Wednesday, October 5, 2016

Liberalism is a philosophy of consolation for the West as it commits suicide.

James Burnham

Rudolph Giuliani: Trump is right about ‘stop and frisk.’ Lester Holt should apologize

If a foreign government had imposed this system of education on the United States, we would rightfully consider it an act of war.

Glenn T. Seaborg, National Commission on Education, 1983

“Deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

Immigration without assimilation is invasion.

Still trying to get back to normal. Good conference and lunch with Larry and Steve today. Considerable work on our new book this afternoon, My typing remains rotten and it’s tough writing – every line needs corrections, sometimes lots – but the ASUS ZenBook keyboard makes it easier.

Newt is calmer about the Vice President debate than I am.

The Vice Presidential Debate was a great example of the power of a good case reinforced by solid preparation. We are at the traditional

Governor Mike Pence had done his homework. He had studied the Clinton-Caine program and their debate style. He understood how Senator Kaine would debate and he was ready for him.

It was said that Abraham Lincoln was the best lawyer in Illinois with a good case and Stephen Douglas was the best lawyer with a bad case.

Last night Pence did well with a good case but Kaine did not do so well with a bad case.

There were two clear indications of how much Kaine was on the defensive.

http://us5.campaign-archive1.com/?u=3872bad904308135ca41de823&id=252efa193a&e=2692b32928

First, he relied again and again on canned responses that were supposed to be clever but came across as robotic and not in touch with the topic at hand. Pence was prepared for this tactic, and he repeatedly pointed out the canned nature of Kaine’s answers. It stripped Kaine of a lot of authenticity and reduced him to a normal politician who had been well coached.

Second, Kaine was so hyper and eager to disrupt Pence’s presentation that he interrupted an estimated 70 times. His intensity came across as manic and juvenile. Pollster Frank Luntz reported that his focus group believed “Mike Pence is winning because Tim Kaine cannot debate like an adult without interruptions.” [snip]

All of which I suppose is true, but Kaine’s “I know it all” smirk – worse than Hillary’s – set my teeth on edge, and he has the manners of a bully with his constant interruptions; particularly when Pence was about to make a telling point or mentioned anything about Mrs. Clinton’s emails or the Clinton Foundation. I suppose the watching audience was already aware of those points, and Kaine’s frantic bullying, with the help of the “moderator,” may well have had the effect of emphasizing them. There was no “debate” in the sense of a civil exchange of ideas or arguments. I don‘t usually let politicians get my goat, but Kaine achieved that. In Spades, with Big Casino.

National Space Society Congratulates Blue Origin for Its Successful In-flight Escape Test of New Shepard as of course do I.

Jerry,

After watching Mike Pence’s performance in Tuesday’s Vice President Debate any questions or concerns I might have had about Donald Trump have been put to rest.

Selecting Mike Pence as his running mate demonstrates that Trump knows how to find and recruit the absolute best people, one the most important jobs for a President.

Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, has chosen what appears to be an impolite nattering idiot as her running mate. As I watched the debate I thought that Kaine looked like someone. I finally figured it out. He looks like Teller, the silent half of Penn and Teller. After listening to Kaine for 90 minutes I understand why Penn decided to have Teller be silent.

It looks like Hillary’s ability to recruit the best advisors is as lacking as her ability to tell the truth.

Last chance to save the Republic. Vote for Trump.

Bob Holmes

Windows Journal 

Jerry,

I’ve been using Windows Journal for several things since it was first introduced with Windows 7.

With the 9/19 Update, MS elected to uninstall all Windows Journal implementations due to an undisclosed security problem with the tailored .xml used for the Journal’s .jnt file format. The apparently remedy is to install a “updated version” the sole revision of which is a security warning on opening files – and a tendency (well, if you can call a 100% failure rate a tendency) to crash if I attempt to open any existing files, either by double click or from within the open program.

Two hours with the Microsoft help desk (chat) was of no actual help.  (That’s no surprise; the surprise was that both people I spoke with had a good command, at least of written, English).

Do you or the Advisors know of anything?

Thanks,

Jim

Peter Glaskowsky says

I used Journal for a while myself; it was a nice lightweight program for taking handwritten notes.

But Journal was superseded by OneNote many years ago, and only stuck around because disk space is relatively cheap and Microsoft tends to hang onto things.

At this point, I think the only sensible thing is to restore a backup of Journal, or go to an older machine, and migrate any remaining Journal notes into OneNote. A tool for this purpose was released in 2007; it might still work:

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/johnguin/2007/12/21/journal-to-onenote-importer/

.             png

Election Data Point

Dear Jerry,

This is one small data point, but it seems significant.

Six months ago I went to Mr. Trumps’ campaign site and left my information, and offered to work as a volunteer.

Today, six months later, and barely more than one month before the

election, they got back to me.

They think I might be of some use telephoning, or perhaps travel to

Nevada, all as part of getting out the vote.

I am a California resident. I know California is about as Blue as a

state can be, but six months later and they want me in a state where I

know no one, and where I have no knowledge of local issues or conditions?

Prepare for four years of scandal and hack appointees, not to mention a

Supreme Court rubber stamping every Progressive Agenda Item.

Petronius

I suspect that recruiting Californians to work the ground game in Nevada was not approved at a very high level. As you note, building a ground game in California is not likely to be a good investment of resources.

SUBJ: Science Is Sexist Because It’s Not Subjective

http://thefederalist.com/2016/09/29/feminist-phd-candidate-science-sexist-not-subjective/

We are appalled. But not surprised.

Cordially,

John

Loopy

Donald Trump’s plan for ISIS

Dear Mr. Pournelle,
I agree that it would not be prudent to announce, in detail, plans for defeating ISIS. (Which, as far as I can tell, seem to be going rather well at present.) On the other hand, announcing loudly that you HAVE a plan, and it’s better than anybody else’s plan, but of course you can’t say what it is — that’s just shoddy.
Beyond that: it seems that much of Donald Trump’s argument is: I’m brilliant. Elect me, and I’ll fix everything. Day one.
Is he running for President? Or Emperor?
Yours,
Allan E. Johnson

He would not care for the responsibilities of emperor, and the military is not likely to accept him if he did want the job. I find it interesting that he says the Caliphate must be defeated and quickly; I have heard little from his opponent since they were identified as the junior varsity. I do not recall any revision of that appellation

Introducing myself — Max Hunter’s son

Greetings Dr. Pournelle. I’m Matt Hunter, Max Hunter’s second son (out of three sons and two daughters). I came across a photo of you, my Dad and Dan Quale in the meeting that kick-started SSTO development leading directly to the Delta Clipper program.
My father spoke very highly of you and I thought you might enjoy being updated on recent activity and actions taken on behalf of his legacy. First, we have established the Maxwell W. Hunter Foundation, a non-profit educational foundation whose mission is to inspire a new generation of space enthusiasts and potential aerodynamicists through, among other things, support for secondary-level aeronautical engineering curriculum.
Second, we are completing a complete overhaul of his old website which can be viewed at http://www.maxwellhunter.com. The website is described as “providing a journey through America’s golden age of space exploration through the eyes of Maxwell W. Hunter II. His unique perspectives on projects and policies in which he had a leadership role are reflected in his extensive library of technical and policy papers, correspondence, speeches, photos, video and family records.”
Finally, in honor of the 50th anniversary of its original publication, ”Thrust Into Space,” his famous textbook on rocket science and propulsion systems for space travel, has been reissued by the Foundation. It’s available on Amazon.
That’s it! I hope to meet you at some point and hope all is well. Feel free to contact me

Matt Hunter

I wish you well. Max was a giant.

