View 708 Tuesday, January 03, 2012

I took two days off at New Year. I’m back now, and there’s a lot to catch up on. I’m restarting Chaos Manor Reviews, with a 2011 review and the annual Orchid and Onion Parade; I should have it posted by the weekend, and we’ll start over. Apologies for letting it lapse for so long. It has been a busy year.

Locally we had the Rose Bowl Parade without incident. The Occupy people staged their follow-on without incident, but also without the live coverage they had hoped for: when the Parade ended, the TV stations covering it live instantly switched to replay mode. They can’t show commercials during live coverage, but in replay they can halt and resume. They weren’t going to miss any of that for live coverage of the Occupy with their 70 foot Corporate Octopus made from recycled plastic bags (I have

Losing to Mozilla

I interrupted the above in order to go Google the Occupy Octopus to see if I could find a picture of it, and discovered that the new and improved version of Firefox is god awful. I suppose it’s all right if you don’t keep a lot of open tabs as reminders, but I do. In fact, I’ll have a pack of them below, either now or in a couple of hours. But the problem is that the new and improved Firefox won’t display more than two rows of tabs. In the old and useful Firefox, you could scroll rows of tabs, so that if it only showed two rows and you had more than two rows open, you could scroll down to the next row, or even down two more rows. No longer. Now the miserable thing scrolls one tab at a time! And although I can set Tab Mix Plus to display 3, 4, 5, or even 6 rows, it will never actually show more than two rows. I even closed Firefox and reset my machine, and brought Firefox back up as the first thing I opened. It came up showing four rows of tabs. Problem solved, I thought. Then somehow, there was a shift, and whammo! two rows of the tabs vanished, and I was back to two rows. And if I open a new tab I can’t see it. It’s down on an undisplayed row. I can go to the settings and set things so I can scroll, but I can only scroll one tab at a time.

I hate the improved Firefox, and I wish I had never installed the “upgrade.” If anyone has a suggestion as to what they did to restrict the number of tabs rows and why they did it, I’d like to know. The reason I liked Firefox was that I could use it as a kind of memo pad, keeping rows of open tabs so that I can go look at them at leisure, and also so that I can easily get to them so they can be copied for recommendations. I like that feature. But Mozilla has improved Firefox to make it very inconvenient to do that. A plague on them.

For those interested in the Occupy Octopus and the Occupy movement’s efforts to take part in the Rose Parade, it’s covered here: http://offthebench.nbcsports.com/2012/01/03/run-its-the-occupy-octopus-protesters-hijack-end-of-tournament-of-roses-parade-video/

The Iowa Caucuses are this evening, and by tomorrow morning we will know a bit more about who will face Obama. Perhaps one or two of the current candidates will be so disappointed with their showing that they will drop out, and it is not inconceivable that the results will attract some new candidates who think they have a chance. No one knows anything here.

I continue to say that anyone on that platform would be preferable to Barak Hussein Obama as President. That includes Ron Paul, whose foreign policy might be disastrous but whose election would be accompanied by a wave of Republicans in the Congress. The new Congress would not accept the more extreme parts of Ron Paul’s policies, and Paul’s position is one of deference to Congress, so the compromise would probably be a good policy. Ron Paul himself says that his nomination as the Republican candidate is extremely unlikely, so a vote for Paul is more a vector toward return of constitutional government than an actual choice of Ron Paul for candidate; and the effects will be on the other candidates.

Anyway we will know a lot more tomorrow.

Some recommendations.

First, a former Soviet economist/statistician, who begins with rather dull stuff – at least dull to an old Cold Warrior familiar with all that stuff about socialism and how in the Soviet Union “we pretend to work and they pretend to pay us for it” and how only the nomenklatura had access to most goods and services. Then I realized that it has been 20 years since the Seventy Years War AKA the Cold War ended, and a lot of my readers think of that as history. For some readers, the opening remarks may be interesting. Whether they are or not, I can recommend that you spend the 45 minutes it takes to listen to this. You don’t have to watch it, and you can be doing some clerical stuff while listening – think of it as radio. He tells you much that we used to know but have forgotten. I say we because it is true of me, the Old Cold Warrior, so it is likely that it will be true for you. As Burke told us, we seldom need educating, but we often need reminding.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytLqGU4sjhs

= = = = =

You might also find this one interesting:

http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2011/12/20-years-since-the-fall-of-the-soviet-union/100214/

I had meant to write an essay about this one, but I realized that I can’t. Better just to point to it.

