View 806 Tuesday, January 14, 2014

“Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency.”

President Barack Obama, January 31, 2009

Christians to Beirut. Alawites to the grave.

Syrian Freedom Fighters

What we have now is all we will ever have.

Conservationist motto

If you like your health plan, you can keep your health plan. Period.

Barrack Obama, famously.

Cogito ergo sum.

Descartes

Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum. Cogito,

Ambrose Bierce

I keep saying I am going to catch up, then I fall further behind. I haven’t really recovered from this flu like thing, but I was getting there – then Roberta came down with it. She has been bed ridden since Sunday, and tomorrow Richard and his family will be here in LA. I can only hope she’s recovered enough to enjoy the grandchildren, and that I have enough energy to cope with everything.

I’ve been keeping notes as things get more and more bizarre. A governor’s political staff use public office to cause traffic jams in Fort Lee? I cannot imagine what they thought the upside of that action would be. In order for it to have any political effect it would have to be known that it was done as a political move, but how could it be known? As soon as it came out that it was caused, done on purpose, for political reasons, the entire operation was a disaster, as nearly anyone should have known.

Meanwhile, in Orange County, a rather highly educated jury – three of them had Master’s degrees –- after relatively short deliberation found the Fullerton policemen “not guilty” of anything after they beat a homeless schizophrenic to death. Six policemen, pounding on him with batons and the butt of a Taser, listening to him plead for his life; all this caught on film, and the film was played for the jury –it defies belief that anyone would have voted these police not guilty of use of excessive force. I can understand a reluctance to convict the one policeman, Ramos, of second degree murder, since I doubt that at any time he ever actually formed the intent to kill the man; but he most certainly had the intention of teaching him a lesson, as he put on his latex gloves and told his captive “These are what will F— you up.” And then used them to do so. Had the chap been black, there would be riots all over LA and Orange counties; but this was a white middle class schizophrenic who reminds me somewhat of the goofy chap in Silver Linings Playbook. Irritating, annoying, but hardly deserving a death sentence. I find the jury verdict appalling, and the precedent even more so. Rodney King actually led the police on a high speed chase, and was big enough and tough enough to be a bit scary; but there was none of that here.

The worst of it is that this makes for a perfect opportunity for the Federal Government to expand its power by charging those police with civil rights violations. However that comes out the result will not be good.

And former Secretary Gates has come out with a tell all book about his term as Secretary of Defense under both Bush II and Obama. I haven’t read it although I will. But it’s a bit early for that book, isn’t it? Had he left office when Obama came in, it would be one thing; but he agreed to serve Obama. He quite possibly fell into the myth – First Black President, reforms president, politics ends at the water’s edge, foreign and military policy in the national interest — and became disillusioned. Many did. But he stayed on, for reasons not entirely clear; does he not owe Obama at least enough loyalty to delay publishing the book until after the next election? But perhaps I am reading everything wrong.

The education disaster continues. University presidents routinely make a million dollars or more a year. The rich grow more powerful and the powerful grow rich. And the middle class is put into bondage. You are not longer wealthy if you cannot see to it that your children graduate from University without owing a lifelong crushing debt. Fewer and fewer can say that as time goes on. However much money we throw at the education system it will absorb it and demand more, while raising its prices. And apparently we will never catch on.

My hearing aids continue to work splendidly. I heard the homily at Mass last Sunday for the first time in years. I also found out what the warning of of failing batteries sounds like. Only the left battery was getting low, but I was told about it at increasingly frequent intervals until I changed the battery. Actually I changed both of them. I have about 90 batteries, and I am told they’ll replace the batteries free any time I am out at COSTCO. I have turn the volume down on all the listening devises in the house, and in fact I find I can do that several times. I turn the radio down until it’s comfortable, and a few hours later it seems a bit loud. I’ve been quieting the house down quite a lot. And I heard all the activities at the LASFS meeting last week. When we take a walk I hear birds, and all kinds of sounds. There is one peculiarity. When I first sit down to this keyboard, the clicks seem loud. After a few minutes they fade. When they have faded to near stillness they begin to get louder again. Meanwhile the radio in the background doesn’t seem to change in volume at all.

