Category Archives: View

View 686 Friday, August 05, 2011

Roberta ‘s sprained knee has recovered enough to let us take a walk around the block – two blocks, actually, since we go down past Ed Begley Jr.’s house – he drove past in his electric car, which is powered from the solar panels on his house – and although the official weather for the area is “hot as blazes” it was actually cool and pleasant in the shade, and not bad in the sun. Nice breeze. Studio City is a village, and it’s a good place to walk.

There is at least one crow fledgling in the flock of five that we saw. I keep hoping there are other flocks of crows here, but I am never sure. Last autumn there was a flock of eleven. Not now.

Studio City is a mostly single family residence area, and while there has been some expansion with large lots subdivided into two huge houses, and other single family houses like ours expanded, the area can support much larger flocks. I can remember when our part of Studio City had two flocks of about 40 crows each. Every couple of days they would gather for what I called a “cawing contest.” One flock would settle into a tree. The other would choose a tree across the street. Then, for about an hour, they would make as much racket as they could. By some complex system of rules some crows would fly from one flock to the other, and as the contest continued, eventually one flock would noticeably outnumber the other. Then the losing group would all fly over to the winning flock’s tree, and they’d all fly off together.

I never understood the rules, but the other day while hiking up the hill with Paul Schindler, former editor of BYTE online, I told him about it, and he wondered if there were any permanent transfers of members from one flock to the other, thus promoting genetic diversity. I didn’t know, and since there aren’t enough crows to have cawing contests now, I can’t watch to see if the early transfers from one flock to the other mostly involved fledglings. It’s an interesting hypothesis. Crows flock, but they basically raise their young in single families in summer. When the young begin to fly the elders conduct them around teaching them the crow business for a few days, then the kids are pretty well on their own. In the old days that meant joining a flock, and it may be that the cawing contests were meant to attract this years’ fledglings to one or the other flock.

West Nile Virus has thinned the Studio City crows from two flocks of 40 or so to perhaps 20 total (that’s a guess, and probably optimistic: I hope there are that many). There was another outbreak of this formerly unknown disease amounting to I think three cases in Los Angeles and Ventura counties. The toll on bird population was much higher. I suppose there are some people, particularly those with big trees suitable for use in a cawing contest, who found the large flocks irritating, but I miss them. I wish we could come up with some way to immunize our crows, but I don’t suppose that will happen.

On Bunny Inspectors and why I don’t implement comments:

I recently had mail from a reader who took me to task for my frequent mentions of Federal Bunny Inspectors.

For those who don’t know, these are Federal Inspectors employed by the Department of Agriculture to enforce laws requiring you to have a Federal – not local, not state, but Federal – permit to sell rabbits as pets. Actually it gets worse: they also go about investigating stage magicians including local amateur stage acts to see if there is a rabbit involved in the act. Interestingly, if you kill the rabbit in the act, or sell them for meat, or even feed them to snakes, no Federal license is required. Only if you use them in the stage act, in which case you must have a license and proper transportation equipment, and yes, highly paid Federal civil servants actually roam the land looking for magic acts that may or may not employ rabbits. And you get to pay interest on money we borrow from China to pay these civil servants including their medical care and retirement benefits.

My correspondent told me that this was a tiny amount of money. His subject was “orders of magnitude” and he in essence accused me of innumeracy. I pointed out that this was intended as symbolic of a greater problem, and his remark was

I do understand the concept of symbolism. I understand it as an inferior substitute for reasoning.

At this point I must have taken leave of my senses, because I answered that by saying that my point was that a country that can’t cut this kind of spending can’t cut anything else. And of course that got me

Not necessarily. Larger programs are more heavily defended, but also more heavily attacked.

For instance, the F-35 jet engine

Which ought to be sufficient explanation for why I don’t open this place up for general comments. I would spend my life in conversations like this, in which the object is to score points. That can be fun, but it’s not a terribly productive way to spend time, and I never seem to have enough time nowadays. It’s bad enough when I’m tempted to answer mail.

