Chaos Manor View, Wednesday, July 22, 2015

I’m in novel writing mode now, which means that for a few days I will have less time for this page and Chaos Manor Reviews; but Chaos Manor Reviews will generally have something computerish, and I’ll try to keep this place going; and it won’t be that long.
We had a good Wednesday story conference including Skyping Dr. Jack Cohen in England, and one thing it indicated is that we’ve come to a part in the opening of the book that needs me; technical stuff mostly, and fitting it into dialogue and action scenes so you don’t get lumps in the stew; the sort of stuff I used to turn out fairly quickly, but it seems to go slowly now because my typing is so bad. I am not able to touch type at all. The good news is that I am getting better at two finger; but, alas, that means I have to look at the keyboard and not the screen. Then when I look up I see the silly mistakes I have made, and have to go about fixing them. It’s slow; but it’s faster than typing on a Selectric and we wrote quite a lot, including The Mote in God’s Eye http://www.amazon.com/Mote-Gods-Eye-Larry-Niven/dp/0671741926 on typewriters, and Mote still holds up (and sells pretty well, too; if you haven’t read it, you will probably like it a lot).

Anyway, that’s the way things are. I also learn that all my little ornaments each open a new file, and those add up, so I’m trying to get a new scheme to put in the little gold bubbles a different way. We’ll see.

I need to comment at length on the Iran “deal”, but it is sort of pointless: it’s pretty well a done deal. Mr. Obama has made that clear. He’s in this all the way.

As to why, unless you assume deliberate malice on his part, he must be assuming that he’ll win the Persians around to his way of thinking: we are showing trust and good faith, and we expect that in return; after which we will both be better off. After all, we’re not on a war course with Iran, but they can’t know this because we sent an invading army into Iraq. Jihadists don’t blow up Brazilian airplanes and civilians. Treat Persia right and they’ll stop holding Death To America parades, and the world will be a better place.

We tried force, and CIA operations and such; give peace a chance. And of course he is President and it’s pretty well his call.

I do point out that in the early 1500’s, a sophisticated Prince, Suleiman, later called Suleiman the Magnificent, became Sultan of Turkey; It was thought by many of the European leadership that this was a man you could do business with, and many set their policies to accommodate that assumptiuon.

Islamic scholars were just completing new editions of the Koran and the Hadith (Sayings of the Prophet), and the plain language laid upon the Leader of Islam the duty to bring the entire world under submission; there could be truces with the infidels, but peace with them is forbidden by the black letter law of the text. But there are black letter commandments in the Bible, particularly the Old Testament that were no longer taken seriously (see Jonathon Swift on that 200 years later); surely Suleiman would be a reasonable man.., Of course he was not, and in 1529 marched to besiege Vienna after taken much of the Balkans and starting feuds there that continue to this day. His siege was not successful, although it could have been; it was a near thing, actually. And the campaign was undertaken at considerable cost, both economically and to his prestige. Fortunately his rule was tempered by the loss of his genius advisor and his oldest son to palace intrigues and the Ukrainian/Polish girl known as Roxelana, but that’s another story. So are the Ayatollahs ruling Iran, and the Sunni/Shia conflict continues.

I do not think Mr. Obama has the correct appreciation of the situation, but I was not elected President; and under the Constitution we have only one President.

As to what strategy we adopt if this one does not work, one thing is certain: Iran will have nuclear weapons before we can know.

Still more on automation and jobs
There is little doubt that, someday, robots will be taking a lot of jobs from people. Whether that will be in five years or fifty cannot be determined with certainty until after it has happened. It is however true that, right now (which is where we are on the time-line), truck drivers are not seeing their wages fall because self-driving trucks are taking their jobs from them. Right now, much of the talk of automation taking jobs is clearly a smoke screen designed to obscure the real reason that current wages are stagnant or falling.
However, there is another angle to automation that I think people have missed. It’s possible that, at least under some conditions, robots could simply be a stealthy means of offshoring jobs to low-wage countries that have, until recently, been hard to offshore!
For example, there is a company that makes robotic floor cleaners for large establishments. These floor cleaners are only competitive when wages for that class of labor are over ten dollars an hour. Obviously the businesses would be even happier employing human labor at a dollar an hour – that would be cheaper than using robots (for now).
But here’s the thing: these robots are, I believe, largely assembled by hand in places like Vietnam where wages are a dollar an hour or less!
So here’s the thing: what if the total amount of human labor saved by these cleaning robots is equal to the total amount of overseas human labor required to assemble the robots (and their spare parts etc) in the first place? In this case we haven’t saved any human labor at all – we’ve used the robots as a conduit to replace $10/hr labor with $1/hr labor!
Yes I know – the truth is in the specifics, and in this case would require the kind of careful quantitative analysis that modern jingoistic economists have largely abandoned (‘Anything labeled free trade is always good just because’ etc). Still, something to consider.

