View 712 Thursday, February 09, 2012

Today I merely feel filleted, so perhaps I am recovering, but I’m sure not in good shape. I won’t be going to my LASFS meeting tonight, and I don’t have much energy, but it’s all better than yesterday. Of course I sort of remember a week ago when I thought I was recovering, too, but since most of these things last about two weeks, I think I really am on the mend. Meanwhile all kinds of interesting things are happening out there.

Mr. Santorum now has the opportunity to be what he said he wanted to be, the conservative alternative to Mr. Obama. He can ignore Romney. If Romney fires up the attack machine, he can reconsider, but the proper way to do that would be to put forth his own program.

Every Republican candidate has pledged to end Obamacare. There’s no more issue in that. Attacking Romney for Romneycare is not precisely conservative: if Massachusetts wants Romneycare that’s their affair, not that of the Federal government. So far as I am concerned Massachusetts can reinstate the Congreagational Church as an established religion. That’s the plain meaning of the Constitution, and this modern interpretation of the Civil War Amendments forbidding the States from an establishment of religion didn’t even exist before 1947, and it took a while after that before it became the politically correct monstrosity the doctrine has become now. True enough, no state will establish a religion, and the last state to have one disestablished it just before the Civil War, but the First Amendment is very clear: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion. This was explicitly intended to prevent the federal government from disestablishing the established churches of the seven states that had them in 1787. There is zero evidence that those who adopted the Civil War Amendments intended them to extend the authority of Congress over established religions, nor that those states that ratified them intended that result. The intent was protection of the freed slaves, not involve the Federal government in religious matters.

The conservative position is expressed in the ninth and tenth amendments. It was expressed by the Virginia ratifying delegates:

That those clauses which declare that Congress shall not exercise certain powers be not interpreted in any manner whatsoever to extend the powers of Congress. But that they may be construed either as making exceptions to the specified powers where this shall be the case, or otherwise as inserted merely for greater caution.

Indeed, Hamilton didn’t want any Bill of Rights because, he said, Congress could not do anything not set forth in the enumeration of powers. “Why forbid that which the Congress cannot do?” he asked. Contrast that to the modern interpretations which infer government powers and restrictions from emanations and penumbras of the Constitution.

Showing that Romneycare does not work in Massachusetts is perhaps a supporting argument for the repeal of Obamacare, but since all the candidates are agreed that Obamacare has to go, what’s the point? We are not going to mandate that Massachusetts give up the state’s health care program. That’s their business, not mine, and one part of conservatism is a firm belief in minding one’s own business.

What we need from Senator Santorum is a discussion of his economic plans. What regulations will he get rid of? When? What other Obama laws will he cause to be repealed? These are the important matters. Tell us, Senator, which will you do if you have the power? It’s your turn in the spotlight.

I wrote that this afternoon and didn’t manage to post it. I’ll put it up now and go to bed. I think we are recovering, but it’s a slow energy sapping recovery. Maybe tomorrow I’ll have some gumption. There’s plenty to write about. I just need to be able to think straight.

The radio is telling me that ten states have been “granted” indulgence against meeting the requirements of No Child Left Behind, as if anyone could meet those requirements in any way other than making sure no child gets ahead. Leveling the public education system is a means of creating castes and hereditary rule, of course: if only the children of the ruling class can get a real education, the iron ring is well forged. The waste is enormous and the effect on wealth and growth is enormous.

The simplest improvement to the public school system would be the abolition of the federal Department of Education, turning out everyone in it to find a job. Some of them might even start private schools, but of course most would seek other government work. Once on is accustomed to being an Iron Law bureaucrat, it’s hard to do much else. If the Department of Education is so smart, why are the DC schools so awful? Congress has full authority to use DC as an experimental education system and give it the very best schools the geniuses at the Department of Education can devise.

[The Congress shall have Power] To exercise exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten miles square) as may, by cession of particular states, and the acceptance of Congress, become the seat of the government of the United States.

View 712 Wednesday, February 08, 2012

The miseries continue here. Our trip out to Kaiser yesterday was precautionary, but it’s just as well that we did it, given that things aren’t any better today. This is one horrible cold, unlike any I have had in years. Apologies for being brief. I’m doing well to concentrate on anything. Alas.

Santorum emerges as a real contender for the Republican nomination for President. He says he is not the conservative alternative to Mitt Romney, he is the conservative alternative to Barrack Obama. I was impressed. The last time I was really impressed by Santorum was the night he won the Iowa caucuses. He sounded Presidential then, and he sounded Presidential last night. Perhaps the election of 2012 will be on issues and causes, not on personalities: a self-proclaimed conservative candidate against a left liberal, without a lot of personality and personal history baggage. Mr. Obama will have to run on his record, and Mr. Santorum can run against that. Neither has any great personal record. The only executive experience Obama can claim is as President, and that’s in essence running on his record.

