Category Archives: Mail

Mail 716 Monday, March 05, 2012

The contraception controversy.

Warthogs

The Screwtape Letters

Birth control for all

Dear Dr Pournelle,

In one of your posts you ask why federal government should provide birth control to all, and why citizens should pay for it (I assume via tax).

My short answer is: freedom, perhaps.

My reasoning goes thus:

When you add more gas molecules to a container, all molecules have less space to move, assuming they cannot escape. Similarly, the more people occupy earth, the less freedom each one has, and the harder it is going to be to obtain essentials to live.

Humanity has 2 options: expand into space, or limit numbers of people.

Expanding into space is the best option, since additional sources of elements we need for survival can be obtained, limitless (in a human sense) quantities of energy is available, and eventually, we can even emigrate into space. But our leaders are too stupid to realize this.

The second is to limit uncontrolled human expansion on earth, so that the people who are born, are also free. Not all births should be prevented, but say all beyond 3 children per family.

This last solution is less than optimum, because it needs to be enforced all over earth, and this would be either very hard, or impossible.

Why this is a government responsibility? Because they have the responsibility to ensure the continued survival of the whole nation, not only a few individuals. I know that nature will take care of overpopulation in its own way, whether by starvation, floods, earthquakes, wars, illness, etc., but surely "voluntary" limits are more compassionate?

I enjoy your dayjournal very much, and you have been a great influence on my own philosophy on life. I am a current subscriber, but would also like to thank you in words. Hope your health is better.

Respectfully,

Chris

Chris Els

When I was an undergraduate, the looming overpopulation of the Earth was probably my most ardent concern, and the opposition to birth control was one of my principal reasons for leaving the Catholic Church. I was raised a Unitarian, and converted to the Roman church in high school, influenced by but certainly not pressured by the Christian Brothers who taught there.

I later encountered William Vogt, whose book Road to Survival was my introduction to Malthusian principles – we didn’t get much of that at Christian Brothers, but I can hardly fault them because I don’t know anywhere else that they taught that sort of thing in high school. Vogt was an ecologist, and a very good writer, and his depictions of an Earth denuded of species other than humans, all of them living in or headed for squalor, were stark and convincing. I particularly recall him writing about the Biblical injunction:

And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

Did that really mean that we were to exterminate and replace them? And for some reason I remember well Vogt’s challenge that man has no more right to live than a canvasback duck. It was a challenging question: we will choose the right answer in all particular cases, but the general answer is more difficult. After all, doesn’t the command to be fruitful and multiply imply that at some point the job will be done?

When I got to the State University of Iowa in Iowa City I sought to take a class in ecology, largely because of my reading of Vogt when younger. “Ecology” was a buzz word among my contemporaries, and many people claimed to be ecologists. I discovered that while there was a simple minded class called ‘ecology’, the actual class was advanced and had as a prerequisite an understanding of differential equations. I managed to convince the professor that I had such an understanding (although I wouldn’t take that in the math department for another few years), and I learned a lot from the Ecology class. Most of what I learned was how little we understood, and how difficult modeling is when there are a number of variables to account for.

When I returned to religion I was still troubled about contraception and spent a number of years as a high church Anglican, with two critical differences between what I believed and what Rome taught, namely that the Episcopal church was a legitimate heir of the Faith through the Apostolic Succession (Rome now accepts that), and contraception. When some years later I returned to the Roman church I kept, I fear, my reservations about the Church’s position on birth control. In practice it makes no difference to my behavior.

I say all this because I well understand your position.

As to limiting the number of people in the world, do note that population counts. A nation that restricts its population is not likely to be sufficiently powerful to impose those restrictions on everyone else. I leave out the morality of that imposition; for the moment it’s enough to establish that we can’t do it. The only real way we could limit the population growth of India, Pakistan, China, and much of Africa would be through wars of deliberate extermination, and whether or not we were successful in that endeavor we would no longer be the United States of America.

Of course we can try to limit our own population growth while building the splendid city on a hill, a shining monument, an example for the rest to follow – as indeed Western Civilization has been since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. As you can easily find from A Farewell to Alms, for most of history most of mankind has been condemned by Malthusian population growth to what we would today consider intolerable poverty for anyone. Even in the most prosperous Western societies most of the population labored hard during daylight hours for six days a week (holidays excepted – perhaps another 20 depending on the country); had little to no health care (not that this was as important as now; until antibiotics physicians were not much better than grandmothers at treating the sick, and until Pasteur and Semmelweis surgeons were often a greater danger than just being left alone); had one change of clothing; ate one meal a day and that mostly starches; and generally lived lives that the most impoverished in the United States would find intolerable. And that is about 90% of the population for thousands of years. The novels of Jane Austen show the splendor of life among the elite but once in a while slip in scenes of what was going on outside the great manors, and why being taken into the manor servants hall was considered a good thing to have happen to your children.

For nearly two centuries the United States has escaped from that trap. The escape was due at first to freedom combined with the Frontier, nearly limitless land to be had for hard work, land on which one might labor all ones life and pass on to the next generation a life much better than yours; and to the growth of technology, which made a few able to produce goods to be consumed by the many. Freedom, new land, and technology broke the iron rule of Malthus, and even as I found Vogt persuasive I could see that for parts of the world – particularly the part I lived in – he wasn’t strictly accurate. We had population growth along with a rising standard of living for everyone.

The may no longer be true. There are those who say those heady days when a rising tide floated all boats and even common laborers could look forward to being part of the middle class, and send their children to college have come to an end. We have had our golden age, and the best we can hope for now is to spread the wealth around a bit, but will never be able to make everyone rich.

But this is not Lake Wobegon, and we have run up against the brutal fact that much of our population is not productive. They may be ‘middle class’ as in Aristotle’s definition, possessing the goods of fortune in moderation, but how they came by that possession is important: to larger and larger numbers, their possessions have not been earned, but given to them by government. This is not a formula for producing a land of the free. Moreover, as the many threaten the few, as the masses threaten the rich, the rich are not without recourse. We all remember the days of the French Revolution, or the early days of the Bolshevik takeover of Russia, but the results were not what the revolutionaries expected. They never are. The French were fortunate to get Bonaparte. The Russians got Stalin.

I am certainly not in favor of using government to restrict access to birth control. Some of the slogans now put forward in this debate come from that era – keep your rosary off of my ovary – but many are irrelevant now. In my day boys could walk to the back of the drugstore, ask for a male clerk, and stutteringly ask to be sold condoms. I know because I did it once, not that possession of the item did me either harm or good since it was never used. In those days girls had every right to expect that boys provide the contraceptives, although most of the girls of my social class relied on total abstinence and avoiding the occasion of sin. Where I grew up there were girls you could sleep with and girls you could marry, and they were not the same girls, and in the case of myself and my geeky friends it didn’t matter how much time you spent looking for the girls you could sleep with, because you could never find any. Ah well. It’s all different now. For one thing, condoms are dispensed from machines in public wash rooms as well as on display in the drug stores (and at least one grocery store).

So: is it in the interest of the United States to prevent unwanted conception among those who can be persuaded to use contraception? I recall once Larry Niven telling Isaac Asimov, who was ardently in favor of limiting population, that every time Isaac persuaded someone to adopt his view the IQ of the earth went down. Niven as usual was being humorous but also as usual with Niven there was a truth under the humor.

What I am sure of is that requiring Roman Catholic institutions to provide and pay for contraception is a very dangerous incursion into freedom of religion. Sometimes such incursions are necessary, but generally they are justified as protection of minors: I have no right to demand that you get a tetanus shot or a blood transfusion, but I assert the right to require you to allow your children to get that medical treatment. Religious freedom is after all a freedom, and when the state is allowed to squelch one freedom it is one step closer to ridding itself of the nuisance of all the others. How much easier government would be for bureaucrats if it were not for all those pesky rights that people have!

You apparently assert that to defend freedom we must impose some kind of population growth control; at the very least it is to our benefit that we tax everyone regardless of conscience in order to provide free contraceptives to anyone who wants it; and this is the justification for the government’s position in the Georgetown case.

I would say that your case is not proven: that I see no indisputable link between the availability of free contraception to women students in Georgetown and our future prosperity, while I do see a direct and indisputable link between requiring all to pay for that provision and the loss of some part of religious freedom.

= = = = = = = =

birth control

Jerry

30 years ago when I got married I remember my wife commenting about our, then, insurance policy not covering birth control and what a financially foolish policy it was. Which is cheaper 10/15 years of birth control or one unplanned birth with 10 years of insurance claims on all the standard medical claims for a growing child.

Bill

Bill Tims

Which still does not tell me why it is my obligation, rather than yours, to pay for it.

