Tuesday, August 1, 2017

Being intelligent is not a felony. But most societies evaluate it as at least a misdemeanor.

-Robert A. Heinlein

The map is not the territory.

Alfred Korzybski

Microsoft is on a mission to improve office to beyond the comprehension or use of the average computer user, possibly to get rid of office users who are not enterprise clients or very large accounts; they certainly don’t care what damage they do to people who just want to use the stuff, write letters, maybe run a blog or Facebook (not that I Facebook) or generally just use it.

My recent adventures with Outlook, all caused by Microsoft improvements, are not over, but we now see a complex path to restoring what I had before their improvements made it temporarily impossible to use. For a while I couldn’t even search Outlook mail files – an error known to have been caused by one Microsoft “fix”. There were others. I’ll try to have an account of the whole adventure, but I don’t have time now. At least that crisis is over; I almost lost all my subscriber files, because Microsoft keeps “Contact” files in a screwy format different from mail files. I have lost the “category” flags which gave me a quick visual view of a subscriber’s status, but the information that caused those characterization flags was preserved, and can be restored by hand. A tedious process, but it can be done.

On that score, we’ve not had a pledge week for some time now, because I haven’t been providing much for you to subscribe to. I’m doing more work on fiction now – I have a good chance of finishing this volume of the Janissaries series this year, possibly earlier, if my health holds up and there are no more Microsoft crises. Yes, you guessed it, it was intended to be the last volume in the series, but it won’t be. It will have an ending that makes sense, and it will be a final ending for some characters – I don’t mean I’m killing them off, although some will die. Others. Though, reach a state where they need not be tracked individually. But there are also new and very important characters, and they will have to be followed as they interact with Rick and Tylara. Worked on it a bit today, and I pretty well see where this volume is going. I had hoped to end the series, but I just can’t.

Then there is LisaBetta, a story of a girl pretty well raised by a strange kind of AI on a world that we might grow into in fifty or so years. John DeChancie has done a first draft, and I promptly got absorbed into everything else and it sat neglected for months. It’s good stuff, and I’ll have to get at it. I also have to remember that perfect is the enemy of damned well good enough.

And Starborn and Godsons, the third book in the Legacy of Heorot series. Is coming along nicely, with some writing that ignores that aphorism. Larry and Steve has some really great scenes, and I’ve done some I’m proud of.

And now that Roberta is coming along nicely, and I’m recovered pretty well, and I’ve survived Microsoft’s improvements, I can get at it. Except one on the War Colleges want Strategy of Technology for a text and could I help with the revisions, and Colonel Doug Beason and I are doing an anthology on planetary defense (of which we have none), and that takes time, and every time I pay a bill I worry a bit; but I feel better than I have in years, I get my time consuming exercises, and…

Well, the point is that if you haven’t subscribed in a while, now would be a good time to renew, or and if you never subscribed I operate this place on the public radio model. We don’t have ads and distractions, I don’t often bug you for money, but if I don’t get subscriptions it will slow down or go away.

And this is the silly season. Nothing much is really happening, and most of it isn’t worth commenting on (by me; it gets plenty of comment from others).

https://www.jerrypournelle.com/paying.html

One of the ways Microsoft improved Word for me: they turned off AutoCorrect on one of my machines. It used to be that if I typed in a few letters of a day of the week, it would offer to complete that, and if I typed in a day of the week follower by a comma, it would put in the date if I pressed return. Not the Earth, but convenient, and on all my other machines it does that. Not this one. And if I ask for help, I’m likely to get help that says I should go to the tools menu – a menu that no longer exists and hasn’t for a while. Or none at all. Microsoft doesn’t seem to have a name for this feature, and HELP is the usual uninformative nonsense it usually is. If anyone knows what the feature is called or where to find it in Word 365, I’d appreciate the tip. I don’t use it a lot, but it annoys me that it is off.

I mentioned that Doug Beason, (Col. USAF RET, former Chief Scientist of Space Command) and I are about to put together an anthology of stories and essays on Planetary Defense. More on that another time. Anyway, that sometimes has me thinking of events like Tunguska, a 10-30 megaton – yes, megaton – event in Siberia in 1908. A blast possibly half the size of Tsar Bomba that flattened and charred tens of thousands of trees over 2000 square kilometers, possibly the largest blast recorded in human history before the invention of the H bomb; a bigger blast than any weapons we now possess.

Meteorite is the obvious explanation, but there was no meteorite, and no crater either. When the Russians finally got around to inspecting the area – they did have rebellions, the War, Ten Days That Shook the World, their Civil War, and years of Stalin’s purges to distract them – in 1927, they could find no meteorite, no rocks, no hole in the ground, and in fact nothing that looked like the residue of a meteorite strike. It was a mystery that intrigues everyone, and back before I learned the explanation I was induced to speculate about it in broadcasts of the BBC and US public TV. I liked “black hole” as a possibility, although I knew damned well it couldn’t be that; and since I went on these shows to promote Lucifer’s Hammer I usually stuck to the comet theory. After all, we thought many comets were just dirty ice snowballs. Still do, I guess. The ice would have melted, and what’s to find?

But I learned better.

