Learning from Cyprus, carbon based computers, aluminum batteries, dissent on Dane-geld, and Korean dragons

Mail 769 Tuesday, April 02, 2013

One of the lessons I learned from Katrina was that the banks might be inaccessible, and for an extended time. I was switching from one card to another right before the storm, and so was lower than normal on cash on hand when the whole state of Mississippi lost power. Being from the Gulf Coast, my bank was simply off-line, even when I was far enough away to get back online or find a working ATM. The lesson I learned was to keep an envelope locked away with a thousand or so in cash to cover requirements while things are broken. From watching Cyprus, I’m thinking I’m going to up that amount, just in case.

Graves

A number of people, having contemplated the Cyprus affair, have reached similar conclusions.

Hell’s Bunnies

Dear Jerry:

It was an eventful weekend for the San Diego Highway Patrol as well as the North Korean Army:

http://vvattsupwiththat.blogspot.com/2013/04/and-in-related-development.html

—

Russell Seitz

Fellow of the Department of Physics Harvard University

Will the singularity be a carbon-based life form?

If graphene becomes the new base material for computers 10X faster than the silicone chips now in use; If graphene takes an expected 30 years to reach common use; if 30 years is the constant expectation of how long to reach singularity; does this mean the expected true AI is gonna be a carbon-based life form?

http://www.kusi.com/video?clipId=8716717&autostart=true

V/r,

Rose

Actually that makes a great deal of sense. Thanks.

WisCon’s radical feminist Failfandom Brigade Gets My April Fool’s piece yanked.

Hi Jerry!

I sold science fiction website Locus Online an April Fools piece (like I do every year), titled "WisCon Makes Burqas Mandatory for All Attendees." This was an obvious reference WisCon’s decision to withdraw a Guest of Honor invitation to Elizabeth Moon over her extremely gentle criticisms of Islam.

I was expected the permanently disgruntled to take offense. What I wasn’t expecting was that Locus would cave into pressure and force the piece to be taken down within a few hours.

Details here:

http://www.battleswarmblog.com/?p=16802

I would really like to see The Streisand Effect here…

—

Lawrence Person

I am not sure I should comment. I do tend to believe people who insist that they aren’t kidding when they say they want to kill me. On the other hand, I do not do April Fool stories.

SAGE

Dear Dr. Pournelle, this is probably old news to you, but I found this fascinating. The largest computer ever built: SAGE

https://scottlocklin.wordpress.com/2013/03/28/the-largest-computer-ever-built/

James Snover

It certainly was. It worked pretty well for what it was intended to do, too. A lot of SF authors got their notions of what a big computer would look like from having seen Iliac and SAGE.

Jerry

Here is a long piece on How Samsung Became the World’s No. 1 Smartphone Maker:

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-03-28/how-samsung-became-the-worlds-no-dot-1-smartphone-maker

Quite good.

Ed

Thanks

Phinergy demonstrates aluminum-air battery capable of fueling an electric vehicle for 1000 miles

http://phys.org/news/2013-03-phinergy-aluminum-air-battery-capable-fueling.html

This is pretty interesting. The comments following seem a bit skeptical at least, but seem short sighted to me. I just checked and aluminum is under 1$/lb, and that factors in the energy costs for production noted as a problem. But that’s no problem if their claims are true as that with this technology you could drive 1000 miles for about 55 bucks worth of aluminum, and even if that’s for a Prius class car that is pretty good as that equates to the equivalent of about 75MPG by my calculations, and the Prius only gets 55 or so.

It’s a good way from being commercial, but it would make for an interesting transportation system. Aluminum is a very common element; of course reducing it from ore requires a lot of power. In an energy rich society aluminum would be a cheap enough battery.

Observations About Fusion’s Future

I ran across this article published in Forbes (links below) what struck me are three observations:

1) Fusion seems to be gaining some level of credibility beyond the physics labs. Whether this is warranted or not is still very much up in the air. Certainly no one has designs or technologies that are remotely ready for commercial use.

2) The unquestioned assumption that government, indeed only the federal government can successfully tackle this problem. Now while there are times where government programs can and have been very successful ( TVA, Apollo, Manhattan etc ). In the past, our expectation has always been that private enterprise should lead the way. I don’t know which I find more troublesome: the assumption that it must be a government project, or the fact that this assumption is completely unchallenged and unquestioned.

3) Given the past 30 yrs of Federal Government projects, I can think of no better way to ensure that we will NEVER sell the first kilowatt of fusion power, than to hand the project over to Washington DC. Now if DC were to offer an X Project style $10B to the first commercial company to generate and sell 50MW of fusion derived power for 1 year we might get somewhere. of course that approach won’t happen today.

