Chaos Manor View, Wednesday, October 7, 2015

As usual on Wednesdays, Niven and Barnes were over and we had a story conference on The Cthulhu War, That’s the working title of the interstellar colony novel we’re working on; as to why Cthulhu in a science in a hard science fiction novel, see The Secret of Blackship Island http://www.amazon.com/Secret-Island-novella-Avalon-Series-ebook/dp/B007MSK4HM and you’ll know.

I then investigated use of Word OnLine, and was able to open and was able to open and edit a copy of the manuscript posted to the cloud by Barnes; later Niven was able to open it and edit from his machine at home. Barnes used one version of Word to create it on a Mac; I have accessed it from Alien Artifact, a 64-bit Windows 7 system, from Swan, a 64-bit Windows 10 system, and Precious, a Surface Pro 3 running the latest beta release of Windows 10. They all worked. While Word 16 or whatever it is called has more collaboration features, Word OnLine is plenty Good Enough for what we do.

I have been in the Monk’s Cell, and have produced a thousand or so words of Mamelukes, with considerable work on the progress of a sea battle – of course no battle plan survived contact with the enemy. And I know where most of my characters are and what they are doing when this book ends. Progress is being made.

I can do three of the Five Tibetan Rituals now to a repetition of 10, and 20 sit-ups; it’s progress.

Microsoft announced a new Surface Product Line, including a Surface Pro 4 with a new keyboard, and a Surface Book, which is the top of their Surface line. I have ordered the keyboard for the Pro 4; it appears to be better than the Surface Pro 3 keyboard. I will probably get a Pro 4 but I want to see it in action first; the 3 remains good enough. I did more experimenting with it today, and the keys are still too close together, but the new Pro 4 keyboard from the pictures has more key separation. I hit two keys at once on the 3 far too often, but I did get a bit better with it as time wore on, and I found I was spending more time writing and less correcting what I had written; I have high hopes for the Pro 4 keyboard. If thing go well, I will get a Pro 4.

I’m working just now with Swan, a fast Windows 10 desktop in the back bedroom. I am using the Logitech K360 keyboard, which has good separation of keys; I have K360 boards on all my main machines except the Surface Pro 3. And I am learning to type faster, although only two finger while staring at the keyboard. The I look up at the screen and see all the wavy red lines most caused by my hitting two keys,

When I went to play with the Surface Pro 3, I found that it had downloaded no Outlook mail after 2 October, and it was now telling me it couldn’t find the server. I complained to my advisors, then remembered the primary trouble shooting tool: restart the app. I proceeded to do so: shut down Outlook. Restart Outlook. And behold, it downloaded a week’s worth of mail, quickly and efficiently, and all’s well. While that was happening Eric sent me this link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nn2FB1P_Mn8

It was appropriate, but in my defense, Precious had several updates since Oct 2, and had been reset each time; even so, that wasn’t shutting down. In any event, closing and restarting Outlook fixed the problem. I understand that Microsoft is going to make the quick access to autocorrect available to Word 365 or whatever they call it now, but I don’t know how to do it; I sure need it. Going to File / Options / Proofing / autocorrect while trying to remember exactly what you mistyped is useless. I do understand there is a fix, but I sure don’t have it yet.

Eric says

    If you buy an Office or Word license, that version will be with you however long you care to use it. Word from an Office 365 subscription will eventually upgrade to the latest version but there are ways to delay that for several months. The difference between word 2016 and 2013 is fairly subtle though. Aside from the return of AutoCorrect to the right-click menu, most of the differences are in the collaboration features.

    If you all get up to date there some very elaborate things, like real-time collaboration where you see each other typing away but I doubt that is really desirable for your group most of time. It could be good for plotting sessions if you have a shared notepad but looking over each other’s virtual shoulder as you type would probably be annoying. I expect that will be used more by corporate workgroups.

Eric Pobirs

He also says

About every two weeks or so,  Live Mail 2012 does an email download with infinite incoming messages. None of them actually exist but if it isn’t interrupted it will go on like that forever, never downloading any actual messages. You don’t have to exit the program but you do need to make the incoming message display visible so you can hit the stop button. After that it downloads messages normally.

Eric

And finally:

    You may want to try it on Swan first, due to the larger screen. In addition to the familiar red squiggly underline for unknown words there is also a little box that appears on the left end of the red squiggly line. Right-click on that box and you’ll be offered the AutoCorrect setting dialogue. The issue I raised before is in how it uses the item highlighted to seed new entries.