This afternoon I was reminded of a restaurant in the Baltimore harbor area, Eat Bertha’s Mussels; an intriguing name, and if it’s still there I can recommend it highly for sea food if you don’t mind sawdust on the floor.

But I remember it because it was there that Rolf Sinclair, and old friend from the National Science Foundation (and one of the reasons I used to say that the NSF budget might be the best Federal tax money we spend) took me. Mrs. Pournelle, Larry Niven, and Poul and Karen Anderson to dinner with two young men whose names, embarrassingly, I do not recall. They explained in detail, drawing some diagrams and writing equations on paper napkins just what must have happened at Tunguska. Not a comet, not a black hole, not the wrath of Jehovah or Thor, but a good old fashioned stone—not metal—asteroid entering the atmosphere at a rather steep angle and high speed. The great speed meant that air resistance to entry – hardly reentry – into the atmosphere became greater and greater as the rock descended, and eventually that energy potential exceeded the binding energy that held the stone monster—about the size of the Coliseum in Los Angeles – together. Thus it came apart. With a bang. A 10 to 30 megaton bang. Trees blew outward in a radial pattern around the impact point, but there was no impact: it blew up at a fair altitude. The debris was subjected to extreme temperatures, and everything that could be affected by that was consumed. The only thing that fell to earth was sand, and that was pretty well indistinguishable from sand blown in from the Mongolian Desert.

Thus no crater, and no trace of what hit us. Farewell the black hole, or the ice comet. Just a stone asteroid.

Of course there are a lot of them out there.

Our two dinner guests presented a paper on that to the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science – Rolf was the AAAS official who invited them to speak – and later published much the same thing in SCIENCE. And I can’t remember their names. I got to know them pretty well, too. But this was at least 27 years ago, and possibly much longer. Thin excuse for not remembering but it’s all I’ve got.

And a sad comment on the internet for scientific research outside your own field: the cause of Tunguska has been known for over 25 years. Yes, there are some anomalies, but not great enough to overcome the theory of a stone asteroid coming apart. That hypothesis explains all the known data, and there’s more than enough energy in a football field asteroid entering at high velocity to bring about all the observed phenomena.  Yet a half hour search doesn’t present me a link to the actual paper the lads – Chyba?—who presented the paper and explained it all to me in that Baltimore restaurant before presenting it to the AAAS. Hah! I just remembered thy name. Christopher Chyba. I got nothing searching for Chyba, but Chyba Tunguska got me a confirmation of his name and a condensation of his theory.  But note I had to know the name; otherwise Google showed me links to how it’s still a mystery, and it might be a black hole, and an old woman who’s convinced it was Thor, and – well, anything but the science.

Erosion Of The US Middle Class

Jerry,

Edward Luttwak has an excellent piece in the Times Literary Supplement on the currently hot topic of “what actually just happened?” Rather provocatively titled “Why the Trump dynasty will last sixteen years”, it’s at https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/trump-dynasty-luttwak

Luttwak spends some time on the Establishment’s continuing hysterical befuddlement, but his primary focus is the core issue in the current fight over who runs America: Will our middle classes grow again and rule, or continue shrinking and be ruled forever by their (our) self-proclaimed betters?

Luttwak focuses on what he presents as a key indicator, the growing unaffordability of a new car for the average American family, and builds his case around that. It’s a good piece, I recommend it.

It also reminded me of a couple of wider-reaching pieces I sent you a year and a half ago, in late ’15 and then early ’16 right after the Iowa caucuses. I think these are worth another look, now that the dust is (one hopes) beginning to settle.

I first took the hugely politically incorrect view that it’s not “democracy” per se, but rule by the middle class that makes Western nations successful. Democracy only succeeds if you have an informed and self-disciplined middle-class majority; otherwise it inevitably descends to “one man, one vote, once.”

https://www.jerrypournelle.com/chaosmanor/there-will-be-war-is-done-the-debates-porkypine-on-the-middle-class-and-a-great-deal-more/

Ergo, policies to foster and preserve an informed and self-disciplined middle-class majority are vitally important to free and prosperous Western nationhood. But the US middle classes are under assault across a broad front. I took a look at the wide variety of middle-class cost squeezes being applied in recent decades, and made the point that while we might not get there as fast, “one man, one vote, once” could happen here too.

https://www.jerrypournelle.com/chaosmanor/recuperation-continues-rip-ed-mitchell/

Will we continue (resume, really) middle class rule here? Things look more hopeful than they did two winters ago. But stay tuned.

regards

Porkypine

Aristotle defined democracy as rule by the middle class, as did many of the ancients. Middle class was defined as “those who possess the goods of fortune in moderation.” We do not have that now. In either party.

Feynman on Thinking

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lr8sVailoLw

I’ll probably mention this again, with comments.

A Solar Eclipse of the Heart

Or, one can argue that space.com has lost it.  You’re choice.

https://www.space.com/37675-warby-parker-total-solar-eclipse-parody.html

Courtesy Uncle Timmy.

Don’t miss it. I’m planning on banging pans just to make sure the sun doesn’t get eaten.

And this deserves comments; the case for man made global warming grows weaker and weaker.

