Chaos Manor View, Wednesday, September 21, 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.

The chaos is diminishing again, and something like its normal state is settling to Chaos Manor. Roberta is recovering from her last trips to urgent care, the infusions are done, her allergies are abating. We have had a fairly calm week. Of course Monday I go to the ophthalmologist, probably to get an appointment for cataract surgery in my right eye, and while the worst that happens will be an eyepatch and very little if any degradation of my vision, while the best outcome would be a vision improvement, and I know things have improved in the last decade and there’s nothing to worry about, I don’t seem to convince that small voice in my head. Oh. Well.

The Scripture and Debate

Jerry,
On 17 September, you wrote in response to one of your correspondents:
“Sacred Texts, like miracles, fall outside the domain of science, and require different standards of debate.”
It struck me pretty quickly. Science is debatable as it deals with testable hypotheses, careful observation, and the fundamental idea that reality always rules. Sacred texts can not be debated as they deal in faith, unquestioned obedience to dogma, and the fundamental idea that scripture always rules.
It is also true that only subjects that can trace back to observable reality can be debated at all. Debate requires some standard of fact, verifiable falsifiability, and objective discourse. Sacred text claims to be beyond all such considerations, so I see no “different standards” by which debate can proceed. Without an objective framework, discourse is reduced to speculation and disagreements can be settled only by authority.

Kevin L Keegan

Science deals only with testable – falsifiable – hypotheses. Religion deals with non-repeatable observations. If you go to Lourdes and examine the data, there are large number of observations of events you cannot explain. Many call them miracles. The observations are well attested to, by both Believers and Unbelievers; if they happened as described many of them are “miraculous” in that there is no other explanation known. Of course there is always faith in the notion that one day we will have a perfectly non-miraculous observation, but that is a faith, not a scientific principle. The notion that all the universe is explicable by science is self evidently untrue at the moment; that it will be true is an act of faith.

Miracles cannot be repeated; by definition, really. 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.

Sacred text is more complex, which is precisely why the Church Fathers did not urge Bible study, and even now insist on safeguards and interpretations. I do not care to extend this particular debate; it has been held many times with varying results; Martin Luther’s interpretation led to the Thirty Years War and Westphalia.

If you want a glimpse into the future of rule by elites continuing for more years, see:

Rejecting Voodoo Science in the Courtroom

The U.S. has relied on flawed forensic-evidence techniques for decades, falsely convicting many.

By

Alex Kozinski

http://www.wsj.com/articles/rejecting-voodoo-science-in-the-courtroom-1474328199

The White House will release a report Tuesday that will fundamentally change the way many criminal trials are conducted. The new study from the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) examines the scientific validity of forensic-evidence techniques—DNA, fingerprint, bitemark, firearm, footwear and hair analysis. It concludes that virtually all of these methods are flawed, some irredeemably so.

Americans have long had an abiding faith in science, including forensic science. Popular TV shows like “CSI” and “Forensic Files” stoke this confidence. Yet the PCAST report will likely upend many people’s beliefs, as it should. Why trust a justice system that imprisons and even executes people based on junk science?

Only the most basic form of DNA analysis is scientifically reliable, the study indicates. Some forensic methods have significant error rates and others are rank guesswork. “The prospects of developing bitemark analysis into a scientifically valid method” are low, according to the report. In plain terms: Bitemark analysis is about as reliable as astrology. Yet many unfortunates languish in prison based on such bad science. [snip]

If you’re up to it, the report, by the Scions of Big Science, is here:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/PCAST/pcast_forensic_science_report_final.pdf

and you’ll find it fascinating if you can get through it.

The review in the Wall Street Journal is by Alex Kozinski, a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge, and Senior Advisor to the Big Science officials who wrote the report. In essence it says that most our forensic technology is terribly flawed, and it will certainly be greeted with shouts of joy by the lawyers.

Even methods valid in principle can be unreliable in practice. Forensic scientists, who are often members of the prosecution team, sometimes see their job as helping to get a conviction. This can lead them to fabricate evidence or commit perjury. Many forensic examiners are poorly trained and supervised. They sometimes overstate the strength of their conclusions by claiming that the risk of error is “vanishingly small,” “essentially zero,” or “microscopic.” The report calls such claims “scientifically indefensible,” but jurors generally take them as gospel when presented by government witnesses who are certified as scientific experts.

Thus writes an Appellate Judge and Senior Advisor to the panel who prepared the report.

Now no one wants to send innocent people to prison; and certainly there is room for argument about much forensic evidence, as there is always argument about eye witness evidence, circumstantial evidence, and just about every other kind of evidence. We already have a judicial system requiring 12 jurors to be convinced of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, and one juror is enough to force a retrial, after which an Appellate Court gets to review it. We have plenty of voodoo science if the perpetrator pleads insanity: prosecution experts seldom tell the court the guy is nuts, and defense experts generally insist he is technically insane, and jurors are once again forced to decide for themselves.

No doubt we can use some improvements in our judicial system. The late Arthur Kantrowitz, one of the early leaders of the L5 Society, for years vainly tried to get a “science court” to decide technical issues, and had powerful reasons for that. But even he had no remedies for the general criminal justice courts. Nor, really, do I.

From the June, 2002 View:

The book of the month is The New World Strategy (Simon and Schuster Touchstone, 1995) by Colonel Harry G. Summers, Jr. His On Strategy was about the best analysis of what happened in Vietnam, although I think he didn’t understand the strategic importance of the South East Asian War: While it appeared to be a defeat of the West, and locally it certainly was, it was a victorious campaign of attrition in the Seventy Years War, the last phase of which we call The Cold War. The U.S,. for better or worse, employed a strategy of containment, denying the Soviet Union new conquests to feed from; we held Vietnam long enough to make their victory nearly worthless while the costs to them were high. Summers’ On Strategy is a good analysis of our local defeat, but does not see the grand strategic victory.

The New World Strategy advises us to return to our roots; its most important conclusion is that there will be no great military revolution that changes everything. The principles remain. I may disagree with Summers on details, but I agree completely with that. The Strategy of Technology, by Possony and Pournelle, made that point 30 years ago. We wrote as theorists. Summers writes from military experience.

I continue to recommend Col. Summers

On Free Trade:

Free trade between equals is advantageous to both, and keeps both competitive. Free trade that ships manufacturing equipment overseas and leaves a Rust Belt or Detroit behind is not advantageous to the United States. Then there is another sort of Free Trade; see below.

It might be useful if someone paid attention to American Interests, instead of to economic theory. Perhaps we would not have made some of the agreements that resulted in Detroit.

And yes, I know, Detroit unions contributed heavily to their own demise; as did government regulations that forced them to pay attention to those demands, and did not allow the actual workers any informed opinion in the subsequent actions. There is plenty of blame all around, but the elites came out of it well.

Brazil
Oh, all the work on the second floor is off-shored to Brazil. I’m honestly not even sure what they do.
Ah! Brazil! So now they are bringing them here now?
I was in Telecom, last gig was the biggest bank in New England that became a big, fat target of downsizing. From a crew of ten, our presence shrunk to one. Me. Sitting alone in a seven room office as the contract ran down.
But, Brazil; they cut out the local project manager mid way through and afterward all the conferences became phoning into a conference bridge. Had to phone in since the new PM was in Brazil. His English was spotty and his emails and project reports had (obviously) been run through a translation program. We learned to ditch the technical jargon early on since if the Boy from Brazil didn’t understand anything, we had to stop and explain it to him. After he got his new Smartphone he liked to join the conference from the beach in Rio, occasionally interrupting the flow with phone-shots of brown bottoms in bikinis (he apparently liked bottoms, male & female). This, while two experienced and competent PM’s were within three subway stops.
I suppose since we were dismantling something, not building anything, in the end it didn’t make any difference. When the job ended we would also be gone. Taking longer was a feature of the new method, not a bug.
After getting laid off, I was offered one other contract that involved downsizing and shutting down. But once was enough.
At the Boston bank I once got a call from a department head in the building. She and her team came in one Monday and their phones and computers were all dead. She spent the morning trying to open trouble tickets but no one came and nothing worked. They were all trying to get by as best they could with cell phones and laptops. Tuesday she called me, as she knew I was the Legacy engineer in the building. I went up to her floor and tried to tell her she needed to stop trying to fix it and call her own supervisor instead, I said I wasn’t allowed to tell her why, but there was something important she needed to hear. I think that at that point she guessed. Her entire department, most of a floor, had been downsized, laid off. But someone didn’t inform them of that before the disconnect orders for their equipment went through.
I’ve heard a lot about American workers being tasked with training their own foreign replacements. I didn’t see any of that directly, but the tech equivalent was perfecting ‘Expert Systems’ for the computer workstations that distilled the essence of the experiences of the old workforce into a set of on-screen prompts that allowed new (and cheaper) operators to respond just the way the old ones did. MaBell did a lot of that.
If I were getting started today, instead of forty years ago, I can’t see anything of the career path I followed. I have no idea where I’d be ending up forty years from now. I can’t see where this country is going to end up, seems the economy is running on inertia with more dead weight being loaded on every year.