I also hear sibilants a bit more loudly than anything else, which can be a bit distracting. Not so much that I’d risk the overall improvement, but I wonder if there is a fine tuning possible. It’s great to hear what people are saying, dogs barking, mocking birds staking out territory, clerks in the grocery store not having to raise their voices… I had forgotten what it was like to hear what is going on around me. If you are wondering if it’s worth it, then it probably is. I am told there are effective hearing aids cheaper than the $2000 set from COSTCO, and I suppose there are – I hardly looked at everything – but I can say that the COSTCO aid work very well indeed. They become increasingly comfortable over time, and I often forget I am wearing them. It’s interesting getting used to hearing again.

How to Eliminate Poverty

Jerry,

A friend of mine told be about a way to eliminate poverty. Here is how it would work:

Every legal resident of the United States, both Citizens and non-Citizens with Green Cards, would receive an annual stipend from the Federal Government, say $32,000. Zone half of this amount would be withheld as Income Taxes.

The Income tax rates would be structured as follows:

Every one would pay a fixed $16,000 per year. That would be covered by the $16,000 withheld from the annual stipend.

The next $16,000 of income would incur no additional Federal Income Taxes.

Income above $32,000 would be taxed at rates determined to be sufficient to fund the Federal Government. There would be NO deductions of any kind.

Under this plan a Family of Four would have an annual income of $64,000 if none of the family members chose to work.

If members of the Family chose to work to generate additional income they could have up to $128,000 without additional Federal Income Tax.

Of course, the annual stipend might have to be lower or a different amount for Children under the age of 18. Using 2013 US Population Estimates the cost of a net $16,000 per person would be a little North of Five Trillion Dollars. This compares with Fiscal 2013 expenditures of 3.5 Trillion dollars and revenue of 2.8 Trillion Dollars.

A quick look shows that total personal income in the US for 2012 was about 13 Trillion Dollars.

Personal Income taxes have been a little less that 50 percent of Federal Tax Revenues. This would indicate that under the scheme above, a total of about 6.5 Trillion Dollars would have to be generated from Personal Income Taxes yielding a rate of something close to 100 percent for taxable earnings.

My Friend’s suggested stipend amounts are obviously too high, but it was his concepts that were important, not the actual amounts.

Something to keep in mind is that there would no longer be a need for payroll taxes to support Social Security Retirement Benefits. Welfare and Unemployment Benefits would also be eliminated.

It is left to the reader to envision the other synergies that a proposal such as this might yield.

Bob Holmes

It may well come to this: a minimum income available to everyone. I have not the energy nor the mental clarity to calculate costs here, but given time I can work on it – this is hardly a brand new idea, and variations of this are indistinguishable from some of the suggestions of Belloc and Chesterton; indeed there is a Jeffersonian character to the idea that everyone is independent of the government for the fundamental necessities of life. No huge bureaucracy need, no boards to determine who is deserving and who is undeserving poor. Some of the Framers in discussing Locke’s notion that everyone is entitled to life, liberty and property wondered if the right to property didn’t mean that everyone ought to have some.

My friend David Friedman’s father, Milton, proposed negative income taxes as the proper way to handle welfare: no big bureaucracy just for that. Just part of the tax collection machinery. We have a crippled version of that in the Earned Income Tax Credit.

Fine tuning can contain refinements like a poll tax: you are paid enough in the basic entitlement to afford a poll tax, say on the order of $250 a year. If you do not choose to pay it, you do not vote, nor can anyone pay it for you: it is paid through the same system that pays you the entitlement.

I see I am rambling. Odd, because I have thought about this since I was an undergraduate. The trick here is to make the basic minimum large enough to allow one to live, but not in luxury or even in excess comfort. Chicken every Sunday, perhaps, but not every day. And since it is paid to everyone, not just those who “need” it, a great deal of bureaucratic nonsense is eliminated.

As productivity increases – and it has done so for a hundred years – the “surplus” becomes greater. By distributing this there is likely a drop in the rate of rise of productivity – there is less concentration of capital – but that is not necessarily a bad thing. We are now at a point where there are individuals who could raise a private armored brigade. That happened in the declining days of the Roman Republic; Crassus was a needed member of the Triumvirate. His ability to settle Caesar’s debts was decisive. I am not terrified at the economic power of Bill and Melinda Gates, but I can think of people I would not care to see able to hire capable private armies. (Or to pay to maintain an existing army under a popular general, for that matter…)

Enough. It is something very well worth discussion.