Solar Minimums May Be [the] Final Piece of [the] Puzzle in [the] Fall of Western Civilisation.

<http://www.nationmultimedia.com/detail/opinion/30322133>

—————————————

Roland Dobbins

Apologies to whomever sent me this link: the Outlook crises ate you mail. But I had opened this link. Fascinating information on the end of the Greenland colonies after centuries. And it wasn’t the Gulf Stream. The western colony never was anywhere near any wandering of the Gulf Stream.

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/why-greenland-vikings-vanished-180962119/?utm_source=keywee-facebook.com&utm_medium=socialmedia&utm_campaign=keywee&kwp_0=350935&kwp_4=1409424&kwp_1=620431

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

Thursday, July 27, 2017

Being intelligent is not a felony. But most societies evaluate it as at least a misdemeanor.

-Robert A. Heinlein

The fact that in normal life and in psychiatry, anyone who “consistently and persistently insists” on anything else contrary to physical reality is considered either confused or delusional is conveniently ignored.

Michelle Cretella, M.D.

If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan.

Barrack Obama

The map is not the territory.

Alfred Korzybski

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

Glenn T. Seaborg, National Commission on Education, 1983

Six Republicans Who Voted for Obamacare Repeal in 2015 Sank the ‘Clean Repeal’ Bill Today

Another day, another defeat for the Senate’s health care effort

http://reason.com/blog/2017/07/26/six-republicans-who-voted-for-obamacare

n 2015, when presented with a bill that would have repealed much of Obamacare’s taxes and regulations, Senate Republicans were eager to send a political message. Though the bill would be vetoed by then-President Barack Obama, 52 Republicans voted “aye.”

With 48 of those 52 senators still in office, the Senate on Wednesday could muster only 45 votes in favor of a “clean repeal” of Obamacare. Six senators who voted for the 2015 bill voted against the repeal effort.

They are Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn.

Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va.

Dean Heller, R-Nev.

John McCain, R-Ariz.,

Lisa Murkowski R-Alaska

Rob Portman, R-Ohio.

[snip]

These will probably be known in future as Obamacare Republicans. Susan Collins of Maine has already earned that title.

Straight repeal of Obamacare, leaving us where we were before Obamacare was passed, would, according to those who vote against repeal, leave millions without health care insurance. It is never mentioned in these debates that “insurance” against pre-existing conditions is not insurance at all; it is a subsidy, an entitlement; an obligation for those who have actual insurance to pay for events that have already happened to other people, and who now can say they have health care insurance; while everyone else’s premiums skyrocket. Someone you don’t know, who lives in another state, has a misfortune. You decline to donate to charity to pay for his (or her, or his becoming her) misfortune or sex change operation, and the government will send a tax collector, followed if need be by the hangman, to collect for you in the guise of “insurance” for that individual.

But we can’t just let people die in the streets.

Nor did we before Obamacare; somehow we muddled along. That, however, is generally not mentioned in these debates; and any case no reforms to Obamacare are to be considered by the Democrats who vote unanimously to leave it unchanged: after, the disasters aren’t happening on their watch. Look over there: one of President Trump’s relatives let a Russian business man pay for his dinner. Or maybe he paid. Or there’s a rumor that the people who run Snopes paid. Or maybe Stalin through his estate… Russia. Russia. Russia.

0130 and bedtime.  FLASH: McCain saves Obamacare.

Collins of Maine, Murkowski of Alaska, and McCain of Arizona voted to save Obamacare from any change or repeal; the vote was 49 to 51.  If any single one of these Republicans had voted with the rest of the Party, at least something would have happened, as a 50-50 vote would have allowed the Vice president to cast the deciding vote. Why McCain decided to save Obamacare is not immediately known to me. He blamed it on the House, according to one news story, but I do not understand that. Obamacare is now his legacy. (And of course all the Democrats. I trust you like your health care premiums.)

“uranium flowing to Russia”

You might want to check your sources there. According to the NRC Uranium One never got a license to export and “no uranium produced at either facility may be exported.”

https://web.archive.org/web/20170129043258/https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/news/2010/10-211.pdf

Unless you have some source other than the “Clinton Cash” book, your statement is probably false.

 

This turns out to be extraordinarily difficult to do. It seems to be undisputed that the State Department approved a deal with a Russian company, but the approval was by a committee on which the Secretary of State sat. I could find no record of the votes of that Committee. It is probable that no Uranium actually has been exported as a result of this deal, although the Russian company owns 20% of it. I admit I was quoting Sean Hannity who famously talks about this. Even reading the Snopes rejection of the charge makes me wonder what’s going on here, but it is likely that no physical Uranium changed hands.

It appears not to be in dispute that a Russian oligarch donated tens of millions to the Clinton Foundation; apparently there are no Russian causes or charities in need of that money? And it is not in dispute that Mr. Clinton’s speaking fees, already outrageous, were doubled – well over half a million dollars per speech – and he delivered at least one at this rate. I have been unable to discover the nature of the speech, but given what was paid for it, perhaps it is held in close confidence.