I need to test this but so far I cannot see any box at the end of the red squiggly line. I’m writing on Swan now. Eventually we’ll get this straightened out.

I urge you to read http://www.wsj.com/articles/zuckerbergs-100-million-lesson-1444087064 which tells the story of how Mark Zuckerberg gave #100 million to a school district, and what the results were: nothing. You cannot help this awful school system by throwing money at it.

Then stay tuned: there are a few success stories, although the blob – the faceless officials and administrators and union officials who run our hopelessly awful school system – generally suppresses them. The protoplasm in the pupils has not degenerated. The potential is still there as it was when we used a real Sixth Grade Reader http://www.amazon.com/California-Sixth-Grade-Reader-Pournelle-ebook/dp/B00LZ7PB7E .The Iron Law has prevailed in the public schools, and that prolongs the depression – the only reason the unemployment rate is under 20% is because those who gave up looking for work are not, officially, unemployed – and slowly turns America into a Third World Country. That is the current situation. We can do something, but we probably won’t.

If you have kids of any age and do not know of the Kahn Academy https://www.khanacademy.org/ remedy that instantly.

It’s getting late. Stephanie sends this link:

http://www.news.com.au/national/western-australia/miranda-devine-perth-electrical-engineers-discovery-will-change-climate-change-debate/story-fnii5thn-1227555674611
If you want to learn more about climate predictions, read it.

And I remind you of

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/09/30/massive_global_cooling_factor_discovered_ahead_of_paris_climate_talks/

Our models don’t work. This might be one reason.

[

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

Chaos Manor View, Monday, October 5, 2015

It’s bedtime. I’ve worked on Mamelukes and sort of tended to mail, but I’ve pretty well neglected this place. I’ll get back to it shortly, but I’m on a fiction roll just now.

There are a few things to notice.

LENR Status

Hello Jerry,

A presentation on the current LENR state of play by a PhD Physicist from my old department at NSWC Dahlgren:

http://www.lenr-forum.com/forum/index.php/Attachment/386-IEEE-brief-DeChiaro-9-2015-pdf/

Short, not much detail, but there is apparently growing evidence that there is really a ‘there’ there.

Of course I’ll be convinced when I can by one at Lowe’s to heat my house or a subset thereof (or as one outfit proposes, buy a car with a 30 kmile ‘LENR tank’), but in the meantime I continue to HOPE real hard.

Bob Ludwick

If there’s even a small chance of a 30,000 mile car – 30k on one filling – there are plenty of investors who will want to get in on it. And I note that the Office of Naval Research has never given up on LENR. And that most research centers are leery of press conferences; next time it won’t leave any doubts. But, as you say, the evidence that something is to be found piles up, and we can hope.

OS X El Capitan and MS Office 2011 / 2016

Dear Dr Pournelle,

A word of warning to your readers: If you use Office 2011 or OS 2016 on OS X Yosemite, you may wish to wait before upgrading to OS X El Capitan.

OS X El Capitan breaks Outlook 2011 and almost all of Office 2016. Just about everything refuses to start or crashes repeatedly. I have experienced problems myself and they are also well documented at http://www.macrumors.com/2015/10/05/microsoft-office-2016-el-capitan-bugs/

Microsoft is working on it, apparently.

Best wishes,

Simon Woodworth BSc MSc PhD.

Thank you.

Snowden Drama

This whole Snowden Affair looks more like a soap opera now; not that it changes anything revealed but the characters and activities are getting strange. I wonder if things aren’t so good in Moscow anymore?

Maybe his recent criticism of Russian policy wasn’t a good idea?

<.>

Edward Snowden says he has offered to return to the United States and go to jail for leaking details of National Security Agency programs to intercept electronic communications data on a vast scale.

The former NSA contractor flew to Moscow two years ago after revealing information about the previously secret eavesdropping powers, and faces U.S. charges that could land him in prison for up to 30 years.

Snowden told the BBC that he’d “volunteered to go to prison with the government many times,” but had not received a formal plea-deal offer.

He said that “so far they’ve said they won’t torture me, which is a start, I think. But we haven’t gotten much further than that.”

</>

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/EU_BRITAIN_EDWARD_SNOWDEN?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2015-10-05-13-50-39

Normally, if you’re a guest in someone’s home you abide by their behavior and if you cannot bear it then you leave. You do not tell others how to live in their own home. Is this fallout from that?

◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

There is some probability that rational decision is not the governing phenomenon here.

Tactics, strategy, and politics

This article is worth most people’s time. While I presume you have a keen grasp of the subject matter contained herein, a past contributor

— whose name escapes me at the moment — mentioned the difference between doctrine and weapons systems. If I were at my PC I run a Google search on your site and name the contributor because the point was apt. However, I’m on my mobile phone and lack the time to do it so I respectfully request allowances in this matter.

Having said that, this article touches upon that point in more detail and applies that point not only in the military sense but also stretches into its implication for the body politic. the article mentions essays and statements by other people commented on the matter and you may find it interesting even if you’re already abreast with the substance of the discussion.

@WarOnTheRocks: If one cannot tell the difference between task and purpose, how can one become a strategist? http://ow.ly/T1xI9

◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

Actually, the necessity for doctrines is discussed in The Strategy of Technology by Stefan T. Possony, Jerry Pournelle, and Francis X. Kane. Of course most of the examples in that 1970 book are from the Cold War.

“These results demonstrate for the first time that, regardless of potential radiation effects on individual animals, the Chernobyl exclusion zone supports an abundant mammal community after nearly three decades of chronic radiation exposure.”

<http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/chernobyl-disaster-exclusion-zone-around-plant-has-become-wildlife-haven-on-par-with-nature-reserves-a6680396.html>

Hiroshima and Nagasaki support abundant bipedal mammal communities, too.

Kind of puts paid to the Union of Confused Scientists, doesn’t it?

—————————————

Roland Dobbins

As opposed to coal mine tailings and other fossil fuel sites… With sufficient energy you can deal with any chemical wastes. And Chernobyl was a weapons reactor, not a power reactor; no positive void reactors can be licensed in the US; that’s fundamental atomic law, written into the Atomic Energy Act by Edward Teller.

‘Cyber banging’ drives new generation of gang violence

Jerry

This is happening just south of you:

http://www.latimes.com/local/crime/la-me-1003-banks-lapd-gang-shootings-20151003-column.html

“Many of the people who were shot this summer seem like inexplicable targets, neither robbery victims nor gang-involved. “Somebody just drives to where the person is, walks up, shoots them, gets back in the car and drives off,” Harris-Dawson said.

“We’re used to people beefing in public,” he said. “Now the whole conflict is happening on social media. And all of us — interventionists, police, the community — are in over our heads on that.”

I’ve stayed off of social media for professional reasons, so I’ve missed all that. And really, this seems to be as much of a time-waster as television. “We’re dealing with a different generation and we’re going to have to evolve,”

Inevitable, wasn’t it?

Dear Dr. Pournelle, 

It appears that Russia is making a play to become the new international arbiter of the Middle East. 

http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/09/28/leave-it-to-vlad-and-the-supreme-leader-obama-iraq-iran-middle-east/

Foreign Policy’s correspondents are divided as to whether this blindsided the administration, or if this is the administration’s real plan for the Middle East — to abandon it to the Russians while we concentrate on our own domestic issues. 

Certainly the author of the piece believes the second is more likely, as Putin evidently did tell President Obama face-to-face that he was planning on escalating pressure on ISIS.  
The scope of the Pentagon’s Anti-ISIS training effort — all 60 recruits — does not project confidence in the effort.
http://thehill.com/policy/defense/247060-pentagon-only-training-60-syrian-rebels-against-isis

Huffington Post suggests that there are other “black” operations under way in larger numbers 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/four-five-fighters-pentagon-syria_55f9ad27e4b0d6492d63ed49
but, if so, they have neither been effective at containing ISIS or convincing the Russians of our seriousness. 
It seems that we are abandoning influence in a region we have considered of utmost importance since 1945. Regaining it will probably not happen without bloodshed. 
Respectfully, 

Brian P.

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

Chaos Manor View, Tuesday, September 29, 2015

Thursday, October 01, 2015

The week has been enjoyably consumed by family matters, with three of our four boys in town. Wednesday I had a good story conference with Niven and Barnes and Jack Cohen by Skype from England, and lunch after that. All’s well, but as usual I have been falling behind.

