View 714 Friday, February 24, 2012

Dr. Pournelle —

A reminder of this day in history:

Written 24 February 1836, Mission San Antonio de Valero (the Alamo)

“To the People of Texas & All Americans in the World:

Fellow citizens & compatriots—I am besieged, by a thousand or more of the Mexicans under Santa Anna—I have sustained a continual Bombardment & cannonade for 24 hours & have not lost a man. The enemy has demanded a surrender at discretion, otherwise, the garrison are to be put to the sword, if the fort is taken—I have answered the demand with a cannon shot, & our flag still waves proudly from the walls. I shall never surrender or retreat. Then, I call on you in the name of Liberty, of patriotism & everything dear to the American character, to come to our aid, with all dispatch—The enemy is receiving reinforcements daily & will no doubt increase to three or four thousand in four or five days. If this call is neglected, I am determined to sustain myself as long as possible & die like a soldier who never forgets what is due to his own honor & that of his country—Victory or Death.

William Barret Travis

Lt. Col. comdt

P.S. The Lord is on our side—When the enemy appeared in sight we had not three bushels of corn—We have since found in deserted houses 80 or 90 bushels & got into the walls 20 or 30 head of Beeves.

Travis”

It still gives me chills to read it.

Pieter

Thermopylae had its messenger of defeat. The Alamo had none.

Bill Gates has an education article “Shaming teachers is wrong solution for school performance” that’s worth your attention. The Gates Foundation has found that in most schools, if you eliminate the worst 10% of the teachers – don’t bother to replace them, just get them out of there – you greatly improve the efficiency and performance of the school. They don’t go into details, but speculation is easy. Good teachers who break their hearts trying cannot be much encouraged when they see they are evaluated and paid exactly the same as time-servers and incompetents and frauds none of whom can be fired. None of this is in the article, which is in reaction to publishing the “performance” statistics of individual teachers, and is a powerful critique of the evaluation methods in use today.

Gates says that good teaching is a missionary activity. He’s probably tight, too. As for the current situation:

I am a strong proponent of measuring teachers’ effectiveness, and my foundation works with many schools to help make sure that such evaluations improve the overall quality of teaching. But publicly ranking teachers by name will not help them get better at their jobs or improve student learning. On the contrary, it will make it a lot harder to implement teacher evaluation systems that work.

In most public schools today, teachers are simply rated “satisfactory” or “unsatisfactory,” and evaluations consist of having the principal observe a class for a few minutes a couple of times each year. Because we are just beginning to understand what makes a teacher effective, the vast majority of teachers are rated “satisfactory.” Few get specific feedback or training to help them improve.

The rest of the essay is worth reading.

The problem is the unions which exist to protect incompetent teachers. The unions will oppose any form of teacher performance evaluation, and insist on seniority and credentialism as the only measures for teacher evaluation. That is clearly wrong.

One should always take Gates seriously, and I agree that publishing teacher evaluation scores is probably not a good idea; but I fear that his views will be used by the unions and “professional teacher associations” as an argument for doing nothing, changing nothing, and studying the problem while our public schools fail, and expensive private schools solidify the class distinctions in America so that only the rich get a good education.

It’s happening now. In many places the primary family goal is to get the kids out of the public schools. Into Catholic schools, private schools, Lutheran schools – anywhere but in the public schools. Of course in Los Angeles that’s particularly important. It happens that I live quite close to one of the best public grade school in LAUSD. It was almost wrecked some years ago in the bussing era, but it has recovered and people now buy houses in my neighborhood in order to make their children eligible. That’s shameful.

Afghanistan is exploding because prisoners were sending notes to each other in copies of the Koran, and the guards burned the books.

The only thing that has ever united the Afghan tribes has been the presence of armed foreigners on their soil. So has it been since Alexander the Great, and so is it now.

I’m still recovering from what officially isn’t flu but certainly lays you out like flu. Actually I had pneumonia once and this has taken longer to clear up. I haven’t had much energy, and what little I have has gone into errands and household maintenance. Apologies. I’m dancing as fast as I can.

