Category Archives: Mail

Mail 718 Monday, March 26, 2012

Martin-Zimmerman Story

Jerry,

Most of the coverage of this case is sloppy, and some of the sloppiness seems deliberately inflammatory. Take a look at these if you want what’s actually known so far.

– The Orlando Sentinel with leaked info from the local PD (since pretty much confirmed as authentic by the local city manager in the course of saying he wants an investigation of the leak.)

http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2012-03-26/news/os-trayvon-martin-zimmerman-account-20120326_1_miami-schools-punch-unarmed-black-teenager

– ABC News with an account from Martin’s girlfriend, who was on the phone with him at the time.

http://gma.yahoo.com/trayvon-martin-shooter-told-cops-teenager-went-gun-030349812–abc-news.html

and more from the girlfriend in the Orlando Sentinel

http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2012-03-20/news/os-trayvon-martin-girlfriend-speaks-details-20120320_1_shooting-death-gated-attorneys

The mob wants to crucify Zimmerman. Looks to me the local cops made the right call; there’s no case there. If anything, there’d be more of a case (not much, but more) against Martin for assault and battery, if Zimmerman hadn’t made the point moot.

sign me

Porkypine

One more data point – Martin was caught with a bunch of women’s jewelry plus a large flat-blade screwdriver in his bag at school last October.

http://www.kansascity.com/2012/03/26/3515140/multiple-suspensions-paint-complicated.html

One reason Zimmerman was out patrolling was because of multiple recent burglaries in the neighborhood. I’d be curious when they started, versus when Martin came to stay in the neighborhood. Also, was he on a reasonable route from the store he’d been to back to where he was staying when Zimmerman followed him, or wandering somewhere else?

Not proof of anything either way, of course, but indicative. I won’t hold my breath to see answers to these, mind. Even asking the questions doesn’t fit the "innocent martyr to gun-toting racism" narrative.

Porkypine

I have more mail on this, but most of it points to this being a case for the local authorities, and indicates that the original investigating officers made the right decision. The reopening of this may have been no real favor to Mr. Martin’s family. Our local radio talk show dug into the records and although they continue to demean Mr. Zimmerman, they have broadcast that Mr. Zimmerman made an average of 2 911 calls a year.

Re: Crime Procedurals

"I don’t think I have read more than one crime procedural novel taking place in Florida"

Well maybe they don’t actually count as ‘crime pprocedurals’ in a normal way (as Elmore Leonard’s don’t either) but the Travis McGee stories by John D. MacDonald surely count in my estimation.

As to Special Prosecutors, one particular failure of G.W.Bush in my mind was that he did not, *immediately* upon learning the Patrick Fitzgerald KNEW from Armitage’s confession, that no-one else was quilty of anything, fire Fitzgerald ‘with prejudice’ and pardon Libby.

It is to my mind unconscionable that a ‘special prosecutor’ should question anyone about anything when the object of the prosecutional investigation has been determined.

It was as far as I can tell, GWB’s only failure of nerve. He knew that the MSM would howl, and he left Libby in the wind, when he was legally and morally in the right to stop the investigation at that point, and to punish Fitzgerald for his arrogance and tyranny.

My $.02 worth

Geoff

Special Prosecutors find something to prosecute or they have nothing to do. So they keep looking. I think it is a very bad thing to do. The Constitution makes Congress the Grand Inquest of the Nation, but it has seldom functioned so. I do not think that was GWB’s only failure of nerve, but it was a major one.

I have a flood of mail on keyboards, and I will have a report on keyboards I can recommend. I have ordered two keyboards to try out; I had standardized on the Microsoft Comfortcurve keyboards until I started thinking about it and realized that although I have several of them including on my writing maches (one running a ThinkPad, for instance) I actually type faster on this Ortek. I hoave thought that before and then let the thought go because there ain’t no more Ortek boards.

Mechanical Keyboard Club!

Jerry

Once upon a time I was looking into mechanical keyboards. I started here:

http://www.overclock.net/t/538389/mechanical-keyboard-club/0_30

Not being a fan of clicky keyboards, I settled on one that I can’t remember. I foolishly deleted my bookmarks on the subject. I recall that I was looking for white backlights to work in the dark, silent keys but that clicky feel. Most of the best switches are by Cherry these days.

A decent one (a Das kb) seems to be here: http://www.daskeyboard.com/model-s-professional-silent/

Another good one (Filco Majestouch): http://www.diatec.co.jp/en/det.php?prod_c=757

Ah! Found my keyboard: http://www.deckkeyboards.com/product_info.php?products_id=95

It’s the Deck Legend – Frost (tactile). And it’s big. “The Deck 105 key Legend measures 18.5" long x 7" deep x 2" high (with feet raised) and weighs 3.5 pounds. Cable length is approximately 6 feet (exposed). Tactile feedback switches (Cherry MX1A-C1NW, clear).”

Yup. This is the one. I still want it, actually. But my 1997 Dell is still holding up so well I can’t justify the purchase.

Ed

Ed also adds:

Jerry

One more thing: the place that specializes in keyboard enthusiasts is http://geekhack.org/

Ed

I have an old keyboard. Like your ‘old’ it is very very very old. A MaxiSwitch MaxiTouch Model 2189022xx PN 218902200-21200.

This is a full size, heavy, PROGRAMMABLE keyboard with a separate Insaert/Home/Page section and number section. A full 20" wide by 8"

deep. Solid, heavy, well built.

Iirc I ordered it because you wrote a review about it. Nice medium to heavy key action, No click, but I HATED that about the IBM keyboards.

This is very close to the IBMin feel.

Still in the cupboard as a backup, with a DIN to PS2 adapter rubber banded onto the end of the cable. And I saw the Manual not too long ago.

It explains the programming features. Macros at your fingertips.

If you want it, just say the word and give me an address, and I will drop it off at Fedex, paid from my end, as a ‘Non-returnable Review sample’!! I would consider it my donation to the cause. But only if you expect that it will not just become an aggregation to the midden known as Chaos Manor!