John The River

Perhaps not so uncommon a story as you think.

cataract surgery
Best of luck on your cataract surgery Dr. Pournelle. I think you’ll be amazed at the results. My mother had hers removed a couple of years ago and she went from not being able to read subtitles on the TV with her glasses to being able to read them easily with no glasses at all practically overnight.
I’m looking forward to your new book!
thanks,
Scott Morton
Toronto, Canada

Thanks. I will let yours stand for a large number of similar messages of both good will and predictions of a good outcome. I have no intellectual doubt that all will be well.

‘Perhaps my training as a Russian specialist distorts my judgment, but as I contemplate the ideas spreading from the academy through society, I fear, a century after the Russian Revolution, a tyranny greater than Stalin’s.’

<http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/The-house-is-on-fire–8466>

—————————————

Roland Dobbins

Police caught discussing charges to fabricate

… when they discover that the protestor they stopped had a permit for his pistol.

http://www.aol.com/article/news/2016/09/20/police-accidentally-record-themselves-fabricating-criminal-charg/21475789/?icid=maing-grid7%7Cmain5%7Cdl20%7Csec1_lnk2%26pLid%3D-1053988942_htmlws-sb-bb

It happens. It is the price we pay for hiring protectors rather than standing watch ourselves: which would likely result in other and possibly worse abuses.

Prince of Sparta – More Fact Than Fiction? In Prince of Sparta, Prince Lysander makes a comment;
“Hell, without the CoDo shoveling their human refuse on our heads, there wouldn’t be any Helots.”
This made me think of the recent terrorist attacks in New York, New Jersey and Minnesota, and Obama’s policy of “shoveling” Middle East refugees into the US.
It strikes me that the same sentiment could be said of Obama and his policies.

Cam

I think I should not comment on this…

Czar Vlad I

Dr. Pournelle,
Ref previous correspondence about Putin, George Will writes about putting the Pravda back into history: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/putin-goes-full-orwell/2016/09/14/d5f0bb50-79da-11e6-bd86-b7bbd53d2b5d_story.html
-d

I think Putin’s motives as a Russian Nationalist and Pan-Slavic protector are obvious to anyone who will look. The notion that Russia would give away its naval base forever is absurd; the conquest of Crimea was inevitable. We forced Russia out of the Balkans; we ringed then with NATO allies; and we wonder at Putin’s suspicions?

KGB Coming Back!

Mr. Putin has been busy. He’s cleaned out his security services — he no longer trusted them. He created his own personal guard, just before an assassination attempt by a car. This personal guard is loyal only to him. Even as he began looking more and more like Tsar Putin, he did this:

<.>

Russia plans effectively to revive the KGB under a massive shake-up of its security forces, a respected business daily has reported.

A State Security Ministry, or MGB, would be created from the current Federal Security Service (FSB) , and would incorporate the foreign intelligence service (SVR) and the state guard service (FSO), under the plans. It would be handed all-encompassing powers once possessed by the KGB, the Kommersant newspaper said, citing security service sources.

Like the much-feared KGB, it would also oversee the prosecutions of Kremlin critics, a task currently undertaken by the Investigative Committee, headed by Alexander Bastrykin, a former university classmate of President Putin. The Kremlin has not commented.

</>

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/09/19/russia-to-reinstate-the-kgb-under-plan-to-combine-security-force/

Why not? After all, we both won the Cold War. It is said we bled the Soviet Union through the 1979 Afghan Campaign. Well, if we can credit Reagan with that, why can’t I credit “active measures” (ideological

subversion) with the corruption of our universities and the Democratic Party? If we can entertain this notion, we see our mutual doom.

The Soviet Union died, and so has the Republic. Putin keeps playing a bad hand well as we continue to throw the game. From the ashes, rises a phoenix that appears to be a double-headed eagle. Let us hope Former Deputy Director Morrell is correct when he says that Putin is a tactician and not a strategist; he has no long term plans and won’t succeed in the marathon. I’m not so sure.

◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

His goals are Russian Nationalism and Pan Slavic ideology in that order. I do not know how good a strategist he is, but his choices are limited; he dare not take advantage of the mistakes of his self-declared enemies, precisely because he has so few choices.

sc:bubbles]

U.S. Special Forces Sabotage White House Policy

Sir:
This might be of interest.
http://fortunascorner.com/2016/09/15/u-s-special-forces-sabotage-white-house-policy-gone-disastrously-wrong-with-covert-ops-in-syria/
Best,
Ralph

Interesting. I do not know of this.

Scriptural Appreciation

     Dear Dr. Pournelle:
     You were kind enough to reprint my scriptural-cherrypicking-is-inevitable letter; and then to comment:
     “Sacred Texts, like miracles, fall outside the domain of science, and require different standards of debate.”
     Differing in vigor and rigor. The difference between art-appreciation and art-creation applies not only to sacred texts, but also to other art-works. A concert-goer pays to be swept away by musical glory; the composer, to earn his keep, must appreciate the tune but also analyze it. No doubt you, as a fiction writer, have been at both ends of this transaction.
     Part of the difference between critical analysis and passionate belief is that the former makes predictions that the latter denies, such as:
     1)    Eternal Truth is a century old;
     2)    Infinite Wisdom stops at the border;
     3)    Black becomes white when necessary;
     4)    It doth not profit a prophet to be too specific
     But both agree that these snarks well describe thy neighbor’s faith.
     And as for miracles… I think that miracles in scripture are like special effects in the movies. Both are convenient for the writer but detrimental to the text; for they both make the writing too easy. Both miracles and special effects tend to cover up wooden characters, dumb dialog, shoddy background, idiot plotting, and vile values. Their purpose is to distract the audience from the failures of the artist. 
     I say that good writing is the only miracle that the movies need, and the only special effect that scripture should desire.
     Sincerely,
     Nathaniel Hellerstein
     paradoctor

My remarks above apply here as well. I can show you records of well documented “miracles” that cannot be explained by modern science, as well as examples of situations in which nearly everyone would agree a miracle was appropriate, but none emerged. The observations are as real as any observations we have – have you ever seen a Higgs Boson? The hypothesis that they aren’t really miracles and one day will be explicable and routine cannot be proved, and falsifying it might take eternity, which I, at least, don’t have.

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

Chaos Manor View, Saturday, September 17, 2016

Revision and additions, Sunday, 18 September

 

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.

Monday, September 19, is International Talk Like a Pirate Day. There are a number of Perks.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/nation-now/2016/09/16/arrr-free-doughnuts-talk-like-pirate-day/90511324/ 

 

http://www.ljsilvers.com/tlap

 

http://talklikeapirate.com/wordpress/

 

 

If you’ve been wondering why I’ve been invisible, there’s been another acute rise in the level of chaos here, and my week was devoured by locusts. I won’t describe all of it. [ Sunday, 18 September, 1330]  It is beginning to resettle. We were able to go to our weekly brunch without incident.  I still cannot type a sentence without at least one error, generally from hitting two keys at once, but you can’t have everything.

Last Monday I went out to Kaiser, to the optometrist. It seemed to me that my glasses were getting much less effective, and since they hadn’t been renewed since before the stroke, it was time to get that done. My former optometrist, who had been the father of at least one of my Boy Scouts back when Niven and I used to take the Scouts up into the High Sierra – back in the days before cell phones and GPS for hikers – had retired, and this was a new chap. He had new equipment, too. The eye exam was much more thorough but shorter and more efficient.

When it ended, he said “You preferred the lenses you already have, in both eyes, eye at a time. You don’t need new glasses.”

He let that sink in a bit, and added, “You’ve got the same vision in your left eye that you had the last time you were here.”

I closed my right eye, and my vision improved slightly. I let that sink in. “You’re saying I don’t need new glasses, I need a new right eye. Or at least to have the cataracts removed from it.”

Of course that was what he’d been telling me. I’ve been avoiding this for years. I don’t dictate we’ll, and I doubt I could do much dictating. I told him that, and added that I understand everything is a lot easier and more successful now, and I have had friends get their cataracts fixed in an hour with no problems at all. “And since I don’t get much good out of my right eye anyway, might as well start with it, no?”

