View 703 Friday, December 02, 2011

I went to the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society (LASFS) ** last night, and after the meeting I got into a conversation with an old friend. The conversation drifted to politics as such things do this year, and he denounced Newt Gingrich as flighty and impulsive. I asked for an example, expecting the immigration issue, and was told that he wanted to change the Child Labor laws to allow children to be janitors, and that was a terribly dangerous thing to do because of all the chemicals involved. I hadn’t heard anything about this, and there was nothing in this morning’s paper about it, but the radio is full of denunciations of Newt Gingrich. Al Sharpton charges racism, of course. Some web site that looks as if it were Tea Party but probably is not speaks of “disgusting rhetoric from eye of Newt”, and says:

Incredibly, Gingrich compared making kids work as janitors to a successful program that paid kids to read books. Of course, reading books is not hard labor and is directly relevant to education — cleaning bathrooms is not.

Well, it may be that cleaning bathrooms is hard labor and not relevant to education, but when I was a pupil at Capleville consolidated in Tennessee, the 7^th and 8^th graders were expected to mop floors (not with any chemicals I know of; just whatever you mopped floors with) and we didn’t even get paid for it. We also cleaned up after ourselves in the lunch room from 4^th grade on. But of course what Newt was driving at had nothing to do with janitorial work per se, and most of the examples he gave were for more clerical tasks; and his point was that there are generations growing up now who have no work habits, and little conception of the connection between showing up on time, doing a job, and getting rewarded for that. Today’s children are apparently entitled to two (or even three) meals a day from the school without even having to refrain from disrupting the classes, much less actually do some work for the meal.

I know precisely where this idea came from. I can recall when Newt was still Minority Whip a conversation with Newt and my son Richard, then a Congressional Committee staffer, in an Irish pub across the street from the Capitol. The conversation came around to laws that got in the way, and I brought up the Federal Minimum Wage and other regulations that ended the “board jobs” that enabled me to get through my first year at the State University of Iowa in Iowa City. I worked at Reich’s Café; a “board job” was an hour of waiting on tables, in exchange for a meal off the Café menu. I also got to keep any tips I might earn, which in my case amounted to about thirty cents an hour, which wasn’t trivial in those days of 25 cent milkshakes. Those jobs are all gone now, ended by Federal labor laws.

We also discussed the loss of work habits. When I was young I wanted a .22 rifle (and it wasn’t unusual in Tennessee in those days for ten year olds to have and to carry .22 rifles). I was paid ten cents an hour for picking cotton, later raised to a quarter an hour after I learned to be more efficient (and I suspect my parents felt sorry for me). So there I was in the fields along with the sharecroppers, who thought it was amusing, but who kept my bags separate from the rest, I suspect so that they could go through them and be sure I hadn’t left hulls in there, which would lower the price Mr. Lamb’s gin in Mineral Wells, Mississippi would pay for the cotton. I learned a lot from doing that: to show up on time, to work steadily (I got docked for low productivity at first, on the testimony of the sharecropper), and to find some other way to make money because picking cotton sucked.

But the point was that I grew up knowing there is a connection between productive work and being paid. So did my son Richard, but Richard pointed out that there were still many laws in place that made it very difficult for youngsters to get work. Richard and his older brothers swept Studio City sidewalks for the merchants, but it had to be done in rather mysterious ways because of the various laws. Here were these boys who wanted the job, and merchants who wanted their sidewalks swept off after wind blew leaves all over, but it was illegal just to pay them for getting the sidewalks clear. This made no sense.

We went on to talk about the effects on a nation of having generations who grow up not really connecting work habits with life, and who felt entitled to anything they got without having to do anything in exchange.

Incidentally, in those days Newt Gingrich and Mr. Jones and some other of his supporters were establishing a program to pay kids to read books – it had to be a “reward” rather than “work” because of the various child labor laws. It’s all right to give a kid a dollar for reading a book, but giving him a job reading that book is illegal. This is, after all, the land of the free and the home of the brave.