But I have given up on cables, since I need extensions to reach from the computer case beside the credenza, up into the credenza to the keyboard slide. Now using a Logitech DiNovo which is a bluetooth cordless kb + mouse combo. I don’t think I could go back to a corded mouse. But if IBM made a cordless keyboard with a trackpoint, I’d be THERE in a flash (they only make a corded trackpoint’ed version).

Geoff

This will do until I get some boards in to try.

Jerry

What would it be like to live on the evil side of an alternate universe portal?

http://www.gocomics.com/brewsterrockit/2012/03/25

Ed

Brewster Rocket knows…

One comment to the letter from "Stephanie S" regarding Pfizer’s prospective profits under Obamacare: history has shown that socialized medicine is not a boon for the pharmaceutical companies, as expensive new remedies are never funded for implementation. Even the European pharmaceuticals today make up their R&D money proving new drugs in the US market, as they are obligated to provide any new remedies at a small markup on cost elsewhere — if they make that much.

Admittedly, Obamacare was sold as a boon to the pharmaceuticals in the short term. That was just one more lie…

The market system has done well for the United States. Adding a safety net when we can afford it is a nice thing to do, but charity works better on that. Political systems can’t really distinguish between the deserving and undeserving poor, and that makes a difference, as you will find if you have to make several trips to an emergency room and are observant.

Aristotle tells us that injustice consists of treating equal things unequally and also of treating unequal things equally.

The main difference between Germany, Japan, and Afghanistan.

The main difference between Germany, Japan, and Afghanistan is that Germany is inhabited by Germans and governed by Germans; Japan is inhabited by Japanese and governed by Japanese; and Afghanistan is inhabited by Pashtuns, Gilzais, Uzbeks, Tajiks, Hazara, Almaks, Turkmen, Balochs, etc., and is governed by no one.

–

Roland Dobbins

That is certainly an important difference. And Iraq consists of Arab Shiities, Arab Sunni, Arab Baathist atheists, and Kurds who aren’t Arabs at all. Plus some other diversities. If diversity is a good thing for a democracy they have it. Usually diversity promotes empire or did historically. Indeed the Hittites and their Trojan neighbors (who were said to be the founders of Rome had the trick of bringing in and assimilating different peoples and having them become loyal to the state. The Greek democracies never did learn that trick. Rome did…

Various

Jerry,

In response to your Sunday Chaos Manor:-

There is great educational value in having Wiki bookmarked on the screen when reading your postings. For example I now know what a J curve is and the meaning of isentropic.

The traditional way of sinking submarines was to drop a series of bombs each about the size of a 45 gallon barrel at the place where you hoped the submarine would be when the bomb arrived. This was not particularly effective. It was then realised by some OR type that there was a reason that flying birds are not hunted with rifles but with shotguns which fire a projectile with an effective diameter of a couple of feet. Hence hedgehog, a sort of marinised mortar shell, fused to explode on contact. A small explosion in contact with the pressure hull did the business, could be carried in very large numbers, and didn’t deafen your sonar.

In comparing the success of WW2 occupations with the present efforts you left out one of the factors essential for success. In 1943 the United States began training the administrators who were to run the captured territories. Then when they were needed they were fluent in the local language and had a good grasp of local administration. The Iraqi people, not to be confused with the Iraqi armed forces, never felt defeated and some continued the war using new tactics for which the occupiers had no effective counter. It is far worse in Afghanistan. Here each man, family, and village constitutes it’s own armed forces. The only way to bring peace to such a country is to defeat, ie., kill them in detail. What Tacitus once described as making a desert and then calling it peace. Not a sensible way to spend borrowed money even if the money can never be repaid.

John Edwards

When the military were conquering Iraq in the early days of the war, the generals told the Iraqi generals to keep their troops in barracks, keep them orderly, and “you will have an honorable place in the rebuilding of Iraq.” Then came Bremer who sent the Iraqi army home armed and unemployed. The worst proconsul since the Romans led legions into that desert …

Medieval warming WAS global – new science contradicts IPCC

Once again, you are proven right…

Medieval warming WAS global – new science contradicts IPCC More peer-reviewed science contradicting the warming-alarmist "scientific consensus" was announced yesterday, as a new study shows that the well-documented warm period which took place in medieval times was not limited to Europe, or the northern hemisphere: it reached all the way to Antarctica.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/03/23/warm_period_little_ice_age_global/

Abstract:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0012821X12000659

Calcium carbonate can crystallize in a hydrated form as ikaite at low temperatures. The hydration water in ikaite grown in laboratory experiments records the δ18O of ambient water, a feature potentially useful for reconstructing δ18O of local seawater. We report the first downcore δ18O record of natural ikaite hydration waters and crystals collected from the Antarctic Peninsula (AP), a region sensitive to climate fluctuations. We are able to establish the zone of ikaite formation within shallow sediments, based on porewater chemical and isotopic data.

Having constrained the depth of ikaite formation and δ18O of ikaite crystals and hydration waters, we are able to infer local changes in fjord δ18O versus time during the late Holocene. This ikaite record qualitatively supports that both the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age extended to the Antarctic Peninsula.

Description: Horizontal_Line

Chuck Ruthroff

The greatest mistake you can make is to be continually fearing you will make one. — Elbert Hubbard

I try to pay attention to all the evidence. Novelists need to be plausible, attorneys need to accumulate evidence, but scientists must account for ALL the data… http://www.jerrypournelle.com/science/voodoo.html

Moon News

This is big news, but not so big when you think about it and I’ll get to that at the end.

<.>

In the new research, published online today in Nature Geoscience, geochemists led by Junjun Zhang at the University of Chicago in Illinois, together with a colleague at the University of Bern in Switzerland, looked at titanium isotopes in 24 separate samples of lunar rock and soil. The proportion of 50Ti to 47Ti is another good indicator of whether a sample came from Earth, and, just as with oxygen, the researchers found the moon’s proportion was effectively the same as Earth’s and different from elsewhere in the solar system. Zhang explains that it’s unlikely Earth could have exchanged titanium gas with the magma disk because titanium has a very high boiling point. "The oxygen isotopic composition would be very easily homogenized because oxygen is much more volatile, but we would expect homogenizing titanium to be very difficult."