I am not quarreling with the States rights to impose compulsory medical insurance on those resident in the state. I am stating that the Constitution gives no such power to the Federal government. Of course the real problem started with the Feds ‘giving’ money to the states to support hospitals, whereupon the Federal Courts decided that this gave them the power to require that hospitals admit everyone who came to them without regard to their ability to pay. This closed many hospital emergency rooms and closes more every year, since hosts of people including illegal immigrants simply use the emergency room as a free clinic. It takes a very vigorous and wealthy hospital system to withstand that assault, and there still has to be a vigorous triage treatment to weed out those who do not need the services of expensive emergency room physicians.

Unexpected pregnancy certainly can be a burden. I can tell you many such stories. The burden is usually more on women than men, too, since the practical result is generally to remove the mother from income earning during the infancy of the child. The men have to work harder, and sometimes both mother and father have to drop out of school, assuming the father can be found. Of course now the tendency is to impose support of the child on taxpayers, and requiring the father to pay child support is not so much in favor. Public support of new children works in a vigorous economy, but when the economy falters it makes for problems. Our Great Recession has exposed that.

The fact remains that the Federal Government has not the Constitutional power to require that you and I pay for someone else’s insurance against pregnancy. This is not a religious issue but one of Constitutional power.

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Sandra Fluke and public obligations

RE: Sandra Fluke and public obligations

Jerry,

Google is your friend; use it, please, o’ greater touter of the internet. There are a number of women’s health issues that are

quite effectively treated with oral contraceptives; they are not ONLY prescribed for birth control. There are anywhere from over

4,000,000 to over 12,000,000 women in this country who are affected by some of the more severe of such issues. For such women, oral

contraceptives are not about birth control. Practicing virginity is of absolutely no benefit regarding such women’s health issues.

If one includes all of the non-birth control medical uses for oral contraceptives for women, those numbers are much higher.

It ain’t all about having sex. It certainly is not even remotely about religion, though the GOP is straining mightily to try make

it seem that way; pushing a car uphill with a rope. Get a grip. As for where the government got the right, is was duly passed by congress and signed into law by the president. Surely you’ve heard about it.

For any particular activity of the government, there are groups large and small who are vehemently opposed for any number of reasons

near and dear to them. Yet their tax dollars help pay for these very activities. Where does the government get the right to do

these things? If you look at the voter turnout for any given election, whether local, state or federal, more often than not less

than 20% to 25% of eligible voters give the government that right.

Bruce

I answered:

Sandra Fluke and public obligations

Fine. You then agree that you have an obligation to pay for someone else’s health care, and in some cases contraceptive pills are important in curing some other problem. You must also pay for their chemotherapy. But if they take contraceptive pills as a guard against pregnancy is that not fundamentally different? Why are you obliged to pay for someone else’s birth control, even if you admit some obligation to pay for their general health care?

Jerry Pournelle

I’m obliged because I’m an American citizen and taxpayer, and that’s the law, written by the congress and signed by the president. It’s the same obligation I have to pay for military hardware and salaries (even if I were a steadfast conscientious objector, which I am not). Do you suppose there are some members of the military using their salary to pay for things to which I have strong objections? Following your logic, why then am I obligated to pay for military personnel salaries if they are not going to spend it the way I want them to spend it? Good Heavens! They might even be paying for oral contraceptives with my money!

This is not the America in which you grew up; it is not the America in which I grew up. But I never expected America to stay static and Norman Rockwellian; I’ve expected change throughout my life, and still do.

And you and I and everyone who has insurance or the wherewithal to pay for their own health care have been paying for someone else’s health care for some number of years, now. It’s called pass-through; prices are set by total care provided. Those who can pay are charged enough to cover the cost of caring for those who can’t pay. I see it rather simply; I’m going to pay for the health care of others, one way or another. Why is such a simple concept so difficult for so many people to grasp?

Bruce

Which is a pretty good statement of the modern liberal position. If Congress passes it and particularly if Congress passes it and I like it, then that’s that, and the Constitution need not be consulted. We can vote ourselves any largesse we desire, and require someone else to pay for it. That may perhaps lead to places we don’t want to go, but let the good times roll. But as Lady Thatcher observed, at some point you run out of other people’s money. You may then seek to take it from them, but they are richer than you, and they may not be as dumb as you think; and eventually it comes down to who can recruit the strongest forces. Generally those will be the Legions, as the Roman Republic found, and to be at the mercy of the Legions is frightening; to keep order one needs an Emperor. Ave Caesar Imperator.

You will run out of money, you know.

Incidentally I know something of research tools, but thank you for the instruction.

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Re: Sandra Fluke and public obligations

The first problem is that birth control pills have medical uses besides birth control… i.e. there are situations, like treating endometriosis, where preventing pregnancy is a side effect of the desired treatment rather than the desired treatment itself. They are also used for treating lesser problems, like severe menstrual cramping. Personally, I can’t see any argument regarding treating a significant medical condition, and I can’t see any respectful way for a religious institution to inject itself into a conversation between a doctor and patient about how much it really hurts, and is that enough to allow you to treat this particular problem.

The second problem is that preventing pregnancy is cheaper for an insurance provider than paying for childbirth. As a dollars and cents calculation, will insurance companies save money by providing birth control to X women to prevent Y pregnancies? It is a straightforward ratio to figure out which is cheaper, a calculation that has been done by insurance companies, and it is cheaper to prevent the pregnancies. That means I’m saving money for myself in paying for insurance that provides contraception to women.

The third problem is that pregnancy is the single most obvious condition where the burden is shared unequally between male and female. Suggesting abstinence is fine, but the consequences of failure to meet that goal fall pretty heavily on one side of the fence.

Speaking only for myself, I’d just as soon let all the women in the country vote on it and butt out of whatever they decided. Just guessing from the polls on women and use of contraceptives, I think the likely result of such a vote would be in favor of coverage.

-Fred Stevens

I think you have missed the point here. I don’t question the right of the states to impose that kind of law and solution; after all the States had and by my reckoning still ought to have the right to establish a church. I question the constitutional authority of the Federal government to do that. I believe the Constitution trumps economic arguments. If it doesn’t it won’t be much of a limit on government.

As to “birth control” pills as treatment for actual disorders requiring them, Georgetown’s insurance policy already covers those and has done so for a decade. It is only contraception that is against the principles of the Jesuits who run this nearly secular law school.

= = = = = = = =

Sandra

Jerry,

The flare-up this week came from Rush Limbaugh calling this young woman a slut and a prostitute for daring to suggest that contraception being covered by health care. If he had kept his mouth shut, this story would have died and wouldn’t have gotten any coverage at all. What he did was keep the issue alive after the president came up with a reasonable compromise for those institutions who believe that their religion doesn’t allow them to provide coverage.

Its time that we get past the idea of universal health care. Every industrialized, forward looking country has some type of universal coverage and it shows in their health statistics. The US if falling way behind in infant mortality, life-span and general health. This impacts us economically, and reduces our ability to compete.

I believe that government requirements should not be adjusted or changed due to religions. What Rick Santorum is calling for is as close to a "caliphate" as he have ever seen in this country. From his comments on Kennedy to Rick’s mandating the ability of states to make contraception illegal, this man has dangerous and "rearward" looking ideas. This is not just a made-up issue around the "elite media" (whatever that term means) as Gingrich said this morning on "Meet the Press." This is an issue for all voters to consider and make an independent decision.

Alex

p.s. Miss Chaos Manor Reviews — hope you are able to get back to that soon.

Well, not everyone considers nationalized medicine a settled matter. I for one would prefer to see some more state implementations. I’ve seen just how horribly wrong a nationalized system can go. Now admittedly, if there were some way to make everything work for everyone as smoothly as Kaiser has here in Los Angeles, I would be interested, but my suspicion is that meddling will ruin what we have without making anything much better. At my age I can’t wait several days for medical attention.

As to whether or not government requirements should be adjusted or changed due to religious beliefs, I think you would find few among the founders, including the Deists and atheists, who would agree with you. Of course if the Constitution means whatever the courts say and not what was agreed to in the Constitution that is of no matter.

Thanks for the kind words. I miss Chaos Manor Reviews, and the good news is that I am feeling more like being up to resuming it.

= = = = = = = = = =

cost of contraception

Hi Jerry-

Surely, you are aware that the net cost of contraception to the insurer is negative. Pregnancy and its complications are expensive; these costs more than offset the cost of contraception. The entire approach taken by conservatives on this issue seems brain-dead. The arguments about sexual mores or religious freedom are not compelling to most people. Here are some winning arguments:

1. The Federal government has no legitimate role in mandating requirements for health insurance (outside of the district and perhaps the military). There does not seem to be any reason why the individual states could mandate health care, if that is way the citizenry votes.

2. The high cost of contraceptives is largely due to legal liability and regulation. Make contraceptives available over the counter, reduce the regulatory burden of the FDA, remove contraception from health plans, and limit the legal liability of manufacturers and the cost of contraception will drop to less than $50/year for most women.

3. Employer "provided" healthcare is an historical accident. Repeal the corporate income tax and remove whatever other incentives there are for employers to provide health insurance to their employees. This will make transparent the real cost of health insurance, which is shockingly high.

