View 724 Thursday, May 24, 2012

I have just spent nearly an hour doing something I will never do again. I got a request: could he send a book to be autographed. I foolishly said yes. Foolish because I ought to have written up a set of conditions and attached it to that letter. I didn’t. Presently there arrived a USPS “Bubblepack”, somewhat damaged, sent book rate, with some instructions written on the outside as if that were a postcard. Inside were Mote and Gripping Hand, and an envelope with three (3) $1.05 (I didn’t know we have $1.05 stamps) stamps and one (1) one cent stamp. The postage on the bubble wrap was marked $3.31, applied by a post office; apparently my correspondent had weighed it himself and concluded that $3.16 was enough, but when he went to send it it cost more. Well, all right, I suppose. I can stand losing $0.15. Actually I just added a “forever” stamp and had done with it.

But there was no self addressed stamped return container. I was apparently expected to use the used bubble wrap. To do that I had to copy the return address on some kind of label; then cover the address with that label and cover the return address with my own labels; use Scotch tape to repair the tears in the bubblewrap package; use more tape to seal the package after I had opened it; and, I discovered, find some glue to put my labels on with because the sticky goodies had sort of expired on them, and I ran out of Scotch tape almost immediately on starting.

Had I known it was going to take so long I’d have donated the books to the LASFS library and given no more thought to it – and the next time someone sends me books without a stamped and addressed return package I’m gong to. Fair warning. I don’t mind signing books, and I don’t mind putting them into the return package, but I am not going to be copying the addresses onto labels and repairing the container the books came in. Not again.  I ended up resorting to glue to get some of the labels on and the repairs done. Of course I tend to be compulsive about finishing a task once I take it on, but I warn you, I can abandon one. Now tomorrow I’ll have to walk down to the Post Office to mail this thing, and show it to the clerk so that my face and the package will be on the surveillance tape.

One reason I went through with this nonsense was that Niven came over and I had him sign the books before we hiked up the hill. Got a lot of work done on the new novel although I had to confess that  most of my progress lately has been notes and plot points, not text, and we are way behind. Discussed this a bit with Larry, who pointed out that it’s pretty standard with writers to slow down when we get to be damned near 80. We never retire, but we do expect to be able to take some time off. I thought about that, agreed with him, and resolved to put in a couple of hours a day in front of the fiction machine up in the Monk’s Cell where there are no games and little of interest to do. Somerset Maugham used to go out on his veranda after breakfast with his box of writing paper – he wrote in pen and ink – and write W. Somerset Maugham — W. Somerset Maugham — W. Somerset Maugham – over and over until he was so bored that he had no choice but to write something. I suspect I need some sort of drastic rules like that to get this book going again. It’s not that I’ve lost interest in the book, far from it, it’s likely to be the most important thing we have done yet; but finding the energy and directing it to the specific task seems to be more difficult than I thought. It’s probably a quirk of age.

Anyway, we made it up the hill, most of the way, turning back after the second big curve in the fire road because Larry was getting a sore calf. For the record, he’s younger than me. And I’d have gone all the way.  Sable was more than willing. She clearly remembers that the last time we were up on the hill she actually caught a gopher, and she was looking forward to doing that again – she showed excitement at the exact spot where she got that gopher when we passed it on the way up and coming back down too. But it was a pretty exhausting hike.

Anyway starting tomorrow it’s a new regime. I’ll also try to keep this place up.  And there’s mail. It’s a great life if you don’t weaken…

Tonight at LASFS I had a discussion with my friend who has an autistic son. The news is good. All is well, and the lad is doing some work at a college level. That’s not the usual or the expectable outcome for such cases. As it happens, while I was looking for something else I came across http://www.jerrypournelle.com/view/2008/Q3/view528.html#Tuesday; about two screens down on that is a lengthy comment of mine on autism that I see no need to revise. If that subject interests you, that’s a place to find it.

And I found this from July 2008; it seems to apply still to my situation:

1215: Yesterday was a strenuous day. I went out for my walk in the morning, and got a phone call from Paul Schindler, my former BYTE editor (he founded the on-line edition of BYTE as we did an early this week in tech show which, had CMP continued BYTE and the tech show, would have evolved into podcasts and such). Paul had told me he would be in LA yesterday and we had a lunch appointment, which I remembered but hadn’t marked down. All turned out well, Roberta and I finished our walk (we had to go to the bank) and met Paul back at the house. Went to the salad joint (Good Earth in Studio City) and that was good. I am always glad to see Paul, which doesn’t happen often enough.

