Category Archives: View

Mail 747 Saturday, October 27, 2012

Publuis Speaks

Dr. Pournelle —

27. October 1787: The first of the Federalist Papers are published.

It’s a fascinating time to be studying the Federalist Papers.

However, looking at all that is going on, it would be worthwhile to also study the writings of the anti-federalists as well.

Pieter

The anti-federalists were concerned that the Federal Government would become too powerful and suppress the liberties of the states and of the people…

Patrick Henry was one of their leaders. He would not go to the Convention of 1787 saying he smelt a rat. George Mason was another.

RFID for Public School Students

Dr. Pournelle,

I think we now have conclusive proof that these are the Crazy Years. Students in San Antonio public schools are being tracked by RFID. The administrators are unashamed to say they are trying to raise their take of state money by increasing attendance.

If this goes nationwide I expect more libertarians and conservatives will use private schools and homeschool. This would accentuate a bifurcation of society into Taxpayers and Citizens, to borrow your taxonomy.

http://redtape.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/10/26/14705346-texas-schools-begin-tracking-students-with-computer-chips-in-id-cards?lite

and

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2011352/texas-school-uses-rfid-badges-to-track-student-locations.html

Best wishes,

Nathan Raye

Given the uselessness of much of the public school system, and the terrible expense of the official credentials of education, there are few ways out. Go into debt in order to pay the absurd costs of our universities which teach what used to be taught free in high school; keep the debt for life.

The solution to much of the cost of ‘higher education’ is to return to competent high schools. But the teachers unions will insist – probably believing it – that this is impossible even if we once did it. They say they can’t do it now. They’re right of course. They can’t.

What we need is some kind of cheaper way to certify that you are educated.

Jacques Barzun, RIP.

Fitting that he outlasted Hobsbawm, if only by a hairsbreadth:

<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/26/arts/jacques-barzun-historian-and-scholar-dies-at-104.html?pagewanted=all>

<http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/9636970/Jacques-Barzun.html>

<http://india.nydailynews.com/newsarticle/49e5e56d9c042fdca988d9c54494d573/cultural-historian-author-jacques-barzun-dies>

Roland Dobbins

Dear Dr. Pournelle:

Lena Dunham put out a Pro-Obama ad saying that "your first time should be with someone who cares".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=o6G3nwhPuR4

…

If this actually puts him over the top, I won’t move to Australia because I have family obligations here. But I would really, really, really, wish I could.

Of course, it’s also possible that people will be offended by so unserious approach to such a fundamental question. I mean, if you REALLY want to compare voting for a president to a sex act, the comedic potential is unlimited, but I suspect you really don’t want to hear it. Even if my second thought involves the word "prison". My first thought is unprintable.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

I am never surprised by what political operatives will say.

Like Niven says, Any damn fool can predict the past. Seems like there’s a lot of damn foolery going around on this topic.

Meanwhile, from a G.W. Bush-era former CIA analyst:

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/10/how-critics-of-obamas-libya-response-profoundly-misunderstand-intelligence/263139/

And, from the archives, a piece on "creeping determinism":

http://www.gladwell.com/2003/2003_03_10_a_dots.html

Key quote from the piece, explaining the phrase:

"None of these postmortems, however, answer the question raised by the Yom Kippur War: Was this pattern obvious *before* the attack? This question–whether we revise our judgment of events after the fact–is something that psychologists have paid a great deal of attention to.

For example, on the eve of Richard Nixon’s historic visit to China, the psychologist Baruch Fischhoff asked a group of people to estimate the probability of a series of possible outcomes of the trip. What were the chances that the trip would lead to permanent diplomatic relations between China and the United States? That Nixon would meet with the leader of China, Mao Tse-tung, at least once? That Nixon would call the trip a success? As it turned out, the trip was a diplomatic triumph, and Fischhoff then went back to the same people and asked them to recall what their estimates of the different outcomes of the visit had been. He found that the subjects now, overwhelmingly, "remembered" being more optimistic than they had actually been. If you originally thought that it was unlikely that Nixon would meet with Mao, afterward, when the press was full of accounts of Nixon’s meeting with Mao, you’d "remember" that you had thought the chances of a meeting were pretty good. Fischhoff calls this phenomenon "creeping determinism"–the sense that grows on us, in retrospect, that what has happened was actually inevitable–and the chief effect of creeping determinism, he points out, is that it turns unexpected events into expected events. As he writes, "The occurrence of an event increases its reconstructed probability and makes it less surprising than it would have been had the original probability been remembered.""