Let the election be about freedom.

Having said that, I will repeat: This is a crucial election and I prefer each and every one of the seven Republican contenders to the current president. I am not endorsing anyone; but it would appear that a Santorum/Obama contest might be the closest thing we can have to a straight contest on conservative vs. liberal principles. That could be a significant election.

not flashy, but damn important

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204369404577209112780407698.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

We’re the government and we will tell you how to live.

Phil

As for instance Obamacare. There are other fundamental differences between where Obama has taken us and where conservatives want to take us.

I’ll try to have more later.

View 712 Tuesday, February 07, 2012

We’re still under the weather here, and I’m going to take Roberta out to Kaiser in a few minutes, so this will be late. I have a big bag of good mail to present, and I made a lot of notes at the breakfast table.

The Small Pournelle Jobs Plan

The Pournelle Jobs Plan. This is easy to implement: in every legislation or regulation that exempts small business from the regulation, double the size of the exemption. If it applies only to businesses with more than 10 employees, that becomes 20. If 20 it becomes 40. Fifty becomes 100, and 100 becomes 200. This will have the effect of allowing successful small businesses to expand without incurring new and more stringent regulations. It could create a lot of jobs, and I don’t see much of a downside.

The House could pass this in a week, and let the Democrats argue as to why it should not pass the Senate.

Another of my notes is on the climate debates: so far we have on the one side a group of scientists and others who point out that the data do not support the AGW hypothesis predictions, and the AGW Believers have responded by attacking the credentials of those who point out that the data don’t match the predictions. That’s pretty irrelevant. Why do I need scientific credentials to point out that your own data do not match your predictions?

When I was a Marxist back in undergraduate days, we had a debate phrase we used often: “Before you attack your opponent’s motives, answer his arguments.” I thought that was right then and I think it now. Of course when I questioned some of the Marxist predictions I got denunciations from my former colleagues, thus proving that it was a catch phrase. And gee, I thought they meant it. I did. Ah well.

But the data keep coming in, and so long as you actually believe in science rather than merely Believe, it’s getting hard to ignore.

The current policies are based on assumptions.

1. The Earth is in fact steadily warming; not only is the cold not coming back, but AGW is overcoming the ‘natural’ trend of the past 200,000 years toward glaciation.

2. That warming is caused by CO2 and the cooling from 1320 to about 1800 was caused by something else; volcanism, perhaps, rather than solar activity. A seldom discussed corollary is that we can ignore volcanism as a determinant of the future.

3. Warming is bad, not good. There is some discussion of this but no big grants to do definitive studies that I know of.

4. People in the West – USA, Europe, perhaps Japan – can do something about this even if the Chinese and Indians are Deniers and will continue to burn fossil fuels.

5. What we can do will be cost effective: that it won’t bankrupt us while accomplishing little to nothing. At least if we bankrupt ourselves and fail it may be easier to live under more primitive conditions if it’s warm. The worst would be that we bankrupt ourselves, stop warming, and we have no way to combat the cold.

Admittedly I have been a bit whimsical there, but the questions are serious, and I see little discussion of them. Most of the “defense” of the “consensus” position on AGW is that those who don’t believe it are incompetent and not worthy to be part of the great climate science community – and probably take oil money. Government grants through universities are not corrupting. Oil money corrupts.

“Well, you know, it turns out that our Founders designed a system that makes it harder to change than I would like sometimes.” Barrack Obama, onetime lecturer in constitutional law at the University of Chicago, currently President of the United States.

I would have thought that anyone who spent much time studying the Convention of 1787 would be well aware that the system was one of checks and balances, designed to resist quick ‘reforms’; and that it took a long time and a lot of effort to distort it as far as it has been distorted. What this does make clear is that the President is not unhappy with what he has done so far, but he is saddened by the fact that the Constitution resists his reforms and changes; and given the chance he will impose more of his will, through any means necessary.

We’re back. Fortunately we didn’t waste much time or money – ours or our physician’s – in discovering that what we have is bad cases of the common cold, and what we need is painkillers, rest, and chicken soup. This will end. It’s a matter of endurance. I got some takeout soup on the way home. I’ll go out for a chicken and other ingredients in the morning. Too tired now. I make a good chicken soup in the pressure cooker. Of course I tend to make too much, but that’s not a severe problem.

I have some good books to read, and I ought to learn patience. Sort of. If you have a cold buy one of my eBooks. It won’t cure your cold but then nothing else will either, and a good book will take your mind off your problems. Of course so will Tuesday night TV I suppose.