But it did tire me out a bit, and I discovered I had medical appointment at 4 PM: a bone density test. So out to Kaiser, back to the house, and by then it had been a very strenuous day. Got to bed at 11 PM, but it was a bad night. Woke up every hour until 8 AM when I should have got up, but I slept in until 0930. Whereupon Roberta bullied me into getting ready for a walk and we were out by 10 or so. I was ready to go back to bed. Plus my arthritis was killing me. It took sheer will power to keep walking — but things got better as I went, and by the time we came back home with two or three stops for strenuous stretching, I felt pretty darned good. Which means that I can’t completely trust the signals: I clearly didn’t need more sleep, I needed the exercise; and indeed half way through our 2 miles I felt good enough that I did the arm lifts I abandoned a month ago.

So I’m a bit tired but not out of energy. And I need to rethink the regime. Yes, I must get enough sleep and rest, but I can’t just trust the signals any more. Given enough rest, I need to force myself to do the exercises. What’s good to know is that a strenuous Monday does not automatically require an all day sleep on Tuesday.

View 724 Tuesday, May 15, 2012

I seem to be recovering form whatever malaise has struck me, but it’s slow. Meanwhile, Victor Davis Hanson has a piece called “Can California be fixed?” which tells pretty well why Californians are often depressed. http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/299975/can-california-be-fixed-victor-davis-hanson# It’s worth your time.

It’s pretty well accepted among those who study education that schools can be fixed – or at least doubled in effectiveness – by the simple expedient of firing the 10% least competent teachers and not replacing them. Just allocate their students to the other teachers. As to who are the 10% least competent, you will find by and large that everyone knows who they are. Principals know (although there are incompetent principals who need to go). Parents know although some will have political agendas. Students know, although some will of course have a grudge against competent but unpopular teachers. Other teachers know. But when you come down to it, you can choose the 10% least competent by using almost any rational procedure and you will get most of them, and of the few that you fire who shouldn’t be fired, essentially none will be in the top 50% of effectiveness.

But that’s unfair! If you fire even one who should not be fired –

But, alas, the alternative is to inflict all these incompetent teachers on the children unfortunate enough to be stuck in the public school system (and you will note that few who can afford an alternative will inflict this system of education on their own children).

Now the California courts have held that education is a right, meaning that paying for education is a public duty. I don’t accept that, but assume it is true: surely if you have a right to education then you have a right not to be stuck with an incompetent teacher? Whereas if you assume that education is an investment in the future, then surely you would not invest your money in incompetents? Those who claim that incompetent teachers have a right to a job at public expense have not explained the origins of that right.

In eBook era, slackers are out, reads the head for a New York Times thought piece picked up by a number of local papers. It tells stories of writers doing, not one novel a year which was the goal most writers aspired to but seldom met, but ten novels a year, plus a cascade of short stories, and a ton of blogging. The good news is that they’re selling, particularly for thrillers.

I find I’m not likely to join this new revolution, but it’s inspiring – and ought to be so for all those who want to make a living at this racket. Productivity counts…

Fortunately, backlist sales are up, too, and I’ve got a fairly large backlist. Backlist isn’t as good as a new thriller every couple of months. Back when I got into this racket, you had to write a lot, but it was mostly small stuff for the magazines, fleshed out with non-fiction, and the right non-fiction paid more than the magazine fiction. I don’t suppose that’s true any longer.

But the writing business is pretty good for those of an age and temperament to enjoy it. And science fiction writers are still the bards of the sciences.

In digging around on this topic I came across this, done back before we knew the effects of the Internet. A lot of it is still valid. http://www.whedon.info/Joss-Whedon-SciFi-com-talks-to-SF.html

And I do find I have a bit more energy every day, so apparently things are improving.

And the poll data are good. The President’s approval rate is about 43%. And it’s falling with key groups. Even Democrats are drawing away from him. It sure would be nice if some sanity returned to the Democratic Party. Maybe the New Democrats will come back?

Eric has been scanning and proofreading the ancient first BYTE columns that I did. We’re going to put them together into a book, with some comments by me looking back thirty years. I must say the darned things were pretty interesting – I started with the notion of seeing what Eric had got done, and ended up reading several of my old column, and my conversations with my mad friend Mac Lean. Mac Lean was an old retired spook with strange hobbies, one of which was small computers – he’s the guy who got me into it. Anyway, we’ll be putting much of that together in the next month or so.  But it got late and I haven’t done the mail and I guess I won’t get to it tonight.