Neither of these incidents is a criminal activity, but then most if not all of the endless expensive investigation of President Trump’s involvement with the Russians has yet to produce an actual crime or indictable offense, and most investigation allegations and results were pretty laughable. I would be astonished if the Russian Ambassador did not attempt to maintain close contact with anyone who might let slip some information useful to he boss, or if Mr. Putin did not encourage such activities, but of course I have no sources other than the media on this.

It is self evident that refusals to obey subpoenas, deleting subpoenaed messages, physical destruction of computing equipment, careless handling of classified documents, and receiving tens of millions of dollars in donations as well as hundreds of thousands in speaking fees does not get the investigative attention that a private real estate deal before the election, and a useless meeting with a Russian lawyer who deceived young Trump as to the purpose of the meeting receives.

Clearly the FBI is still afraid of the Clintons; more afraid than they are of the President of the United States. President Trump does not control the Deep State, and seems unable to dismiss holdovers from President Obama.

My Outlook has gone mad. It will not let me search certain folders. It will not run rules on others. I am trying to straighten things out, but it is taking time. Microsoft is improving outlook for enterprise users. Small users can safely be ignored, do they are.

And now (1500) I have visitors.

2330: After dinner, visitors left, brainfog enough that I am tired of fighting Outlook: the goal is to assemble a good outlook mail file that has all may stuff in it and which I can search and run my rules on; amazing how difficult that is; I’ll explain later.

Microsoft Office Help

I doubt that they can’t find people who use their products. It’s just that the people doing the Help files are programmers, working at Microsoft.
As programmers, they already know how the program works, so the help files and screenshots are just reminders in case a detail slips their mind.
And as programmers inside a huge bureaucracy, they don’t meet users, or care about them.

Besides, if they can’t remember how to do something, and the help file isn’t helpful, just call up the person who modified the program, and ask.
To write instructions or help files properly, said files have to be tested on complete outsiders, people without a clue as to how to do the task. Hand them the files or manual, watch them try, and if they can’t figure it out, explain what they didn’t get from the help file, then modify the file to clarify. Iterate till ten or so people in a row can find the proper help file, and do whatever is required, without asking a single question.
But all that requires taking the job of writing instructions at least as seriously as writing the programs.

Stephen

As it happens. One of my recent visitors is a former Microsoft executive. He sort of agrees. I remember when bill Gates ran the place; he was proud of having ordinary users use his stuff, and learning their problems so they could fix them..Ah well.

From years ago (I have been forced to look at what I thought were archived files):

I still don’t understand how the Affordable Care Act is constitutional when it is a direct tax that is not apportioned and, therefore, seemingly unconstitutional. But, there is another interesting angle to the tax and the subsidies that may surprise the residents of 36

states:

<.>

The law states that tax credits will be available through so-called exchanges, or online marketplaces, “established by the State.” When it was being crafted, it was assumed that all 50 states would create their own exchanges. After it passed in March 2010, it became clear that many states would rely on the federal government to operate them, as the law allows.

In 2012, the Internal Revenue Service made the subsidies available in all states. The law’s challengers claim they cannot be offered in exchanges operated by the federal government. Thirty-six states fit into that category. Without subsidies, insurance costs would skyrocket.

</>

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2014/11/22/supreme-court-obama-health-care/19271273/

The populist press says this could “kill Obamacare”. I doubt it. I think it is more likely this president will stand up and make a speech saying that, under this law, states have the right allow the federal government to set up and run insurance exchanges for them. And, if they do that, they aren’t eligible for the subsidies.

He, and other democrats, can appeal to the people and say the law is clear, his IRS tried to help them in the interim, but now their states will either have to get their act together or those subsidies will no longer be available and the states are to blame for this — not him, not his party, and not his initiative passed into law.

What happens next would depend on how the states react. Would they find ways harness public outrage and focus that on this president, his party, and his policies passed into law by a congress controlled by his party? Or, would the smooth talking leftists stall the matter long enough that enough state politicians would make their own exchanges for fear of losing offices in the latest debacle?

I can tell you one thing, if the Supreme Court rules in the way the snip from this article outlines, shares of ConAgra foods will increase as cynics by massive amounts of Orville Redenbacher’s popcorn as they sit back, much, and laugh at the latest debacle of this coming summer.

◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

Remember when the Republicans were going to repeal Obamacare?

I am experiencing odd problems posting this, buy it appears to be going up all right; it tells me that the server returned an improper response.  But the text goes up; unfortunately there is an endless spinning wheel in the tab. Perhaps it will fix itself.

Hah. It sort of did. I no longer get the “improper response:, it loads quicker – buy the spinner is still in the tab.  Enough. I’m for bed. Good night.

And now the spinner is gone.  No trace of the problem.  it did fix itself.

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

Monday, July 24, 2017

The fact that in normal life and in psychiatry, anyone who “consistently and persistently insists” on anything else contrary to physical reality is considered either confused or delusional is conveniently ignored.

Michelle Cretella, M.D.

The map is not the territory.

Alfred Korzybski

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

James Burnham

Major computer crisis converted to minor by Eric today, but it took all day. Writeup to follow. One Problem is that they keep improving Office, but the F1 help files are not revised, so instructions given in Help often include screen shots showing menu items that are no longer there for the version of Office you are using. This is not good. They need some product managers who care; apparently Microsoft can’t find any who actually USE their products.

