Mail 701 Wednesday, November 16, 2011

It has been a ghastly week, but it is stabilizing. Here is a mixed bag of mail worth your attention. I’ll be back up to speed shortly.

PLEASE DO NOT put carriage returns or line feeds at the ends of sentences. Best for me is plaintext with CR’s at the ends of paragraphs.  I try to reformat to make things look better, but it’s very late, I am tired, and some of the mail looked good in Word but formatted awful in LiveWriter. I sure miss FrontPage.

First let us deal with the browser situation.

Browsers

Jerry,

I’d noticed all the problems you’re having with FireFox. I’ve used multiple browsers over the last several years (IE, FireFox, Chrome, Opera, Safari, Dolphin, etc). On my PC I’ve actually recently made the switch almost completely over to Chrome. I find it far more stable than IE and FireFox. Opera and Safari have their own strange usability/stability issues. Of course, it’s all about comfort level of course.

Erik

As most readers know, I installed Firefox 8 upgrade, and the result was quite horrid. Actually over a few hours things got better, some because I learned how to tame the beast – you must use the alt key as a toggle to get the tool bar that has file and view and tools and help – and you must always let Firefox load all its open tabs before you try to do anything with it. That includes trying to read one of the tabs if it requires scrolling. It includes clicking a link that would normally open a tab. While Firefox 8 is loading it don’t want to be disturbed nohow. After that it seems to work quite well.

Slavery for the unemployed?

Dear Dr. Pournelle,

I thought you might appreciate this story in the Guardian.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/nov/16/young-jobseekers-work-pay-unemployment

In yet another example of good intentions gone astray, someone hit on the idea of putting unemployed people to work in unpaid positions, the better to give them experience for real jobs.

The problem, of course, is that if they start getting paid, they’re no longer unemployed. So the benefits get cut off.

Result: They are compelled to work 30 hours a week for benefits but no pay.

Check me on this, but isn’t that the literal definition of slavery? When you give people basics such as food, shelter, etc. but deny them an actual salary and any economic opportunity?

Respectfully,

Brian P.

There is also debt slavery. In America we call it the middle class.

Don’t get old, poor and lonely – in the Netherlands

Dr. Pournelle –

I really don’t understand the thinking. Considering modern European history, you’d think this would be one of the last things that would be on the social docket.

Informed consent in Netherlands: euthanasia

http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/9826

"A 64-year-old Dutch woman with dementia was euthanased earlier in March, it has been revealed. According to the Dutch daily De Volkskrant, it was the first time that a person in an advanced stage of dementia had been euthanased."

"As in other countries, the Netherlands is facing a dementia tsunami. It is estimated that 500,000 people will have dementia in 2050 [~ 3.2% of estimated 2050 pop. of 15,845,000]. The death of this unnamed woman probably foreshadows many more."

Netherlands looks to expand euthanasia grounds to include lonely, poor http://uk.news.yahoo.com/netherlands-looks-expand-euthanasia-grounds-lonely-poor-190804973.html

"… the Netherlands is caught up in its own controversy over a proposal from the Dutch Medical Association (KNMG) to expand the definition of who may qualify for assisted suicide — including for the first time such nonmedical factors as loneliness and financial struggles."

"Prior to publishing the study results, the KNMG polled its members online. More than 68 percent agreed with the statement that doctors should be “permitted to factor in vulnerability, loss of function, confinement to bed, loneliness, humiliation and loss of dignity” when determining whether a patient is a good candidate for euthanasia."

And then there’s this from last summer:

Organs of those killed by euthanasia being used (14 Jun 2011) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/belgium/8572849/Organs-of-those-killed-by-euthanasia-being-used.html

"The paper showed that about 23.5 per cent of lung transplant donors in Belgium and 2.8 per cent of heart transplant donors are killed by euthanasia. "

Apparently, organs from the euthanized are better for transplantation than those from accident victims.

It seems a very slippery slope.

Pieter

And it has always been predictable. Once you can get rid of people because they are inconvenient, there is no obvious limit on the number of people you can discover to be inconvenient or top have a bad quality of life, or who’d be better dead.

sexual harassment

The other night my wife was watching one of those crime dramas on TV and I was half watching. You know the type, investigators in the field talking to an eccentric female computer whiz back at headquarters who almost instantly gets them the information they need to solve the case. Anyway, there is friendly banter between the woman and the cops, with mild sexual innuendo, presented as normal and acceptable; both characters are smiling… the exact same kind of behavior that gets political candidates and other public figures in big trouble for sexual harassment nowadays when a woman remembers it years later. The same media that shows it as OK in fiction reports it with disdain if not horror on the news.

DH, Connecticut

Dana Hague

I am always suspicious of accusations that don’t come out until years later. As for instance with Mr. Justice Thomas who was unanimously approved as a court of appeals judge. But that’s another story, and one we needn’t get into.

Energy from Orbit News Release

Hi Jerry,

I thought you might like to see that some mainstream types are finally taking this seriously.

http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-11-iaa-power-orbit.html

Thanks for all you do!

—

E.C. "Stan" Field

Space based solar power

Hello Jerry,

Looks like I was a bit premature in writing off SSP. Check this out:

http://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Solar-Energy/Energy-of-the-Future-Spaced-Based-Solar-Stations.html 

In fact, since it is due to start supplying much of the world’s

energy requirements by 2030 and we are expected to be the sponsors,

we should be the beneficiaries of the early systems, certainly much

earlier than 2030. Maybe I’ll get to use electricity from space to

cook my words, prior to eating them.