It seems that American adults are, on average, more incapable than most humans. “Researchers tested about 166,000 people ages 16 to 65 in more than 20 countries”. I think it’s safe to say that we’ve hit the iceberg as our governments and bureaucracies re-arrange the deck

chairs:

<.>

It’s long been known that America’s school kids haven’t measured well compared with international peers. Now, there’s a new twist: Adults don’t either.

In math, reading and problem-solving using technology – all skills considered critical for global competitiveness and economic strength – American adults scored below the international average on a global test, according to results released Tuesday.

Adults in Japan, Canada, Australia, Finland and multiple other countries scored significantly higher than the United States in all three areas on the test. Beyond basic reading and math, respondents were tested on activities such as calculating mileage reimbursement due to a salesman, sorting email and comparing food expiration dates on grocery store tags.

</>

https://nypost.com/2013/10/08/us-adults-are-dumber-than-the-average-human/

This dovetails with a Vice News article that points out that most bureaucrats and intellectuals surveyed think that Americans don’t know anything about policy. Vice presents this as a “study”, which I don’t consider it to be since I can’t find any reference to an article in a scholarly journal, but it references a book that seems to include original research:

https://news.vice.com/article/washingtons-governing-elites-think-were-all-morons-a-new-study-says

◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

The average public school is awful, and getting the schools to run for the benefit of the pupils rather that preserving the tenure of the teachers is one of the most important tasks ahead. I suspect we are up to it, but it takes someone with a thick skin. I’d say more but my typing is awful tonight. I would not sell America short. Hitler and Tojo made that mistake.

Warthogs & Strategy

I have a crackpot theory about the USAF’s A-10 “strategy”. It has everything to do with the F-35’s modern communications capability and the ‘fact’ that the A-10 is a forty year old airplane wrapped around a big gun. Modifying it seems out of the question. Duplicating its capabilities would probably be cost prohibitive.
Everything I have read about the new generation of aircraft, in particular the F-35 and the F-22, and the new networking capabilities those aircraft (will) have makes the Air Force’s desire to replace the A-10 with a ‘smart’ system more understandable. Wrong, especially from the ground pounders’ point of view, but understandable.
See http://aviationweek.com/defense/how-get-f-35s-f-22s-talking-fourth-generation-fighters. It takes a little reading between the lines to reach the conclusion I did, but it seems to make an otherwise incomprehensible decision less so.

Darryl

It’s a pilot’s air force, and subordinating to the ground army kills your career. The A-10’s need protection from missiles and the hot jet jockeys can fight missile bases; but no one wants that mission. You don’t get to zoom your hands in war stories about how you won air supremacy by attacking ground targets. Perhaps I am overly cynical.

sc:bubbles]

HSV-2 Swift destroyed off Yemeni Coast by Anti-Ship Missile

http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?D=10/04/2016&SO=&HC=2&ID=469303

“The futuristic looking HSV-2 Swift, an ex-U.S. Navy experimental high-speed logistics catamaran now being utilized by the UAE government, was struck by a missile on the evening of October 1, according to multiple reports.”

The moral of the story is to stay out of the littorals unless you have proper defenses, and excellent intelligence. 

Graves

Some reports say that it has been salvaged. It was no longer a US ship in any event.

 

for your observations…

David Couvillon
Colonel, U.S. Marine Corps Reserve, Retired.; 
Former Governor of Wasit Province, Iraq; 
Righter of Wrongs; Wrong most of the time; 
Distinguished Expert, TV remote control; 
Chef de Hot Dog Excellence;  Avoider of Yard Work
 

Here’s the vital U.S. security interest in Syria

James G. Wiles

A major objection to American involvement in Syria appears in the form of a question: “why is this our problem?”

It is indeed our problem, for cold reasons of geopolitics which have nothing to do with humanitarian intervention, R2P or liberal internationalism.

In Caroline Glick’s latest column in the Jerusalem Post, is the stake for U.S. security interests around the world.

Here’s the money quote:

By adopting a strategy of total war, Putin has ensured that far from becoming the quagmire that President Barack Obama warned him Syria would become, the war in Syria has instead become a means to transform Russia into the dominant superpower in the Mediterranean, at the US’s expense.

“In exchange for saving Assad’s neck and enabling Iran and Hezbollah to control Syria, Russia has received the capacity to successfully challenge US power. Last month Putin brought an agreement with Assad before the Duma for ratification. The agreement permits – indeed invites – Russia to set up a permanent air base in Khmeimim, outside the civilian airport in Latakia…

…The Russians have also decided to turn their naval station at Tartus into something approaching a full-scale naval base.

With Russia’s recent rapprochement with Turkish President Recip Erdogan, NATO’s future ability to check Russian power through the Incirlik air base is in question.

Even Israel’s ability to permit the US access to its air bases is no longer assured. Russia has deployed air assets to Syria that have canceled Israel’s regional air superiority.

Under these circumstances, in a hypothetical Russian-US confrontation, Israel may be unwilling to risk Russian retaliation for a decision to permit the US to use its air bases against Russia.

America’s loss of control over the eastern Mediterranean is a self-induced disaster.”

(emphasis added)

It’s an open secret in Jerusalem that Caroline Glick often reflects the thinking of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

What has happened in Syria, as Glick demonstrates, is that Mr. Obama has enabled Putin to reverse one of the three great foreign policy accomplishments of the Nixon Administration: the ejection of the Soviet Union from the Middle East.

This is what this president has done to the U.S. defense posture in Europe and the Middle East. Meanwhile, in the Far East, the Chinese are trying to flip the new Philippine government into the anti-American column.

If they pull that off, Beijing will have successfully broken out of the nine-dash island chain and penetrated the U.S. defense perimeter which contained China since the end of the Korean War.

As Victor Davis Hansen wrote this week, “a hard rain is coming.”

 

 

 

“ Russia has deployed air assets to Syria that have canceled Israel’s regional air superiority.

Under these circumstances, in a hypothetical Russian-US confrontation, Israel may be unwilling to risk Russian retaliation for a decision to permit the US to use its air bases against Russia.

America’s loss of control over the eastern Mediterranean is a self-induced disaster.”

Russia’s air asset have not CANCELED Israel’s regional air superiority, but certainly have induced a challenge to it. There are 3 levels of air control – Air Supremacy; Air Superiority; and Air Parity.  In Israel’s case they have have enjoyed Air Supremacy for quite some time – this WITHOUT augmentation from the US.  I would suggest that Israel (and certainly with US [other friendly?] reinforcing assets continues to maintain air superiority.  (NOTE: that Russia putting all it’s eggs in one airfield is NOT tactically sound – distance prevents fighter and fighter/bomber support from Russian or Iranian airspace).

I will concur, however, that the Russian re-introduction into the eastern Med is absolutely a disaster.

s/f

Couv

David Couvillon
Colonel, U.S. Marine Corps Reserve, Retired.; 
Former Governor of Wasit Province, Iraq; 
Righter of Wrongs; Wrong most of the time; 
Distinguished Expert, TV remote control; 
Chef de Hot Dog Excellence;  Avoider of Yard Work
 

From: Leonard
David makes a good point.  Nevertheless Israel has sought not to rely on US direct military involvement in its wars.  I can’t imagine that policy changing.  I suspect the basing of US planes was for the sake of US force projection given the loss of naval power in the Mediterranean Sea and the frayed ties to the Sunni Arab powers in the Gulf.  But extending the invite to US air power now, given Russian presence in Syria, puts natural gas fields in eastern Med at risk!