TG

The problem of ‘unemployment’…
Dr. Pournell,
You have hit “ glancingly “ at the problem.
The last time industrialization created a surplus of goods-per-working-hour the response of the industrialized world was to simply decrease hours to match. (It is amusing – but the reduction of factory hours from 60 per week to 40 per week is nearly a match to the reduction of farm laborers. Effectively we got more factory workers but each did less factory work – and the total volume of factory work hours remained fairly stable.) Why can we not do the same again? Well, one block might be the law/union homogeny that has demonstrated itself entirely resistant to any shift in the ‘eight-hour-day/five-day-week’ formula. Another might be the burden of confiscatory taxes – which have in effect already removed a third of the working hours so far as the worker compensation is concerned. In effect, 1/3 of the ‘surplus hours’ have already been taken away – just not the work involved. These are both injurious, and annoying, and frustrating… but the stupidity of the master class has been overcome before and can be again. What can NOT be overcome, unfortunately, is the unsuitability for productive action of a fair percentage of the population. The productive cannot lay down a portion of the working day because the unproductive are incapable of picking up the ‘slack’. [One may, from another angle, view the division as having occurred, if one takes idle dependency as a form of work. Which – I grant – as it is paid for – can be so viewed. Consider the percentage of ‘career welfare’ personnel. The numbers are, again, amusingly close.]
As for solutions? I have none save that of history. The industrial revolution destroyed a fair percentage of the English population. Whatever upheaval cuts off the bread for the charity-dependant class will do the same. This is sad, but hardly a unique event, or one difficult to anticipate in any context save time.
With respect
Keryl Kris Reinke

When there is little shortage of goods, all is well; it is easy to divide a large pie. Or it is said to be.

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

Chaos Manor View, Monday, July 20, 2015

“Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded—here and there, now and then—are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.

“This is known as ‘bad luck’.”

– Robert A. Heinlein

I have installed – well Eric has installed while I watched – a new XBOX ONE in the TV room. At the moment it’s more used to get the TV into my local network than anything else, and I have little experience with it; but we seem to be able to access the web, and my various servers. It’s on HDM2 while the regular TV is HDM1 because I didn’t want the way we use the set to change much, particularly for Roberta; eventually we’ll have integrated it into the system, and we can use voice control. So far I’ve sort of seen the potential but we don’t do that.

Eric’s report will be in Chaos Manor Reviews.

We did test SKYPE. We usually Skype the kids on Sunday, and it’s a problem because Roberta’s machine faces a bright window, so it’s a bit hard for me to get into her office and in the picture with her; but we used Skype on the XBOX now that we have reliable Internet in the back TV room – and it worked splendidly. The camera adjusts to get both of us into the picture, and if we add a third the view expands to include him too. I expect there are apps that will do that for the MacBook Pro or Widows 7 with Logitech Camera that we normally use, but I haven’t seen them.

It probably means that we’ll use it for Skyping with Dr. Jack Cohen next time since it’s easy enough to get three chairs in there, and it’s been hard getting all three of us in the picture using the Mac; although I suspect there is a Mac app that would make it easier. We’ll see. In any event. Look for more about the XBOX One now.

We need a new version of capitalism for the jobless future

By Vivek Wadhwa July 20 at 7:00 AM

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/innovations/wp/2015/07/20/we-need-a-new-version-of-capitalism-for-the-jobless-future/

“There are more net jobs in the world today than ever before, after hundreds of years of technological innovation and hundreds of years of people predicting the death of work. The logic on this topic is crystal clear. Because of that, the contrary view is necessarily religious in nature, and, as we all know, there’s no point in arguing about religion.”

These are the words of tech mogul Marc Andreessen, in an e-mail exchange with me on the effect of advancing technologies on employment. Andreessen steadfastly believes that the same exponential curve that is enabling creation of an era of abundance will create new jobs faster and more broadly than before, and calls my assertions that we are heading into a jobless future a luddite fallacy.

I wish he were right, but he isn’t. And it isn’t a religious debate; it’s a matter of public policy and preparedness. With the technology advances that are presently on the horizon, not only low-skilled jobs are at risk; so are the jobs of knowledge workers. Too much is happening too fast. It will shake up entire industries and eliminate professions. Some new jobs will surely be created, but they will be few. And we won’t be able to retrain the people who lose their jobs, because, as I said to Andreessen, you can train an Andreessen to drive a cab, but you can’t retrain a laid-off cab driver to become an Andreessen. The jobs that will be created will require very specialized skills and higher levels of education — which most people don’t have.

I am optimistic about the future and know that technology will provide society with many benefits. I also realize that millions will face permanent unemployment. I worry that if we keep brushing this issue under the rug, social upheaval will result. We must make the transition easier by providing for those worst affected. In the short term, we will create many new jobs in the United States to build robots and factories and program new computer systems. But the employment boom won’t last long.

Within 10 years, we will see Uber laying off most of its drivers as it switches to self-driving cars; manufacturers will start replacing workers with robots; fast-food restaurants will install fully automated food-preparation systems; artificial intelligence–based systems will start doing the jobs of most office workers in accounting, finance and administration. The same will go for professionals such as paralegals, pharmacists, and customer-support representatives. All of this will occur simultaneously, and the pace will accelerate in the late 2020s.