So, if the giant impact hypothesis doesn’t explain the moon, how did it get there? One possibility is that a glancing blow from a passing body left Earth spinning so rapidly that it threw some of itself off into space like a shot put, forming the disk that coalesced into the moon. This would explain why the moon seems to be made entirely of Earth material. But there are problems with this model, too, such as the difficulty of explaining where all the extra angular momentum went after the moon formed, and the researchers aren’t claiming to have refuted the giant impact hypothesis.

</>

http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2012/03/findings-cast-doubt-on-moon-orig.html?ref=hp

The models I saw showed a planet hitting the earth in a glancing blow and creating the moon. This theory is not completely inconsistent with the old one.  Something could have hit the Earth, causing the spin that planet may have kept going.  I think we are fine tuning a larger theory here, but this article frames it as if we are going in a whole new direction.  I don’t think the author of this article saw any of the mathematical models or computer models on the subject.  What do you think?

—–

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

I fear I have not thought much about it. I have heard many “exciting new” theories of the origin of the moon over the decades.

Interesting thing the President said overheard

Jerry,

What an interesting thing to say. What positions will change after voter opinion doesn’t matter?

"This is my last election," Obama told Medvedev. "After my election I have more flexibility."

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2012/03/26/open-mic-catches-obama-asking-russian-president-for-space-on-missile-defense/?hpt=hp_t3

Seriously, wow. This is a hell of a lot more than merely asking for negotiating room, but the media is presenting this as a simple request to tone down rhetoric for a while instead of a signal that the President will make some real foreign policy changes as soon as he has no internal political consequences for doing so.

To refresh our memory on the President’s starting position:

http://macsmind.com/wordpress/2008/06/08/obama-wants-to-protect-america/

Is that where policy is going after the election?

Please withhold my name, since Tennyson had it right. Theirs not to wonder why…

As a former troop I can wonder in public…

‘Is the Kindle changing the reading habits of science fiction readers?’

<http://jameswharris.wordpress.com/2012/03/24/what-is-the-kindle-doing-to-the-science-fiction-genre/>

——

Roland Dobbins

The Kindle is changing the reading habits of a very large part of the reading public… I now sell more eBooks than print books.

Live and Let Spy.

<http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/reviewofbooks_preview/12266>

<http://www.amazon.com/Live-Let-Spy-BRIXMIS-ebook/dp/B00724WU2I/>

–

Roland Dobbins

Ornithopter

Dr. Pournelle,

As I’m sure you’ve heard by now, the ornithopter guy did, indeed, fake it.

http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/aviation/diy-flying/why-its-so-hard-to-build-a-human-powered-winged-aircraft-7539894?click=pm_news

Still nice to dream about, though.

Ben

Ben Barlow

Alas.

Mail 717 Saturday, March 24, 2012

· China Coup

· Bell Labs

· VIP’s

· Red Tails

· Operations Research

· Ornithopter

· Jobs, Gates, and dreams

· Nation Building

·

SUBJ: Chinese economic stability

Jerry –

It has been several days since you mentioned rumors of a Chinese coup, and it seems fairly clear that they were unfounded. However, your comment that "China’s economic boom is said to be faltering, but that’s a slowing of growth, not an actual collapse." is true, but not necessarily relevant. A polysci course I took some time ago invoked the Davies’ J-Curve to explain why revolutions often succeed when things don’t seem to be all that bad. It’s all about expectations and perceptions. As a related condition in the US, I suspect that Obama’s chances of reelection will depend on his ability to get folks to evaluate their economic condition in terms of last year ("what have you done for me lately?"), rather than before he took office.

Regards,

Jim Martin

That’s the classic theory on revolution, and Marx dealt with it a bit; but it depends on the structure of the society that is undergoing the revolution. China hasn’t really followed that pattern, and sometimes it’s difficult to distinguish between a revolution and a coup, or either from a revolt of janissaries. Some African ‘revolutions’ were engineered, and certainly one failed attempt at a coup by foreign invaders led by rather famous mercenaries would have been a ‘revolution’ to the world had it succeeded.

China’s history is more one of changes in dynasty, and contests between war lords. Sun Yat Sen led a real revolution in 1911 that established the Republic of China in name, but in fact the country was torn apart into semi-independent provinces under war lords. The Communists were active in forming a national party, as was Sun Yat Sen with his socialist nationalism. The Japanese invasion broke things apart even more and for a while there was a genuine three-way war between the Japanese invaders, Chiang Kai-shek and his Kuomintang (usually referred to as Nationalists). After World War II there was a vicious civil war, extraordinary inflation, and a collapse of central government that ended when Chiang took his army to Formosa (which had been liberated from the Japanese mostly by the US Navy).

That’s not much of a history: the point is that China never had a revolution in the usual Western sense of the word. Both the Chinese Communist Party and the Kuomintang claimed to be the people’s party with revolutionary goals, and both organized armies. Both professed reforms, and both were corrupt. Both were in essence dictatorships under their party leader, and both had support from foreign powers (US and USSR).

Historically China has often solved insurgencies by the “two province” system – take all the food from one province and distribute it to the people of the other. One starves and can’t rebel, and the other is dependent and grateful. There are also divisions along racial lines. The current CCP rules through an extraordinary party organization system; the only effective opposition to the party would be the People’s Liberation Army, which is a political and economic power as well as an army.

As to the US economy and elections, elections matter less and less as the regulatory authority of the central government expands. I remember when the only Federal official who mattered in Shelby County, Tennessee, was the Agriculture Department County Agent, and even after Pearl Harbor the federal government was far away and didn’t much interfere with daily life.

_The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation_

<http://www.amazon.com/Idea-Factory-American-Innovation-ebook/dp/B005GSZIWG/>

Roland Dobbins

– – –

Subj: Bell Labs, scale and innovation

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/294143/bell-labs-scale-and-innovation-jim-manzi

>>[B]y the 1980s, Silicon Valley, math-intensive finance and similar

>>ecosystems were exploding. Talented, ambitious young people could go

>>to these places, and make both a huge individual impact and a ton of

>>money. The Labs still had a lot of smart people, but you can imagine

>>the selection-bias problems in recruiting and retention once these

>>alternatives were available.<<

Perhaps Pournelle’s Law of Bureaucracy applied to Bell Labs, too?