The upshot being that I have an ophthalmology appointment – two of them, actually – in the afternoon a week from next Monday. Whether I get the operation then or just another examination I don’t know. I know I can’t lose: I actually can read slightly better with an eye patch over my right eye than without the patch – but that message doesn’t seem to get across to whatever controls my emotions, so I continue to suppress terror. That used up part of the week including some of every day.

Then there have been some time demands from SFWA. I can think all right on almost any subject, but I don’t change subjects easily – after an interruption it takes time it focus on whatever interrupted me, then more to get focused on what I was doing – and my telephone number, although unlisted, seem to be in the hands of everyone I ever gave money to, and a lot of people I never heard of but think I might give them money, and they don’t much care when they call. It’s actually easier if they call during meals; I don’t have trouble getting focused on eating again.

The remedy to that is the Monk’s Cell, where I have an ASUS computer with an excellent keyboard for hunt and peck typists, but no telephone, and I can’t hear the doorbell. Alas, Roberta has been getting infusion therapy at home from some really competent Armenian and Philippine Registered Nurses, and I’ve had to be ready to let them in. Fortunately she’s done with that, and with luck we’re over her infection and returning to normal, so next week I may get some work done. We can hope so.

I would like to write an essay on this subject, but these two pieces say it pretty well. Both are old, and I’ve been saving them to cite, but I doubt that Ill get to it, so I call your attention to:

How Global Elites Forsake Their Countrymen

Those in power see people at the bottom as aliens whose bizarre emotions they must try to manage.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/how-global-elites-forsake-their-countrymen-1470959258

By

Peggy Noonan

Aug. 11, 2016 7:47 p.m. ET

1797 COMMENTS

This is about distance, and detachment, and a kind of historic decoupling between the top and the bottom in the West that did not, in more moderate recent times, exist.

Recently I spoke with an acquaintance of Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, and the conversation quickly turned, as conversations about Ms. Merkel now always do, to her decisions on immigration. Last summer when Europe was engulfed with increasing waves of migrants and refugees from Muslim countries, Ms. Merkel, moving unilaterally, announced that Germany would take in an astounding 800,000. Naturally this was taken as an invitation, and more than a million came. The result has been widespread public furor over crime, cultural dissimilation and fears of terrorism. From such a sturdy, grounded character as Ms. Merkel the decision was puzzling—uncharacteristically romantic about people, how they live their lives, and history itself, which is more charnel house than settlement house. [snip]

Her entire essay is worth your time, and helps explain the crisis in America as well as Germany.

Then comes a site I do not know, but this article is in the theme and is worth your reading:

Guanabara Knocking

https://kakistocracyblog.wordpress.com/2016/08/14/guanabara-knocking/

Porter / August 14, 2016

A couple of years ago I was touring an American corporate campus when my perky docent said something odd:

In the East Building we have HR and the cafeteria on the first floor, the second floor is Brazil, and on the third is accounting…

Wait, what do you mean by ‘Brazil’ on the second?

Oh, all the work on the second floor is off-shored to Brazil. I’m honestly not even sure what they do.

What is directly in my field of vision has been off-shored to Brazil? I think most people have a familiar facial countenance that emerges when it suddenly occurs they are speaking to a lunatic. With this expression probably unmistakable, I conceded my skepticism that the ‘off-shoring’ initiative had been flawlessly executed.

Chuckling in response, my escort explained that ‘Brazil’ meant the people not the place (was this a Kakistocracy reader?) and that the entire floor was occupied strictly by that country’s nationals. Whether they were imported en masse by a contractor or materialized as the result of focused internal hiring is a matter I didn’t pursue. [snip]

I have a good bit more to say about H-1B Visas – they are sometimes a good idea, particularly for recent graduates already in the United States and seeking to stay here. I do not believe there ought to be a green card stapled to every technical degree, but there are some subjects that ought automatically to rate a green card on graduation with honors. But the article is worth reading, and you may enjoy the comments.

We have reached the point where the elites simply do not interact with most of the populace. Charles Murray saw this coming many years ago, but the intellectuals were so consumed with denouncing The Bell Curve without reading it – literally; I was present as a reporter at a AAAS session hastily put together to “discuss” The Bell Curve, and the session leader proudly announced he had not read and would not read the book – to pay any attention to its conclusions, or those of any other book Dr. Murray might write. This is the essence of the modern intellectual: some truths simply cannot be questioned, while others must not be stated, else you are no true scientist or intellectual.

websites and video

Jerry,

I find auto run video on websites annoying. I can’t believe I’m that much different than most people. Why would web designers think that immediately playing video as soon as you reach their page would be effective? I used to use flash blockers to give me a play button, but now the websites are using JavaScript.

I find the written word much more effective at transferring information than video. Video is great for a demonstration of what you’re reading about, but to me that’s all.

Using Pocket to download just the text for later viewing helps with most sites, but not all.

I don’t know if you would recognize silicon valley anymore. People wandering around everywhere stepping into intersections with their heads buried in smart phones just assuming no one will hit them. Many people ridding bicycles in the middle of traffic inches from sudden death from a collision with an automobile. The political movement is to make bikes the equal of cars.

We are invaded not only with illegal immigrants, but with legal ones from all over the world who are not assimilated. There is no melting going on. They are bringing their little European countries with them, or Indian, or the pacific rim.

—

Phil

 

Bezos in space

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2016/09/15/jeff-bezos-on-nuclear-reactors-in-space-the-lack-of-bacon-on-mars-and-humanitys-destiny-in-the-solar-system/

As Blue Origin moves toward its goal of having “millions of people living and working in space,” the company has launched and landed the same rocket four times in a row, an unprecedented feat aimed at ultimately lowering the cost of space travel. By 2018, it plans to soon fly tourists on short jaunts past the edge of space in capsules designed with large windows. And earlier this week, Bezos announced plans to fly a new massive rocket, capable of getting to orbit, by the end of the decade.

See also https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2016/09/12/jeff-bezos-just-unveiled-his-new-rocket-and-its-a-monster/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2016/09/15/jeff-bezos-on-nuclear-reactors-in-space-the-lack-of-bacon-on-mars-and-humanitys-destiny-in-the-solar-system/

Then there is:

“I know how to get the U.S. permanently into space. Write me a check for a billion dollars, give me a letter of credit for a second billion I probably won’t have to spend, and get out of the way. I’ll take the money and vanish into the Mojave desert, China Lake for preference, Edwards Air Force Base if I must; and in about four years I’ll have a Single Stage to Orbit savable as well as recoverable and reusable spacecraft capable of putting about ten thousand pounds into orbit at costs of about five times the cost of the fuel the flight takes.”

This quote from sci-fi author and aerospace industry veteran Jerry Pournelle dates to the early days of what would later become the DC-X. Pournelle was one of many space enthusiasts actively lobbying for a small SSTO project with minimal organizational oversight. As seen in Part 2, the DC-X project found it’s ‘Skunk Works’ home in the Strategic Defence Initiative Organisation (SDIO), but Pournelle’s words turned out to be prophetic – they would just take a while to happen and the innovators behind these projects would be able to write their own billion dollar cheques…

https://thehighfrontier.wordpress.com/tag/jeff-bezos/

The quote is from my Step Farther Out, which is being revised and updated by scholars on the Isle of Mann.

Unbelievable

Why is the Navy’s largest shipbuilder looking for a subcontractor in China?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/josh-rogin/wp/2016/09/15/why-is-the-navys-largest-shipbuilder-looking-for-a-subcontractor-in-china/?wpisrc=nl_popns&wpmm=1

—

Robert K. Kawaratani
瓦谷ロバート孝一

I do not know, but it might be worth finding out.

Robots will eliminate 6% of all US jobs by 2021, report says | Technology | The Guardian

I envision a future where fast food joints initially shrink to 3 employees and we all place our orders on our phones. Eventually said joints have no employees; just contracted delivery and cleaning services (which are also mostly robotic.)

Its not just entry level jobs going away though. Just as manufacturing jobs started being lost to automation 20 years ago (and never came back) now we see that  services jobs are next.

“By 2021, robots will have eliminated 6% of all jobs in the US, starting with customer service representatives and eventually truck and taxi drivers. That’s just one cheery takeaway from a report released by market research company Forrester this week.

These robots, or intelligent agents, represent a set of AI-powered systems that can understand human behavior and make decisions on our behalf. “

…

“These robots can be helpful for companies looking to cut costs, but not so good if you’re an employee working in a simple-to-automate field.”

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/sep/13/artificial-intelligence-robots-threat-jobs-forrester-report

John Harlow

I remain convinced that before 2024, 50% of those presently employed will be working at jobs that can be done by a robot costing no more than a year’s salary of the present jobholder. The robot will have a useful life of at least ten years, and 20 of them can be supervised by one human.