Nice walk this morning with Frank, my number two son, after dinner with Alex (1), Frank (2), and Richard (4), lacking Phillip (3) who is still a career Navy officer. Now Frank and Richard have gone home, and we’ll try to get back to what passes for routine at Chaos Manor. It was all complicated by a dead rat who expired Monday behind the walls in the downstairs office, rendering the place unusable with the smell. The exterminators are due in hours, but the smell was so awful that I cajoled Frank into clearing access to an access door, where, Lo! he found and extracted the corpse, so I am able to write this; it’s hot outside, but we have all the windows open, and I prefer hot with a fan to the alternative as normal chaos returns…

And it’s lunch time.

The big news is Climate Models: they have left out an important factor in cloud formation. The expensive climate models we depend on for climate predictions cannot predict the present from the past, and cannot explain the past fifteen years of virtually no warming at all: they predicted a monotonic temperature rise that failed to happen.

MASSIVE GLOBAL COOLING process discovered as Paris climate deal looms • The Register

Thought y’all might be interested in this. Credit belongs to Jim W., but he doesn’t have your emails on his smartphone, which is all he has access to right now.
Stephanie Osborn

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

“Sometimes you gotta say what’s in your heart… And you have to stand for what you believe. No matter what.”
~’Dr. Michael C. Anders,’ Burnout: The mystery of Space Shuttle STS-281

Date: Thu, 1 Oct 2015 12:09:36 -0500
Subject: MASSIVE GLOBAL COOLING process discovered as Paris climate deal looms • The Register
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/09/30/massive_global_cooling_factor_discovered_ahead_of_paris_climate_talks/

A team of top-level atmospheric chemistry boffins from France and Germany say they have identified a new process by which vast amounts of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are emitted into the atmosphere from the sea – a process which was unknown until now, meaning that existing climate models do not take account of it.

The effect of VOCs in the air is to cool the climate down, and thus climate models used today predict more warming than can actually be expected. Indeed, global temperatures have actually been stable for more than fifteen years, a circumstance which was not predicted by climate models and which climate science is still struggling to assimilate.

In essence, the new research shows that a key VOC, isoprene, is not only produced by living organisms (for instance plants and trees on land and plankton in the sea) as had previously been assumed. It is also produced in the “microlayer” at the top of the ocean by the action of sunlight on floating chemicals – no life being necessary. And it is produced in this way in very large amounts.

The standard climate models have never been very good on clouds and cloud formation; this is known, and many of the ad hoc corrections usually applied to the models’ predictions have involved clouds, their formation, and their effects. This new discovery will be an important correction to the models. Obviously, C02 increases facilitate more growth of plants on land, which may increase VOC production – a negative feedback.

It is also reasonable to assume that increased ocean temperatures will increase formation of VOC’s, and cloud reflectivity over the ocean may have some effect on el Nino events, which we do not understand. None of this affects the influence of C02 on warming, of course, but the negative feedback mechanisms may explain why the models have been so unsuccessful in explaining the actual climate behavior.

The situation in Syria is serious, and we have an incompetent Secretary of State and a President not educated in foreign policy, and not gifted with natural talent in that subject.

Meanwhile ISIS, The Caliphate, thrives having declared war on the United States while openly calling for terrorist attacks on the West in general and the US in particular. It suffers little punishment for these acts, and the President’s responses to the televised brutality of the ISIS regime have not been effective.

The United States, by pronouncement of the President and the Secretary of State, has a policy demanding regime change in Syria without specifying what regime it should change to. President Obama has also designated ISIS as “the junior varsity” and also demanded its end, but ISIS has continued to grow; it presumably is not the President’s designated successor to the Baathist regime of Western educated Syrian President Assad. Now that the US has cooperated in the regime change in Libya, ISIS has colonies there as well.  So long as ISIS has territories to rule by its version of Islamic Law, it will continue to attract recruits as it claims to be the legitimate Caliphate: if effect The Return of the King.

Baathists put Arab unity as a primary goal; this means toleration of both Sunni and Shiite Arabs, and also toleration of other Arabs including Christian and Druze. When the American Press speaks of “moderate Arabs” it generally means Baathists although it does not seem to realize this. The Baathist Party has generally thrived in Arab nations with Sunni majorities, although Baathist party members are often Shiite. Baathist regimes tend to be one-party despotates ruling by force.

The President does not seem to understand that majority rule democracy in the Middle East equates to legalizing persecution of minorities; and this is generally inevitable. Lebanon had a multi-party multi-religion multi-ethnic regime at one time, but the US support was slowly withdrawn, and the tolerant regime has pretty well vanished. Lebanon was not a majoritarian democracy, but it was constitutional with offices reserved for Marionites, Shiites, Sunni, and Druze.  It worked at one time, but generally the only tolerant regimes have not been democracies. We will except Israel, but it is very much an exception.

