View 717 Sunday, March 11, 2012

The news from Afghanistan confirm the view of Lt. Col. Davis:

Truth, lies and Afghanistan

How military leaders have let us down

By LT. COL. DANIEL L. DAVIS

I spent last year in Afghanistan, visiting and talking with U.S. troops and their Afghan partners. My duties with the Army’s Rapid Equipping Force took me into every significant area where our soldiers engage the enemy. Over the course of 12 months, I covered more than 9,000 miles and talked, traveled and patrolled with troops in Kandahar, Kunar, Ghazni, Khost, Paktika, Kunduz, Balkh, Nangarhar and other provinces.

What I saw bore no resemblance to rosy official statements by U.S. military leaders about conditions on the ground.

Entering this deployment, I was sincerely hoping to learn that the claims were true: that conditions in Afghanistan were improving, that the local government and military were progressing toward self-sufficiency. I did not need to witness dramatic improvements to be reassured, but merely hoped to see evidence of positive trends, to see companies or battalions produce even minimal but sustainable progress.

Instead, I witnessed the absence of success on virtually every level. http://armedforcesjournal.com/2012/02/8904030

A simple summary of Davis’s findings: Afghanistan sucks, and no one at the pointy end wants to be there.

Maybe after this last incident we won’t be.

Sandra: A one act play by Dr. William Briggs, Statistician to the Stars

Hello Jerry,

You have had a couple of comments about the ‘Trials of Sandra’ and how her rights were being violated, so I thought that you may enjoy Dr. Briggs’ (http://wmbriggs.com/) little one act play:

"Sandra Fluke Mows The Lawn: A Play In One Act Published under Culture, Fun

Scene: A suburban Washington DC street some sunny afternoon in July.

Little Sandra and her friend Mark arrive at the house of Mr George.

Little Sandra pushes a manual lawn mower, the kind where the blade spins by pushing the wheels, and Mark holds a broom.

Little Sandra: Excuse me, sir. Would you like your grass mowed?

Mr George: Well, hello there. Trying to drum up a little business, eh? But aren’t you two a trifle old for this?

Little Sandra: Yes, sir, we are. Trying to earn money, I mean. We’re both college students and our stipend of fifty-five-thousand isn’t enough to make it through the whole year. So in the summers we cut grass to make something extra on the side.

Mr George: Isn’t that nice. Makes my heart sing to see gumption like that. Reminds me when I was a boy cutting tobacco. I suppose the lawn could use a trim—

(On these words, Mark takes the mower from Little Sandra, hands her the broom, and begins cutting the lawn.)

Mr George: (With a smile in his voice) Anxious, isn’t it!

Little Sandra: He sure is, sir. And now, sir, the matter of payment?

Mr George: (Pulling out his wallet) Of course, of course. This outta do it. (He hands her a ten)

Little Sandra: Very funny, sir. But I’m sure you know there are laws that specify that employers must pay their employees a certain minimum wage?

Mr George: Now just a minute, young lady—

Little Sandra: The laws also stipulate a minimum number of contracted hours. This doesn’t include mandatory breaks and a lunch which must be a full hour.

Mr George: Why would you need lunch? This lawn isn’t—

Little Sandra: Yes, sir. Lunch. You’re not responsible for paying for our lunch, but you should be aware—here are the numbers (she hands over a sheet of paper)—those employers that received the highest Diversity rankings sponsored their employees’ meals.

(It is clear Mark is doing a half-assed job of the mowing.)

Mr George: The whole job will only take you half an hour!

Little Sandra: The law’s the law, sir. And I’m a law student and activist so I know what I’m talking about.

(Mr George fishes in his wallet and pulls out more cash)

Mr George: Fine, okay. Here. Just get the job done and go.

Little Sandra: This barely covers it, sir. But since this is your first offense, we won’t file charges. But now there is the matter of my morning after pill, sir?

Mr George: Morning after?

Little Sandra: My abortifacient. I’m not obligated to tell you this, but Mark and I last night, for a very special reason, were in a hurry and I worry something might have happened. So if you’ll just…

Mr George: Young lady, I have no idea what you’re talking about.

Little Sandra: (Sighs) You already acknowledge you’re my employer?

(She doesn’t wait for an answer) We’re already covered the wage laws, but you should know that under the new Obamacare laws, you have to pay for my abortions. You’ll also have to pay for my future birth control.

Mr George: What! I will not pay for yours—or anybody’s–abortion! I am a Catholic and I believe abortion is murder.

Little Sandra: Look, sir. I’ll make this easy. Your religious beliefs are irrelevant. And in any case, they are trumped by me being a woman. I want the abortion and you have to pay for it, and that is that.

