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Friday, December 30, 2016

 

Happy New Year

 

   

 

“Deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

Immigration without assimilation is invasion.

Debbie Reynolds, longtime America’s sweetheart, died of a broken heart; if there were ever any doubts about that being a legitimate diagnosis, those doubts should be expelled now. I met her a couple of times in Los Vegas when she owned a hotel there; she would come down to the lobby and talk with people standing in line, or just staying there. She wouldn’t have remembered me, but she was hard to forget. I remember being in love with her as a young man; of course I had never met her and never thought I would. RIP

Someone has gone mad. It may be me, but I don’t think so. President Obama seems to be doing his best to alienate Israel, cause problems – possibly even war – with Russia, import more unvetted migrants from dangerous parts of the world, and more; and to do all this in the last few days he is in office. Actually he’s not even in office. He’s playing golf and swimming in Hawaii.

The intelligence people say – or some of them say – that they have proof that the Russians hacked the Democratic National Committee with the intention of gathering embarrassing documents that, if leaked, would aid Trump against Hillary. They have presented no evidence for this statement; of course, being the CIA, they could have good reason for withholding evidence if it would endanger sources or compromise techniques. What is known about the hacks and what evidence is available to the public is summarized here:

Here’s the Public Evidence Russia Hacked the DNC — It’s Not Enough

Sam Biddle

December 14 2016, 8:30 a.m.

There are some good reasons to believe Russians had something to do with the breaches into email accounts belonging to members of the Democratic party, which proved varyingly embarrassing or disruptive for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. But “good” doesn’t necessarily mean good enough to indict Russia’s head of state for sabotaging our democracy.[snip]

https://theintercept.com/2016/12/14/heres-the-public-evidence-russia-hacked-the-dnc-its-not-enough/

Presumably acting on classified information that is more convincing than what is available to the public, President Obama acted.

Obama Strikes Back at Russia for Election Hacking

By DAVID E. SANGERDEC. 29, 2016

Continue reading the main story Share This Page

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/29/us/politics/russia-election-hacking-sanctions.html

WASHINGTON — President Obama struck back at Russia on Thursday for its efforts to influence the 2016 election, ejecting 35 suspected Russian intelligence operatives from the United States and imposing sanctions on Russia’s two leading intelligence services.

The administration also penalized four top officers of one of those services, the powerful military intelligence unit known as the G.R.U.[snip]

This is the most severe diplomatic action President Obama has ever taken, and he has done it in the his last days in office. Apparently it was not enough for the neocons, who seem determined to get us into a shooting war with Russia.

Obama’s Russia Sanctions Put Trump, Hill GOP on Collision Course

Putin punishment among list of clashes Trump could have with own party

– See more at: http://www.rollcall.com/news/politics/obamas-russia-sanctions-put-trump-hill-gop-collision-course#sthash.R9Agofcg.dpuf

 

 

President-elect Donald Trump’s opposition to President Barack Obama’s retaliation against Russia for trying to influence the U.S. election will immediately pit him against the hawkish wing of the Republican party. And it soon could force him to veto additional penalties supported by his own party.

The White House on Thursday revealed a set of economic sanctions and other penalties intended to squeeze Russian leaders for backing and — as Obama administration officials have acknowledged — being directly involved in hacking email servers designed to help Trump defeat Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

The Obama administration announced that it has imposed sanctions on Russia over its hacking during the U.S. election. The punitive measures target nine entities and individuals: two Russian intelligence services, four intelligence officers and three companies that provide support to Russian cyber operations.

The administration is also expelling 35 Russian officials stationed either at the embassy in Washington or the consulate in San Francisco. The individuals and their families have been given 72 hours to leave the U.S. And a senior administration official told reporters those actions are not the lone ones Washington implemented, signaling covert retaliation, as well.

But the senior official said Obama’s moves came via executive actions, meaning Trump could reverse any or all of the moves after he is sworn in on Jan. 20.[snip]

Fortunately, Mr. Trump has called for calm.

Mr. Putin may or may not wait to see what Trump will do before he orders retaliation. Exactly what Putin will do is unclear, but he is as aware of the real world as Mr. Trump is. All nations listen in on each other’s telephone calls – we were recently caught tapping the Brazilian President’s phone, and during the Cold War we even dug a tunnel under The Wall into the basement of the East Berlin Stasi headquarters to enhance our abilities to listen in on their calls to Moscow – and hacking goes on in all nations against all other nations all the time, as did telephone tapping and bugging before hacking was possible.

When I was Co-Director of Sam Yorty’s third campaign for Mayor of Los Angeles (we won) we rented offices in a suite on Wilshire Blvd. that had long been used as campaign headquarters for various offices and by both parties. I had a sweep done of my office, and found 21 bugs, some old carbon microphones that must have been in there for 20 years. We cleared them all out, but I couldn’t be sure we had them all. This is not an uncommon story.

In 1929 Secretary of State Henry Stimson shut down the Army’s Black Chamber (founded by poker expert Herbert Yardley) on the grounds that “Gentlemen do not read each other’s mail”; but those days are long gone. Code breaking – hacking – was common by all major powers and the US breaking of the Japanese military code (the code name was Purple) had a great effect on war operations including our decisive victory at Midway. Every government hacks every other government, and everyone involved knows it. The more skilled hackers don’t leave many clues behind; the most skilled don’t leave any evidence that they were successful, or even tried. You may assume that both NSA (the direct successor to Yardley’s Black Chamber) and the GRU employ highly skilled hackers, who left little or no direct evidence of their identity, or even that they have been in each other’s servers.

It can be assumed that (1) the Russians hacked government computers, possibly including the Democratic National Committee’s computer; and (2) they left no solid evidence behind. The President has expelled 35 Russian diplomats three weeks before he leaves office, and he has done so without consulting the incoming President.

He has also changed our historic policy toward Israel without any warning; and Mr. Trump has been castigated for commenting on it since we have only one President at a time. True; but in the past lame duck Presidents did not change major foreign policies a few days before leaving office.

Trump and outrageous
In a recent post, you ruminated on the observation that Trump’s staff was not prone to making outrageous comments, and that this suggested something about his personnel selection. From that comment, I’m tempted to conclude that you would agree that Mr. Trump himself is prone to making outrageous remarks.
It is obvious that this habit did not hurt him enough to cost him the election, and might have even been viewed positively by some of his supporters. I wonder if you think this habit will serve him well, or poorly, once he is actually President?

Craig

The neocons want war. Apparently the President is willing to help them get it. Mr. Trump is the voice of calm.

2205 Friday, Dec. 30:

Vladimir Putin Won’t Expel U.S. Diplomats as Russian Foreign Minister Urged

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/30/world/europe/russia-diplomats-us-hacking.html 

MOSCOW — President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia announced Friday that he would not retaliate against President Obama’s decision to expel Russian diplomats and impose new sanctions — only hours after his foreign minister recommended doing just that.

Mr. Putin, betting on improved relations with the next American president, said he would not eject 35 diplomats or close any diplomatic facilities, rejecting a tit-for-tat response to the actions taken on Thursday by the Obama administration.

The switch was remarkable, given that Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, had just recommended the retaliation in remarks broadcast live on national television. He called for punitive measures mirroring the ones imposed by the Obama administration, which accuses Russia of intimidating American diplomats and hacking institutions like the Democratic National Committee to influence the 2016 election. [snip]

Apparently. Mr. Putin remains calm as well. We do not what further provocations Mr. Obama plans, but he cannot be pleased by this response.

It is widely believed in Russia that the CIA interfered in the Ukrainian elections, and probably in the Russian Presidential elections as well.  I have not seen their evidence, but my information about the beliefs is reasonably well founded.