Now Putin has offered cooperation and has been rebuffed. I foresee interesting times as Russian warplanes attack the Caliphate and Obama worries that they will also strike “moderate Muslims” whom Obama approves of – if he can find any. Interesting times.

Perhaps it is time to leave Syria to the Russians and Assad, and concentrate on shoring up the Kurds, who are the only real friends we have in the region?

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

Chaos Manor View, Monday, September 28, 2015

1330: Just back from a walk with Paul Schindler, former BYTE editor and old friend who comes down from the Bay area once or twice a year. We usually take a hike up the trail to Mulholland, but with the walker that was right out, so we had to make do with two miles on the flats. I am now motivated to get up the paved fire road past the ranger station at Fryman so that I can get up the hill again. I am sure I can manage the fire roads. But first time I think I want Barnes along, just in case…

Saturday night I went to a gumbo party out in Woodland Hills. It was a meeting of the Mystery Writers of America local chapter. I have been off and on going to MWA meetings since the late 60’s when it met in the Los Angeles Press Club building, and I used to hang out with Ed McBain aka Evan Hunter. Alas the Press Club sold the building (I have no idea where the money went) and met in various places thereafter, with increasingly smaller meetings. Some were in the nearby Sportsman’s Lodge in Studio City and I went to those, but then they got increasingly harder to get to, and each time I went I knew fewer and fewer people. For some reason I decided to go to the gumbo party and said I would be there.

Then Greg Bear and Astrid Anderson Bear came down for the weekend to see Karen Anderson, and I was committed for Saturday night, so we had lunch at a nearby Italian place that serves gluten free pizza that my wife can eat. That went well, but there was no way Karen could get into my house with the front stairs – I use the garage, as I can’t get up the front stairs either. But my garage opens on another street, not the front of my house, and it has stairs too, only not so complex, so I couldn’t invite them in. It worked out fine, and the restaurant was quiet enough that we could have a great conversation, sort of finishing the conversation we started Thursday night at the LASFS meeting.

At the MWA party there was no one I knew, and I doubt anyone there ever heard of me, but it was interesting getting the mystery writer point of view on what is happening to the publishing industry. After a while I found myself sitting at a table with a younger guy, whom my son Alex introduced with a name I didn’t catch – my hearing aids aren’t so good at noisy parties – as having produced a recent documentary on Glenn Campbell. I mentioned that I had met Glenn Campbell a long time ago when I was one of the managers of Sam Yorty’s campaign for Mayor. Of course I didn’t know him, but that led to other conversation, and eventually I found out I was talking to Trevor Albert, who produced a lot of big movies including Groundhog Day. I was impressed.

Then Sunday there was at LASFS a memorial to Ann Morell, an old friend, as is her widower Bill Ellern. I’ve known Anne since before she met Bill, and they were married for thirty years.

That pretty well used up the weekend, and I am off to Kaiser and physical therapy in few minutes. More another time.

1605: Hah.  Kaiser Physical Therapy specialist Theresa Wong has just said I don’t need her any more; I have graduated. I suppose that is good, but I will miss her.  I have to go out to the Podiatrist tomorrow, so I’ll drop off a couple of books for her when we go.  The first day I came home from hospitals I was a mess.  Now they can’t do a lot more.  And I can do several miles walk after vegetating for a week.  Good progress, and no reason to believe I can’t keep improving. 

USAF tankers 

Dear Dr. Pournelle,

Here’s a pretty good writeup on the KC46 Pegasus, the USAF’s next generation air-to-air refueling tanker.

http://hotair.com/archives/2015/09/26/pegasus-its-no-unicorn-either/

While it isn’t much of an improvement over the older KC-135 and is quite a bit more expensive, that doesn’t change the fact that the older aircraft is quite long in the tooth, and still needs replacing.

Also, the procurement process is wasteful. I’m sure that comes as a shock to all readers .

Respectfully,

Brian P.

The elimination of Systems Command was a drastic mistake.  Now we pay for that “saving”.