The broader issue turns on uncertainty of commitment.  Would any allied government bet on a Democratic Party administration to keep its security agreements when the base of the party is 40% or more supporters of Bernie Sanders?  

Here is the reason to vote for Trump, as despicable a person as he has proven himself to be.  It is not just the possibility of conservative judges on SCOTUS but also a possible rebuilding of military capabilities and commitments.  

Note my use of the word possible.  I have no assurance that Trump will keep his commitments or even remember them.  But there is a chance.

With Clinton and the Dems their track record cannot be ignored.  Who would trust them?   Remember how the democratic congress repudiated the agreement to resupply south Vietnam after the Nixon – Kissinger peace treaty with the North?

Len

 

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

Thursday, September 29, 2016

Liberalism is a philosophy of consolation for the West as it commits suicide.

James Burnham

Rudolph Giuliani: Trump is right about ‘stop and frisk.’ Lester Holt should apologize

If a foreign government had imposed this system of education on the United States, we would rightfully consider it an act of war.

Glenn T. Seaborg, National Commission on Education, 1983

“Deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

Immigration without assimilation is invasion.

But according to candidate Hillary Clinton and moderator Lester Holt during Monday night’s presidential debate, stop and frisk is “unconstitutional.” They are wrong. In Mrs. Clinton’s case, it’s the usual misrepresenting she does when she does not know what she is talking about. As for Mr. Holt, if a moderator is going to interfere, he should do some homework and not pretend to know the law when he does not. Mr. Holt and NBC cannot overrule the U.S. Supreme Court.

Stop and frisk is based on an 8-1 decision of the Supreme Court, Terry v. Ohio. That ruling hasn’t been overturned or even modified by the court since it was handed down in 1968. Stop and frisk is constitutional and the law of the land. The majority opinion, written by then-Chief Justice Earl Warren, approved the constitutionality of stopping a suspect if the police officer has a reasonable suspicion that a person has committed, or was about to commit, a crime. If the officer also has a reasonable suspicion the person is armed, he can conduct a pat-down—that is, a frisk—of a person’s outer clothing.

Rudy Giuliani

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2016/09/28/rudolph-giuliani-trump-is-right-about-stop-and-frisk-lester-holt-should-apologize.html

I wasn’t astonished when Lester Holt tried to prop up Mrs. Clinton in the debate, but actually to interrupt Mr. Trump to insist that he knows the law when he doesn’t was a bit surprising. Perhaps he does know the law and this was planned? He knew the question would come up. He presumably was briefed on the law and Terry v. Ohio. Yet he interrupted Mr. Trump to assert a falsehood. This did not come as an astonishment to many;

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2016/09/27/lester-holt-spins-debate-for-hillary-6-huge-ways-plays-gotcha-with-trump.html

 

One Federal Judge did decree that because more black and Hispanics were stopped and frisked, the practice as employed in New York City was racist. That governs no one in Chicago, where Mr. Trump recommends the practice be applied.

Mayor Bill de Blasio rushed to declare Donald Trump “literally all wrong” in saying Monday that stop-and-frisk is effective and constitutional. But the NYPD put out a statement that proves him wrong.

De Blasio was on MSNBC defending Hillary Clinton, who claimed that “stop-and-frisk was found to be unconstitutional” and “ineffective,” adding that it “did not do what it needed to do.” Trump disagreed on both counts — and the facts back him up.

As the NYPD release rightly notes, “Stop, Question and Frisk is not unconstitutional,” and even Judge Shira Scheindlin’s disastrous 2013 ruling never said so.

Fact is, the Supreme Court found it constitutional back in 1968 and has never reversed or even modified that decision. Scheindlin ruled merely that the NYPD’s use of the tactic had shown “deliberate indifference” to constitutional rights, claiming racial bias.

Then the US Court of Appeals threw her off the case because her “impartiality might reasonably be questioned.”

And it stayed her ruling — a step usually taken only when a decision is unlikely to survive the full appellate process.

But higher courts never finished examining her decision — because de Blasio, who’d won his race for mayor vowing to end the practice, squelched the city’s appeal.

Trump was also right to call Scheindlin “a very anti-police judge.” One of her own former clerks told The New Yorker that “she thinks cops lie.”

http://nypost.com/2016/09/28/clinton-is-wrong-on-stop-and-frisk-and-trumps-right/

All of this must have been known to someone in the CBDS staff who briefed Lester Holt. Perhaps he fell asleep during the briefings?

Reading the Wall Street Journal’s daily Trump Thump has become painful, and I no longer do it religiously. I probably have missed some articles, because there remain a few neo-cons not yet converted to the official WSJ position.

Another Wall St. Journal column says of Trump, “If he had a plan to win this debate against Clinton, it remains as secret as his plan to defeat IDSIS.” I’m not all that familiar with Mr. Riley, a black conservative, and perhaps he is not very familiar with military action; but Trump had said, many times, that he’s not going to discuss strategy for the enemy benefit, and I agree with that. He has said he will do it rapidly, which suggests that he plans to accept the Caliphate’s declaration of war on the United States, and retaliate massively. I’d recommend a Corps sized expeditionary force, including one heavy armored division, with an air support team including both the A-10 Warthogs and a wing of air supremacy SAM busters. That will do it fast and with few casualties. It is an elementary military principle that you use overwhelming force at the point of contact (if you can); this keeps casualties low and actually costs less than trying to do the job on the cheap. As to what we do when we have conquered ISIDS, it will be our territory; we won’t do it as a favor for Iraq and/or Syria. We will own the oilfields, too. We can dispose of that territory as we will, partitioning it into more stable regions. I suggest we give the King of Jordan a reasonable part of Sunni Iraq, hopefully a portion with some oilfields in it. He can use the income, and the Middle East can use the kind of stability he has brought to his part of it. The Kurds also have a high stake here.

The important part to remember is that ISIS rules only if it rules. Its legitimacy is that it applies Sharia to areas it controls; if it controls no area, if it sovereign nowhere, then it is just another terrorist group; perhaps not the Junior Varsity, but not a Caliphate. Its main attractiveness to recruits is that it claims to fulfill the will of Allah, and Allah favours the Caliphate.

I do not know Mr. Trump’s plans; I doubt he does in detail. I do know he does not consider himself a military expert and will seek advice from those he thinks are; just as when he decides to construct a new building, he does not start with blueprints of the men’s room (or whatever the Federal regulators require in the area he will build it). He will have to decide on policy, he may even choose a plumbing company, but I’d be much surprised if he spent much time on ball cocks. Eisenhower built highways, but he wasn’t a civil engineer.

