Chaos Manor View, Saturday, April 9, 2016

“This is the most transparent administration in history.”

Barrack Obama

Liberalism is a philosophy of consolation for Western Civilization as it commits suicide.

Under Capitalism, the rich become powerful. Under Socialism, the powerful become rich.

Under Socialism, government employees become powerful.

I still don’t have Outlook running on the Surface Pro 3, but I have learned a few things; as usual they are both to the credit and detriment of Microsoft. With Apple, everything is either very simple or impossible; with Microsoft many things are very simple, but many more are very complicated; most are possible, but you never know. And good luck finding out how to do them.

First, thanks to all the readers who have told me how to find the box that lets you view hidden files in Windows 10. There are two ways, neither of which was hinted at when I Binged “show hidden files Windows 10”. The first is windows key + e gets you Explorer; the View tab on that will have boxes for Show Hidden Files and Show Extensions. These are off by default; checking them does the trick. As it happens I had long since done that, but didn’t remember it. I suppose to Microsoft this is so obvious they do not need to tell you when you Bing hidden files? In any event it works.

A better way is to Start > Control Panel > File Explorer Options. Many fewer readers told me about this one, and I have never seen any reference to it in a Microsoft help file, but then I have pretty low expectations when it comes to Microsoft Help. All their Help employees seem to be graduates of that condemnable school that teaches how to document things so that you can prove to your supervisor that you have done so, but can be found and comprehended only by those who already knew how to do it. Clear only if previously known. Microsoft does not have a monopoly on that, of course, and given our wretched school system that evolved after we nationalized control of schools with Federal Aid to Education fewer and fewer people including programmers know how to write comprehensible English anyway.

Of course Microsoft tells me to do Start > Control Panel > Appearances and Personalization, but that category does not exist on any of the Windows 10 machines I have. Oddly enough I have a few readers who tell me they have it on theirs, but I haven’t undertaken the task of finding out just what edition or build or mark number of Windows 10 they have; most of you don’t have Appearances in you Control panel.

I have also discovered that Control Panel appears on the Start Menu on one of my Windows 10 machines, but not on two others. Usually I have to do Start and then type c into the “Ask me anything” window on the lower left of the screen, at which point a little window pops up letting me open Control Panel. After I open it, right clicking on the icon offers me the opportunity to pin Control Panel to the Task Bar, but I don’t use it that often; I’ll remember that Start > type c will get me control panel; although you might think that “All apps” ought to include an option to open Control Panel? But the ways of Microsoft Product Managers are arcane and comprehensible only to an enlightened few; users aren’t expected to make sense of them.

I still do not have Outlook running on the Surface Pro 3. One reader suggested I do a Repair installation of Office, and I am doing that now; it is taking forever. I have been running the program for an hour, and the progress bar is about a quarter way over, and appears not to be moving at all. Task Manager shows 0% of CPU time is devoted to running “Microsoft Office Click to Run”, the only open app other than Task Manager, but if I stare at it long enough I am rewarded with a momentary kick up to 0.2% before it goes back to its by now traditional 0%. I will let it run all day and see what happens. Wish me luck.

I do these silly things so you don’t have to. I think, though, that it would have been faster simply to uninstall Office and start over; I don’t recall the initial installation taking an hour or more. We’ll just have to see how this plays out. It’s lunch time and I’ll just let it run…

Well. I went up to correct the first paragraphs of this, before I go to lunch, and Lo! the progress bar has moved past the 1/3 area, not yet to halfway, but it has definitely moved. Hope springs eternal. And now for lunch…

Sigh. It’s an hour later and I don’t think that progress bar has moved a millimeter. We’ll just wait…

Still no progress on repair installation of office on the Surface Pro. However, I did learn one thing about Control Panel.

Start > type C >Click on Control panel

It opens as Control Panel > All Control Panel items. Now go up to the path line and click Control Panel in the path it shows up there. Lo! There appears a control panel, only this time there are many fewer items, one of which is Appearance and Personalization. Click that, and it will offer you File Explorer Options. That offers you View. View does let you control things like Hide File Extensions and such. See, it’s all very clear, provided you understand how to do it. If you didn’t already know, it’s pretty hard to figure it out, but after all, that’s part of the fun, isn’t it.

Beedee, beedee, beedee… .

While I was doing that, the Surface suddenly went mad and finished the Repair Installation of Office. Now when I click Outlook 16, a blue Window appears. It seems to say Starting, but vanishes quickly, to be replaced by another blue window. Moving Dots indicate trundling. It says Processing. It does this endlessly. I think I am back where I started. Always something interesting to do with Microsoft.

outlook repair

Dr. Pournelle,

For app launch issues with the latest version of office, MS seems to be recommending a repair installation. Don’t uninstall first, just do a repair installation.

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Repair-an-Office-application-7821d4b6-7c1d-4205-aa0e-a6b40c5bb88b

Sean Long

Thanks. Alas, I tried it, with results detailed above. No Joy. I now have office 2016, One Note and Word seem to work fine, but Outlook won’t open. I’m giving it an hour to try, but I have no realistic hopes.

windoze10

Thank you for sharing your experience with windoze10. You’ve convinced me not to ‘upgrade’ from win7. If it ain’t broke, then why try to fix it.

I do want to emphasize that I am living with Windows 10, and as I discover how to do things I find them reasonable, and the system useful for getting work done; but they have changed the interface a lot, and I don’t find a lot of the improvements and actual improvement at all. If you’re just learning it I suppose you are better off; you won’t so often try the wrong thing. Windows 10 works well to get my work done. All I must do is forget how Windows used to work.

Eventually I will learn the Windows 10 arcana, after which no doubt Microsoft will improve beyond recognition yet another time.

I do not think windoze is an appropriate cognomen. It’s not slow, it’s merely incomprehensible unless you already know its secrets.

Big ransomware roundup

http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/04/ok-panic-newly-evolved-ransomware-is-bad-news-for-everyone/

                We’ve gotten the crime part of the cyber-punk future without the fun parts.

Eric

A-10 with busted wing

An Israeli F-15 once landed safely, after a midair collision, with dam’ near nothing left of the right wing.  It was GONE from just outboard of the engine intake/nacelle.

http://theaviationist.com/2014/09/15/f-15-lands-with-one-wing/

–John R. Strohm

Of course the survivability of the Warthog is not what makes it so valuable for the kind of assaults we need on ISIS, It can also be far more precise in target selections, vastly reducing collateral damages.