The conversation went on well into the night – we were all younger in those days – and I am sure Newt has been thinking about these matters ever since, and it’s no surprise at all that he brought it up in a Presidential campaign. It’s who he is. And all of you, and I, and Newt know that any changes in fundamentals like Child Labor are going to be thoroughly discussed, and hazards like disinfectants and cleaning chemicals will be thought about, but the fundamental principle remains:

Either kids grow up expecting to work for a living and developing elementary work habits, or they don’t; and if they don’t, they are going to be handicapped for the rest of their lives. That’s hardly a racist statement: it’s as true of Yuppie kids in the Valley as ghetto kids, and it shows in both cases. Kids who learn that you’re supposed to work for a living have a head start. It makes a lot of sense to look at such matters to see what results the current legal system have on that fundamental notion.

I would never have advised Newt to bring something like that up in a campaign for nomination, but I sure understand where he’s coming from. So should you. It’s impossible to sustain an economy in which large segments of the population do not associate work with earning, and who think they are entitled to the goods of fortune at the expense of someone else. That’s not the way the world works, and any society not founded in productivity is doomed: as Lady Thatcher observed long ago, Socialism is great until you run out of other people’s money.

But we all knew that.

—-

** As you may guess the LASFS web site is maintained by science fiction fans who have volunteered to build and keep the site. Any resemblance to the cast of The Big Bang Theory is not entirely coincidental.

I keep repeating this. Freedom is not free. Free people are not equal. Equal people are not free.

But if you don’t care for freedom, you must look into the alternatives. We are back to the notion of a command economy, which is supposed to be more efficient and more stable than freedom. China is often held up as an example. What America needs is a Five Year Plan.

And we have “social science” classes at grade, high school, and college levels taught by teachers who do not know that this experiment has been run, many times, in many places, and the results have not been favorable. No matter what twists have been employed, and no matter how rational the arguments for a command economy appear to be, the experiments have always had the same result.

I can recall when “The Five Year Plan” was the punch line for a great many jokes. Now, apparently, in many “social science” classes it is the remedy to all our problems. Such is the state of education in these United States of America.

Freedom is not free. Free people are not equal. Equal people are not free.

The headlines are that unemployment is below 9%, magically down to 8.6%. This is because more people gave up looking for a job, not due to more people being employed. The real unemployment rate in the United States is above 15%. But of course it you don’t count someone who isn’t looking for a job because he simply gave up and is now looking to maximize entitlements, that brings the numbers down. Ah well.

I managed to pay the bills and get them off to the post office. They were high this month because of the water damage to my bathroom and the dining room ceiling. If you’re thinking of subscribing, this would be a good time to do it. I have caught up with the October subscriptions and the first part of November, and I’m plugging along on that; apologies if you subscribed and I haven’t answered. I’ll get there. Really and truly.

Steve Barnes has sent what he things is a publishable draft of Black Ship Island, a novella set in the interim between Legacy of Heorot and Beowulf’s Children. It features an intriguing new alien and some more on the strange ecology of Avalon, and of course has a whacking good story involving the Starborn without the adults. Larry and I discussed this a bit at LASFS last night, and we’ll both take a pass through it, then merge our works. I expect magic from Niven and usually get it. We’re also discussing Anvil (working title; the publication title will almost certainly be something else) and how we might fix the United States if it just had to be done. Imagine that you had that power. What might you do? The devil is in the details…

So things do get done here, if a bit slowly.

NHK satellite CO2 data

no firm conclusions but a little more discussion.

the silence from the media is deafening

http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2011/10/31/japanese-satellites-say-3rd-world-owes-co2-reparations-to-the-west/

Ron Mullane

Worth looking at, not sure what conclusions are supported. It does seem clear that the remedies involving CO2 production in the US and Europe are not working and will not work.