Hoping this finds you well,

— Hal

This is all I know though I have heard part of this from other sources. This is commentary /analysis, so…

http://www.conservativedailynews.com/2012/10/bill-clinton-told-hillary-to-resign-us-arming-syrian-rebels-with-ties-to-al-queda-muslim-brotherhood/

This is my first look at that web site and I know nothing about it or its staff. Nor do I know much about the relationship of the Clintons in these times.

Five-second Rule

As I recall, the Mythbusters’ examination of the rule found that a handful of seconds didn’t really make any difference. Moist, flat, food picks up bacteria immediately. Food that is dry and doesn’t present a broad contact surface doesn’t really do any worse in 6 seconds than 2. This doesn’t seem surprising to me.

Mike Johns

Ah well.

Synopsis of the Wizard of Oz.

<http://twitpic.com/b7f9za>

Roland Dobbins

: Occasional virus double-checks

While online virus scans are convenient, I think a better choice for an occasional double-check would be a Linux-based Rescue CD. You know how adept today’s rootkits are at hiding themselves from the OS itself. The boot CD completely bypasses those tricks.

Obviously, it’s less convenient. But if you run it overnight then it’s not that big of a deal. Or, you can try to find useful work to do on a nearby machine while it’s running.

Drake Christensen

Agreed, and I actually have done this.

APOD: 2012 October 22 – A Space Shuttle on the Streets of Los Angeles, a video:

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap121022.html

I want one of those transporters. Looks perfect for parallel parking.

Ed

It was quite a sight.

Subject: Italian court convicts 7 scientists for failing to predict earthquake

I wonder if it’s too much of a stretch to wonder when they will start convicting scientists for not agreeing with Global Warming alarmism:

http://www.foxnews.com/science/2012/10/22/italian-court-convicts-7-scientists-for-failing-to-predict-earthquake/?test=latestnews

Tracy

I wondered that too. But we still do not know the entire story about the case in Italy. Just wh said what, and when…

Louisiana Mushroom Cloud – Rods from God?

Hi Jerry;

Really iffy source but you got a call on a conspiracy web site. The speculation is that a recent Louisiana mushroom cloud that the government blames on a ammo bunker explosion is really a test of the Project Thor Rods from God concept you developed in the 1950s at Boeing. They were even delivered from the X37 space plane that was recently relaunched.

http://beforeitsnews.com/earthquakes/2012/10/urgent-warning-the-next-24-hours-project-thor-is-at-hand-2445686.html

Bill Baggott

First I have heard of this. The whole point of Thor is that there wouldn’t be a mushroom cloud…

novels and quality

One of the problems with the “revolution in publishing” we are seeing is the proliferation of really bad books that are available. Finding good books is more difficult than it used to be or maybe I’m just getting old and irascible.

The problem even extends to publications in medicine.

Mark

When I wrote about information utilities and using them for self publication in A Step Farther Out, I did point out that this would make necessary some new ways to sort out the gold from the dross. That seems to be happening.

But one man’s drech is another’s pleasure, and it’s astonishing how many individual authors now have their niche readerships. I expect to see more of that.

Air + Water = Gasoline

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/exclusive-pioneering-scientists-turn-fresh-air-into-petrol-in-massive-boost-in-fight-against-energy-crisis-8217382.html

—

* * *

"Mad Science" means never asking, "What’s the worst that could happen?"

–Schlock mercenary

I’d have to see a lot more evidence before investing in this…

Sanitary towel firm’s ‘CEO’ sets traumatised man straight (don’t be drinking coffee when you watch the video):

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/10/18/bodyform_video/print.html

Ed

View 747 Friday, October 26, 2012

Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence. Napoleon Bonaparte

I first used this quote sometime in the Genie era. I think I first saw it in one of the works of Ortega y Gasset, but it might have been told by de Jouvenal. The story is told that there was a problem in Paris while the Emperor was on campaign. When it was reported as treason, Bonaparte made that comment. I’ve known about this since undergraduate days, and it may be that I first learned it from George Mosse in his Western Civilization class. The Internet doesn’t seem to have caught up with that, which is why you can’t rely on the Internet, particularly when it comes to scholarship about the origin of aphorisms. There are too many claimants with partisans.

None of which is particularly relevant, but in my searches for when I first used this – certainly in View or Mail in 1998 but I suspect considerably earlier – I found a long forgotten Chaos Manor Report in which a reader made up a list of aphorisms he had learned from reading Chaos Manor. For those searching for useful phrases, I recommend Leadership Quotes.