Some interesting excerpts:

"A solar power station in space measuring several kilometres in

length may sound like something from a science fiction film, but the

reality is that this idea could well be operational and supplying

much of the worlds energy requirements within less than 20 years.

Space based solar power stations are not a new idea, in fact they

have been researched since the 1970’s."

and

"According to Reuters, the paper provides little precise detail on

how the technology could be deployed, nor on the estimated cost of

new solar power stations."

Of course, the really interesting part comes later in the story:

"The report recommends that governments help subsidize private sector

firms to fund further research into the technology, arguing that the

risks associated with such new technology are too great for private

firms to undertake prototype projects on their own.

According to businessgreen.com the US National Space Society is

scheduled to hold a news conference in Washington later today to

promote the new report."

Lets see. Solaren. Solyndra. VERY expensive up front, but HUGE

payoff expected. Government subsidies required.

Naaahhhh, GOTTA be a coincidence. Or the output of a focus group

somewhere that says that if you have a company named ‘Solxxxxx’ it is

good for at LEAST a $5e8 in unaccountable government subsidies. If

there are a few FOB’s on the board, that is.

And, just curious, wonder how you go about building an inflatable 1

km mylar concentrating mirror with the surface tolerance and

mechanical stability required for it to ACT as a concentrating

mirror? And how do you maintain that tolerance and stability while

slewing the mirror to track the sun and compensating for the ‘solar

sail’ thrust produced by the reflected beam? And how do you get the

solar power produced by the solar array ((1 GW insolation)*(overall

conversion efficiency of insolation to downlink beam)) from GEO to

the power grid on the earth? And what fraction of the energy

departing GEO in the downlink beam appears on the grid as 60 Hz (or

for the rest of the world, 50 Hz) power? And is the system self-

assembling or does it require an installation team in spacesuits,

working outside in GEO? Is the overall MTBF so good that an on site

O&M team and an ongoing earth/GEO supply line is not required?

Oh well, fortunately, I am not an engineer so I don’t have to worry

about such things. I can just let the real engineers handle them

while I sit back and, over the next 20 years or so (if I am still,

very optimistically, here), watch those nasty old CO2 belching coal,

oil, and gas plants being taken off line as they are replaced by

clean, infinite solar power.

Can’t wait.

Bob Ludwick

Solar power satellites will come, but for the moment we have natural gas. Just as we no longer have forests of burnable wood… Solar power does require a spacefaring nation to sustain it.

Packing & the Friendly Skies

This is a very interesting talk (from a security conference, no less) on

how to travel in a way that neither the airline nor the TSA can get

access to your luggage.

The trick: use the TSA’s own rules against them and pack a

pistol – even a cheap starter’s pistol, in your luggage.

(a starters pistol is less likely to cause problems while travelling to

the more unfree US states (or internationally), but is still considered

a firearm for TSA purposes).

Carrying a handgun or long gun requires a hard sided lockable

container…

Of course, you’ve cleverly sized the container so that your valuable

stuff (digital toys, external hard drive, network stuff etc) rides along

with the gun.

http://deviating.net/firearms/packing/  The first link is the video.

Worth watching and recommended:

There’s another video out there on youtube that shows how a zipper-

closure suitcase / softcase can be opened with nothing more than a

Bic pen, even if the zipper pulls are locked together, and then closed

back up so you’ll never know it was opened, except your stuff is missing.

And with no visible damage you have a very weak claim.

Ever since I first saw this I’ve been watching the local industrial / military

surplus stores for a military case that is shown in the video, or even a

hardshell suitcase sized Pelican (or similar) case.

Google "Pelican 1560 case" to get an idea….

The talk is particularly informative and rather entertaining – a quite

obvious pleasure in using "The Man’s" rules to your advantage.

It’s a little long but excellent info, I especially like the tip

about carrying

a prepaid mailing envelope for unexpected things. The prepay won’t

expire (unless the rates change).

Language warning – there’s the usual sort of mild profanity commonly

heard at the less "corporate" security conferences.

Mike

Crony Capitalism Undermining the Space Program

Jerry,

Mr. Simberg has an interesting article in the Weekly Standard.

Charles Adams, Bellevue, NE

<http://www.weeklystandard.com/print/blogs/how-crony-capitalism-undermines-space-program_608068.html>

"How Crony Capitalism is Undermining the Space Program

Rand Simberg

November 14, 2011 1:27 PM

…. A little over a year ago, Congress approved a NASA authorization bill that mandated the agency to spend billions in taxpayer dollars over the next few years on a congressionally specified giant rocket with no defined mission and no budgets with which to build payloads for it.

This boondoggle, called the Space Launch System (SLS), is based on hardware derived from the now-obsolete Space Shuttle program. It is expected to have a minimum of $18 billion in development costs with a first flight six years from now. However, based on history, most expect that schedule to slip and the price tag to increase far above that by the time it is operational over a decade from now. NASA already acknowledges that it will only fly once every year or two, which means that each flight will cost billions.

The Space Launch System is supported primarily by Senators Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, and Bill Nelson, D-Fla., and has garnered support from others, such as Richard Shelby, R-Ala., and Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, for whom the project promises jobs in their respective states-at Johnson Space Center in Houston, Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, and solid motor manufacturer ATK in Utah. Thus, some cynics have taken the acronym SLS to really mean "Senate Launch System." Conveniently, it happens that some of the major campaign contributors to those senators are contractors who will benefit from the no-bid, sole-source, cost-plus, fixed-fee contracts for the system-under which they get paid for time and materials, not results. Note that, unlike Solyndra and other loan-guarantee programs, there is no chance of taxpayers ever getting their money back…."