The Debate

Dear Mr. Pournelle,
I suspect the debate didn’t change much. Those of us who find Trump intolerable saw an intolerable Trump. Those who find Clinton intolerable saw an intolerable Clinton. Those who dislike both of them about equally probably saw little reason to change their minds.
I’m coming to the conclusion that what we need for the next four years is a caretaker President. In a better world, that would not be the case. Our country has work to do, and “steady as she goes” isn’t likely to get it done. However: some years back I read an article maintaining that, in a representative government, it is not plausible to find a strong, visionary leader unless a large consensus of the population roughly agrees on what direction they want to be led.
At present, the vision of one party is more or less the nightmare of the other. For either to claim “leadership” would require demonizing and marginalizing about half the voters. Which wouldn’t bode well for the future of the Republic.
It would be pretty to think that a Presidential mandate could break this deadlock. I don’t see that happening. What is urgent, I believe, is to begin clawing ourselves back from our current polarization. Other crises will be resolved well or poorly; but this one renders leadership impossible.
I’m inclined to think the United States is healthy enough that, if necessary, we could more or less coast for the next four years. There’d be damage; but not nearly as much as trying to impose a “vision” which half the voters detest. That would give us four years to try to find something like a national consensus.
Granted, that in itself would be a challenge I’m not sure we can meet. but hey, the horse *might* learn to sing…
Yours,
Allan E. Johnson

The problem is that we can’t coast. The rest of the world isn’t. Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton seek to convert this from a nation of states to a national democracy, majority rules; and with two more USSC Justices, they will succeed.

Then there’s

China actively pursuing space-based solar power.

<https://warisboring.com/guess-what-could-be-totally-missing-from-the-new-u-s-presidents-intel-briefing-9ce4881643e5>

—————————————

Roland Dobbins

Take the high ground, boy, or they’ll kick hell out of you in the valleys. I learned that as a first principle, and it applies in a technological war as well.

 

“A gigantic technological race is in progress between interception and penetration and each time capacity for interception makes progress it is answered by a new advance in capacity for penetration. Thus a new form of strategy is developing in peacetime, a strategy of which the phrase ‘arms race’ used prior to the old great conflicts is hardly more than a faint reflection.

There are no battles in this strategy; each side is merely trying to outdo in performance the equipment of the other. It has been termed ‘logistic strategy’. Its tactics are industrial, technical, and financial. It is a form of indirect attrition; instead of destroying enemy resources, its object is to make them obsolete, thereby forcing on him an enormous expenditure….

A silent and apparently peaceful war is therefore in progress, but it could well be a war which of itself could be decisive.”
–General d’Armee Andre Beaufre

From The Strategy of Technology, Winning the Decisive War, by Stefan Possony and Jerry Pournelle

The address is wrong in the invitation to send money. If you care to make a donation, the address is

Jerry Pournelle

Chaos Manor

12051 Laurel Terrace Drive

Studio City, CA 91604

We wrote Strategy of Technology almost fifty years ago. It was used as a textbook in the military academies at one time. The principle remain true, although all the examples come from the Cold War. I hope to revise it with new examples some day; it is still important.

Re: Trump’s First Debate

Dr. Pournelle –
Just read your column on the debate and I thought I’d add a little tidbit.
Hillary condemns Trump for allegedly not paying any federal income tax; that he’s “gaming” the system.
She needs to informed of how the tax system works, that the only way to not pay federal taxes is because you have used your money elsewhere in ways of which the government approves and rewards. these include charities, capital purchases, capital improvements, all sorts of things that improve the lives of others. By doing so, the government lets you off the hook on federal taxes.
To imply that Trump is doing wrong is simply bald-faced dishonesty on her part and a hope that her listeners are ignorant enough to fall for her tripe.
Further, I suggest that an examination of her tax returns will show that she “gamed” the system in the exact same way.
I will admit that I was not a big Trump supporter. My mother was from the start, but I was for Walker, then Fiorina, then Cruz. But, once he got the nomination, he won my support 100%. The important thing right now is to ensure Hillary does not make it to office. Then, we can work on smoothing our rough edges for next time.
Cam Kirmser

But it is all irrelevant. We know that the Clinton Foundation will thrive under Mrs. Clinton. We suspect that Mr. Trump will not go broke in office. And all that is trivial compared to exponential growth of the national debt in the past 8 years, under both Democratic and Republican majorities in both houses of Congress. One candidate says he will cut taxes and reduce costs. He may be lying. The other says she will spend a lot more money shoring up Obamacare, giving free college education, increasing entitlements, and so forth. I suspect she is not lying.

Smallpox Vaccinations Aren’t Available

Smallpox vaccinations are not to be had anywhere, at any price, unless you actually work with the virus or you’re part of a “smallpox response team.”
The government claims to have enough vaccine to vaccinate everyone in the U.S.
https://emergency.cdc.gov/agent/smallpox/vaccination/facts.asp

Ray Van De Walker

And you can believe as much of that as you want to.

Terrorism Risk Alert

Well, as it often happens, high-risk individuals go missing from military programs and we hear from them again at some odd terrorist attack. I wonder how long before we hear from these boys?

<.>

Several Afghan nationals undergoing military training in the United States disappeared from U.S. military bases this month, according to Pentagon and Homeland Security officials.

“During the month of September, seven Afghan students were considered absent without leave (AWOL) during international military student programs,” Pentagon spokesman Cmdr. Patrick L. Evans said.

</>

http://freebeacon.com/national-security/missing-afghans-raise-terrorism-fears/

Not to worry, I’m sure some federal bureaucracy or other has an Afghani sensitivity training campaign on the shelf for just such an occurrence. After all, being concerned about potential security risks is racist and only enables climate change!

◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

We will win the narrative and get Pulitzer Prizes.

You wrote that you’d worry about ADHD. You also wrote that many boys were drugged and this still happens in some places. What would you do if you confronted ADHD in your child in today’s day and age?

My experience has been that most cases described as ADHD occur in rich families and those with really good health insurance. Since the diagnosis didn’t exist when I was in graduate school in psychology, I don’t know the recommended treatments. In my time I once had a psychology practice in association with a leading pediatrician; I only took cases of bright children who were not doing well in school. I tended to teach them self discipline, and give them interesting things to do and read, and this was successful in those cases. I don’t believe I ever recommended drugs, which of course would have to be prescribed by my physician associate. It was a lucrative but time consuming practice and I gave it up.

I have seen kids of rich friends diagnosed as ADHD and have not found one I thought was autistic. That includes relatives of my daughters in law. I generally recommended more interesting schools, which advice was not always taken, but seems to have worked where it was tried. I have no experience with average IQ kids, so I cannot recommend anything. In general, bright kids who are bored tend to exhibit behavior indistinguishable from the diagnosis of ADHD, and since all of those I have encountered tended to respond well to self-discipline and interesting subject matter, I couldn’t say what I would do when “confronted” with ADHD, since I have never actually encountered it.

I have friends who had genuinely autistic bright children, but far more severe than the DSM ADHD. They eventually recovered, but the ordeal was severe and required enormous patience.

Freeman Dyson

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2016/10/13/green-universe-a-vision/

The Green Universe: A Vision

Freeman Dyson

I have not read this, but Mr. Dyson is one of the great thinkers of our time.

Miracles –

Hi Jerry,

I’m blessed to count Mark Mittleberg and Lee Strobel as two friends – they are both best selling apologists, and provide a great filter between academia and the mass market.  One of the really cool parts of their work is that they provide references and citations to the deep academic literature.  