The Kemalists finally make a move…

http://www.defensenews.com/article/20140102/DEFREG01/301020006/Turkish-Army-Demands-Retrial-Coup-Plot-Cases

This could be a portent for the secularists in Turkey to begin their resurgence in answer to government corruption.

David Couvillon

Colonel, U.S. Marine Corps Reserve, Retired.; Former Governor of Wasit Province, Iraq; Righter of Wrongs; Wrong most of the time; Distinguished Expert, TV remote control; Chef de Hot Dog Excellance; Avoider of Yard Work

The government established by Mustapha Kemal Ataturk, in which the Army is the guardian of the Constitution but does not and must not actually rule, has its roots in Plato and Aristotle, and a “rule of honor” society has been described in some utopias. Ataturk and his brotherhood were concerned that the people would overthrow the rule of liberty he had established, and the Army was given the task of protecting it. They did so for generations. The present government has jailed hundreds of the officer corps, and is said to have crippled the Brotherhood, and most observers think – with rather joy or dismay – that is so; but the roots of the Brotherhood go deep, and it is likely that it extends to the junior officers and senior non-commissioned officers of the Turkish Army. We can only watch and see; American interference in Turkey’s constitutional affairs would quite rightly be resented by both the Ataturk Brotherhood and the Muslim Brotherhood. I no longer have reliable Turkish contacts, and my views are not better informed than most.

The Syrian conflicts present the Ataturk Brotherhood with a terrible dilemma: as patriotic Turks they can hardly support the establishment of independent Kurdistan; yet the American have built a functional Kurdistan within Iraq. There are as many Kurds in Iran and Turkey as there are in Iraq; and of course there are many in Syria. The Syrian regime promoted religious tolerance among Muslims – Sunni, Shiite, Alawite, Jews, Marionites, Orthodox Christian, Protestant – in ways that few other Muslim regimes ever have. This tolerance has pretty well vanished now.

Prime Minister Ergodan has been frantically purging senior military and police and judicial figure in hopes of ending the Army’s role as guardian of the constitution.

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

View 805 Thursday, January 09, 2014

I’m just back from a LASFS meeting. It was probably a mistake to go. I woke up believing I was getting over whatever has laid me low for the week, but I woke up at 1100, and by 1500 I wasn’t so sure. Niven and I were going to do a working dinner, but I didn’t quite feel up to that, and now I’m back and ready for med.

This stuff is pretty bad. I’ve had worse, and I am sure all the vitamins and stuff I take have helped keep me out of the great miseries some people have had, but I sure don‘t have much energy or concentration. I hope to be back on track next week. Apologies.

This is typical of mail I have been getting. My thanks to all.

Dear Doctor Pournelle,

Congratulations on your new hearing aids. When I got mine, the experience was similar to what you describe. When I walked out of the audiologist’s office I was astounded by the sheer plentitude of sounds-distant car alarms, bird calls, the rustling of my clothes. The latter sound took me about a week to get used to. But now I know why they put cymbals on drum sets. Before the aids, they merely "clicked." The piccolo also seems much less pointless now.

Enjoy!

Jeff

And in fact it pretty well describes what I am going through. I hear things that I must have heard at some point earlier in my life because I recognize them for what they are, but they still take me by surprise. My stairs creak a bit. I have never known that before.

Please tell people in your column that the longer they wait to have hearing aids can change how effective they are. Once you lose your hearing some of it cannot be brought back (maybe in future). I could not get my WW2 artillery friends to ever go get aids until it was too late. Enjoy your work. Thanks for your effort.

I will. I will also point out that the VA seems eager to help veterans whose hearing has been affected by even basic training rifle range practice, which never required hearing protection when I was in service.

Greetings, Dr. Pournelle,

I’m glad you’re enjoying your Costco hearing aids; my father had much the same experience as you are describing, and I expect that at some point I will get something similar as well.

Your "Man Mountain Molehill" correspondent states a real whopper when he says "For example, a Pentium has always been roughly 1" square since the original ca. 1990.". In fact, Intel’s consumer processors (excluding a few of the crazier Xeons-in-consumer-clothing Core i7s) have always been significantly smaller than that in die size; 1" square equates to ~645 mm^2, and the largest of Intel’s consumer processors (the original 60 & 66MHz Pentiums, on an

800nm/0.8 micron process) are less than half that size (294 mm^2), with most of the subsequent processors significantly smaller. A typical Core i5 processor, which includes graphics functionality as well as the CPU, is 177 mm^2.