Today’s news makes Napoleon’s quip more relevant each day. Indeed, the news strains the truth of his statement, and I have at least one reader who has long held that the Obama government is simply malicious, and I ought to admit it. My reply to him was that I suspected he had not spent much time in faculty lounges. Liberals do not believe they are evil. Indeed, the foundation of liberalism is that good intentions cannot be evil. Conservative intellectuals call that a negation of the importance of prudence. That is to say, in a classical education the primary virtues are Prudence, Temperance, Courage, and Justice. Prudence is a due regard for the possible consequences of your courageous actions in pursuit of justice. Liberalism in essence says that if your intentions are good, your actions are not evil. Perhaps incompetent, but then the world is complex, and there are always unintentional consequences to what you do. The important thing is to act. Do something, even if it’s wrong. And of course once one starts down a road, it is difficult to admit that you are going in the wrong direction, and it becomes important to defend what you are doing, so that the unintended consequences become acts you should defend even though, had you known that would happen – well, you get the idea.

But as we learn that the CIA operatives in Benghazi wanted to go to the aid of the consulate when the attack began, and were told from Washington that they could not go – ordered to stand down – it becomes even more difficult to ascribe the entire mess in Benghazi to simple incompetence.

Leon Panetta is nether evil nor incompetent, or at least he wasn’t when I knew him as a California Congressman very friendly to the space development movement. His statement that we do not send forces into unknown threat situations is a generality that is often true; but it does provide a clue as to the White House reasoning in the Benghazi crisis. I see a glimmering: they were terrified of another Black Hawk Down incident. If we sent in a helicopter team from Italy it would be a one-way mission, victory or die: they’d have bingo fuel when they got to Benghazi and there wasn’t any safe place to go other than the consulate grounds. And the political consequences of something like Black Hawk Down would be horrible. Political managers never make bets like that. Montrose’s toast is not for them.** And once one goes down that road, it is difficult to turn back. Don’t throw good money after bad. Cut your losses. Some hands you have to fold even if you had to make the first blind bet. Etc.

I don’t know. I do know that the more information we have of the Benghazi fiasco, the more strain that puts on applying Bonaparte’s aphorism to that situation.

As to Panetta’s generality, there are always exceptions to it. The Brits decided that they would cut their losses – and removed their consulate from Benghazi well in advance of September 11. That would be, in my judgment, the signal for a major decision: how badly do we want that consulate to stay open? What would it cost to make it secure? Because once we decide that we will keep it open, we need to arrange for its security, up to and including stationing resources capable of dealing with organized terrorist attacks with crew served weapons. If that turns out to be too expensive, then get out. The Brits made their decision.

The House of Representatives is the Grand inquest of the Nation. I would suppose that the death of an ambassador on duty followed by inadequate accounts from the Executive Department would warrant a Grand Inquest. I can understand that the House might be unwilling to open that inquest pending a national election.

Jacques Barzun, RIP

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/26/arts/jacques-barzun-historian-and-scholar-dies-at-104.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20121026&_r=0

I never met Jacques Barzun, but he had more influence on my life than most people I knew. I read his Teacher in America when I was in high school, and periodically reread it, much of what I think I know about both the value and methods of education came from that book, and I recommend it to everyone. He was America’s best public intellectual, and he will be remembered for a very long time. His intellectual history From Dawn to Decadence: 1500 to the Present is one of those books that every aspirant to the intellectual life should read at leas once in his life.

Dragon set to splash down Sunday noon

http://www.eetimes.com/design/military-aerospace-design/4399498/Dragon-splashdown-set-for-this-weekend

First paying mission. Good Job SpaceX.

Phil

An important event in the development of commercial space. Hurrah for the Commercial Space Act.

My thanks to all those who have subscribed or renewed during the current pledge drive. The drive ends tomorrow – I run a pledge drive when KUSC has their pledge drives since this place operates on the Public Radio model. It’s free to all but it stays open only if we get enough subscriptions. My thanks to all those who responded.

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** “He either fears his fate too much, Or his desserts are small, Who dares not put it to the touch, To win or lose it all.” James Graham, Marquis of Montrose

View 747 Wednesday, October 24, 2012

An Anniversary of Note from the 70 years War

Jerry,

This week is the fiftieth anniversary of the Minuteman I being place on strategic alert.