Recently Lee recommended Craig Keeners two-volume set on Miracles.  It provides compelling and powerful case studies and documentation that they really do happen.  I’m halfway through, and it’s absolutely fascinating.

https://www.amazon.com/Miracles-Credibility-New-Testament-Accounts/dp/0801039525/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1474582053&sr=8-5&keywords=miracles&tag=chaosmanor-20

I’ll witness to one myself – I was raised in a non-religious family, not even really C&E.  In college in the late 80’s, I became actively hostile to religion (lovely environment, CU Boulder, so very intolerant).  In 2004 I was in the habit of spending my lunch hour at our local Barnes and noble, often picking up and reading scientific books (Brian Greene, Hawking, etc.).  They had a display with The Case For Christ, and Darwin’s Black Box.  I thumbed through both, thinking I’d debunk them with a good laugh.  But neither was that easy.  That launched a 5 year deep investigation of my own – I read all of Lee’s books, read his sources, and read those sources, and all the counter arguments as well.  In the end, I came to a rational decision that Christianity was true.  Some months later, in late 2009, I came to faith – through a true apologetic, rational path.  My wife had always been a believer, and we set out to find a church to attend.  The second one we tried, just a month later, was Cherry Hills Community Church, which seats about 2500 people in the worship center.  They have a tradition as part of the service to turn around and greet and shake hands with the people around you.  

As I turned, I found myself shaking the hand of Lee Strobel.  We’ve been friends ever since.

God has both impeccable timing, and a great sense of humor.

I challenge anyone to brush that off to coincidence.  Of all the gin joints in all the world….

Cheers,

Doug

One of the Brothers told me in high school that each of us will experience a miracle or two; what we do with that experience will determine much in our lives. This was not Church doctrine, just an observation by a person I admired very much. His name was Brother Fidelis, FSC.

sc:bubbles]

Sweden as a case study

Greetings Doctor
A short mail from Sweden. First to get it out of the way, you’ve been a longtime formative hero of mine. I got my basic world view from then illicit (sold but not kept at the library) Biggles books. World-view was then re-enforced by the Lord of the ring, but not really explained until getting my hands on Falkenberg’s Legion, and go tell the Spartans. Yes, I exaggerate a bit, there were other influences, but yours was important.
No one around here wrote books like that, since I grew up in Sweden, where we of unlimited welfare take our rights seriously and skip lightly over our outmoded duties, except those having to do with paying taxes.
Anyway, Sweden today might be the best case study possible with regards to a comprehensive and declining welfare state and free immigration. Of course, also the best, worst example in the world of poor and slow integration, since we due to feelings of supreme goodness, and strong unions, keep perfectly healthy immigrants out of the work force and on the dole. Twenty years ago I didn’t understand the term “Welfare Islands” when reading the Falkenberg books. I due to language and a less fractured country, envisioned real islands where the govt dumped the refuse. Now, the term makes perfect sense here in Sweden. Linguistically though, welfare is a good word here, encompassing everything the govt handles out as schools, hospitals, unemployment money and the coins you get from your social worker. So, linguistically, here, welfare is good, while money from “soc” the social workers is sorta frowned upon, and being re-named every fifth years or so to avoid pointing fingers at the dolees. So voters mainly care about jobs and welfare, ignoring defense and education. Yeah, recently we worry about immigration too, but the solution is simply more taxation.
I’d say Sweden is the perfect example of politicians bribing the voters with their owntax money, and most people have long lost sight of it. Recently cheap loans and somewhat lowered income taxes have made the middle class dependent on banks instead of politicians, and brought a day to day prosperity but little accumulated wealth, certainly not as compared to the loans. This perceived affluence and increased stratification, basically people living in rentals missed out on the property rally and cant borrow for consumption, have given the middle class a big touch of upper class guilt meaning no one says no to silly ideas. Thus every idiot idea coming out of leftist campuses in the US, or France, or dreamed up by those among us who simply hate civilization, are happily adopted by a very vocal minority and not resisted on fear of being labeled a Nazi.
Sweden; still comfortable, yet increasingly dismal and headed for the abyss, but a great case study, although few around here would admit it. Look it up, if you have any spare time to speak of.
If published, please keep name out. I could lose my job or at least the next three raises over it. As I said above, not agreeing with the lefties ideas makes you a Nazi around here. We take corporate policy one step further and call it something like shared bottom-line values. Said values are then decided on by the employer, and manifestly good, they have to be since they are shared values. Not agreeing with them, is a bad thing.
Thanks for the books. As I said formative.
Carl

 

I am Norman, which is Frenchified Danes and Swedes who were hired from our homeland in then Denmark (now Sweden) by the King of France to keep our relatives from raiding Normandy. I have a great deal of empathy with Sweden. I am sad to see Sweden used as a social experiment, but it is well that there has been one with obvious results.

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

Tuesday, September 27, 2016

Liberalism is a philosophy of consolation for the West as it commits suicide.

James Burnham

If a foreign government had imposed this system of education on the United States, we would rightfully consider it an act of war.

Glenn T. Seaborg, National Commission on Education, 1983

“Deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

Immigration without assimilation is invasion.

Well, the ophthalmologist decided that my cataract is not ripe enough. Of course she didn’t say that. That’s what they used to say in the old days, when all they could do was remove the lens, so they wanted you to wait until things were so bad that even no lens was better than you were seeing. Apparently I wasn’t complaining enough about my cataract, nor eager enough to get it removed. I did get some drops that do seem to help, or at least I thinks so. Sand my left eye is fine, so having a lot of the light blocked off in my right eye isn’t so bad.

Apparently they don’t want to see me again for six months, so we’ll drop that story until next spring. It probably wouldn’t have improved my typing anyway.

And of course I got my flu shot while I was there. The eager young nursing students administering the immunizations also insisted on checking my other shot records, but I’m up to date on pneumonia and tetanus.

It seems to me that Hillary has based her entire campaign on “Trump’s not fit to be President, no matter how much you hate me and despise Obama’s policies.” Trump’s debate strategy seems to be to make sure she claims responsibility for the situation we are in, and doesn’t denounce ObamaCare, the Iran deal, our various regulatory policies, our immigration policy – to make sure she says you’re going to get more of what we already gave you. Big government, soak the rich, free trade agreements – and lots of migrants and immigrants. A bit more bureaucracy will take care of everything.

But you have no choice, because Trump isn’t fit to be President, he isn’t even rich, this is all a con, and he believes Obama wasn’t born in the United States and he sort of supported the invasion of Iraq just like I did, and he doesn’t know how to build a wall or do anything much. And he loses it when provoked. Just you watch.

So we watched, and yes, she led him off track sometimes – after all, this was his first ever Presidential debate, and she’s done several, and she’s pretty smart – but even when he was off track a bit he kept saying things like you’ve been in power, why didn’t you do something when you were Secretary?, and generally reminding us who spent more money we don’t have than any other President in history and got us the slowest recovery from a Recession than anything since the Great Depression. And despite the goads and slights, he didn’t turn into a raging bull ready to nuke everybody. He sounded like a business man ready to take advantage of any breaks he could get, and now ready to apply those skills to the Presidency.

Scott Adams seems to have reached the same conclusion.

If Trump continues in this way : I want to fix things, I know they’re broken, and I have done pretty good for myself, let’s see what I can do for you, and no, I’m not going to nuke any baby seals nor even Moscow or Tehran, but maybe I will adjust the rules of engagement for our sailors in the Persian Gulf – if he keeps that up, looks like he might want actually to do some of the things everyone talks about, I think he wins. I’ve had about enough of this slow recovery. And I don’t think adding more taxes and regulations will help. I don’t think Trump will make taxes worse, or grow the bureaucracy, or get us into another war. I’m not so sure about Hillary. Qadaffy did everything he could to Finlandize. He’d have licked Obama’s boots or Hillary’s toes if he thought that would help.