indicting sec state, nuclear Asia, and power point
Dr Pournelle,
You wrote that you would “not predict that the Obama Administration would allow an indictment of Hillary Clinton.”
Good bet! As Secretary of State, Dame (Damn?) Hillary was operating as a classification authority, and had the responsibility, derived from the President’s, to classify, declassify, and release classified information at any level. Even if she’d deliberately sent classified information via unclassified channels to an uncleared recipient, she was operating within her authority to do so. The worst possible punishment would have been if the President had disagreed with her information decision and had asked her to resign. Having resigned the position, she’s legally untouchable.
Remember when President Carter announced to the world the world the development of radar stealth aircraft? Remember then junior Senator Joe Biden walking out of a classified-content briefing by the intelligence agencies and blabbing about national technical means to the reporters waiting outside? Like that.
As far as the personal e-mail account is concerned, Cabinet officials and directors of federal agencies grant or deny their subordinates the use of personal accounts. It was within her authority to except herself from any State Department policy requiring the use of government e-mail accounts.
Mrs. Clinton is immune from legal prosecution on either issue. This political investigation is only about the question of the public appearance of competence and chasing down any of her political cronies who can be indicted, at length, in a persistent effort to keep her politically embarrassed and ineffective.
The real effect will be to make Bernie Sanders the democratic party candidate, or if she is nominated after all, to so disable the remaining dregs of the Clinton reputation as to make so her unacceptable to many voters in her own party that they either don’t vote, or are driven into the arms of her opponents.
The real proof of incompetence is Benghazi, as you say, but she’s immune from impeachment on that score, as well.
On the other subject, neither South Korea nor Japan is really interested in having or hosting Nuclear Weapons. In particular, the government of Japan could not politically stand the development of a nuclear weapons industry, given its voters’ opposition to any nuclear technology. IMO, both countries are interested in keeping the U.S. as a guarantor of their nuclear security, and/or to get more representation in Chinese control over North Korea. They may also be setting themselves up in a position to purchase or be admitted as guardians of any weapons seized from North Korea after a long anticipated coup or revolution.
Taiwan especially does not need a native nuclear weapons capability. Having nukes would force China to have to do something about Taiwanese independence and it would likely not be pretty.
I wish you well in your presentation of _Survival_With_Style_ and hope that your technical team can help you to overcome your laptop issues. I wish that I could attend and see it. Have you given thought to publishing your presentation after the conference?
Wishing you and yours continued recovery and good health,
-d

Actually, it is legal to impeach anyone even if they do hot hold an office; the sentence would be to be forever barred from holding public office. It is not likely, of course, so I mention it only as an interesting fact.

“Guccifer” extradited to US

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/04/08/source-no-coincidence-romanian-hacker-guccifer-extradited-amid-clinton-probe.html?intcmp=hpbt1

The suggested implication is that the FBI will be able to use Guccifer to prove foreign access to Clinton’s server without having to invoke or prove in court any hacking by foreign governments, and thereby avoid a need for intelligence sources and methods to prove their case.

ISIS Chem Bio Terrorism Capability

The attached is a European Parliament brief on the ISIS CBR terrorism risk, downloaded from

http://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/BRIE/2015/572806/EPRS_BRI%282015%29572806_EN.pdf.

There are also reports today in two British tabloids – not confirmed in any more reputable news sources yet – that one of the Brussels bombing suspects recently arrested was found with decaying animal organs and sanitary sewage in a bag in his backpack, and citing another recent case where ISIS sympathizers were arrested with similar material in jars with nails, presumably to facilitate infection in a bio-IED attack. Supposedly authorities claim that such weapons would not work, but they apparently (willfully, or in an attempt to pacify the public) forget that these were the first weapons of mass destruction and have been used in warfare for millennia. (I will admit that the scale is smaller than dropping dead cows on a city under siege by catapult, but that is at least partially compensated by the crude engineering afforded by modern knowledge, even without refinements such as processing and separation of infectious microorganisms.)

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/isis-feared-planning-crude-biological-7715046

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3529865/Brussels-terror-suspect-shot-police-tram-stop-rucksack-containing-animal-testicles-faeces-prompting-fears-ISIS-planning-crude-biological-attack-food-supplies.html

Respectfully

Jim

JK Woosley PhD

Sweden: A Beggar on Every Corner

by Ingrid Carlqvist
April 9, 2016 at 5:00 am

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/7782/sweden-roma-beggars

Comment

• For the last few years, Sweden has been overwhelmed with Roma beggars from Romania and Bulgaria. Recently, the government estimated that there are now around 4,000 in Sweden (population 9.5 million).
• “We do not fool anyone. We just benefit from the opportunity.” — Bulgarian beggar in Sweden who said he “owned” five street corners.
• “If the begging is profitable, they stay miserable…. [Giving money] improves the acute situation. At the same time, it contributes to making the bigger issue permanent — the misery…. It will not help the Roma, but it gives you a chance to feel like a good person. … The basic concept of racism is precisely that we as westerners and Swedes are far superior (smarter) and that the Roma are inferior (dumber). If this… is not racist then I do not know what is. … One could add that the image is inverted among Roma. They consider themselves superior and smart, while the gadjo (non-gypsies) are stupid, naïve and gullible.” — Karl-Olov Arnstberg, Swedish ethnologist

{snip]

Rule of 30

When I used to do small business consulting, I ran into something called “the rule of 30”. It seems that this rule works in the “size” of business organizations where they as they expand and grow, the “breakpoint” of 30 units is a limiter. Thus, when a restaurant chain begins to expand past 30 units, it needs to split into two divisions each with its’ own leadership which begins to shift away from the restaurant’s original founder’s vision. If it doesn’t split, the organization will fail. Similarly, the archaeologist Leaky found that primitive human “tribes” also self limited themselves to 30 members. To expand beyond this invited failure. But 30 seemed to be the correct number of persons necessary for all the jobs that needed to be done by a tribal group.
I also submit for consideration that the reason for the American Civil War (or The War between the States as I was taught in Virginia) was not necessarily slavery or industrial vs. agrarian import taxation but because the U.S. was at or near the “rule of 30” states, meaning that the natural thing for America to do was to “divide” into two entities in order to become successful, or in other words, not to fail. Of course, America did not divide, we have become over 50 states, meaning as an organization we are now destined to fail because we have violated the rule of 30. Of course, I will be called insane or “stupid” for proposing this. I can accept that. But this could be one of many possible reasons for our current “failure mode.” Because we did not successfully split before of during our Civil War, we may have doomed ourselves to “organizational failure.”
This is something I have never seen proposed anywhere. Might as well throw it into today’s chaotic mix. Where else but in “Chaos Manor?” Still love your site.

Vasyl

It is an intriguing idea, and one I have given little thought to. I do believe that Liberty and individual freedom cannot survive in very large unitary states.

‘But now these voters formerly called common-sense conservatives are now considered drug-addled losers who are too stupid to determine what is in their best interest.’

<https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2016/04/02/trump-leaves-the-conservative-establishment-arrogant-and-unmoored/>

—————————————

Roland Dobbins

That’s us, all right.

To give him his due:

Lawyers Acknowledge Mistake In Filing Sexual Misconduct Charges Against Professor Dershowitz

by Alan M. Dershowitz  •  April 9, 2016 at 9:45 am

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Richard A. Simpson, RSimpson@wileyrein.com

April 8, 2016

Lawyers Acknowledge Mistake In Filing Sexual Misconduct Charges Against Professor Dershowitz

Professor Alan M. Dershowitz released the following statement regarding resolution of the case styled Bradley Edwards, et al. v. Alan M. Dershowitz, Case No. CACE 15-000072 (Cir. Ct., Broward Cnty., Fla.).