A belated Happy Easter to you and your Family,

Tony

A Challenge to America: Develop Fusion Power Within a Decade from the supposedly non-partisan American Security Project

http://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesleadershipforum/2013/04/02/a-challenge-to-america-develop-fusion-power-within-a-decade/?ss=business%3Aenergy

"This article is by Norman R. Augustine and Gary Hart. Norman Augustine is a board member of the American Security Project, a nonpartisan public policy and research organization, and has been chairman of the Council of the National Academy of Engineering. Gary Hart is a former senator from Colorado and is chairman of the American Security Project.

America’s economy and security depend upon reliable sources of power. Over the next few decades, almost all of the power plants in the U.S. will need to be replaced, and America’s dependence on fossil fuels presents serious national security concerns. They sap our economy, exacerbate climate change, and constrict our foreign policy. Our new found boom in natural gas and oil production will ease but not eliminate these underlying issues. …"

Tony Sherfinski

Max Hunter used to say that free enterprise was wonderful, but an American herd of dinosaurs headed in the right direction was an awesome sight. For an example think of D-Day. Commercial fusion has been about thirty years away for the last fifty years.

Dane-geld

Dear Dr. Pournelle,

I hope you enjoyed the previous letter I sent you describing the 9-year-old in DC. It warms my heart to know that thinking is taught to some, at least. There’s hope for the future.

At any rate, I want to disagree somewhat. You once again posted Kipling’s "Dane-Geld" poem in response to the continued buyoff of North Korea.

I believe there may be a flaw in both Kipling’s poem and your analysis: The assumption that if you fight the Danes they go away.

That may work well if you live on a remote island which is poor compared to other, more desirable targets. It didn’t work at all for the Byzantines.

http://www.amazon.com/Grand-Strategy-Byzantine-Empire/dp/0674062078

The Byzantines were not the English. They bordered the Central Asian steppe. They learned there wasn’t any point to great military victories, because even a victory left the winner that much poorer in lives and money to contend with the next threat, which would come over the horizon sure as sunrise in a few years or decades.

When you have no natural barriers, barriers must be made of men. And if you could co-opt your enemies to act as barriers through money and cunning diplomacy, that allows you to save your strength for a battle that actually needs to be fought.

So Kipling’s strategy is not the right answer in all times and all places. It worked very well indeed for medieval England but didn’t work at all for medieval Byzantium.

I believe in our own time our situation is much closer to Byzantium’s than England’s. Air travel ensures that even a small band of idiots with boxcutters can perpetrate an act of war in the heart of our greatest city. Our enemies are worldwide, and are best fought locally by their own countrymen. Which means the "war on terror" must be a war of diplomacy, blackmail, special operations, and payoffs to the right people.

Same with North Korea. I think the world would be a much better place if we liquidated the regime and made it part of South Korea. This would, however, mean war with China. And compared to war with China continual payoffs of a bully are the softer option.

Then, too, it’s not the situation that dictates strategy but the men who must implement it. Byzantium was a centralized bureaucracy with extremely high taxes. This crippled their production both of material resources and fighting age men. We know this because the Byzantines were barely able to hold Anatolia, but when the Ottomans took it over they used its resources to conquer half of Europe and hold it for hundreds of years.

A centralized bureaucracy in which the population watches chariot races produces a very different kind of man than you would find in the island on which Magna Carta was signed. I leave it to you to determine which more closely fits the modern United States.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

It is certainly the case that silver bullets are often effective; Kipling was stating a general principle (and one that it would be well to have others believe of you in most cases). He wasn’t always correct in his assumptions. Indeed, there are no simple rules of statecraft, particularly if you are in the empire business.

China is the key player in the Korean business. Korea is certainly more within the Chinese sphere of influence than in ours. China can’t really afford to fiancé the rebuilding of North Korea; and if South Korea does that as part of unification, China finds itself with strangers on its borders. One way out is for China to negotiate: they’ll help South Korea unify the peninsula in exchange for throwing the Americans out of Korea entirely. China gains a true neutral on its border. How good a deal that would be for South Korea is not easily determined, nor is it really a US decision. China was a dependent kingdom, not exactly subject to China, but certainly part of the Chinese sphere and nominally somehow a part of the Chinese hegemony. Symbolically China could display dragons in the throne room; Korea could not, for that would be an assertion of independence.

But the Korean throne room is huge, and the throne stood in the middle of the reception hall. Those being received by the Korean King and Queen stood at the edge of the room under a large tapestry roof. From where the Chinese minister Plenipotentiary stood he could see that there were not dragons on display in the throne room. Of course there was a dragon. It was above his head, above the tapestry.

But of course this subtlety was not unknown to Chinese Imperial intelligence; how could it not be? They knew the dragon was there. The Koreans knew the Chinese knew the dragon was there. But it was to the interest of China to ignore this so long as the Koreans did not parade it. Subtlety upon subtlety. I make no doubt that something of this sort will happen.