The article is quite long and quite thoughtful. I recommend it to your attention.

The problem is real: our education is increasingly unable to teach people to do anything that someone else would pay to have done; yet it drives us increasingly into debt, both public debt and saddling the students with lifetime debts. That can’t last, and we all know it.

But the Federal Government is relentless: No child is to be Left Behind, and since in the real world there are only a very few Marc Andreessens there will be unequal results – but inequality is not acceptable in public education. So the smart ones flee to private schools, but if these are not – suitable – to the bureaucracy? Of course the rich will not give up their schools. Perhaps we can make them do it. But the rich can hire armies too. If this sounds a bit familiar, you probably didn’t get history in a public school, where government, we are taught, always produces good results because it has good intentions.

After all, intentions are more important than results…  If the Regulators have pure hearts and mean well, surely they will find an answer; can’t leave such things to freedom, no can we?

Apple Hires Auto Industry Veterans

Tech giant has been building a team for an electric-car project

http://www.wsj.com/articles/apple-hires-auto-industry-manufacturing-veteran-1437430826

By

Christina Rogers,

Mike Ramsey and

Daisuke Wakabayashi

Updated July 20, 2015 7:51 p.m. ET

Apple Inc.is recruiting experts from the auto industry, a signal that its efforts to develop an electric car could be gaining ground.

Apple leaps in, but slowly?

Windows 10 Signifies Microsoft’s Shift in Strategy

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/20/technology/windows-10-signifies-microsofts-shift-in-strategy.html?_r=0

By NICK WINGFIELDJULY 19, 2015      (nyt)

SEATTLE — Next week, when Microsoft releases Windows 10, the latest version of the company’s operating system, the software will offer a mix of the familiar and new to the people who run earlier versions of it on more than 1.5 billion computers and other devices.

There will be a virtual assistant in the software that keeps track of users’ schedules, and Microsoft will regularly trickle out updates with new features to its users over the Internet. And the Start menu, a fixture of Windows for decades, will make a formal reappearance.

But one of the biggest changes is the price. Microsoft will not charge customers to upgrade Windows on computers, a shift that shows how power dynamics in the tech industry have changed.

The decision to make free a product that once cost $50 to $100 is a sign of how charging consumers for software is going the way of the flip phone. Companies like Google have crept into Microsoft’s business with free software and services subsidized by its huge advertising business, while Apple in recent years has made upgrades to its applications and operating systems free, earning its money instead from hardware sales.

If you have Window 8, you probably should grab Windows 10; but if you’re happy with Windows 7, I wouldn’t be in any great rush. ”Be not the first by whom the new is tried, nor yet the last to cast the old aside.”

https://medium.com/@Blakei/artificial-intelligence-and-the-future-of-work-abacce6328d6?curator=MediaREDEF

Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Work — Medium

By Blake Irving, CEO, GoDaddy — Artificial Intelligence has been the topic de jour lately with every corner of intellectual thought sounding in on the perils, and the potential rewards, of synthesizing a machine intelligence that could successfully perform any intellectual task that a human can. Elon Musk, Bill Gates and even Stephen Hawking have all suggested that an AI with this sort of general intelligence (also known as Strong AI or Full AI) could bring about an apocalypse that sees an end to human civilization, or even an end to the human race.

There’s no doubt that Strong AI is the subject of intense research by DARPA, MIT, Berkeley, IBM, Google and many others. But it’s hard not to notice that despite all the anxiety, Strong AI today lives only in the imagination of science fiction writers and in the hopes and dreams of research scientist. At the prestigious “Future of AI” conference in San Juan this January, the estimates for when an AI might emerge vacillated wildly from 5 years to a hundred years in our future — its variables are that unknown.

While a singularity triggering AI is tantalizing to speculate about, like day dreaming with a lottery ticket in your pocket, it’s still all hypothetical. So when I was asked to join a panel discussion about “when AI will change our lives” at this year’s Fortune Brainstorm Tech, my first thought was, “who knows, it may not happen in our lifetimes.” That thought was followed quickly by a second thought: “when it happens it will probably just kill us all, so let’s talk about something more practical.”

There’s considerably more.

Todos Santos in reality? 
Dr. Pournelle,
This came from the UK Daily Mail.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3167922/The-end-urban-sprawl-Ambitious-plan-fit-entire-CITY-inside-single-bee-hive-skyscraper-house-25-000.html
I wonder if the architect has heard of Paolo Soleri?
Best regards,
Bill Kelly

Arcologies make sense for some people.

A foolish consistency.