And alas, it remains true: if we can’t manage to eliminate Bunny Inspectors, we aren’t likely to eliminate programs like Head Start, which are popular and which everyone, everyone I know anyway, wishes mightily would work. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t wish Head Start would work. Indeed, if Head Start did what we all hope it would do, it would save us a lot of money. The trouble is that Head Start doesn’t work. There are literally hundreds of studies, all conducted by people who very much want Head Start to work, and none of them are able to find any objective means of demonstrating any effect of Head Start lasting more than a year or so. Ten years after Head Start its alumni have grades, dropout rates, crime rates, and anything else you would like to measure that are indistinguishable from those who did not experience Head Start. Charles Murray, who fervently wishes Head Start would work, has been in program assessment work much of his life; he’s one of those who searched avidly for any data showing success. There isn’t any.

If we can’t eliminate Bunny Inspectors we aren’t going to eliminate Head Start. If we can’t get rid of Department of Education SWAT Teams, we won’t be able to get rid of much of the imbecility of “No Child Left Behind” AKA “No Child Gets Ahead.”

John Derbyshire, a sometimes correspondent whom I admire considerably, rails that the US Education System is already working about as well as it can.

Pretty much everything any politician says about education makes me want to go up to whoever said it, grab him by the suit-jacket lapels, and shake him forcefully up and down while screaming in his face: “DON’T YOU GET IT? YOU’RE AN INTELLIGENT GUY—WHY CAN’T YOU SEE WHAT’S RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOUR NOSE?”

Case in point: Three years ago New York City hired the Rand Corporation to raise public-school students’ test scores by paying cash bonuses to teachers whose classes performed well. More than $56 million in bonuses was handed out.

Results? There weren’t any. “Researchers called the experiment a bust,” reports the New York Post. You could have knocked Mayor Michael Bloomberg down with a feather. “I would have thought it would have had a bigger effect,” he gasped. That was the point where the lapel-grab impulse seized me.

Read more: http://takimag.com/article/
what_shall_we_do_with_the_kids/
print#ixzz1UBeJpU00 

He has other instances.

And he’s both wrong and right. Given the criteria we are using for whether or not education works, he’s pretty well right, and certainly right in that throwing more money into this imbecilic system of education isn’t going to bring about noticeable improvements.

But our criteria are based on Lake Wobegon, when in reality, half our children are below average. Bill Gates may finally have figured this out: for many years he said that every American child deserved a world class university prep education in K-12. I haven’t heard him saying that recently. Perhaps he understands that condemning the below average children to a world class university prep education condemns them to years of pure hell.

But that’s another essay, and I’m running low on time.

My point is that if we can’t make obvious cuts in useless actions of government, we aren’t ready to tackle really tough problems. We have to have a mechanism for trimming out the ridiculous so that our supposedly intelligent legislators can actually look at the hideously expensive and well intentioned programs that are not working.

View 686 Thursday, August 04, 2011

· Lessons for the Mamelukes

· Those cuts in education

Lessons for the Mamelukes

It was on the network news last night and major front pages today: Hosni Mubarak, formerly Pharaoh, formerly Commander in Chief of the Egyptian Armed Forces, successor to Sadat, on a gurney in a cage, on trial for his life. His two sons shared the cage with him.

When Tunisia exploded and the Tunisian Army dithered, then chose to protect the demonstrators from the security forces, the Egyptian military, the Mamelukes who were the power behind Mubarak, saw an opportunity in the beginnings of unrest and demonstrations in Cairo.

Mubarak had hoped to maneuver his sons into leadership positions, turning his rule from despoty to dynasty. The Mamelukes didn’t want that. Mubarak’s sons reminded those who knew the history of Imperial Rome (which after all ruled Egypt for a very long time) of the sons of Septimius Severus. One of them, Caracalla, sacked Alexandria in retaliation for an insult. The Mamelukes didn’t want to relinquish command of Egypt – they still haven’t, although they are supposed to be arranging an election that will mean the end of their rule – but they did not want a Mubarak dynasty. The demonstrations looked to be a good way to end that. Mubarak would resign and go into exile. The Army would continue to rule.

Mubarak resigned but he didn’t go into exile. That turned out to be a mistake: the demonstrators demanded more, and the Cairo demonstrations went from a demand for regime change to a demand for revenge, as revolutions almost always do.