STATEMENT OF ALAN M. DERSHOWITZ

I am pleased that the litigation has concluded and I am gratified by the Joint Statement issued today by Jeffrey E. Streitfeld on behalf of the parties, in which “Edwards and Cassell acknowledge that it was a mistake to have filed sexual misconduct accusations against Dershowitz and the sexual misconduct accusations made in all public filings (including all exhibits) are hereby withdrawn.” Mr. Streitfeld’s announcement and the Joint Statement are copied below.

[snip]

Thanks

Thanks for pointing me towards ‘Freefell’, by the end of the weekend I should be up to date. Some of the panels are classic (So for the movie I can see Johnny Depp as Captain Sam.) Once I get up to date it won’t be such a time sink.
Windows 10. I blogged about my experiences with the ‘free’ upgrade.
***(Tower on Win7): Microsoft does not want to give you a choice on upgrading to Windows 10. This is what I’ve found.
A Windows process GWX (stands for Get Windows 10, cute isn’t it?) is labeled as an important update while in Win7 and is loaded onto your machine (…of course MS doesn’t really believe that it’s your machine, at least that is the way they behave. )
“This process does several things; it can download (without asking permission, no matter what your update permissions are set to) the 6Gig Windows Ten upgrade onto a hidden folder on your hard drive, it downloads update KB3035583 onto your computer (which is the process that places a Windows 10 icon on your taskbar and splashes a Nag Window on top of whatever you are doing to nag you into upgrading.), and if you uninstall the KB3035583 process (as some sites suggest) to remove the annoying nagging then the GWX.exe process immediately downloads it again and it pops up the next time you reboot.
I finally got rid of all of it (I think.) but it took me over two hours of my time. One little thing that made it difficult was a program called Trusted Installer. This process ‘owned’ the folder C:windowsSystem32GWX and stopped me from deleting it. Even though I have Administrator Access on my machine and network. On the bright side, I’ve learned a lot more about windows security features and operation than I ever knew before.***
The most annoying ‘bug’ so far has been Win10’s problem with hidden SSID on my WiFi homegroup, hidden and the notebook can’t connect automatically, un-hid and it connects. When I got tired of manually connecting I unhid the router, but then I realized I needed to change the name (Johnspinkpanties: Old joke I’d forgotten about).
On your comment (or is that, your plea) “…to let them work while there is still a work ethic among most of the work force”. My observation is, too late. That may be caused by my residence in a blue state but many (easy to find) stories on the difficulties US based manufacture is encountering while attempting to restart American production makes me ask the question; how long is the shelf life of American work ethic and craftsmanship? In NC a company failed to restart a baby furniture factory when not enough workers with basic skills could be found (surprisingly viewing ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ 20 times in grades 1-12 does not prepare you for the workplace) and older veterans, laid off decade earlier, either weren’t interested, too old or found other careers. The spread of a $15 dollar minimum wage isn’t going to help either. When I started my first jobs, frankly I was worthless. But I learned, got better and started earning the minimum wage money I was getting. Soon I was worth more and started making that. But what if that first minimum wage job wasn’t there and open for a teenage kid? At $32,000 a year a employer will have a hell of a lot of adults with long work histories and families applying for that job. Who’d hire a kid? Where is that kid’s first job going to come from? At twenty, a boy-man with his full growth and adult strength can get a manual labor job picking up heavy things and putting them down; but first job in his twenties? Somehow I doubt that ‘everyone goes to College’ is the answer.
“Islam in its fullest and most complete form is utterly incompatible with Western ideals and concepts.”
Agreed. Tell me, does the Spanish Inquisition start to make a lot more sense? I’ve talked to people that lack the slightest understanding or knowledge of history, they are shocked that I see the Inquisition in a positive light. But they also know nothing about the history of the Iberian Peninsula, the long war north that ended at Tours (France) and long ‘The Reconquista’ that ended in 1492 when Queen Isabella could finally spare the money to fund spaceflight, er..exploration. After living under Islam for several centuries, strangely, they developed a compulsion to eliminate it from their homeland. Root and branch.
The problem with the short box comment form is that I didn’t see how long this was getting, thanks for all your efforts, bye.

John The River

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

Chaos Manor View, Friday, April 8, 2016

“This is the most transparent administration in history.”

Barrack Obama

Liberalism is a philosophy of consolation for Western Civilization as it commits suicide.

Under Capitalism, the rich become powerful. Under Socialism, the powerful become rich.

Under Socialism, government employees become powerful.

In an hour or so Larry will be over and we’ll go to the Writers Of The Future dinner for Judges and others. A lot of my friends and colleagues will be in from all over the country, and with the possible exception of the World Science Fiction Convention it’s my main chance to meet with all of them. I suppose that’s not as big a deal now as it was when I was younger, but it’s still fun.

Spent the morning trying to persuade the Surface Pro 3 (with Surface Pro 4 keyboard with fingerprint recognition) to run Outlook, but no joy. I click the Outlook button and up pops a small blue window with moving dots to say it’s trundling, and either “Starting” or “Processing” below the word Outlook – and it trundles. I gave it two minutes once. Nothing. It just trundles.

It has been that way since the last Windows 10 build. I have shut it down, restarted it, managed to locate scanpst.exe and run it on Oiutlook.pst, invoked powerful magic, a number of curses, and general whimpering in frustration. Everything works including the fingerprint recognition. Everything but Outlook. I suppose next I will have to uninstall Office and reinstall it; that may do it, but I can’t be sure. A tablet/portable without Outlook is useless on trips, and in fact useless to me at the breakfast table since I need Outlook to get at the mail.

I doubt Microsoft cares, but I was going to carry the Surface Pro 3 on a trip involving the space community; I sure don’t dare do that now. I’ll refurbish the ThinkPad, I guess. Or get a new one. I sure can’t do email without Outlook.

As I said, everything else works, and quite well. I’m getting used to Windows 10, and if I didn’t have a lot of habits picked over the years from earlier versions of Windows I’d have few problem with 10. Except of course Microsoft doesn’t understand Windows 10 either.

Example: I want to be sure I can see “hidden” files, even though Microsoft doesn’t want me to. Bing “see hidden files Windows 10” and you get very explicit instructions from Microsoft. Start>control panel; click on Appearance and Personalization. Click Folder Options, then the View tab. One minor problem: there is no Appearance and Personalization in my Control Panel. There is a Personalization, but it does not have Folder Options. This is true of every Windows 10 computer I have. Microsoft may one day intend to put an Appearance and Personalization command in there, or maybe it had one once, or maybe the people who wrote that need a new career in concrete breaking; but whatever is the explanation, it doesn’t describe Windows 10, and maybe it’s just the usual Microsoft competence; anyway it’s not helpful; and I would still like to be able to view hidden files in Windows 10, and maybe some day Microsoft will get around to telling me how to do it. I won’t hold my breath.