Dear Jerry –

I expect that you looked benignly on the recent publicity concerning the close approach of 2011 UW158, with its much-mentioned valuation of $5.4 trillion (in platinum alone – or maybe it’s all precious metals, that part seems to get left out). http://www.rt.com/news/310170-platinum-asteroid-2011-uw-158/

Unfortunately for the cause of space exploration, the numbers don’t add up. With measurements of 500 meters by 1000 meters, a brick-shaped object will have a volume of 250 million cubic meters. Since the pictures show that it is not remotely brickish, lets work with 100 million cubic meters. Assuming it is solid metal, with a specific gravity of about 8, that’s about 800 million tons. Assuming a platinum abundance of 100 ppm, that’s 80 thousand tons, or 80 million kg. With platinum at $32 per gram, total value is $250 billion.

While this is certainly better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick, it’s not $5 trillion.

Regards,

Jim Martin

We don’t need it to be worth $5 Trillion

advise and consent

Dear Mr. Pournelle,
In a recent posting you commented “this process of Presidential agreements without advice and consent of the Senate, with the President able to veto Congressional disapproval is a recent Constitutional discovery, unknown through most of the history of the Republic.” I agree; but it’s been a long time making, and I don’t know how we walk back from it.
In the run-up to the first Gulf war, I saw no congressional appetite for actually taking responsibility and declaring war. Much easier to hand it to the executive. From a cynical perspective, Congress seems to be more eager to cast votes which please “the base” but have no real effect (as in “repealing Obamacare”) than to enact something for which they might have to take ownership of the consequences. Recovering a more robust Constitutional government would, I think, require a Congress with the courage to make choices and accept responsibility for their consequences.
On another level, I am becoming convinced that the level of polarization in our current politics is pushing us toward bad government. Consider a Republican Congressional leadership which declared it to be their first priority, from the beginning of President Obama’s term, to make him a one-term president. Not to do the business of the Republic, but to ensure the ineffectiveness of the President. What might be plausible results of this?
One, of course, might be that the President in question would throw up his or her hands and say “My goodness! They don’t like me! I’ll just go play golf for four years.” Another option would be to try to work with the Congress anyway. As I remember it, President Obama tried this; and found that even originally Republican proposals (such as the substance of the Affordable Care Act) became intolerable once his hands touched them.
Another option — and I agree both that we seem to be moving toward this, and that it’s harmful — is that a President who actually wanted to accomplish something might look for ways to do it without relying on Congress. Cue the ominous music; but echo-chamber discourse and red-meat rhetoric move us in this direction.
If we are to recover a better balance among the branches of government, we’re going to need to learn to work together; and that “compromise” is not a dirty word.
Yours,
Allan E. Johnson

The usual path when democracy decays to decadence is some form of dictatorship, which can go in several directions after that.  Governor Schwarzenegger of California started with good intentions, and was called hideous names by nurse and other people he wanted to like him, so he just gave in. But of course he was only a governor.

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

Chaos Manor View, Friday, July 17, 2015

“Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded—here and there, now and then—are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.

“This is known as ‘bad luck’.”

– Robert A. Heinlein

After this great glaciation, a succession of smaller glaciations has followed, each separated by about 100,000 years from its predecessor, according to changes in the eccentricity of the Earth’s orbit (a fact first discovered by the astronomer Johannes Kepler, 1571-1630). These periods of time when large areas of the Earth are covered by ice sheets are called “ice ages.” The last of the ice ages in human experience (often referred to as the Ice Age) reached its maximum roughly 20,000 years ago, and then gave way to warming. Sea level rose in two major steps, one centered near 14,000 years and the other near 11,500 years. However, between these two periods of rapid melting there was a pause in melting and sea level rise, known as the “Younger Dryas” period. During the Younger Dryas the climate system went back into almost fully glacial conditions, after having offered balmy conditions for more than 1000 years. The reasons for these large swings in climate change are not yet well understood.

http://earthguide.ucsd.edu/virtualmuseum/climatechange2/01_1.shtml

Chaos Manor Reviews returns. http://chaosmanorreviews.com/ There will be regular posts and limited comments. We’re back…

This continues to be my daybook, and will have more general topics; Chaos Manor Reviews will be pretty well to confined to technology, including experiments where I do silly things so that you don’t have to.

It’s 1610 and Time Warner has slowed the Internet for me; it took three attempts to post this, and other things take forever.

Yet another update to be installed on the Surface Pro 3; not sure I understand that but I’ll do it.  Since I never see a build number anymore, I am presuming that this is a release copy.

The installation went smoothly; had to enter user names and passwords for some of the upstairs machines. but they seem to be available just fine. Internet works fine now, so the Time Warner daily lag time is over; given the years when I had to resort to all kinds of tricks including a satellite link to get high speed Internet in this Studio City dead zone, I really shouldn’t complain about a half hour of delays and washouts each day. The rest of the time it just works, without problems.