She summarized her Libya Policy as “We came. We saw. He died.” Of course it wasn’t so long after that that our ambassador – her ambassador – died also, but that was hardly Qadaffy’s fault. He’d died.

Somehow I think any random Marine Colonel could have come up with better results in Libya than Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton.

 

Smallpox

From the CDC web sire

http://www.cdc.gov/smallpox/vaccine-basics/index.html

Smallpox vaccination can protect you from smallpox for about 3 to 5 years. After that time, its ability to protect you decreases. If you need long-term protection, you may need to get a booster vaccination. Find out who should get smallpox vaccine.

B

Yes, and they insist they have enough vaccine to immunize the entire US population. Of course it does deteriorate, so you can believe as much of that as you want to.

Miracles at Lourdes
Jerry,
Your comments about the miracles at the Lourdes Shrine sent me to google looking for more information. You comment suggested that there were several hundred such documented miracles. Perhaps that is the correct number, in total, since the founding of the shrine. But the number of recent miracles is substantially less. According to one site I consulted, prior to 1914, there were an average of 57 miracles claimed each year. Since 1947, when a medical board was created to review these claims, the total number of accepted miracles has decreased substantially: only 56 were recognized between 1947 and 1990. And since 1978, there have been but 4 recognized. It shouldn’t be surprising that the more closed these claims have been scrutinized, the fewer there are that are accepted.
The other thing that jumps out is how infrequent these miracles are relative to the number of visitors at the shrine. According to one site, approximately 5,000,000 people visit the site each year, and some 350,000 people bath in the water. So the odds on obtaining a cure from a visit are exceedingly low.

Craig

Why do you think I am surprised that we see fewer miracles as science advances? It is obvious that many old wives’ tales – blue bread mold, orange mold, spider webs – produced results for centuries before we learned what the mechanism was. I don’t expect that trend to stop, and neither does the Pope or any of the theologians I know of. They may see implications in our scientific advances that you do not see, but they certainly do not deny them. What has not happened that they have dropped to zero. I don’t recall saying that the laws of statistics are relevant here.

I said it is an act of faith to believe that there never will be any more miracles when our science is sufficiently advanced. Perhaps that deserves a stronger faith that belief that prayer can sometimes be effective, but that wasn’t my argument. Incidentally, the decline in number of miracles certified has a lot to do with the rules applied to the definition.

Persia

https://www.strategypage.com/qnd/iraq/articles/20160926.aspx

I do hope that the US politicians and military leadership are paying attention to this analysis.  I’ve been saying such since 2003.

David Couvillon
Colonel, U.S. Marine Corps Reserve, Retired.; 
Former Governor of Wasit Province, Iraq; 
Righter of Wrongs; Wrong most of the time; 
Distinguished Expert, TV remote control; 
Chef de Hot Dog Excellence;  Avoider of Yard Work

So do I.

Credibility

http://warontherocks.com/2016/09/it-is-time-to-drive-a-stake-into-the-heart-of-the-american-credibility-myth/

I’m incredulous… the author is making the argument that ‘credibility’ and ‘reputation’ have no bearing on current or future diplomatic or military actions.  Therefore, promises/threats are merely rhetoric.

David Couvillon
Colonel, U.S. Marine Corps Reserve, Retired.; 
Former Governor of Wasit Province, Iraq; 
Righter of Wrongs; Wrong most of the time; 
Distinguished Expert, TV remote control; 
Chef de Hot Dog Excellence;  Avoider of Yard Work

Holy carp!

Evidently we had an incoming over Australia!

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/huge-meteor-crashes-earth-flash-8917015

It could not have hit “offshore” as the article reports; we would have heard tsunami reports by now. More likely an airburst, per the reports I’m seeing. Also the reports are over a lot of different non-USA media.

‘Huge meteor’ crashes to earth as flash of light is … http://www.mirror.co.uk Hundreds of local reported seeing a “burning light” at Turkey Beach and Emerald in Queensland, Australia, followed by tremors

Stephanie Osborn

“The Interstellar Woman of Mystery”
http://www.Stephanie-Osborn.com

A book recommendation

Jerry,
Book reviews/recommendations used to be a regular feature of your Chaos Manor column. I understand you are not able to produce as much as you used to, and have had to let this slide. But in return for many interesting suggestions in the past, I would like to suggest a book to you. I feel comfortable doing so, because it was a book that Bill Gates recommended on his blog:
https://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/Sapiens-A-Brief-History-of-Humankind

Craig

From the September 1996 Column – A Little Taste of Crow Column The book o

f the month is Hidden Order: The Economics of Everyday Life by David Friedman (Harper Business, 1996). One doesn’t normally think of an economics book as light and pleasant reading, but David makes it seem so. He also explains most of the assumptions underlying economic theory. If you have any interest in economics at all, you’ll find this book both readable and fascinating; and I guarantee you’ll learn something from it. David analyzes such things as the length of supermarket checkout lines, whether to change lanes on a freeway, and incidentally something about money and unemployment. He’s a former King of the East in the Society for Creative Anachronism, and one of the most interesting people I know.

>From the October 1996 Column – Of Zip and Spam and NT 4_0 Column The book of the month is by Cicely Veronica Wedgwood, The Thirty Years War (Routledge). I thought I knew all I wanted to about the Defenestration of Prague , Friedrich the Winter King, Father Tilly, Cardinal Richelieu and Father Joseph “the gray eminence,” and Wallenstein, but once I opened this wonderful book, I found a wealth of details more fascinating than any novel. Part of Hitler’s popularity came from his promise to upset the Peace of Westphalia that ended the Thirty Years War.

Missing Special Forces article

Hi Jerry,

FYI The Special Forces article does still exist on the originating site:

https://sofrep.com/63764/us-special-forces-sabotage-white-house-policy-gone-disastrously-wrong-with-covert-ops-in-syria/

It is a members only article which was probably ‘borrowed’ without permission by the site whose link you posted.

SOFREP appears to be a legitimate site with articles from former Special Forces members.

-Blair S.

Scott Adams on Periscope: live-streaming he debates,

Jerry

After this: http://blog.dilbert.com/post/150919416661/why-i-switched-my-endorsement-from-clinton-to

There is no other way I’ll watch/listen to the debates than –

https://www.periscope.tv/ScottAdamsSays/1zqKVVeZjvZKB

sc:bubbles]

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

Sunday, September 25, 2016

Liberalism is a philosophy of consolation for the West as it commits suicide.

James Burnham

If a foreign government had imposed this system of education on the United States, we would rightfully consider it an act of war.

Glenn T. Seaborg, National Commission on Education, 1983

“Deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

Immigration without assimilation is invasion.

Tomorrow I go to the ophthalmologist who will presumably schedule a cataract operation for my right eye. I’m not risking much, since my right eye adds little or nothing to my vision: indeed, I can read better with an eyepatch over it than with it. It might aid in my driving, but I don’t expect to do a lot more driving unless my vision is improved. I conclude that the upside is good and the downside if everything goes wrong is not great, and I have a lot of encouraging message from all of you as well as friends I know well: I believe you when you say that cataract surgery has improved greatly since the days when they waited for cataracts to “get ripe”, meaning get so bad that anything was better than your present condition.