And just as I was going to bed I got

‘The dominance of modern humans could have been in part a consequence of domesticating dogs — possibly combined with a small, but key, change in human anatomy that made people better able to communicate with dogs.’

<http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/id.15294,y.0,no.,content.true,page.1,css.print/issue.aspx>

Roland Dobbins

Which looks like my cocktail party theory of the coevolution of humans and dogs – they kept their sense of smell, we used our forebrains to get smart, and we each look after the others kids – may be getting respectable.  I’ve always believed it, which implies to me a pretty strong ethical obligation to dogs, but then I have other weird ideas.

Anyway good night.

And of course I just had to see if there was a new Freefall panel, and there is. If you don’t know Freefall, I would be astonished if anyone who reads this place regularly didn’t like it. http://freefall.purrsia.com/default.htm The problem is that it won’t make sense unless you go to the Story Start and read from there. That will take a while, and it’s worth it. Trying to backtrack the current story line won’t work very well.  The first few episodes may not be as good at hooking you as they should be, but read on. It will get to you. And in case you are wondering, no, Sam is not human. He’s not even humanoid. But he’s not a robot.

Mail 724 Monday, May 14, 2012

 

I just received word that Jay Kay Klein, THE photographer of science fiction, passed away on Sunday morning, May 13, in a Catholic hospice (a “Francis House”) in Syracuse, NY, at age 80, of esophageal cancer.

This sad news came to me today by phone from Craig Peterson, a local plumber and a great-souled man, whom Jay Kay originally hired to fix a bathroom faucet in his longtime home in Bridgeport, NY….and who then, miraculously, took it upon himself to become Jay Kay’s final friend, exactly what he needed, helping him with his constrained living situation (Jay Kay’s late wife had been a serious hoarder), plowing his driveway, and (all gods be thanked) helping him get his immense and precious collection of over 65,000 negatives of virtually everyone in our field over a 40-year+ period safely to the University of California’s Riverside Libraries Eaton Collection of SF & Fantasy.

Craig’s been going through Jay Kay’s address book all day, calling people like Fred Pohl, Bob Madle, and me. He tells me an exhibition and celebration of Jay Kay’s photos will be mounted at Chicon 7, the 70th World Science Fiction Convention (Aug 30-Sep 3), by Melissa Conway, the Head Librarian at Riverside Libraries, who now has charge of the collection.

He just forwarded me by email a copy of the obit notice he wrote up for Jay Kay. I attach it, and the photo he included of Jay with one of his own iconic photos of Isaac. (I’m not sure who took it. Craig, I think.) He also sent particulars for Melissa Conway, which I’ll paste below.

I met Jay Kay at one of Ben Bova’s legendary parties. I am attaching two photos he took of me—not that there’ll be any shortage of his photos in Locus’s archives! The first was taken shortly after I was introduced by Jim Baen to Robert A. Heinlein, before the 1975 Nebula Banquet at which Robert was given the first-ever Grandmaster Award; the second is a favorite shot of Jeanne congratulating me right after I received the Skylark at Boskone XV in 1978. (And just as I’m about to mail this, Craig sent along another shot I can’t resist including, of Jay Kay with what appears to be a rare photo of a beardless Samuel R. Delany.)

Craig mentioned that at one point while he was helping Jay Kay shovel through his wife’s incredible store of hoarded stuff, they found a small fortune in GM stock. Jay had had no idea it existed, and continued to live like a man of limited means. God knows what his treasure trove of photos is worth, even just in dollars.

Science fiction owes Craig Peterson an incalculable debt. It’s only thanks to his hard work those 65,000 negatives reached the right hands in time. I exchanged long snailmail letters with Jay Kay twice in the past couple of years, and knew he was in extremely poor health. He wrote by hand, because, he said, it hurt his fingers too much to type, and sadly his handwriting was incredibly bad. But I could tell he badly needed a friend, and made a couple of unsuccessful attempts to scare up a volunteer who lived near enough to help. I can’t express how happy I am to know that Fate sent Craig Peterson to fix Jay Kay’s bathtub faucet. I understand Jay Kay left Craig his awesome collection of vintage guitars, and I am very glad. He says they were the topic of the first conversation he and Jay Kay ever had, that day he came to fix the faucet.