Rush Limbaugh demonstrates (once again) that he is a buffoon.

This election will almost certainly go Democratic. The Republicans seem to be unable to remove their heads from their asses.

That is most unfortunate, as this is a pivotal election…

-Steve=

I don’t disagree much with your main points. I do not accept the conclusions that follow. Limbaugh is an entertainer and highly successful at doing what many others attempt unsuccessfully. He works very hard, and he has organized his thoughts and his staff well.

I don’t bet on elections anymore, but presuming that it is a fair election I would think it probable that it will go Republican with some surprises, much as 2010 did. I think Obama is deeply in trouble. He has lost the charismatic appeal and is no longer the chosen one who will astonish us with his accomplishments. Yes WE CAN! Can what?

Screwtape Letters

"Among flippant people the Joke is always assumed to have been made. No one actually makes it; but every serious subject is discussed in a manner which implies that they have already found a ridiculous side to it."

How did C.S. Lewis so accurately describe Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert sixty years before either of them got started?

—

Mike T. Powers

C. S. Lewis did that a lot. Those not familiar with The Screwtape Letters will find many contemporary people, some not born during Lewis’s lifetime, very accurately depicted. Lewis wrote for his generation, but much of his work belongs to the ages. He was a Christian apologist, often described as ‘Apostle to the skeptics,’ and he took matters of conscience and religion seriously. I expect most of my readers are familiar with his works, either his non-fiction such as Mere Christianity , or his juvenile fiction notably the Narnia series, or his adult works such as That Hideous Strength which remains relevant despite its years. I also found his allegorical work Pilgrim’s Regress strangely compelling. Lewis was an adult convert to Christianity after a fairly long period of skepticism, and some brushes with paganism. For those new to Lewis, I suggest The Great Divorce as an entertaining start.

Bunny Inspectors Without Borders

Just in case you were wondering, it isn’t only America that has bunny inspectors and the Ministry Of Fish Licensing.

http://blogs.catster.com/kitty-news-network/2012/03/05/oh-no-neko-cat-cafes-facing-hiss-worthy-new-law/

(Excerpt)

For years, cat cafés have been an oasis of calm in the hectic life of Tokyo’s residents. They allow frazzled workers to stop by and drop their day’s tensions and enjoy a cup of coffee, tea, or whatever. People who live in the city of 13 million often face strict regulations that forbid cats in many apartment buildings, so the cafés also allow Tokyo cat lovers to get their feline fix.

But now, the cafés may be forced to close their doors before most city residents even get out of work.

A new revision to Japan’s Animal Protection Law, due to go into effect on June 1, will put a curfew on the public display of cats and dogs.

The law is targeted toward late-night pet shops, which often sell cats and dogs 24 hours a day, keeping them under bright lights that never shut off. But the cat cafés are collateral damage in the fight to stop the real animal abusers.

The cafés would only be allowed to be open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.

Hiromi Kawase, the owner of one of Tokyo’s cat cafés, says she doesn’t keep her establishment open all night. But she does stay open until 10 p.m. and finds that many of her customers don’t even get there until 8 – the end of the workday for most of Tokyo’s residents.

(I’m sure that if you asked any of the officials involved, they’d explain that this *totally* wasn’t their intent and they *totally* support the idea of cat cafes and they *totally* will work as hard as possible to sort all this out and they have high confidence that they can deal with all of the issues involved sometime in the next twelve to eighteen months and they understand that this might cause some minor, *extremely* minor inconvenience for business owners but they ask for our understanding and support because after all they’re just working on behalf of defenseless animals.)

—

Mike T. Powers

Japan can be a complete Iron Law Bureaucracy but sometimes sanity creeps in. It will be interesting to follow this story.

"Go peacefully. It’s following government’s orders."

<http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2109756/The-Execution-Factor-Interviews-death-row-Chinas-new-TV-hit.html>

—

Roland Dobbins

And if 2,000 executions a year and these interviews don’t do the job, perhaps they’ll let her film the executions as they happen.

Peaceful thoughts from Islam for today

Read Sura 22 verses 19-21. Read on if you want more context.

Pickthal:

19: These twain (the believers and the disbelievers) are two opponents who contend concerning their Lord. But as for those who disbelieve, garments of fire will be cut out for them; boiling fluid will be poured down on their heads,

20: Whereby that which is in their bellies, and their skins too, will be melted;

21: And for them are hooked rods of iron.

These are instructions for peaceful egalitarian Muslims as well as any others.

Is it any wonder there are so few peaceful Muslims speaking up when this is what they are taught?

http://www.cmje.org/religious-texts/quran/verses/022-qmt.php#022.019

{^_^}

Oath of Fealty – Kindle version

Hello, Dr. Pournelle.

I followed the link in your post from February 24, 2012, 11:35 pm PST ("If you haven’t read Oath of Fealty, the paperback edition is available, and there’s a Kindle edition. It was a best seller in its time, and it’s still very readable") to the Kindle edition available on Amazon and was somewhat surprised at the $6.30 price tag. I was even more surprised to learn that I could purchase a new, paperback copy of the book from several different Amazon-affiliated suppliers for under $5.00 (http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/1416555161/ref=tmm_mmp_new_olp_0/178-8468700-4822264?ie=UTF8&condition=new). I completely understand that pricing is outside your control but an electronic edition of a book written in an electronic form (S-100 using Electric Pencil, I believe you said), published electronically, distributed electronically and consumed electronically that costs substantially (percentage-wise) more than its paper equivalent I found sad, if slightly amusing. I purchased the Kindle version anyway; a Niven/Pournelle offering not in my library is rare 🙂 We can at least hope the paper version was printed on recycled paper. I do yet cling to a slowly dissipating hope that the highly touted electronic office of the late 1980’s will arrive sometime before my last days on Starship Earth…

Michael

Michael Tanner

Thanks for the kind words. Yes, the paper edition of the book remains in print, although I think most of those have already been written off by the publisher. Oath probably reads a little better in paper because of the complex typography. I don’t know how the Kindle price was determined.

FYI.

Subj: It’s starting

I’ve just heard on the qt that ammo demand is currently outstripping production and that well before fall shortages are expected to be more significant than they were in 2009. Specific concern was raised for all common calibers of pistol ammo, .223/5.56×45,.308/7.62×51, and .30-06.

The recommendation is to and buy ahead, particularly if you use .380 Auto (recalling 2009).

Warthogs

Combined Arms

I read your comments at the A-10 and which branch should ‘own’ it with great interest. Having spent 6+ plus years in the US Air Force, two of them at Myrtle Beach AFB when it hosted a Wing of A-10s, and 13+ years in the US Army, working in plans and operations, you are spot on about who should be running the A-10.

And for those who believe this is a bad idea, I suggest you speak with anyone in the United States Marine Corps. Commanders at Marine Expeditionary Brigade level (a two star command) own their own aircraft group and use them as needed to support the mission assigned. The aviation group provides offensive air support, assault support, electronic warfare, control of aircraft and missiles, anti-air warfare and Aerial Reconnaissance. They do rely on the USN and USAF to control the airspace they fight in, although Marines are part of that mission as well (at least on the Navy side).

Believe me, during all the various nights I spent at a G3 shop working on plans for operations, I often wished we has a string on a squadron of A-10s. Small, ugly and the best friend a grunt could ever have.

Hope you’re doing well.

Ed Green

Thanks. [Sergeant Green, USA Ret., is an old friend.]

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Why Generals hate the A-10

It actually goes deeper than what the article states. If you ask any pilot what the AF mission is he will say it is to defeat enemy fighter pilots in the air. Naturally the A-10 has no part of that mission. If you ask a fighter pilot if he is tasked to support ground troops he will say yeah we train for that after we finish training for defeating enemy fighter pilots in the air; but, there is rarely, if any, money in the budget to do that.

That is the core of the problem. It is the same philosophy as when the Brits were retreating in France the RAF loaded up their planes with the spare pilots and left the mechanics, fuelers, munition loaders behind to rot. So when they set up shop the next time they couldn’t get into the air.

craig valentine

So long as the A-10 exists and the Air National Guard and reserves are trained to use it, it will be useful and sometimes decisive, but if it were integrated better with the ground forces we would develop much more effective doctrines for its use. Air superiority belongs to the Air Force, but not support of the field army.

Hot Fudge Sundae Falls on Friday next February

HOT FUDGE FRIDAY 15 FEBRUARY 2013 or is it…

asteroid 2012 DA14

http://rt.com/news/paint-asteroid-earth-nasa-767/

Article linked on DrudgeReport.

http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/risk/2012da14.html

Note that 15 February 2013 approach not currently shown on NEOs list

There are multiple items in the blogosphere referencing the asteroid variably as 60 – 100 m in diamter, stating that the closest approach on Feb 2013 is about Geosynch altitude (a factor of 4 larger than the median distances shown for future approaches on the NEO page). The NEO page indicates an impact energy in the vicinity of 2 MT. This is correctly noted as approximating the Tunguska event.