I more complete list of models and their die sizes and power consumption can be seen here:

http://www.techarp.com/showarticle.aspx?artno=337&pgno=8

Charles

The bottom line remains: computers are getting more and more effective at doing the kinds of jobs that do not require high intelligence to do. And our schools are not teaching many of their graduates to do anything that anyone would pay you money to do. The cost of school is outrageous although you don’t see it because it is paid by the state not the local taxpayers. Just as the local taxpayers don’t control the schools. At the university level the math is inexorable: say that having a degree from Waybelow Normal will earn you on average $2,000 a year more than you would make without the degree. You graduate with a $50,000 debt. How long will it take to be even steven on that?

Hi Dr. Pournelle,

I occasionally think about our current political mess in America. Sometimes I think Apophis could solve all of our problems in 2029 or 2036. I am responsible for my part of the current mess since I started voting in 1976 without taking a critical thinking class. I blindly followed my dads directions to vote. It took many years, but I started voting for the other party after my eyes were opened. Later still I have come to the conclusion that both halves of the "incumbent party" are just like the guy in the Sneetches story by Dr. Seuss. We walk from party to party paying our two dollars to get a star tattooed on our bellies and later paying our five dollars to get it removed. I am ashamed to say it took this long to come to this level of knowledge or perhaps disappointment in government. There seems to be many more people who are willing to trade individual freedom for material stuff and can’t see that only two parties is not enough – especially when they are apparently working together. There are other parties and I do look at them from time to time.

I’m sure you watched "The Wild Bunch" by Sam Peckinpah. A man could walk into a bank with a note and a gun and rob the bank teller and probably live to tell about it. The movie was set in 1913 and before that time robbing banks probably worked well. Bank robbery is very irresponsible. Probably as irresponsible as telling King George to go chase himself. Depending who is writing history bank robbery and insurrection could be scorned or praised. Technology was on the side of the bank robber and the patriot. Firepower and a fast horse could win the day for the bank robber. Today a gun and a note gets your face on national TV and the bank is very happy to give you a bag of money containing a dye pack and a GPS.

Keeping in mind a patriot is defined by the winners who write history, I do have to ask the following question: what happens when a CDC doctor discovers an odd benign virus in blood samples from across the United States that upon further analysis is determined to be artificial and contains a message that demands individual freedom to be redeposited into our Constitution and a list of politicians to be retired – real retirement not the Bladerunner kind? I wonder if such a world is ahead of us? Our Founding Fathers took matters into their own hands, but weapons have gone from local to nearly global in reach.

I have realized that every pound of freedom comes with a ton of responsibility, and that every ounce of "Free Ice Cream" from government costs a ton of freedom. Do we need to reform ourselves before we can reform government? I am asking if science is going to get us out of our current mess and will the majority of the Eoli never understand?

Thank you,

-Bruce

Thanks. And good night. I’ll be back with my brain turned on Real Soon Now.

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

View 805 Wednesday, January 08, 2014

“Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency.”

President Barack Obama, January 31, 2009

Christians to Beirut. Alawites to the grave.

Syrian Freedom Fighters

What we have now is all we will ever have.

Conservationist motto

If you like your health plan, you can keep your health plan. Period.

Barrack Obama, famously.

Cogito ergo sum.

Descartes

Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum. Cogito,

Ambrose Bierce

It’s Wednesday, and the flu has still got me. I feel worse now than I did Monday. Possibly some of that is due to going out Tuesday.

It Changed My Life

Tuesday I got my new Kirkland Signature Receiver in Ear Hearing Instrument Model K5562-DRW hearing aids at COSTCO. They had already programmed mine but I got there a few minutes early and the very competent and extremely pleasant young lady technician was programming a new pair for people whose appointments were after mine, so I got to see a bit of how that was done. They seem to have many options, all done on a laptop computer with Bluetooth connection to the instruments – both at once although they can work on one at a time. Between the prescription I had from Kaiser and the tests she had done last week when I decided to buy them, they had a pretty good picture of the complicated pattern of my hearing loss. It took about half an hour of instructions to be sure I understood how to do everything from changing batteries – about every three days – to tuning the volume, to recharging the remote. There are three programs put into the instruments. Inspection of the documents that came with them show a capacity for four. The three I have are for ordinary use, use in crowds with background noise, and one intended for when I am listening to music or at the opera. Since I didn’t know it was possible to have a fourth I never asked what that ought to be for, but apparently I can get them reprogrammed, including adding a fourth option, anytime I want to. I can also go out and have them cleaned and new batteries put in any time I shop at COSTCO. I’ll probably do that although I don’t think of any program I need that I don’t have.