Perhaps we need to think in terms of stimulating the creation of new industrial labs — and the creative destruction of old, degenerated ones

— rather than of trying to preserve old industrial labs as National Treasures?

Rod Montgomery==monty@starfief.com

Bell Labs was an extraordinary institution. There have been many attempts to copy it, but the general consensus is that they have not been very successful. Bell was owned by a private company which wasn’t really private – as a regulated public utility it had its own form of bureaucracy – but Bell management understood that the Lab was different, and its management was quite different from that of The Phone Company.

I would not quarrel with the notion that we need some new creations and creative destruction.

It is possible to have a Strategy of Technology. US Air Force Systems Command was a rather successful attempt to build an institution for creation of technology on demand. It’s gone too.

VIPs

http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htmoral/articles/20120322.aspx

Why can’t the ride the jump seats (webbed seats) or crammed among the cargo like I (and all my Marines) had to? (Besides can you think of a better campaign photo op?)

Cheap energy = prosperity!

Drill here, DRILL NOW!

David Couvillon

Colonel, U.S. Marine Corps Reserve, Retired.; Former Governor of Wasit Province, Iraq; Righter of Wrongs; Wrong most of the time; Distinguished Expert, TV remote control; Chef de Hot Dog Excellance; Avoider of Yard Work

I suspect that is not sufficiently dignified for the Command in Chief, or even the Deputy Assistant Associate Secretary of Defense…

Surprise, surprise, surprise!

Hello Jerry,

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2012/03/17/effective-world-government-will-still-be-needed-to-stave-off-climate-catastrophe/

(Note that the world government must be ‘effective’; ‘totalitarian’

carries SUCH negative vibes.)

But we already knew that 20 years ago when Climate Science, a formerly unknown scientific backwater, burst on the scene with the announcement that CAGW was upon us, the science was settled, that ONLY an omnipotent world government (Marxist of course) could snatch us back from the jaws of disaster, and only if action was taken IMMEDIATELY.

Well, they were right about one thing; climate science was indeed settled 20 years ago. Not surprising when the entire ‘science’ is based on an axiom: ‘CO2 introduced into the atmosphere as a byproduct of humans using combustion as their primary energy source is causing the ‘Temperature of the Earth’ to rise drastically and at in increasing rate. The effects of that temperature rise are uniformly negative and can ONLY be ameliorated by the establishment of a world government with authority over every aspect of energy production and consumption.’

Other sciences, based on a never-ending loop of data collection and theorizing as to the explanation for the observed data rather than a single immutable axiom, are never settled, of course. But then other sciences are actually scientific, unlike ‘climate science’ which is and always has been a political movement which uses the trappings of science and the threat of imminent catastrophe as its justification.

Bob Ludwick

Surprise!

Red Tails

The Tuskegee Airmen gave good, faithful, and valorous service, and deserve to be remembered. But–

As a child in the early Fifties I listened to my father and his contemporaries, all of them Southerners who had "been in the War", and I can say without fear or favor: The Red Tails deserve honor, but if there had been no Red Ball Express — taken as an eponym of the support troops, construction, logistics, and the like, staffed by blacks, which were many — there would have been no Civil Rights movement. The matter-of-fact valor, persistence, and dedication of those units was seen by people who would be the leaders of the next generation, and that was among the first chinks in the dam of irrational prejudice. These were people who sprinkled their conversation with the n-word and worse as a matter of unthinking routine. I often heard things like "I don’t think we could’ve won without the n–rs", and it was such sentiments that allowed people like Dr. King to exist and present their ideas without being simply slapped down.

The romance and importance of aviation in WWII has grown enormously in retrospect, to a level not present among the actual fighters. LeMay and many others engaged in a decades-long PR campaign designed to promote Air Power to a position of glamor and admiration, and largely succeeded, but the citizen-warriors who prosecuted the effort and won thought of the Air Corps as a sort of sideshow, useful in some cases but paling in importance compared to the grunts and sailors who ground out victory one bullet (and one blob of mud) at a time. That includes the pilots, air crew, and support people who prosecuted the war in the air, many, if not most, of whom considered themselves privileged characters lucky to be mostly behind the lines, enjoying many of the comforts of home, and basking in the admiration of the noncombatants they mixed with at the expense of the people who deserved it. Dad and the others knew of the Tuskegee Airmen and praised them as they were due, but thought the truck-driving, shovel-wielding black men who brought, and built, the things needed by the troops were more important.

Regards,

Ric Locke

There is a wonderful movie about the Red Ball Express, by that name actually. It used to be shown to every incoming class at West Point along with They Died with Their Boots On… I say a wonderful movie although I only saw it that once.

Escort Mission

The idea of what the mission actually is was questioned in other areas during the war. The Brits put AA guns on some merchants running solo in the Med. After a few months, the people in charge of the AA guns wanted them removed, because the AA gunners on the merchants weren’t shooting down very many enemy aircraft, and in their view, their effort was being wasted. Then, the people in charge of shipping went- WHOA! The ships with the AA mounted weren’t being sunk- enemy aircraft swerve off when the flak starts up, and the bombs either miss or aren’t released. The cargo was getting through.

The AA guns stayed, and were placed on more ships as time went by and they became available.

Harold

The key to effective operations research is to figure out what the real criterion is. OR was invented, sort of, by Brit boffins looking at the Battle of the North Atlantic. It’s a classic story: the Royal Navy discovered that hasty attacks on submarines immediately after one was spotted didn’t get many submarines, so they devised new tactics to make attacks with precision and bring other escort craft to the location. The boffins analyzed the data and discovered that this was indeed true, but those tactics lost more ships than the hasty attacks – what was important was to break up the wolf pack and send the subs diving so the convoy could get past. Hasty attacks got ships through – and that was the real goal of the convoy.