Of course not everyone seems to agree that this is a subject for rational debate.

http://climateaudit.org/2011/11/28/direct-action-at-harvard/#more-15067 

Sallie Baliunas is a long time friend and a very competent scientist; so of course Harvard students are invited to take direct action against her, rather than engage in rational argument. But then a lot of the students at Harvard don’t seem to have been required to learn much about rational debate.

And if you don’t know about Freefall, you probably should. Start here http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff100/fv00001.htm and for the first few pieces it may seem frivolous or confusing; plug along. It is not only interesting, it invites thought about some very serious matters. It may help to know that Sam, the main character in the first few screens, is not really the main character; and that Sam is unique. He is an intelligent non-human on a planet of millions of Asimov 3-law robots. He isn’t mammalian, either.

I am not a fan of Snopes, but it happens I ran across this the other day. Snopes labels it false or fraudulent or something. I think the story is worth paying some attention to. It is probably made up by someone determined to be anonymous, but there are points made that need making.

http://www.snopes.com/rumors/freezing.asp

View 703 Thursday, December 01, 2011

I was involved in a discussion in another conference, and was reminded of my Megamissions Essay. I had to search to find it, and was astonished to find that I last worked on it in 1994. It needs some work. We did not develop THOR, nor did we built Thoth missiles, but we did develop Hellfire and drones.

In searching for my megamisions essay I found an exchange of mail with a reader on USAF and US Army missions that is still relevant today.

Meanwhile the power is out in many places in Los Angeles. We had a minor flicker last night, but the neighborhood seems to be intact. All’s well, but I am again far behind in other stuff.

I am curious about the Herman Cain affair. Apparently the first barrage against him with Gloria Allred leading the charge came to nothing, and the stories told of his ‘sexual harassment’ seem to have fallen apart. Comes now Ginger Smith. I don’t know if she has any connection with Axelrod, and of course her story of a decade and more long affair with Mr. Cain may be true: but so far we haven’t seen the evidence. There are claims that Cain paid her, but there’s no specification: how much, and how? Cash? Check? Credit card? As to the telephone communications, we don’t know who called whom, now long they talked if at all, who texted whom, were any answered? Cain may well have had a long time mistress whom he met infrequently; she herself describes all this as ‘a casual affair’; but one would think that if she is going to come forward with this story – and why is she doing that? – she would add corroborative detail, intended to give artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative. So far we have not seen much in the way of corroborative details.

So we now have Newt as the latest “I’m not Romney” and the big guns will be laid using different aiming stakes. We may expect a large TOT barrage shortly.

And I really have stuff I have to do. I can recommend the old but still relevant stuff linked to above:

Megamissions

On USAF and Army doctrines

And I am off to lunch.

The latest polls show that Newt beats Obama, 45% to 43%. Incidentally, I know of no political figure in any contested political office who has been reelected with 43% or lower approval rating.

Immigration Absolutism    Jerry, I can understand absolutism on rejecting amnesty for illegal immigrants for the same reason I can understand absolutism on rejecting tax increases. Both make huge sense – as tactical positions.

In both cases, we have a fundamental political conflict not practically solvable by compromise: Open borders (with US citizenship meaningless) versus secure borders, and exponential growth in government’s share of the economy (with as endpoint the government becoming the economy) versus limited government.

In both cases, the other side has repeatedly made "compromise" deals (offering reduced spending for higher taxes, offering more secure borders for amnesty) then flagrantly violated them. Spending wasn’t reduced, the borders weren’t secured.

Tactically speaking, any position other than insisting on reduced spending (or secured borders) before even discussing any tax increase (or amnesty) is suicidal – the other side cannot be trusted, period.

Newt’s partial amnesty position was as I recall explicitly hypothetical – given the borders secured, then what? Gingrich is either foolish or brave to discuss longer term complexities in the simplistic heat of a primary campaign, but you’re not the only one who thinks that he may be looking past the primaries to the general election, where he’ll need to appeal to the center.