When I put them in my life changed. I had them on the #1 or “ordinary” program, and suddenly I could hear things. The click of computer keys, which I haven’t heard in years. Door works when you turn the knob. Rustle of paper when you put things away. My own footsteps. All kinds of sounds that most of you pay no attention to, but which I haven’t heard in so many years that I had forgotten they existed. Moreover, I hear them more loudly and clearly than I have for forty years and more.

I went out into the COSTCO store crowd. Used the remote first to change the program to #2, the suppress background noise program, and then to lower the volume a click or two. Wonderful. I could still hear myself walking, people coming up behind me, random conversations. A pretty blonde athletic lady with a pony tail followed by – perhaps better to say accompanied by – three girls who were very clearly her own, ages about 10, 9, and 7, although they might have been 10, 10, and 7; hard to tell, and I didn’t want to alarm anyone by paying a lot of attention to them. But I could hear them talk. And having granddaughters I found them interesting. Reluctantly I went on through the store, just wandering about to see the wonders of COSTCO – there are some – and kept finding them coming up behind me or toward me when I turned into an aisle; apparently their mother was casing the joint as I was.

And I could hear everyone around me. This was just before noon; as noon approached COSTCO blossomed with free samples of food appearing everywhere. You could eat enough to live on there assuming you could wangle a membership. I suppose they have ways of discouraging that. I ended up buying very little, several bags of coffee beans in 2 ½ lb. bags and costing less per pound than the same blends – Columbian and Sumatran – that I usually get at Trader Joe’s, and about the same price per pound we pay for Sumatran at Smart and Final.

I’m wearing down. This flu is painful. Fortunately it is a beautiful Spring day outside, about 75 F. And the radio is telling me that Swine Flu is back and several have died of it in LA County. I should have got my flu shots. Only of course I did get my flu shots. I always do. And I can’t guarantee that I have flu, although most of the symptoms fit. The exception is my nasal passages. I am sort of stuffed up, my head feels full of cotton wool, but I don’t have that much trouble breathing. I do cough up stuff. Sudafed is enough to get me through the night, mostly. I’m almost out and I’d go out to get more but I don’t feel up to going out.

Anyway last night for the first time since we have had it, the TV volume was about 16=20 as opposed to the 20-35 I usually have to set it to. And I could hear the words without having to watch the sub=titles. I may turn off the sub-titles if this keeps on. And this morning I could hear the radio as well as read the paper, a kind of multitasking I used to do but haven’t since The Lump was extirpated.

I’ll have more on this as I gain more experience, but I can recommend the Kirkland hearing instrument sold by COSTCO, since they have a guarantee – if you don’t like them, you take them back and they refund your money. I paid essentially $2000 for the pair, and it’s a good use of the money.

Moore’s law may be over for awhile.

Here’s a pretty good overview, and abstract, with graphs:

http://www.extremetech.com/computing/123529-nvidia-deeply-unhappy-with-tsmc-claims-22nm-essentially-worthless

This is no secret in the semiconductor industry. Industrial ICs have always used inexpensive process nodes. However, GPUs are high volume consumer products that have always been able to use more, cheaper transistors.

However, the 20 and 14nm processes at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (The premier fab, really) have transistors that cost about the same as its 28nm node. Just to be clear, historically one would expect 14nm to be 1/3 to 1/4 the cost.

Maybe TSMC fouled up? No, the new nodes work, they’re just not cheaper. Also, a separate foundry (a huge organization spun off from AMD) Global Foundries (GF) has also hit a similar wall near these numbers using slightly different technologies.

And, maybe the customers designed bad chips? No; Nvidia and AMD are both reporting similar cost problems across all their related product lines.

Intel may be having problems as well; They are opening up their formerly proprietary fabs to take outside work. This is at minimum a sign that they can’t pay for their fabs with PC CPUs alone.