Figuring out the true mission so that you don’t optimize on the wrong criterion is probably the most important job of an operations research team; and it’s astonishing how many operations commanders don’t know what the true strategic mission is.

Jerry

He did it! A man flew with his arms and custom-built wings:

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/03/human-bird-wings/

It will be a sport. Olympics, anyone?

Ed

– – –

Subject: fake? Re: I never thought I’d live to see the day of human powered flight

*sigh*

maybe fake.

http://gizmodo.com/5895235/cgi-experts-say-flying-bird-man-is-fake

– Paul

:wq!

On Thu, Mar 22, 2012 at 14:34, Paul D. Walker wrote:

http://www.kurzweilai.net/houston-we-have-liftoff-humanbirdwings-guy-finally-enjoys-the-miracle-of-human-flight

– Paul

Just given the physics and biology I would say that it’s more than questionable: I’ll bet a dollar that it’s true but only if I’m given extreme odds. Say a million to one.

‘Microsoft never seemed to recover from the shock of achieving their original 1975 goal.’

<http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/03/welcome-to-the-post-pc-era.html>

Roland Dobbins

I said that some years ago. But Microsoft has a lot of bright people, and its management may be able to give them more control while they try to find a new dream. Gates and Jobs had both genius and vision but in quite different ways. Jobs had to spend some years in the wilderness letting the technology catch up with his new visions; Gates stayed on his, and took a while recognizing the impact of the high speed internet even though he had written about it; but he always did have faith that the technology would bail him out if he went a bridge too far. Jobs went two bridges too far with the original Mac and it took a while before the technology let him build the machine he had envisioned.

Combating climate change

Hello Jerry,

Dr. William Briggs (Statistician to the Stars: http://wmbriggs.com/) most recent blog entry is entitled ‘Bioengineering Humans To Combat Climate Change’. In it, he provides some excerpts from a ‘forthcoming peer reviewed “Human Engineering and Climate Change” in the journal ‘Ethics, Policy and the Environment’.

Your readers may be interested in his excerpts and his commentary thereon. Reading the actual journal requires a purchase. I, for one, don’t want to encourage public insanity, so I declined.

When reading Dr. Briggs’ piece, keep in mind that people who think like the authors of ‘Human Engineering and Climate Change’ are currently setting the policies, energy and otherwise, of the United States and much of the remainder of the formerly civilized world.

Bob Ludwick=

Humans have been reengineered to adapt to climate changes several times in our evolutionary history either through genuine climate change or because of migration, but we have let nature and nature’s God do that. I once had a job in a department of human engineering, and I did human engineering work, but we thought that mean engineering the device to be easier to use and more effective for humans.

We know pretty well how to survive warmer. We learned how to live at the edge of glaciers a long time ago.

Energy and global warming

Jerry P:

I think I sent something along this line previously, but will do so again. The heat engine, the earth and atmosphere, converts thermal energy, solar flux, into mechanical energy. This moves the atmosphere and hydrosphere. I don’t have the desire to figure out the balance, but it is not an isentropic process and so there is loss of solar energy to movement of stuff; like air and water. Now someone could probably calculate how much energy it would take to move the Gulf Stream faster by say a mile per hour on the average. And it would be difficult to measure accurately. But it would be worth while to think about the claims that climatic warming will produce more and more severe weather patterns. So if that is true, then we want to know if there is a conversion increase and what balances it all out. I have not looked closely at this topic but have not found anything readily available to equate thermal/ mechanical conversion: solar flux vs ocean flux & atmospheric flux. Just pondering a bit.

CBS

The problem is that when you try to model these things you drown in complications, so you need to make a bunch of simplifying assumptions. In operations research we learned that the assumptions often govern the outcome, so we tried to build models in which the outcome was fairly insensitive to the assumptions. The climate modelers haven’t been able to do that. It’s still just too complicated; we don’t even have good agreements on measurement operations.

Nation building

Hello Dr Pournelle, here are some of the reasons Afghanistan is different than Germany and Japan.

Both are homogeneous. Slice up Germany and Japan and you’ll find ethnically, culturally and even theologically homogenous populations.

The percentages who don’t fit the mainstream are small enough to be trivial. Iraq was three major groups, if you pick the three biggest groups in Afghanistan you can’t get to majority status. This means that since you have to do things different to deal with local conditions based on culture and other such factors, you essentially have to crack a new code for every little hamlet in Afghanistan.

Germany and Japan were logistically straightforward. While combat units move about relatively easily, the supplies you need for a population and an army are another matter. The sea gets you close to anywhere in Japan and the roads, rails and rivers allow you to move about in Germany without too much trouble. That sort of transportation network isn’t there in Afghanistan.

Germany and Japan were full of cosmopolitan, educated, motivated people who can and did take responsibility and control of local leadership and business. Afghanistan is dreadfully short of cosmopolitan, educated, motivated and not overwhelmingly corrupt people who can be trusted with important things like power over their neighbors, water or money.

Germany and Japan are culturally honest and hardworking. Afghanistan is culturally corrupt and lazy. I actually heard an uncorroborated story about a border policeman fired because he wasn’t taking in enough money in bribes, and passing a sufficient percentage along to his superiors.

There are others, but those are all huge problems for Afghanistan.

Serving Officer

The only thing that has ever united the people who live in the geographical area called Afghanistan is the presence of armed foreigners. That has been true since Alexander the Great. The Khan in Kabul never united the country for any length of time, and the President has even less power. The writ of Kabul does not run everywhere. Why we fight to subdue the Afghan people to the Mayor Kabul is not clear to me.

nation building; what works, what doesn’t

Dr. Pournelle,

I had a thought that not every nation building effort of the U.S. has been an unmitigated disaster, and I wondered what did we do different in Germany and Japan? The answer was not a big surprise. In Japan, Gen. MacArthur did 1) defeat the enemy utterly and completely. 2) Break up the existing Oligarchies and (I hate to say it) redistribute the wealth. 3) Rule as absolute dictator for several years while building a new, western style government. 4) Dictate a new, western style, Constitution. Simple. As speaker Gingrich is fond of saying; "Simple doesn’t mean easy".