This has NOT been picked up by mainstream domestic news media other than Drudge. There are numerous foreign language reports searching "asteroid 2012 DA14" on google news but none I recognize as foreign mainstream news sources. Some of the articles suggest that NASA has already confirmed near certain impact in 2013.

Bottom Line: 2013 risk is overstated by sensationalists in the blogsophere. Future risk is significant, though the Palmero scale is still fairly low on the object, because perturbations are likely to increase impact risk. But keep an eye on this one.

We will see. Last I heard it was “h-bomb sized” in energy, which would be megatons; nasty but not a dinosaur killer. I suspect it won’t be all that close, but it is well to be watchful. We’ll hear more.

Liberty in Illinois

Yet another decision striking down Illinois’ eavesdropping law which bars citizens from recording police in the public performance of their duties.

"The decision came in the case of Christopher Drew, an artist who was arrested in 2009 for selling art on a Loop street without a permit. Drew was charged with eavesdropping after he used an audio recorder in his pocket to capture his conversations with police during his arrest.

In a statement Friday, Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez defended bringing the charges and said her office plans to appeal to the Illinois Supreme Court.

…Illinois’ eavesdropping statute, one of the strictest in the nation, makes it a felony to record any conversation without the consent of all parties. It carries stiffer sentences — of up to 15 years in prison — if a police officer or court official is recorded without his or her knowledge."

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-03-03/news/ct-met-eavesdropping-law-ruling-0303-20120303_1_eavesdropping-statute-police-internal-affairs-investigators-innocent-conduct

-R

Subj: drroyspencer.com

Global Temperature change in February: -0.026 degrees Celsius from January.

Error Code,

Jerry

Don’t you wish you had a book where you could look up the error codes? This:

http://xkcd.com/1024/

I want that book.

Ed

Subject: Direct measurement of temperature

In your column for March 1, you quote a Mr. David Fuhs as stating categorically that there is no direct temperature measurement before 1940. I find this hard to believe, because as far as I know, the Weather Bureau, predecessor to the National Weather Service, has been keeping records ever since it was founded in 1870. Perhaps Mr. Fuhs is referring to the fact that it didn’t become part of the Department of Commerce until 1940, or that earlier records have been discarded. If so, I’d find that to be highly unlikely, considering how zealous any such bureaucracy is at safeguarding its paperwork and I find his way of just throwing out the claim without the slightest evidence suspicious, to say the least. Of course, judging by the rest of what you quote, Mr.

Fuhs to be a denier, not a skeptic, as he seems to believe that it’s not warmer now than it was in 1776. If this is typical of a denier, I can see why the True Believers are so contemptuous of them and so eager to lump the skeptics in with them.

Joe

The problem is the accuracy of the measures before we had automatic recording, and even after when the environment of the sensor changed dramatically. We have estimates of temperature for the past hundred years that I would trust to within a couple of degrees, and I am willing to believe that our proxies give us a good general estimate of temperatures over centuries; but I do not believe that inferences requiring 1/10 degree accuracy are reliable.

Mail 714 Saturday, February 25, 2012

Even the liberal media is concerned –

I’m surprised at a couple of the articles that have been published in the local alternative weekly paper. The paper leans heavily to the left, but at least one of their columnists is taking a hard look at the current administration’s record. Here are two well-researched, well-written articles that are critical of President Obama and the current administration. The first scares the heck out of me. The second only surprises me because the right hasn’t picked up on it.

Letters at 3AM: It Came From the White House Obama and a majority of Democratic legislators support the NDAA, allowing the arrest of U.S. citizens without a warrant http://www.austinchronicle.com/columns/2012-02-10/letters-at-3am-it-came-from-the-white-house/

"Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., noticed that to subject American citizens to arrest without warrant and to detain us without trial violates the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments of the Constitution. Feinstein proposed to specifically exempt American citizens from the NDAA’s arrest policy.

Her clarification of the NDAA passed the Senate by a vote of 98 to 1. That’s as bipartisan as it gets, even in good times. In these times, passage of Feinstein’s clarification was a miracle of agreement.

Yet in the NDAA’s final version, as signed by President Obama, American citizens are not exempt. How did that happen?"

Letters at 3AM: Obama, Nukes, and Us

President Barack Obama fudges the truth of his nuclear policies http://www.austinchronicle.com/columns/2011-04-08/letters-at-3am-obama-nukes-and-usmichael-ventura/

–Gary P.

We also have proscription lists – lists of people including American citizens who shall be killed on sight if there is no way to apprehend them, or perhaps even if there is — bin Laden was apparently given no chance to surrender. Now of course soldiers in the field are allowed and encouraged to kill hostiles on sight, but that’s not quite the same thing as sending snipers in gillie suits or drones with Hellfire missiles to seek them out.

Courts still have the writ of habeas corpus, which demands that anyone holding someone against their will be required to produce that person and tell the court why it is legal to detain him. (If you don’t really believe that in the English language the male pronoun includes the female, feel free to change that to “detain him or her” or better, substitute Damon Knight’s ‘yeye’.) The question becomes whether it is a proper and sufficient return to the writ to state that yeye is being held pursuant to the NDAA act, yeye having been placed on the list of enemies of the people or whatever designation the NDAA gives them.

I haven’t done an extensive search on this. Snopes http://www.snopes.com/politics/military/ndaa.asp gives the statement that the military can arrest anyone without trial or warrant a “mixed” rating meaning partially true, but isn’t clear as to what parts are not true. Snopes seems to be relying on a signing statement by President Obama stating that it isn’t his intention to hold people indefinitely without trial. He did not say that they couldn’t be arrested and held; and he did not specify how long they might be held. Nor did he say anything about response to a writ of habeas corpus. Of course for a writ to be issued a judge has to know that someone is being held, and who holds that person.

Even the Daily Kos isn’t sure what the act authorizes.

I expect we’ll find out soon enough. http://www.austinchronicle.com/columns/2012-02-10/letters-at-3am-it-came-from-the-white-house/

The white house’s e-petitions

Dear Dr. Pournelle,

I thought you might be interested in this technical innovation the White House has put together:

https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions/%21/petition/rescind-hhs-dept-mandate-requiring-catholic-employers-provide-contraceptivesabortifacients-their/lBxr7SdP

You’ve heard of e-petitions, right? The white house actually put e-petition software on their own web site. If enough people sign the petition, they promise a response of some kind. Essentially it’s the same thing as a letter to the White House, updated to the digital age.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

I wonder what kind of petitions they get or allow to be displayed?

Boffins build blood-swimming medical microbot,

Jerry

Fantastic Voyage — a blood-swimming medical microbot:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/02/25/autonomous_implantable_robot/print.html

I just added ‘microbot’ to my spellcheck dictionary.

Ed

Now that is fascinating. We should hear more about this soon.

Subject: Follow up to Himalayan glaciers have lost no ice in the past 10 years, new study reveal

Some previous estimates of ice loss <http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/02/09/himalayan-glaciers-have-lost-no-ice-in-past-10-years-new-study-reveals/?intcmp=features##> in the high Asia mountains had predicted up to 50 billion tons of melting ice annually, said Wahr, who is also a fellow at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences. Instead, results from GRACE pin the estimated ice loss from those peaks — including ranges like the Himalayas and the nearby Pamir and Tien Shan — at only about 4 billion tons of ice annually.

Bristol University glaciologist Jonathan Bamber, who was not part of the research team, told the Guardian that such a level of melting was practically insignificant.

"The very unexpected result was the negligible mass loss from high mountain Asia, which is not significantly different from zero," he told the Guardian.

…and…

“According to GRACE data published in the study, total sea level <http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/02/09/himalayan-glaciers-have-lost-no-ice-in-past-10-years-new-study-reveals/?intcmp=features##> rise from all land-based ice on Earth including Greenland <http://www.foxnews.com/topics/greenland.htm#r_src=ramp> and Antarctica was roughly 1.5 millimeters per year annually or about one-half inch total, from 2003 to 2010, Wahr said.”

It occurs to me with the above statement from the article that using the sample data below, over a one hundred year time span the total rise in sea level would amount to a little over 7 inches. This would hardly cause the catastrophic scenario the AGW alarmists are predicting in which coastal communities would be several feet under water.

The usual back of the envelope assumption is that the seas have been rising about a foot a century for a long time. Since the Ice Age some of the land formerly covered by glaciers has been rising. Obviously the presence of sea ice in the Arctic will have little effect on sea levels, although water density is affected by temperature of course.