 

 

Congressional Cybersecurity Leader Demolishes Obama’s Hacking Case Against Russia

All that’s left of the Russian hacking case is the emotional hype about what turns out to be a non issue.

http://russia-insider.com/en/congressional-cybersecurity-leader-demolishes-obamas-hacking-case-against-russia/ri18233

Jim Himes, a Congressional leader in the oversight of the National Security Agency and US cybersecurity, has just torpedoed Obama’s case against Russia.
Obama has revealed his intentions to attack Russia in retaliation for alleged hacking of Democratic Party and Clinton campaign emails. He’s offered no substantiation for his accusations. The evidence he and others have cited does not check out. What’s more the allegations have never been addressed by the UN or any other competent international security agency.
But the lack of substantiation is actually beside the point. The primary issue is that countries covertly gathering information from other countries is nothing new, and is certainly not unique to Russia.
The US, for example, was caught hacking telephone conversations of the German Chancellor and the president of Brazil.
The other part of Obama’s allegation is that Russia has interfered with the US process of selecting political leadership. I don’t know whether that’s true or not. But so what. How does that matter? There are plenty of examples available of America’s insinuating itself decisively into leadership issues of other countries. There’s nothing new or unique here either.
Himes’ torpedo of Obama’s case against Putin came this morning when he was interviewed on MSNBC about the Russian hacking. Himes clearly asserted, “We’re better than them in hacking into networks.” Bingo. There’s the admission. Let me repeat what he said, “We’re better than them in hacking into networks.”
Obama himself admitted at today’s press conference that “there is hacking going on every single day,” and went on to explain that the United States has offensive capabilities, not simply defensive ones.[snip]

Interesting “take” on climate change debate…

http://blog.dilbert.com/post/155121836641/the-illusion-of-knowledge

“I don’t know the underlying truth of climate science. But I do know a lot about persuasion. And I can say with complete confidence that if you are a non-scientist, and you have certainty about your opinion on climate science, you are hallucinating about the capacity of your own brain.”

Charles Brumbelow

I pretty well agree with Scott Adams on this.

And then there’s this…

100% Of US ‘Warming’ Is Due To NOAA Data Tampering.

<http://realclimatescience.com/2016/12/100-of-us-warming-is-due-to-noaa-data-tampering/>

—————————————

Roland Dobbins

Long, complex, but pretty well makes the case that we don’t really know…

Russian hacking

Dear Dr. Pournelle,

Happy New Year! I’m glad to see you and Robert have survived the 2016 celebrity massacre!

At any rate, the FBI has released this report which is being hyped by huffpo.

https://www.us-cert.gov/sites/default/files/publications/JAR_16-20296A_GRIZZLY%20STEPPE-2016-1229.pdf

I think it’s an interesting look into Russian tradecraft , but I don’t see anything obviously earthshaking about it. Russian intelligence agencies steal data, color me surprised. Still interesting from a technical perspective.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

Engineering shortage or cost?

Dr. Pournelle,
As a >50 year old, white, unemployed engineer in a country with our history of H1B hiring, I am skeptical of any claimed shortage of engineers. Subjectively, it seems to me that the real “failure” is in the HR sub-industry, in which the more experienced (and therefore more expensive) are eliminated from consideration. In my own job hunting and on those occasions that I’ve been a part of an interview team for engineering positions, I’ve observed jobs going unfilled because of corporate red tape and personnel office complications.
Just this past October, before the election, my demographic was reported to have a very high and unreported unemployment rate, mostly because many have stopped looking for work and are not counted in the official statistics. I don’t know how many of the age group are engineers.
I’ve also witnessed gross inefficiencies in engineering departments, causing me to question the real severity of the need.
All very subjective, of course.
I am very happy to read about Roberta’s continuing recovery. Happy New Year to you and yours.
-d

The half-life of an engineer used to be about seven years.  What is it now?

That is probably still correct.  I am probably not typical, but in my second career I worked as a systems and test engineer for about 13 years, then had about a 9 month return to work after 18 months off (and swearing, twice now, that I’d never go back).  So your half-life figure is pretty close.  I’ve worked with others whose engineering experience was similar.

Human resources, recruiting, and personnel departments are essential, yet if there were no open staff positions, how much HR would we really need?    Perhaps a shortage of qualified technical personnel is useful to keeping a large number of HR and recruiting personnel employed.

-d

There is no STEM Employee Shortage

There is, in general, no shortage of engineers in the US. The Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers looked into it a few years ago. http://spectrum.ieee.org/at-work/education/the-stem-crisis-is-a-myth
Two key facts from the article.
1. Each year about 277,000 STEM jobs come open. However, we graduate 252,000 with Bachelor’s degrees, 80,000 Master’s. and 20,000 PhDs, 40,000 Associates, and bring in 50,000 H1B visa holders. As a result, there are 11.4 million people with STEM degrees that work outside STEM.
2. Despite the “shortages”, compensation for engineers has lagged behind non-STEM fields. If there were shortages, wages would be growing faster than average. (Not to say there are some fields that had real shortages and growing pay – until the crash in oil prices, there was a shortage of petroleum engineers. Now they are being laid off as half the oil companies in the US are technically bankrupt.)
Combine this with the blatant age discrimination in many companies, especially IT. If you get laid off when a project ends and are over 40, it can impossible to find a job. I had friends laid off from aerospace jobs before the 2007 crash that took two to three years to find a job. Many are out of STEM.

Edmund

But the half life of an engineer is about seven years; after that half of what was taught to engineers became obsolete… and that was in good times. Of course the various “studies” courses remain unchanged.

Secularism: Everyone Wants to Get Rid of It

by Yves Mamou
December 30, 2016 at 5:30 am

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/9589/secularism-france

• Now, after more than a century of separation of powers between church and state, an intolerant and extremist Islam is disrupting the rules of the game, invading public spaces, schools, universities and companies with the veil, halal food and open violence.
• “By making the public space empty of everything that brings us together… Islamists are eager to fill it, especially in disillusioned, brainless and uprooted young heads”. — François Fillon, a former Prime Minister of France, who is running for president in the 2017 election.
• “Secularism is just becoming a religion opposed to all other religions”, said Tariq Ramadan, a prominent figure of the Muslim Brotherhood in Switzerland and France. He congratulated mayors on Christmas nativity scenes probably because he sees it as an opening for Islamic opportunities in the public sphere. “We need a Republic authorizing the visibility of diversity and not a Republic of neutrality,” he said.

Can a French municipality erect a statue of the Virgin Mary in a public park? The answer is No. France’s Administrative Court has given the mayor of Publier, in eastern France (population 6500), three months to comply with the ban on religious symbols in public spaces and to remove the statue. If the municipality fails to do so, it will be fined €100 ($105) a day. Mayor Gaston Lacroix said he will try to relocate the marble statue on private land.

France’s 1905 Law on the Separation of the Churches and the State (Article 2) states that “The Republic does not recognize, pay or subsidize any religious sect”; article 28 prohibits any religious symbol on public monuments.

The Virgin May statue in Publier, on the bottom of which is inscribed “Our Lady of Geneva Lake watch over your children”, has a long story. It was installed in the town park in August 2011, without debate. The statue was acquired with taxpayer money: €23,700 (USD $26,000). Acknowledging at the time that he had “joked a little with the 1905 law” on the separation of church and the state, the mayor had to sell the statue to a local religious association.

Now, the mayor has to remove the statue from the public park. He tried to privatize the piece of land where the statue is erected, but the land-sale project was rejected by the court.[snip]

Westinghouse Science Fair could do Em Drive if….

Westinghouse Science Fair could do Em Drive if we had Westinghouse Science Fairs like the old ones.

Clark

Good point. Alas.