By contrast, in Iraq, the U.S. military ruled for about 30 days. Then the state department took over, putting the worst proconsul in the history of the world (Paul Bremer) in charge. I don’t know what criteria he used in employing and installing a new civilian government, but he did it quite quickly, and left everything else up to them. This resulted in the same power structures, same ownership of wealth, etc. And of course the new bosses wrote a constitution to benefit themselves and no one else. Even your youngest readers (any idea what that age might be?) can see how well that has worked.

It strikes me as reasonable to assume that Japanese peasants started from the same point of ignorance of republican style government as Iraqi peasants. The results are so dramatically different because the methods were dramatically different, or so I see it.

Martin Lee Rose

Pueblo, Colorado

So far as I know we never had any clear goals in either Afghanistan or Iraq. I opposed going into Iraq at all, and advocated driving out the Taliban and getting out quickly in Afghanistan, leaving behind the impression that it would be a good thing not to annoy the United States – while we invested the money we weren’t spending on wars in building energy independence. I was told the Iraq war would only cost $300 Billion, but I never got a very detailed account of how that number was arrived at. For what we have spent in the years since 2002 we could have energy independence and a new Fleet.

Afghanistan makes nothing we want. Iraq has oil but we don’t get any. As an old operations research man I was trained to identify the goals and criteria. I am not sure that was done for either of those operations. We knew what we wanted from our occupations in Germany and Japan.

Regarding Fluke

I don’t think you need to suppose that government subsidies for birth control will inevitably follow the HHS mandate. I think there’s another way to demolish the Fluke argument:

First of all, mandates have ALWAYS increased health insurance costs. The size of the uptick varies, of course, but there has never been a mandate that has NOT increased monthly premiums. And who pays those higher premiums, pray tell? Employers. People who buy their own health insurance plans (like yours truly). In short, a lot of people who are NOT Ms. Fluke. So yes — our thirty-year-old Georgetown coed IS asking other people to pay for her birth control.

Further, once ALL contraception is declared "free," do you think people will continue to buy the generics? Of course not. They’re going to go after the pricier brands. Big Pharma will certainly make a killing — especially after those companies start jacking up their prices in response to the utter lack of cost-reducing incentives. And what’s going to happen once the insurance industry is hit with larger bills for their government-mandated birth control coverage? Insurance companies will charge higher premiums. So once again, employers and individual health care consumers will end up footing the bill.

Personally, I don’t think it’s just to ask me to pay more for my health insurance so the CEO of Pfizer can swim in a pile of money. Do you?

Stephanie S.

Well said.

Mail 717 Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Afghan conflict and recent killings

Hi Jerry

In reaction to the rogue killings in Afganistan here is one reaction from a Canadian perspective from an author who has been there and recently published a book on Canada’s involvement in that conflict. It is a bit of a rant and makes some remarks concerning the history of the conflict that are provocative (especially if you are a democrat).

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/03/13/terry-glavin-canada-deserved-better-than-this-so-did-the-afghans/

Hope you can access this link.

Sam Mattina

Thank you. I have posted more on this today: https://jerrypournelle.com/chaosmanor/?p=6165

Nation building

Dear Dr. Pournelle,

David Warren concedes that nation building in Afghanistan and Iraq has been a failure.

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/cominghome/export+democracy/6223785/story.html#ixzz1nplW1l7G

In this, he retracts his initial support, which was predicated on our success in rebuilding Germany and Japan back in 1945. He states that the situation is too different.

Which raises the question in my mind: WHY is the situation different?

You were alive and aware of world events in 1945. You’ve lived through both reconstructions. What is different between them?

From my vantage point of someone who grew up in the ’70s, I perceive two answers:

1) Japanese militarism and German Naziism were defeated *as ideologies* in a way that militant Islamism has not been. Consequently, the Axis populations were willing to abandon the old way of looking at things and adopt a new one. They were essentially racist viewpoints that were definitively rebutted when ‘inferior’ Slavs and Americans beat the Aryans and the Yamato Race. Not just defeated, but destroyed, annihilated, the Axis. By contrast, militant Muslims expect to win the battle in the long haul, tactical setbacks notwithstanding. It’s a viewpoint they have held since AD 700 and does not appear to have lost any staying power in all that time.

2) The US made it absolutely clear in 1945 that we were in for the long haul in Japan and Germany and were determined to win whatever the cost. In fact, we’re still there. By contrast, there was an expiration date on our adventures in the Middle East from the day of the invasion. I don’t think the most stupid shepherd in the hills doubted for an instant that the Americans would be leaving in a fairly short time. There’s not much incentive to change when the winning move is simply to grab a book and take a vacation until the Americans quit in disgust.

Is that correct ? Are there issues? As I said, you have living memory of both. What do you see?

Respectfully,

Brian P.

In World War II we had an objective, and we knew when it had been achieved. What we undertook in Japan and Germany was achievable by citizen soldiers – indeed required citizen soldiers.

See Fehrenbach. The kind of operations we undertook in Iraq and Afghanistan cannot be accomplished with citizen soldiers without great expense. It cannot be done on the cheap; it is actually more expensive than building legionaries and auxiliaries. Of course no one in Afghanistan believes that the father of two children deployed for the fourth time in eleven years will stay until the job is done. We don’t believe it either. When Rome sent a Legion to Britain it was not recruited in Rome and never believed that it would be called home to Rome – indeed, the troops dreaded it. See Benet’s Last of the Lecions. If we want to build nations, we need to send those who expect to garrison that nation, marry locally, and – well, you get the idea.

No such thing as a light infantryman in the US anymore…

http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htinf/articles/20120311.aspx

And SLAM is rapidly rotating… http://www.amazon.com/Soldiers-Load-Mobility-Nation/dp/0686310012

s/f

Couv

Cheap energy = prosperity!

Drill here, DRILL NOW!

David Couvillon

Colonel, U.S. Marine Corps Reserve, Retired.; Former Governor of Wasit Province, Iraq; Righter of Wrongs; Wrong most of the time; Distinguished Expert, TV remote control; Chef de Hot Dog Excellance; Avoider of Yard Work

A dilemma that has been with us since Roman times, when the new model Roman Army called themselves Marius’s Mules…

BUFF

When I’m in the Shreveport, LA area, I still marvel at the BUFFs flying around. Their northern landing approach brings them about 400 ft over I-20!

http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htmurph/articles/20120313.aspx

s/f

Couv

Cheap energy = prosperity!