Dave Hammond

Begin forwarded message:

Subject: Popular in NYT Technology: Microsoft Releases Office 2016, With Features Focused on Teamwork

Microsoft Releases Office 2016, With Features Focused on Teamwork
By NICK WINGFIELD
Office 2016 has numerous changes, with the most prominent ones designed to improve how the software is used by groups of people to collaborate.
September 21, 2015 at 05:00PM
via NYT Technology http://ift.tt/1V7CKtx

Eric installed  Windows 16 on Swan, my Windows 10 system in the back room, and on Precious, the Surface Pro, over the weekend, but I haven’t had a chance to try it yet; I’m hoping it will improve our collaborative efforts.  More when I know more.

http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-briny-liquid-water-on-mars-20150926-story.html

Watch NASA scientists explain why they think water still flows on Mars (LA Times)

By KAREN KAPLAN

Some of NASA’s top scientists are set to share new findings they say will solve a mystery about Mars.

Jim Green, NASA’s director of planetary science, and Michael Meyer, lead scientist for the Mars Exploration Program, will hold a news conference Monday morning at NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C., to “detail a major science finding,” according to the space agency.

The news conference will also include three members of the research team behind a study published Monday in the journal Nature Geoscience that offers evidence of “contemporary water activity on Mars.”

In that study, scientists from Georgia Tech, NASA Ames Research Center and elsewhere explain that an instrument aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has spotted telltale signs of hydrated salts in several locations on the surface of the Red Planet.

Using data collected by the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars instrument, the team members concluded that salts are deposited on the slopes of several craters and canyons. These salts — including magnesium perchlorate, magnesium chlorate and sodium perchlorate – appear to have been carried there recently by flowing water.

Mars has frozen water at its poles and traces of water in the dust that covers its surface. Finding liquid water flowing on Mars would make the planet much more Earth-like, and potentially increase the likelihood of Martian life.

In their study, the researchers write that their findings “strongly support the hypothesis that seasonal warm slopes are forming liquid water on contemporary Mars.” But they aren’t sure where that water comes from. One of the possibilities that comes to mind – that water ice melts in the relatively warm summer – is unlikely, since these salts weren’t found near the icy poles. They list a few other theories but say none of them seems probable.

More details may be forthcoming in the news conference, which begins at 8:30 a.m. You can watch it live in the window above.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/how-humans-can-win-the-race-against-the-machines-1443392035

How Humans Can Win the Race Against the Machines

American education is ripe for a technology revolution to prepare students for the 21st century      (journal)

By

Christopher Mims

Sept. 27, 2015 6:13 p.m. ET

Whatever your measure—the reading and math proficiency of high-school graduates, the skills gap in the nation’s labor market, or the real value of college—there can be little argument that America’s schools, as a whole, are failing to prepare students for the 21st century.

There are countless explanations why, but here’s a significant contributing factor: Until recently, we simply didn’t know how to use technology to make teachers and students happier, better engaged and more successful.

Think about it: In every field of human endeavor, from manufacturing to knowledge work, we’re figuring out how to use technology to make humans more successful—to raise the quality of their work, if not their measured productivity.

But the same can hardly be said of teaching. In education, the overwhelming majority of students are still learning as they always have, in classrooms dominated by a one-to-many lecturing model in which teachers inevitably leave some students behind while boring others. That model has barely changed in a century.

<snip>

We need a new education technology, but we won’t get it.  There are too many who have built their lives on learning the old technology, and they now lead the unions to protect their comrades. We cannot fire incompetent teachers; we cannot fire incompetent education professors; we cannot require new teachers to learn the new technologies assuming we have some in development.  The public school system now exists to pay unionized teachers salaries and pensions; if that condition is not fulfilled, then the children don’t matter.  Again that may not be true of individual teachers, but it will be true of their union leaders at both the public school and teachers college levels levels.  Pournelle’s Iron Law will prevail; heck we can’t fire obviously incompetent teachers now;  how can we ever replace those who don’t know whatever new technologies we may develop?  We can’t even keep order in the classrooms.

It may be that parents will learn the new technologies; but will regulators ever allow schools using them to be credentialed?  Perhaps I am misinformed?

http://www.wsj.com/articles/matt-damon-tinkers-to-survive-on-mars-in-new-movie-1443025432

Matt Damon Tinkers to Survive on Mars in New Movie

In ‘The Martian,’ opening Oct. 2, Matt Damon plays a stranded astronaut who has to figure out how to survive on Mars for almost two years      (journal)

By

Don Steinberg

Updated Sept. 24, 2015 9:37 a.m. ET

“The Martian,” a science-fiction movie opening Oct. 2, isn’t about mind-bending quantum cosmology or the intergalactic origins of human life. There are no bureaucrats or evil CEOs with hidden agendas who could sabotage a space mission. There’s no back story about parental issues between a wistful astronaut and a child peering into the night sky.