The news today is boring. Russia. Russia. But never about money flowing from Russia to the Clinton Foundation as US Uranium flows to Russia; or the enormous speaking fees former President Clinton collects in Russia. Somehow that is not important, while real estate deals in Florida before Mr. Trump was nominated were. And if you believe that…

Is Amazon Evil?

Good afternoon, Dr. Pournelle,
I saw this article on the combination of Amazon and the Washington Establishment, and I thought that you might find interesting.
I didn’t know about the Post Office subsidy; I order a lot through Amazon, but now I’m wondering if I should drop it.
One thing the article doesn’t mention is that Amazon is also selling more industrial supplies and tools, the type of goods that companies such as McMaster-Carr sell. Amazon isn’t at that level yet, but perhaps in 5 years…
Regards,
Don Parker

I would not call Amazon evil, but I am concerned with preservation of competition. This is a subject requiring much thought and more time than I have tonight.

Welfare-to-work

Jerry:

“Ed” suggests that we end welfare and use that money to put people to work.

The first thing to do would be to train up inspectors, to go out and check the safety of every part of the infrastructure. They can find the bridges which are disintegrating, the roads which need repair, the pipelines which are ready to fail. This is an incredibly massive job, which has long-since overwhelmed the agencies responsible for maintaining them. Their reports would allow for proper planning, increasing safety and cutting repair costs.

While some of these jobs would be physically demanding, others can be done without getting out of the car, so any level of physical fitness or disability can find a job suited to their capabilities.

They would also be long-term jobs, because by the time one area has been fully inspected and repaired, it will be about the time to start the next series of inspections.

Keith

Obama promised shovel ready jobs, but managed to double the national debt while the roads and bridges crumbled. Your scheme would generate many useful reports; but sorting the myriad reports into useful and not so much might be difficult. Creating new bureaus may not be the best answer, but it should not summarily be dismissed. Our roads and bridges – many of them – are really deteriorated; do they know that back where they failed to find shovel ready jobs?

‘Who knew that hunter-gatherers without a written language could keep such careful records?’

‘Who knew that hunter-gatherers without a written language could keep such

careful records?’

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2017/01/a-drought-of-sanity-in-california.html

—————————————

Roland Dobbins

Dr. Jordan Kare

I was fortunate enough to work on a small piece of one of Dr. Kare’s projects and had a chance to talk with him on several occasions. He impressed me as one of the smartest people I’ve ever met and was simultaneously approachable and easy to be around. I was doing some design work at Lasermotive on a laser propulsion concept and he would listen to my ideas attentively and always treated me as though I was making a vital contribution. Perhaps not, actually, but I was encouraged to keep the ideas flowing. Sorry to hear of his passing, the world doesn’t have enough people like him.

John Witt

Give me shelter 

Dear Doctor Pournelle,

The other day I saw a Talking head, apparently a rich, progressive activist type, opine in reference to war refugees that it was incumbent as a moral responsibility on the United States to take in refugees from any country in which we wage war. Although I was taken aback by this sweeping statement, part f a group conversation on CNN, one of those so beloved “”roundtables” wherein each member attempts to outdo the others in coming up with a pithy soundbite while dancing around the issue (in this case the supreme court more or less upholding the Trump Travel Restriction Order), neither the moderator nor any other member of the cluster-chat took issue with this rather astonishing moral imperative argument.

This makes me wonder: Syria and the other sources of refugees currently tramping across the borders of the Western World are predominantly, nearly exclusively, Muslim nations. Where are the Saudis and the Gulf Arab states in all of this? How many refugees from their neighboring nations, refugees that are fellow Muslims, are they taking in? After all, these nations are some of the richest, per capita, most advanced societies anywhere, well able to afford the cost. They also have PLENTY of room.

Allow me the extravagance of a supposition: suppose New Zealand broke out into bloody civil strife, with millions fleeing the war zone for safer shores. Suppose Australia, rich and underpopulated was silent on the matter, and sealed its’’ borders. Suppose the rest of the world then insisted that, oh, let us say China and India must take in millions of New Zealanders, that it is their moral and ethical duty to take in the wretched refuse of wars horrors.

Would that not be more or less the equivalent of the current mad theory that the West must take in the Middle East’s refugees?

As for the moral argument that war waged upon a nation requires the state that initiates hostilities to take in refugees from the other:

Hmm, do I have the right to move to Japan or Germany, or Italy? Wait, the Axis in World War Two also included Hungary and Rumania! Say, I kind of like the idea of moving to the Black Sea coast of Rumania, setting up a little Dacha and having the Rumanian people foot the bill for my retirement. After all, Rumania declared war on America in 1941, and I am sure I can find a Human Rights attorney to argue that the psychic burden of that aggression has damaged me to the point where I will never again feel safe in America…

Ah, sweet idiocy, thy name is International Relations!

Petronius

And it’s late. Tomorrow there’s still work to do cleaning up after the disaster, fiction to write, and more. Good night. Things are looking up. Medical appointment today: I remain cancer free, and came away without new medicines or new instructions.