Drill here, DRILL NOW!

David Couvillon

Colonel, U.S. Marine Corps Reserve, Retired.; Former Governor of Wasit Province, Iraq; Righter of Wrongs; Wrong most of the time; Distinguished Expert, TV remote control; Chef de Hot Dog Excellance; Avoider of Yard Work

My first aerospace job was in the Boeing Bomber Weapons Unit, where I was charged with helping convert the B-52 force to the new model in which the tail gunner was inside the flight cabin (and became the lowest ranking enlisted man aboard, and thus was charged with making and distribution of coffee when not in combat). I was also involved in the downward ejection system modifications, and in the control system for the Hound Dog standoff missile deployments. I got to play about in the huge bomb bay when we tried to make the bomb release timing more exact. The current BUFF is sometimes described as a bunch of parts flying in loose formation, and the crews are all younger than the ships they fly. She’s a splendid old girl. I love her.

Pirates and congress

Dear Dr. Pournelle,

I thought you might appreciate these remarks by Stephen Carmel of Maersk lines.

To hear him tell it, he’s more worried about Congress than about pirates.

http://www.informationdissemination.net/2011/08/pirates-vs-congress-how-pirates-are.html

Essentially, armed security — in Maersk’s case, made up exclusively of former SEALs — adds about one fifth of a cent to the cost of a gallon of gasoline at the pump. That’s not without it’s problems. For one thing, sending freighters with armed crew aboard invites reciprocity. He posits a Maltese freighter sailing into Norfolk with a crew armed to the teeth, in accordance with the piracy plan provided by the host nation.

Also, there is an issue that if someone shoots a Pakistani pirate aboard a US flag ship, there’s nothing to stop that pirate (or his survivors) from suing in Karachi, ensuring the ship is impounded the next time it docks there. There is liability protection in US law, which is very helpful against piracy off the New Jersey coast, but less where it actually matters.

" At this point the single most helpful thing regarding piracy (aside of course from solving Somalia) the worlds governments can do would be to push through IMO a rule set that standardizes training and certification of shooters, a standard weapon set, and international protocols for entry and clearance of armed merchant ships in ports and a standard framework for liability cover. That to me would be a heck of a lot more useful than banal calls for the worlds Navy’s to do more."

The major costs to his shipping line, as he sees it, comes from $6 bil a year in emissions controls, $50/ton carbon tax on ship’s coal, $15 bil in invasive species mandates, ballast water mandates etc. etc. etc. Given the choice between Congress and the pirates, it’s almost as if he’d run up the black flag himself! Maybe John Galt’s valley will reflag merchant ships?

Respectfully,

Brian P.

Ain’t we got fun? The Iron Law is quite real…

Share the Wealth

I love to see this President sharing the wealth.  He does not need to show valid identification to take the office of President, so why should the people who vote for him have to show such identification? 

<.>

The Justice Department has blocked a new law in Texas requiring voters to show a photo ID, saying that it disproportionately harms Hispanic residents.

The action is the second time in three months that the Obama administration has blocked a state voter ID law. In December, the Justice Department struck down South Carolina’s new law requiring photo identification at the polls, saying it discriminated against minority voters.

</>

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/justice-department-bars-texas-voter-id-law/2012/03/12/gIQAUzgW7R_story.html

Eventually, they will learn "the hireling fleeth, because he is an hireling, and careth not for the sheep". 

—–

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

Spreading the wealth around. We can’t say we were not forewarned. One must show ID to fly on an airplane, but it is apparently unreasonable to ask for identification for voters.

You need a reality check.

I’m not certain I have ever said that Ms. Fluke’s rights were violated, and I certainly don’t agree with her views about my obligation to pay for her contraceptives.

Stop spreading lies. I’m disappointed you’d let yourself be used to perpetuate this. It’s not even a good lie.

She has insurance coverage.

She pays over $1800/yr for the coverage.

Federal Regulations say her INSURER needs to provide birth control.

So, exactly where is she dipping into YOUR pocket?

The insurer pays the benefit from her premium collected, or their investment income, OR they suck at underwriting and deserve no pity for failing to be good capitalists and it comes from their reserves.

So, exactly where is she dipping into YOUR pocket?

Now, since you OBVIOUSLY haven’t actually READ HER TESTIMONY, it is reproduced below so you can clarify this issue for yourself before you publish your retraction.

YOU WILL NOTE THAT SHE NEVER MAKES THE CLAIM WHICH YOU FALSELY ATTRIBUTE TO HER.

Please remember to be as enthusiastic in your correction of others going forward as you were in spreading this malicious lie.

With barely concealed disgust,

Mike Lieman

I am not sure this needs comment. Once you tell an “insurance” company what benefits it must pay, you will find that subsidies are not far behind – or else the company simply ceases to exist. We all pay for subsidies. Even those who pay no taxes, since they generally exist on entitlements which could be increased. Of course those who live on entitlements don’t always get to say what it is they will be entitled to.

Ah, well.

antinihilism

Hi Jerry-

One way of confronting wrongheadedness is to take it seriously. This article is an example. It may be of interest to your readers.

http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/The-new-old-lie-7300

Best regards,

-Steve=

Yes, I have mentioned it elsewhere. Thanks.

x-prize for education

Jerry,

On the subject of an X-prize for education…

Spend the money convincing parents and govt busybodies that education is intensely personal and each child will, no matter how much effort is spent on them, achieve only to their own maximum potential. There is a huge difference between the top 10% and bottom 10% in academic achievement, but right now the big thing seems to be to force all kids to learn exactly the same amount and then measure the schools on how closely they come to making all students perform to a mythical average standard.

Nothing could be more harmful to our kids.