Navy Accepts Delivery of ‘Not Combat Survivable’ USS Gabrielle Giffords

http://www.breitbart.com/2016-presidential-race/2016/12/29/navy-accepts-delivery-not-combat-survivable-uss-gabrielle-giffords/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social

Richard

Alas. Maybe they need some guns.

“Then I grabbed the AK… and started muzzle thumping him in the head with it”  Dr. P,

It appears that a group of U.S. soldiers on vacation in France, aided by a balding British ally, have proved that the Turkish Method still works:

Alek Skarlatos, on holiday in Europe with fellow serviceman Spencer Stone and student Anthony Sadler, said he and his companions heard a gunshot and breaking glass while on their Thalys train at around 3.45pm on Friday.

“I saw a guy entering the carriage with an AK and a handgun, at that point I ducked down and my friend Spencer, next to me, ducked down and I just looked over at Spencer and said: ‘Let’s go’,” Mr Skalatos told Sky News from his hotel room in Arras, northern France.

The 22-year-old National Guardsman from Rosenburg, Oregan, and Mr Stone charged the unidentified 26-year-old man, believed to be of Moroccan origin, down the narrow carriage.

“Then I grabbed the AK (assault rifle), which was at his feet, and started muzzle thumping him in the head with it,” Mr Skarlatos added.

Mr Sadler, a senior at Sacramento State University, told The Associated Press of his friends’ exploits: “Spencer makes first contact, he tackles the guy, Alek wrestles the gun away from him, and the gunman pulls out a boxcutter and slices Spencer a few times.

“And the three of us beat him until he was unconscious…

Airman Mr Stone, who was injured himself in the hand during the tussle, performed first aid on the unidentified passenger.

Mr Sadler continued: “Spencer, who has some paramedics training, just clogged up his neck so he wouldn’t die. This is all in the midst of Spencer bleeding profusely himself.”

“It was just really heroic of him to do something like that.”

Mr Skarlatos added: “We just did what we had to do. You either run away or fight. We chose to fight and got lucky and didn’t die.”

<http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/france-train-shooting-us-soldiers-speak-of-the-moment-they-stopped-gunman-and-beat-him-until-he-was-unconscious-10466861.html>

Regards,

    Bill Clardy
“The faster I runs, the behinder I gets…” – Pogo

Upcoming Leap Second

at 20161231-23:59:60Z

Arriving 1 second before 20170101-00:00:00Z

It will only affect the live countdown in London…

https://www.timeanddate.com/time/leapseconds.html

and happy New Year…

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.

Thursday, December 29, 2016

If a foreign government had imposed this system of education on the United States, we would rightfully consider it an act of war.

Glenn T. Seaborg, National Commission on Education, 1983

Richard is here with our grandson, so things are thin this week.

The discussion of the EM drive is sort of over: there’s not a lot left to say, but we’ll do a kind of Postscript. A reactionless drive remains impossible under any theory at present accepted, and thus is a good example of what Descartes called an extraordinary claim when he said “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”—a phrase made popular by the late Carl Sagan. We clearly do not have extraordinary evidence, and if the Chinese do they aren’t showing it. Not being fools, it is unlikely that China would pay the expense of orbiting an EmDrive without that, yet they claim to have done so. They also claim they have positive results, although that is a bit vague.

Given the costs – low – of a ground test that should produce extraordinary evidence, it would seem very reasonable to me to pay for two or three independent experimentum cruccii at the National Laboratories. Yes, they have other important work to do (or should) but constructing an EmDrive is within the capabilities of any university physics department and some high schools, while hanging it in a swing and feeding it power is within the capabilities of nearly any competent person. Isolating it from air currents and magnetic influences is a bit harder, but needless if it doesn’t hang off vertical in the swing, and something that anyone would think worth the expense if it did hang off vertical and stay there for hours or days as long as power be supplied.

The ultimate test would be for an EmDrive to cause a satellite to change orbits without losing mass; but that would be expensive, and wouldn’t be tried until it showed thrust without mass loss in swing tests on the ground, conducted in progressively more isolation from air current, magnetic influence, and “bobbing” which can happen if you have an immovable anchor like attachment to the ground. Think about bobsleds. They do work, you know. You can bob in boats for that matter.

You can “pump” in a swing but it is fairly obvious that you are doing so. You cannot make yourself hang off vertical without visible motion.

Russia and the United States
Dear Mr. Pournelle;
You wrote “Of course we have never tried to interfere with Russian internal politics, not even when the Soviet Union governed Russia. Our Voice of America and other efforts were nothing of the sort.”
Of course we did. I approved then. I would approve now. If my loyalties were to Russia, I might approve Russia’s present actions. But they aren’t.
Russia and the United States are, at the least, rivals. There might have been a window of time after the fall of the Soviet Union when that could have changed. But it wasn’t, and here we are.
They are in addition rivals caught in an oligarchic and kleptocratic system which I find appalling. So: do I want them to win? Do I want them, even, to gain influence?
Of course I don’t. And I certainly have no reason to believe that Putin’s Russia will behave like parfait gentle knights. If they were NOT engaged in actions to our detriment, I would be surprised.
Is Russia, or is it not, trying to do us an injury? Seeing this through an American politically partisan lens would be truly imprudent. I do not CARE whether looking at Russian hacking gives comfort to the Clinton campaign. That battle’s done, and my side lost. What I care about, is the future of the United States.
Yours,
Allan E. Johnson

When the Soviet Union fell, we might have made it clear what our roles  — the US and Russia – might be. One obvious fact is that we had common interests in curbing certain Chinese interests. Another is that the US had no interest in most of the Turkestans, nor did Russia.

Came the Balkan crisis, the United States had no real interests at stake, but we chose the anti-Slav side. History is not a long suit with most of the cookie pushers, but someone at State might have realized that the Russians have always been pro-Slav, but apparently that lesson never got to the top, and probably isn’t taught in Arkansas schools. Kosovo at the end of WWI was mostly Slav – Serb – and there has never been a single legal immigrant from “Muslim” Albania into Kosovo. The US pressured the Serbs into giving Kosovo to the “Albanian majority.” None of this escaped an obscure KGB Lt. Col. who was then working his way up in the Russian White Palace to become Boris Yeltsin’s heir and successor.

While we were at it, we bombed the Chinese offices in Belgrade, and dropped the bridges on the Lower Danube, thus bankrupting most of the lower Danube newly free nations.  We proclaimed ourselves the champions of democracy, but we used bombs to ruin the economies of nations emerging from the WTO and the rule of the nomenklatura. I’m sure they learned their lessons from this.

Realizing that the Russians were no longer seeking our friendship, we began to ring them with NATO allies, including Estonia, much of which is suburbs to St. Petersburg.  This was not unobserved in Moscow.

That is where US Russian relationships start, and Obama-Hillary Clinton have done little to improve those relations.   Were you the new Tsar, what would your reaction be?  We say we have no ambitions against Russia; would you believe that?

The defense of Estonia rests on “massive retaliation at a time and place of our choosing” in case of Russian invasion of the Baltics. So long as SAC existed, that was a frightening but believable threat.  Now? What are our capabilities?

What does Russia have that we want? Why, then, do we ring them with bases, and threaten nuclear war over the Baltics? Are we reliable?  Is our word good?  But then we abstain from a UN resolution condemning one of our long term allies. Just what is our policy, and were you the Russian Tsar what would you believe Russia’s best course might be?

We chose the Moslems in the Balkans.  The Russians have not forgotten that.

“There might have been a window of time after the fall of the Soviet Union when that could have changed. But it wasn’t, and here we are.”