While I was clearing some stuff out I came across a copy of our 1980 technology novel OATH OF FEALTY, and began to read. I got trapped. It’s a very good story and a lot more complex than it looks at first. It was written on an S-100 system with Electric Pencil, long before the computer revolution took off, so one would expect it to be primitive, but it’s not. It doesn’t of course have the Internet, but there’s something about as good; and our projections of some of the consequences of advances in computers were pretty good. We missed some of the implications of wireless so sometimes characters have to plug into a wired network, but we even had some wireless advances. It really holds up well. If you haven’t read Oath of Fealty, the paperback edition is available, and there’s a Kindle edition. It was a best seller in its time, and it’s still very readable.

View 714 Thursday, February 23, 2012

In Defense of Earmarks

The Constitution gives Congress control of the purse strings. Congress works through a system of committees. It’s not possible for every Member and Senator to be an expert on everything the government spends money on.

Now on the principle of subsidiarity, that should mean that many of the decisions made by Congress ought to be delegated to much lower levels. Left to the states, or even to local school boards and tax districts.

On the other hand, to pursue a strategy of technology – as an example – specific decisions have to be made. In military research and development it is quite possible to have legitimate disagreements on policy. On the other hand, if you don’t have the technology you can’t take certain directions. You can’t build weapons that you don’t know how to build.

At these levels it is quite possible that individual Congressmen have good ideas for development projects that are not favored by the Administration. Much of our military technology has been developed due to funds specifically allocated in authorization and appropriation bills. Then there is service politics: the Air Force will no relinquish any fixed wing air missions, but in fact the Air Force doesn’t like to do close support of the field army, or interdiction and isolation of the battle area. The Air Force doesn’t like Warthogs, and being assigned as a Warthog pilot is generally considered a career ending post. Most of the close support and interdiction missions turn out to be flown by Air National Guard units – and most of the appropriations for the aircraft and weapons needed for those missions has been through legislative direction – i.e. earmarks.

I could give other examples, but I think the point is made. The Constitution specifically gives the Federal Government the right to build post offices and post roads, and in the early days of the Republic there was considerable competition for funding of post offices in various small communities. Log rolling – you vote for my local project and I’ll vote for yours – has been with us since the first Congress. It’s part of the oil that keeps the system running.

Now it’s true enough that Earmark Projects will increase without number if there is no limit placed on them. Part of that is the Iron Law – once something is established there is always a lobby for it, and since everyone pays but few benefit directly you get a force for the appropriation and only a generalized ‘turn them all out!’ opposition. That too is the way the world works.

Earmarks need to be controlled by rules. They should always be open, voted on by the relevant committee, not thrust into the appropriation in the dead of night by an influential Member. They should be debated. But they should not simply be ended. Sometimes individual Congressmen have pet projects that really do benefit all of us. That particularly happens in the sciences, where there would be very little contrarian research and development if the Big Science consensus controlled the appropriations. Earmarks can be for very silly projects, and fund very silly ideas; but they are not really a very large part of the budget, and for every dozen or two pork barrel museums and preservations of the birthplace of some obscure community favorite son, there will be sound research and development that leads to useful technology. The DC/X could be classed as an earmark; and the country is better off for having funded it. It was rammed down the throat of the expendable rocket industry which has no incentive to develop technology for reusable rockets.

I’m in favor of having a brighter spotlight put on earmark appropriations, but it would be a very bad idea simply to eliminate them.

I’m still trying to recover from this upper respiratory things. I think I am recovering – I thought I would be recovered enough to go to my LASFS meeting tonight – but it’s slow. When it came time to go out, I stayed home and watched mindless TV. I’m now trying the zinc stuff: I don’t really believe in it, but I have recommendations from MD readers who say they don’t believe in it either but they’ve seen it work and use it themselves… I took a long nap after lunch and still didn’t feel up to going out. Sable is making it very clear that she is entitled to walks, and why aren’t we doing it>

I’m working on it.

But at least some things get done. I think we have the final version of the latest Niven-Pournelle-Barnes project.

Coming soon to an eBook site near you. Note I said coming soon. It’s not up yet. This is a teaser. It’s a novella set on Avalon.

View 714 Wednesday, February 22, 2012

ALAS:

‘FTL neutrinos’ result caused by inattention to Pournelle’s Law?