Above average kids need an extra challenge, and those kids with the potential for some seriously high-end education should not be held back in public schools, and their parents should not have to resort to putting their kids into expensive private schools. Likewise, kids who are at the lower end of academic potential should not be made to feel inadequate if despite all their hard work, they do not achieve to the standards set. Forcing a standard that all kids can achieve is simply enforcing mediocrity on our children.

Instead, an approach similar to the one I first saw in my own high school ought to be considered as a model for all public schools. My school had a 4-track system. The primary tier was for the 60% or so students who were "average". These courses challenged these students without either boring or embarassing them, and the classes were structured to minimize the effects of the "average" disruptive student as well. The next track had about 20% of the students, those who were either a bit above average in capabilities or who simply possessed a better focus for the school environment. Classroom disruptions were almost non-existent mostly because students who disrupted these classes were placed back in the primary track. The next track was for those 10% students who were clearly above average, and who consistently performed well with their grades, comprehension, and in various types of tests. There were ZERO disruptions in these classes, and students who qualified for these classes (mostly through testing and observation) loved the extra challenge. The final 10% track was for students who were getting no benefit from the normal classes, for various reasons. Some simply could not sit still through a class, some simply progressed slowly. These students were taught in much smaller classes by highly talented teachers (often the ones teaching the "top" track classes) and their education focused on things that could help them succeed later in life.

One thing was VERY clear in all of the classes… Nobody was given a free ride, and the teachers and faculty did not say or imply that failing to go to college was somehow a failure to succeed in life. All students were encouraged to apply to college if they wanted, and some of the classes in all tracks, especially in the junior and senior years, were targeted specifically at preparation for college entrance. But the career counselors presented both college and direct entry job prospects after high school with equal respect. Because they realized that some students simply wouldn’t benefit from college and might even be badly harmed by an unsuccessful college attempt. This is why the school included vocational elective courses for everyone.

So my suggestion is to give the $10 million to someone who can figure out how to convince the meddling govt busybodies to get their fingers out of public schools, and let the schools set their own priorities and standards based on the student populations they have. Because each student is going to have different capabilities and trying to force them all into one single mold, or even trying to prepare ALL of them for college, is pretty destructive to almost every student including both high and low achievers.

Sean

The only way that education comes close to being an investment in the future is if it makes the public school graduates more productive citizens. It is not politically correct to notice that this really means that you ought to concentrate on the smartest students; there is little return on investment put into the disabled, feebleminded, and those with behavior problems that doom them to being unproductive. National wealth depends on production and productivity, not on getting a dull normal child to get a ‘passing grade’. Yes, half the children are below average, and that and they cannot be ignored; but adding a few points to the SAT score of a child with IQ 89 is unlikely ever to have a payoff equal to the cost of the education. You aren’t suppose to say this, but nearly everyone knows it.

Preparing a potential scientist to be a scientist, or engineer to be an engineer, can have huge return on investment; and taking the time of the teacher away from the bright normal who might become an engineer in order to raise the score of a dull normal a bit is simply not a good investment of limited resources. Wealthy societies can afford all kinds of ‘rights’ and entitlements, like bashing down curbs to make life more pleasant for the handicapped; but that always ends up in lawsuits, and assertions of rights, but seldom adds to productivity. If we’re rich enough we can be generous, but it doesn’t work that way now.

I do think that Khan Academy is making a big difference. http://www.khanacademy.org/

Denier? Warmer?

Great quote you had "I am so accustomed to being taken to task by AGW Believers that I haven’t really prepared for someone who attacks me as a warmer."

Isn’t it interesting that in a society where discourse is as simultaneously simple and complex as it is now-a-days that there is no room for skepticism without pre-conceived positions.

I wonder how long it will be before such skepticism is wiped out everywhere, even in professions like forensics, for being so darned inconvenient.

John

Well either you believe in rational discourse or you don’t. I read John Stuart Mill at an early age, and I suppose I have never forgotten it. Possony believed in rational discussion. It works among rational people, which is what I try to restrict myself to.

Texas vulture study upends forensics

Jerry

It is always true that if you go investigating and gathering data you will learn something you didn’t know, maybe even getting a surprise. For example, the Texas vulture study and its effects on forensics:

http://news.yahoo.com/texas-vulture-study-upends-forensics-142318853.html

“For more than five weeks, a woman’s body lay undisturbed in a secluded Texas field. Then a frenzied flock of vultures descended on the corpse and reduced it to a skeleton within hours. But this was not a crime scene lost to nature. It was an important scientific experiment into the way human bodies decompose, and the findings are upending assumptions about decay that have been the basis of homicide cases for decades. Experienced investigators would normally have interpreted the absence of flesh and the condition of the bones as evidence that the woman had been dead for six months, possibly even a year or more. Now a study of vultures at Texas State University is calling into question many of the benchmarks detectives have long relied on.”

“The time of death is critical in any murder case. It’s a key piece of evidence that influences the entire investigation, often shaping who becomes a suspect and ultimately who is convicted or exonerated. "If you say someone did it and you say it was at least a year, could it have been two weeks instead?" said Michelle Hamilton, an assistant professor at the school’s forensic anthropology research facility. "It has larger implications than what we thought initially." And more.

Ed

Fascinating. Thanks!

Possibly relevant to the end of the Encyclopedia Britannica:

: A parable about Wikipedia and MSM

Read this article first – all the way to the update at the bottom.

Video: Does O’Brien know what “Critical Race Theory” is?

http://hotair.com/archives/2012/03/08/video-the-wikipedia-definition-of-critical-race-theory/

What does this say about the reliability of Wikipedia when important articles are edited to match a liberal agenda and protect liberal media personalities from having their distortions discovered?

What does this say about the liberal media distorting reality in their quest to smear those of us on the right?

Should you believe either one when it comes to politics or your life?

{^_^}

e-books – good for serious writers

http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2012/03/13/should-serious-readers-buy-e-books/

Charles Brumbelow

The eBook revolution has changed the publishing business. We are just now learning how. I am still collecting thoughts and data on the subject. I also think that author associations must deal with the “self published” author who has sold thousands of eBook copies of an otherwise unpublished work. The publishing profession has been the gatekeeper as to who is a “serious” writer in the past, but no longer.