Mr George: This is insanity! Why should I give you money to murder your baby?

Little Sandra: I’ll not answer the implied charge, sir. But you obviously have to pay because you’re my employer. When you became an employer, you took on the implied duties of being my bedroom monitor.

You must fund the prevention of and the eventual abortion of any children I decide I do not want. Or if I decide I do want the child, you have to pay for that, too. And you must do this because you’re an employer.

Mr George: Why should I pay because I’m an employer? Why should you allow me to have that level of intrusion into your life? You have your own money. Take responsibility for yourself! You pay for it!

Little Sandra: Surely you realize this is an issue of women’s health, sir. Here are the relevant statistics. (She hands him another paper) You wouldn’t want me, a woman, to become sick because I had unprotected sex, would you? It will be cheaper for you to pay for my abortion than to pay for the birth of the child.

Mr George: You’re out of your mind, young lady. I’m not paying for either. It’s your life. You pay. You damn your own soul. Don’t make me complicit. I only wanted you to do a specific task for me, a task for which I’m already paying more than enough.

Little Sandra: Employers must pay because they are employers.

Employers have a duty to pay for whatever might affect their employees’ bodies, wherever and whatever the employees do with those bodies. Employees have no monetary or personal responsibility at all.

Employees have rights. If you don’t give me the money, I will run to Congress and tell on you, sir. Now if you would just fetch your checkbook?

Mr George: And to think I’ve always been a loyal Democrat!

(Mr George exits off stage to fetch his checkbook.)

Little Sandra: Mark? Ready? He’s going to get the money. That’s good enough.

(Mark leaves the lawn mower and doesn’t bother sweeping the clippings. Mr George returns)

Mr George: This whole thing is surreal. I can’t believe what has become of my country.

(He begins to write a check)

Little Sandra: Just one moment, sir. Don’t forget that we need funds to cover Mark’s gender reassignment surgery. Tomorrow, he will be Mary! (Whispers) That’s why we were in such a hurry last night. You know, one last time?

Mr George: But…what?

Little Sandra: You’re an employer, sir.

(Mr George knows he’s beaten, his shoulders slump and he writes a check and hands it over)

Little Sandra: Thank you, sir. Nice doing business with you.

(Little Sandra and Mark/y drop the equipment and turn to leave, laughing as they go. After a few paces, Little Sandra’s cell phone

rings)

Little Sandra: Hello, Mr President!

(The end)"

Like I said before: the lines between parody, satire, and factual reporting are now indistinguishable. We now live in a country in

which the above could be a transcription of an actual event.

Wonderland, in retrospect, is beginning to seem staid and stogy. And sane.

Bob Ludwick=

I’m not certain I have ever said that Ms. Fluke’s rights were violated, and I certainly don’t agree with her views about my obligation to pay for her contraceptives.

Review: Into the Forbidden Zone: A Trip Through Hell and High Water in Post-Earthquake Japan, by William T. Vollmann

http://www.downloadtheuniverse.com/dtu/2012/02/a-guided-tour-of-hell.html

"Likewise, it’s impossible to read Into the Forbidden Zone without feeling like we have missed the forest for the trees when it comes to covering this disaster. So much of the media attention since March 12 has been focused on Fukushima. In fact, just last week, I went to a panel at the American Association for the Advancement of Science conference, where reporter Michael Hanlon showed us charts documenting how quickly and thoroughly the nuclear aspect overshadowed everything else—to the point that we, the media, began to ignore the far greater suffering and loss of life caused by the earthquake and tsunami.

"A year after the accident, there’s still not a single person who has been killed by radiation from Fukushima. (Even the Fukushima 50 are still alive and well, months after the media predicted they would die horribly. That surprised me, but it comes from Pieter Doornenbal, a scientist who studies radiation in Japan.)"

In fact the death toll from radiation at Fukushima Daiichi remains zero, and the predicted deaths from future cancer are indeterminate, but not high. This was not Chernobyl.

Odysseus Lies Here?

<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/11/opinion/sunday/kristof-odysseus-lies-here.html>

—-

Roland Dobbins

I remember looking over the island now called Ithaca and wondering if this could possibly be the island described by Homer. This seems much more reasonable.

John D. Clark’s Ignition: An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants

http://library.sciencemadness.org/library/books/ignition.pdf

Dear Dr Pournelle,

I do not know whether this is an authorized publication, but I do know it’s out of print and commanding $500+ on amazon.

If this is authorized, it might be of interest to your readers.

best regards,

Jean-Louis Beaufils

Paris

To the best I can determine this is at worst an orphan work whose copyright owner, if there is a valid copyright owner, is unaware of its existence.