Preliminary examination shows the Surface Pro 3 is working nicely, Internet connections solid, internal network implemented OK. I’ll start taking it to the breakfast table next week, so I won’t need the big magnifying glass to read the newspapers; I can find what I want in the printed copy and get it on the computer where I can adjust the type size.  It’s still hard to browse the paper on line; I far prefer to do that on the printed copy.  But individual articles are in too small a print for me to read comfortably; and with OneNote it’s easy to make my notes on the articles and get them into the daybook.  I wish I could type, and I wonder how long it will take to train Precious, but she has larger keys.  My problem is that I hit two keys at a time and must correct each sentence, and that takes a while.  Autocorrect can be trained to do much of that, and I’ve got this machine pretty well trained, but of course two key pressed words can be ambiguous. But for unambiguous words auto correct works fine – except that it’s harder to do in Word 365 which is on the Pro.  It’s much easier in Word 7. Maybe one day Microsoft will figure that out.

Checking the MacBook Pro:  splat-k (command-k) revealed most of the machines on the internal net, but failed to see Alien Artifact, which is really my main machine.  I had just turned off the wireless on the MacBook Pro and let it automatically go to Ethernet, which it did just fine; splat-k showed the Pro could see all the other machines except Alien Artifact.  Thought about it a bit and typed in smb://Alien Artifact, which after searching it told me it could not find, and neither did the trouble shooter; tried smb://AlienArtifact and all was well.  As usual, with Macs things are very simple, or impossible; actually you can add tedious to that list, and it helps to have access to a Unix guru.  I would never have believed you could make an operating system understood by the people out of UNIX, but Apple has done so. 

The name Alien Artifact comes from Eric: we built him in an elegant but complex Thermaltake case, which is handsome, big, cool, very quiet, and very easily inspires the name.  I like it, but I suppose I am going to have to come up with a shorter name, except this seems so appropriate.

Now that we have reliable Wi-Fi and Ethernet in the back room  where the TV resides, it’s time to get an X Box.  Microsoft sent me one of the early ones but I seldom used it, and I never did enough with consoles to justify getting another; but they are now doing a lot to make your TV more useful, so I suppose I can investigate.  We’ll see. Recall that this is the day book; full reports in Chaos Manor Reviews.

Intel says that the doubling time in Moore’s Law is now closer to two and a half years than two; this is trivial, of course, unless you are a stock trader. The important thing is that the doubling time for computer power remains an exponential, and if the doubling time changes, so does what is doubled. As shown in our Strategy of Technology showed back in 1970, technology progress generally follows a logistics curve – an ogive or S curve – and eventually will end, whereupon a new S curve generally begins, with slow progress at first; think of the top speed of aircraft as an example. http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/07/16/intel-rechisels-the-tablet-on-moores-law/

Global warming and volcanoes

Subject : Global warming and volcanoes
Regarding the connection between volcanoes and temporary climate change; I think it’s worth noting that an eruption large enough to cause major disruption to the climate (even for a year or two, a la Tambora) is likely also to disrupt efforts to ameliorate the bad effects on people, such as famine and disease.
The reason is very simple. Volcanic eruptions and air transport don’t mix very well. The relatively minor eruption in Iceland a few years ago, that massively disrupted air travel across the whole of Europe, is a good example of that. A supervolcano eruption, quite apart from its catastrophic effects on climate, would probably ground virtually all aircraft for years.
Regards,
Ian

A decent systems analysis of what threatens civilization and mankind would have us spending taxes on a far different schedule of preferences, but that’s not how government – at least this kind of government – works.

http://www.zdnet.com/article/the-next-frontier-for-artificial-intelligence-learning-humans-common-sense/

The next frontier for artificial intelligence? Learning humans’ common sense (ZD)

Spain’s artificial intelligence research institute is looking at teaching robots to know their limits, but think human-level AI is a way away just yet.

By Anna Solana for IT Iberia | July 17, 2015 — 10:56 GMT (03:56 PDT) |

Nearly half a century has passed between the release of the films 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and Transcendence (2014), in which a quirky scientist’s consciousness is uploaded into a computer. Despite being 50 years apart, their plots, however, are broadly similar. Science fiction stories continue to imagine the arrival of human-like machines that rebel against their creators and gain the upper hand in battle.

In the field of artificial intelligence (AI) research, over the last 30 years, progress has been similarly slower than expected.

While AI is increasingly part of our everyday lives – in our phones or cars – and computers process large amounts of data, they still lack human-level capacity to make deductions from the information they’re given. People can read different sections of a newspaper and understand them, grasp the consequences and implications of a story. Just by interacting with their environment, humans acquire experience that gives them tacit knowledge. Today’s machines simply don’t have that kind of ability. Yet.

There is considerable more, and it is not a bad summary

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

Chaos Manor View, Friday, July 17, 2015

“Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded—here and there, now and then—are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.

“This is known as ‘bad luck’.”

– Robert A. Heinlein

We are reviving Chaos Manor Reviews. http://chaosmanorreviews.com/ There will be a lot more there as time goes on.

My Surface Pro is installing a major upgrade; I infer that since it is only 22% done, and it has been a while since it started.  I presume it is a new build of Windows 10; I also note that my Windows 7 systems want me to reserve upgrade to 10.  This looks to be a big deal. Hmm. The Surface is restarting.  I’ll see. Ah. After restart it’s 32% done.  A major build all right.  Fortunately the Surface Pro 3 is not a main machine…

OK through trundling, restarting and such.  No build number.  Must be the release.