Let’s hoist a glass in memory of Jay Kay Klein, my friends. I never left his company without a smile on my face. Somebody call Gordy, and Randall, and Ted, and Isaac, and we’ll all pass the guitar round in his honour. Science fiction’s most acute and astute eye has closed for the last time. But what it saw, we have forever, thanks to photography and the kindness of Craig Peterson.

–Spider

I first met Jay K in Seattle in 1961, and we were convention friends for years after. I have a number of photographs that he took. One, of me and Mr. Heinlein, hangs on my stairway and is a prized possession. My thanks to Spider Robinson for this.

From the horse’s mouth – why the CAS mission should chop to the Army.

<http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/dear-boss-i-dont-just-quit-i-give-up>

Roland Dobbins

Commenting about the forthcoming NSA facility in Utah.

"The $2 billion facility, slated to be complete by September 2013, is allegedly designed to be able to filter through yottabytes (that’s 10^24 bytes) of data. Put into perspective, that’s greater than the estimated total of all human knowledge since the dawn of mankind. If leaked information about the complex is correct, nothing will be safe from the facility’s reach, from cell phone communications to emails to what you just bought with your credit card. And encryption won’t protect you – one of the facility’s priorities is breaking even the most complex of codes."

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/technology-blog/4-high-tech-ways-federal-government-spying-private-153556125.html

And look what is happening to Bones…

I am given to understand that there are encryptions that will require times long relative to the age of the universe to crack by brute force. Perhaps I am misinformed?

$20 Bribe for Janissaries Book 4

Dear Mr. Pournelle,

I’m a big fan. I first read the Janissaries series when I was a kid. I’m 31. That may seem young, but not when measured in decades waiting for a book.

I’m a big enough fan that I have, quite literally, invented a new business model to incentivize the authors I like to publish the books I like. It’s called u-Wish, and the website is u-Wish.com. I launched just last week. The idea is that fans can pledge money to fulfill wishes — for instance, getting a book they like published. They don’t pay anything unless and until the wish actually comes true — for instance, you actually publish the book.

If you fulfill the terms of the wish, the pledged amount is charged and transferred to you. In other words, everyone wins. Your most ardent fans to pay a premium to incentivize you to do what they want. You have a guaranteed payday, in addition to whatever you get from a publisher, and in addition to whatever you get from sales. Basically, it’s free money. I have personally pledged $20 for the sequel to be published by 2013. If you do that, then u-Wish sends you a check for $20. If more people pledged between now and then, well then you get whatever has been pledged.

I will be promoting the wish regardless, because I want it to happen. But no one has better access to your fans than you do. And if you promote it, i’m sure the wish will get a lot more traction.

If you have any questions about the concept, please call or email me. Phone is [redacted-Ed].

Thanks!

-Ted Glotfelty

(CEO and founder of u-Wish).

An intriguing idea. This is the first I have heard of it. I am plugging away on the book. I admit this is a titillating incentive…

My science writer colleague Mitch Waldrup writes:

My apologies in advance for the group email — with double apologies for those of you who get this message more than once.

Once again, I am running the Marine Corps Marathon with Leukemia and Lymphoma Society’s Team in Training (TNT). Until last year I had alway been a cyclist and occasional swimmer, never a runner. But then I got it into my head that this was something I wanted to do while I was still healthy and strong enough to consider it. When I first started training just a year ago, when a mile seemed like an epic run, it didn’t seem possible that I would ever make the finish line. But I did. And when it was all over, I felt such a high that I didn’t want to let it go. So here I am again — this time running with my wife, Amy Friedlander, on Team Amy and Mitch.

The larger purpose, of course, is to support LLS in its mission-to help find cures and more effective treatments for leukemia, lymphoma, Hodgkin’s disease and myeloma. My grandmother, Lucile Rabun, died of lymphoma, and Amy’s mother, Dorothy Friedlander, died of a rare variant. So we are running in their memory.

Please make a donation in support of our efforts at our team web site, http://pages.teamintraining.org/nca/corps12/teamamyandmitch <http://pages.teamintraining.org/nca/corps12/teamamyandmitch> .

Thank you so much.

Mitch Waldrop

"The Lovitz Curve"

http://pjmedia.com/zombie/2012/05/11/the-lovitz-curve/?singlepage=true

this is great.

Phil

And readable.