What choice but to cherrypick?

Dear Dr. Pournelle:
One of your correspondents chastised you for quoting Galatians 3:28 as an example of universalism. He pointed to neighboring verses as proving that the passage is not universalistic, exactly; really it’s tribalism for a new, bigger tribe. I agree that this is the normal course of universalism. It turns out that universal principles are as politically manipulable as tribal identity.
Your correspondent went on to mock “that favorite pass time of using the Bible to justify their personal positions”. There, I think, he went too far. Opportunistic cherry-picking of scripture is as normal as tribalized universalism, or cut-and-paste tribalism.
And why not? What alternative is there to cherry-picking? Original intent? That’s a fine theory; but in practice originalism tends to be about the original interpretations of the originalist rather than the original intent of the author.
And in the case of the New Testament, who is that original author? There are two theories: documentarian and revelatory. According to the documentary hypothesis, the New Testament was written by a committee of 2nd century Hellenized Jews. According to the revelatory hypothesis, the New Testament is the Word of God, an immortal being of infinite wisdom. Both hypotheses are troublesome for the originalist.
For if the documentary hypothesis is true, then the originalist must try to know the mind of someone from 1900 years ago. This is possible but difficult, for we know little about people from that long ago. Worse, gaining such a perspective would be of limited value to us; for they knew even less about us than we do about them.
And if the revelatory hypothesis is true, then knowing the mind of the Author would be valuable – indeed, _infinitely_ valuable – but for that very reason it would be impossible. What chance have you or I to read the mind of God? Even to claim to know infinite wisdom is folly. I know better than that; and no doubt you do too.
So the scriptural originalist must either work hard for limited value, or pine after limitless value in vain. In neither case is originalism worth the effort. Whereas opportunistic cherry-picking is simple, easy, useful and open to all. That is why cherry-picking prevails.
So scripture presents itself as a message, but in practice it is a medium. It’s a language, not a statement; you can say whatever you want to in its terms. There’s a verse for war and a verse for peace; a verse to build up and a verse to break down; a verse to laugh and a verse to weep; a verse to cast away stone and a verse to gather stones together. Scripture is more like a piano than a tune; the sound it makes depends upon the skill and intent of the player.
That too is normal. Holy texts naturally evolve towards interpretational flexibility. They survive by justifying the personal positions of the believer.
Sincerely,
Nathaniel Hellerstein
paradoctor

Sacred Texts, like miracles, fall outside the domain of science, and require different standards of debate.

sideways, sort of?
Dr. Pournelle,
XKCD is getting a lot of praise from the global warming crowd for an earth temperature chart, and it is quite well drawn as well as humorous to the normal standard. http://xkcd.com/1732/
To me, drawing a hockey stick with the x and y vertices transposed doesn’t make the chart any more factual than if presented in, say, a power point slide show by a political has been. It doesn’t credit any of the data, the model, or the prediction, and doesn’t plot any atmospheric pollution or other factor. It doesn’t validate the concept of a value for a world temperature. It also misses out on including several contrarian historical observations. It fails to point out the logical impossibility between the claimed cause-and-effect and the never specifies the types of drastic and immediate action to correct the perceived problem (if it indeed represents reality, then the chart is still a Trek-style Kobayashi Maru — a lost cause, with no James Kirk, or even a Gene Roddenberry in view to game the system).
Of course, I am an ignorant and probably micro-aggressive and uncultured denier for actually writing this, and will probably be interned for re-education shortly, if the guillotine is to be avoided.
For me, Michael Crichton and Tom Clancy were the best anti-group-think writers on the “denier” side of literature. I hope there are others out there: XKCD’s style of satire is pretty effective but terribly misguided.
-d

Modern science need not explain data, but it does have to adjust the data until it is explicable. Why that is better than the old scientific method taught is school – “If you can’t tell someone how to repeat your experiment it isn’t science” – is not clear to me. I studied Philosophy of Science under Gustav Bergmann many years ago, and perhaps was contaminated with the Weiner Kreiss philosophy, but I hope I have recovered; and I was also taught that with three parameters of adjustment I could explain anything. Apparently modern intellectuals know more, now, but they keep it well hidden from me.

Russia may rise to super power status again following US deal over Syria | The Independent

Not the path we expected, but perhaps the start of he CoDominion?

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/deal-for-joint-military-action-with-us-in-syria-could-elevate-russia-as-well-as-defeat-isis-a7237256.html

Stephen

—

Please excuse brevity. Typed with one finger on a sheet of glass.=

It may yet be.

Illegal Immigration

I wrote the following several years ago. I work in an industry that is directly impacted by illegals. I’m a master cabinetmaker. I used to live in the Baltimore, MD area (Pikesville)…and left in December of 2014 after I couldn’t find work. Here’s a link to a post from 2011 (not looking for click bait as I’m going to include my proposal to end illegal immigration here).
http://thevailspot.blogspot.com/2011/11/how-to-end-illegal-immigration.html
There is constant argument on how to eliminate the huge problem we have with illegal immigrants in this country. This post stems from a comment on made on a Daily Caller article. You want to end illegal immigration? There are five simple steps to do so:
1. One year manadatory jail term and $10,000.00 fine for each illegal worker who is found in your employment.
2. Revoke business license for 1 year for each illegal worker who is found in your employ
3. On third violation…seize all property owned by that company…
4. Eliminate the “anchor baby” citizenship loophole…by stating that those children born to parents who are here illegally do not have citizenship.
5. Eliminate ALL federal funding to municipalities and counties that are “sanctuary” areas. (If you don’t wish to enforce federal laws…then you don’t get federal dollars.).
Those five simple steps would eliminate any and all incentives for hiring illegal workers.
I firmly believe that if our nation did the above…jobs for illegals would dry up over night (well nearly so)…because the cost of hiring illegals would be far higher than most business would be willing to pay.
Just my 2 cents.
Rich Vail

A Description of a Hillary Clinton Presidency

Dear Jerry,

Russian language media columnists – in Russia – are now analogizing Hillary Clinton to Leonid Brezhnev. What they mean by this is:
a) a sclerotic and rapidly aging person who is steadily sliding into dementia;
and,
b) while presiding over a reactionary regime of careerist mediocrities ruling over a stagnated and failing political economy and society.
I think this is an extremely accurate preview of a Hillary Clinton Presidency, should one occur.  
Best Wishes,
Mark

Debunking more Darwinian myths

Dear Jerry:

Yesterday (9/11) you posted a link to Fred’s discourse on evolution.

Coincidentally I have been reading and laughing my way through Tom Wolfe’s “The Kingdom of Speech” and thought some of your readers might be interested in what that book has to say. Here’s my review:

Darwinism is an easy target for ridicule. It is a pretentious faith whose doctrines claim that it answers all questions about how life arose from a few damp chemicals and arrived eventually at me writing and you reading this review on incredibly complex electronic devices.

There is remarkable little evidence to support Darwinism’s claims.

The faith conflicts with the geological record, fails to account for the origin of life, and cannot explain the origin of information stored in our DNA. Most importantly, Darwinism cannot account for the origin of the many traits that distinguish man from other animals.

Many Darwinists, in despair of ever answering the challenges to their faith coming from discoveries in molecular biology, have fallen back to spouting vehement invective. Others bring lawsuits to prevent discussion and teaching about the failures of Darwinism. Still others engage in the politics of personal destruction in hopes of silencing those scientists who try to publish scientific results that conflict with the Darwinist faith.

These failures are sometimes recognized by prominent Darwinists. Most famous, perhaps, is the late Stephen Jay Gould. He compared Darwinian explanations to Kipling’s just-so stories. Wolfe explores that branch of critical thinking along with many others.

Is it worthwhile to read yet another book deconstructing Darwinian myths? In this case, yes. Tom Wolfe adds to the rich literature debunking Darwinism by examining Darwinist explanations of the origin of human speech.

Wolfe starts at the dawn of the Darwinian Age when world-renowned linguist Max Muller pointed out that Darwinism had no explanation for human language. Muller was arrogant and joyfully sarcastic, so he enjoyed ridiculing the origin stories invented by Darwinists. Many others through the years have continued this tradition. Wolfe ultimately arrives at a recent paper by world-renowned linguist Noam Chomsky, et. al. in which today’s most distinguished linguists conclude that 150 years of research have provided no Darwinian explanation for the origin of language.

Along the way Wolfe tells engaging, frightening, and very funny stories about scientific presumptions being overturned by individuals who actually go out into the field to gather evidence concerning those presumptions. Those who stay home at their desks and merely think about how things “must have happened” simply cannot compete in the realm of ideas.