Subject: If you get excited about maps, you will probably find this funny:

http://www.xkcd.com/977/

Tracy

research harvesting and repub Jerry,

And article from CERN about companies harvesting research and wikipedia data from the internet and republishing for profit.

http://cdsweb.cern.ch/journal/CERNBulletin/2011/45/News%20Articles/1394589?ln=en

Jim

This is a serious matter, and I will have an essay on it in future.

I’m an economic nitwit, but . . .

Dr. Pournelle:

You’ve often repeated that if you want less of something, tax it; if you want more of something, subsidize it. With that in mind i wonder how this would work in a non-liberal government US: guarantee that domestically-produced oil from US-owned companies would get a $1/barrel bounty in addition to the market price of oil. When the price of foreign oil goes up, US-producers would get that, plus a dollar more.

I assume there are all sorts of problems with this, but in a free-to-drill US this seems like a good incentive to increase domestic production.

Then again, as the subject line says, I’m an economic nitwit.

Pete Nofel

Food production and population

Dear Dr. Pournelle,

I saw this thread on a message board and I particularly appreciated the last post in it:

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=221712&page=3

"Re: Resources

Myth-Overpopulation is the cause of starving people.

Fact-There is enough unsustainable food production to feed everyone on this planet as it is. The UN has published several reports on food production VS population, the biggest barriers are economical, not production.

Myth-The way we make food now is the best way to do it.

Fact-There are far more sustainable ways to proceed, all of which would greatly increase our ability to produce food.

www.omegagarden.com

Myth-Humans have a massive footprint and there isn’t much we can do to minimize it.

Fact-Centralized and decentralized systems can greatly play a role in reducing our footprint. Energy can be saved in all kinds of ways without negatively impacting quality of life, or in some cases, such as the link below, improving quality of life. Superior usage and management of energy also plays a substancial role.

www.earthship.net

"

Respectfully submitted to your attention. I cannot vouch for the accuracy of his links, but it’s still worth thinking about. I also am of the opinion that complaining about 7 billion people on earth is like people on a pacific island complaining that there isn’t enough food on the island for everyone. If overpopulation is a problem, it is one that needs to be met with imagination and resolve, not handwringing.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

As I said a long time ago in A Step Farther Out, historically wealth has always been the most effective means for stopping population growth. Wealthy people have fewer kids. This seems always to have been the case. There’s a lot more to be said on this, but that’s for another essay.

Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence. The third time, it’s enemy action.

<http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=47438>

Roland Dobbins

A few stories of interest

Israel attempts to muzzle critics with funding curbs http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/13/israeli-ministers-criticism-ngo-funding

Israeli biometrics database for the entire country is hacked and exposed on the web

http://www.fastcompany.com/1790444/the-downside-of-biometrics-9-million-israelis-records-hacked

Amazon cloud vulnerable to hacking.

http://www.infoworld.com/t/cloud-computing/sloppy-use-amazon-cloud-can-expose-users-hacking-178575

Rule by technocrats http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/nov/13/europe-rise-technocracy-editorial

Concern with UK courts becoming involved with politics

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/nov/13/anticuts-litigation-court-politics-editorial

—

Harry Erwin

View 701 Wednesday, November 16, 2011

• Taj Mahal in Guatemala
• New Firefox Not working well
• HELP I need to restore the old Firefox

THE PANIC is over. Thanks.

Chaos Manor is beset with plumbing problems and other interferences with our routine. Meanwhile I have a haircut appointment shortly. Tomorrow I have lunch with Niven in Beverly Hills as we look into material for our novel, which is in fact moving slowly but it is moving. It’s hard to run a country. It’s almost as hard to find a good way to tell the story. We’re doing a fable.

I have recently upgraded to Firefox 8. That seems to have been a foolish thing to do. The tool bar is gone, and I can’t find any way to control the thing. There is an introductory page that consists of a bunch of videos recited by someone with a rasping voice who talks too fast and goes past the important points quickly while praising how great this all is. I prefer to read such instructions rather than have to spend time listening to someone try to tell me.

I did the upgrade because Firefox kept crashing, I presume because I keep about 50 tabs open. Whenever I’d click on a link in mail, Firefox would start to load it, then crash. I got tired of it, and tried downloading the latest and greatest. I fear that was a big mistake. We’ll keep trying it for a while, but I suspect this will change my browsing habits just as having to move to LiveWriter has changed the very nature of this daybook, not always for the better. I used to be able to add links easily. Not I have pretty well got to insert them by hand in source code, Livewriter being for some reason unable to import bookmarks properly from Word, and having no way to put them in without my writing them in source code. That makes linking parts of my rambles rather difficult. I sure liked FrontPage better, and for that matter I liked the old Firefox pretty well, while the new one assumes I am both an idiot and a genius alternately, and that I can’t read. Why is this?

I also need to start doing new essays for BYTE and to get Chaos Manor Reviews going again. This hasn’t been a very productive summer, largely because of energy levels. I’m working on things that may restore that, but meanwhile life keeps delivering its small surprises like the plumbing problems. Ah, well. Thanks for your patience.

Topping off this morning’s difficulties, I would swear I read an editorial this morning entitled “Science Fights Flouride” by one Justin Zuckerman, and I certainly made notes this morning on something I thought was such an article, but Google doesn’t believe such an article exists. At least I think it’s Google because Firefox seems to be insisting that I use some horror called the Yahoo Tool Bar, which can’t find the article either.

