Mail 720 Thursday, April 12, 2012

‘Cevik Bir, the founding officer of an army unit established to head off Islamic challenges to the secular state, was taken into custody in Istanbul on Thursday.’

<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/13/world/middleeast/turkey-detains-military-leaders-for-role-in-1997-coup.html>

——

Roland Dobbins

This is potentially disastrous news. It may mark the end of Kemal’s brotherhood.

Hillary Rosen

Worse yet for Rosen (and the White House) is that her misfired shot at Ann Romney has refocused attention on Michelle Obama’s $300K/yr patronage job at the U of Chicago Hospital that was created for her (and never refilled after she left) while her husband was in the Illinois State Senate.

Oops.

Lee Stillman

Chicago politics is just about what you think it is, but people are always astonished when they discover it.

Just damn cool!

http://www.gizmag.com/great-paper-airplane-project/21961/

Cheap energy = prosperity!

Drill here, DRILL NOW!

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

Physically strong men are more likely to hold right wing political views because they believe society should be geared to personal struggle and self-preservation, an academic study claims.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/9197597/Strong-men-more-likely-to-vote-Conservative.html

—–

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

I had not heard that hypothesis before. Let’s see. Buckley was a sailor. Kirk walked sometime but actually hardly ever went outside. Thinking back on the conservatives I have known, most don’t stand out as strong. I suppose people would have called me that in that I did lead hikes into the high sierra but I never thought of myself as having much strength.

George Zimmerman idea

So when the warrant is issued, he needs to have one of his friends turn him in, collect the bounty from the NBP, then use it to offset the cost of his defense.

B

Great idea. Alas. It came too late…

Fukushima was not a problem?  The Army disagrees:

<.>

The Troop Support branch of the Defense Logistics Agency has decided to replenish its stockpiles of anti-radiation pills, citing the ongoing crisis at Fukushima and the potential for nuclear fallout as a primary reason behind the bulk purchase.

</>

http://www.infowars.com/army-stockpiles-anti-radiation-pills-to-protect-against-fukushima-fallout/

I’m glad to see the army is faster than the general public, but it is still not as fast as me…

—–

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

I would not draw that conclusion. The tsunami killed tens of thousands. Some died from the lack of power that Fukushima would have generated, but the number harmed by radiation? The military has good reason to be prepared of course.

For Feds, ‘Lying’ Is a Handy Charge – WSJ.com

Didn’t Martha Stewart go to jail for lying?

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303299604577328102223038294.html

John

I think the lesson is self evident. Stewart was jailed for denying something that she did something that wasn’t a crime to begin with. Special prosecutors always get something.

Is this considered a hate crime?

Found this on reddit. Warning very raw footage of a violent mob attacking one individual. Also notice the CNN report. How would the news react differently if the man wasn’t white but the crowd was?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwoEh-ZwlCI&feature=watch_response <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwoEh-ZwlCI&feature=watch_response>

CNN report

http://www.cnn.com/2012/04/10/justice/maryland-beating/index.html?iref=allsearch <http://www.cnn.com/2012/04/10/justice/maryland-beating/index.html?iref=allsearch>

According to the smoking gun this happened right outside the Baltimore Courthouse

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/buster/assault/videotaped-baltimore-street-beating-879234 <http://www.thesmokinggun.com/buster/assault/videotaped-baltimore-street-beating-879234>

G Bushnell

Is it possible to have black on white hate crimes in Baltimore?

Marines Push Quietly, But Hard, For Navy to Replace C-2s With V-22s

Makes sense to me.

http://defense.aol.com/2012/04/06/marines-push-quietly-but-hard-for-navy-to-replace-c-2s-with-v/?icid=related1

"Fathom the hyprocrisy of a government that features every citizen to prove they are insured…. but not everyone must prove they are a citizen." Ben Stein

NASA Insiders Denounce Agency’s Global Warming Activism

I’ve long wondered how that nutjob James Hansen has been able to keep his job.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/04/10/hansen-and-schmidt-of-nasa-giss-under-fire-engineers-scientists-astronauts-ask-nasa-administration-to-look-at-emprical-evidence-rather-than-climate-models/

Michael Reed

As long as he wants to, I suspect.

NASA Scientists rebuke NASA for promoting man-made climate fears!