Regards, Charles Adams, Bellevue, NE

<http://www.boeing.com/news/frontiers/archive/2008/november/i_history.pdf>

"…The first operational Minuteman site was Malmstrom Air Force Base, Mont., where the first 10-missile ‘flight’ was rushed into activation on Oct. 27, 1962, at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis. U.S. President John F. Kennedy referred to the missiles as his "ace in the hole" during this historic standoff with the Soviet Union…"

I recall those times. I had some involvement in command and control systems of the time (all long obsolete). And I recall the Cuban Missile Crisis: we were in my back yard filling burlap bags with dirt. We then carried them into the basement. Seattle wasn’t a primary target but we were East of a naval target area. East and downwind…

Last night Greta van Sustern of Fox News showed a printed copy of an eMail from the State department delegation in Libya that apparently went to the situation rooms in both the White House and the State Department in Foggy Bottom. It stated quite clearly that the consulate in Benghazi was under attack by armed terrorists with AK-47 rifles and RPG’s. This was about two hours into the attack. There was no mention of any protests against any video.

The existence of the eMail is now confirmed by the Washington Post http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/email-state-department-told-white-house-militants-claimed-responsibility-for-libya-attack/2012/10/24/b4cd09b0-1def-11e2-8817-41b9a7aaabc7_story.html. There was no mention of this in today’s Wall Street Journal or the Los Angeles Times although Ms. Van Sustern was displaying the memo at 7PM Pacific Time last night. I saw it.

We do not usually do breaking news here, and we certainly do not have all the data; but it does seem to me that the President certainly knew by Wednesday morning 12 September that the attack on the Benghazi consulate was an organized attack by a terrorist organization – or at least that such an organization was claiming it.

We also have reason to believe that the White House was aware of the attack within two hours of its beginning. The attack continued for some seven hours, and at least two of those killed were killed in the last hours.

The United States maintains forces that could have reached Benghazi by helicopter within two hours from Italy. I do not have a list of other assets in the Mediterranean, but it does appear that we had some resources in the area. They were not sent.

From the first debate:

ROMNEY: And there was no demonstration involved. It was a terrorist attack and it took a long time for that to be told to the American people. Whether there was some misleading, or instead whether we just didn’t know what happened, you have to ask yourself why didn’t we know five days later when the ambassador to the United Nations went on TV to say that this was a demonstration. How could we have not known?

But I find more troubling than this, that on — on the day following the assassination of the United States ambassador, the first time that’s happened since 1979, when — when we have four Americans killed there, when apparently we didn’t know what happened, that the president, the day after that happened, flies to Las Vegas for a political fund-raiser, then the next day to Colorado for another event, other political event.

At that time the official US position was that the attack on our consulate was a demonstration against a U-Tube video defaming the Prophet Mohammed PBUH that got out of hand. That was still the official position of the United States Department of State – and one presumes the White House – as late as Sunday September 16 when the US Ambassador to the UN declared it on several Sunday news shows.

As of now there has been no statement from the White House in explanation.

As to what might have been done: we knew that conditions in Benghazi were deteriorating long before September 11, 2012, and also that 9-11 is a memorable anniversary. Benghazi is a seaport. The United States has ships called helicopter carriers. Helicopters land on them. Helicopters can carry Marines. Marines carry rifles in addition to bayonets and ammunition. Marines have been known to defend US diplomatic institutions against local attack, and their effectiveness is well known.

As to obtaining Libyan permission to allow a US helicopter carrier – say something like the late USS Tripoli – to berth in Benghazi, their refusal would itself be something worth knowing, and they certainly have no capability of preventing such a ship to stand off shore; and surely the Libyan provisional government would not refuse a US request to send in helicopters to rescue American diplomatic personnel. We could negotiate that in advance of 9-11, and doing that would be simple prudence.

It is not as if we have not gone through such things before. The United States has some experience in these matters. And we did have warning in advance.

Despite that warning, an American diplomatic institution was attacked, and four Americans including our Minister Plenipotentiary and Ambassador Extraordinary were killed. Clearly something went very wrong. Such matters should not happen, and if they do, precautions must be taken to see that they do not happen again.

Surely the White House owes us more of an explanation than continued references to a U-Tube movie trailer?