[A reader has found it for me. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-zimmerman-fluoride-20111116,0,7281469.story Thanks!] [Apparently I can’t spell fluoride and Google can’t remember that some people spell flouride wrong. Ah well.]

The thrust of the article was proof that Jonathan Zuckerman, whoever he is, doesn’t understand the principles of freedom. Some communities have decided to stop putting fluoride in the water, but this time it’s all right that they are doing that, because this time they are listening to economic/scientific debate and not a bunch of right wing propaganda about freedom and liberty. Zuckerman is according to my notes a professor of history and education, and he is pretty sure that fluoride it good for you, but now that some scientific people are questioning it and the debates in the cities are about science, it’s all right if a few misguided city councils decide not to put the stuff in everyone’s water. As opposed to the bad old days when only political fanatics opposed it, and it was necessary for the media and everyone else to bully everyone in the country into doing what the then scientific consensus was sure was good for you.

Here is an excerpt from Professor Zuckerman’s column:

But I’m also glad that the anti-fluoridators are resting their case on science, which provides a shared framework for dialogue and understanding. And that makes them very different from the nation’s first critics who were — to put it mildly — paranoid kooks.

Starting in the late 1940s, opponents charged that fluoridation was leading America toward socialism or communism. "Totalitarian government is not confined to forcing everyone to vote for the same dictator, or go to the same church," one wrote. "It involves also the elimination of liberty to choose your food and drink."

After all what is this liberty stuff? It’s a good insight into the mentality that says “We know what’s good for your children’s teeth, and we really care, so we’ll be sure you don’t forget.” It’s a good insight into one intellectual’s views. This particular intellectual is a professor of history and education, and I am sure he passes this view along to his students; if it ever occurs to him that there is a contrary view he doesn’t let that influence what he writes here.

Now in the real world of rational debate there are perfectly good economic reasons why one ought not put into the water system a chemical that only does good when it’s applied to the teeth. Whether or not fluorides are harmful when consumed, they certainly don’t do any good for your teeth when they are sprayed on the lawn or used to flush toilets. Giving the fluoride drops away at the firehouses, or giving kids fluoride toothpaste in the schools would be a cheaper way to see that everyone gets the benefits of fluoride – but that only goes to people who want the benefits. We can’t have that. People too stupid to listen to the consensus of the well meaning who only want to do good must of course be forced to do what’s good for them. What’s all this liberty nonsense? That’s only for extremists.

I have to run. We’ll get back to this another time. Yes, there were certainly some very irrational people and a few out and out nuts in the debates over whether this stuff ought to be put into the tap water, but there were others who questioned the economics, and a few physiologists who wondered if all that fluoride is good for you. For every “Fluorine is natural, fluoride is death” radio preacher there were others who pointed out that whatever the benefits, they came from direct application to teeth, not from drinking it, and there were more efficient ways to put that on kids’ teeth. And the “debate” never really dealt with that because everyone was so busy publicizing the most irrational arguments they could find as if they were the only arguments.

If you think I may be finding some similarities with the Climate Debate, why — well, It’s time for me to go get a haircut. See you later.

1530:  Good haircut, brisk walk to the barber. We then took Sable out for a walk around the block since she didn’t get out this morning what with the contractors coming for estimates and other distractions. Of course it was just as Carpenter Avenue school was letting out. A flood of good looking and presumably bright kids with a parent attached, each with an enormous rolling book bag, streamed forth, and Sable had to talk to each one of them, and most of the kids thought Sable was the neatest thing they’d seen all day. It seemed as if there were considerably more girls than boys, which may be meaningful  or may be related to the steepness of the hills on the other side of the school. Carpenter is at the base of where the Hollywood Hills come right down to Ventura, so if you park over there you’ll have a steep walk to get back to your car. If you park on this side of Laurel Canyon it’s all flat. Perhaps families with boys tend to park on the steep hills, and families with girls prefer the flat? I have no idea, and it’s not even a cocktail party theory. But I am sure there were more girls than boys.

And all of them wanted to pet Sable., and she wanted to talk to each and every one of them. Interestingly, girls with women tended to be more likely to stop and talk than girls with men. I have no conclusion on this. I did think we have a pretty good crop of kids, all polite, neat, lively, and sensible about approaching strange dogs who look like red wolves. Most thought Sable was a wolf. They’re also fairly trusting, because once assured that Sable is excessively friendly, they immediately wanted to pet her. But they pretty well all did ask. It’s hardly a random sample, since Carpenter is the showcase grammar school in the LA school district, but it does say that we’ve got a pretty good crop of future citizens coming. That’s reassuring.

The Central American Taj Mahal

Re Firefox, it seems to be behaving very nicely. I have not found the session manager tool or indeed the tools in general, but I didn’t need to: Firefox restored all my tabs including the one whose opening crashed the system. It looks good. It seems considerably faster than the version I updated it from. I like it – but I still cannot find the tools/options, and for that matter I can’t even find Help so I can go to Help/About to be sure I know the version number, which I believe is 8. I’m sure I’ll find out soon enough, but I am not smart enough to guess what the programmers thought they were doing. It might be fun to play along until I find out.

One anomaly. There is a row of tab groups in the tool bar. They appear to be groups I have bookmarked and then sorted into bookmark folders, some of them long forgotten. The last one in that row is something  new to me. I’ll tell you what it is, but first let me set it up.