I fault the book for lacking a table of contents and an index. Such features are vital for those of us who want to return to useful parts of the book. I also think the price of $16.25 was rather high for so few pages with so little text on each page. Then again, I am reminded that Saint Thomas Aquinas followed the reasoning of Saint Augustine and Albert us Magnus. He concluded that a just price is determined by the buyer’s willingness to pay as well as by the seller’s reluctance to sell. Readers are more willing to pay more for a Tom Wolfe essay than for one written by someone of lesser talent. At any rate, I note that Amazon has already reduced the price by 65 cents since I bought it 10 days ago, reflecting either Amazon’s recognition of buyers’

reluctance or their desire for greater sales.

Other enjoyable books deconstructing Darwinian myths about what it means to be human include G. K. Chesterton’s “The Everlasting Man”

and David Stove’s “Darwinian Fairytales”. Both are available, of course, from Amazon.

Best regards,

–Harry M.

assimilation

Dr. Pournelle,
You’ve had as a banner on your blog the sentence “Migration without assimilation is invasion.” Just FYI, I mentioned the blog and the quote to an acquaintance who is of the Tohono Oldham nation. He agreed completely, and asked if Trump wins, when would I be deported to Ireland?
Considering how the EU is recently dictating Irish tax law, I told him I might just insist on Scotland as an alternative.
-d

Dr. Pournelle,
I’m no longer wasting unrecoverable life time apologizing for failed spell checker auto-correction in my outbound messages and text, but I must attempt to correct an apparent example of same in a previous contact message which you printed on 17 September 2016. The Native American name of the Southern Arizona tribe I mentioned is Anglicized as Tohono O’odham, not “Oldham,” as I apparently sent.
Of possible interest, as with a few other “tribal” areas, the “reservation” for the Tohono O’odham actually is split by the U.S. border with Mexico. Perhaps remarkably, neither the Nation nor the U.S. Border Patrol report any significant illegal cross border traffic within the borders of the Nation: little such traffic occurs on the reservation, whose residents, I am told, transit the international border freely within the borders of the reservation. Long-time, non-native residents with adjoining ranch property on both sides of the U.S.-Mexican border can no longer transit on their own property, even where it is un-fenced, and many have stopped using the land on one or the other sides. If verified, I’m curious to find out why this might be true. What might the Native Americans be doing differently than the U.S. government to control undesired smuggling and human trafficking?
-d

Sunday,18 September

Noonan,Globalization, Detachment, Dehumanization

I am not sure if you read LTC Grossman’s work On Killing. I learned about the Stanford University Prison Experiments and the Milgram Obedience Experiments through him — I’ve since acquired several of Milgrams books.

LTC Grossman theorized that several factors allowed the United States Army to increase the rate at which soldiers would kill. These factors included, but were not limited to, group absolution, demands of authority, symbols of authority, and certain forms of distance e.g.

physical, social, cultural, mechanical. The further away or the more obscured a person is, the easier it is to deny their humanity and kill them according to Grossman’s framework. They are not people, they are “the enemy”. This is not a person, this is “the patient”. Or, this is not a citizen, this is an “emotional cripple” and not worthy of living since we’re better than him or her.

As Mister Lapham put it in the documentary/musical The American Ruling Class — standing outside the doors to the Council on Foreign Relations — and I’ll paraphrase but use quotation marks for ease of

reading: “many of the people inside these doors would not consider you fully human unless you make 250,000 per year.” I believe dehumanizing citizens has grave consequences, especially when this is done by a ruling class that….well…Teddy Roosevelt said it better than me:

“Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to befoul the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of today.” ― Theodore Roosevelt

But, what if I’m part of a “vast right-wing conspiracy” against someone or other? Let’s look to the left:

“Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men’s views confided to me privately. Some of the biggest men in the U.S., in the field of commerce and manufacturing, are afraid of somebody, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.” ― Woodrow Wilson

And then we have Eisenhower’s farewell speech, which I am confident you’re familiar with and need no reminder. I’ve studied this all my life and that’s not an exaggeration. I noticed something was very wrong before I was a teenager and I looked and found a few things and kept digging. I suppose I thought I was going to save the world or something, somehow, but now I’m older and I realize that Americans have no effect on policy according to the Princeton study I forwarded to you previously.

I realize a small group of 240 corporations and less than 20 banks — essentially — “control” the world economy, according to a scholarly paper “The Global Network of Corporate Control” by some Swiss researchers. This was in Forbes Magazine and I got the article from Cornell University after reading about it in Forbes:

https://arxiv.org/abs/1107.5728

So, now what? Well, my plan was to talk about it and everyone would wake up and things would change. That hasn’t happened and I decided to skip the whole idealism, frustration, despondency — or worse radicalization — disease Johnson outlined. I’m not sure where we go from here but I know one thing, I remain, and I will press on with the faith that others have lived through similar circumstances. Maybe one of our overlords will take pity on me and pull me out of the slime or maybe I’ll remain here with the hostages. This is what it means to be human.

◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

It is not always true that elections have no effect. Gingrich with the Contract with America had a profound effect. Alas, his personal behavior resulted in the Old Establishment retaking control. We once had balanced budgets, and were paying down the Debt, in a coalition of Mr. Gingrich and President Bill Clinton. That ended when Mr. Gingrich departed as Speaker and the Establishment regained and reconsolidated control.

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

Chaos Manor View, Sunday, September 11, 2016

Nine Eleven: 15 years

 

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.

I watched the 15^th Anniversary of the attack on the United States with some misgivings. I recall when it first happened, no one thought that we’d go so far as to create new bureaucracies, spend hundreds of billions of dollars, get into land wars in Asia, quadruple the national debt, while failing to rebuild the twin towers taller and stronger and better; but we have managed to do so, and more. If the purpose was to bring financial and bureaucratic disaster to the United States while creating chaos in the Near, Middle and Far East, bin Laden more than accomplished his goal. Among other achievements, he caused the creation of TSA; and the TSA with its security theater drama is a permanent fixture; thanks to bin Laden. That bureau alone costs $7 billion a year.

It’s easy to loathe the TSA. They slow down our travel. They cost us money. They scan past the privacy of our clothing. And their screeners tend to have the same perpetually aggravated disposition of the average DMV employee. (Not to mention, their very presence seems to overshadow the multitude of other, simpler destructive options for your average terrorist.)

Any loathing you may have will only be fueled when you look through this infographic. The numbers are infuriating if you trust them all. 70% of weapons make it past TSA screeners? It costs us $6 million to find each gun? We spend more than double on the TSA than we do clean energy?

And don’t even look at the salaries they’re making.

https://www.fastcodesign.com/1669240/the-tsas-insane-budget-and-woeful-track-record

We can honor the victims of the attack. I’m not so sure about the remedies. The current administration created ISIS, but has no intention of doing much about it other than to feed special forces into an effort to nip at the Caliphate’s edges as it continues to grow. One division and the Warthogs could have eliminated the Caliphate as it was born, with no more than a few hundred casualties. Now it will take an entire Corps consisting of Infantry, Heavy Armor, all the A-10’s with heavy logistic support, and a Wing at least of air superiority forces to protect the Warthogs. That’s what I reckon it needs for next Spring, which is about the earliest we are able to strike. I say nothing about the requirements two years from now.

The only way to defeat ISIS is to deprive it of its status as a state. To be a state, it must govern a territory, where it imposes what it believes is the law ordered by Allah in the Koran. If it does not govern, it is not a state, just another terrorist organization.

As to why it requires so much to defeat ISIS: non-symmetrical warfare requires overwhelming force at the point of application; anything less than that plays into their hands. So long as they are not losing much territory, they are winning. Feeding troops into a meat grinder that goes on for years is their strategy: they can keep it up. We should not; and in fact we can’t. We haven’t enough long term determination.

The television is filled with memories of the 9/11 attack; it is well to remember, for it cost far more than the thousands immediately killed. We continue to pay, doing to ourselves in the name of security far more harm, at far greater costs, than the terrorists can afflict on us. It is clear that the current ruling class cannot end this. We have the means, as we had the means to rescue our people at Benghazi; but we have not the will to defeat our enemies, just as we had not the will to rescue our ambassador.

The chaos continues. Friday night we went twice to the Emergency Room at Kaiser. The first time, Roberta had an allergy reaction to the antibiotic pills she was taking for a chronic internal infection. It was just dusk, she drove, we were given prompt attention, and it was decided to change from her pills to infusions, the first to be administered there (in the hall; their rooms were filling up). The needle was left in her hand, and a nurse would come to the house the next day to show how we could do it for the next week. All seemed well, but on reaching the house – Roberta driving as I do not see well at night – we discovered that the tubes attached to her were leaking blood. Not a lot, but quite steadily.