Friends and Colleagues,

This one is SO AMUSING to me, but maybe I have a sick sense of humor. NASA’s Jim Hansen has long been the one of the top dozen cronies for the Radical Left’s agenda to push Global Warming Alarmism, and it seems like enough is enough.

It is particularly fitting that this outrage comes concurrent with Senator Inhofe’s book The Greatest Hoax <http://www.amazon.com/The-Greatest-Hoax-Conspiracy-Threatens/dp/1936488493/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1334095848&sr=1-1> , a book I highly recommend. I put up a review on Amazon for his book, so please take a look. My suggestion is that if you read only one book about Global Warming Alarmism, this is the one.

Finally, it is also gratifying that the late novelist Dr. Michael Crichton (who got death threats, ridicule, and was spurned by Hollywood for not going along with Global Warming Alarmism) is also being vindicated. His novel State of Fear <http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0061782661/ref=cm_cr_asin_lnk> was right on, and prescient. I think that 50 years from now this book will be seen as his best work.

Enjoy and learn. Perhaps sanity is returning, if we can but survive this Administration’s false science, fear-mongering, divisiveness, class warfare, and race-baiting until November.

Best,

John D. Trudel

I would not go so far as to use the term hoax, but the consensus view on global warming and climate change is coming apart. We just don’t know enough about climate trends. It is time we found out more with real science rather than leaping to conclusions and then funding only studies consistent with those conclusions.

Analysis of Sci-Fi Field

This columnist has an interesting take on how Sci-Fi morphed from an literature of optimism in the Golden Age to a literature of pessimism nowadays. I’ve long thought the field took a dark turn somewhere and I lost my passion for it in the 1980’s. Then again, maybe it was me that changed, not the field.

http://pjmedia.com/eddriscoll/2012/04/04/why-we-need-big-bold-science-fiction/

Michael Reed

Science fiction comes in waves. I tell stories that have fantastic elements in them. Rather like the old bards who sang to the warriors. Come, give me some of that wine and a slice of that roast, and I will tell you of a place where men can fly, and a story about a virgin and a bull…

Seen on Slashdot

http://news.illinois.edu/news/12/0410braininjury_AronBarbey.html

“Scientists report that they have mapped the physical architecture of intelligence in the brain. Theirs is one of the largest and most comprehensive analyses so far of the brain structures vital to general intelligence and to specific aspects of intellectual functioning, such as verbal comprehension and working memory.”

“The researchers also found that brain regions for planning, self-control and other aspects of executive function overlap to a significant extent with regions vital to general intelligence.”

This, as they say, has implications.

John

Perhaps.

Ron Paul

Most of us never planned on winning; we are in the race for an entirely different reason and we are only getting stronger as the non-thinking academicians and ideologues get weaker and more laughable to the world. 

<.>

It should be obvious by now what Ron Paul’s strategy is. Benton alluded to it – to “press the fight for limited, constitutional government’ all the way to the convention floor in Tampa.

“Ron Paul may not get the GOP nomination for president in 2012, but whoever does will be leading a party much different from the one that exists today. It will include delegates to the national convention, activists, and party officials who support a non-interventionist foreign policy, sound money, and civil liberties. You talk about a nightmare for the party oligarchs!”Kenn Jacobine wrote last month.

</>

http://www.infowars.com/new-york-times-clueless-why-ron-paul-keeps-campaigning/

I suspect that with the loss of the geriatric vote and the boomer vote, we might have a decent party again  but I doubt we will have much of a country to preside over. 

—–

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

If Obama is reelected what happens then?

eBooks vs. Print

Dr. Pournelle,

I thought you might enjoy this blog post about the transition to eBooks.

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/04/books-bits-vs-atoms.html

Regards,

Kenny Biel

Lucifer’s Hammer

Short and sweet. Do you think Peter Jackson and/or Neil Blomkamp could bring LH, my favorite story, to the screen and do it justice? I think it would be wonderful to see the character’s brought to life and I think the story is more timely than ever before, given our current situation in both the US and the world in general. Thanks so much.

Paul Miller

We have sold options on Lucifer’s Hammer several times, but none has ever been picked up, and just now no one has an option. I’d love to see it made into a movie. Thanks for the kind words. It has held up pretty well for many years.