Almost thirty years ago Russell Seitz and I went on an expedition to Guatemala. I was there because it sounded like fun: we were involved in gathering bedrock samples from various places in Guatemala. We had credentials from the Boston Metropolitan Museum. The theoretical reason for the expedition was to get enough bedrock samples from far enough separated places to allow building a data base of trace elements. This would aid greatly in find the source of the Olmec Blue Jade. More on that another time. Russell had underestimated the effect of the sun at equatorial latitudes when at 4,000 feet – there ain’t so much air above you as you might think – when combined with some photosensitive medications, so he was feeling pretty woozy. I was driving the Land Cruiser, which had no air conditioning. We came down from the mountainous area to sea level and were headed for Puerto Barrios. It was very hot, and the humidity was high enough that there was a haze. As we drove over a bridge we saw below us a boy with half a dozen dead parrots on a stick; apparently he had been hunting them, either for their feathers or to eat, or, as Russell observed, quite probably both. I was digesting that rather bizarre information when there loomed up ahead of us, appearing in the gloom and becoming more solid and real as we drove toward it, a rather fantastic sight: the Taj Mahal.

“Does that belong in this hemisphere?” I asked. Russell just shook his head. “You see it too?”  “Yes.”  “Good."

As we got closer, this is what we saw. It’s much smaller than the real thing, of course, and it’s not a very good imitation, but I can assure you that on a hot enough day with enough gloom its appearance can be quite startling. It marks a cemetery. Across the street is Funeraria Finchey, and next to that is a pharmacy that sells a lot of stuff that would need a prescription in the United States. Now all this was long ago under a different government in Guatemala.

As to why I got a link to http://www.guate360.com/galeria/details.php?image_id=2651 which I have never seen before as a consequence of installing Firefox 8 I have no idea. Could Funeraria Finchy be buying advertisement on Firefox? I presume not, but I am out of hypotheses. I note that the site has other Guatemala fotografias, including the streets of Puerto Barrios. I don’t remember the city, which wasn’t all that large when we were there. Russell and I managed to get the Puerto Barrios Yacht Club to serve us a rather good lunch, although I don’t recall how we managed that. Possibly one of us was a member of a club they recognized. The steward was very tall and very dignified, with a strong Oxford accent, and was from Bombay. I think they still called it Bombay in those days.

I haven’t thought about that expedition in twenty years. I certainly hadn’t expected to be reminded of it by installing Firefox 8.

Alas

And of course I spoke too soon. Firefox 8 is mad. I need to find a way back to what I used to have. For reasons I don’t understand, Firefox now finds some unresponsive script on every tab I try to open, and takes forever. It’s unusable. And for the moment I seem to be stuck with it.

So I have made Internet Explorer the default browser because Firefox 8 seems insane on finding scripts and opening windows and doing other madnesses, and I can’t find any way to the tools or help.

But Internet Explorer, although fast and handy, has the fatal defect that there is no way to put a delete “x” in the tab, so in order to delete a tab you have to open it, and that takes a long time on some tabs when all you want to do is get rid of it. Perhaps somewhere there’s a way to set that up but I don’t know it. I was perfectly happy with Firefox 5.6 except that they kept trying to improve it until it crashed, so they came up with increasingly unstable versions.  At some point I am going to have to solve the browser problem.

I hate this. I can’t easily add internal links because LiveWriter doesn’t know how. I liked FrontPage which made things easy to do, but they had to improve things so that it doesn’t work any more to do the basic stuff I need, like inserting a bookmark and easily linking to past work. With FrontPage I could keep a local copy of anything I had posted, and open a local copy and link to its bookmarks. Now I can’t do that. Why do people think they are improving programs when they take away basic features? Now my Browser is improved to the point of uselessness.  Is there anyone left in programming who has ever heard of the concept of “user friendly”?

HELP

HELP CAN ANYONE TELL ME HOW TO GET BACK TO A USABLE VERSION OF FIREFOX AFTER INSTLLLING FIREFOX 8 ?

I am desperate. [LATER: THE PANIC IS OVER. I generally do not erase anything from this daybook/journal, and I’ll leave this as it was, but I no longer need help on this. I am getting control of Firefox 8. I think. Practically almost…]

Perhaps just a little less desperate:

Firefox toolbar

Re Firefox 8: You probably already have this from others, but the ALT key or F10 toggles the FF toolbar on and off… I had to find it by accident.

DH, Connecticut

Dana Hague

Thanks. At least I can get the toolbars back. Still doesn’t solve the problem that Firefox 8 seems to find scripts in every window I try to open, and goes made on the subject, thus taking forever. I would say I liked the new Firefox if it worked, but it doesn’t, and I don’t really have time to figure out what is wrong.

Well, I found HELP (use the alt key as a toggle) and then looked to see how to make Firefox the default browser. Of course it showed me the old way, under the General tab in options. It isn’t there. eventually I went back to options and tried the Advanced tab. There is was. Way to go, fellows. Nothing like learning from Microsoft how to set up a Help program.

Over time Firefox 8 is being just a little better behaved. It has stopped its mad addiction to telling me about bad scripts, although there is no reason why I might not start doing it again.  We’ll see.  It’s dinnertime now.

Meanwhile I really hate LiveWriter’s inability to insert and link to bookmarks. I can do it by writing in the code, but that seems a needless imposition. If FrontPage could do it, why can’t livewriter?  Lazy programmers who don’t actually write daybooks?