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

Friday, July 21, 2017

Shuttle accomplished much. And she was all we had. And yes, I loved seeing her fly, and I can’t listen to ‘Fly Columbia’ without a tear. And if that doesn’t get to you, and you can hear Fire in the Sky without emotion, then – well. It’s not my place to insult my readers.

https://www.jerrypournelle.com/chaosmanor/fire-in-the-sky/

Dr. Jordin Kare, The Bard of Man in Space.  RIP

He was never as famous as he should have been, but he was instrumental in keeping the dream alive after the the Apollo program ended as anyone, and he inspired interest in the Shuttle when it was all we had.

He also kept alive the concept of laser propulsion, including launch to orbit but ground based lasers, long after Arky Kantrowitz pretty well despaired of it’s acceptance in his lifetime. He did serious work for the space program; but he will be longer remembered for his songs.

From September, 2010:

I make no secret of having mixed emotions about the Shuttle. The design was wrong and the design criteria included requiring the services of the large standing army of development scientists who had made Apollo possible. Had I stayed in the aerospace industry, say in Operations Research at North American Rockwell – I would doubtless have benefitted from Shuttle. And in 1980, when we were preparing the transition team papers for the incoming Reagan Administration, the Administrator of NASA came to Larry Niven’s house to plead the case for continuing Shuttle on the grounds that it might be flawed, but it was all we had. (It had not yet flown an orbital mission.)

And it was all we had for manned space flight, and it was possible that it could evolve into a truly reusable space ship. It didn’t. From the first Shuttle required operation of the Shuttle main engines at more than 100% of their design rated thrust, and that meant that after each flight they had to be reconstructed. Shuttle was a rebuildable spacecraft, but it was not reusable in the usual operational sense – refuel it and fly again. And over time we found that the Shuttle annual budget was independent of the number of flights. Shuttle ate much of the dream of manned space flight.

Worse, NASA Houston and the standing army insisted on keeping the low pressure pure oxygen space suit system rather than developing the NASA Ames higher pressure air suit. This compromised all the Shuttle EVA missions since it required pure oxygen prebreathing, meaning that the pressure in the Shuttle on missions in which an EVA was planned had to be at low pressure pure oxygen; and that in turn meant that the number of molecules of cooling ‘air’ would be low, meaning that many of the electronics in Shuttle had to be shut down until after the last EVA.

There were other flaws. And yet: Shuttle accomplished much. And she was all we had. And yes, I loved seeing her fly, and I can’t listen to ‘Fly Columbia’ without a tear. And if that doesn’t get to you, and you can hear Fire in the Sky without emotion, then – well. It’s not my place to insult my readers.

A long time ago Larry Niven pointed out to Carl Sagan that every time Carl and his people won the argument that robots would do, and we did not need a manned space program, he lost more support for space. The American people were willing to pay to send humans to space. They were not so concerned with taxing themselves to send robots and only robots. Exploring the universe has a purpose, and part of that purpose is to find new resources, and new habitats, for humanity. As Tsiolkovsky said long ago, the Earth is too small and fragile a basket for the human race to keep all its eggs in. And as I said long ago in A Step Farther Out,  90% of the resources easily available to the human race are not on the Earth at all. Even inefficient space exploration has a high potential payoff.

It may be that I am part of an irrelevant and bygone era, but if so, then so are you all. Arthur Clarke said it well: if the human race is to survive, than for most of its history the word ‘ship’ will mean ‘space ship.’ If we do not go to space, all of humanity will one day be part of an irrelevant and bygone era.

I used to see Jordin at conventions, and made a point of finding him. It was always worth doing. We were never close friends, but he was a good friend. Farewell to the Bard of Man in Space.

A Step Farther Out https://www.amazon.com/Step-Farther-Out-Jerry-Pournelle-ebook/dp/B004XTKFWW/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1500682475&sr=8-1&keywords=a+step+farther+out%5C%22&tag=chaosmanor-20

I don’t like to say it because it sounds like despair, but it’s becoming more obvious that Republicans can’t rule; at least these Republicans can’t. Having passed bills to repeal Obamacare back when they knew President Obama would veto them, they can’t do it now that they have a President who would sign it. The only remedy here is to do it: send the bills through, and record the votes. Then we’d have an idea of who not to invite back to any party function, fund raising event, or even barbeque or baby kissing; let them caucus with the Democrats if they like. And raise their own money.

Yes, I suppose I don’t mean all of that, but Obamacare? The very notion that I am responsible for everyone’s medical problems has not been debated openly; and there has been no real debate on the utter unconstitutionality of a national entitlement to health care. No State dared try it; not the richest, nor the poorest.

Federal aid to education worked so well, didn’t it? It converted a fairly decent system of education in many states that scaled down to something awful in a few – converted that to something near awful in all. That’s improvement? And we move further down the path.

The only way that sending the tax collector (followed by the hangman for those who refuse) to finance education is justified is the theory that education is a good investment: educated students make better citizens who cost less to govern, and some will go on to create jobs and find other ways to enrich us all. It may even be true – if done right. It’s demonstrably not true now. Now the schools exist to make sure that anyone who gets “credentials” will never have to work a day after a few years working in a state educational institution. This does not seem like a good investment to me.