<http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/02/neutrinos-faulty-cable/>

Roland Dobbins

The applicable Pournelle’s Law was one of troubleshooting: 90% of the time it’s a cable. I first formulated that back in S-100 days, and it’s still true. Now it may be that we’re better off without faster than light neutrons, but I for one regret that they’re going away. Of course this was always the way to bet it, but it was a more intereresting universe when everything we thought we understood was fundamentally wrong…

Of course we still have the situation where some large portion of the universe is composed of dark matter which we can’t see or detect, and dark energy which we can’t find but have to believe in on faith. Of course one explanation of the data that forces us to believe in these undetectables is a revised aether theory such as Petr Beckmann’s aether as an entangled gravitational field – see Einstein Plus Two by Beckmann, and that would be interesting. Do note that I’m playing games. I do wonder about the proliferation of hypothetical constructs and intervening variables in physics. I thought those were a monopoly of the social sciences…

The Republican Debates

I watched the CNN-moderated Republican candidate debates that took place this evening in Mesa, Arizona.

The clear winner was Newt Gingrich. The clear loser was Senator Santorum, who was often petulant rather than presidential. It wasn’t a fatal loss, but Santorum must learn to stop taking the bait. The moderator, and others, all tried to get him to jump Romney rather than be presidential, to defend some past record rather than state what he would do now, to be apologetic rather than positive – and Santorum rose to the bait every time. Then he got into a long term slanging match with Romney. Neither of them looked very good in that, and neither came off all that well, but Romney looked more presidential than Santorum. Senator Santorum really has to learn the first rule of campaigning: don’t let the opposition set the agenda. Don’t respond and react. Santorum’s touchiness won’t hurt him as President. He’s sound in principle, and unlike British Prime Ministers, don’t have to engage in debates unless they want to, and being able to debate isn’t terribly important one way or another in actually governing the country. Debate talent is important for campaigning for the office of President, but not for executing that office.

That, of course, is one of the major flaws of democracy. We require those who would be president to spend most of their lives learning how to get the office, and almost none on learning how to be President once they get there.

Incidentally, Newt knows this. Campaigning actually bores him. He prefers to be among smart people discussing possibilities, in a situation in which he doesn’t have to be guarded but can say what he thinks as the ideas spring up. Most fresh and original ideas aren’t all that useful. They can lead to something useful, but we don’t use the phrase ‘half baked” for no reason. Many half-baked ideas do bake out, sometimes into very good things indeed. But of course campaign debates are not the place to spring new concepts; those need discussing in private and among friends who aren’t playing ‘gotcha’. When Newt was an unknown Congressman making speeches about the nature of the Constitution to the empty House chamber after hours, he was quite different from when he was Minority Whip, and when he found that it might be possible to win a Republican Majority for the first time in forty years and he went into campaign mode he had to change once again. Part of that was time, but part was the requirements of campaigns.

His experience at this came across during the debate. He stayed on target, didn’t rise to the bait and use his time on petty denunciations of others or in reacting to some accusation, and he pretty well stayed on point: we’re in big trouble, and it’s going to take some fundamental and profound changes to get out of it. We’re going to need energy independence to break our enthrallment to the Middle East. Breaking our energy dependence is a first requirement for independence and liberty. Fortunately we have the resources; all we need is to get the government out of that way.

Ron Paul came off well. When asked what single word best described him, he said “consistency” and he’s right. He doesn’t have plans and programs for education because the Constitution doesn’t give the government any rights or powers over education. It’s not a matter for either Congress or the President. He applies this principle to most of the matters brought up. He’s also keenly aware that we are spending money we don’t have, much of it on matters the Federal Government has no Constitutional power to spend it on. His return to the first principles of Constitutionalism seems absolute, and as the campaign goes on you begin to realize that he really means it. Whether that’s possible – whether the American people even want such a thing – isn’t clear to me, and I suspect it is not clear to him; but that’s his position, and he’s going to stick to it. Ron Paul reminds me of John Quincy Adams. We are the friends of liberty everywhere, but we are the guardians only of our own. We do not go abroad seeking dragons to slay. We have enough to do preserving our own liberty.