The Mamelukes had not wanted to see Mubarak’s head on a stick. He was, after all, their leader. They do not want to see that now, but they are not sure what they ought to do.

There are lessons here. One is the usual lesson the West seems determined to teach to strong men and dictators from Pinochet to Qaddafi to Bashar al-Assad: never let go. If you must go down, go down fighting, for you will not survive the transition – and after the first round of revenge will come the others, more show trials. And if you fight, as Khaddafi and Bashar are doing, you may yet win out. If you do not, you will at best spend your life in a Dutch prison. They may not poison you as the Brits are said to have poisoned Napoleon, but it will not be pleasant. Better to do as Martin Luther advised the Princes to do with the Anabaptists: burn, slay, kill.

The Mamelukes already regret their actions. What they will do now is not clear. Certainly there will be factions among the top leadership who see that they are next. And they are watching progress in Syria as Bashar Assad surrounds Hama.

But What of Justice?

Of course the question rises, should not tyrants be brought to trial? Where is justice?

There is no answer to that. England, during the Wars of the Roses, found it expedient solemnly to declare that it could never be treason to swear allegiance or pay taxes to a crowned King, no matter which color rose that King wore. Sun Tzu teaches that one ought to build golden bridges for ones enemies. The question is simple: what is the cost of justice? How many lives will be lost if the option of settling these affairs with silver bullets is irrevocably thrown out. Let Justice be done though the heavens fall is an appealing cry. I remember shouting it at an undergraduate rally myself some sixty years ago.

Meanwhile the battles in Libya continue. The artillery rolls out and people are being slaughtered like sheep in Syria. For some, the heavens are falling. Will they see justice?

Those cuts in education.

The cries are becoming shrill: the budget deal is cutting spending on education! We must do something.

Alas, the Deficit Deal cuts nothing. Even if every projected “cut” in the Deficit Deal were implemented – and in fact none will be before 2013 – the result is not a cut. It is a reduction in projected increases in spending. I hate to keep repeating that, but apparently it is difficult to understand: the “cuts” in the Deficit Deal are cuts only to projected spending. Even if implemented, there will be more spending on education in future than there was this year. There are no cuts, although the demonstrating college students are demonstrating the quality of the education they are getting, since they don’t realize this.

The downside to pumping more money into education is that when more money enters a market the prices go up. When I was a lad, state colleges were nearly free. You had to find a way to live while going to school, but tuition at state schools was never the deciding factor. Roberta worked her way through college. I had the GI Bill to help me, so for me it was mostly a matter of board jobs: work an hour at Reich’s Café in Iowa City and you got a meal off the menu. Those jobs are outlawed by the Federal government now: they don’t meet minimum wage requirements.

Since we have been pumping money into the university systems the tuition has risen accordingly. Costs of education soar. University staffs and facilities multiply and become more expensive. My suspicion is that genuine cuts in education spending would benefit the institutions as they are forced to shed non-essential expenditures. I’m prepared to present arguments for that position, but that isn’t my point here: there are no cuts in education expenditures. We’re going to spend more money on education next year than we did last year. We will spend more in 2013 than we will in 2012; just not as much more as the baseline projections forecast. And that, in the Washington Accounting, is a cut.

So the demonstrating students can go back to studying sociology or whatever is it they are slaving away at, and thus help make the US more competitive in the international intellectual market. I am sure there is a dire need for more sociology students.

And the Dow will continue to fall when the financial people realize that the Deficit is now larger than the annual GDP of the United States, and rising.

The Wall Street Journal has an editorial today on the effect of the Deficit Deal. Apparently even the WSJ did not quite understand the effects of the Deficit Deal. They are now horrified. It’s worth your attention if you want to understand why things are going to get worse. Note that the Dow is just figuring this all out.

Jihad!

Re the Republicans:

“We have negotiated with terrorists. This small group of terrorists have made it impossible to spend any more money.” Mike Doyle, Member of Congress (D, Pennsylvania)

“Tea Party Republicans have waged jihad on the American people.” Joe Nocera, columnist, New York Times

This is known as civility.