In my understanding, Moore’s law has always been a marketing rule-of-thumb that customers will buy something twice as good, and it usually takes 18 months to get it. In the real world, exponentials usually become s-curves after a bit. It may be that optical thin-film lithography on silicon has reached its limits.

So, something really new will now be needed to sell up the customers, and there may be a pause in the tempo. Molecular manufacturing would be just the thing, but I don’t think it’s ready, at least, there’s no public evidence of it.

 

Ray

There are signs that Moore’s Law is best described with an ogive or logistic curve, not a simple exponential.  As Possony and I pouted out in The Strategy of Technology, the ogive or “S curve” describes a great deal of technological development, as for instance, the speed of aircraft through the 19th Century. Sometimes one ogive flattens out only to enter another period of rise, the first part of which looks like an exponential.  We don’t have enough data to be sure where Moore’s Law (which is, after all, more empirical than theoretical) will go.  My own belief is that we’ll see one more iteration at least. That would be astounding progress.  Even if we only get a 50% improvement…

My point really is that less and less unskilled labor is required to sustain civilization.  Encouraging everyone to expect the kind of middle class life of the semi skilled worker after World War II may be a mistake.  Sure, some will rise into a new middle class, but most of them will do so because of productivity – and the number needed to increase productivity is falling, not rising.  Given jobs eliminated and workers who have ceased to look for work, unemployment in the US is 11 – 12%, not the politically correct 7+ we pretend to believe.  Any economic plan must understand this.  It must also understand that the school system is useless in teaching skills to the lower 40% of the population. (Lower 40% is IQ <= 90.) These are not stupid or useless people; but they are not being trained to be part of a modern high tech civilization, and they are not needed in modern farming. Some will find a home in organic farming, possibly a very good home. ) 

I’d write more on this but my head is full of cotton wool.

Moore’s Law, TSMC

Everything else being equal, more transistors per wafer should lead to a lower cost per transistor. But yield difficulties reduce the cost advantage.

I can’t remember a new process innovation that didn’t have yield problems as it ramped up.

The industry has known this since the 1960s when a typical wafer was 3" and a typical LSI at the limits of technology had a few hundred transistors. Meanwhile, chip designers always pack more transistors onto a given chip area so the total area of silicon stays about the same. For example, a Pentium has always been roughly 1" square since the original ca. 1990.

Man Mountain Molehill

Maybe just drugging our problematic children isn’t the answer. Who knew?

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/30/health/adhd-experts-re-evaluate-studys-zeal-for-drugs.html?src=recg

John Harlow

Of course we have been saying that here for years.  Ah well.  Unrestricted capitalism leads to many places. Of course over regulation of capitalism kills the goose laying those golden eggs. Everyone pretends to know this, but few act as if they do.

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

View 805 Sunday, January 05, 2014

“Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency.”

President Barack Obama, January 31, 2009

Christians to Beirut. Alawites to the grave.

Syrian Freedom Fighters

What we have now is all we will ever have.

Conservationist motto

If you like your health plan, you can keep your health plan. Period.

Barrack Obama, famously.

Cogito ergo sum.

Descartes

Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum. Cogito,

Ambrose Bierce

Ramble on Education: Silicon is cheaper than iron. And cheaper than muscle, too.

Climate Scientists Icebound

It’s Sunday afternoon and I just got up. Yesterday I had intended to get some work done, and didn’t; just not enough energy. Last night I went to bed with a mild sore throat and headache and by morning I had the works. Stuffy head, headache, sore throat, ache all over, so I only got out of bed a few minutes ago.

Ramble on education.

Everyone is doing year end analyses, and I should as well, but I’m just not up to it. I have identified two big issues, the Global Warming mess, and the coming dissolution of American Education from pre-school through university, but those are not easy to write on when your head is full of cotton wool We do have some indications of change in the right direction. More and more students, graduating with a lifelong debt, have discovered that they got neither education nor training in useful skills for their money, while the accrediting agencies continue to support the obvious grade inflation.