Instead, “The Martian” is the story of an enterprising scientist who is stranded on a planet and must use his wits and limited resources to survive and be rescued. The movie, directed by Ridley Scott, is based on a book that Andy Weir, then a computer programmer, published chapter-by-chapter on the Web.

“No one would ever accuse ‘The Martian’ of being literature,” Mr. Weir says of his book. “I’ll be the first to admit it. There is very little character depth at all. There’s no character growth. It’s a story about events, not people.”

In the movie, astronaut Mark Watney (Matt Damon) is part of a crew sent to Mars. (Other members are Jessica Chastain, Michael Pena and Kate Mara). A storm hits and Watney is struck by debris that appears to kill him. The crew reluctantly aborts and blasts off. Then Watney wakes up amid the rusty red dust of Mars and wonders where everybody went. The NASA brass in Houston (boss Jeff Daniels and scientist Chiwetel Ejiofor) arrange a funeral—there’s no grieving family—before receiving word from Watney that he isn’t dead after all.

ENLARGE

Andy Weir, author of ‘The Martian,’ at the Toronto International Film Festival in September. Photo: Jeff Vespa/Getty Images

The driving force of the film is Watney’s Popular Mechanics-style approach to surviving on Mars for almost two years. He measures, calculates, builds, experiments and blows thing up. He adapts communications devices and mulches Mars dirt with his own waste to create soil for growing food. He’s like the Discovery Channel’s “MythBusters” guys in space, joking darkly, with little time for brooding about his plight. Six years ago, Mr. Weir was a programmer working on mobile apps who had gained a modest following for the comics and sci-fi stories he published as a hobby on his website. A space nerd, he plotted missions in his head and wrote software to calculate orbital trajectories. He figured a Mars mission gone awry would make a thrilling tale, which he started posting online in 2009. The science, he says, became the drama.

<snip>

Robinson Crusoe in space.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/fd1c2266-62e6-11e5-9846-de406ccb37f2.html#axzz3n5GT1Iwr

Astronomical costs of intellectual property rights patently wrong    ft

Kate Burgess

Innovations are still being stifled by dense thickets of overlapping patents

The International Space Station cost €100bn over a decade, smartphone patents wars have cost $20bn over two years

It seems cruel that it costs comparatively little to launch groundbreaking ideas into space yet so many are held back by the billions spent protecting intellectual property rights on earth.

The price of funding the International Space Station, the collaborative project that has taken the technology of many corporate tots to the stars, is about €100bn over a decade, according to Europe’s Space Agency. That means every European paying about €1 a year.

Put that against the $20bn that the patent wars cost the smartphone industry alone over two years when the likes of Apple, Motorola and others filed thousands of patents and battled to protect them.

As far back as 2011, the Hargreaves Report, sponsored by the UK government, warned that innovations were being stifled by the dense thickets of overlapping intellectual property rights. Since then, growing numbers of patents have been filed across the digital spectrum with holders laying claim to algorithms and formulas and through them sweeping ownership of broad technologies and products.

Multinationals may have the resources to file and then defend their claims in court when necessary, but few small businesses do.

For most start-ups, the costs of litigation are astronomical and the outcome too uncertain. Academics from the London School of Economics put the total cost in the UK for claimants and defendants in patent litigation at between £1m and £6m in 2012. The costs are rising. It emerged last week that the UK government is planning to double the fee for issuing civil lawsuits — the second increase in 12 months. The Law Society says it is a further deterrent to small businesses defending their rights to intellectual property.

It does not deter big companies.

<snip>

Dear Jerry:

Washington’s  Growing resemblance to the City of Dis  has washed over into another Dantean analogy:  the Best Practices of both sides in the Climate Wars increasingly  draw on the Seven Deadly Sins

http://vvattsupwiththat.blogspot.com/2015/09/metamodeling-seven-deadly-sins-at.html

Finding seven deadly sins Emoji in short supply, I had to make my own.

Best regards

—

Russell  Seitz

Fellow of the Department of Physics Harvard University    

An example

Model Envy-   The need to command larger research budgets than competing models or theories, if need be by having competitors defunded or charged with crimes.

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