2230:  Thanks to all. I’ll write this up later. Firefox seems to have tamed down. I have some new add-ons, and for some reason it has stopped playing ugly games with questions about scripts. I now know to use the alt key as a toggle to bring up the tool bar. I have no idea why they think I want their Yahoo tool bar but not the actual tool bar for Firefox, and I’d as soon the actual toolbar was on all the time, but that’s minor. As of now it seems stable and a lot faster than the older Firefox was. We’ll see; I know, sort of, how to get back to the older version if I have to. If it starts the ‘script did not run’ craziness again I’ll have to rethink, but at the moment I’m hanging in there with Firefox 8.

It has been a very long day. It ended much better than it started. I have more than once been grateful to the USAA insurance people, and it looks as if I have reason for that again. Our house problems are under control, and there’s no need for panic. If you are eligible for USAA insurance, I can’t imagine a good reason for not having it. House and car.

And no sooner did I write that than LiveWriter stopped being able to post this stuff.  Whether that’s Firefox or LiveWriter I don’t know. This is trying to drive me nuts.

One thing is for sure. When you open Firefox, LEAVE IT ALONE until it is through. Do not interrupt it while it is restoring tabs. Don’t try to publish something while it is doing that. Whisper to it, say that you love it, and don’t disturb it until it is done. Then you can try using it. But not before.

The good news is that doesn’t take long. The bad news is that if you try to do something before it is finished with its loading it will be broken until you close it and restart.

And it’s late and I have a mail pile to do. Tomorrow is lunch with Niven and his brother as I gather material for the new novel. I’ll be late tomorrow.

I am off to bed but the panic is over. Firefox 8 works, so long as you make sure to let it load everything when it starts up. Do not try to publish something while the wheels are still spinning.

View 701 Monday, November 14, 2011

· Newt, Herman, and Mitt

· High Tech and Commodities

I put up my perspective on the Republican foreign policy debates and some notes on the assassination in Dubai last night.

I have a medical appointment – class, not emergency—this afternoon, so this is likely to be brief. We will also have plumbers tearing my bathroom apart and rebuilding it to fix leaks. If you have been thinking about renewing or subscribing, this would be a marvelous time to do it.

The radio tells me that this afternoon at 2 PM – didn’t say whether California or Eastern time but I presume Eastern, meaning in about ten minutes – Gloria Allred, who isn’t suing anyone for anything, is bringing forth Ms. Bialek’s old boyfriend, who wasn’t in Washington D.C. when Herman Cain was President of the National Restaurant Association. The name of the former boyfriend is not given, but Allred made sure that everyone could spell her name properly.

Meanwhile, Cain’s wife has said she doesn’t believe any of this. And none of this would have much relevance to the Presidency of the United States except that Cain makes it so. It’s hard to blame him. After weeks of this we have precisely three named ‘accusers’, one of whom says she’s not a witness to anything of importance but had a weird feeling about a dinner in Cairo at which nothing inappropriate happened. Back in those days Egypt was a place that people would go to for conferences and dinners and being sent there was a reward, not a nightmare as it proved to be for Lara Logan; but that was a different era.

So long as the media will show up, we can be sure that Gloria Allred will have conferences. We will shortly know the name of the person she will introduce and why after fourteen years what he has to say is relevant to the Presidency of the United States. And all the media will flock to hear it.

Newt, Herman, and Mitt

The latest polls are now showing Newt Gingrich tied with Mitt Romney in the Republican polls. I don’t know how Gloria Allred will get into the Jump on Newt, It’s His Turn act that will presently begin, but I make no doubt that she’s trying.

Cain is now back to third place. That was likely in any case following a foreign policy debate: Cain is either the best or the least qualified candidate on those issues. Least qualified because he has no experience and he doesn’t really have a policy. He’s for a strong America and for winning any wars we get into. The how isn’t his show: he will assemble a group of experts and have each present his arguments, then choose a policy accordingly. This is pretty well how most US Presidents have operated, of course. Best qualified because he has not present agenda other than the principles that America must be strong and must not get into wars we can’t win, but we damned well ought to win any we get into: that is, he’s going to let the experts handle these matters, and he’ll pick experts who share his principles.

Recall that Harry Truman was Vice President for 82 days before he became President. He had no foreign policy experience, and his military service was as a junior officer in World War I. He made no claim to expertise in either military or foreign affairs. He had never heard of the Manhattan Project or the Atom Bomb. He kept Roosevelt’s cabinet, but made it clear to all, that he was now President, as he made it clear to Marshall and King that he was commander in chief. He was faced with a series of decisions that affected the fate of the world.

I am not a fan of Cain’s 9-9-9, which, I note, seems to have a smaller place in his campaign than it did a few weeks ago, but 9-9-9 is not going to pass any foreseeable Congress. The US needs a thorough tax reform and a thorough reassessment of tariff policies. All of the candidates know this. Cain’s proposals are the most radical barring Ron Paul, but everyone knows we can’t go on as we’re going.

I’m with Newt: anyone on that stage would be a better President than Barrack Hussein Obama. The latest polls show Obama well below the critical 43% approval rate that traditionally been the line drawn by political managers and consultants: no incumbent gets reelected with lower than 43% approval. The Washington establishment is beginning to feel that pressure – not that some liberal spokespeople are looking for Republicans with “growth” capability, and a few have suddenly developed doubts about Mitt Romney’s “flexibility.” Brooks is looking about for a new candidate to groom. The goal of course is to keep power within the establishment.