Speaking of historical temperature data…

Have you heard that Google is now changing its records to help perpetrate the fraud?

https://sonofsoylentgreen.wordpress.com/2012/03/07/hansen-outsources-fraud-to-google/

And here’s a good review of Mann’s book.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/03/07/a-detailed-review-of-manns-book-the-hockey-stick-and-the-climate-wars-as-it-relates-to-the-wegman-report-to-congress/

John David Galt

And that will have to do for now. I am still trying to recover from this thing which is debilitating but no longer dangerous. Recovery is very slow.

View 716 Friday, March 09, 2012

I am still climbing out of the doldrums. This malaise doesn’t want to go away, and although the glycerin has eased nasal inflammation, my head still gets stopped up unless I take Sudafed. And my energy levels are low.

“Free Speech Under Fire” by Jonathan Turley in today’s LA Times http://jonathanturley.org/2012/03/09/free-speech-under-attack/ is worth your attention. Excerpt:

Some historical debates have now become hate speech. After World War II, Germany criminalized not just Nazi symbols but questioning the Holocaust. Although many have objected that the laws only force such ignorance and intolerance underground, the police have continued the quixotic fight to prevent barred utterances, such as the arrest in 2010 of a man in Hamburg caught using a Hitler speech as a ring tone.

In January, the French parliament passed a law making it a crime to question the Armenian genocide. The law was struck down by the Constitutional Council, but supporters have vowed to introduce a new law to punish deniers. When accused of pandering to Armenian voters, the bill’s author responded, “That’s democracy.”

Perhaps, but it is not liberty. Most democratic constitutions strive not to allow the majority to simply dictate conditions and speech for everyone — the very definition of what the framers of the U.S. Constitution called tyranny of the majority. It was this tendency that led John Adams to warn: “Democracy … soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There was never a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.”

The whole notion that it is a “hate crime” to question any part of a consensus is frightening. As an example, it is extremely unlikely that the number of persons killed in the Holocaust was 6 million. That number was promulgated at a time when the true number could not possibly be known. That doesn’t mean that the Holocaust never happened; but it is exceedingly unlikely that the true number was known at the time the estimate was first announced. I expect that I will get at least one accusation of being anti-Semitic for saying that. But either one believes in rational discussion or one does not; either one believes in evidence, or one does not. At one time there was a healthy debate on the subject of Hitler’s Final Solution. There was a lot of nonsense put forward by all – there were many more than two – sides in that debate. I can’t think the world is worse off for that. I don’t think that refusing to discuss an issue is a good idea.

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free. And Democracy is not liberty. Sometimes democracy is the best protection for liberty, but that is not always so; there can be and often are conflicts between liberty and democracy. For a discussion that, read about the Convention of 1787 and what was said and done there.

I have this:

Without a true global average temperature covering a long enough period to establish a STATISTICALLY VALID trend (not just a regression line thrown across disparate measurements from here & there); then there is no way to prove that the planet’s climate has warmed.

You can repeat all year long that "we know" that the Northern Hemisphere was colder because this or that growing season was shorter (according to some guy) or because the Delaware had ice on it when Washington crossed it — it proves nothing, it is not science.

If you disagree, why not submit what you "know" to a scientific publication? Why not present it as a "scientific" paper? Go collect your Nobel Prize in "What everybody knows" or in the "If you don’t believe what I say, because I say it, you’re a dope" category.

You ASSUME that it is uncontested fact.

I contest it. And you CANNOT PROVE WHAT YOU SAY. I DARE YOU TO TRY.

You do not know. You presume. That’s not science. It’s not scientific. It includes no measurement. No observations. You have absolutely no way of determining the extent of the reported cold (or, have you been keeping the hourly-averaged temperature in Tempe, Arizona on October 12, 1872 hidden from us?), yet you claim that the temperature was colder than "normal" (whatever that might be) all across the Northern Hemisphere.

Without ACTUAL THERMOMETER MEASUREMENTS year-round, randomly distributed, and giving full coverage of the hemisphere — what you say you "know", you do not actually know. It is a gratuitous assertion. A baseless BALD-FACED LIE.

And anyone who makes such unfounded, ignorant assertions should probably not go around pretending to be "science-minded" or even rational.