Might I suggest that it is very much in our interest to change that situation; but to do so without looking like a paper tiger? Not an easy thing to do…

Russia and the United States

You’ve given me insight into the events surrounding the fall of the Soviet Union that I did not have at the time.  Thank you.

Considering this:  yes, it would certainly be reasonable for the new Tsar to distrust the United States and distrust our intentions.  And I agree:  changing this would be very much in our interest.

But I don’t see any realistic way for this to happen.  (In a similar vein, I’d much rather we were allied with Iran, which at least has a civilization, rather than Saudi Arabia, which has oil and Wahabists.  But I don’t see that happening in the next few decades either.)

President-Elect Trump has expressed a desire for a new strategy regarding Russia; which has some appeal.  But I am inclined to think that new strategy will turn out to be “Let the Wookie win.”  It seems to me that Vladimir Putin is more strong-willed and more ruthless than Donald Trump, and will demand cash on the barrelhead while paying in nice letters.  Why should he not?  Again, it is reasonable for the Tsar to distrust the United States, and I don’t see how the election of Donald Trump changes that.

On the contrary:  from what I know of Mr. Trump’s business career, he has scooped up rather a lot of money by, shall we say, renegotiation.  (The less flattering term is flim-flam.)  Business bankruptcies, each of them paid for by people who worked for or trusted him; promises to regulators which were immediately abandoned once he had his casino permit; huge proposals for a golf course in Scotland which he now wants to renegotiate into a subdivision.  While flim-flam can be quite successful, the problem is that it stops working once people notice.  And I rather think Putin will have noticed.

Again:  I can’t fault the Tsar for distrusting the United States.  My concerns regarding present Russia are on a different basis.  But neither do I expect the Tsar to place American interests ahead of his own.  And I think he’s rather good at pursuing his interests.

Yours,

Allan E. Johnson

.

I do expect the Tsar to be alert to his own interests, and the Trump team to be expert at reminding him of them. We do have common interests with the Russians, and in fact very few real conflicts. It is in the Russian interest to keep Iran from upsetting the world; to bring about some kind of peace and stability in Syria; to establish warm water ports in the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf; and to challenge China over hegemony over Russian and Chinese Turkestan. China’s goal may be to gain more than a sphere of influence over the Turkestan republics; Russia does not want that.

And Russia could use a mutually lucrative partnership in developing her Far Eastern holdings.

You do not like Mr. Trump. I was not fond of either Mr. Obama or Mrs. Clinton. Or for that matter Mr. Kerry. I see no point in continuing the discussion or the merits of Mr. Obama’s successor other than to say I much prefer him either Mr. Obama or Mrs. Clinton.

The Wall Street Journal has “improved” their on line edition, so I cannot find the piece in today’s Business and Finance section that I see in the printed edition. It’s at the end of the Business section “3-D Printing Fuels Demand for Powdered Metals”, and it’s not really worth reading since the title says all they seem to know: we can make large objects by printing them with powdered metals, and we’re beginning to print a lot of other metallic stuff from cobalt, aluminum, nickel, etc. Demand for these continues to grow, and has outstripped supply.

Richard pointed this out to me this morning, remarking that it seems to make free trade all the more necessary.

Perhaps. It’s also a new job source. The problem is that it’s not a source of jobs for the average high school graduate except perhaps in mining, and probably not even there, because our education is so dismal. We need engineers.

Employers Facing Engineering Talent Shortage

https://www.goodcall.com/news/employers-facing-engineering-talent-shortage-05961

For the eighth consecutive year, engineers are included on the annual list of the U.S. Top 10 Hardest Jobs to Fill, according to ManpowerGroup. As a result, Experis Engineering (a division of Manpower Group) released an extensive report that provides more information about the demand and supply relationship in this industry.  Some of the most interesting tidbits are listed below:

Across all industries, roughly 32% of U.S. employers say they struggle to fill positions. However:

• 82% of employers who hire engineers struggle to fill open positions

• 95% of employers plan to hire engineers in 2016, but 20% of employers are not confident their efforts will be successful

[snip]

This is not uncontroversial; there are lots of articles about it, and not all agree that there is a shortage of trained engineers, and certainly the schools will not agree that it’s their fault.

When I first came to Boeing in the 1950’s, something like half the engineers at Boeing did not have engineering degrees, and a smaller but reasonably large percentage had never been to a college or university: they had come to work as draftsmen and learned engineering on the job, eventually becoming certified. Boeing gave money to the University of Washington, and increasing numbers of engineers came out of engineering school; it was clear that the then-current generation of non-degree engineers would likely be the last; but that was the engineering establishment that built the Flying Fortress and then the SuperFortress, the Strato-Fortress (better known as the BUFF or B-52), and Boeing’s civilian aircraft including the 707, the first commercial jet. By then most engineering candidates took some math from the local community colleges, but there were still non-degree engineers, some high schools still being able to teach sufficient math through calculus.

I doubt there are any engineers under 50 who don’t have a degree now. And there is a growing demand for special visas to import engineers from Europe and Asia.

Richard also pointed out that in addition to the workers, big manufacturing jobs require a supply of parts and subassemblies; do we have the people to do those jobs?

I’ll say this: we could. The US has not suddenly had an epidemic of poor protoplasm. As late as World War II, the Army found that the vast number of illiterates enlisting had never been beyond fourth grade, and some had never been to school at all. Now there are illiterates who have graduated from high school, and the literacy rate overall is down quite a way from what it was in the 1940’s when nearly everyone left school able to read; even the village dullard, a 15 year old girl still in my fifth grade class, could read; she didn’t understand much of what she read, but she could read. (Later she married an Italian POW assigned to work on her parents’ truck garden, so the story ends better than you might expect; she, her parents, and the young man who wasn’t sent back to Italy at the end of the war were all happy with the result.)

It is unlikely we can reform all the local schools, many of which exist to allow people to pay their union dues, but returning control of the schools to local districts and removing the iron lock on credentials held by the obviously incompetent departments of Education might help. Indeed, allowing companies like Boeing to have decent apprenticeships and on-the-job learning would be better than what we have.

Space Exploration

Sir:
I think I understand and can even agree with the reasons Mr. Bouldin is so ‘down’ on your reporting on EM drive experimentation, but at the same time the little I understand about physics, and the published reports of the hazards to the human body on extended space ‘voyages’, simply enforces my belief that, absent any Dilithium crystals, some ‘new’ propulsion method is going to be required before any vision of manned venturing beyond low Earth orbit is practicable. In particular, while many concepts such as solar sails, etc., stress long-term acceleration, I see very little on how to decelerate a given vehicle so that productive work can be accomplished.
One of the lessons I took to heart in a prior life was management by objective (observing, of course, prescribed limitations). It strikes me that there is too little discussion of just what the objective in this case is. There is a time when the powers that be have to recognize that the ultimate objective, however defined, is governmentally unmanageable and, all else being equal, it is better to back off and let the dreamers and entrepreneurs have free rein. This is essentially what England and the Royal Society did to encourage the development of a chronometer accurate enough to enable the mariners to determine their longitude, obsoleting the then usual practice of latitude sailing. See http://www.waterencyclopedia.com/Mi-Oc/Navigation-at-Sea-History-of.html.
At our present stage of technical knowledge, the millions and billions of years involved in any extra-solar-system exploration (or colonization?), given the current state of propulsion technology, would almost certainly seem to legislate fatally in any such government effort. And to what end? I remain skeptical about ‘asteroid mining’, and have a most difficult time envisioning any economic demand that is currently unmet. The ‘visionaries’ such as Elon Musk are amusing, but little more. To me, the question is how much money is the government willing to spend to expand the knowledge of the educational and scientific community? Is there a reasonable expectation of ‘payback’, either governmental or private?
According to the media, NASA is trending towards robotic exploration, to the exclusion of manned missions. Is this a clue?
Darryl Hannon

We have no present strategy of technology. We need one. Technology (as opposed to new scientific principles) can be created on demand; we’ve done it. (X programs help.)