Los Angeles pays over $8,000 a year per student to each school. If they were to offer me $8,000 a year to educate 100 10^th grade students, paying me only for those who demonstrated previously agreed to standards of progress and otherwise leaving it to me to hire a hall and assistants to do the teaching, do you think I’d do well? I do. I’d be arguing to add a grade a year to my school, and profiting every year. And if I couldn’t do it, the kids would damn well still have got a better education than what I saw last time I visited a classroom.

John Stuart Mill argued in On Liberty:

Were the duty of enforcing universal education once admitted, there would be an end to the difficulties about what the State should teach, and how it should teach, which now convert the subject into a mere battle-field for sects and parties, causing the time and labour which should have been spent in educating, to be wasted in quarrelling about education. If the government would make up its mind to require for every child a good education, it might save itself the trouble of providing one. It might leave to parents to obtain the education where and how they pleased, and content itself with helping to pay the school fees of the poorer classes of children, and defraying the entire school expenses of those who have no one else to pay for them. The objections which are urged with reason against State education, do not apply to the enforcement of education by the State, but to the State’s taking upon itself to direct that education: which is a totally different thing. That the whole or any large part of the education of the people should be in State hands, I go as far as any one in deprecating.

Of course we’ve forgotten all that. If we ever thought about it. The purpose of today’s public education is to see that all teachers’ union members are paid until they die.

And in a lighter vein:

SUBJ: Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.

Apropos of nothing – this is just too damn good not to pass along.

“Man hurt after blasting wheel with shotgun”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1569250/Man-hurt-after-blasting-wheel-with-shotgun.html

“Stupid is as stupid does.” – Forrest Gump

Yeah I know this guy is a poster child for natural selection.

But. . .

How many (of us!) can TRULY say we have NEVER, EVER been SORELY tempted to shoot a piece of recalcitrant hardware?

I suspect most (of us!) have never heeded such temptation. But I will confess, when I was younger and my passions were yet unmellowed by a couple score of years . . . I was DAMNED close a time or two.

Don’t look so smug.

Cordially,

John

P.S.

(Waaaaay) back when Johnny Carson was still hosting The Tonight Show, I recall a guest he had one evening. The guy had finally gotten fed up with the coke machine in his gas station stealing people’s money. He drew his pistol and shot the machine.

(Suddenly Keenan Wynn’s famous deadpan line from _Dr. Strangelove_ springs to mind, to wit: “You’re gonna have to answer to the Coca-Cola Company.” But I digress.)

Carson interviewed the guy in a light-hearted fashion and give him an award for “The Best Use Of A Slug In A Vending Machine.”

The audience cheered uproariously.

I opine that in the heart of every member of a technologically-advanced society lurks a tiny little Luddite spirit thirsting for revenge.

John

But perhaps that is more true than you think.

The end of the internet startup

We haven’t had a major new technology company in more than 10 years.

Updated by Timothy B. Leetim@vox.com Jul 11, 2017, 10:00am EDT

https://www.vox.com/new-money/2017/7/11/15929014/end-of-the-internet-startup

Silicon Valley is supposed to be a place where a couple of guys in a garage or a dorm room can start companies that change the world. It happened with Apple and Microsoft in the 1970s, AOL in the 1980s, Amazon, Yahoo, and Google in the 1990s, and Facebook in the 2000s.

But the 2010s seem to be suffering from a startup drought. People are still starting startups, of course. But the last really big tech startup success, Facebook, is 13 years old.

Until last year, Uber seemed destined to be Silicon Valley’s newest technology giant. But now Uber’s CEO has resigned in disgrace and the company’s future is in doubt. Other technology companies launched in the past 10 years don’t seem to be in the same league. Airbnb, the most valuable American tech startup after Uber, is worth $31 billion, about 7 percent of Facebook’s value. Others — like Snap, Square, and Slack — are worth much less.

So what’s going on? On a recent trip to Silicon Valley, I posed that question to several technology executives and startup investors.

“When I look at like Google and Amazon in the 1990s, I kind of feel like it’s Columbus and Vasco da Gama sailing out of Portugal the first time,” said Jay Zaveri, an investor at the Silicon Valley firm Social Capital.

The early internet pioneers grabbed the “low-hanging fruit,” Zaveri suggested, occupying lucrative niches like search, social networks, and e-commerce. By the time latecomers like Pinterest and Blue Apron came along, the pickings had gotten slimmer.

But others told me there was more to the story than that. Today’s technology giants have become a lot more savvy about anticipating and preempting threats to their dominance. They’ve done this by aggressively expanding into new markets and by acquiring potential rivals when they’re still relatively small. And, some critics say, they’ve gotten better at controlling and locking down key parts of the internet’s infrastructure, closing off paths that early internet companies used to reach a mass market.