Note in that regard today’s Gallup poll that for the first time has the former Speaker leading the current President, 45-43. Newt’s signal to the center was received, apparently.

sign me

Porkypine

I agree regarding tax increases: no tax increase without irrevocable spending cuts in the same bill. Under those conditions I might be amenable to selective tax increases, particularly the largely symbolic taxes on “the rich” (they are symbolic because they are easily avoided; and they do give the appearance and sometimes even the reality of being more fair). But any tax increase not accompanied by not the promise, but the actual cut, in spending should be rejected. I don’t really mind taxes that reduce the gap between top and bottom, but I would rather have that gap than have the government get more money to use to increase spending, and we know that is what will happen if government gets more money. It always happens.

Interesting speculation on why Newt brought this up. May well be. I wouldn’t have advised it, but it seems to have been successful.

From your daybook last Wednesday:

"As Governor Perry put it, there ought to be a visa stapled to the degree certificate. I can’t think anyone would object to that."

Sigh. You’d think so, wouldn’t you? I said as much on a CSPAN segment a couple of months ago, then posted my speaking notes to my blog. Read the comments thread. An amazing amount of vitriol, hatred, and ignorance. And these people get to vote.

http://academicvc.com/2011/09/28/immigration-and-competitiveness/

Despair is a sin. Keep up the good work.

Stephen

View 703 Wednesday, November 30, 2011

If you haven’t been following Fred, he has a neat satire: http://fredoneverything.net/LLA.shtml

It will also lead you to a description of the toughest undergrad math class in the country. Fred’s piece is satire, but it’s true enough that Math 55 classes do not look like America.

I really don’t want to spend a lot of time on the election, but I weary of the nonsense being said about the immigration issue. The immigration hawks always bring up the gang members and their molls, and the specter of amnesty as a magnet to draw people in, Amnesty certainly is a magnet, but given the flow into the US just now it’s clear we don’t need a magnet to have a steady flow of illegal immigrants seeking work.

The first thing, then, is to close the border. Build fences. Build moats. If you’re really serious build a mine field. Go look at der Grenze, the border control system of the USSR in Europe: it was intended to keep people in, but it worked to keep them out, too; and as to magnets, the lure of free Austria and West Germany was quite strong. Yes, some got across those borders, but it wasn’t that many. If we’re serious about closing a border we can do it, just as if we are serious about controlling employment of illegal immigrants that can be done too.

But I do wonder: what proportion of those insisting that all eleven million – 1.1 x 10^7 – illegal immigrants have got to be deported have an undocumented nanny, or really know the immigration status of all the members of their gardening crew? But assume that they are all serious, what do we do with, say, a 70 year old man who has been the janitor in a church for 25 years, has two citizen daughters who are members of that parish and four grandchildren, also all citizens. It is now his retirement party. He’s going to go live with one of his children. Do we send a federal agent to his retirement party to handcuff and deport him?

Eleven million people is a lot of people. We can probably get about a million to self-deport by offering rewards for voluntary deportation. Start with $1,000, and when that is done raise the stakes to $2,000. When those cherries are picked you look at the immigration status of everyone arrested on suspicion of a felony, and act accordingly. That will probably get another million burglars, at probably about $2,000 each, plus a few expensive law suits to establish that we’re not interested in whether or not they are guilty of the felony that got them arrested, they are clearly guilty of being illegally in the US, and yes, we really did check the immigration or citizenship status of everyone arrested for burglary (or whatever) in that jurisdiction for the past few weeks, etc. If we’re really lucky the self-deportations and automatic deportations for felony arrests will get us down to, say, 7 million illegal immigrants in the US. That’s still a lot. Now what? Expand the program to check status of everyone arrested for anything? Think of the law suits when someone gets deported for jumping a turnstile. And of course there’s driving without a license as an automatic deportation for illegals. Now we go after anyone using someone else’s social security number, and after that anyone who uses a fake SS #.