New word in my vocabulary

Thanks to Roland Dobbins, I now have a new word in my vocabulary: Holitburo. Hollywood political bureau = holitburo. Sheer genius, Mr Dobbins.

James Snover

What do we make of this?

http://www.disinfo.com/2012/05/soho-watcher-claims-nasa-cover-up-of-spaceship-spotted-near-sun/

This is crazy; if it is true, what would it mean?  Three times this thing pops up on cameras?  Someone is splicing UFOs into the camera as a joke or something is up…  What do you think?

—–

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

I think I have been seeing stories like this all my life. When Close Encounters of the Third Kind did its world opening, NBC decided to have a science fiction panel see the movie and then discuss it. Participants were Niven and me, Harlan Ellison, Ted Sturgeon, and I suspect there were a couple of others but that’s all I remember. We sat just behind the Director and several big names in the TV industry, and when the mashed potatoes scene came on and went on and on — :This means something” – Niven, said, in a voice that could be heard throughout the Dome, “Clearly the man is not entirely sane,” Followed by loud laughter, followed by a considerable cut in that scene before the moview was released,

Anyway in the panel afterwards Ted Sturgeon announced that he had been following flying saucer stories for years, and was now going to hold out for wreckage and bodies. Show me wreckage and bodies. Anything else I’ve seen before and it never worked out.

I am not quite that adamant, but I do have good reasons for doubting that the United States has any alien space technology kept in secret places like Wright Patterson, I wrote all that in the preface to Karl Pflock’s book on Roswell. Pflock, a true believer in UFO;s obtained a grant to write a book showing that the Roswell incident proved the existence of UFS’s — and, to his horror and disappointment, found that there was a truth and something of a secret, but it had nothing to do with UFO’s. It’s all in Pflock’

mixed blessing

"For those who don’t know, this confirmation extends down to the lowest ranking commissioned officers in the armed forces. That is more or less ceremonial now in so far as it affects ensigns and lieutenants, but it’s fairly vital when it comes to flag ranks."

They might not have done it any differently if they had foreseen the size of the country’s future military but it would be interesting to know what else they would have done differently if allowed a glimpse of how the country has turned out.

–Mike

A&D Matures Layer-by-Layer 3D Digital Manufacturing

Aviation Week & Space Technology May07 , 2012 , p. 48

http://www.aviationweek.com/awin/ArticlesStory.aspx?id=/article-xml/AW_05_07_2012_p48-452346.xml

“Additive manufacturing— producing parts layer by layer direct from digital models —is moving into aerospace. Three-dimensional printing is widely used for rapid prototyping with polymer materials , but technologies for additive manufacturing with aerospace metals are maturing. Working with engine manufacturer Rolls-Royce , Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute for Laser Technology has developed a technique to produce bladed compressor disks—blisks—using a laser beam to melt nickel- or titanium-based alloy powder and build the blades layer by layer , reducing material use by up to 60% and manufacturing time around 30% compared with machining blisks from solid metal . Working with Lockheed Martin, Chicago-based Sciaky is developing the capability to produce titanium structural components for the F-35 using electron-beam direct manufacturing . Sciaky and additive-manufacturing system makers EOS and Optomec are working with Pennsylvania State University’s Applied Research Laboratory to establish a manufacturing demonstration center for the U.S. Defense Advanced ResearchProjects Agency to develop and promote direct-digital manufacturing technology.”

I remember reading an SF story about this kind of stuff, 40-50 years ago. Now it’s coming true. Hey. Ya wanna build an airplane in your garage?

Ed

I continue to examine 3d printing technology. It’s amazing.

Subj: Charles Murray: The view from ground level in working-class America

http://blog.american.com/2012/05/the-view-from-ground-level-in-working-class-america/

Rod Montgomery==monty@starfief.com

I am very much an admirer of Charles Murray. We correspond, infrequently as neither of us has enough time.

Subject: A rare privilege

Jerry, here’s a story I think you’ll love about a gate guard who was given the rare privilege of drawing his side arm because a sergeant didn’t understand that the gate guard outranks everybody. Not once, as you’ll see, but twice:

http://everything2.com/user/Roninspoon/writeups/Two+stories+of+the+pistol

I wandered off the route I was supposed to take across Henderson Field one day in late 1951. I was challenged by SAC security forces and treated – let us say professionally. I was on my way home from the Far East at the time and the plane, which lost a cowling piece at Wake Island and kept us stuck there for a couple of days while it was repaired (a bleaker place to be stranded would be hard to imagine other than the cartoonish desert island). Apparently our plane wasn’t where it was supposed to be, and we were not supposed to wander past the B-47’s over on one side. I suspect now I know why…

Subject: Farenheit 451 anyone?

http://money.cnn.com/video/technology/2012/05/07/t-frx-plastic-fire.cnnmoney/

Tracy

Cut 15% of teachers and give the rest a 14K bonus/.