As a result, an industry that used to be famous for its churn is starting to look like a conventional oligopoly — dominated by a handful of big companies whose perch atop the industry looks increasingly secure. [snip]

It didn’t take the Deep State to get control. As Adam Smith said. Whenever two capitalists get together, they conspire to keep newcomers out of their business. One way is to get government to impose regulations which add greatly to startup expenses

All Men Are Created Equal

Jerry,
I have never in my life read or heard the phrase “all men are created equal” to mean that all people are equal in all of their abilities. It was evident to me as a five year old in first grade that not all of the children or adults were of equal ability. I have always understood the phrase to mean that all people are born with the same basic prerequisite of life, the need for sustenance, which implies the need for nourishment, shelter, and security in one’s self. This prerequisite is there no matter how dull or brilliant, no matter how physically incapable or capable a person is.
The need for sustenance implies the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That is, that to lead a rational life, one must be free to obtain their sustenance, secure in the knowledge that the fruits of their efforts will not be summarily seized by another, and that their efforts will not be arbitrarily impeded by another. The whole edifice of Western law unfolds from this first principle.
There is the implication that the law should neither penalize on person’s efforts nor favor those of another. There is the implication that one must be judged for one’s actions, not one’s appearance or beliefs. In short, there is the implication that all persons are equal UNDER THE LAW. But, nowhere is there the implication that all persons are equal in their abilities.
To attempt to create a society in which all persons are equal in their abilities is to contravene the principle that all persons are equal under the law. You must use the law to impede the efforts those who are able and favor the efforts of those who are not. Such a system is not even communism, where the efforts of the able are not impeded, but their fruits are seized for the not able. Such a system will not let the able produce at all. This is the society that the far left would impose on the West.

Kevin

If anything in nature is self-evident, it is that all men are not created equal. When I was young I said openly – even in my days of flirtation with communism – that 90% of humanity were dependent on the other10% to keep them out of utter poverty. Probably I was wrong. But men are not created equal.

That does not mean they are not human.

A long dialog and other discussion of Global Warming from 2010:

https://www.jerrypournelle.com/mail/2010/Q3/mail640.html#dialog

And more, including some lengthy words on education:

https://www.jerrypournelle.com/view/2010/Q4/view643.html#dialog

Actually more rational than most discussions are now.

Globalize the Presidency:
A Modest Proposal

We now have proof, from Trump Jr. himself, that he and friends tried to outsource oppo research to foreign spies. How very globalist.
In normal times this would earn condemnation even from his party. But these are not normal times. I therefore predict that the Republicans will normalize this abnormality. So of course one calls on foreigners to meddle in elections!
I am reminded of some incidents from Ancient Greek history, where a citizen of a city-state is exiled, but returns at the head of an army from another city-state. That’s treason, of course, but sometimes it worked.
Why did Russia meddle with the Presidential election? Because that office has global reach. It’s only reasonable for other nations to want a say in the American Presidency; it has an effect on them.
So here’s a modest proposal: make this official. Globalize the Presidency. Let citizens of other nations lobby and fund and campaign openly. Perhaps let them vote, at, say, 1/100 of a vote each. More if they pay off our debts.
Comments?
– paradoctor

If the idea is to get our debts paid, isn’t there a more easily accomplished way? Levying tribute on others is a long and well established procedure. Today it’s the have nots levying tribute on the haves (only the State is pleased to do it fir them; the State is always pleased to do it for them). The Constitution was intended to prevent that, and did so for a while. It’s remarkable: those who possess the best arms are deferential to those who march and swagger and set fires, then run away. It will be interesting to see how long that lasts; and then to see just whom the army will obey.

To the victor belong the spoils. The strong do as they will, and the weak suffer what they must. Sometimes the strong forget that, and act as if they were the weak.

Current Status of Space Law and Private Property

Hello Dr. Pournelle,
I grew up reading your books, which helped to nurture my interest in space. My aptitudes were not the best fit for a STEM career, but I have pursued the study of law as it relates to space. I will probably be pursuing related doctoral work in the fall, and as an LL.M. student got to successfully represent North America in an academic competition on the subject before an ICJ panel in Jerusalem back in 2015.
Linked is an article I’ve written defending the 2015 U.S. law declaring private ownership of extracted space resources legal. Whatever percentage of your audience which is willing to pay the exorbitant paywall fee might be interested: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14777622.2017.1288515
I’ve co-authored another, shorter, article on the same topic with a lawyer for a new space company–it can be requested here https://iafastro.directory/iac/archive/browse/IAC-16/E7/2/32435/ or from me–but I don’t think I have a direct link for it as of yet.
Regards,
Ian Perry
University of Mississippi School of Law, 2013 (J.D.), 2015 (LL.M.)

At least for the next 500 years we are unlikely to encounter any space resources owned by aborigines. That does not stop someone from claiming them as “the common heritage” or some such. In the current climate those claims may prevail. You go find it, taking all the risks and paying the price. I’ll be happy to share it with you.

Thanks for the kind words.

In case you missed this:

George Mosse Lectures On-line

Dr. Pournelle:
I expect you will be glad to know that the University of Wisconsin has four series of lectures recorded by Dr. Mosse — a total of 122 lectures recorded between 1969 and 1982 — in mp3 format, available for free download at: http://mosseprogram.wisc.edu/mosse_audio_lectures.htm.
Best prayers and wishes for you and Mrs. Pournelle.
-mjl

Mosse was the best lecturer on Western Civilization I have ever heard. I wish those had been available when my boys were growing up.

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