Meanwhile, as Iran’s first nuclear weapons test looms closer, foreign policy will become more prominent in the debates. It really is important, although not as much so as regaining economic prosperity. 

Commodities and Technology

It’s time for me to get off this political stuff and get back to technology and society. The whole world of publishing has been transformed. Amazon has taken over a lot of it.

There was a flurry of stories about how Amazon’s profits are down, due to major investments in technology. That’s the experts for you. I remember when the joke was that one day Amazon would make a profit at all: for the first few years of its existence Amazon was building a mechanism to sell goods on line. Bezos burned a lot of capital doing that. Slowly he built the structure, and one day there was a profit, then more profit. Next thing we knew, Amazon was a major competitor to Wal-Mart. Now it’s making tablets. Meanwhile the number of Amazon Prime subscribers grows exponentially.

There are other big trends. It used to be that the interesting stories were about new technology. There’s still new technology, but the really interesting trends are in the widespread use of technology in places that used to not be affected. Just as scientific pocket calculators went from really expensive – I remember Adrian Berry and I on an expedition from a AAAS meeting to find a scientific calculator that would not only do fractional exponents and algebraic series, but show the results as a graphic plot – to throwaways in supermarkets. Now pocket computers are becoming a commodity. Tablets aren’t there yet, but they will be. It’s exciting out there.

And now it’s time to get ready for my class. Kaiser really believes in preventive medicine. And the plumbers are here. It would be a nice time to get some new subscriptions. And yes, I know, I know, I am damnedly late in recording them. I guess I haven’t been dancing as fast as I can, but I’ll get at it. Thanks to all.

View 700 Sunday, November 13, 2011

We don’t do breaking news, but sometimes breaking news triggers stories we’ve been holding on to.

· The Foreign Policy Debate

· Assassination in Dubai

· Explosions in Iran

· Brazil sends in the Army and the Marines

The Foreign Policy Debate

Newt Gingrich is generally the smartest man in any room he happens to be in; he certainly was in the latest Republican debate. As usual he followed Reagan’s dictum: don’t trash fellow Republicans. Instead he was careful to say that anyone on that stage was infinitely preferable to Barrack Hussein Obama. He was also responsive and decisive on the questions, and showed what everyone knows, that he has kept up with world affairs. He has presided over balanced budgets, he understands the need for science and investment in long range technologies, and he was the only candidate to point out that the US is a maritime power and we are underfunding our Navy and we will face severe consequences from that. He looked Presidential, and he sounded well informed. He understands American conservatism and he is politically principled. Newt’s negatives are personal, not intellectual.

Romney came off well. As usual he looks Presidential. He is well informed, and he has no personal defects that I know of. He has principles. Many of his views are conservative.

CBS News says

And despite being widely seen as the frontrunner for the nomination, Romney didn’t take any serious blows from his rivals. (Gingrich notably declined to elaborate on his not-so-veiled criticism of Romney as little more than a competent manager who wouldn’t change Washington.) Romney’s only cause for concern: If he’s supposed to be the man to beat, why aren’t his rivals more eager to take him down?

As to why his rivals won’t do the hatchet job on Romney that CBS News and the rest of the media want done, I don’t suppose I need to make any comment beyond saying the Republicans are getting smart. Romney can certainly beat Obama in a general election. He is a competent manager, and is likely to take advice from smart people. The media hope that if he is elected he will ‘grow’ which to them means he’ll become a liberal seeking the adulation of the liberal media. They may be in for a surprise. My Mormon friends are not all conservative but they are all strong advocates of individual freedom coupled with community, not government, collective responsibility.

And he scored points with conservatives in responding to a question from debate co-host CBS Evening News anchor Scott Pelley, who pointed out that al Qaeda recruiter and U.S. citizen Anwar al-Awlaki, who was killed by U.S. forces without trial, was not convicted in court. You don’t get such privileges if you are at war with the United States, Gingrich said.

Herman Cain held his own. He is not a foreign policy expert, and he made it pretty clear that he doesn’t intend to be one, just as he doesn’t intend to be a military expert. He said clearly that in such matters he would call in a number of experts and have each present his views, then as commander in chief he would choose one. That’s what most managers have to do – few CEO’s are experts at everything that goes on in their companies. That’s what the best past presidents of the US have done. The alternative is to insist on some kind of collective recommendation so that the CINC is not bothered with the need to make tough choices. Cain doesn’t look to be afraid of tough choices, but he is also aware that there are many aspects to foreign policy and military policy that he doesn’t know a lot about. That sounds pretty good to me. He’s aware that he’s not a military or diplomatic genius.

Governor Perry held his own. He is clearly not all that comfortable in debates, but then few Presidents have engaged in debates while in office. You have to be good at debate to get the office, but the President doesn’t go out on the floor of the House or Senate and engage in debate, nor do we hold debates among heads of state. We know Perry can make good speeches. He is apparently dynamite at charming a small group, which is a skill that Presidents do need and need badly. The radio is reporting the Perry actually won the poll of those watching the debate. Interesting.