So I suppose I am in the market for a reliable laptop to run Outlook and present a slide show of “Survival With Style” to the Space Development Conference. (Which, incidentally, I founded 35 years ago, chairing the first one with LASFS SMOF Milt Stevens as cochairman; needless to say he and the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society stalwarts did all the work. We had Robert Heinlein as Fan Guest of Honor, and Apollo 13 Astronaut as Guest of Honor).

I was planning on taking the Surface Pro 3, and it might still be a good idea, but I’ll have to start over with it, installing the current Windows 10 and not the experimental version; and I suppose it wasn’t really fair to assume that the experimental version would be reliable enough to use for a real trip. Ah, well.

 

          Added after correspondence:

 

I do want to make it clear that I am warning you about using the experimental version of Windows 10: do not do so on any machine which is actually needed to do your work,  it is not reliable.  Microsoft converted my Windows 7 on what was my main system to Windows 10, either without my asking for it, by stealth, or by confusion; I did not knowingly consent to it, and suddenly my 7 system was running 10.  Their help files are abysmal, but so far I have not wanted to do much on that desktop that needed any help; Windows 10 has been stable, and while it can be a little confusing it is not fatally so.  And actually I liked 10 on the Surface Pro, but the experimental version is not stable enough that I would carry that Surface on trips; I’d as soon have an iPad.  That may change.

But on a desktop recent enough to run 10, there is no reason, really, why you should not bite the bullet and get 10 if you are running 7; the confusion won’t last long, and it is stable for most normal operations.

Around here I do a lot of goofy things, but that’s partly so you won’t have to.

 

Space X did it

http://www.space.com/32517-spacex-sticks-rocket-landing-sea-dragon-launch.html

—

Phil Tharp

 

  !!!!!!

 

Bacevich: ‘In the War for the Greater Middle East, the United States chose neither to contain nor to crush, instead charting a course midway in between. In effect, it chose aggravation.’

—————————————

Roland Dobbins <

An ugly conclusion, but accurate, and what I feared from the first day.  Good intentions are never enough.

 

I messed up the Bacevich link – apologies.

Here it is:

<http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/04/middle-east-foreign-policy-afghanistan-unwinnable-213778>

It’s adapted from his latest book:

<http://www.amazon.com/Americas-War-Greater-Middle-East-ebook/dp/B0174PRIY4?tag=chaosmanor-20>

—————————————

Roland Dobbins

 

 

 

Boston Globe Opinion Piece

This is an interesting if amusing opinion:

<.>

IF FBI Director James Comey feels no deadline pressure to wrap up the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s e-mail server, he should.

“The urgency is to do it well and promptly. And ‘well’ comes first,”

Comey told local law enforcement agents in Buffalo on Monday, according to the Niagara Gazette.

“Well” is important. But so is “promptly,” and the FBI’s definition of that is unclear.

The probe, underway for a year now, addresses a fundamental question:

Did Clinton intentionally or recklessly forward classified information in a way that put the country at risk?

Getting the answer sooner rather than later seems only fair.

</>

https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2016/04/06/why-fbi-slow-clinton-mail-probe/lJmHwLuAfbxSXrrvR0XqwJ/story.html

When did the general public ever have the right to pressure law enforcement to increase the speed of an active investigation? The investigation is finished when it is finished and if it doesn’t happen on an idealistic time table then I guess we all have to learn to live with it. If it drags on for ten or twenty years then an article like this would seem in order.

That FBI hasn’t stonewalled on this from the beginning raises my eyebrow.

◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

I would not predict that the Obama Administration would allow an indictment of Hillary Clinton.  Actually I have mixed feelings about the process; one of the things that destroyed the Roman Republic was the practice of indicting Consuls after they left office; not many were actually convicted, but the fear of that happening affected all politics.

First man-made object in space?

http://savvyparanoia.com/the-fastest-man-made-object-ever-a-nuclear-powered-manhole-cover-true/

                If I ever heard about this before, I’d forgotten.

Eric Pobirs

We didn’t talk about that test during the Cold War, and I suspect it was forgotten before 1990. But then there’s this:

 

http://io9.gizmodo.com/no-a-nuclear-explosion-did-not-launch-a-manhole-cover-1715340946

 

A-10 and the Air Force

The A-10 shows why the F-16, the F-22 and the F-35 will never be able to replace it!
http://www.businessinsider.com/watch-one-of-the-baddest-a-10-pilots-ever-land-after-being-hit-by-a-missile-2016-4
Watch the video on this one! This is what the A-10 does that the F-16, the F-22 and the F-35 never will!
http://www.nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/get-ready-russia-china-the-f-35-stealth-fighter-can-dogfight-15675
Maybe the F-35 can dog fight. But, it can not go deep into the valley of the shadow of death and come home on a wing and a prayer!

Peter Wityk

http://www.dailywire.com/news/4315/60-minutes-crew-met-muslim-refugees-things-went-michael-qazvini?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_content=010616-news&utm_campaign=dwbrand

Unsigned

 

The Panama Papers

>

> This seems like the greatest leak in history; if I were still taking my illicit finance course I would have asked my professor tons of questions.  Now, I plan to research this and see if I have any questions worth contact him about.  But, this is huge and will take time to digest:

>

> http://panamapapers.sueddeutsche.de/articles/56febff0a1bb8d3c3495adf4/

> ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

> Most Respectfully,

>

> Joshua Jordan, KSC

> Percussa Resurgo

 

Good.  What do you think he’ll say?

Jerry Pournelle

 

The Panama Papers

I’m not sure…

We covered the methods of money laundering and we covered places where it happens. He might just comment that it’s like any other money laundering operation, but the compelling factor here is who is involved and seeing how the International Community and its several institutions will deal with this.

But, he might have some deeper insights or more nuanced opinions on it. So far, I find it interesting that Putin seems to have a ton of wealth overseas or at least theoretical access.

And, seeing who this leak damages the most, I’m starting to wonder if this was a leak by Western intelligence agencies. And I’d also be interested in hearing any indication that he might think that as well. “Ethical proof” may not be logically satisfying, but it is neurolinguistically satisfying. =)

◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

 

 

Peggy Noonan on Trump this week

http://www.wsj.com/articles/new-yorks-vote-matters-for-a-change-1460070403

Closer to the mark this week.

—

Phil Tharp

From the Guardian website:

The long read: The sugar conspiracy.

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/apr/07/the-sugar-conspiracy-robert-lustig-john-yudkin?CMP=share_btn_fb#_=_

Excerpt (from a 2015 paper titled Does Science Advance One Funeral at a Time?):

A scientist is part of what the Polish philosopher of science Ludwik Fleck called a “thought collective”: a group of people exchanging ideas in a mutually comprehensible idiom. The group, suggested Fleck, inevitably develops a mind of its own, as the individuals in it converge on a way of communicating, thinking and feeling.

This makes scientific inquiry prone to the eternal rules of human social life: deference to the charismatic, herding towards majority opinion, punishment for deviance, and intense discomfort with admitting to error. Of course, such tendencies are precisely what the scientific method was invented to correct for, and over the long run, it does a good job of it. In the long run, however, we’re all dead, quite possibly sooner than we would be if we hadn’t been following a diet based on poor advice.

Perhaps some of what is troubling climate science?