View 712 Monday, February 06, 2012

WHAT IS AN X PROGRAM 

It is important to understand that X projects were wildly successful, and it is their success that caused them to end. The official US policy in the era of the X Projects was arms control. Arms control sought to limit the arms race and that included limiting advances in military technology. X Projects generated lots of new military technologies: far too many for the arms control strategists. Whenther or not that was a good idea in the Cold War – I hated it, of course – it is certainly NOT a good idea now. X Projects generate new technologies.

All this is discussed in The Strategy of Technology. See below.

The papers are full of articles about how independent voters are sick of Republicans calling each other names.

Political managers know that independent voters generally turn out to vote against, not for, candidates and issues.

Reagan understood all this, thus the Eleventh Commandment. It’s simple logic, but alas, that isn’t taught in today’s public schools, where the claim may be that they teach kids how to think, but the reality is more that the teachers defend an agenda chosen by “experts”, who are far more likely to insist on fashionable intellectual trends rather than the tools of thought.

I keep hearing reports of Israeli preparatory activity, as if the IDF is getting ready for something big. I do not believe Israel can take out the Iranian nuclear capability by itself. There’s no sure way to do that with air strikes. The operation will require brigade sized ground operations. Israel has a parachute brigade and has recently practiced a brigade sized training operation, but I doubt that Israel has the capability of extracting that force once the mission is completed. Of course if the mission is critical enough that may not be the primary decision factor.

My head isn’t working well. I have a lot of great mail. I’m going to spend some time answering it. Here’s one thing to think about while I am working on it.

Jerry

Do X-prizes make a difference? Try this one – the iPhone doc may detect cancer, diabetes and other illness:

iPhone doc will detect cancer, diabetes –

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/01/31/touch_screen_diagnosis/print.html

“A drop of blood or saliva can be analysed using an ordinary touch screen – and once boffins perfect the identification of biological molecules, then diagnosis by iPhone isn’t far off. The work is being done in South Korea, where researchers at the Advanced Institute of Science and Technology have been spitting and bleeding onto capacitive touch screens to see what details they can extract from the samples using standard touchscreen tech.”

“The technology would certainly seem a contender for the latest X-Prize [2], which requires the use of non-invasive techniques to diagnose illness. Given the ubiquity of touch screens it’s not surprising that alternative applications are being sought for them, and we look forward to the day we’re never more than gobbing distance of a diagnosis.”

Ed

I am not sure how this would work, but it does raise some interesting thoughts on what becomes possible with the next generation of consumer electronics tools. That speculation used to be a lot easier. No longer. Larry Niven’s ‘autodoc’ that also gives you a manicure seems closer…

I have been promoting prizes and x-projects for a long time. I was digging about looking for my S-Prizes slide show which I did years ago, and found something I said early on in this Century:

I can solve the space access problem with a few sentences.

Be it enacted by the Congress of the United States:

The Treasurer of the United States is directed to pay to the first American owned company (if corporate at least 60% of the shares must be held by American citizens) the following sums for the following accomplishments. No monies shall be paid until the goals specified are accomplished and certified by suitable experts from the National Science Foundation or the National Academy of Science:

1. The sum of $2 billion to be paid for construction of 3 operational spacecraft which have achieved low earth orbit, returned to earth, and flown to orbit again three times in a period of three weeks.

2. The sum of $5 billion to be paid for construction and maintenance of a space station which has been continuously in orbit with at least 5 Americans aboard for a period of not less than three years and one day. The crew need not be the same persons for the entire time, but at no time shall the station be unoccupied.

3. The sum of $12 billion to be paid for construction and maintenance of a Lunar base in which no fewer than 31 Americans have continuously resided for a period of not less than four years and one day.

4. The sum of $10 billion to be paid for construction and maintenance of a solar power satellite system which delivers at least 800 megawatts of electric power to a receiving station or stations in the United States for a period of at least two years and one day.

5. The payments made shall be exempt from all US taxes.

That would do it. Not one cent to be paid until the goals are accomplished. Not a bit of risk, and if it can’t be done for those sums, well, no harm done to the treasury.

I had Newt Gingrich persuaded to do this before he found he couldn’t keep the office of Speaker. I haven’t had any audiences with his successors.

Henry Vanderbilt points out that having a prize, say $1 billion,  for the second firm to achieve point (1) above will get more into the competition, and produce better results. I agree.

All of which remains true. There is a great deal more in the 2003 discussion on access to space. http://www.jerrypournelle.com/topics/gettospace.html#Prizes2

Which ought to give everyone something to look at while I go have lunch and come back to deal with the mail.

X PROGRAMS AND ACCESS TO SPACE

I just found this, which is my explanation of what X Programs should be.  http://www.jerrypournelle.com/slowchange/why_have_nasa.htm 

It is drawn from my testimony to the House Space Committee in 1995, and there’s nothing in it that I wouldn’t say today. This was when Newt was Speaker, and we thought we would be able to get this done. Unfortunately the President had other priorities. It would still be a good path.