1952: OK it’s the release candidate.  I’ll explore it over the weekend and something to say about it in Chaos Manor Reviews.

Had good story conference with SKYPING Wednesday. My 2008 Mac Book Pro died (power failed) quite suddenly after two hours plus, so I thought I would replace it. Just checked, and yes, there is a replaceable battery as well as a replaceable hard disk back there; I wondered because there was no way to replace the Air’s battery. With the Pro – this Pro at least – it’s push pull click click; I just checked. Now I have to figure out what year it is – there are apparently several different sizes depending on year, and I don’t remember exactly when I got the Pro; around 2008, and that was the year of my brain cancer, and my memories are a bit fuzzy. I’ll find out. The price seems to be between $50 and $100.

Performance on a new Pro would be better I suppose but for what I do with that Mac would not be particularly noticed. 

Ah, About This Mac says it’s a late 2008 15” running Yosemite. On line price seems to be about $100, although I still haven’t found what Apple sells them for; my Mac experts tell me stick with Apple. No hurry in any event. Alas I suppose I’ll have to replace the Air with its swollen battery, but the latest Surface Windows 10 Build is encouraging, and a tablet with OneNote is better than an Air for the kind of research I do away from my desk. Since there are obviously several hours of battery life in this 7 year old MacBook Pro which I don’t use as a portable anyway, I suspect I get a mains outlet on an extension cord for living room SKYPING and otherwise do nothing…

The Heritage Foundation on the Iran “Deal” (a kind of agreement with a foreign power unknown until recently) had this to say:

 The deal the Obama administration reached with Iran is one of the worst in history, according to Heritage Foundation defense expert Jim Carafano:

Proponents of the Deal say it stops Iran from having the bomb anytime soon, but I see nothing in it that would make that impossible or even very difficult except Iranian intentions; apparently Mr. Obama and Mr. Kerry believe they have persuaded Iran not to go for a bomb, at least not on their watch. That would be powerful diplomacy.

Inspection requires notice, and no American Inspectors are allowed at all.

US inspectors will be banned from all Iranian nuclear sites under controversial deal amid warnings ‘only American experts can tell if they are cheating’

• Only countries with ‘diplomatic relations’ to Iran make up inspection teams
• As the U.S. does not, no American nuclear experts will be taking part
• NSA Susan Rice also confirmed no independent U.S. inspections in Iran
• Nuclear deal with UN requires Iran to dismantle key elements of program
• Inspectors will have access to nuclear facilities, but must request visits

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3165063/US-inspectors-banned-Iranian-nuclear-sites-controversial-deal-amid-warnings-American-experts-tell-cheating.html

Some say it’s a brilliant act of diplomacy by diplomatic masters.

Putin’s Brilliant Diplomacy to Bring West, Iran to Negotiations Table

Le Huffington Post columnist Didier Chaudet analyzed Russia’s decision to sell Iran the S-300 missile defense system. The deal is not about mere economics, but a series of complex, chess-like moves successfully implemented by the Russian government to bring the West and Iran to the negotiation table.

Read more: http://sputniknews.com/analysis/20150505/1021747686.html#ixzz3gBojssZU

Why I’ll vote in favor of the Iran nuclear deal

07/14/15 01:23 PM

By Rep. Donald Beyer

http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/why-ill-vote-favor-the-iran-nuclear-deal

The historic accord to close off Iran’s pathways to a nuclear bomb is an enormous win for U.S. national security and President Obama. In the coming weeks, I plan to vote in support of this landmark achievement and urge my colleagues to do the same.

I witnessed firsthand the transformative power of diplomacy as ambassador to Switzerland and Liechtenstein. I commend our diplomats for skillfully averting a global showdown with Iran as part of a deal that blocks its efforts to obtain a nuclear weapon.  <snip>

Congress can vote to reject this “deal” but Obama has vowed to veto any such rejection. I presume that somewhere in the Pentagon there is a group studying a world with a nuclear Iran. this process of Presidential agreements without advice and consent of the Senate, with the President able to veto Congressional disapproval is a recent Constitutional discovery, unknown through most of the history of the Republic.

Maunder Minimum Subject 
Hi Jerry,
With the constant hyperbole surrounding climate discussions, it’s hard for a non-scientist to get a solid sense of a writer’s objectivity. For instance, Ars Technica’s science writer says the maunder minimum is not an important factor on climate even if true.
I like reading Ars, but I’ve noticed its science writer is often (always?) at odds with your views. I’ve read everything you wrote here for over a decade so I value your opinion quite a bit, but I’d also like to read the opposite view. My problem is finding a source I trust. Do you have any advice on how a non-scientist can see through these issues without getting misinformed too much?
Thank you!