Bill Frye

Among other problems. “In the bowels of Christ, think ye that ye may be wrong.”

Clinton Campaign Courts UFO Conspiracy Theorists

Jerry,
Apparently, the Clinton campaign has decided that they cannot win the general election without strong support from the UFO lunatic fringe “Clinton campaign chair: Americans ‘can handle the truth’ about UFOs” (http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/clinton-campaign-chair-americans-can-handle-the-truth-about-ufos/ar-BBrwmu5?li=BBnb4R7). Clinton intends to ask for the declassification of
as many documents concerning Area 51 as possible.
I figure, given her track record, that no such documents will be found.
We go from incomprehensible to bizarre.

Kevin L Keegan

Astonishing, although on reflection…

 

To Beat Go Champion, Google’s Program Needed a Human Army    (nyt)

George Johnson

APRIL 4, 2016 

Lee Se-dol, a professional Go player from South Korea, was smiling amid other players despite losing four of five games against a Google computer program called AlphaGo. Credit Lee Jin-Man/Associated Press

Nearly 20 years ago, after a chess-playing computer called Deep Blue beat the world grandmaster Garry Kasparov, I wrote an article about why humans would long remain the champions in the game of Go.

“It may be a hundred years before a computer beats humans at Go — maybe even longer,” Dr. Piet Hut, an astrophysicist and Go enthusiast at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., told me in 1997. “If a reasonably intelligent person learned to play Go, in a few months he could beat all existing computer programs. You don’t have to be a Kasparov.”

That was the prevailing wisdom. Last month, after a Google computer program called AlphaGo defeated the Go master Lee Se-dol, I asked Dr. Hut for his reaction. “I was way off, clearly, with my prediction,” he replied in an email. “It’s really stunning.”

At the time, his pessimism seemed well founded. While Deep Blue had been trained and programmed by IBM with some knowledge about chess, its advantage lay primarily in what computer scientists call brute-force searching. At each step of the game Deep Blue would rapidly look ahead, exploring a maze of hypothetical moves and countermoves and counter-countermoves. Then it would make the choice that its algorithms ranked as the best. No living brain could possibly move so fast.

But in Go, an ancient board game renowned for its complexity, the ever-forking space of possibilities is so much vaster that sheer electronic speed was not nearly enough. Capturing in a computer something closer to human intuition — the ability to seek and respond to meaningful patterns — seemed crucial and very far away.

Other seemingly distant goals included the ability to translate automatically between two languages or to recognize speech with enough accuracy to be useful outside the laboratory. Computer scientists had already spent decades trying to crack these problems.

For many, the aim was not just to make an artificial intelligence, but to understand deep principles of syntax, semantics and phonetics, and even what it means to think.

Now anyone with a smartphone or laptop (communing by Internet with a supercomputing cloud) can get a rough translation of text in many languages. They can dictate instead of type. Photo software can sort not just by date and location but by the faces of the subjects.

The results are imperfect and often clumsy, but they would have been mind-blowing in 1997. What happened between then and now?

Of course, computers became ever more powerful. But even today’s fastest aren’t able to anticipate all of the permutations of a situation like playing Go. Success on this and other fronts has come from harnessing speed in other ways.

The breakthrough in translation came from setting aside the question of what it means to understand a language and just finding a technology that works. The automated systems start with a text that has already been translated, by human brains. Then both versions are fed to a computer. By rapidly comparing the two, the machine compiles a thicket of statistical correlations, associating words and phrases with their likely foreign counterparts.

Similar approaches, more artificial than intelligent, have led to surprisingly rapid improvements in recognizing speech and facial images, as well as with playing championship Go.

In AlphaGo, learning algorithms, called deep neural nets, were trained using a database of millions of moves made in the past by human players. Then it refined this knowledge by playing one split-second game after another against itself.

Tweak by algorithmic tweak, it became ever more adept at the game. By combining this insensate learning, which amounts to many human lifetimes of experience, with a technique called Monte Carlo tree search, named for the ability to randomly sample a universe of possible moves, AlphaGo prevailed.

That was an enormous victory. But the glory goes not to the computer program but to the human brains that pulled it off. At the end of the tournament in Seoul, South Korea, 15 of them took the stage. They represented just a fraction of the number of people it took to invent and execute all of the technologies involved. Lee Se-dol was playing against an army.

Back in 1997 I wrote, “To play a decent game of Go, a computer must be endowed with the ability to recognize subtle, complex patterns and to draw on the kind of intuitive knowledge that is the hallmark of human intelligence.” Defeating a human Go champion, I wrote, “will be a sign that artificial intelligence is truly beginning to become as good as the real thing.”

That doesn’t seem so true anymore. Ingenious learning algorithms combined with “big data” have led to impressive accomplishments — what has even been called bottled intuition. But artificial intelligence is far from rivaling the fluidity of the human mind.

“Humans can learn to recognize patterns on a Go board — and patterns related to faces and patterns in language — and even patterns of patterns,” said Melanie Mitchell, a computer scientist at Portland State University and the Santa Fe Institute. “This is what we do every second of every day. But AlphaGo only recognizes patterns related to Go boards and has no ability to generalize beyond that — even to games similar to Go but with different rules.

“Also, it takes millions of training examples for AlphaGo to learn to recognize patterns,” she continued, “whereas it only seems to take humans a few.”

Computer scientists are experimenting with programs that can generalize far more efficiently. But the squishy neural nets in our heads — shaped by half a billion years of evolution and given a training set as big as the world — can still hold their own against ultra-high-speed computers designed by teams of humans, programmed for a single purpose and given an enormous head start.

“It was a regrettable game, but I enjoyed it,” Mr. Se-dol said during the award ceremony. (Regret, enjoy — these words do not compute.) He added that the contest “clearly showed my weaknesses, but not the weakness of humanity.”

Picking up the plaque and bouquet he had been given as consolation prizes, he laughed nervously and stumbled from the stage. Several days later, he said he would like a rematch.

 

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

Chaos Manor View, Thursday, April 7, 2016

“This is the most transparent administration in history.”

Barrack Obama

Liberalism is a philosophy of consolation for Western Civilization as it commits suicide.

Under Capitalism, the rich become powerful. Under Socialism, the powerful become rich.

Under Socialism, government employees become powerful.

My youngest son and two of the grandchildren were here from DC for the Easter weekend and most of the week after. Then everything happened at once, and I’ve been falling further and further behind. This weekend is the Writers of the Future thing, to which I’ve become committed, and it’s a chance to see some of colleagues – fellow judges of the writing contest – whom they fly in from all over for the weekend; I love it, but it’s one more sink for my time. Didn’t used to be a big problem, but as I grow older, it gets harder and harder to think about more than one thing at a time, while it also takes longer to shift focus from one thing to another. Now I’ve got taxes – which isn’t too complex this year, but there is a fair amount of money involved since I paid my quarterly income taxes on the income I had the year before my stroke, and have to look up all those medical expenses. And I have got three fiction works in progress, and it’s sort of my turn on two of them, while the third is Janissaries, which is mine alone.