Roberta didn’t make choir practice, largely because it’s up in the choir loft and she’s a bit intimidated by the stair climb, but it looks as if the internal infection was cured by the week of infusions, and the infusions took the place of the medicines causing the allergy reactions, and we’re back to the normal chaos of Chaos Manor. We seem to have her SKYPE working properly again, so all’s well there, too.

All this has made my posts here a bit thin on the ground, but that should improve too. I’ve developed a series of unpleasant but evocative exercises for when I get up, and Tuesday I should be back to the Five Tibetan Rites which have always helped in the past; I missed doing them all last week.

The election news is interesting. Peggy Noonan describes the situation well in The Year of the Reticent Voter, also in the Wall Street Journal):

The signature sentence of this election begins with the words “In a country of 320 million …” I hear it everywhere. It ends with “how’d it come down to these two?” or “why’d we get them?”

Another sentence is a now a common greeting among Republicans who haven’t seen each other in a while: “What are we gonna do?”

The most arresting sentence of the week came from a sophisticated Manhattan man friendly with all sides. I asked if he knows what he’ll do in November. “I know exactly,” he said with some spirit. “I will be one of the 40 million who will deny, the day after the election, that they voted for him. But I will.”

A high elected official, a Republican, got a faraway look when I asked what he thought was going to happen. “This is the unpollable election,” he said. People don’t want to tell you who they’re for. A lot aren’t sure. A lot don’t want to be pressed.

That’s exactly what I’ve seen the past few weeks in North Carolina, New Jersey, Tennessee and Minnesota.

She has a lot more to say, but it adds up to, nobody knows what’s going to happen. The Democrats have the best ground game, but it’s not so clear that getting out Democrat voters is the key to the election. Normally, in anything like a close election, the winning strategy is to have the best ground game. Most close elections are won by the opposition staying home, as the Republicans did in the elections of Clinton and the re-election of Obama. I do not think that will happen here, and neither do the Democrats; there are districts where getting out the vote for Democrat incumbents in the House or the Senate really getting out people who don’t much like Mr. Obama, and are really turned off by Hillary. The best ground game may not elect Mrs. Clinton, although it may cut into Republican majorities in both houses of Congress. There are even those who think this might be the best possible result.

We do live in interesting times.

I intended to write an essay on vaccination, but I’m pretty tired, so I suspect this will look more like an outline of an essay.

First, be clear: I do not oppose compulsory vaccination for those who attend public schools, or expose people to their contagious diseases. One of the triumphs of the 20^th Century was the near extermination of small pox and polio. Small pox immunization required vaccination, not just a painless inoculation or sugar cube, The vaccine serum was spread on the skin – generally the upper arm for boys and the inside of the upper thigh for girls, since it left an ugly scar – after which the vaccinator punctured the skin a dozen or more times with a vaccination needle. The sire swelled up, became inflamed, and remained painful for days: that way you knew the vaccination had “taken”, and if it did not, many were required to have another vaccination. If that didn’t take, it was usually concluded that you were already immune, and in any event you were not likely to contract small pox.

When I was young, almost everyone got vaccinated or they didn’t got to school. That included Christian Science children and members of other religious denominations who refused vaccination. If you joined the armed forces, you got another vaccination, even if you could show a vaccination scar –which I definitely could. No matter. I got another, which didn’t take, but the Army didn’t demand a second attempt. I kept my first vaccination scar into my forties, but eventually it faded away. I presume I am still immune to smallpox. If I didn’t, I’d go demand another even at my age. I knew some smallpox survivors. I sure didn’t want that, and don’t want it now.

We also got tetanus, diphtheria, and whooping cough (pertussis) inoculations. In my case, in the early thirties, it was three separate inoculations, and it wasn’t compulsory. In later years it became a DPT shot, which is what my children all got, and it was compulsory in California and Washington as I recall. Later other immunizations were added to the package, and at one time there were, as I recall, clinics giving a package immunization for some 15 to 20 diseases, including childhood diseases most of us went through: measles, mumps, that sort of thing. Some states resisted making those big package shots compulsory, but under pressure from the Federal Government threats to withhold Federal Aid To Education most states gave in.

About this time, autism, which occupied less than a week in the Ph.D. in Psychology program, became more common, and ADHD – attention deficit hyperactive disorder – which did not appear in any of my abnormal psychology or psychiatry textbooks – was invented. Astounding numbers of boys were drugged with methamphetamines, a practice continuing in some places to this day. Add Ritalin and 15 disease inoculations, and you have a witches’ brew that I doubt anyone understands; it is certainly an insult to a developing body. Whether that could make autoimmune disorders more common I haven’t the competence to declare, but I certainly would not be surprised if it did.

Leave out the Ritalin. Immunizations are intended to alter you immune system, inducing it to produce antibodies that attack invading organisms and viruses. When those diseases are often fatal and are very contagious – as smallpox and polio and diphtheria are – requiring those inoculations as a condition of living in normal society makes a great deal of sense. Add Tetanus, which is not contagious – there’s plenty of it around horse stables among other places – but easily contracted from untreated minor wounds – and inoculation is highly desirable, and one can make the argument that failure to immunize minor children is child abuse. One can make that case; do not confuse that with my accepting it. And I’ve already said I saw to it that my children all got DPT shots.

Now add the other 15 or so diseases we have discovered immunizations against. Measles. Mumps. Various other diseases, some not so easily caught. Development of the vaccines is expensive. Passing the FDA test to be allowed to market them is extremely expensive. The lobby pressures to make use of them compulsory is very high. Opposition to adding one more immunization to a growing package is low. Benefits are lower than for polio or smallpox or diphtheria. It is not good to have measles, and you can in fact inadvertently become a great danger to pregnant women if you have measles – see Agatha Christie’s The Mirror Cracked – but it is not as dangerous as smallpox. And if you get immunization as part of a package of 20 immunizations, you have no idea of what that will do to a developing immune system.

Fortunately as my children were growing up, they were discovering these new immunizations, and if the kids hadn’t had whatever they were now immunizing against, it was fine with me since it was one at a time. I would have refused to let them give any of my boys the 20-disease immunization shot, and if they made it compulsory I would have paid a private physician to do the inoculations one or two a week; or I think I would. I certainly would have wanted a lot more evidence that having a case of measles was more dangerous than a 20 disease inoculation.

California has recently passed a law making it far more difficult to object to immunizations. Most of that is pressure from migration and unimmunized migrants showing up in the public schools. The shots will probably be given in big bunch packages because that’s cheaper.

If I had small children, I would get them their shots, but spread out over weeks, not all at once – that way they will be immune to most of the 20-disease immunization which I’d try to avoid. And I’d worry about ADHD.

I’d also look into finding some way to get a smallpox vaccination for the young kids. Smallpox supposedly exists only in Georgia and Russia, securely contained from intruders and terrorists. Nobody kept a small sample anywhere else, and there’s none pout in a jungle somewhere. And you can believe as much of that as you want to.