The size of local glaciers in high and cold places is mostly affected by the amount of precipitation. In dry years there isn’t any snow and the sun still shines. In wet years with lots of snow glaciers grow. The snows of Kilimanjaro have been shrinking but there has been drought in that area.

http://tohatchacrow.blogspot.com/2011/03/kilimanjaro-snow-levels-increase-after.html

Scientists Reply on Global Warming

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203646004577213244084429540.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

The interest generated by our Wall Street Journal op-ed of Jan. 27, "No Need to Panic about Global Warming," is gratifying but so extensive that we will limit our response to the letter to the editor the Journal published on Feb. 1, 2012 by Kevin Trenberth and 37 other signatories, and to the Feb. 6 letter by Robert Byer, President of the American Physical Society. (We, of course, thank the writers of supportive letters.)

We agree with Mr. Trenberth et al. that expertise is important in medical care, as it is in any matter of importance to humans or our environment. Consider then that by eliminating fossil fuels, the recipient of medical care (all of us) is being asked to submit to what amounts to an economic heart transplant. According to most patient bills of rights, the patient has a strong say in the treatment decision. Natural questions from the patient are whether a heart transplant is really needed, and how successful the diagnostic team has been in the past.

Why The Generals Hate The A-10

Nice summary: http://www.rense.com/general38/a10.htm

It’s ugly. It’s lumbering and it’s old. But the A-10 Warthog almost certainly remains the best performing airplane in the Air Force’s fleet. The 30-year-old attack plane is safe, efficient, durable and cheap. GI’s call it the friend of the grunt, because it flies low, showers lethal covering fire and greatly reduces the risk of friendly fire deaths and civilian casualties.

While the high-tech fighters and attack helicopters faltered in desert winds, smoke-clotted skies and in icy temperatures, the A-10 proved a workhorse in Gulf War I, Kosovo, Afghanistan and the latest war on Iraq.

Naturally, the Air Force brass now wants to junk it.

And now the Air Force plan is to replace the inexpensive, durable, effective A-10 with the F-35????

It amazes me that the Army hasn’t taken back control of their own destiny and regained control of the close air support role. The Air Force doesn’t want to do it, they just want the $ associated with the mission.

John Harlow

The close support and interdiction missions should belong to the Army. The problem is that aviation is not a good career path for Army officers. It’s one reason why warrant officers are employed as helicopter pilots. The Luftwaffe solved this somewhat by allowing them to have ground units, but that doesn’t work very well either. Being a hot helicopter pilot doesn’t make one a good field grade officer. The Air Force has always had the myth that good pilots can learn command, and they have career paths for boffins, but it has always been a problem.

Some of the essence of the difficulty is shown – not deliberately – in the movie Command Decision with Clark Gable (there’s more in the actual novel it was based on).

Earmarks

Dr. Pournelle,

I must agree with your earmark comments, and add that the ability for a weapons program to find at least one congressional champion is a key darwinian challenge for any system. Without a tame congresscritter, the contractors I’ve been involved with can’t build weapons systems that we _do_ know how to build. Grooming, care, and feeding of such champions becomes more important (measured in time and effort expended), in many cases, than the development and implementation of the technical aspect of the system. It is also easy to cross the somewhat arbitrary line between legitimate sales/support and illegal influence. Just my observations, mind you, but they seem in line with your own and the Iron Law.

Glad you are recuperating. Our own recoveries from a similar ailment have also been slow, but eventually successful (this is one of the first good day’s I’ve had in a month).

Looking forward to the new book…and combing the web for advance sales.

-d

Congress must control spending. That means it can’t fund everything the executive branch – including the generals – wants. On the other hand sometimes the executive branch, and especially the generals, are just plain wrong in rejecting some projects. The earmark system is flawed and can lead to waste, but it’s better than having no Congressional control at all.

Legend of Black Ship Island will be up sometime next week I think.

Extraordinary Korean War Vet,

Jerry

A friend sent me the link below. He commented. “That one did not go in the direction I thought it would. Almost stopped it at the beginning of Fanfare for the Common Man, as I thought it would be a lengthy slide show, but held on. Glad I did. Not a widely known gent, but obviously a deep soul. Thanks.”

<http://www.greatamericans.com/video/Portraits-of-Valor-Tibor-Rubin>

The vid is 12 minutes. It is about Tibor Rubin, a Hungarian concentration camp survivor who came to the US and ended up in the Pusan pocket. He was left behind as his company retreated to impede the NK’s. He held out for a few days, came back to US lines, and after a number of patrols was captured. Since he was an experienced prison camp survivor, he helped others. At about 9 minutes he tells about how he fed a man “goat shit,” telling him they were pills but also telling his patient “You have to help yourself.” Finally in 2005 he got his MOH. Nice short piece. Worth watching – and I usually don’t watch vids.

Ed

Subject: We probably didn’t need an added incentive to get into space.

There could probably be volumes printed about this … Robert Heinlein would probably not be shocked.

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/02/24/playboy-and-virgin-galactic-fantasize-cosmic-mens-space-club/?intcmp=features

Tracy

Bunny inspectors?

SUBJ: Movie recommendation

Dear Jerry,

Just watched an excellent, nay, out-STAND-ing movie that I think you would thoroughly enjoy. The movie’s title is "Longitude" and is about the British Royal Navy’s search to find a way to reliably calculate longitude in the 1700’s.

The story is fascinating. Its an historical drama. The movie contains military history, technical invention and innovation, politics, faith, betrayal and triumph all in an English historical setting. It also deals closely with government prizes, which you have been discussing lately. The movie contains both 18th-century and 20th-century components. It is well-written, well-made and well-told.

For an unabashed Anglophile movies and history nut (like me), it doesn’t get any better.

Netflix has it, although I found it at my local library too.

Cordially,

John

Instruments made of ice.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-17162066

The fleeting nature of these instruments makes the all the more beguiling.

Andrew

Andrew McCann

Oath of Fealty –

Hi Jerry,

There’s also an iBook edition, which I’d picked up as my ’emergency read’ for plane trips. During my last delay, I too was recaptured by the story – it’s one of my favorites, and definitely holds up well.

Cheers,

Doug=

Thanks for the kind words. I am really quite fond of Oath of Fealty. It was the second novel Niven and I began, but we put it aside to do Inferno and Lucifer’s Hammer.

A Feast for the Eyes: Favorite Pictures of EPOD for 2011

Jerry,

Enjoy!

<http://epod.usra.edu/blog/vote-2011.html>

Regards, Charles Adams, Bellevue, NE

Mail 714 Thursday, February 23, 2012

This will have to be short shrift – most of the mail deserves more comment, but this is the best I can do as I fall behind…

"I do wonder about the proliferation of hypothetical constructs and intervening variables in physics."

You would almost think it was a hundred years ago …. 😉

Dan Steele

Port Ludlow, WA

FTL Neutrinos & All Things Dark In Physics

Jerry,

Don’t worry about the state of modern physics too much on the account of dark matter and dark energy. These things are at least replicably measurable entities. The moniker of "dark" is a frank admission of the physics community that they do not know what the stuff is, beyond the fact that dark matter must be matter of some kind, some where, as it has a gravitational influence and that dark energy must be energy of some sort because it causes the expansion of space-time to accelerate. There are many theories as to what each is, and they are indeed theories because they are each falsifiable through observation and experimental testing.

Where physics gets into a little trouble these days concerns theories of multiple universes, many of which are inferred from our current theories of the universe — general relativity theory and quantum field theory — but which are not falsifiable or experimentally testable. So, they cannot claim the mantel of "theory" but they are still discussed as such. The physics community needs to come clean and call them what they are, speculations. Speculations are important as they provide the seeds of future observation and experiment, but they should not be elevated to the status of evolution, relativity, or quantum field theory just because someone with a PhD dreamed them up.

Kevin L. Keegan

Ofer Lahav on dark energy

Subject: Ofer Lahav on dark energy

The head of the science programme at the Dark Energy Survey on the rapidly expanding universe and the future of dark-energy research

http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2012/02/ofer-lahav-dark-energy?fsrc=nlw%7Cnewe%7C2-22-2012%7Cnew_on_the_economist

Tracy

Dark energy, like the aether, is inferred from indirect observations. Some of those observations are recent and there hasn’t been a lot of though given to alternate views. We’ll see. Meanwhile the space telescopes tell us more…

re: UFO’s and Burkhard Heim

Dear Dr Pournelle,

I’m reading A Step Farther Out and just got through the chapter about UFO’s. Something struck me: you cite a remark by Robert wood that "these things are generally reported accompanied by a really overwhelming magnetic field".

A by-product of Burkhard Heim’s unified theory is that a strong enough (as in tens of thousands of Teslas) magnetic field cancels inertia. A common theme in UFO stories is their ability to move as if they had negligible inertia – seemingly unlimited acceleration , including "turning" at very sharp angles.

As you say, it’s all conjectures.

On a different tack, it’s often stated that special relativity is what prevents us from interstellar travel. Staying with Newton doesn’t really make things much better.

Assume only Newtonian physics apply and you want to travel from Earth to Alpha Centauri in a week.

Under constant acceleration/deceleration, you’ll have to generate and handle about 22,000 g’s.