….The Oconomowoc plan is to cut the number of high school teachers from 75 to 60, but not to cut what is offered or increase class size. "This is a plan that really puts first what’s best for the kids," said Joseph Moylan, the high school principal.

The plan calls for most teachers to teach four blocks a day. Add on all the other things that need to be done as part of good teaching, and it’s a formidable schedule – impossible, some would say.

A big trade-off: Oconomowoc is planning to offer teachers with four-block loads $14,000 a year extra. That would mean the starting salary at the high school would be just over $50,000; the top salary would be in the mid-$80,000s. (Even with that, the reduction in staff will mean savings of over $500,000.)……

http://www.jsonline.com/news/education/time-will-render-bold-oconomowoc-school-plan-effects-da56n8d-149398195.html

.I would like to see that tried.

Solar quiet spell like the one now looming cooled climate in the past,

Jerry

Solar quiet spell like the one now looming cooled climate in the past:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/05/08/climate_is_affected_by_the_sun/print.html

Ice skating on the Thames, anyone?

Ed

And yet we see signs of enormous storms on the Sun. None of this is easily predicted. I fear a859 sized solar storms…

Herman Kahn’s _Techniques of Systems Analysis_ is also available online, for free, from RAND:

http://www.rand.org/pubs/research_memoranda/RM1829-1.html

And if you take the "Browse by Author" link at the left side of that page, and look for Kahn, Herman, you’ll find a bunch more interesting-looking titles.

If I have not said it clearly before, I consider Herman Kahn’s Techniques of Systems Analysis one of the most valuable books an aspiring systems analyst must read. It is at that graduate level and assumes a working knowledge of calculus; and it explains what systems analysis / operations research is all about, why one would do it, and gives examples.  If you are ever stuck in the logistics business, or the analysis business, or even the strategy business, and you have not read Herman;s book, go do so immediately. Then read it again, because you won’t have got some of his better points the first time, but they’ll be more apparent after you get through to the end.  If you know calculus, read this book.

Subject: April jobs report: Hiring slows, unemployment falls

“….the unemployment rate fell to 8.1% as 342,000 workers dropped out of the labor force. At 63.6%, the portion of the adult population participating in the job market is now at its lowest level since 1981 <http://money.cnn.com/2012/05/03/news/economy/unemployment-rate/index.htm?iid=EL> ….”

http://money.cnn.com/2012/05/04/news/economy/jobs-report-unemployment/index.htm?hpt=hp_t2

View 724 Monday, May 14, 2012

Reaping the Whirlwind

As you sow, so shall you reap. They sow the wind, and they reap the whirlwind. I’ve been saying this for years, and now it’s happening. It can be a depressing experience, particularly if you live in California, where the coming train wreck is absolutely predictable, nearly everyone sees it coming, and no one seems able to stop it – indeed, the frantic activity by the governor and legislature is to make it worse. Now the President is sending advocates to induce California to spend even more money on a rail system that everyone knows cannot be completed because there just isn’t the money.

California has the highest paid teachers in the country but hardly the best or even adequate schools; so the proposal is to continue giving them more money. What is called ‘drastic cuts’ is in fact lowering the projected raises; it’s still spending more money than was done last year. Everyone knows this; but that’s called austerity.

And it goes on. We have high income taxes and high sales taxes. The streets are not properly paved, much of the water system is ancient, and within a few years the pension costs will be larger than the income even with new taxes. It can’t go on and we all know it; but on it goes. We continue to sow the wind even as we reap the whirlwind.

And it’s discouraging.

I am sure I’ll be over this fit of depression shortly. At some point everyone must be aware that it can’t go on. What happens after that? Will we then burn down the cities? I’ve been heavily under the weather lately. I think I am recovering. thanks to all those who have asked.