As it happens I have some experience in thinking about incidents of this sort. Back in the 1950’s I partnered with some senior officers of the US Navy to write papers on international security. Our conclusion, based in part on experiences of the British Royal Marines in Africa, was that ships capable of carrying about a battalion of Marines with helicopter transportation and air support would be capable of handling the vast majority of violent incidents taking place within 100 km. of deep water. Those papers are said to have been influential in the design and commissioning of the Iwo Jima class helicopter assault carriers including the USS Tripoli which served as President George H W Bush’s flagship when he visited Somalia. My son Phillip was an ensign on the Tripoli at that time. I don’t claim much credit in ship design, but I did have some small input in development of tactical use; count me as a fan of Iwo Jima class as a means of force projection. Alas, they are pretty well gone, and I am not all that impressed with what replaced them.

I still believe that the Navy needs the modern equivalent of the Iwo Jima class ships: a battalion of marines with transport and fire support. Their purpose is to deal with situation like the Benghazi incident – largely by deterring them. The threat of an avenging company of Marines not an hour away is a very effective deterrent to terrorists planning an armed attack. They can’t stop a suicide bomber, but they can sure stop a group with AK-47’s, RPG’s, LMG’s, and mortars.

Perhaps someone should explain that to the President. We know that he knows that we have ships that airplanes can land on. Given the results in Benghazi it may be that no one explained how the LPH ships worked, and why we need such assets in this dangerous world.

I have an appointment with a podiatrist, and no, there is nothing wrong with my feet; but since I am mildly diabetic Kaiser has decided that I should have a foot inspection and pedicure. That seems like a very good idea, and it happens this afternoon. On our Knights of Lazarus pilgrimage to Israel one of our companions was a podiatrist, and he is, so far as I know, the only one I have ever met, and I know little about the subject. Perhaps I will find out more.

And that went well. Now to work on fiction. And the Pledge Drive continues. If you don’t know what that is, this place operates on the Public Radio model. It’s free, but it will not stay open without new and renewing subscribers. We get plenty of subscribers, but people sometimes need reminding. This is your reminder. If you have not subscribed, this would be a good time to do it. If you have not renewed your subscription in a while, this would be a great time to renew. Thanks to all who have. As usual the pledge drive corresponds with KUSC’s pledge drives. I don’t ask for anything like as much money as they do, but then I don’t  have the expenses they have.

Subscribe now! Renew now!.  There. I’m done shouting at you, and the drive ends at the end of the week.http://www.jerrypournelle.com/paying.html

Regarding the Italian trial of the scientists, I have this from another conference. It sums it up nicely:

According to Nature:

What happened outside the meeting room may haunt the scientists, and perhaps the world of risk assessment, for many years. Two members of the commission, Barberi and De Bernardinis, along with mayor Cialente and an official from Abruzzo’s civil-protection department, held a press conference to discuss the findings of the meeting. In press interviews before and after the meeting that were broadcast on Italian television, immortalized on YouTube and form detailed parts of the prosecution case, De Bernardinis said that the seismic situation in L’Aquila was “certainly normal” and posed “no danger”, adding that “the scientific community continues to assure me that, to the contrary, i’s a favourable situation because of the continuous discharge of energy”. When prompted by a journalist who said, “So we should have a nice glass of wine,” De Bernardinis replied “Absolutely”, and urged locals to have a glass of Montepulciano.

Oops. The New York Times <http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/04/science/04quake.html?_r=2&> weighed in with an expert:

The statement by the official, who is not a seismologist, violated a cardinal rule of risk communication, which is that those involved should speak only to their expertise, said Dennis Mileti, an emeritus professor of behavioral science at the University of Colorado at Boulder. “This person should not have been speaking,” said Dr. Mileti, who has studied risk communication.

Yes, we often find officials keeping silent on important matters of the day. Anyway, the earthquake came and killed and after the funerals people remembered the wine quip. Fingers were pointed, collars were fingered, a trial was ordered. Guilty! The judge gave the six scientists who had the conclave with De Bernardinis six whopping years in prison.

But the trial was not, contrary to many discussions, because the scientists failed to predict the quake. The prosecutor, one Picuti, said (in Nature), “The basis of the charges is not that they didn’t predict the earthquake. As functionaries of the state, they had certain duties imposed by law: to evaluate and characterize the risks that were present in L’Aquila…They were obligated to evaluate the degree of risk given all these factors and they did not.”

“This isn’t a trial against science,” insists [surgeon and local resident] Vittorini, who is a civil party to the suit. But he says that a persistent message from authorities of “Be calm, don’t worry”, and a lack of specific advice, deprived him and others of an opportunity to make an informed decision about what to do on the night of the earthquake. “That’s why I feel betrayed by science,” he says. “Either they didn’t know certain things, which is a problem, or they didn’t know how to communicate what they did know, which is also a problem.”