We can hope that the House will hold fast on its rejection of the card check nonsense built into the appropriation for the FAA. This isn’t about money. Well, in a sense it is: it’s about compulsory union membership and thus donations to Democrats. Presumably the Republicans in the House know enough to stand their ground. Although you never know with the Country Club. The Tea Party Republicans understand perfectly.

View 686 Wednesday, August 03, 2011

Call to Action! Well, for those who are fans of my works with Larry Niven.

NPR Top 100 SF&F

Dear Dr. Pournelle:

I did not know if you knew that you and Niven have 2 books on the NPR top 100 SF&F list and they are winnowing down to 10. Time to mobilize the fans?

The link is here: http://www.npr.org/2011/08/02/138894873/vote-for-top-100-science-fiction-fantasy-titles

Rick Cartwright

I wasn’t aware of that, but it’s certainly time to mobilize!

We went to the Hollywood Bowl last night. Concert, Rachmaninoff’s Third, by Yuja Wang. There was also Tchaikovsky’s Fifth.

I am not always in agreement with the LA Times’s Mark Swed, but I am much in synch with his review. It begins

Sporting a stylish new beard and an impressive new title as Los Angeles Philharmonic resident conductor, Lionel Bringuier conducted an unusually incandescent performance of Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony at the Hollywood Bowl Tuesday night. The orchestra played with vibrancy. Bringuier will repeat the Tchaikovsky with the Boston Symphony at Tanglewood Sunday afternoon. He’s 24. He’s clearly arrived.
But it was Yuja Wang’s orange dress for which Tuesday night is likely to remembered. The Chinese pianist, who opened the concert with Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto, is also 24 and already a star. Her most recent recital CD is called “Transformation.” On the back, she is quoted as saying that her album “reflects the endless transformations in life and music.”

The rest of the review is very much worth reading, and even if you don’t care for music reviews, the picture of Miss Wang in that orange dress is worth looking up. But do read it, even if you don’t normally care for technical reviews of classical music. I particularly liked these paragraphs:

Actually, Hollywood’s idea of Rach 3 was the film “Shine,” which presented the concerto as the mountainous challenge that drove a mentally unstable pianist over the edge. Believe that, and the only explanation for Wang is that she must be some sort of cocky classical music cyborg.

Nothing, for her, looked even vaguely difficult. She was at her best in the most punishing passages. Rhythm is one of her strong suits, so the last movement, in particular, rocked.

I have a vague memory from high school of a movie – sometime in the 1940’s, I think in color – in which there is a female concert pianist, a performance of Rachmaninoff’s Second (which was far more popular in that time than the Third), and some kind of conflict both musical and romantic between the pianist and the conductor. I suspect that this was my first introduction to Rachmaninoff (good classical recordings were much harder to come by in those days), and as I recall I was quite taken with that movie. I would guess the year was 1946. My efforts to find it through Google have failed.  If anyone recalls that picture, please send me a note. Thanks.

IMDB lists “I’ve always loved you” in 1946 that seems to match the movie you described.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0038629/

—

Bryan

“For my part, I consider that it will be found much better by all parties to leave the past to history, especially as I propose to write that history myself.”

— Sir Winston Churchill

That is certainly it. The movie greatly influenced my life, in that I think I can trace my interest in classical music to it. I was also in high school and took Miriam, who lived across the street, to see it. It may have been our first date; it was certainly one of the first. In those times it was very difficult to get recordings of classical music. I think there were only 78’s, although perhaps they had invented 33 rpm records. Hi-Fi was expensive and not very available. Concerts in Memphis were rare. WHBQ where my father was manager had a large record library but mostly of country and western. I only saw that film once but I have remembered scene from it ever since. Thanks.

I had a long standing appointment to hike with Paul Schindler, my BYTE editor in the days when BYTE transformed from a printed magazine to on-line, and today Paul and I took Sable up the hill. It’s a bit over two miles in each direction, and a 700 foot climb from Laurel Terrace to the heights above the Tree People at Mulholland and Coldwater. Not all that punishing, but for most of the month of July Roberta has been recovering from a severe sprain that keeps her from going on our morning walks, and despite Sable’s best efforts to talk me into going out daily, I haven’t been doing that much this month, mostly because it has been hot.