Assuming you somehow manage to survive this, your speed at turning point will be about 220c, meaning your kinetic energy will be equivalent to about 24,000 times your mass.

Let’s be optimistic and assume you have near-perfect mass-energy conversion and know how to generate and control black holes so you can store all that mass in a small enough space.

You’d still have to accelerate all this at 22,000 g’s.

The math to compute how much reaction mass you’d need to achieve this is beyond my ability under a scenario in which you also convert mass to energy to accelerate your reaction mass, but I note that with a reactionless drive, you’d need about 5 PetaWatts to do it and get a 1,000t spaceship in orbit at Alpha Centauri. Using marine nuclear reactors, we’d need (using the only figure I could find, 54kg/kW, and that for the Savannah’s power plant) 270 billion tons of power plant to generate them.

So even if Einstein were wrong, to get the the closest star system in a week we’d still need to

1) learn how to survive 22,000 g’s

2) learn how to generate energy densities about 2 (based on rocket engines) -3 (based on nuclear plants) orders (the 1,000x kind of order) of magnitude higher than we’re currently able to.

It doesn’t sound really less far-fetched than the Alderson drive.

Best Regards,

Jean-Louis Beaufils,

Paris

Nobody ever said it would be easy.

I like the Alderson Drive – I wrote the specs for it, sort of, as the input for Dan Alderson to work with – but I fear that the only way to the stars is generation ships. Those are possible.

Medical Revisions

An interesting article on how smartphones change healthcare outcomes:

https://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/23/technology/personaltech/monitoring-your-health-with-mobile-devices.html?_r=4

I’m surprised it took the NY times long enough to figure this out. I’ve been using search engines to diagnose myself for over a decade; now I use WebMD. Before I go to the doctor, I do my research and my recommendations are often followed. Medicine is analysis, plain and simple. You use the same structured analytical techniques that you use in matters of statecraft. The only differences are vocabulary and the composition of the information — really.

Doctors must learn all sorts of vocabulary and rules, but the analytical framework is basically the same. What a concept? That’s what the modern education system tried to erase, but they failed with some of us. Doctors are expensive consultants who speak a different language and are authorized by law to do things I can’t, like write prescriptions. I only go to the doctor if I need antibiotics, etc. Else, you’re candy on a stick, lazy, or incompetent.

—–

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

Well, my professional career was in Operations Research, which is generalism par excellance. Gradually I learned less and less about more and more until…

Day of the Drone

I got a kick out of InvenSense’s disclaimer.

"InvenSense sensors should not be used or sold in the development, storing, production and utilization of any conventional or mass-destructive weapons or any other weapons or life-threatening applications as well as in any other life-critical applications including but not limited to medical equipment, transportation, aerospace and nuclear instruments, undersea equipment, power plant equipment, disaster prevention and crime prevention equipment."

While it is a precision accelerometer for -16G to +16G, it’s survivable at 10,000G shock tolerance. Doesn’t say what the temperature range for operation is (probably 50 to 100 degrees F?), nor what the tolerances were for electrical, magnetic or ionizing radiation interference or damage; although you can write to the company and ask for that information.

I wonder how durable these would be for a reusable space vehicle? At $150 a piece, you could easily have a light weight, multiple-redundancy system without worrying too much about one or two dying on a flight.

Michael D. Houst

I am told that the accuracy of these microgyro guidance systems requires correction by gps, and ICBM’s don’t do that. But drones get their position fixes from gps as well as inertial memory… It used to be that we talked about cruise missiles. Drones seem to be related…

Re: Drones or the do-it-yourself cruise missile

These pages have everything needed for an autopilot:

http://www.microcenter.com/search/search_results.phtml?Ntt=arduino

Parts are on the peg at the local MC for what amounts to pocket change.

For once, the electronics are cheaper than the airframe. Build one in your garage. One fellow in NZ pointed that out a few years ago and got in big legal trouble. See:

http://aardvark.co.nz/pjet/cruise.shtml

This guy has been messing about with pulse jets for quite awhile, so the results were somewhat predictable. On another part of the site, he shows where he built every kid’s dream machine, the jet-powered go-kart.

Just not sure why we haven’t seen any terrorist cruise missiles yet, maybe because it’s easier for the terrorists to program humans to do the job than microcontrollers.

Stan Schaefer

Inertial Guidance

Jerry:

I worked on inertial guidance systems at Wright Field from 1955 through 1958. Part of my job was to look for non-mechanical alternatives to rotating-mass gyros and moving-mass accelerometers. I came across a report on experiments by a Frenchman named Georges Sagnac. He had placed an interferometer on a ship and demonstrated that the interference fringes would shift if the ship were driven in a circle. That sounded like a lead to what I was supposed to work on. I found that the sensitivity of the interferometer depended on path length (longer path = more sensitivity) and on wavelength of the illumination used (shorter wavelength = more sensitivity). Knowing the maximum size that we could get away with in an airplane, I calculated the wavelength needed to get the sensitivity we required. It came out gamma rays. That was out. There are no mirrors for gamma rays, so you can’t make them follow a closed path. Good idea, but not feasible.

Years later, after I was long out of the inertial guidance business, I read an article in AVIATION WEEK about a laser gyro. The headline puzzled me. How do you make a gyro out of a laser? About two paragraphs into the story I realized they’d found a way to get a long path length, and make a Sagnac gyro work in either an airplane or a missile.

This is one of the tricks I learned to use in my later career as a technological forecaster. Ask "what’s missing" from a potential innovation, that makes it not feasible, then watch for something to provide that missing piece. The laser provided the missing piece for the Sagnac gyro.

Joseph P. Martino

Dandridge Cole said long ago that you can’t predict the future, but you can invent it. Of course your inventions will have effects you didn’t predict.

Presidential Campaign

Jerry,

Gingrich definitely won the debate. Santorum will win some primaries and delegates, but not the nomination. I remembered that I didn’t support Santorum but couldn’t remember why. Ron Paul refreshed my memory while confirming my opinion that Santorum was the kind of kid who was always getting robbed of his lunch money.

More and more analysts are speculating about if not predicting a brokered convention. I believe that energy policy is the salient issue. If we don’t get energy policy right for a change, nothing else will matter. In spite of that infamous flirtation with Global Warming Theology posing with Pellossi on the couch, Gingrich is rational about energy policy. Santorum is also rational on energy policy and AGW. Ron Paul is also rational but would have a far too passive approach to energy policy. My fantasy is a brokered convention that nominates Governor Palin who is absolutely maniacal about energy policy. Obviously her activist approach to energy is policy is the result of the importance of oil production to Alaska, but she also understands how energy impacts the economy, foreign policy and national security. Alternatively, she could be the VP nominee and given authority over energy. If a President Paul, Romney or Gingrich reneged on such an agreement, she could seduce them. I have no doubt that the excitement of having sex with her would kill them then she would be President.

Jim Crawford

The Problem With Gingrich

I think the problem people have with Newt Gingrich is that he doesn’t care if people don’t like him, and he won’t apologize for having made someone mad. Everyone else will immediately rush out to apologize for and try to take back any statement that made someone feel mad. "Telling people who’ve spent their whole lives here that they have to leave is heartless! Um, wait, that doesn’t play well? Oh, well I didn’t *mean* it." Gingrich won’t play that game (or make that concession, if you want to see it that way.) And that’s why people get upset; not so much that he says things, but that he doesn’t pretend to feel sorry for having said them.

—

Mike T. Powers

"We thought they would support the other parties emerging from the womb of the revolution, but they didn’t."

<http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/story/2012-02-09/egypt-revolution-activists/53183038/1#.T0MRqyS8Kno.email>

Surprise, surprise.

—

Roland Dobbins

Bacevich: ‘As Israel has discovered, once targeted assassination becomes your policy, the list of targets has a way of growing ever-longer.’

<http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175505/tomgram%3A_andrew_bacevich%2C_uncle_sam%2C_global_gangster/>

—-

Roland Dobbins

I am working on an essay about proscription lists. We seem to be legalizing them.

Spacecraft volume/mass calculator

Dr. Pournelle:

This may interest you for both practical / fiction use; an online calculator for spacecraft volume and mass calculations.

http://www.5596.org/cgi-bin/structure.php

Pete Nofel

"It ain’t fair? Hey pal, ‘fair’ is where you buy funnel cakes."

Pete Nofel

Thanks. Useful

Norman Spinrad publishes rejected Star Trek script via Kindle Store.