And Windows 10 and the Surface Pro 3 are driving me nuts. Not straight Windows 10 on a desktop; that turns out to be an easy transition. My advice is, you ought to grab the free update to Windows 7, or 8, that Microsoft is offering. That’s assuming you have not already; they’ve been pretty aggressive about it. My Windows 7 machine, on which I had been unceasingly refusing to accept their offer of 10, woke up one morning with 10 whether I liked it or not; on reflection I refused their offer of restoring 7, and I don’t regret it. I’ve been weeks now with the standard upgrade to 10 on Alien Artifact, my main machine, and while it’s sometimes hard to find some things, for the most part it has been a pleasant experience.

I suspect that standard Windows 10 would do well on the Surface, too; but I can’t be sure, because the Surface is running the experimental updates, which not only happen more often than the standard updates, but do so erratically, sometimes requiring a lot of manual care and feeding.

Then sometimes Office doesn’t work. It is very hard to get anything helpful about this. Outlook won’t open, and scanpst.exe does not work nor is there any intelligible failure message.

Microsoft tells you that you can view all files by going to start – control panel – appearance and personalization, but there is no appearance button in control panel. Nothing works as the documentation tells you it will. If you have problems with Windows 10, it might be easier just to learn Linux. After fooling around with the Surface Pro for half the day, wasting all my time, Outlook still won’t open, and it’s back to not knowing that it has a fingerprint button. The Surface may be a great machine; when it works, it works pretty good; but do not run experimental Windows 10 on it if you actually want to do some work with it. And get something more reliable for road trips.

My Surface Pro is also giving me goofy messages. I just connected the Western Digital My Book 2 terabyte USB hard disk, and told the Surface to copy all the Outlook files to it. I got an error message: fatal hardware error, with some other stuff. There was a “try again” command which I clicked and it’s now happily copying all those files. Just finished as I was writing and correcting this paragraph.

Now at least I have something; next step is to copy the Outlook Files file on this computer over to the Surface and see if that will let me open Outlook. The only thing Precious – the Surface Pro 3 – has that isn’t on this machine is the sent items folder, and that’s hardly vital as the Surface was only the main machine for the time I was in hospital last year, and not all of that.

Enough. I’ll do a Chaos Manor Reviews on the progress of Windows 10 and the Surface Pro; of course that’s yet one more job item I need to do. Sigh. But for the moment, despite wasting much time trying, Outlook will no longer open on the Surface Pro; it presents me with a window that strives endlessly at “Starting”, but never does, nor does it try to tell me why it won’t start. Ungood. Double plus ungood. Fortunately I depend on the Surface Pro 3 for nothing other than gauging Microsoft’s progress, which is lousy.

There’s not a lot to say about the election: Cruz and Trump are trashing each other while between them they have 2/3 of the Republican voters; the Republican Establishment is running around like chickens with their heads cut off. Rudolph Guiliani just endorsed Trump, which pretty well assures Trump of 2/3 of the New York delegates, and probably helps everywhere; whether Trump gets enough delegates to win on the first Convention ballet out of events up through June 7 is not clear, but the Establishment will continue to (1) trash Trump, and (2) alienate a good part of their own party.

Meanwhile, Democrats continue to go for Bernie because Hillary is fairly repugnant to most of the nation. The Armed Services don’t want her, not because she’s a her but because she so badly messed up in Benghazi; you don’t abandon your people, and if it was not the Secretary of State who told the potential intervention/rescue/vengeance forces to stand down and let her ambassador be killed, she certainly knows who did – and isn’t saying. She left one of her own people hung out to dry, and there a lot of voters who can never forget that; and indeed, electing someone who did is a very dangerous thing to do.

We sowed the wind for decades; we will reap the whirlwinds, but we have some control over how long that will be. That’s easier to do if we’re rich than poor. We are in a Depression and have been for some time; and each man, woman, and child owes at least $50,000 to the US Government; that’s $200,000 for a family of four. Clearly not all can pay their share, meaning the some of us must pay more. There are not many ways out of this. The easiest is to grow our way out; we have the computers and 3D printers and robot manufacturing tools to do it – look at what we did in 1941-44 – but it is going to take that kind of effort. We spent the money to rebuild the infrastructure, but it was used for the primary purpose of government: to hire and pay government workers and pay their pensions. That much was done.

It did not build infrastructure, new bridges, fix pot holes, build border fences, or much of the other stuff that needs doing. Bailing out Goldman-Sachs was important because it was important to the ruling class. Now we have to look to the rest of the people: to let them work while there is still a work ethic among most of the work force. Given our rotten schools and the permissiveness culture, the work ethic won’t last all that much longer.

I note that Newt Gingrich, one of our most astute politicians, thinks that the Republican nomination is still not determined, but that it will be either Trump or Cruz; no other alternative is possible with chicanery; and that would be a disaster, because it would make it manifest that we are no longer a democratic Republic. The consequences would be very grave. But, Newt says, it is likely that one of them will become the nominee, and either of them can be elected. The rejection of the Democrat Establishment by Democratic voters is very high. This is not a rejection of Roosevelt or Kennedy, both of whom were admired and even loved. Is not even like the rejection of Jimmy Carter, who was perceived a good hearted but out of his depth. It is much more fundamental than that.

Given the revolutionary technology we have seen come out of the past dozen years, we ought to all be rich; instead the money is gone, and we don’t see where it went. That isn’t likely to change between now and November.

Trump and Wisconsin

Don’t you just love the way everyone is predicting Trump’s doom now that he lost in Wisconsin? BTW, last night when I checked the district map of Wisconsin, Trump won everywhere but the big cities. I suspect there is a very series warning there. I also suspect Mr. Trump is probably getting tired from the relentless grind and may be re-targeting his campaign a little.

—

P

: Nuclear proliferation among allies  Dear Jerry,

The Hooha over Trump’s comments on South Korea and Japan developing nuclear weapons got me to do a little thinking, based on some recent research of mine on the history of nuclear weapons states.

You were correct that we have-never- been in favor of nuclear weapons being obtained by other nations, allies or not.

Even though the British played a key role in the Manhattan Project to develop the first nuclear weapons, immediately after the end of WW2 the United States refused to share nuclear material, technology or assist in any way with a proposed British nuclear weapons program, which under Clement Attlee the British undertook on their own. However, once the British tested nukes, we signed in 1958 an agreement with them to jointly develop and share nuclear weapons technology. The agreement has been renewed at decade intervals since, and British dependence upon US know how and even hardware (though NOT including fissile materials or actual weapons designs) has become such that it is an open question whether the British nuclear deterrent is truly independent.

Then there’s France. In the late fifties Charles De Gaulle made the decision to go nuclear. The French independently developed, at enormous cost, a full nuclear triad, with fusion weapons. How expensive was it?

According to one source, for about a decade the French spent a quarter of their national budget on this program. That’s a quarter of the WHOLE budget, not just the defense spending. Imagine any US president trying to get a program of that scale approved, and re-approved, for a decade!