We also discovered that our land line wasn’t working – again no dial tone. I immediately wrapped her hand and arm in a towel and drove back to the Emergency Room. The  first time when we arrived at the Emergency Room at about 9 PM (on Friday night), it was nearly empty, and while I noticed that the waiting room (very large) had more people in it when we left at about midnight, I paid little attention. The second trip, the way to Kaiser was crowded, far more traffic at 1 AM than there had been at midnight when we went home. Many pedestrians wandering about. Traffic at a halt. I drove around the point of maximum congestion by going down a center turn lane. I took it slow, everyone was polite and cooperative, and in a few minutes I was back to normal traffic for 0130, which is almost none. That must have been one big party!

The Emergency Room waiting room was filled to overflowing. Most of the people there looked unwell, but few seemed to have any visible emergency, and some, couples with children in tow, didn’t seem sick at all. It took a while to get my bleeding wife past the line that had formed in front of the reception desk, but again everyone was polite and cooperative, so we bypassed several of them, most of whom seemed mostly to need forms to fill out, and had no Kaiser card which would have obviated the forms. The receptionist had a Registered nurse badge; she registered our Kaiser card, but dealt with the bleeding herself by eliminating one of the tubes that had been attached, leaving Roberta’s needle in place but no longer leaking.

We were sent to wait for our name to be called. It was pretty clear to me that this would be a while, since we no longer had any critical need. I went to the receptionist and suggested we just go home, since a nurse was coming to the house Saturday anyway. The receptionist was very careful not to advise us to leave, but emphasized that we certainly could if we wanted to since there was no longer any critical need. She also suggested rehydration. She didn’t mention that it would be a while, but from the crowded waiting room it was fairly obvious.

So we went home and to bed. Saturday morning our son Alex went out to the Kaiser infusion pharmacy and picked up a huge bag of infusions and piping and various wrapped sterile disposable instruments. I figured out what was wrong with the phone – our fault this time, no internal wiring or AT&T problem. Josephine, a registered nurse came a bit early, Roberta got her infusion. She has had no allergy symptoms. The home RN came again this afternoon and all is well. Chaos Manor has returned to mild chaos.

I did get my brass cannon, which is what the National Space Society gives as its Heinlein Award. I know why, since Mr. Heinlein told me the Brass Cannon Story in his house while he was at 1776 Mesa in the Broadmoor district of Colorado Springs. But that’s for another time.

For what it’s worth, Snopes on “Hillary’s diazepam pen”

http://www.snopes.com/clintons-secret-service-agent-holds-diazepam-pen/

j

Wouldn’t know about that and don’t much care for breaking news. We do know that her coughing fit was probably caused by walking pneumonia. She’s pretty tough but that shouldn’t be neglected are her age. A few days rest and some antibiotics ought to take care of it, though. We can all wish her well.

HRC, if pneumonia why is NEUROLOGICAL Dr. Oladotun Okunola (Parkinson’s guy) always by u side? Admit u REAL illness!

This is the first time I’ve seen a name for this person, who was the person allegedly photographed having a diazepam (valium) pen available to inject Hillary.

http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2016/08/oh-hillary-handler-carries-diazepam-pen-seizures/

http://www.meridianmeds.com/products/diazepam

Again, I have no notion, but the Constitution does not specify health impediments to being President. That’s a task for the voters, or the Electors.

Al Qaeda, Race, and US Schooling

Well, I find this interesting. The latest Al Qaeda communiqué sounds

more like something that would come out of one of these nutter colleges we’ve been reading about that have discriminatory housing, classes on how “evil” “white people” are, and so on.

<.>

The video also includes an appeal to African American non-Muslims, inviting them to convert to Islam to seek salvation with footage from a sermon from late African-American leader Malcolm X.

Addressing recent racial tensions involving black Americans, Zawahiri urges them to levy blame for their struggle on the U.S., telling them “the law is in the hands of the white majority, [who] control it as they wish,” according to a video translation issued by the Middle East Media Research Institute.

“We inform every weakened [person] in the world: America is the source of calamity and the head of evil in this world, and it is the thief of nations’ ailment, and it is the one who humiliate the Africans [i.e.

African Americans] until this day, and no matter how much they try to reform and obtain their rights according to the law and the [U.S.] constitution, they will not attain it, for the law is in the hands of the white majority, [who] control it as they wish. And they [i.e.

African Americans] will not be saved but by Islam,” Zawahiri says.

</>

http://www.foreigndesknews.com/world/middle-east/eve-911-anniversary-al-qaeda-threatens-attacks/

Just to grind the nonsense of the Al Qaeda terrorist, and the leftist

universities who parrot this kind of crap, into the dust: Thomas

Sowell — an academician of the black persuasion — remarked, with data to back up his claims, the American, “liberal” welfare state did more harm to American citizens of the black persuasion over a thirty year period than slavery did. He compared African American households without a father after slavery ended to the statistics after 30 years of leftist welfare and “Great Society” policies. You’ve mentioned this before and you’re in good academic company.

He also focuses on schooling and even that was better before the left touched it — as you’ve said. You’re an impressive man. You often open my eyes to things I didn’t know and I often find you in good intellectual company — not that intellectual company much matters to me, but it does make me more persuasive when I test your positions with conversation partners to judge reactions and hear rebuttals.

I realize you do not normally watch videos, but if you prefer you can see Sowell’s statements. He also makes interesting points on cultural assimilation and society and he even draws comparisons with Europe, Sri Lanka, etc. He’s very persuasive and very effective:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lm-FqtAOSB8

◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

I generally recommend Dr. Sowell. Moynihan pointed out long long ago that the black family survived slavery, Jim Crow, segregation, general neglect, and other stresses; it took The Great Society and welfare to destroy it. At the time he wrote his famous report the black illegitimacy rate was around 20%, and most black children had two parents living at home.

4 years after Benghazi, are we protecting US diplomats any better? – MSN News

They aren’t learning the lessons very well, are they?

4 years after Benghazi, are we protecting US diplomats any better?

By Martin Edwin Andersen

Tribune Washington Bureau – Tribune Washington Bureau – Sun Sep 11 20:47:41 UTC 2016

Four years after the Benghazi terrorist attacks killed four Americans on the 11th anniversary of 9/11, debate still rages over whether the United States has done enough to protect its diplomats overseas.

http://a.msn.com/r/2/AAiLT0O?a=1&m=en-us

They’re trying to get their last-minute killing in before the cease-fire starts the way holiday shoppers try to get their last minute shopping done before the stores close Christmas eve.

Spate of Deadly Attacks in Syria Ahead of Cease-Fire

By ANNE BARNARD

The New York Times – The New York Times – Sun Sep 11 19:30:00 UTC 2016

At least 91 people have been killed in strikes on rebel-held areas in the two days since Russia and the United States declared that a cease-fire would begin on Monday.

http://a.msn.com/r/2/AAiLZwL?a=1&m=en-us

David

: 9-11: The Charlie Foxtrot behind the story

http://www.aol.com/article/2016/09/11/secrets-of-9-11-new-details-of-chaos-nukes-emerge/21469698/?icid=maing-grid7|main5|dl1|sec1_lnk3&pLid=-353835306_htmlws-sb-bb

Original story on NBC news (some different details)

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/9-11-anniversary/9-11-anniversary-how-lower-manhattan-has-healed-sept-11-n645816

: “New Class War”

Jerry,

Just read this:

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/new-class-war/

While I appreciate an academic analysis as much as the next guy, I think he really misses the point of Trump and his supporters. We want our country back.

—

Phil Tharp

I have that article on my “to be recommended” list, and intend to cite it when I do an update of Djilas and his theory of the new governing class. It is one reason why things always change for the worse despite the astounding accomplishments in technology.

Privilege Check, an Underfable

Privilege Check

Once upon a time, in Animal Farm, Snowball said to Napoleon, “All animals are equal.”

Napoleon said, “Check your privilege! I am more equal than you!”

Moral: The worst shall be first.

Paradoctor

Campbell’s Law

I thought your readers might find this to be of interest.

https://mikethemadbiologist.com/2016/09/10/campbells-law-strikes-education-again/=

Steve

Indeed

Fred on evolution.

<http://www.unz.com/freed/darwin-unhinged-the-bugs-in-evolution/>

He’s a bit unfair to Greg Cochrane, but the rest is spot-on.

I would say quite unfair to Greg, who has rational arguments for his views; they may be wrong, but he has more data than most grand theories have.

I remember learning “omnis cellula e cellula” in my first week of high school biology.  It seems to hold in today’s world. In so,me of my youthful intellectual excursions I was tempted to reject it, but I have never found a real exception to the rule.