<http://www.amazon.com/STAR-TREK-He-Walked-Among-ebook/dp/B007AJZAZY/ref=pd_zg_rss_ms_kstore_digital-text_6>

—-

Roland Dobbins

Subj: Do we need more Solemn Excommunications?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnxJyEF4qLE

Rod Montgomery==monty@starfief.com

Mumbai Attacks

Remember when I said the terrorists in Mumbai spoke a certain Hindu dialect?  That made it very hard for me to believe that Muslim terrorists undertook those attacks; later I found evidence of certain outside intelligence agencies.  As always, the discouragement fraternity had their baseless insults, accusations, denials, and disagreements.  But, once more the truth rises to the top like the cream of the crop:

<.>

An Indian court on Saturday approved a request by prosecutors to charge an American citizen, David Coleman Headley, in connection with the 2008 terrorist attacks here, according to an official with the National Investigation Agency. The decision, which is the first step in seeking an extradition, sets up a possible confrontation between the United States and India.

Mr. Headley has confessed in the United States to playing a major role in the Mumbai attacks, which killed at least 163 people, but he testified against another man tried in the attack to avoid both the death penalty and extradition to India.

The plea deal has angered many Indians, already frustrated by the slow progress in the investigations into the brazen attack that unfolded over three days and shook this city. So far, only one person has been convicted in the case in India: the sole surviving gunman in the attacks, Ajmal Kasab, who has been sentenced to death.

The court on Saturday also approved charges against seven Pakistanis and another man in the United States, Tahawwur Rana. It was Mr. Rana whom Mr. Headley testified against in a United States court. Mr. Rana was eventually acquitted of helping to plot the Mumbai attacks, but he was found guilty of supporting plans to attack a Danish newspaper that published cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.

</>

https://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/world/asia/india-allows-request-to-charge-us-citizen-in-2008-attacks.html?_r=1

Just because certain intelligence agencies were able to use Hindu operatives to pull this off does not mean the sponsor of those operations was a Hindu sponsor.  It is quite possible to convince people to work against their interests, even if you are their greatest enemy.  In fact, KGB operations revolve around these deceptions — consider Operation Trest.  As time goes on, operations become more complex and this is not an accident.  I don’t know why this is a shock to the average person. 

—–

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

I have no comment because I have no reliable information.

Justice Ginsburg causes storm dissing the Constitution while abroad <http://dailycaller.com/2012/02/06/justice-ginsburg-causes-storm-dissing-the-constitution-while-abroad/>

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/02/06/justice-ginsburg-causes-storm-dissing-the-constitution-while-abroad/#ixzz1mebxY5XE <http://dailycaller.com/2012/02/06/justice-ginsburg-causes-storm-dissing-the-constitution-while-abroad/#ixzz1mebxY5XE>

I missed this completely when it happened, and it’s not what I particularly want to hear from a member of the Supreme Court whose job is ensure this country follows the Constitution. It seems she would be inclined to change to meet her standards.

Tracy

Well, it has always been the fancy that the Supreme Court decides what is the law of the land, but in fact they decided cases, and only those cases that the Congress allows them to decide. (There are some cases in which they have original jurisdiction according to the Constitution, but most cases come to them on appeal, and Congress sets that up.) Jefferson abolished a number of courts when he took office; he did not care for some of the judges Adams had appointed. The relation of the Court to the other two branches of government is more complex than is usually taught in school.

Mail 713 Saturday, February 18, 2012

Sacking Bad Teachers.

Jerry,

There was an account in the New York Times of an education authority that was sacking bad teachers with the full approval of their union. Let us hope this spreads. It will, if the number of teachers who really want to teach exceeds the number of teachers who want an unexacting and well paid career with guaranteed job security. <http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/16/opinion/kristof-the-new-haven-experiment.html> <http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/16/opinion/kristof-the-new-haven-experiment.html>

Glad you’re feeling better.

John Edwards.

In Los Angeles the teachers unions have so constipated the system that it is nearly impossible to fire even a flagrantly bad teacher – and any teacher who is about to be fired is given the opportunity to resign thus keeping an retirement and sometimes other benefits. That was the case with the teacher photographed feeding cookies with his male body fluids as frosting to 3^rd grade girls. He was removed from the classroom a year ago, but was allowed to resign. He’s now under arrest by the police – but even had he been arrested and convicted before he left the district he would have been able to resign before being axed. In his case he’s likely to be getting pension in prison, but he’ll still get it.

There needs to be some way to change all this, but the courts don’t approve of laws that reform the system. It may take something more drastic than that, because the system can’t continue to support this: there just isn’t enough money no matter how you raise the taxes. Paying more to retired than to working teachers is not likely to be a successful policy.

No one wants to discuss this because the unions are powerful, particularly in Los Angeles, and they all stand together. Solidarity and all that.

The American school system is one of the major reasons for continued unemployment. It fails the bright students in favor of the just below average, and it doesn’t teach much of any use at all to the way below average. The whole system needs rethinking, beginning with abolition of big unified districts in favor of smaller districts with their own school boards, and some education of those who want to be on school boards. It’s a nightmare in much of the country and the feds make it worse.

and the iron law always applies

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204059804577227542171881120.html?mod=WSJ_Tech_LEFTTopNews

Phil

Video Game Novelizations

They actually date back to the 80s. Alan Dean Foster did I think the first one, for a game called Shadowkeep, and the Zork games has some as well, as did The Bard’s Tale (Mercedes Lackey wrote a couple, I believe for one your publishers, Baen) and Might & Magic. George Alec Effinger wrote one of the Zork novels. His wasn’t so much a novelization of the game as a sequel, but a few of the others were more faithful to the games themselves.

It kind of disappeared when Japanese video games became dominant over PC ones, but now that has reversed (Western games are far more popular), so you are seeing it once again.

Jeremy Reaban

Yes, I was an early Zork player and was once asked to write a novel set in the Flathead kingdom; but by then I was successful in my own work and didn’t need to. All long ago. It is an interesting development. But as I said earlier, I don’t dare pay much attention to games developments now; I like them too much…

Food Police

Fwiw, the Little Village Academy in Chicago (part of Chicago Public Schools, CPS) bans children from bringing lunches from home and mandates that they eat the school lunch. This was reported in the Chicago Tribune in April 2011.

"(principal Elsa Carmona), to my surprise, confirmed that she does indeed prohibit home lunches because she believes the school lunch is healthier than what she has seen kids bring on field trips"

http://newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/tribnation/2011/04/q-a-do-chicago-schools-really-ban-kids-from-bringing-lunch-to-school.html

Original Article:

"Any school that bans homemade lunches also puts more money <http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2011-04-11/news/ct-met-school-lunch-restrictions-041120110410_1_lunch-food-provider-public-school#> in the pockets of the district’s food provider, Chartwells-Thompson. The federal government pays the district for each free or reduced-price lunch taken, and the caterer receives a set fee from the district per lunch. At Little Village, most students must take the meals served in the cafeteria or go hungry or both. During a recent visit to the school, dozens of students took the lunch but threw most of it in the garbage uneaten."

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2011-04-11/news/ct-met-school-lunch-restrictions-041120110410_1_lunch-food-provider-public-school

-R

Follow the money…

Interstate Highways

You wrote:

"When Eisenhower proposed the Interstate Highway system, it was largely proposed as part of a national defense system, and although it is forgotten now, part of the justification was the this would make it possible to build a large number of civil defense shelters…"

I don’t doubt it, and I’ve also seen it said — though honestly, the latest "authority" I’ve seen discuss it might be Lee Child in a Jack Reacher novel — that Eisenhower advocated the highways to allow large mobile army units to move rapidly within the US in the event of a war here, avoiding transportation problems he’d confronted in Europe. It’s a thought that might cross the mind of anybody familiar with the famous armored maneuvers in Louisiana before WWII, the ones where legend holds that Patton paid service station owners out of his own pocket for extra gas for his tanks.

–Mike Glyer

The Army during the 1920’s and 30’s had enormous difficulties getting units from one coast to the other, and this was imprinted deeply in most of the officers of that time. Eisenhower, an operations specialist, was very much one of them.

Highway bill

I’m willing to keep the currant federal gas tax if the federal government took over the interstate highway system from the states and used the federal gas tax solely to fund the system. An argument can be made that the interstate highway system is a federal issue.

And we can make Alaska and Hawaii happy and not charge the tax there since there are no "real" interstates in either state. Hawaii can keep and and maintain H1, H2, and H3 on its own. Same with Puerto Rico and the other unconnected islands.

Fredrik Coulter

In theory the gas taxes go into a Trust Fund that can only be spent on highways, but of course it never works quite as promised.

Real Reason For "Free" Contraception? buffy willow

Jerry,

Paul Rahe analyzes the politics of the Administration decision forcing Catholic institutions to provide contraception, agrees with your conclusion that it makes little practical sense, but goes on to say:

"This suggests that there can be only one reason why Sebelius, Pelosi, and Obama decided to proceed. They wanted to show the bishops and the Catholic laity who is boss. They wanted to make those who think contraception wrong and abortion a species of murder complicit in both.

They wanted to rub the noses of their opponents in it. They wanted to marginalize them. Humiliation was, in fact, their only aim, and malice, their motive."

Given the facts, it’s a disturbingly plausible argument. Interesting times…

Full Rahe column at

http://ricochet.com/main-feed/More-Than-a-Touch-of-Malice

sign me

Porkypine

subject: Election Coverage

Hi, Doc.