At the same time, technology advances make skilled workers more productive than they used to be, meaning that we need fewer of them. The great industrial advances following World War II that made a majority of blue collar workers middle class citizens are no more: there’s no need for a huge population of factory workers. For a long while automation created jobs; it’s not so clear that this is automatic now. The result is that there’s less for the average citizen to do in the traditional economy. And as the robots get better at their jobs, some companies are finding it much cheaper to buy robots and do the work here rather than send stuff overseas for cheap labor; another trend that will continue. And our education system continues to raise prices, demand a larger share of income, and shows no sign of comprehension as to what is going on.

Moore’s Law may be slowing down, but there are a couple of iterations to go; and I remind you that doubling of the current state, not just another iteration of the doubling of the previous state. Think on it. The next doubling of computer power for the price will add as much new productivity as did all the doublings by Moore’s Law from the first Altair to last year’s desktops. Now, I know this is a first approximation and some of the effects can be discounted – but only some. And we have at least two more iterations of Moore’s Law to go. Actually, one suspects, we have many more than two coming.

Back in the very early days of computing, when I was working with old Zeke, my friend who happened to be a Z-80 computer running CP/M and CBASIC with 8” floppy disk drives, I came up with one of Pournelle’s Laws: Silicon is cheaper than iron. Therefore the days of the spinning metal disks were numbered.  In those times hard drives were huge and a 30 megabyte drive consisted of platters larger than soup plate, and the only hard drive available to people like me were a Honeywell Bull 5 megabyte which came with a case and power supply the size of a two drawer file cabinet; lights dimmed in the house when you turned it on. It seemed an easy prediction to make. But even as I said it, CPU flops became cheaper. Data separation on both hard drives and floppies started an exponential dive. Precision control of milling machines got better exponentially. We went inexorably from 5” Winchester drives with 5 megabytes to 25 megabytes, 100 megabytes, a gigabyte. Now a terabyte external drive is under $100.

At the same time silicon drives got cheaper and cheaper. They still cost more per gigabyte than spinning metal, but that gap is closing, and few new computers are built without at least one silicon “hard drive.” It too dates from about 1983 when I said silicon is cheaper than iron, but remember that Moore’s Law is both inexorable and exponential.

And my head is full of cotton wool so you’re free to speculate on the effects of this, but one is clear: the new technology makes traditional college and university education as obsolete as were the 8” floppy disks that sparked my observation. You can store and distribute the best classroom lectures in all the world, and do that cheaply. Since most of the expensive universities now use graduate students – often graduate students who don’t speak English very well – as teaching assistants to sort of conduct class discussions and actually deal with the students, the solution to that kind of college class is easy to see. We don’t need the highly paid tenured faculty at all for undergraduate education. Colleges can go back to being affordable for people like my wife and I – affordable and useful as well. It takes some thought but the clues are here. Of course we will go through another generation of illiterates running the Republic before anything can be done, but the mechanism for saving our own children to be survivors during the coming generation of chaos already exists.

And as it happens, I got this mail today.

SUBJECT: Qualification inflation

Hi Jerry.

Some more evidence pointing towards qualification inflation, as discussed many times before in Chaos Manor:

http://news.nationalpost.com/2014/01/03/critics-complain-of-qualification-inflation-as-more-canadians-hold-university-degrees-and-low-paying-jobs/

Cheers,

Mike Casey

Global Warming Questioned?

An Antarctic expedition intended to demonstrate global warming in the Antarctic became icebound in mid summer, and has caused other ice breakers to require rescue. At last count 22 crew members will remain trapped in the ice and wait for conditions to improve. The climate models had predicted open water in summer, but that didn’t work. Predicting just when the ice conditions will get better is a bit difficult since Winterset here is High Summer down there.

Of course the great faith in the consensus on global warming – oops, climate change – has not changed. It is too warming! And all that ice in the Eastern US, and all that ice trapping the scientists, is weather, not climate, and we know we don’t know how to predict the weather. And we can explain what looks like anomalies in our predictions. Let us make a few adjustments in our billion dollar models, and all well be well.

I continue to hold about the same opinions as Freeman Dyson: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CM9YR6PZKo

For a somewhat whimsical presentation see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00Y9EZDdpUw

And for a pretty good lecture on the data, see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yze1YAz_LYM

I tend to prefer papers to presentations, but this is what I could come up with for the moment.

I make no doubt there are plenty of explanations as to why the models didn’t show why three icebreakers couldn’t get through in mid summer. They just haven’t come out yet.

And I’d better get back to bed.

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