 

sc:bubbles]

An instance within the memory of some of this house will show us how our militia may be destroyed. Forty years ago, when the resolution of enslaving America was formed in Great Britain, the British Parliament was advised by an artful man, who was governor of Pennsylvania, to disarm the people; that it was the best and most effectual way to enslave them; but that they should not do it openly, but weaken them, and let them sink gradually, by totally disusing and neglecting the militia.

— George Mason

I ask, sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people, except for a few public officials.

— George Mason

 

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

Chaos Manor View, Thursday, September 8, 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.

Migration without assimilation is invasion.

 

 

I have enough interesting new mail to continue the discussion of immigration, and I will do that. Meanwhile, things are approaching the normal state of chaos here. The plumbing works, the phones work, our life saving assistant is over her health problems, I can shower properly, and in general things are reasonable again. We had to postpone the weekly Wednesday conference, but we can make up on that later this afternoon.

For your amusement:

 

 

 

Now for a diversion:

 

Carol Highsmith. Public Domain

I saw an AP release today that intrigued me, and on looking farther, determined that it raises a matter of some interest to writers. The LA Times page C5 header said “Photographer gave up image rights, firms say”, which is not very intriguing, but for some reason I read it. It didn’t make a lot of sense, and the story was much more complex than the header indicates.

Carol Highsmith (ne McKinney) is one of the best known photographers in America, and her donation of her works to the Library of Congress and thus into the public domain.

Carol Highsmith is a distinguished photographer who has traveled all over America, aiming to chronicle for posterity the life of the nation in the early 21^st century. She’s donating her work to the public via the Library of Congress, which has called her act “one of the greatest acts of generosity in the history of the Library.” The Carol M. Highsmith Archive, which is expected ultimately to encompass more than 100,000 images, is accessible royalty-free via the library’s website.

http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-getty-copyright-20160729-snap-story.html

So of course she gave up her image rights. She quite generously did so with full knowledge and intent. Why is this news?

Well, it turns out that Getty Images, among others, is selling copies of her photos. That’s certainly legal: I published copies of the California Sixth Grade Reader, and I think Amazon charges about four bucks, of which I get 70%. You can, as Getty Images notes in its defense, get copies of Dickens or Shakespeare, certainly public domain, from many places, some free and some for nominal sums. I think I just paid two bucks for the Kindle edition of Bleak House, although I was given a copy by Mr. Hertz, my lawyer, some years ago. Bleak House is a massive work, and I find it easier to read on the Kindle these days. Of course it’s legal to charge for copies of public domain works, else sellers of old book would all be out of business, but in fact a few remain. I doubt that one could make living publishing public domain books and images, but there is nothing illegal about it, as I am sure Ms. Highsmith knows. So why is she suing Getty Images? And for a billion dollars at that?

This is where the story gets more interesting. Enter now License Compliance Services, apparently acting on behalf of Getty Images. Ms. Highsmith used one of her own photographs on her own web site, whereupon License Compliance Services sent her a bill for $120 which was to purchase a license to her own photograph.

I do not know Ms. Highsmith although I think I may have met her at some social or fund raising event at one time or another, but I have no problem at all imagining the fury generated by that demand that she license her own photograph from a company she probably had never heard of. In any event she filed a suit:

Photographer Files $1 Billion Suit Against Getty for Licensing Her Public Domain Images

http://hyperallergic.com/314079/photographer-files-1-billion-suit-against-getty-for-licensing-her-public-domain-images/

In December, documentary photographer Carol Highsmith received a letter from Getty Images accusing her of copyright infringement for featuring one of her own photographs on her own website. It demanded payment of $120. This was how Highsmith came to learn that stock photo agencies Getty and Alamy had been sending similar threat letters and charging fees to users of her images, which she had donated to the Library of Congress for use by the general public at no charge.

Now, Highsmith has filed a $1 billion copyright infringement suit against both Alamy and Getty for “gross misuse” of 18,755 of her photographs. “The defendants [Getty Images] have apparently misappropriated Ms. Highsmith’s generous gift to the American people,” the complaint reads. “[They] are not only unlawfully charging licensing fees … but are falsely and fraudulently holding themselves out as the exclusive copyright owner.” According to the lawsuit, Getty and Alamy, on their websites, have been selling licenses for thousands of Highsmith’s photographs, many without her name attached to them and stamped with “false watermarks.”

Actually, she received the demanding letter from License Compliance Services acting on behalf of Getty Images (who, I suspect, now wishes it had never heard of License Compliance Services). According to today’s paper, Getty Images claims it has every right to charge for public domain images it distributes; I have not found their defense of requiring the author of the work to license its reuse.

I must say I wish Ms. Highsmith well. I also confess to being one of her admirers. If any of you have used one of her public domain photographs – there are thousands – and received a bill from LCS, you have my sympathies. She didn’t cause it to be sent.

See also https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160729/13362135105/getty-makes-nonsensical-statement-photographer-carol-highsmiths-lawsuit-falsely-claiming-copyright.shtml

A neat montage of some of Ms. Highsmith’s photos can be found at http://www.carolhighsmithamerica.com/ 

The “Undocumented” Problem

Jerry,

There appear to be some stumbling blocks in the way to reaching a consensus on how to handle the problem of people in the US without proper documentation.

The words Illegal, Alien and Criminal seem to trigger violent reactions from a large number of our Citizens and Elected Officials.

We should try to reach agreement on using the word Undocumented and using three categories Undocumented with US Citizen Children, Undocumented and Undocumented Felon.

I believe that adopting these three classifications will go a long way to reaching agreement on what to do to solve the Undocumented Problem.

These priorities for action may help to ease the path to consensus.

First, adopt a policy of immediate deportation of Undocumented Felons at either the completion of the incarceration or capture if not incarcerated.

Second, adopt a system of Work Visas for the currently Undocumented with US Citizen Children. Acceptance of such a Visa would allow Documented residence of a non-working spouse. A working spouse would be eligible for their own Work Visa. These Work Visas would require a longer than normal residency to be eligible for Citizenship (perhaps forever.)

Third, properly enforce the existing laws against the hiring of the Undocumented. Legislate increased penalties for violating these laws including significant periods of incarceration if necessary.

Fourth, address the porous border with Mexico. This is not just an Undocumented problem, but a real and extremely dangerous problem of Terrorism!

This can be addressed with a combination of technology and appropriate staffing. The Technology part MUST go outside of normal Federal Government Procurement Practices to ensure success.

Fifth, deal with the Undocumented without suffix population by giving them the option to return home and get in line for Work Visas and a possible path to Citizenship. Those that choose to stay will be deported when found and will not be eligible for either Visa or Citizenship.

Bob Holmes

Well, I disagree with none of your points, but I do object to their order: it seems to me that until we gain control of the border – stop the bleeding – the rest is irrelevant. Your fifth point is implicit in the Trump approach: we may not go looking for illegal aliens, but we have not forgotten they are breaking the law. I suspect that it is all that is possible, and much of that will have to be left to state and local authorities. Many of them will not be at all vigorous in their search for status offenders; but they should not relax their crime prevention efforts. It is in the interests of all, legals and illegals, that we reduce gang warfare and drug cartel power. Latest statistics show that can be done; but if we do not control the inflow, it is not so terribly useful. But then you know that.

Illegal immigration measures

Arizona’s experience shows that substantial enforcement does not require inhumane measures. They applied misdemeanor penalties like $100 fines for lacking a document or not using e-verify. The legal history is here:
http://www.ncsl.org/research/immigration/analysis-of-arizonas-immigration-law.aspx
In 2007, Arizona mandated use of E-Verify. It reduced formal illegal employment substantially. There’s always informal self-employment, of course, but it still makes the place quite a bit less attractive to illegals. An employment analysis, with data, is here:
http://www.ppic.org/content/pubs/report/R_311MLR.pdf
The next step was SB1070, to enforce immigration laws at most government contacts. It passed with wide support among citizens. Most of its provisions were struck down by federal courts, because, ironically, federal law already had similar provisions and penalties. However, the “documents” provision remains in force because the US Congress did not establish penalties. This strongly suggests that sufficient laws are in place, just not enforced. Therefore, minor revisions to the federal budget and executive action could prioritize enforcement.
http://www.colorlines.com/articles/what-ever-happened-sb-1070
California already deports convicted felons who are illegal aliens, after they have served their terms. See http://www.shouselaw.com/deportable-crimes.html
Combine this with policies that improve border control and improve employment by lowering energy costs and reducing unnecessary regulations. Practical improvements in security and employment should be possible without an inhumane society.
Assigning welfare benefits only to legal residents is a good idea, but it has already been struck down by federal courts. The courts specifically extend constitutional civil rights to illegals, including “equal protection.” For example, North Carolina officials could not ask school children if their parents were illegals. It might take a constitutional amendment to overturn this. Any congressional act is likely to be overturned in the same way by citing the same cases.
Ray Van De Walker
How ell California complies with deportation of convicted felons is not so clear: there are numerous cases of illegals being released at the end of their sentence before informing the Immigration Service that they existed, or so I am told. There are also complications of Sanctuary Cities and various city police special orders. Of course we are discussing Federal, not State policies here.