Ron Paul remains Ron Paul. He is a strict constitutionalist. His views on what we should and should not do in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are based on his rejection of the notion that those are legal wars: they were not declared by Congress. Ron Paul’s view of War is pretty close to that of the Framers, as is his view of the role of the States in domestic matters. That’s pretty close to my views on the subject as well. I have more than once pointed out that the Constitution says nothing about education, so why is the federal government at all involved in it? Indeed the Constitution makes the Congress the absolute sovereign of the District of Columbia: if they know how to educate kids, let them show the country how to do it in the place where they are in charge. Instead the federal government including the judiciary wants to run the schools in Kansas City, with the usual disastrous results. But I digress. My bottom line: I think the country would be a lot better off after four or eight years of Ron Paul as President even as I would be prepared to be critical about some of his foreign policy views: but Constitutional Republic is a far far better scenario than incompetent empire, which is what we’ve been trying. I am glad to see Ron Paul in the debates, but I confess that I don’t think he is a serious candidate. He can say what he wants to say because he isn’t going to win. I’d like to see him in the Senate when this is all over. Ah well.

Michelle Bachman remains a serious candidate. She was well informed, and a great deal more charismatic than she was in the early debates. Huntsman is a foreign policy expert, and it shows. He’d make a good Secretary of State, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see him as grand duke of Foggy Bottom in 2013. Like Huntsman and Bachman, Santorum came out about where he went in, not losing but not gaining much. As Newt keeps saying, anyone on that stage would be far better for America than the present occupant of the White House; I saw nothing to make me doubt that.

Assassination in Dubai

They’re not calling it an assassination yet, but it sure looks like one. The son of an important Iranian official has been found dead in a Dubai hotel. It’s all remarkably similar to what happened to a Hamas official not all that long ago. It’s possible that this wasn’t a strike by Mossad, but I sure wouldn’t bet much money on it.

Note that this happens as there is news of explosions in Iran at bases connected with the Iranian nuclear program. There’s even video. All this happens as the Republican candidates, with the exception of Ron Paul, agree that they would use any means necessary including military strikes and joint covert actions with Israel to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons.

As to what’s going on:

Iran has long had a policy of providing strong incentives – positive and negative – to its smartest kids to study nuclear engineering and go into the Iranian nuclear program. It has long been thought that one way to make sure there is no nuclear program is make sure there aren’t any really bright nuclear engineers.

This rather drastic policy has been applied in the past, and neither Syria nor Iraq ever got nuclear weapons. Note that hostility toward Iran having nuclear weapons is universal in the Arab world with the single exception of Syria. The obvious author of the Iranian explosions and the death of the smart young man in a Dubai hotel is Mossad, but Israel is not the only country happy with these recent events, nor is Mossad the only intelligence agency capable of using these techniques. Welcome to the shadow world.

Brazil Sends in the Marines

Most Americans have never seen a real slum. Brazil knows a lot about them, and periodicaly the government sends in the Army to tame them down a bit. That’s happening again. The headlines talk about police, but these operations involve armored personnel carriers, Brazilian Marines and other elite troops as well as police. The military maxim that if a job needs a platoon, send a regiment seems to be governing.

It isn’t the first time Brazil has used its army for the reconquest of generations-old slum areas. The results have been mixed. When you have an area that for many decades has had no police, garbage collection, building codes, street repaid, or any of the other services usually associated with even the lowest level of western city life, establishing some kind of rule of law is a very difficult proposition.

Brazil has a thriving economy and seems to have tamed much of its bureaucracy. It will be interesting to see this experiment in nation building. We can all wish them well, and there will be a thousand dissertation topics…

Those interested in Cain may find these sites worth a moment.

http://www.norcalblogs.com/gate/2011/11/5th-cain-accuser-was-involved-in-return-of-elian-gonzalez-to-cuba-now-works-for-obama-administration.php

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=47438

The Cain events are not over. All this is a bit of a distraction. The real question is what can be done about the economy, and that requires an agreement on just what is the point of government, and who owns what. Is the purpose of government to reduce the gap between richest and poorest? That certainly was not the intent of the Framers, some of whom might have thought of that as a good idea, but it wasn’t what the Constitution was intended to do. If it is the job of a government it would have to be a state government. Of course if any state adopted a really serious soak the rich program, the result would be wealth flight – as is happening with the flow of wealth and jobs from California to Texas (or California to almost anywhere, for that matter).

Whatever the merits and demerits of the Cain 9-9-9 plan (and there is much to debate about it), an excise tax does reach everyone. Those who spend more pay more in tax, but everyone has to pay something. When some pay no taxes at all, there is no incentive for them not to vote for higher taxes. If you have to pay the tax you vote for, you have some reason to think about raising that tax.

I have no great objection to reducing the disparity between richest and poorest, but I have a lot of objection to raising the government’s revenue. The more money government gets, the more it will spend on bunny inspectors, Walnuts as Drugs, and thousands of other such programs. Government spending will always rise to exceed income. Raising taxes just raises spending. If you want to reduce the disparity in incomes, first eliminate institutions government and private that are too big to fail. The result of that may surprise you. But that’s another essay.

Just to clarify the above: I would very much like to see laws and regulations that limit the sizes of organizations, including private fortunes. The problem is that doing that has side effects. I do subscribe to the principle that any organization that is too big to fail is to big. I subscribe even more to the elimination of institutions that take high risks, keeping the winnings while saddling the public with their losses. It seems to me that we can go a long way in that direction fairly rapidly.

I would start with the banks: instead of a Big Five or Big Six I would have a not-so-big fifty or sixty. One way to do that would be to go back to the separation of commercial and investment banks, with investment banks unable to guarantee any funds or receive any bailouts. We had such a structure until about 2000. We also need to stop using public money to drive up the costs of education and housing. All this is relatively simple, and I suspect that all the necessary measures would be approved by both the Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party movements.

What we don’t need is to rob the rich in order to give the government more money to spend.