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D9RRJUV02&show_article=1

This one also deserves attention, in particular the problem of the vanishing American. We used to use the Melting Pot and assimilation to create more Americans. Now we glorify Diversity, which may well mean the end of the American Culture and American exceptionalism. I have written about this in the past and will do so again. Meanwhile:

http://pjmedia.com/spengler/2011/12/18/thomas-friedman-and-the-higher-education-bubble/?singlepage=true

For those unhappy with the nanny state:

http://pjmedia.com/blog/the-nanny-state-wants-your-cell-phones/

For those concerned about website tracking, I owe you an essay; but you can find out a lot from a two part series in The Register.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/11/01/how_to_stay_anonymous/

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/11/08/how_to_stay_anonymous_part_ii/print.html

View 707 Saturday, December 31, 2011

HAPPY NEW YEAR

We’re just back (early) from Larry Niven’s New Year party.

I had some good conversations. Most of my thoughts lately are on the latest novel, and in particular, is there any way that the United States can be saved? In a sense it’s a fairy tale because we postulate a sufficient threat to us all to justify some really drastic measures.

Steve Jobs famously said that he did not build Apple Computers in the United States because there were not enough available and affordable quality control engineers and skilled technicians whom he had faith in to produce the quality products he demanded. He trusted Singapore and the Orient more.

There are many grains of truth in that. Still, in 1940 – 1945, with a population of 140 million, half the work force conscripted into the armed services thus requiring building a new work force from women, apprentices, new graduates, and people called out of retirement, we produces a Liberty ship a day, thousands of B-17’s and other heavy bombers, clouds of fighters, and enough tanks to give numeric superiority over the best the Germans could produce. Once, told that the German Panther was ten times better than the US Sherman, we said that the solution to that was simple. We would build 11 Shermans for every Panther. We pretty well did that.

We built the Empire State Building during the Depression in one year. We built Hoover Dam during the depression in 3 years. We built the P-51 from drawing board design to actual combat deployment in 105 days. We built clouds of P-47 close support aircraft. We build a mechanized army and the ships to take it to Europe. All that without computers, without robots, without Interstate highways, with a population of 140 million, beginning with an economy enthralled in the Great Depression.

And we educated a work force fully capable of doing that. We turned out a generation that could read.

If we could do all that then, can we not do it now? What man has done, cannot man aspire to? Suppose we were given the chance? You have the power, what will you do?

That’s our next book. We’re working on it. Do we live in a true Dark Age in which we have forgotten what we can do? Many think so. When I mention Jaime Escalante and what he did, most scratch their heads unable to remember who he was. Yet what man has done man can aspire to.

Those thought engulf me.

Suggestions welcome.

HAPPY NEW YEAR

Digging through the archives I found this: http://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/hammer.html which turned out to be interesting. I also found this.

this http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v453/n7199/full/4531184a.html 

View 707 Thursday, December 29, 2011

Mark Steyn, substituting for Rush Limbaugh this morning, says that Newt Gingrich is wrong on first principles: it is simply wrong in a free society for the government to require you to have health insurance, and anyone who believes that is beyond the pale, a liberal or socialist, not a conservative.

In fact Gingrich hasn’t been quite so clear in his “endorsement”, but leave that. Is it true that any consideration of mandated insurance is simply anathema?

Well, we can postulate that a free country ought not dictate what its citizens should buy, and that is perhaps a fundamental principle. Yet while there is certainly a sense in which that is true, it neglects other principles and facts, none of them particularly obscure.

To begin with, it is certainly no less conservative to insist that someone pay for his own health insurance than it is to insist that someone else pay for it. If you aren’t obliged to provide your own insurance, should someone else be so obliged?