This hike has been scheduled for months, and Sable knows that Paul means hikes, so the weather was no excuse. It’s well over 90 out there, and there’s no water on the trail. I took a Baggie of ice cubes, and Sable got nearly all of them. A fur coat isn’t precisely the proper dress for this weather. Sable was fine, though. She loves that trail: there are fresh gopher holes ever few feet, and she keeps hoping to find a really stupid gopher. As long as she’s hunting I don’t worry about her reactions to the heat, and she left a trail of terrified gophers from bottom to top to back down again. She came home and curled up for a nap.

She’s still flat, and will be for the rest of the day. The crutch in the background is Roberta’s.

Paul reminds me that I don’t very often solicit subscriptions. I expect he’s right. If you haven’t subscribed, this would be a great time to do it. If you do subscribe, have you renewed recently? This would be a good time to do that… Of course I’m a bit behind on recording subscriptions, but don’t let that stop you. Subscribe or renew now!

Details

Rod Montgomery points out that my proposal to raise the eligibility age for Social Security by “one month per month” is indistinguishable from raising it to 68 in one fell swoop. Also, there is already a provision to raise eligibility to age 67 at two months per year. Which proves conclusively that one ought not pontificate over details without more work, and getting overly detailed in a discussion of generalities is never a good idea. Apologies.

My point was that Social Security does need reforms, and the easiest reform is to slowly raise the eligibility for primary Social Security (Old Age Insurance). There is also a definite need for reform on entitlement to Social Security for those who never paid into it in the first place. This has never been properly debated. Temporary payments to widows and orphans, for instance, is quite different from payments for disabilities, particularly work-related disabilities for those actively part of and paying into Social Security, which is itself different from disability payments to those who don’t meet those qualifications. This gets technical, and the law is quite complex, as you can find out here.

Of course one reason we’re in so much trouble is that there isn’t enough attention paid to details. The general notion of the Americans with Disabilities Act may have been a great idea, but the details mandate some really puzzling activities, such as fining companies for firing people who are drunk on the job, and requiring companies to hire a sign language interpreter to sit in meetings to allow a stone deaf programmer to participate. I dare say neither of those cases was intended in the original act. More: as Larry Niven observes, only wealthy societies can afford to do things like bash down the curbs to make wheelchair ramps, most of which may never be used by any disabled person, but are convenient for nannies pushing strollers. It may be a great idea, but you need to be rich before you think of spending that kind of money.

When economic times get tight, there ought to be ways to suspend laws that mandate heavy burdens on the economy. We don’t need to be borrowing money in order to protect the jobs of common drunks who happen to be alcoholics, and whose companies protect themselves by transferring the work to India where drunks can be fired instantantly.

We can all come up with examples.

The problem is that legislators deal with general principles: they are then implemented by people who often pay less attention to details than I did in my offhand statement about one month per month – the different being that my slip of the brain doesn’t result in millions to billions of dollars spent. I can hope that some of my proposals will be adopted, but I certainly wouldn’t ask for mindless adherence to offhand ramblings. Alas, our legislative process sometimes results in precisely that.

View 686 Tuesday, August 02, 2011

· Spend and Tax

· Defending the Deal

· Realities

Note that there is a new tab, THE WEEK. This combines the weekly view and the weekly mail in another view that many find a preferred way to look at this site. Most of the comments we have had on the new WordPress based site has been favorable.

Spend and Tax

The debt limit debate has ended with the adoption of the deal. That particular Kabuki dance is ended, and the President has made his victory speech.

President Obama marked the end of the "long and contentious" debt-limit debate Tuesday afternoon, lamenting that the "manufactured crisis" has stunted the economic recovery and promising a return to a jobs-focused agenda.

The president called the deficit-reduction measures paired with the debt-limit increase an "important first step to ensuring that as a nation we continue living within our means." But he also said he would continue to fight for a "balanced" approach when Congress continues the debate this fall.
"I’ve said it before, I will say it again: We can’t balance the budget on the backs of the very people who have born the biggest brunt of this recession," he said.