And when you have done all that you will still have 4 to 5 million illegal aliens present in these United States. Some of them are likely to be solid citizens. Others may well be ne’er-do-wells. Shall we go examine the documents of every ne’er-do-well in the country? But don’t people who haven’t committed any crime but are generally just not considered desirable have some kind of rights? Do we go back to vagrancy laws? When I was young “No visible means of support” was a valid reason for someone to be arrested, and it was often used to shake down young people hitchhiking across country. Happened to me, once. Easier to pay the ten bucks than stay in the Podunk cooler while they verified my student status and that I had a place of residence in Iowa City. Of course no one hitchhikes any more. Worse, the courts have hammered away at the vagrancy laws, but we could perhaps find a way around that?

My point is that a few minutes’ thought will show that dealing with the eleven million illegal immigrants already here is not as simple as “Send out enough agents, round them up, and throw them out!” We all know that. Perhaps Newt Gingrich brought it up precisely to set the boundary at “road to legality but not citizenship” as opposed to full amnesty. He may be looking past the primary to the general election.

Brian Hall’s Perfect Climate Irony

Jerry,

You should know that the article that Brian Hall references did not look at the complete data set published to date by JAXA (which can be found here: http://www.gosat.nies.go.jp/eng/result/download/GOSAT_L4_Release_en.pdf), but focuses on one graph for July 2009. Not much can be gleaned just from the full set of graphs alone — just that there are months when various regions are net sinks for CO2 and other months when those same regions are net sources. Net sourcing over land seems to predominate over time, but that does not mean that that the few months of net sink do not out weigh the many months of net sourcing.

My advice is for everyone to read the full article at the link I have provided. This debate over AGW will not get settled by ignoring or misconstruing data.

Keegan

Kevin L. Keegan

I agree. This probably ought to be paired with the original mail comment. What we are trying to do here is conduct a rational discussion of a topic that has become anything but rational. I am convinced that CO2 has been steadily rising since 1850 or so; the question is what effect does that have, and whether the rise is great compared to the frequent injections of CO2 by volcanic events, ocean current circulations bringing up warmer/colder water, and such. The evidence seems to be clear that there have been wide CO2 swings in the past.

Arrhenius did some back of the envelope calculations on CO2 effects back around 1900. They seem to be as good a model as the billion dollar computer simulations we now rely on.

In another conference we got to wondering what the difference between courts martial and military tribunals might be, and I wondered what rules, if any, the 1942 tribunal that President Roosevelt set up to deal with the 8 Nazi saboteurs landed by submarine in Long Island and in Florida operated under. They found all eight guilty and six were summarily executed. I have been unable to find anything about the composition of this tribunal or what rules it followed. It sentenved all eight to death, including two who had cooperated with the FBI and made their capture possible. What evidence it heard (did it know that two of them were in fact turned and worked for the FBI to help catch the other six?), what the ranks of the tribunal members or indeed how many there were, and what instructions it operated under seem to have been suppressed successfully. It’s all mysterious even though the US Supreme Court QUINN decision, which affirmed the President’s right to act in this case, is now used to support the argument for the use of tribunals in the War on Terror.

We do know how the Tribunals operate now. Comparison of Rights in Military Commission Trials and Trials in Federal Criminal Court, by Jennifer K. Elsea, Legislative Attorney, January 26, 2010 discusses this in detail. It is published by Congress.

I still don’t know anything about the 1942 Tribunal.

Subject: USDA fines Ringling Bros. Circus over treatment of animals

Looks like the bunny inspectors have moved on to bigger targets. Based on the explanations, this sure looks like a spurious lawsuit by animal protection activists who couldn’t get their agenda supported through their normal methods.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/11/29/us/ringling-bros-fine/index.html?hpt=hp_t3

Tracy

Thanks. We may add that to bunny inspectors as jobs that probably don’t need doing, and certainly are not so vital that we must borrow the money to do them. The US is simply not serious about cutting spending or reducing the deficit, and few of the candidates are either. Why?