You know, it’s just occurred to me that Leftists talk about conservatism as much as atheists talk about God– i.e., more than anybody else does.

And for the same reason. They’re not engaged in disbelief– just denial.

Matthew Joseph Harrington

e pur si muove (the motto of consensus deniers since 1633)

We have a full consensus of astronomers that they Earth does not move. Stop being ridiculous.

SUBJ: David Friedman’s web site

Dear Jerry,

I suspect you already know David Friedman. However here goes anyway.

I have recently discovered the web site and associated blog of David Friedman (a/k/a "Cariadoc of the Bow" in olden SCA times – I have been using his medieval recipes cookbook for 25 years) son of Milton Friedman. His views rather remind me of yours – which is high praise indeed.

http://www.daviddfriedman.com/

http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/

Two items I found immediately interesting are

"Why We are Getting Smarter: A Conjectural Explanation"

http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Miscellaneous/why_getting_smarter.htm

which is reminiscent of your piece on how the Ashkenazim improved their IQ.

and the following which I’m working through now and seems an excellent read. Witty and wisdom in shirt-sleeve English.

_The Machinery of Freedom: Guide to a Radical Capitalism_ (2nd edn)

PDF file

http://www.daviddfriedman.com/The_Machinery_of_Freedom_.pdf

E-book format

http://www.daviddfriedman.com/The_Machinery_of_Freedom.prc

My sincere best wishes for a speedy recovery for you and Roberta.

Cordially,

John

Long time readers will recall that David is a very old friend whom I still see although not as often as either of us would prefer. I used to quote him often in the old BYTE column.

We’re both pretty busy. David’s Machinery of Freedom tries to give practical libertarian solutions to a number of social and economic questions. It may be about the best book on that subject in existence; David is very logical and very consistent. He remains libertarian and I conservative; both our positions are more vectors than immediate policies. He writes pretty good, too.

ADHD –

Essay in Taki’s Mag that echos many of the views expressed here. Both amusing and likely spot on. I think you’ll like it.

So I’m not convinced that “ADD” and “ADHD” are anything more than ideas. At least that’s how it seems to me at the moment. I can be persuaded otherwise, but you’ll have to be very, you know, persuasive. I suspect that what is often misdiagnosed as Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder is actually Teacher Charisma Deficit Disorder.

After ignoring these so-called attention disorders for years, I did a little research and was surprised to discover that there are no blood or DNA tests needed for a diagnosis. A standard ADHD questionnaire <http://www.simonepstein.org/questionnaire_may06.htm> is chillingly vague. You can just fidget a lot, talk a lot, maybe act a little bored, then WHAM!—they’re scrubbing your brain with amphetamines.

http://takimag.com/article/losing_interest_in_attention_deficit_disorder

Dave

I am familiar with a very real case of autism. I think autism and Aspergers are overdiagnosed, but they are very real. As to ADD and ADHD, they were pretty well unknown when I was in graduate school in psychology, and in the short period when I had a psychology practice (in connection with a pediatrician) my specialty, indeed the only thing I did, was work with bright kids who were not doing well in school. I suppose they might have “had” ADD or ADHD, but even in the 1970’s that was not a usual diagnosis, and I found all my patients more easily treated by simply helping them find things they found interesting. Most were simply bored stiff with school; when I showed how their school work might provide some foundation for much more interesting endeavors, and how they could quickly move past what was being taught to other and more interesting things, they were “cured”. I never recommended drugs (couldn’t prescribe them but the pediatrician who owned the practice certainly could) because I never saw any need for them. I also taught some techniques for self discipline which had helped with me when I was in school bored stiff.

ADD and ADHD have created big industries and there are “specialists” with a big interest in keeping them going. The psychological DSM defines them and insurance companies will pay. It may be that there are real cases of a real disorder; I haven’t made a strong systematic study; but I have never seen anything I could call a “disorder” of that kind. I did see bright bored kids. But that is all we were looking for, so that’s not science…

The DSM defines ‘disorders’ that used to be considered fairly normal but unpleasant behavior.

do not track plus

You really want this.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/donottrackplus/?src=search

Phil

I will repeat this in another issue of mail. Firefox users take note. You want this.

Subject: Apple vs Amazon in ereader format smackdown

“Format wars are a mixed blessing for consumers. Whether it’s Betamax versus VHS or Blu-Ray versus HD-DVD, the consumer ultimately wins because companies have to advance superior technologies. But problems arise if the format you backed loses the war – and your device becomes next year’s expensive doorstop.

A new fight is emerging in epublishing between Apple iBooks and Amazon Kindle, with skirmishes between Barnes & Noble, Kobo and others. But the real battle is between the underlying formats: EPUB 3 and KF8”

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/02/06/ereader_format_wars/

It will be interesting to see how this plays out. I love my Kindle, but I really don’t care what format it uses. What I do care about is having one or the other of these companies gaining market share control and owning the most popular format, then jacking up the price. So far, I’ve not seen that kind of attitude from Amazon, but we’ve definitely seen it from Apple at the iTunes store.

Tracy

I agree. But I suspect technology will take care of this. Microsoft got rich setting standards. I expect Amazon will discover that secret. Amazon loses money on sales of the physical Kindle, so I would presume encourages apps that let Kindle books be read on other devices.

Volcanoes, rather than the Maunder Minimum, may have triggered the Little Ice Age?

New evidence (followed by modeling verification) on the origin and development of the Little Ice Age..

http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2012/02/eruptions-not-quiet-sun-may-have-triggered-little-ice-age.ars

Best,

Jon

And the battle of the models continues. We know that volcanoes can have dramatic climate effects.

Subject: Prevention and treatment of colds-zinc seems to work based on the Cochran reports (contains link to full Cochran report)

Dear Jerry,

You seem to be suffering from too many colds (one is too many for me). I read the Cochran analysis of Zinc for prevention and treatment of colds and they concluded that it seems to work to either fend off a cold and to reduce the duration and symptoms of a cold. The possible mechanism may be somehow affecting the ability of the virus to spread to other cells. Cochran did comment that the exact dose and frequency is not known as different studies used different doses. See information below.

However, Zicam and Cold-EEze have sprays, lozenges etc. CVS and Rite-Aid have generics. I have not had a cold in a year despite frequent travel and the last cold I had was very short and mild. This is not dispositive but it does seem to work.

One drawback is the zinc gluconate changes your sensation of taste for about 30 minutes to an hour after using and some people are more sensitive to this than others. I just avoid taking it before eating.

I hope this helps.

—

Kind regards,

Michael

Michael Montgomery, MD

Zinc for the common cold http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD001364.pub3/abstract;jsessionid=04E9C275F5D2808A2CDD6E3594406413.d02t02

I haven’t done this and I should. I hadn’t heard that these zinc based potions were useful for shortening symptoms after you already have the cold; and I didn’t see this when it first came in because, well, because I wasn’t up to reading my mail as closely as I should have been.

I’m getting over this mess, and I’m about to go out and buy a lock for the barn door for future… Thanks. I gather the CVS generic will do?

Education?

Dr. Pournelle,

I tried calling in to Sec. Bennett’s morning talk show some time ago. The subject was the benefit and correctness of "No Child Left Behind", more aptly teach to the lowest common denominator. He and his guest really did think that all children could utilize a college prep education. Maybe something to do with his education business, but I couldn’t believe that someone as intelligent as Bill Bennett didn’t believe that there was a distribution of talents and native intellect, and that some people were better as well as happier in "menial" jobs. I don’t know about you, but when my car is not working correctly or my A/C is on the fritz during a Texas summer I value the skills of a good technician at least as much as someone with a college education in sociology or Poli. Sci. How is it that we have lost the vision that our society necessarily contains a spectrum of jobs, skills, interests, and abilities that are not always tied to a college education? How is it that people that hold these "lesser" jobs get patronized by "upper" classes? I don’t want to go back to an agrarian/skilled labor economy of the 18th/19th century but I sure wish people still carried a similar mindset. How do we best protect economic mobility (beside cheap energy and reduced governmental interference) and individual liberty? I would be curious to know who you would consider a good read on this. Von Mises seems a good starting point, but who else do you think is authoritative on true capitalism?

Get over your cold soon. I need you to finish last installment of Janissaries as well as getting ‘Anvil’ published.

Douglas Lewis

A nation that has no use for half its citizens cannot survive. A great number of the ‘services’ now done by bureaucracies were taken care of by volunteer – what Tocqueville called ‘the associations’ through most of the life of the Republic.

That was one way to allow citizens in boring jobs and dull occupations to feel valuable to the community – there WERE valuable to the community. That is one reason for chopping back on government. Paying people to be unionized stupid is probably not a good thing for a Republic.

Making productive people more productive is an honorable job. That means helping them. We need to change our views about domestic service. I note that the TV sitcoms are beginning to do that.