That is a call for new taxes. Of course new taxes are built into Obamacare which can now be funded with borrowed money, but this is a call for more money to be spent on jobs and education, under the assumption that we aren’t spending enough on those, and investing more money in job creation and education will get the economy going again. That premise is not up for debate: liberals believe it, conservatives do not. Either throwing more money at the problems will solve them or it will not. Until the debt limit was raised it was simply not possible to throw more money into TARP and Stimulus and the Department of Education, and the other federal programs to increase jobs and make education better. Now it is possible to borrow that money and spend it. The President says that won’t be enough: we will have to have a “balanced” approach, which means spend more, borrow more, and tax more.

The Deficit Dance ends with no end to the exponential growth of government. The government will double in size in 11 to 13 years. The National Debt will double in 11 to 13 years. And the beat goes on.

In Defense of the Deal

The President had threatened Chaos and Old Night: no more veteran benefits, no Social Security checks, nothing in the Food Stamp debit accounts, no salaries for Bunny Inspectors. This was a very dangerous thing to do, and playing chicken with the President was simply irresponsible. Someone had to be reasonable, and the Democrats were not going to be reasonable. The President continued to threaten Social Security. It was just too big a chance to take. Kick this can down the road and we will try to fix it after the next election when, with hope, Republicans will control both Houses of Congress and the White House and we can do some real restructuring, welfare reform, zero based budgeting, and all the rest. Hang on for a while.

The Vice President was calling us terrorists, and accused us of holding the nation hostage. This was too much to bear. Someone had to be reasonable and it was clear that the President wouldn’t budge. We had to do it.

That, at least, is the best I can come up with.

We do have the statement by Paul Ryan that we got 2/3 of what we wanted, so this is a partial victory. I don’t think we got 2/3 of anything: the Deficits continue to rise, the Debt continues to rise, the size of government continues to rise; ObamaCare comes in on schedule; and the only “cuts” – i.e. reductions in the rate of increased spending – don’t happen until 2013. New borrowing starts now. The Debt rises now. We’ll lower the raises in spending later. Maybe.

But it’s done. The Deficit will grow. Government will grow. But I have heard suggestions that now with the Deficit Dance out of the way we can reduce regulations to grow the economy. I would have thought that trimming expensive regulations would have been a nearly perfect thing to include in demands for a Deficit Deal but no one seems to have tried that. I did make the suggestion.

The best course for those who agreed to the Deficit Deal would be to show what it is they want to accomplish now that the Dance has ended with growing governments and no mandatory limits to regulation – and Obama announcing 50 mpg cars, more green jobs, more windmills, no new oil wells, more limits to growth, and a need for a “balanced” approach to deficit reduction.

Realities

As the cost of education rises inexorably; as the size of government goes up inevitably; as the Deficit goes up and up; as the cost of government soars; as the price of gold rises; there are some things to remember.

The most important is that No Congress can bind a future Congress.

At any time the Congress could halt the inevitable growth of government by refusing to appropriate the money. No funds can be drawn from the Treasury except according to law.

No taxes or revenues can be raised except by a law that originates in the House of Representatives.

This is worth repeating: they can’t spend money that is not appropriated.

The House could simply refuse to increase spending: send in continuation bills, allowing spending at current levels but no higher, and continue that until the November 2012 election gives a national referendum on the simple question: do you want government to get larger or smaller? Larger is built in to the current system, and it can’t be sustained without massive tax increases. Smaller requires a real change. The possibility is there. Smaller government, less regulation, more freedom, less government. It’s always possible. Is this what is meant by Hope and Change?

I have to say I am weary of the Deficit Dance, and I should be glad it is over: but it did have one good effect. More people are now aware that a “cut” is not an actual cut, and that a $3 Trillion cut over ten years is really an exponential growth of Debt and Spending and Government size of 5 to 6%; that a freeze in government spending, a simple continuing resolution to spend no more next year than was spent last year, is a $9.5 Trillion cut.

Let’s say that again: until there is a $9.5 Trillion cut, the cost of government will continue to rise. A real cut would have to be larger than $9.5 Trillion. If we can get enough people to understand this, perhaps there is some reason for Hope.