And that is the essence of the health care debate.

One answer is that no one is obligated to pay for anyone’s health care insurance. It’s a free country and you’re free to have insurance or not, as you determine by your needs and income. That was the case for most of the history of this Republic: you’re on your own. If you get sick, pay your own bills. If you must, seek charity, or else be sick, languish, suffer, and if your illness is sufficiently severe, die. This is a free country. You are free to pay your own way, but you are not free to demand that others pay your medical bills.

Of course if you have had the forethought to buy health insurance, you are in good shape. If you have not, then pay your bills. Whatever you do, this is no business of the government.

The problem is that this doesn’t really seem acceptable. People are born with defects that prevent them from getting medical insurance. Others develop problems. These people encounter the problem of “pre existing condition.” They plead they would have bought health care insurance but the pre existing conditions make the premiums too high. Others say they once were insured, but when their conditions developed, the insurance company dropped them. It is barbaric simply to ignore all these people. In order for a man to love his country, his country ought to be lovely. Look at these innocent victims. Surely we must do something?

And over time, particularly in boom times when the nation was getting richer, in many parts of the country and perhaps nationally, a new consensus was developed: first, that there ought to be a safety net, then that people have a right to health care insurance, and their birth defects, or health problems developed over time, should not prevent them from obtaining it. Nor is it fair for the insurance companies to charge premiums consistent with the risks the company is assuming.

Thus came the demand for health care insurance available to all at the same price. Of course that’s not insurance at all except in the sense that we are all insuring each other: we all pay and we all benefit. But that requires that we all pay, without exception, and that requires mandated insurance, and we’re back to where we started, except that now we find it is the will of the people that there be this universal insurance policy. Can’t we just accept that and get on with it? And thus Obama Care, modeled in some ways on the Massachusetts system implemented by the Democratic legislature of Massachusetts and the Republican Governor, then Mitt Romney.

And there we are. Meanwhile, the costs skyrocket, in large part because those who receive the benefits are not those who pay for them, and those who pay for them have no control over what benefits are paid. Everyone wants the system to deliver more but cost less. This squeezes some health care providers while opening up the gates to fraud for others. If a system were designed to insure runaway costs while infuriating dedicated health professionals it could not work better to accomplish those nefarious purposes than the system we have now. It doesn’t work, we can’t afford it, and it tramples what we once thought were liberties; yet how is it conservative to overlook people dying in waiting rooms? Or –

That discussion can go on for a long time, and involve any number of well meaning people.

It hardly matters whom we shall elect as President so long as these fundamental questions continue unresolved, and castigating one or another of the candidates as not sufficiently conservative does nothing until we establish just what is a conservative position. No one wants things to go on as they do. No one wants to bite the bullet and come out for “Death Panels” — health care committees that allocate the available health care resources. There doesn’t seem to be much desire for simply nationalizing the health care system and having done with it. And every year, we spend more money and get less for it.

There aren’t many ways out of this swamp, and none that will not infuriate some people. And it’s never going to be addressed if it becomes a third rail, a subject discussable only at peril.

It does seem to me that there is a constitutional solution: make it clear that the federal government has neither the obligation nor the power to solve it. National health care perhaps ought to be a national concern, but it is not mentioned in the constitution, and thus is not a power granted to the Federal government. If this be any government’s concern it is the business of the states. One may argue that all government ought to get out of the health care business, but that, surely, is a matter of politics; but I argue vigorously that as concerns the Federal Government, it is not politics but law. The Constitution didn’t give the Federal Government that power, just as it did not give the Federal Government the power to provide, interfere with, or regulate education.

Leave these matters to the states. Meanwhile, if the Congress wants to show how well it can provide health care and education, it has the undoubted right to take over the health care and education systems in the District of Columbia. Let it show how well it can do there. If what it does works well, it may be tried by the states. If it turns into a bureaucratic mess, the states can avoid the Federal methods.

Leave these matters to the States. Get the Federal government out of the health care and education business.