One subscriber writes:

This is horrible; I no longer trust cops.  Maybe good ones exist; I don’t care.  It’s not worth looking for them.  These creep wear black uniforms, lie, and are always on the news hurting people.  You’re at more risk for police brutality than you are a terrorist attack.  I’m teaching every kid I know that enough police are sadistic creeps that you should not trust any of them, ever.  It’s just not worth it.

http://www.infowars.com/police-hunt-man-for-sport/

The video shows a particularly disgusting incident in Fullerton, California, about fifty miles east of here, where the Fullerton police for reasons still unclear set out to terrorize a homeless schizophrenic and ended by beating him to death. It is difficult to discern a motive here. Feeding frenzy is more likely than sport. I suspect that most of the Fullerton police involved in this incident would be horrified at the notion that they hunted down and killed this man for sport. Two of them have been charged, one with second degree murder, and the wheels of justice grind on, slowly, because even with the evidence from the video (and the audio is in some ways even more disturbing) have been unable to overcome the general faith of the community in the police.

It used to be a stock movie situation: a town so corrupt that it must hire mercenaries to come in and clean it up. The townsfolk, unable to govern themselves, hire a hard man to come in and impose order. They hope to be able to control the forces they have unleashed, and in the US Western version they can, because the hero turns out not to be interested in wielding the power he has been given. In the real world the townsfolk find they have sown the wind.

Self government requires that some of the good guys do some of the governing. Democracies fall when the middle class no longer rules, but hires others to rule for it. The result is a Nomenklatura, what Djilas called “the New Class.” And over time the Iron Law prevails.

Of course blackguarding the police is not usually a way to recover control of one’s destiny. In this world – at least in the world around here – there are tigers. Today’s news tells us of headless bodies distributed at random in Mexico, and areas of Arizona which have in essence been abandoned by the forces of law and order.

Having for a short time been involved in the politics of controlling the police by allocating police resources, I can tell you that the difficulties are immense, particularly in today’s climate of political correctness. We no longer want self government. We now want politically correct police willing to endure the contempt of those they protect, but still willing to stay on the job. It is another way to sow the wind.

In my judgment, victory in Afghanistan means that it will no longer be a safe haven for the enemies of the United States; it will not be a place of refuge in which terrorists may plot and from which they may operate and launch attacks. That, surely, will be enough.

That is likely to be achievable. It does not require the submission of the provinces of Afghanistan to Kabul. It does not require that the US build up a large Afghan national army capable of suppressing the tribesmen. It does require that the tribesmen be able to call for, if not effective assistance against attack from the Taliban, then at the very least swift and more importantly certain vengeance. Attack our friends and Delta Force will find you and kill you. Depend upon it.

I don’t know if that is achievable in practical terms, but it doesn’t seem impossible.

http://www.jerrypournelle.com/view/2010/Q2/view629.html

I said this several years ago, and again in 2010. At the time it seemed obvious. Now, it seems less certain. We set out to compel the submission of the provinces to the Mayor of Kabul, presumably with the end in view of having Kabul submit to us and become a puppet state with an American resident issuing instructions to an Afghan caudillo. That was never going to work. From Alexander the Great on conquerors have vainly sought to unite Afghanistan, only to find that the only unity that could be imposed was a united opposition to the invader who sought to make a puppet of the Khan in Kabul. Why we thought it would be different when we tried it is a bit hard to discern – I have read the enthusiasts without finding their arguments worth repeating. We continue to sow the wind in Afghanistan and periodically we reap a whirlwind.

And having said all that, it is not too late. The United States has a long history of recovering from its soft periods. We won the Cold War, the Seventy Years War that threatened to turn the entire Earth into a Hydraulic society. As Wittfogel noted in his Oriental Despotism, societies organized around the state ownership of everything can be eternal. He reached this conclusion from Marxist theory: there is no further development. As Trotsky put it, when the state owns all the means of production, opposition to the state means starvation. Such cultures fall, sometimes to the merest push – but it is a push, from outside. They rarely fall to internal opposition. The Nomenklatura in the USSR were never seriously challenged until the system collapsed. Prague Spring happened. The Hungarian uprising died stillborn. It took the United States to bring down the USSR, and it did so without the wild death throes we all feared.

In the euphoria following the end of the Cold War some neo-conservatives thought that we had reached the end of history – that liberal democracy would sweep the world, and there would be no more great developments. That nonsense – unlike Marxism this was quite literally nonsense – did not survive long. History has not ended.

There are still free people, and it is still true that free people can do anything they have a will to do.