Until we develop something that cuts down interplanetary travel times we’re not going to have much manned exploration and development in cis-lunar space. Fortunately we don’t need new scientific principles to cut those times. NERVA would do it if we don’t have something better. As to demands not met, we in the West may not have any, but there are a lot of others who consider our poverty wealth beyond dreams; and it remains true that 90% of the resources available to mankind are not on this Earth… (See “Survival with Style” in A Step Farther Out).

Dear Dr. Pournelle:
I’m with Chuck Bouldin’s skepticism about the EM Drive. Reactionless? I don’t buy it; basic physics are involved. Reacting against Unruh radiation? Well… maybe. My favorite theory is that it’s an axion thruster. But of course this is all speculation.
Raise a satellite’s orbit with it or it’s polywater.
– paradoctor

There are far less expensive ways to prove or disprove the EmDrive principle.

“Like the recent buzz over faster than light neutrinos, this will almost certainly (and in my mind, at least, that means something like 6 9’s likelihood) turn out to be either fraud or experimental error.”

I find it annoying that intelligent people think they know things to 6 9s likelihood. We just don’t give enough room for the possibility that we’re missing things (Black Swans). We’re not _usually_ missing things if we’re expert, but we sure miss them more than one time in a million. A whole lot more.

mkr

EM Drive proof

Dear Dr. Pournelle,
Would not NORAD’s satellite tracking data quickly show any objects in NEO that are under acceleration, violating the Law of Gravity?
Surely you and yours could quickly find out if the drive’s output isn”t detectable by current USAF sensors.
If the USAF can’t, couldn’t amateur observers create a wiki to credit or discredit the satellites being under power with a few weeks observation of its orbit?
best of wishes for your wife,
Happy New,
Peter F.Foley

Not if the Chinese didn’t want us to notice it. Fortunately we needn’t orbit an EmDrive for a crucial test.

Reiteraitng on the EM drive 

Jerry,

A few points on the EM drive:

(1) Having looked at a couple of the papers, the inventor’s proposed mechanism is nonsense at best, and does seem to incorporate perpetual motion (in that the claimed induced velocity is added to the velocity of photons inside the tube, ignoring the speed of light limits among other irregularities).

(2) The claimed thrust is orders of magnitude greater than one would expect from a photon thruster (through escaping RF emissions or thermal emissions from heating of the surface), even more so because that calculation was based on directing the total input power into the emissions, ignoring the fact that the device should be radiating into 4pi steradians (or at least have both forward and backward emissions along the long axis of the tube).

(3) I’m not prepared to dismiss “reactionless” drives in the sense that such a drive is providing thrust not by expelling mass but by creating energy fields which react with the external environment; but there is nothing about the device that suggests that this is plausible other than by coupling of residual electromagnetic forces (or by somehow ionizing and manipulating air, which of course would yield zero detectable flux in a vacuum), and any other such mechanism would have long since been detected through it’s perturbations of other electromagnetic technologies. (e.g., if it’s somehow reacting with the “quantum vacuum,” why doesn’t every BNC cable at a turn or crimp generate such forces?)  This means that if the thrust is real and due to escaping energy, the energy must be coupling with relatively high momentum and low kinetic energy – e.g. low velocity ion flow away from the surface.

(4) Unless the inventor is keeping some trade secrets, the proposed technology could be reproduced in most college, and some high school, electronics or physics labs and shops, for a few hundred dollars and equipment and overhead in hand. Arguably nobody feels it’s worth wasting their time because they believe the points above invalidate the technology. (I haven’t tried or suggested it because I don’t have equipment in hand.) The same is true of the big five aerospace companies in the US and many smaller companies; either nobody has stepped up, or they tried it and failed and kept quiet…

For what it’s worth….

Jim Woosley

The only thing I have to add is to remind us all that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and we cannot fund tests of every extraordinary claim; but in my judgment the costs of testing this claim are low, and there’s enough evidence that something funny is going on to warrant an experimentum crucis. Otherwise I haven’t any disagreement with Dr. Woosley.

Em-Drive Redux

Dear Doctor Pournelle,

I liked some of what Chuck Bouldin wrote re: Em-Drive. I went a bit “Tom Swift” in my own post on the matter, and of course The Daily Mail source for some/much of this information on Em-Drive raised red flags for me, but over all I am still modestly hoping there is something to it all.

My enthusiasm for the matter is based not on a love of nontraditional methodology or a dislike of “Settled Science, but rather on a desire to get the Human Race out there. Solar sails, MHD drive, Ion Drive, Nerva, ORION Bang Bang”, throwing rocks from a catapult (don’t laugh, it would work, you just need a really large asteroid to start with, and wind up with a really small one when you arrive at your destination) does not matter, if it GETS US OUT THERE!

Conquering the galaxy is not an irrational goal, and any possible method of facilitating that is worth investigating. If it gets humanity of its’ collective ass from Low Earth Orbit, and motivates people, excites people, works up the urge to Go Out There And Get Moving, then it is a Good Thing.

I noted Gravity Waves as one of the “whacked out ideas” that Bouldin admitted actually proved to be true. Well, in 1979 I took a class in Cosmology at the University of California, Irvine. The teacher was Doctor Valerie Trimble. One of the assignments was to write a paper on alternate explanations for observations of the universe, such as the three degree Microwave Background radiation. As part of such a paper, I referred to the at that time unreplicated results Doctor Joseph Weber got in his original gravity wave experiments done at the University of Maryland in the mid-60s. Most of his peers had come to the conclusion that is low-signal to high-noise ratio had led him down a false path.

What I did not know was that at that exact time, Weber was a visiting professor at Irvine and that his presence had caused a minor stir among some of the more Establishment members of the Physics department.

Doctor Trimble pointed out that the matter of Gravity Waves was still under consideration, an open question,, though of course controversial.

She was generous, though I had been mildly critical of Weber’s work, and gave me an “A”. In closing, she mentioned that Weber was the husband of one Valerie Trimble, Ph. D.

So perhaps weber did not detect Gravity Waves in the sixties, or maybe he did. But we now know they do exist, and can be detected, even measured.

I hope for something similar with Em-Drive. But even if its all moonshine, I want humanity to get out there.

In a universe of random chunks of rock that can kill a planet deader than dead, with gamma ray bursters that can strip an earth-like planet to bare rock in a day, stars that can collapse a couple of centimeters and send out a burst of EMR that will do the same, and throw in an occasional Type 1a supernova that will fry 90% plus of all life on a any earth-type planet within a hundred light years, what is it that is so hard to understand about the need for any technological race with aspirations to more than transitory status as such to get onto as many planets around as many stars as possible as soon as possible?

So yeah, the thought of something maybe making that a bit easier got me excited. Dang me and hang me, but I won’t apologize for that.

Petronius

Well said.

Hi, Jerry –

More news on the EmDrive reactionless drive.  The International Business Times is reporting that the Chinese government has been funding research into the EmDrive since 2010, and that it is currently conducting tests in space to validate its usefulness in the environment.
“Chen confirmed that Cast has developed a test device of the EmDrive and that tests to verify that the device can actually fly are already being carried out in low-Earth orbit. This ties in with information sources in the international space industry gave IBTimes UK under condition of anonymity that China already has an EmDrive on its orbital space laboratory Tiangong-2.”