Francis Gingras

http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/07/the-maunder-minimum-is-back-maybe-and-we-probably-wont-notice/

The arstechnica piece says that the Little Ice Age was caused by volcanoes, not solar variation. This was, interestingly, a theory first published by Benjamin Franklin after he witnessed volcanic dust from Iceland extended a long way; he was sailing to England. And we know that 1816, the Year Without a Summer, was almost certainly caused by the Tambora eruption, which injected reflective particles into the atmosphere and thus changed the Earth’s albedo. More solar radiation was reflected and thus did not reach the Earth.

The models of solar activity predict a new minimum in solar activity. The models have been validated against observation back to as long as we have observation. They are pretty accurate. Whether decreased solar activity has much relationship to solar output – and thus to irradiation received by Earth – is not so clear. We do know that the variance in solar radiation is tiny compared to the output of the sun – but that tiny variance exceeds all the other sources of thermal addition to the Earth’s eco-system, including warming from the interior (due to radioactive element decay in the core). Tiny – relative to solar output – variations in solar output have a large effect on climate. Whether sunspots indicate increased total solar input to the Earth is not so well understood, since we do not have sunspot records for more than a few hundred years, and we do not have accurate records of Earth temperature for more than a century (defining accurate to a degree C or less).

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/SORCE/sorce_03.php

Daily variation in solar output is due to the passage of sunspots across the face of the Sun as the Sun rotates on its axis about once a month. These daily changes can be even larger than the variation during the 11-year solar cycle. However, such short-term variation has little effect on climate. The graph above shows total solar irradiance on a daily basis. The plot is based on data collected by the ACRIM III instrument, which is currently in orbit. (Graph by Robert Simmon, based on data from ACRIM III)

Variations in TSI are due to a balance between decreases caused by sunspots and increases caused by bright areas called faculae which surround sunspots. Sunspots are dark blotches on the Sun in which magnetic forces are very strong, and these forces block the hot solar plasma, and as a result sunspots are cooler and darker than their surroundings. Faculae, which appear as bright blotches on the surface of the Sun, put out more radiation than normal and increase the solar irradiance. They too are the result of magnetic storms, and their numbers increase and decrease in concert with sunspots. On the whole, the effects of the faculae tend to beat out those of the sunspots. So that, although solar energy reaching the Earth decreases when the portion of the Sun’s surface that faces the Earth happens to be rife with spots and faculae, the total energy averaged over a full 30-day solar rotation actually increases. Therefore the TSI is larger during the portion of the 11 year cycle when there are more sunspots, even though the individual spots themselves cause a decrease in TSI when facing Earth.

<snip>

Another trend scientists have picked up on appears to span several centuries. Late 17th century astronomers observed that no sunspots existed on the Sun’s surface during the time period from 1650 to 1715 AD. This lack of solar activity, which some scientists attribute to a low point in a multiple-century-long cycle, may have been partly responsible for the Little Ice Age in Europe. During this period, winters in Europe were much longer and colder than they are today. Modern scientists believe that since this minimum in solar energy output, there has been a slow increase in the overall sunspots and solar energy throughout each subsequent 11-year cycle.

The number of sunspots on the Sun’s surface is roughly proportional to total solar irradiance. Historical sunspot records give scientists an idea of the amount of energy emitted by the Sun in the past. The above graph shows sunspot data from 1650 to the present. The Maunder Minimum occured from 1650–1700 and may have influenced Europe’s little ice age. (The data from this period are not as reliable as the data beginning in 1700, but it is clear that sunspot numbers were higher both before and after the Maunder Minimum.) Since then, sunspot number have risen and fallen in a regular 11-year cycle. An 11-year running average shows only the long-term variation, which shows a rise in total sunspot numbers from 1700 until today. [Graph by Robert Simmon, based on data compiled by John Eddy (1650-1700) and the Solar Influences Data analysis Cent

Lastly, on the time scale of the lifetime of the solar system, measured in billions of years, the Sun is going through the same life and death cycle as any average star. As it uses up its hydrogen fuel, the Sun grows hotter and hotter throughout its lifetime. In a couple of billion years, this gradual heating will melt all the ice on Earth and turn the planet and into a hothouse much like Venus. Since the increase occurs over such an extended period of time, today’s instruments cannot even detect year-to-year changes along this cycle. By the time the effects of this warming trend are felt, it’s possible humans may have become extinct, or found a way to populate distant planets, and in either case may not still be left on Earth worrying about Earth’s demise.

next: The Sun and Global Warming
back: Earth’s Energy Balance

None of this is easy reading, but my conclusion is that there is considerable uncertainty, but it is a reasonable conclusion that models of solar activity are useful in predicting solar output and therefore total solar heat input to Earth. Whether these variations in solar output are are more responsible than CO2  (1825 to present) for global warming is worth study, but need to find more data. It does seem reasonable to to be skeptical about the certainty of human caused global warming, since we know that Earth in Viking times was at least as warm as it is today and very likely was warmer in Roman times.