Alice Rivlin on Federal Spending

Jerry,

This year, Alice Rivlin, President Clinton’s director of OMB, 1994-1996, wrote:

"For the foreseeable future, if policies are not changed, federal spending will grow faster than the economy and faster than revenues at any set of tax rates. This trajectory cannot be sustained indefinitely. Any country whose public debt keeps rising faster than its GDP can grow will eventually be in trouble. The only question is, ‘When?’"

—Dr. Alice M. Rivlin in "The Domenici-Rivlin Tax Reform Proposal" By Alice M. Rivlin, The Brookings Institution and Georgetown University, Presented at the Annual Meetings of the American Economic Association Chicago, Illinois, January 7, 2012,

Link to retrieve article:

<http://www.aeaweb.org/aea/2012conference/program/retrieve.php?pdfid=641>

We continue to live in Robert Heinlein’s "Crazy Years." I do have to remember that despair is a sin 🙁

Regards, Charles Adams, Bellevue, NE

The crazy years. Indeed.

US ecosystems basically unaffected by global warming, studies show 

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/04/10/streams_unaffected_by_global_warming/

US ecosystems basically unaffected by global warming, studies show

Streams fail to dry up as expected at test sites

By Lewis Page <http://forms.theregister.co.uk/mail_author/?story_url=/2012/04/10/streams_unaffected_by_global_warming/>

Posted in Biology <http://www.theregister.co.uk/science/biology/> , 10th April 2012 11:37 GMT <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/04/10/>

Scientists monitoring water flow in streams at test sites across the USA have found, unexpectedly, that the global warming seen in the late 20th century had basically no effect on most of the ecosystems they studied.

The world in general is thought to have warmed up by approximately half a degree C from 1980 to the year 2000, and while the past decade has seen no further increase, most full-time professional climate scientists expect warming to resume in the near future. However there has been much disagreement as to just what effects this could have.

It has often been suggested that the 20th-century warming alone would be sufficient to start causing noteworthy damage to various important ecosystems such as the wet forests of the US Pacific Northwest, which might in turn result in higher levels of atmospheric carbon going forward as trees died and decomposed – and then in future failed to absorb the large amounts of CO2 they normally would. Such postulated positive-feedback mechanisms provide much of the basis for forecasts showing rapidly-climbing global temperatures in this century.

For this reason, the US government has been establishing long-term monitoring facilities across its territory for decades now, allowing accurate records to be collected showing exactly what ecosystem impacts have occurred. Results are now in on 35 important headwater basins feeding river systems across the States over the last 20 to 60 years: and they show that in 28 of these, no effects on water flow from warming could be found at all.

Even where a warming-driven effect could be identified in the record, it was small compared to other more important factors such as "municipal and agricultural water usage, forest management, wildfire, hurricanes, and natural climate cycles".

"When presented with warmer and drier conditions, trees in the Pacific Northwest appear to use less water and therefore the impact on streamflow is reduced,” explains geographer Julia Jones. “In other parts of the country, forest regrowth after past logging and hurricanes thus far has a more definitive signal in streamflow reduction than have warming temperatures.”

According to a statement <http://oregonstate.edu/ua/ncs/archives/2012/apr/study-impact-warming-climate-doesn%E2%80%99t-always-translate-streamflow> [1] issued by Jones’ university highlighting the new research:

Jones said the important message in the research is that the impacts of climate change are not simple and straightforward.

The full paper (pdf) <http://harvardforest.fas.harvard.edu/sites/harvardforest.fas.harvard.edu/files/BioScience_Jones.pdf> [2] is published in the journal BioScience.

Previous data <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/02/20/ecosystems_not_much_impacted_by_drought_heatwave/> [3] from the US long-term environment monitor stations has also shown that droughts and heatwaves aren’t nearly so big a deal for ecosystems as had been thought.

Tracy

And we can end with a cheerful note:

US government service improves after virus takes out email:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/04/10/us_government_service_improves_without_email/print.html

“A virus attack which hit the US Economic Development Administration (EDA) [1] was so severe the agency pulled the plug on its email systems. Twelve weeks later the agency is yet to fully restore email and has only a rudimentary web site in place. But as the Washington Post reports [2], some of the agency’s staff and customers have found faxes and phone calls offer better and faster service.” <snip>

“You pick up your phone and you get back to some human interaction,” one customer told the Post, “which in my opinion is never a bad thing, especially for government.”

We knew it all along.

Ed