Read more on the story here:
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/emdrive-chinese-space-agency-put-controversial-tech-onto-satellites-soon-possible-1596328

It’s also reported – but not in this story – that Shawyer is working on a supercooled version of the EmDrive which will increase the thrust by several orders of magnitude.  I find this intriguing, in that interstellar space hovers around 2 degrees absolute.  Despite the insulating qualities of total vacuum, it may be that a supercooled version of the EmDrive might prove relatively easy to achieve for probes headed for distant stars.

And NextBigFuture has a very in depth article regarding the Cannae drive, another reactionless drive being developed by its inventor, Guido Fetta.  Theseus Space will be launching a demonstration cubesat in 2017 intended to demonstrate the technology.  You can read this very extensive piece at
http://www.nextbigfuture.com/2016/12/chinas-emdrive-research-lead-confident.html

I wish that we had investigated these concepts 15 years ago, instead of mocking them for 15 years.  This is not a mistake that the Chinese Government made.  And we haven’t really started earnest development, even yet.

But, just maybe, we’ve started to start.  I guess that’s something.

Regards, Charlie

Peer review or it didn’t happen.

absolutely backwards
Engineering and technology were around long before peer reviewed academic papers.
A successful orbital test trumps any academic papers.
How many academic papers were there that rockets could not work in space in the 1920s and ’30s?
It would be very reasonable for China to consider the successful engineering of such a drive to be something that would be a dramatic benefit for them, and not want to give away all the details of how to make it work.

David Lang

Syria: Iran And Russia Count Their Winnings,

Jerry

This is a current summary of events in Syria:

https://www.strategypage.com/qnd/syria/articles/20161226.aspx

What I find interesting is that Turkey has built a 900km concrete wall. Can’t be done?

Ed

Aw come on, you know nobody can build that big a wall in under a decade. After all, we couldn’t…

Syria (MUST READ)

detailed review of the situation
Ron M

https://medium.com/deepconnections/prevailing-gray-swans-6-august-12-2016-329f8118a4b6#.p3k4d7bj8

Politicians and business leaders must make full economic calculations of the impact of the new Little Ice Age on everything — industry, agriculture, living conditions, development.”

<http://www.financialpost.com/m/wp/fp-comment/blog.html?b=business.financialpost.com/fp-comment/lawrence-solomon-proof-that-a-new-ice-age-has-already-started-is-stronger-than-ever-and-we-couldnt-be-less-prepared>

—————————————

Roland Dobbins

But there’s this consensus that we don’t need to worry about that…

Obama speeds up influx of ‘refugees’ before Trump

http://www.gopusa.com/?p=18609?omhide=true

 

 

President Barack Obama is speeding up the “refugee” resettlement process before he turns over the White House keys to his successor, President-elect Donald Trump – in an effort to boost the numbers so high that it is now projected that they will exceed his target of 110,000 for this fiscal year by nearly 600.

According to the Refugee Processing Center, the Obama administration has already welcomed 23,248 individuals to the United States as “refugees” through the first 11 weeks of the 2017 fiscal year – almost doubling the 13,786 who were accepted for the same period in 2016.[snip]

Japan to smack space junk with 2.3K-foot whip

http://www.foxnews.com/science/2016/12/12/japan-to-smack-space-junk-with-23k-foot-whip.html?intcmp=ob_article_footer_text&intcmp=obnetwork

Tracy Walters

That was the week that was

Dear Doctor Pournelle,

In catching up with Chaos Manor after a short vacation, I offer my observations on a few matters discussed this past week:

Russians are not westerners. They have a different culture. That anyone thinks they are “just like us”is evidence of either a lack of education or of a morbid surplus of Milk Of Human Kindness and resultant Mental Diabetes. You can file such people in the same folder as those who believe in unicorns and fairies under toadstools, or that All People Want The Same Things (and Of Course those are Good Things That Will Make The World A Better Place For All!)

Countries have interests, not friends. Donald Trump knows this. Vladimir Putin knows this. Some Republicans know this. Look for Democrats that know this in the same place you will find those unicorns and dancing fairy folk.

I suspect Donald J. Trump has played a bit of high stakes poker. He knows a lot about bluffing, and/or spoofing the other players into believing you are bluffing when you actually are holding what players call “The Nuts”. By the way, some of the best poker players I have gone up against were Russian. Hmmm.

I would trust anything Julian Assange says about as much as I would Putin. He’s not in this game to make the United States a better place.

At this point he is deeply compromised, probably being blackmailed by at least three different Intel.agencies.

Watch closely who the Norwegian Parliament decides to give the “Peace”

prize too. I suspect it will be a not very subtle |Flip of the Finger”

to the incoming president. Expect some fireworks around this one.

In closing, perhaps some of the Democratic hysteria was catching, as I note all of the extended hand wringing over the now settled Electoral College vote. Time and past time for all to take a deep breath, and return to reality now that The Donald is safely elected? If someone begins to write about a possible dispute when the House verifies the vote, I think I may just collapse from nervous exhaustion.

Just kidding.

Merry Christmas, and may you and yours fare well in the New Year!

Petronius

Zumwalt-class DD

Dear Dr. Pournelle,

I’m sorry to hear about your hearing loss. While that gets fixed, you can read this article on the catastrophic failure of the Zumwalt-class project.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/443165/zumwalt-class-navy-stealth-destroyer-program-failure

The programs has dropped from 32 planned ships to 3, at a cost of $7 billion each. For comparison, a NIMITZ-class, a generation ago, cost

$6.2 billion.

The major difficulties appear to be that both stealth and a minimum crew complement added greatly to the cost while simultaneously taking away from more normal mission capabilities.

Between this and the F-35, I think we’re going to have to re-evaluate how we do procurement. The stuff we’re building is quite simply too expensive to be produced in quantity, which we will need if things ever get serious again.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.

Monday, December 26, 2016

John Glenn must surely have wondered, as all the astronauts weathered into geezers, how a great nation grew so impoverished in spirit.

Our heroes are old and stooped and wizened, but they are the only giants we have. Today, when we talk about Americans boldly going where no man has gone before, we mean the ladies’ bathroom. Progress.

Mark Steyn

Liberalism is a philosophy of consolation for the West as it commits suicide.

James Burnham

If a foreign government had imposed this system of education on the United States, we would rightfully consider it an act of war.

Glenn T. Seaborg, National Commission on Education, 1983

My youngest son, Richard, is visiting with our grandson, and tomorrow I have an appointment at COSTCO to get my broken right ear hearing aid back; at the moment I’m using the left ear electronics with suitable modifications in the right (and much better) ear, thus confusing my pocket hearing aid remote control. I don’t hear much with my left ear even with the aid, but I miss it, and it looks strange to see that the control shows nothing in my right ear ad and the control in the left. Anyway Mr. Galloway will be here in the morning and we’ll put as much time into that as it takes.

With Richard here we naturally turned to discussions of space. Richard told me of a meeting with an old friend and I think one-time colleague (they were both Congressional staff members). His friend now works for Trump and is to be posted to an Assistant Secretary position where among other things he’ll write speeches for his Secretary. Richard joked about doing outrageous Twitter posts. His friend turned mildly serious. “Oh, no. I’m in Trumpland. In Trumpland only the boss is allowed to say outrageous things.” I thought about that. I’m still thinking about it.

I do not recall any senior member of Trump’s team saying anything outrageous, or even silly, either formally or off the cuff, while working for Trump. There must have been instances, but I don’t recall them. Trump’s people maintain Dignitas; that seems obvious now that I think of it; maybe it’s one of Trump’s less well known abilities.

As most of you know, Richard is a Vice President of Nanoracks, which has put up a majority of the commercial space satellites, and if you want your own satellite he’s the one to talk to. He had some thoughts on the Chinese and EmDrive, and we’ll get to that later.

A dialogue on EmDrive.