It occurs to me that the Japanese are a bit like the British: They want nukes for political purposes, to provide some flexibility and because they are by every other measure a Great Power. On the other hand, the South Koreans are a bit more like the French: They are scared to death, for good reasons, and want some form of guarantee against a repeat of the nightmare of 1950-53. This is similar to the French need to gain some sense of security after their own national nightmare of 1940-45.

So we have been down this road before, and managed to survive it. I don’t know if it’s a good idea for either South Korea or Japan to hang up the “Gone Fission!” signs, but nations will do whatever they believe to be in their best interests, even if it causes trouble with their allies..

I would think that any sane Chinese government would at least consider some Hard Nailed diplomacy on their own soi disant “ally” in North Korea to get them to Cool It and prevent the South Koreans and Japanese from crossing the nuclear line.

As for Taiwan, while I have no information on this, I would put it at no worse than one in three that they already have some nuclear material and all the parts sitting “on the shelf”, with perhaps a ninety day or less assembly time. The Chinese are a pragmatic people.

Petronius

Intelligence: What North Korea Really Fears

Jerry

An article for you.

Intelligence: What North Korea Really Fears –

Cultural weapons of mass destruction, of course:

http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htintel/articles/20160406.aspx

Ed

Yes, of course. It would work on Iran also. And most of the Moslem world, and some of their leaders know it. Adolescents want to be hip – whatever word they use for that outdated expression now – and there are both too many and not enough of them in the hermit nations.

Been away for awhile. I ran across your quote from the September 23, 2014 article “It’s Time to Take the Islamic State Seriously”. At the end of the quote you ask, “Has there been any evidence that this analysis was wrong/”

As I sat here “Hell No!” burst into my mind. After sitting awhile I read back at the section heading, “Is terror intrinsic to Islam?” Again two words coursed through my mind, “Of course!” (Please add the condescending tone to indicate “You dolt!” was left unstated.)

Mohammed himself declared “War is deceit.” He also declared “… I have been made victorious with terror, …”. In the Qur’an Mohammed has Allah saying things like “Soon shall We cast terror into the hearts of the Unbelievers, for that they joined companions with Allah, for which He had sent no authority:

their abode will be the Fire: And evil is the home of the wrong-doers!” (3:151) A go to source for information on this is located here:

http://www.answering-islam.org/Index/T/terror.html

Terror is not simply allowed by the Qur’an and Sunnah. They are recommended and made mandatory.

Islam in its fullest and most complete form is utterly incompatible with Western ideals and concepts. At this time we’re so far down the road I fear a huge cataclysmic conflict is ahead. I cannot say what will emerge from it. Most relatively successful attacks on Islam end with the attackers finding they now have more in common with Islam than with their former beliefs. I pray that this time we win and do not fall into that morass. I don’t see humanity as being evil enough to deserve falling to or into Islam.

Falling into Islam would be Humanity’s adoption of a universal suicide pact.

Mohammed declared that there will be innumerable (99 is what memory coughs up probably inaccurately) sects; but, only one will be the true Islam. All the others are apostates. And apostates must be killed. With no central authority that means as long as two Muslims can reach each other one must kill the other unless their beliefs, down to insane minutiae, are identical.

As a parting note if Jimmy declares “war” on Johnny and Johnny, for ideological reasons, refuses to declare war on Jimmy, reality does not change. They are at war and Johnny had better step up to the task of defending himself and defeating his enemy or he’s going to fall into a world of hurt. This does not change on a global scale. ISIS is our Jimmy. They have declared war. We either respond or die.

But, then, this is pretty much what I was saying years ago in the Daily Diatribes you posted, isn’t it?

{^_^} Joanne

Collecting meteorological data

Given your interest in air temperature measurements, you won’t want to miss this article about weather forecasting.  

http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/04/tv-maker-panasonic-says-it-has-developed-the-worlds-best-weather-model/

Also suggest you follow up by taking a look at Tamdar 

https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox?compose=153f1a11c231560a

 

“The truth can be much, much more complicated.”

<https://in.news.yahoo.com/climate-forecasts-may-flawed-says-170007812.html>

—————————————

Roland Dobbins 

Astonishing

The Unitary State of America

I saw this article on Chronicles magazine website, and I thought you might find it interesting:
https://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/the-unitary-state-of-america/
I find it very difficult to argue with his thesis, that we are no longer a collection of states, but for all intents and purposes we are one state.
I wonder what Alexander Hamilton would have thought of the way things have gone…
Regards,
Don Parker

We have not yet reached that point, and I suspect the Union will come apart before we really do. Integrating the Army with universal conscription would probably be required actually to achieve that, and even that might backfire.

Of course there are always rulers and ruled among those who will not do the work of ruling themselves; and that sort of work ethic is diminishing but not yet vanished, despite all the efforts (by some) and incompetence in the schools.

16 Democrat AGs Begin Inquisition Against ‘Climate Change Disbelievers’

http://dailysignal.com/2016/04/04/16-democrat-ags-begin-inquisition-against-climate-change-disbelievers/

The damage to Science and Freedom being caused by the Warmist Alarmists is incalculable.

Regards,

Jim Riticher

We can certainly agree on that.

Lawrence’s bullet.

<http://phys.org/news/2016-04-bullet-lawrence-arabia-liar.html>

—————————————

Roland Dobbins

I always wondered…

Watch A-10 pilot land after being hit by missile

That is one tough aircraft.

http://www.businessinsider.com/watch-one-of-the-baddest-a-10-pilots-ever-land-after-being-hit-by-a-missile-2016-4

A few days later, Johnson’s skills were on full display when he was hit by an enemy missile while trying to take out a radar site.

The explosion left a gaping hole on his right wing, which disabled one of the hydraulic systems. Still, he managed to fly back to safety.

John Harlow

Hurrah for the Warthog…

CENTCOM analysts purged 

Dear Dr. Pournelle,

Don’t hold your breath waiting for cries of “Obama lied, people died”

(in Syria).

http://hotair.com/archives/2016/04/05/centcom-intel-analysts-pushed-out-to-protect-obama-narrative-on-syria-as-well-as-isis/

Y’know what? I suggest the first, best thing we could do to put our country back on the road to greatness is to restore integrity to our institutions and the rule of law. All of our problems become a lot less daunting when we are committed to seeking out the truth and acting in accordance with it. That starts from the top down, I think.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

As you say, don’t hold your breath.

Jerry,

Third flight of Bezo’s Blue Origin’s Booster

<http://youtu.be/YU3J-jKb75g>

Regards, Charles Adams, Bellevue, NE

Yes, he’s saying he has a iused space ship for sale; learning to reuse ships and have savable cargo is the first requirement for real space commerce.

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

Chaos Manor View, Saturday, April 2, 2016

“This is the most transparent administration in history.”

Barrack Obama

Liberalism is a philosophy of consolation for Western Civilization as it commits suicide.

Under Capitalism, the rich become powerful. Under Socialism, the powerful become rich.

Under Socialism, government employees become powerful.

The panic over Trump continues; part of it is genuine misunderstanding. Of course some is genuine panic, caused by real misunderstanding; and some is feigned for self-serving reasons.