As Freeman Dyson continues to point out, CO2 is going to have its greatest effect in cold, dry areas, because the “greenhouse” effects of CO2 are small compared to those of water vapor. As soon as there is appreciable water vapor, heat reflected from earth and radiated to space but intercepted by greenhouse gasses has been got: there isn’t more for the CO2 to intercept.

We can possibly predict a coming period of minimal solar surface activity – sunspots, etc. Whether this will cause cooling is not known, but it appears to be possible. There is definitely a correlation between sunspots and solar irradiance. Whether this predictable decrease in irradiance is greater that the effects of CO2 is apparently in dispute among those more expert than me. I can only work with the data available, but include in that data records of growing seasons and other rough climate indications from Britain to China, and I’m quite certain it was warmer in Viking times than now, despite Mann’s hockey stick that purported to erase the Viking Warm period.

One thing is certain: USA efforts to decrease the use of coal will have very little effect of world production of CO2, as undeveloped countries continue to become developing nations, and China continues to build coal plants . As witness:

https://twitter.com/settostun/status/555479447248568320/photo/1

We also have this:

http://www.iflscience.com/environment/mini-ice-age-not-reason-ignore-global-warming

There Probably Won’t Be A “Mini Ice Age” In 15 Years

July 14, 2015 | by Caroline Reid

Since our article yesterday about how reduced solar activity could lead to the next little ice age, IFLScience has spoken to the researcher who started the furor: Valentina Zharkova. She announced the findings from her team’s research on solar activity last week at the Royal Astronomical Society. She noted that her team didn’t realize how much of an impact their research would have on the media, and that it was journalists (including ourselves) who picked up on the possible impact on the climate. However, Zharkova says that this is not a reason to dismiss this research or the predictions about the environment.

“We didn’t mention anything about the weather change, but I would have to agree that possibly you can expect it,” she informed IFLScience.

The future predicted activity of the Sun has been likened to the Maunder Minimum. This was a period when the Sun entered an especially inactive period, producing fewer sunspots than usual. This minimum happened at the same time that conditions in Northern America and Europe went unusually icy and cold, a period of time known as the “little ice age.”

The thrust of this is that it’s not going to be as serious as all that; but then the notion of a new ice age hasn’t been put forward since the 1970’s when the same people who now warn us of disastrous global warming were talking “Genesis Strategy” and warning of extreme cooling, and AAAS sessions were devoted to the cooling trend.

There are other things to worry about.

Jim and I have been discussing the link below. It is something he and I have been following for awhile now, and the information in here is horrific. I knew it would be bad, but I had not realized how far inland the devastation would reach, and they are not prepared.

They do have a technical error in the article. Plates that are subducted do not “heat up and melt the material above them.” They are themselves melted, and since the melt is less dense, it rises upward, through whatever fissures in the rock it can find. It is the Juan de Fuca plate itself that fuels the Cascade range of volcanoes. More, since not all minerals melt at the same temperatures, it is responsible for the range of melt chemistries from near the shoreline to deeper into the continent. This, in turn, results in the range of styles of eruptions, from relatively runny, thin lava which releases trapped gases in lovely fountains, to thick, viscous lava that causes explosive eruptions a la Mt. Mazama (its caldera is Crater Lake; it lost ~1/3 of its height in 2290BC, and the local Native Americans passed on the eyewitness tales of the eruption in their legends) and Mt. St. Helens.

I’ve been to Mazama and St. Helens, as well as numerous other Cascade volcanoes, and I’ve been along the coast of Oregon, taking several segments of the coastal highway, as well as I-5 from my friends’ place in the Willamette Valley down to Mazama, and on another trip, down to Redding CA. I’ve been in Portland and Seattle, as well as Eugene, Corvallis, and Salem. Since I already knew of the Cascadia SZ, all of the various “Entering Tsunami Hazard Zone/Leaving Tsunami Hazard Zone” signs were a bit unnerving.

The fact that there is a fault in SoCal that is venting He3 at an accelerated rate is also intriguing, and not in the good way; it turns out that that particular fault is ALSO a subduction fault. It lies well west of the San Andreas.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/07/20/the-really-big-one

Stephanie Osborn

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

http://www.amazon.com/There-Will-War-Volume-III-ebook/dp/B01110QOVQ 

Now available.

Is There a Bubble? Top Tech Investors Weigh In

Some of the best-known technology investors, including John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins, Egon Durban of Silver Lake Partners, Henry Kravis of KKR, and Reid Hoffman of Greylock Partners, appeared at the Fortune Brainstorm Tech conference over the past few days, talking about their investments and whether we are in another “bubble” similar to what happened in technology in 1999 and 2000.

Most agreed that things are different now, but that private market valuations are high, as evidenced by the number of “unicorns”—private companies that have raised money with a valuation of greater than $1 billion.

http://forwardthinking.pcmag.com/none/336057-is-there-a-bubble-top-tech-investors-weigh-in

Here’s how much a self-driving car could save you on car insurance

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/innovations/wp/2015/07/17/heres-how-much-a-self-driving-car-could-save-you-on-car-insurance/

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