The busted Italian forecast was of the Bobby “Don’t Worry Be Happy” McFerrin, there-is-no-reason-for-concern kind. And those fellows paid the price. But what of the opposite: endless end-of-the-world predictions.

The problem with coppering your risks against Type I Errors is the commission of more Type II Errors. That is, if RUN FOR THE HILLS! causes panic when no earthquake eventuates, DON’T WORRY BE HAPPY causes worse problems when an earthquake does happen. Apparently "We don’t know for sure and we need to study this for many more years" is not an acceptable public announcement. Run or stay put? Which? In law there is no space for random error. The product always has a "design flaw," the injustice is always intentional. But no matter how fine the decision rules are, there will always be an alpha-risk of running when nothing happens and a beta-risk of staying put when something does.

The only thing the scientists can say is that "In the past whenever we have seen tremors like this, there has been a major earthquake p% of the time." If p is small, folks relax and don’t worry. But there is a first time for everything, especially when there is no causal link between the prior condition and the event of interest. It’s like learning that no incumbent senator has ever won a presidential election… until one did (Harding). Correlation is not causation. Really.

I don’t know Italian law. I am glad I didn’t have to give a statement about how much to worry about an earthquake. I do recall people asking me about the danger of nuclear war, and how much they ought to spend on survival measures. But that was a long time ago. And all the nuclear survival preparations I wrote about when I was doing Survive columns did not turn out to be needed…

View 747 Tuesday, October 23, 2012

I was on  TWIT this week. See http://twit.tv/show/this-week-in-tech/376

Here is a more complete account of the earthquake prediction story:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn22412-seismologists-found-guilty-of-manslaughter.html

From a colleague in another conference:

From what I have seen so far, the actual case seems to be about scientific over-reach. The scientists were convicted not of failing to predict an earthquake, but of declaring that an earthquake was "very unlikely." If, as reported, the scientists correctly stated that it was impossible to predict an earthquake, why did they then qualify it with a statement that one was very unlikely? By implication, the statement predicted an earthquake was "very unlikely" to occur, and if we can’t predict earthquakes will happen, how can we predict one won’t happen? While there is a definite anti-science trend in some quarters, I think it is not entirely fed by ignorance. Instead, scientific over-reaching, pretending to knowledge we do not in fact have, has led to too many cases of "nothing can go wrong," "there’s nothing to worry about," "we understand all of the risks," and so on. I think that is what led to the convictions in Italy.

Given the state of earthquake prediction science – there isn’t any, and no one can reliably do it – it’s hard to understand how one might be convicted of manslaughter for not predicting an earthquake. Surely there is more to the story, and so far we have not seen trial transcripts. From the New Scientist article:

So what did the six seismologists that have been charged do?
They spoke at a meeting on 31 March 2009 – a week before the quake – organised by Italy’s Civil Protection Department. At the meeting, they said that while they could not rule out a major quake, and it was best to be prepared, there was no particularly good reason to think that one was coming.

Afterwards, the department’s deputy head Bernardo De Bernardinis told the media that the small shocks were reducing the seismic stresses, lowering the chances of a major quake. "That’s completely wrong," Musson says.

This statement, according to the prosecution, gave false confidence to the inhabitants of L’Aquila. This may be true. However, Musson says, "I haven’t been able to work out why the other six are being held responsible".

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn22412-seismologists-found-guilty-of-manslaughter.html

One thing we can expect from this is a great deal more care given to statements about upcoming disasters.

Now imagine what would happen if, instead of global warming, we get big glaciers? Or perhaps sociologists can be charged with crimes for spending money on various crime reduction schemes if they don’t work? Or perhaps the soothsayers can be changed with not giving true sooth. There is still much to learn from this.

The debate went about as I expected. Mr. Obama believes our Libya policy has been a success, and Mr. Romney was smart enough to let that stand without challenge. Given Mr. Obama’s reaction to comments on Benghazi in the debate before this one, that seems an intelligent thing to do: there is little Mr. Romney could tell the debate audience that it does not already know about the success or lack thereof of our Libya policy.

Mr. Romney’s best line: “Attacking me is not a foreign policy.” Mr. Obama’s: On being told that we have many fewer ships than we had in past times, “We also have fewer horses and bayonets.” He then added that we now have ships called aircraft carriers. Airplanes land on them.

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