EM Drive almost certainly not true

Jerry,

I have to admit that I’m finding the posts on your site a bit, uh, let’s call it “optimistic”. The “EM Drive” or whatever it’s called this week is NOT “confirmed”. All that’s happened is that (my god, of all sources) The Daily Mail has made an unsubstantiated claim that has then been echoed by other equally dubious 3rd (or worse) hand sources.

What do we actually KNOW at this point? Not much.

1. Unconfirmed, sometimes anonymous sources.

2. The notions that “NASA” has tested this device and found something is also dubious and overblown. It’s really two guys in a small group at NASA, and of those two, I believe only one actually works for NASA. So trying to establish credibility by invoking “NASA” is not only a logical error, it’s also not even true.

3. The borderline hysteria that the Chinese are now about to stage a Sputnik event on us is really silly. We have no idea if that is even true. The confirmations are 3rd hand, anonymous or dubiously sourced. Note how different this is from the real Sputnik(!) which could be heard transmitting by ham radio operators as it passed overhead! (I know someone who did this!)

4. The NASA paper that was “peer reviewed” has NOT been duplicated. There is a huge difference between peer review, which amounts to reviewers saying “This is a very, very odd result, but I don’t see anything obviously wrong with this”, and independent duplication of results. I have to remark that I find it odd that you, and so many on your site who are extremely dubious of thousands of peer reviewed articles about climate change are so credulous about this reactionless drive, which has one peer reviewed paper.

5. This is the big one. This device would violate conservation of linear momentum. This is not just a principle in classical physics, but also quantum mechanics. It’s very, very, very hard to believe these low signal/noise ratio experiments. Like the recent buzz over faster than light neutrinos, this will almost certainly (and in my mind, at least, that means something like 6 9’s likelihood) turn out to be either fraud or experimental error.

6. But, we want to keep open minds. Well, cold fusion has always failed the “power my house” test, so the EM Drive can pass/fail a similar test. Put one in a satellite and see if the thing can change course.

In conclusion, while I’d love to be wrong about this, I think this thing is utter nonsense. The quest for reactionless drives has a long history, going back at least to the Dean Drive (and I know you know this), and it has been debunked every single time.

So, while this would be wonderful, there’s very little reason at this point to believe that the EM Drive really works.

Chuck Bouldin=

 

Come now. I doubt it works simply because we have too many confirmations of Newton’s discoveries; but it is not impossible. As it is claimed to exist EM probably is not even better than NERVA. But the Chinese Academy of Science says they thought enough of it to put a test object in orbit; possibly that is propaganda, possibly not, but I don’t think there is much doubt that they said it. If it does work, our science needs some revisions.

I do not accept your accusation of borderline hysteria, and I am puzzled by that language. I was not hysteric over Sputnik, nor was von Braun; motivated he was.

I think there is enough evidence to warrant an experimentum crucis, which can’t cost as much as a lot of the bureaucratic activities that eat up most of NASA’s budget, and is all I have advocated. Of course it violates the conservation principles. So did atom smashing violate the conservation of matter and energy we lived with until the 30’s or so. Fortunately an experimentum crucis on EM drive will cost a lot less that the first atom smashers did.

I have a sneaking suspicion that the Chinese are smart enough to realize that, and while I have no confirmation that they have actually put one on their space station, I find it hard to understand why they would say they have done so, since it is unlikely the US will take one to orbit with its more limited access to orbit. To induce us to waste money because they did not do better ground trusting? For sport?

Apparently I was not clear: all I said was confirmed was the Chinese announcement. I infer from that That they did enough ground testing to justify the expense of taking one to orbit. I have not heard they claim that it worked there, and I have not said so. I am very aware that it is impossible under the conservation laws we believe to be true, and that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.. evidence. I will add that I could easily find you a great deal of government supported research, peer reviewed and published, which is probably not true and almost certainly is not significant to anyone but that published author and possibly to academic committees considering promotion of that author.

If I have misread the press coverage and nothing independent of the Daily Mail announcement is true, then apologies; I will go back and check sources.

 

 

You’ve lived through more of these than I have, but I can list:

Polywater. Sub-electrons. Lifters. Rods. The Dean Drive (and many subsequent variants under other names). Cold fusion. Faster than light neutrinos. Gravity shields. Various perpetual motion devices, one of which my friends reviewed when I worked at NIST.

In my lifetime, after 35 years as a working Physicist, big discoveries that held up: High Tc superconductors. Gravity waves (although, remember the recent bogus result with the south pole IR telescope before LIGO II made the real discovery), Bose Einstein condensation. Others, depending on how exclusive you want to make the list.

The things in the first list have certain hallmarks, which BTW, are described very well in Bob Parks book “Voodoo Science: (1) an effect which is very marginal in terms of signal/noise, (2) no experimental changes seem able to make the effect any larger relative to the noise, (3) constantly changing “explanations” for how the effect is produced (cold fusion has this in spades!), (4) the effect is often only observable to a few select experimenters, (5) when the experiment flunks a null control test, as cold fusion did very early on when non-heavy water tests gave the same “results”, the theory is changed to explain the failure. BTW, in the NASA work, the EM Drive seems to have flunked a null control test.

Consider instead the second list. All grounded in Physics. All predicted, and all well understood, except for High Tc, where a complete understanding still escapes us. All published in peer reviewed journals, all quickly and often easily replicated (a team of 4 grad. students at the UW did a “shake and bake” YBCO replication in under 2 weeks!).

Now, which list does the EM Drive belong on? Yes, it MIGHT be true. But, that isn’t really the question. The question is how likely is it to be true? Not very likely. But it makes a good Daily Mail article, I guess.

As for hysteria, when you start talking about “conquering the galaxy” I think you need a bit more to go on than what we have on the EM Drive. Maybe that’s hyperbole, not hysteria, but however you want to label it, that’s taking things far beyond any reasonable extrapolation on the basis of what we know at this point.

Also the claim (and it is nothing BUT an unsubstantiated claim) that the “Chinese are testing this in space”, followed by worries about our access to space limiting our ability to make similar tests….well, that whole line of discussion suggests that there is something to worry about, when the very, very high probability is that there is no worry, because there is no effect, and it matters not at all where the tests are conducted.

All this said: I’d love this to be true, but it almost certainly is not. And there’s clearly no reason to give this thing much credence on the basis of the reports we have.

And second, I don’t disagree with you at all about the tragic loss of US access to space. It’s appalling, it’s embarrassing, and if you count everything (Atlas, Titan II, Saturn IB, Saturn V, Shuttle), the US has built and discarded 5 operational human rated launch systems. There are many reasons to be deeply concerned about our access to space, but testing the EM Drive in a manned space station is not one of them.

Chuck

 

So you are saying give it up, forget it, it can’t work, we know enough to abandon any tests, let the Chinese make fools of themselves if they want to, we’re investing nothing in further tests?

 

My last .gov job was as a Program Officer at NSF. The soul of the job is to decide “Fund this, or that?”. So, yes, I wouldn’t put a dime into this. It’s not even high risk/high payoff. This violates such basic laws of Physics, that it is essentially in perpetual motion machine territory.

Note carefully, the funding decision is not, “Fund this or not”, it’s “Fund this, or something else?”. I’d fund other things. There are plenty of advanced propulsion ideas that WILL work, but need more money. Do a good operational test of a solar sail. The ion drive that is taking the Dawn mission around the asteroid belt is amazing! I’d put a lot more money into that.

http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/ion_prop.asp

If credible evidence appears, I might change my mind, but on the basis of what we know now, that’s what I’d do.