Name Withheld

I am not sure I know what to say. Given those criteria I cannot prove that George Washingon ever existed. I have said that we infer – and that we have confidence in that inference, which is a long way of saying ‘we know’ in the same sense that we know that George Washington existed – that it was colder in 1800 than in 1900, just as I say that we infer, and have confidence in that inference, that it was warmer than at present during the Viking era. This is I think the first time I have ever heard the first statement contested. They certainly thought in 1900 that it was warmer than it had been in 1800. We have records of growing seasons, the dates on which ice formed, a fair number of sea temperature measurements (of varying accuracy and reliability, but they were temperature measurements), almanac readings, newspaper stories of rivers and lakes frozen over, stories of ice skating on brackish canals, and a number of other effects that we would reasonably expect from a colder climate. If the objection is that we don’t know to anything like 1/10^th degree what that temperature was in 1800 I agree heartily; indeed I have said that often. I don’t really know how to get an average temperature over a large area to 1/10^th degree even today, but I can at least describe repeatable operations producing temperatures we can compare from year to year. That will have to do, just as crop records and dates of ice formation and breakup will have to do for earlier times when we didn’t keep accurate temperature records.

I am so accustomed to being taken to task by AGW Believers that I haven’t really prepared for someone who attacks me as a warmer.

I have no accurate thermometer records for the period of the Ice Age, and no direct knowledge that northern North America was covered by hundreds of meters of ice, nor do I have any photographs showing that sea levels were hundreds of feet lower during those Ice Ages; but I have seen enough evidence to convince me that we may reasonably conclude that there was ice, just as I have come confidence that Arrhenius was correct when he concluded that the planet was slowly warming in 1900. He had no direct temperature measurements of the average temperature of the Earth, nor was there any reasonable way to collect them even with the technology of his time if he had unlimited funding. So far as I can see, his back of the envelope conclusions on what would happen if atmospheric CO2 level doubled have held up pretty well for a hundred years – indeed about as well as have all the expensive models.

In any event, I see no reason to continue to flog this horse. Those who insist that the Earth hasn’t been getting warmer at all since 1800 do not have the weight of the evidence – in my judgment.

Nor do I think it reasonable to ignore the possibility of climate changes, or to study the effect of CO2 increases on it. The CO2 increases are very real and quantifiable. In my judgment the warming trend from 1800 to present is also very real, but not so accurately quantifiable. I do not accept the accuracy of the climate models, but that does not mean that they are not studying a real phenomenon.

We can’t “prove” the “observational data” of this graph, but I think there is enough evidence to accept it as at least as accurate as any other, and a good general picture of what is going on:

http://m-francis.livejournal.com/47705.html

I haven’t seen any history/prediction I like better. Note that it is a pretty simple model. If you now impose the 11 year solar cycle on the multi-decade observation it appears to give an even better fit to the observations. Of course by that time you are way beyond the actual limit of accuracy of the observations, and it’s more of a game than any serious scientific effort.

Do note that Arrhenius predicted an “extra” temperature rise from the rising CO2, but so far that appears to be lost in the noise; as far as we can tell, it’s getting warmer but there’s an oscillation. Perhaps the CO2 effect is in diminishing the cold trends, but we don’t have data accurate enough to confirm that, so far as I can tell.

Prying in the Name of Diversity, http://www.jewishjournal.com/thewideangle/item/prying_in_the_name_of_diversity_20120309/ describes an astonishing new law. Excerpt:

The results are in. Of the 1,005 California judges who responded to a government survey released last week, 969 identified themselves as heterosexual, 19 as lesbians and 17 as gay men.

We know this — though it’s none of our business — because of a highly intrusive law passed by the Legislature last year. Under its provisions, every judge in the state, as well as all judicial applicants, nominees and appointees, is asked to provide information about his or her “gender, gender identity and sexual orientation.”

The statute that authorizes this new intrusion into judges’ private lives was enacted after lopsided votes in both the Assembly (52 to 25) and the Senate (23 to 15). But if the Legislature seemed to have no concern about the bench’s privacy, many of the state’s judges do. Some 40% of those surveyed didn’t answer the question on this year’s survey.

The goal of the legislation, according to those who backed it, was to promote greater diversity on the bench. But treating sexual orientation as if it were totally analogous to race, gender or ethnicity is wrong. Of course people should be protected from discrimination in employment or public accommodations because of their sexuality. But there’s no justification for the next level of intrusion — seeking to develop demographic data to ostensibly further “diversity.”

I am in agreement with Mr. Lehrer. It’s none of our business. I don’t think the government ought to be collecting or even be aware of much of the data on which it seems eager to make decisions. It is part of the Gnostic heresy that has taken over what used to be called “Progressives” and are now known as Liberals. There are no social problems that cannot be “fixed” by suitable laws and regulations, and there are no principles that limit what government should attempt.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/06/nyregion/fatal-shooting-of-ex-marine-by-white-plains-police-raises-questions.html?_r=1 will worry you. And an unarmed active duty Marine sergeant was shot dead by an Orange County Sheriff deputy sheriff in front of his children, for no discernible reason. The Marines at Pendleton are incensed.

http://politics.blogs.foxnews.com/2012/03/06/gingrich-invites-snl-space-camp

Newt was a space cadet before he was Minority Whip. It’s the most consistent thing about his policy I know of.