December 29, 2011 1100 AM

I’m writing this at the kitchen table on Khaos, my Mac Book Air. One set of workmen have left. They finally found the cracked and leaking six inch of gas pipe. This was the third attempt. Each previous time ended with supposed success, but turned out to be This Time For Sure. All would be well for a couple of hours and then we would smell gas. The first time was at ten PM. The Gas Company technician, a very pleasant man who turned out to have kids who read science fiction so I gave him a copy of Starswarm, was able to show us how to turn off the section where the leak was while leaving the water heaters, but because it was after ten PM he was alone and they don’t crawl under the house unless they have a partner. Yesterday the contractors came out twice, and each time thought they had found it, but last night there was once again the smell of gas. This time they actually found a pipe with an actual crack in it, and replaced it. They’ve been gone for an hour, all the relevant valves are open, there’s heat in Roberta’s bathroom which was the whole point of the operation, and there is no smell of gas in the hallway. I believe we can at last rejoice.

The moral of the story is that Roberta’s persistence in finding a reliable firm to do the work fixing her bathroom heater has paid off in spades and big casino.

Now she’s out taking Sable for a walk, and I’m sitting at the kitchen table while the plasterer fixes our ornate dining room cornice which was damaged by leaks from my upstairs bathroom, which had to be repaired and – but you get the idea. Chaos Manor has been sufficiently chaotic for the month. With luck it will all be over by Saturday. Meanwhile one of us has to be downstairs while there are workmen in the house, which is why I am working with my wonderful Mac Book Air at the kitchen table.

I’d forgotten how nice the Air is for working. My normal work position involves a Henry Miller chair and a keyboard at precisely the height I want, and big monitor screens. I don’t have any of that at the kitchen table. It takes a bit of getting used to. First I set the Air far enough back on the table so that I can rest my arms on the table and my fingers properly on the keyboard. Strange at first, but after a few minutes it turns out to be very natural.

Of course the Air saved my sanity back when I was getting my brain burned out – 50,000 rads of high energy X-rays to eliminate the inoperable lump in my head – and I was daily in the Kaiser Sunset radiology facility waiting room. I was able to work there, and that’s about the only thing that kept me sane. Clearly the treatment worked since I am still here and they can’t find any traces of cancer left.

Of course the Air saved my sanity back when I was getting my brain burned out – 50,000 rads of high energy X-rays to eliminate the inoperable lump in my head – and I was daily in the Kaiser Sunset radiology facility waiting room. I was able to work there, and that’s about the only thing that kept me sane. Clearly the treatment worked since I am still here and they can’t find any traces of cancer left.

The Mac Book Air – mine is named Kaos for the Goddess of Air – is a remarkably useful device. I don’t think it’s quite enough computer to be one’s only system, and my main machine remains Bette, a quad core Windows 7 machine and a 23” screen. If I am going somewhere for days and I need a system to set up in the hotel room and leave it in place, I tend to carry a ThinkPad; but for just knocking about writing wherever I happen to be, cruising the Internet at need, and just generally having a computer to use, the Air is wonderful. Lightweight, good battery life, gorgeous to look at, and easily carried in a small brief case or messenger bag. She’s not fast but she’s fast enough, and she’s easy to use in awkward places.

And, suddenly, all is well. The gas lines are fixed, the plasterer is done, Roberta is back from her walk, and I can go back up to the office. I can say I enjoyed resuming my affair with Khaos. She really is gorgeous.

For some of my early impressions of the Mac Book Air, see http://www.jerrypournelle.com/view/2008/Q2/view512.html

At work at the breakfast table with Khaos, the Mac Book Air.

Khaos at work. The Mac Book Air (mine is an old one, of course) is my favorite carryable if I need to get some real work done.

Did the real Cheetah die in 1938? A chimp named Cheetah died at 80 this week, but the conspiracy theorists claim that the real Cheetah died, and this one is a fake.

There was apparently a major problem with the site today. It has been hacked up and fixed, although there’s now contemplation of some internal structure changes (which you won’t see).  I believe all is well there now. Thanks.