Chuck

BTW, when I was still in grad school (UW!) one of the Professors had funding for “spin polarized hydrogen” propulsion, ie, monoatomic hydrogen as postulated by RAH in “The Rolling Stones”. The trouble is that if you produce it in any quantity it has a tendency to go kaboom even when kept very cold and in a strong magnetic field. The NASA project was to produce it “on demand” for very low thrust engines so that there was never any quantity on hand, so it was a way of coupling a power source into production of a very high specific impulse fuel. I don’t think it ever led to anything, but it still could.

Not a reactionless drive, but an advanced propulsion idea that could really work.

 

Which is probably a good ending to the discussion.

I asked Richard what his views were; he was dismissive. The Chinese would not orbit an EmDrive system unless they had done the crucial experiments I have described, and if they had done those (months to years ago since it would have had to be accomplished before planning the orbital mission) we would almost certainly know about it; it’s just too big a secret to keep, just as the news of the Salk vaccine leaked out well in advance of the formal announcement (and before Dave Garraway broke the newsban a few hours early).

Which leads one to wonder why they would make announcements about it – careful announcements, not indicating that it worked, but that they were doing serious testing including orbiting an EmDrive. And of course we can only speculate about that. Perhaps they are doing space experiments they don’t want us to be thinking about.

And leads me to this conclusion: no, I would not spend a lot of money on this; but a few hundred thousand to finish the tests? Of course I would. The result of any sign of reactionless drive, however improbable, would be of inestimable value. That was the argument I made to Boeing all those years ago regarding the Dean Drive; and management agreed, but stipulated that there must be real evidence of a positive result however small. I couldn’t get that, and I wasn’t able to purchase the Dean Drive for Boeing (nor was the 3M team able to buy it for Honeywell) but I certainly would have if I could have done the tests.

I do not see why a definitive test would be all that expensive. Hang it in a swing. Turn it on. Make sure there is no air movement. It either hangs off vertical by a measurable amount no matter how small, or it doesn’t. If it does, leave it on for weeks. If there any measurable reaction mass you should know simply by weighing the device. After a few weeks if you still have millinewtons of force, rejoice. If not, well that’s what we expected, and you can add another confirmation of Newton’s Third Law.

Russian hacking once again

Dear Mr. Pournelle,
It is fascinating to see Republicans coming to the defense of the Kremlin; and also that Julian Assange has suddenly gone from villain to unimpeachable source of truth, and therefore all discussion should be closed.
Several points seem to be missed in some of the discussion:
1. It’s not a question of “did Russian hacking make Hillary Clinton lose?” There were plenty of other reasons for that. The question is: DOES the Russian government attempt to discredit or destabilize Western societies? To that, the answer seems increasingly to be: yes.
2. It’s not all about Clinton’s e-mails, if any. There are plenty of other points of vulnerability, such as electronic voting machines with no paper trail, and we’d better raise our game on them.
3. It’s certainly not about “is there enough evidence to convict?” The FBI is quite right that there isn’t. The CIA, however, is trying to answer a rather different question: are there enough clues for us to deduce what our rivals are trying to do? Short of a signed note from Vladimir Putin, I doubt that question will ever yield courtroom evidence.
4. It’s not all about Democrats vs. Republicans. Be aware that, worldwide, plenty of other Western governments are finding troublesome evidence that Russia is using the internet against them.
Yours,
Allan E. Johnson

Of course we have never tried to interfere with Russian internal politics, not even when the Soviet Union governed Russia. Our Voice of America and other efforts were nothing of the sort.

 

 

cool things in the depths

http://gizmodo.com/this-deep-sea-jellyfish-looks-like-it-came-from-outer-s-1773794459

http://gizmodo.com/bizarre-new-deep-sea-creatures-found-in-unexplored-hydr-1790137365?utm_medium=sharefromsite&utm_source=Gizmodo_facebook

http://io9.gizmodo.com/a-bizarre-new-species-of-fish-has-been-discovered-at-a-1673109432

http://gizmodo.com/horrifying-video-of-swarming-crabs-looks-like-an-alien-1770334840

Stephanie Osborn

“The Interstellar Woman of Mystery”
http://www.Stephanie-Osborn.com

Orwellian

Obama Quietly Signs The “Countering Disinformation And Propaganda Act” Into Law | Zero Hedge http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-12-24/obama-signs-countering-disinformation-and-propaganda-act-law

T

This technology is somewhat frightening.

http://blog.simplejustice.us/2016/12/23/seeing-believing-technology/

Let me contemplate that. And the one above.

Strain Transition

1. Your mileage may vary. This plays into the liberal fears of Trump as a belligerent warmonger, but shows that Trump will not follow the path of appeasement (at best) that has worried conservatives for the last eight years. Note, as is buried in the WSJ article, and likely is not being repeated in some of the articles about the matter, that Trump’s comments FOLLOW Putin’s about expanding Russia’s nuclear capability.

2.  The link below will probably be stopped by the WSJ firewall. You can get the article through Google, however:

https://www.google.com/#q=let%20it%20be%20an%20arms%20race%20wall%20street%20journal

and click on the first link.

3.  And as I’ve previously noted to my libertarian friends, “Draw last, shoot first” is often a workable strategy when it comes to individual self defense – if you are mentally prepared at all times to defend yourself, but opens the door to catastrophe, for yourself and for thousands or millions you’ve sworn to defend, when dealing with weapons of mass destruction.

    Subj: Strain Transition

    As all of this comes to light, perhaps people will see what a disaster BHO
     has been for this country.
   http://www.wsj.com/articles/let-it-be-an-arms-race-trump-says-1482507844
   I am convinced that most of this country’s problems could be corrected if
   we stopped attempting to educate people beyond their intelligence.

It would be useful to educate them to some level; say that of the California Sixth Grade Reader of 1915? Clearly we were once able to do that.

Politicians and business leaders must make full economic calculations of the impact of the new Little Ice Age on everything — industry, agriculture, living conditions, development.”

<http://www.financialpost.com/m/wp/fp-comment/blog.html?b=business.financialpost.com/fp-comment/lawrence-solomon-proof-that-a-new-ice-age-has-already-started-is-stronger-than-ever-and-we-couldnt-be-less-prepared>

—————————————

Roland Dobbins

Politicians generally make no such analysis, nor do journalists. There have not been contingency plans for a return of the Little Ice Age for decades.

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.

Saturday, December 24, 2016

Christmas Eve

It came upon a midnight clear,
That glorious song of old,
From angels bending near the earth
To touch their harps of gold!
“Peace on the earth, good will to men,
From heaven’s all gracious King!
The world in solemn stillness lay
To hear the angels sing.

Still through the cloven skies they come
With peaceful wings unfurled
And still their heavenly music floats
O’er all the weary world;
Above its sad and lowly plains
They bend on hovering wing.
And ever o’er its Babel sounds
The blessed angels sing.

Yet with the woes of sin and strife
The world hath suffered long;
Beneath the angel-strain have rolled
Two thousand years of wrong;
And man, at war with man, hears not
The love song which they bring:
O hush the noise, ye men of strife,
And hear the angels sing.

For lo! the days are hastening on,
By prophet bards foretold,
When, with the ever-circling years,
Shall come the Age of Gold;
When peace shall over all the earth
Its ancient splendors fling,
And all the world give back the song
Which now the angels sing.

We can hope so, anyway. God bless you all.

And a special Merry Christmas to all on deployment, and to all who sit in ready alert rooms, or deep underground in silos, or under the sea in submarines, on watch in warships or in fire stations, on patrol or watch in cities and towns and in the country.  Thanks to you the rest of us can sleep tonight. God bless you, every one.

And we can all hope and pray that mankind – English, American, Chinese or Russian – now have the evidence that there is reactionless drive.  We can conquer the Galaxy without it, but it will be quicker and easier with it.

 

Again, Merry Christmas

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.