Santorum said little I disagreed with, and many things I liked, but I found myself shouting at him when he took the bait and went off on another silly tirade either attacking someone else, or defending his record in the Senate. I know why he does it, but I would far rather he showed himself being presidential rather than reacting as if — but no, I’m not going to frame that image. Let’s just say that he’s capable of looking presidential, and has done so, notably the night he won in Iowa but at other times as well. His positions are consistent and generally defer to the constitution. He’d do better if he displayed them rather than apologizing for voting for No Child Left Behind.

Day of the Drone

The two links below point to something astounding.

There was a time when I was the world’s most informed authority on inertial guidance. This wasn’t because of my expertise, it was because I was editor of Project 75, the USAF comprehensive survey of ballistic missile technology, and I had both the clearance and the access authority – need to know – for all of that. The result was a report that I wrote or edited every page of, but which was classified at a need to know level above mine – which makes sense because it literally had everything we knew about our missiles and everything we thought we knew about everyone else’s. Naturally I could get at every part of the document, but not all of it at once, because the number of copies was limited for very good reasons. Anyway, in those days inertial guidance depended on mechanical gyroscopes, and electronics to get the gyroscopic data. We were developing and hoped soon to deploy gyros which used lasers to pick off the spin rates and other pertinent data, which would increase accuracy because reading the data wouldn’t affect the gyroscope as much as the current electronic means would.

But for all that, an inertial guidance platform with three axis gyroscopes and three axis accelerometers was a fairly large and terribly expensive thing. Moreover, the computer that this had to feed was large too. Our other analyses indicated that the major improvement we needed in the ICBM force was not number of warheads or large yields, but accuracies at intercontinental range; and that required on-board guidance computers. (Obviously you couldn’t use any kind of midcourse correction system: no ICBM could be allowed to accept instructions from the outside because that would instantly become the major one point vulnerability of the missile. But that’s another story for another time.)

On board guidance computers had to be made smaller and more powerful and one result was a recommendation for major investments in large scale integrated circuits.

Once all that was done – we had smaller and lighter gyros and accelerometers, and much more powerful and smaller computers with kilobytes of memory, we still ended up with guidance packages that were large, heavy, and expensive,

Now go look here: http://invensense.com/mems/gyro/mpu9150.html

What’s described is a gyro and accelerometer system. In chips. Micromachines. You can buy it to put into your game controller. You can add GPS if that’s not already in it; it’s just another chip. And for about $1700 you can get a quadricopter, a four motor helicopter, complete with control system, GPS, battery life of more than ten minutes, payload of more than a pound. It will fly to where you send it, to an accuracy of a couple of meters, using GPS to find it. It can be given altitude constraints. Such as stay more than 20 and fewer than 30 meters above the local ground level (there’s a camera so you can see obstacles to go over or around).

I will leave it as an exercise for the reader to think of the sort of things a geeky kid who has decided he really hates his school and those bullies who make his life miserable might come up with in a week of thought. I can think of things I might have done with something like that on a particularly lousy day. They’d probably involve sprayers and agar agar, or perhaps inorganic chemicals. Fortunately my geeky kid being bullied experiences were all when I was too young to do anything; by the time I was able to make nitroglycerine I didn’t have any such motives. I didn’t get bullied in high school because my friend was a very large guy who really really wanted to pass Latin…

But I do leave you with the thought for the day. Also I point out that guidance systems for drones don’t cost much. They’ll control fixed wing “model” aircraft of sizes up to tens of kilograms just as easily as they’ll control a small one pound payload quadricopter. The day when any geek can have his own personal drone is not only coming, it’s pretty well here.

Sleep tight.

https://store.diydrones.com/APM_2_0_Kit_p/br-ardupilotmega-03.htm

http://invensense.com/mems/gyro/mpu9150.html

Newt makes his case

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M415AGqnVrg&feature=player_embedded# !

If he would just keep this up.

Phil

Well, it does make his positions quite clear. I can say from personal experience that Newt talks like this and has done so since the 1980’s. He’s being interviewed so it’s not an interactive conversation, but he is paying attention to the questions. I’ve had conversations like this with him many times.

If you’re wondering about Newt, he directly answers the questions about his temperament. And as my reader says, he states his case quite well.