Faith and Science

Dear Dr. Pournelle:
I find myself in disagreement with your comments contrasting science and faith, and especially with your statement that the rejection of miracles is a statement of faith.
You seem to distinguish between, on one hand, matters subject to scientific proof, and on the other, statements of faith; and in doing so, to treat them not only as mutually exclusive but as exhaustive, so that everything must be one or the other. And this division has been common in philosophy, including the philosophy of science, over the past century or two. But it’s not the only way of looking at the subject. There is also a view in which there are truths of reason that are not provable, because they are constitutive of reason itself. I first learned of this view from Rand, but as I learned more history of philosophy I found it, for example, in Aristotle, Aquinas, and Spinoza, among others.
Take, for example, the Law of Non-Contradiction. This is one of the basic premises of logic, relied upon in virtually every proof of anything. Any attempt to “prove” it would be circular, because in talking about “proof” we are already assuming it. But at the same time, any attempt to deny it makes no sense—because to “deny” something is to claim that it is false and THEREFORE cannot be true; but that “therefore” is just the Law of Non-Contradiction restated, and therefore the denial relies on the very Law it denies. If you really want not to rely on the Law of Non-Contradiction, I suppose you don’t have to, but then your own position implies that you can’t object when other people adhere to it; indeed, you can’t even say, “I don’t agree with you,” because disagreeing with people is once again using the same Law. (As I understand the matter, this point goes back to Aristotle.)
Now, according to Thomas Aquinas, religious beliefs include some that are pure matters of faith and revelation. But they also include “natural theology,” beliefs that, according to Aquinas, can be known by reason alone, and do not depend on faith; among these, for example, are the existence of God, the basic attributes of God, and the creation of the world by God. So Aquinas clearly holds that there are truths of reason (or of “science,” as we now say) that are not matters of faith.
Certainly Aquinas would not agree with my belief that the nonexistence and indeed the impossibility of miracles is a truth of reason, any more than I agree with his belief that the existence of God is a truth of reason. But the idea that there ARE truths of reason is more fundamental than disagreement over what specifically those truths are; it makes them subject to reasoned debate, of the kind that Aquinas engaged in at length, and not simply a matter of the clash of rival blind faiths. Joseph Schumpeter talks about this in his History of Economic Analysis, where he says that the Thomist and the scientific atheist have more in common with each other than either has with the logical positivist.
And similarly, the logical positivist and the extreme Protestant who thinks religion is a matter for faith alone, where rational justification is neither possible nor necessary, are akin to each other. I find it odd that you seem to be in this camp, given that Aquinas’s claim that part of theology is rationally knowable is a fundamental Catholic doctrine; it seems to me as if you have accepted a philosophy of science that is at odds with this.
I don’t want to take up your time with arguing over miracles. But I do believe that this is a matter of rational disagreement, on which in principle it is possible to arrive at the truth through reasoned argument, however difficult it might be in practice.

William H. Stoddard

I have no desire to get into a discussion of formal logic. I say that at Lourdes are hundreds of documented events, which, if they happened as reported, cannot be explained by any science whatever. Now you can argue that they never happened, but given the recording systems used, that is a very difficult argument.

You can argue that we just don’t understand yet, which you are welcome to do, but you must understand that is a statement of belief – a statement of faith, just as the explanation of “It was a Miracle” is a statement of faith. You may argue that yours is the more reasonable explanation, but when you look at hundreds of cases, many very different, that statement becomes less and less compelling. I have had at least one experience that Marvin Minsky, very much an Ethical Culture skep;tic, could only agree was enormously improbable. There is no calculation of probabilities that makes it less than one in 10^10 and even that requires assumptions without evidence. Just as the odds of forty million monkeys producing all the works in the British museum by chance are quite low.

Miracles

Jerry,

The discussion of reports of miracles (and by extension other so-called supernatural or paranormal activities) reminds me of a pattern I’ve observed as an administrator of virtual machines.

I know of two fundamentally different forms of VMs. The most common I think of as hypervisors, such as VMWare or Virtual Box, in which the whole virtual system is, in effect, a fully, self-contained OS, and any communication with the running VM must be done via normal server channels such as SSH or a console login.

The second is kernel-based or paravirtualization, such as Solaris Containers, in which the virtual environment is embedded in a Global Zone, and is not a self-contained OS, but generally appears as one to its users.

Importantly for this discussion, a paravirtualization environment can be viewed and changed from two distinct logical contexts, one of which is unseen by the other. An admin doing work within a Container sees the Container as a distinct running server, and has no access or visibility into the Global Zone.

An admin in the Global Zone, however, can see and alter the state of the running Container, outside the Container’s context and permissions (though within the Global Zone’s context and permissions). That admin could, for example, create or remove Container files without leaving any audit trail within the Container of who or how, whereas a user within the Container would be subject to the Container’s permissions and auditing.

Viewing a Container as a universe may be a stretch, but the analogy seems straightforward. I see scientists as users within the Container who say changes to the Container can’t possibly happen without following permissions and being subject to auditing, whereas others claim to have seen inexplicable supernatural changes, or what might be more precisely called supercontextual changes.

If we add further that not all Global Zone users have the same permissions, and some are quite limited to certain areas, it’s not too hard to come up with a “Pantheon” of Global Zone users with varying roles and motivations. 🙂

Anyway, I find it curious how stridently it seems science as a whole today rejects the possibility of anything existing beyond our context. If something exists beyond the realm of entropy, that something would be worth finding, and to me, at least, that’s the point of believing in miracles.

And if not, everything eventually resolves to maximum uniformity anyhow, no matter what we choose to do or believe or hope for, so in that case, how could believing in miracles really do any harm? Tolerance would seem to be called for, not the malicious defensiveness I’ve observed.

-Philip

And of course we know that an exploding cloud of elementary particles will eventually dance Swan Lake…

Science and Faith

Concerning something posted on your blog. ” The fact that events taking place routinely today would have been taken for miracles 100 years ago can be said to be evidence for the science eventually will explain everything hypothesis, but it is not conclusive evidence.”
I agree. Science will eventually catch up with what many faith-believing people hold to be true. Human kind’s faith in science could be seen as the mote in God’s eye (sorry for the punny reference). Our history of science shows a conflict between religion and science, yet when egos and politics are set aside we can see how they compliment each other. Do you agree?

B.A. Simmons

I echo Augustine and Aquinas: when reason and faith conflict it is reason that will prevail, and faith that will be corrected. It may be so corrected that it vanishes, but I have seen no signs of that happening yet. Perhaps in the days of the Newtonian clockwork universe?

‘When the authors protest that none of the errors really matter, it makes you realize that, in these projects, the data hardly matter at all.’

<http://andrewgelman.com/2016/09/21/what-has-happened-down-here-is-the-winds-have-changed/>

—————————————

Roland Dobbins

No kidding, Mr. Holmes.

Subj: The FBI Investigation of EmailGate Was a Sham | | Observer

http://observer.com/2016/09/the-fbi-investigation-of-emailgate-was-a-sham/

Dropped by to check in and Bluehost says your web site is down.
http://box735.bluehost.com/suspended.page/disabled.cgi/jerrypournelle.com

The website you were trying to reach is temporarily unavailable.

Please check back soon.

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information or contact us as soon as possible.

Hope it gets sorted out soon. Also hope you can receive this email. I have no other route to contact you.

–Gary

We had a sort of DOS attack (attempting to use my site to spam people) but all appears to be well now.

I have a number of reports of this:

the link in ” U.S. Special Forces Sabotage White House Policy” to the article is no longer found.

Hope your cataract surgery goes well.

Sincerely

Bob Leever

I said when I posted it that I had no knowledge of the reliability of the site.

Martin van Crevald essay recommended

Dr. Pournelle,
Martin van Crevald in _As I Please_ has begun a series of essays on the future. http://www.martin-van-creveld.com/neither-heaven-hell/
Presuming the following parts will stand up to his usual quality, I recommend that this essay be considered for inclusion in the next _There Will Be War_.
-d

sc:bubbles]

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