I think an explicit Act of Congress denying benefits to Illegal aliens would have to be obeyed by the courts, even if it took a law changing the jurisdiction of the courts, which is explicitly within the powers granted to Congress; a nuclear option, indeed, but then the courts have played some pretty dangerous cards themselves.

immigration and the wall

I suspect it’s a matter of degree. Today we have no effective immigration control and essentially no wall. We can and should build a wall that will stop most of the tidal wave crossing the boarder today.

It’s like security systems, with our individual homes being the low end, local businesses a little higher, and what the president has, the practical top end. We don’t need a wall that stops everyone, we need a wall in the right places that stops most. We then need a boarder patrol that looks for the rest and handles them appropriately as dictated by our laws.

As for getting the 11+ million already here out, first stop the incoming tidal wave as in the above, next, let the police round up the know illegal felons and deport them. My buddy is a patrol cop, the police indeed know where they are. They just can’t do anything. Use something like E Verify to keep businesses from hiring illegals. Once we have done all of that, we can begin to talk about the rest.

I’ve always assumed this was Trump’s approach. It’s what any decent leader would come up with.

—

Phil Tharp

Deportation

Dr. Pournelle,

You say: “I have said it is reasonable to deport any illegal alien convicted of a felony upon completion of his sentence.”

I say, why house and feed him for a prison sentence?  He can run up quite a room and board bill for even the traditional minimum year and a day.

I propose deporting him upon conviction.  Now, we don’t want him coming back, so here is where it gets into the science fictional.  He should be indelibly marked.  Crooks tend to like tattoos, so we will give him an official one.  A bullseye would be appropriate because he would have the same status as a disaster looter… to be shot on sight.

Not politically or socially feasible, but we can dream.

“…surely we can do something immediately without endless talk?”

I don’t know what.  Making one’s position clear to politicians falls on deaf ears.  Worse, a politician will look you square in the face, and to quote Matt Helm’s boss Mac, “Lie and continue to lie in the face of compelling evidence to the contrary.”

Jim Watson

As you say, a dream. My intention was to discuss reality, such as what an elected President might actually be able to accomplish; nothing involving “shoot on sight” is likely and I would not think desirable. Returning deported felons are likely to be a problem: they are now. I propose that it be made explicit law that they are not citizens and have no right to entitlements including court ordered prison conditions. They could be sent to Guantanamo, but I see no reason to inflict their company on good Marines who don’t deserve that duty and aren’t paid for it. I think of a number of firms which would undertake to imprison repeat non-citizens under harsh but not inhumane conditions at fractions of the current imprisonment costs. Those facilities would be built for that purpose and that purpose only, and run by paid guards, with over-all supervision from the armed services. I do not further specify details, but the purpose is to make a not inhumane place that all sane persons would want to avoid, preferably by not reentering the United States.

 

Given that, I see no reason why early departures of sentenced felons should not be possible; depending on the felony, of course. For that matter, I have no real objection to contracts with foreign powers to imprison their own citizens after conviction in the US, although I expect most foreign countries would not sign one.

Immigration and taxes

Just to chime in on the conversation regarding what is to be done about illegals from a tax preparer’s perspective. Going after the companies who hire illegals is actually very easy for what many will likely find to be an astounding reason:

The IRS knows exactly who many of the people who work here illegally are, where they live (or at least where they receive mail) and who they work for. This is certainly not true for all illegals, but it is true for a great many of them.

More on that in a bit, but first I’d like to clear up something that many of your correspondents have said; that companies hire illegals to avoid paying them minimum wage. While this may be true in some places, I’ve never seen it. Every tax return I’ve prepared for someone here illegally (or on an H1B for that matter) is making huge sums of money relative to the native population, typically over 100K a year.

How it works: Company hires Illegal as an employee. Obviously Illegal does not have a social security number, but no matter. Those are pretty easy to find these days, thanks to the internet. The social security number typically belongs to a retiree who no longer files federal tax returns. (I always have to laugh when some burly Hispanic dude hands me a W-2 with a name like Myrtle Vargason on it.) At the end of the year, Company prints out a W-2 for Illegal, who then brings it to me. I carefully document Illegal’s information on Form W-7, essentially a signed confession to being here and working here illegally, so the IRS can issue him an ITIN. I then use this to file Illegal’s tax return so he can get whatever refund and tax credits he has coming. (As a registered tax return preparer, I am legally required to assist Illegal in obtaining his ITIN and filing his taxes. Failure to assist would result in consequences a tad on the serious side.)

Great system, right? Here’s the best part. A couple years hence, 80-year-old Myrtle Vargason up in Elk Snout, Montana gets a friendly letter from the IRS informing her she has 60 days to cough up a wad of cash to cover her penalties for failing to file a tax return on the money she made working heavy construction in Miami, Florida.

So what does Company get from this? By paying Illegal on a W-2, he isn’t avoiding any costs or regulations, so why take the risk? Because he gets an employee who will show up, on time, sober, and who will do the work without endlessly bitching about it being too hot or too cold or being too hung over to work. Sorry, but there it is.
Ric Frost

There is much to think about in your letter. Thank you. I am contemplating it now. I invite comment.

Petronius may consider Zuckerberg to be a member of his tribe, but Zuckerberg and the other Silicon Valley elites certainly don’t consider Petronius and the rest of us plebes to be members of *their* tribe – else they wouldn’t be fraudulently importing scads of foreign H-1B indentured servants to replace their fellow Americans, of whom there’s a surfeit better-qualified than the H-1Bers to do this work.

It’s unabashed economic treason. And one way or another, in the not-so-distant future, there *will* be a reckoning.

R

Landlines

We still have a landline – sort of. We live in a place served by fiber to the house. Our “landline” is carried over the fiber link which provides our cable TV service, our alarm service, and our 100 megabit per second Internet service, and is included in the cost. I supposed that counts as a “landline” but it has obvious advantages over conventional wired service. We live in the Texas hill country, and there are places out here where cell service is spotty as well.

Best Regards,

   — Lindy Sisk

Russian Nuke Ahead of Schedule

One of the arguments made by the Fred — submitted by J — makes a point that I believe many Americans have trouble facing: American policy makers consistently and repeatedly overestimate American capabilities while underestimating enemy capabilities. Further, American policy makers almost never seem to realize that we don’t know much — and certainly not everything — that adversaries may be doing and the battlespace can change quickly.

I’m watching very small, but significant changes in the men and materiel that we would be arrayed against. This is another one of those changes, easily assimilated into existing data and dismissed as “unimportant” along with all the other small changes that were dismissed as “unimportant”.

<.>

On Monday, a defense industry official told Russian media that the mass production of the RS-28 Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile, a new multi-warhead, super-heavy missile designed to defeat anti-missile systems, would begin in 2018, two years ahead of schedule. Defense analyst Vladimir Tuchkov explains what made this possible.

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https://sputniknews.com/military/20160907/1045062797/sarmat-ahead-of-schedule-analysis.html

As Fred said, and I’ve said, our policy makers and “perfumed political princes” — an apt label for our failure of generalship — are not prepared to defeat sheep herders in Afghanistan nor a rabble that was under the shoes of one of the most powerful dictators in modern times.

Nor are they prepared to make realistic alliances that actually help US interests, witness Saudi Arabia. And these people want to fight Russia?

Remember how the Germans trained with broomsticks during a NATO exercise because they couldn’t afford to equip their soldiers with small arms? I guess that would be harder with Merkel’s CDP allocating resources to import military aged men from war torn areas — men who would not fight for their own country but will somehow, magically, become good Germans that would fight for Germany one day?

I could go on, but why bother? The die has been cast. I feel like the people who actually saw what was happening before WWI must have felt. I feel like I’m watching a train wreck that I can prevent if only the drivers will head the words coming into their brains through their commo boxes. But, as a Princeton study demonstrated, the American people have zero effect on US policy and have not for decades.

◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

Those who have not seen http://www.fredoneverything.net/PussyGeneral.shtml might finds it amusing. Warning: Fred is very politically incorrect. The easily offended probably ought to avoid his site.

sc:bubbles]

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