For those actually seeking understanding, while I do not often recommend Slate, I do recommend a recent interview given by Newt Gingrich to a Slate contributor who is obviously attempting to be fair, although he is unlikely to agree with Newt on very much.

Newt Gingrich Is Bullish on Donald Trump

A spirited debate with the former speaker on the merits of the mogul.

By Isaac Chotiner

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/interrogation/2016/03/newt_gingrich_discusses_the_merits_of_donald_trump.html

Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the House and onetime presidential candidate, has always been considered a man of ideas. After leading his party to power in Congress following the release of the Contract With America in 1994, Gingrich became known for his sometimes-quirky policy proposals and unabashed love of wonkery. During the 2012 campaign, he pledged to establish a colony on the moon.

Since I have advocated a Moon Colony since 1970, I don’t see Newt’s proposal in quite the same light as the Slate interviewer, of course. I have known Speaker Gingrich a very long time, having met him when my phone rang decades ago and a voice said, “This is Newt Gingrich. I’ve been elected as a Congressman from Georgia. I’ve read A Step Farther Out, and I’d like to discuss it with you.” In those days my phone number was a bit harder to get than it is now, and there was no Internet – indeed, I showed Newt how to use ARPAnet. I asked him how he got my phone number.

“I called your publisher, and he gave it to me.”

From that time on I was one of Newt’s advisors. When he was Minority Whip I brought Dan Golden, the Administrator of NASA, over to the Capitol to meet him. I have found Newt to be one of the most astute politicians I have ever known, and I find his views on Trump rather close to those I have formed on my own. Note that Newt does not endorse Mr. Trump, but accepts him as a candidate with some interesting policies, and rejects neither Mr. Trump nor Mr. Cruz.

Isaac Chotiner: You were at a meeting on Monday with other Washington figures and Trump. What did you make of him?

Newt Gingrich: Well, Callista and I were both very impressed. In that kind of a setting he talks in a relatively low tone. He is very much somebody who has been good at business. And he listens well. He outlined the campaign as he saw it. I think he did a good job listening. He occasionally asked clarifying questions. He was very open to critical advice. I am not going to get into details, but I will say my overall impression was that in that setting he was totally under control as a guy who has done a ton of business and knows exactly how to operate in that kind of room.

You seem more sanguine than other people in Washington about Trump’s rise. Is that fair to say?

Sure. Remember, I came in as a Reaganite, Kempite when I helped lead the effort in 1994. And I have consistently been in favor of a more aggressive, more active Republican Party that reaches out and expands its base and that is very, very idea-oriented. I think Washington is a city with enormous problems. I think we need somebody—and both Cruz and Trump fit this—who is going to break up the old order and insist on real change. It’s not that I am sanguine. This will lead to a period of very real challenges, but I think we need it.

There is a great deal more. I recommend this interview to you.

My thanks to Phil Tharp for calling my attention to it.

Russia, Iran, Turkey. etc. 

Jerry,

I have been thinking about a dilemma in the Middle East which has larger implications. To wit: Russia, Turkey, Iran, and the US.

Russia has historically had very amicable relations with Iran (formerly Persia), and very hostile relations with Turkey. Abdul Abulbul Amir is a cute song that speaks to a centuries-old reality.

The US, since WWII at least, has had rather good relations with Turkey, and with Iran during the Shah’s regime. Of course, since 1979 our relations with Iran have been quite hostile, but Russia evidently regards that as our problem, not theirs (“Ne moya beda” was one of the most common statements heard in the USSR).

Now, neither the US nor Russia is getting along with Turkey, since Erdogan’s apparent enthusiasm for Islamisation.

So we have common ground with Russia on Turkey, but not on Iran, an ironic reversal from the days of the Cold War. But can Putin be entirely disinterested in the prospect of Iran’s becoming a nuclear power? How far can he trust the Islamic regime’s decision-makers? They will have no more love for a Christian Russia than for a Christian America. Putin is no fool and such thoughts will surely have occurred to him.

I haven’t done an exhaustive Internet search on this, and I am not qualified to hold an informed opinion, but it seems to be to be a matter of some importance.

Do you or any of your correspondents have any insight into this?

Richard White

Austin, Texas

I think we have common interests with Russia on Iran. We are both Infidel nations in the view of the Mullahs and Ayatollahs, and Putin knows this better than Obama. Russia wanted Persia for centuries – with its warm water ports upon the sea – but when Stalin tried to claim it, Truman forced him out with the threat of war. It is difficult to predict just where Iran will go.

It is all complicated by tribal/racial factors: neither Turks nor Kurds nor Iranians are Arabs. We like to pretend that such things do not matter, but historically they have.

Our best weapons against Iran are cultural weapons of mass destruction. They have worked on us; they will work there as well.

http://www.idgconnect.com/blog-abstract/14424/office-2021-why-robots-won-drudgery-steal-jobs

Office 2021: Why robots won’t end drudgery or steal our jobs

• Posted by Kathryn Cave
• on March 29 2016

When it comes to robots and automation, there are two core extremes of view. The first does a gleeful happy-dance about how all our beautiful mechanical friends will liberate us from the grinding tedium of repetitive drudgery. The second warns bleakly that machines will enslave humanity and lead to mass unending unemployment. And possibly a slow and painful death.

Yet even this divisive two-part picture is skewed. As Jonathan Wilkins, marketing director of European Automation points out: “History has shown that when economic times are good, machines are celebrated as wonders of progress that will improve our lives. But when times are tough, they become objects of fear.”

So, is there any kind of sensible middle way? Well, a new book, Service Automation: Robots and the Future of Work 2016, by two academics – LSE Professor Leslie Willcocks and Dr. Mary C. Lacity of University of Missouri-St. Louis – strives to provide some balance. This contains ne

This is mostly a book review, but it contains interesting arguments. For those who do not know if Freefall, the on-line “comic” or serialized graphic novel, I urge you to read it: it has some novel approaches to Artificial Intelligence. I warn you, it will take a couple of weeks to start at the beginning and read up to the present; there three or four frames per issue, three issues a week, and the while it has been running for years, the time covered is only a few months; there are many concepts and characters, the story is both serious and comical, and things are not always what they seem. I look forward to it every day now, and many of you will also. http://freefall.purrsia.com/default.htm You may go to the series beginning from the current strip. You should do so.

Now this is just plain weird. Of course I have mostly used the idea of panspermia in my stories; it simplifies building a story world. Sir Fred Hoyle was convinced of its truth.

This Astrobiologist Is Collecting Unrecognizable Beings from the Stratosphere.

<http://nautil.us/blog/this-astrobiologist-is-collecting-unrecognizable-beings-from-the-stratosphere>

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Roland Dobbins

“Either it’s … an entirely new culture that looks exactly like the Norse and we don’t know what it is. Or it’s the westernmost Norse site that’s ever been discovered.”

<https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/04/01/an-ancient-site-spotted-from-space-could-rewrite-the-history-of-vikings-in-north-america/>

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Roland Dobbins

And of course there’s The Skeleton in Armor (see California Sixth Grade Reader ).

 

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