The Magyars’ Revenge, Jerry

It appears the new post-Communist constitution of Hungary offends some of the usual poobahs of political correctness:

http://takimag.com/article/the_magyars_revenge_charles_coulombe/print#axzz1ofHhPGmn

I really love the term “moral munchkins in Brussels and Washington.”

Ed

I haven’t time to give this the commentary it deserved. In 1956, the Hungarians acted like Poles, the Poles acted like Czechs, and the Czechs acted like swine. That hasn’t been forgotten among any of those peoples.

View 716 Thursday, March 08, 2012

My day is being devoured by locusts, and the evening will be as well.

Be of good cheer. The demographics are favorable. That is, the intellectual liberals are not reproducing themselves, while the homeschooler population is growing. A long time ago David Riesman characterized Western nations as those with “incipient population decline.” Actually, though, that holds for just about everyone. The wealthy Muslim nations aren’t expanding. Their per capita income rates are really low, and if they rise the fertility rate drops. The population bomb has hit them and over time it will be more and more difficult to support an aging population that lives longer.

Of course civilizations die for reasons other than lack of population growth. Western cultural weapons of mass destruction work on the West as well as the Middle East. The culture that many of use grew up in has eroded terribly, and is not being transmitted to the next generation through the public schools. The notions that freedom is important, that government ought to be limited, that self government is preferable as well as cheap – these are not being transmitted. Note the health care debate. The idea of freedom and responsibility doesn’t seem to enter it.

But the home school population is growing, and for the most part they do pass along the values that made America what it was.

It is not yet time to give up.

View 716 Wednesday, March 07, 2012

I have finished editing The Secret of Black Ship Island by Niven, Pournelle, and Barnes, and sent it off as release candidate 1. Since everyone was pretty well satisfied before I tore into it, and I think what I did was improvement, I think it will go pretty quickly now – instead of the months it takes to produce a book from the final draft with print publishers, it ought to go fairly quickly now. We have a cover, and a preface, and acknowledgements, and a good clean text.

One thing about self published books. Most authors are not very good editors of their own work. Niven and Barnes and I have developed pretty good editorial habits and we’ve worked together long enough to know some of each other’s weaknesses, such as my tendency to overly long and complex sentences and Steve’s addiction to gerunds, so our works are generally well edited; having said that I don’t want to diminish the contribution of editors like Ed Kuehn, Bob Gleason, and Jim Baen on our works in the past. In this case we have had the benefit of my advisors as well.

Good editing is a major part of good publishing. I expect to see more editing services offered and accepted as traditional publishing firms decline. Some will be excellent and some not so much so, and choosing among them will be a real problem: there will be many including academics whose opinion of their editorial abilities may be more favorable than is warranted. I expect to see a flock of editorial services offered followed by a general shakeout.

My other accomplishment was to get set for my trip to Colorado Springs where I am to take part in a conference sponsored by the Air Force. I confess that I have never had much practice in doing my own travel arrangements. For a long time I used the excellent travel agency run by Rick Foss, and when the internet shook those out there was always someone else to set these things up for me. It turns out to have taken a lot longer to figure out how to get to Colorado Springs for a couple of days than I would have believed. I wanted to go out of Burbank, but that turned out to be nearly impossible, and almost always involved two place changes and many hours wasted. Eventually I found a way that has me in Colorado the night before I had to get there – getting from here to Colorado Springs by dinner time is nearly impossible even from LAX unless you are willing to leave at bloody dawn. Anyway, I managed it, but it ate a lot of my time. I sure miss the old days of travel agents. Ah well. I suppose this Internet stuff is all for the best.

It’s dinner time. I’ll try to do a full mail bag again shortly. And I am feeling better. A physician reader recommended food grade glycerin as a nasal lubricant, and it sure helps. It works well with Sudafed.

For those who took me to task for my discussion of Sandra Fluke, apparently you were not reading what I said. I don’t fault Ms. Fluke for being an advocate; she’s rather good at it. I suppose I need to address the subject again, but it’s dinner time, and I have used up most of my energy. Another time.

Major space weather tomorrow, but from what I have heard this is biggest solar eruption since 2000, which puts it in a different class from the 1859 solar flare. But your GPS may not work so well tomorrow. But we’re due for a really big one sometime this century.