Chaos Manor View, Wednesday, July 15, 2015

Story conference including Skype with Dr. Jack Cohen in England,followed by a long lunch. Very hot today, and even after a nap I find myself exhausted. This will be brief.

There are two major breaking stories, and we don’t know enough about either to make intelligent comments.

Regarding the constitutional status of the Iran “deal” (a term unknown to the Constitution) I have found no better analysis than this:

Constitutional Issues in the Iran Deal

http://tenthamendmentcenter.com/2015/07/15/constitutional-issues-in-the-iran-deal/

Is the deal announced yesterday with Iran unconstitutional?

In a word: probably.

Here is my assessment.  To begin, the Constitution’s text provides the way to make major international agreements – through supermajority approval in the Senate, as set forth in Article II, Section 2: “The President … shall have power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur.”  This is, moreover, the way the framers and ratifiers understood it: every discussion of international agreement-making in the founding era assumed it would take place through the Senate as Article II, Section 2 describes.  Some argued that this was not enough protection against harmful treaties, and wanted a higher bar – three-quarters of the Senators present, or two-thirds of all Senators, not just of those present.  No one contemplated that treaties could be made in an alternate, less demanding way.

But note that the conclusion is “probably”; not “quite probably” or “certainly”. I do not have time – given my slow typing – to do an essay on this.

I urge you to read the entire thoughtful analysis. The President has always had special powers with regard to foreign policy; this is at the very edge of them. It is not an automatic decision, even for original intent constitutionalists.

As for policy, here is the Tory position:

Israel and Saudi Arabia present united front over Iran deal

Iran’s enemies unsettled by its deal with the West, but Bashar al-Assad of Syria says it is ‘a great victory’

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iran/11739349/Israel-and-Saudi-Arabia-present-united-front-over-Iran-deal.html

By Richard Spencer, Middle East Editor and Robert Tait, Jerusalem

8:53PM BST 14 Jul 2015

The nuclear deal with Iran caused fury in Israel and consternation around the region at the likely increase in influence and resources of a newly enriched Iran.

Most telling was the loudest expression of support. “I am happy that the Islamic Republic of Iran has achieved a great victory by reaching an agreement,” President Bashar al-Assad of Syria said in a message to his Iranian opposite number, Hassan Rouhani.

“In the name of the Syrian people, I congratulate you and the people of Iran on this historic achievement.”

I present it without comment. We simply do not know enough. No one wants a war, nuclear or conventional, in the Middle East; and no one can guarantee that removing Iran’s capability to make nuclear weapons will not require a nuclear strike. That hasn’t always been true, but I think it’s true now. The question is, “if not a deal now, what should we do?’

We simply do not know enough about Planned Parenthood and its use of body parts of late period aborted infants. We probably will not even if Congress investigates http://www.lifenews.com/2015/07/15/congress-will-investigate-planned-parenthood-for-selling-body-parts-of-aborted-babies/ but we certainly do not now; I will comment when I know enough to be able to say something meaningful.

TurboTax Drops Cloud Backup Option for Desktop Users      (nyt)

By ANN CARRNSJULY 14, 2015

If you used the desktop version of TurboTax during the most recent tax filing season and backed up your return online, you may want to make sure you have a copy of it stored on your computer.

Intuit, the maker of TurboTax tax preparation software, has notified some desktop customers that it is discontinuing a service that allowed them to store a copy of their return on TurboTax’s cloud system. (Desktop customers install the tax software on their own computer, by buying a CD-ROM or a download, rather than preparing their returns on the TurboTax website.)

Users have until July 21 to gain access to their tax returns on the cloud and resave them on their own computer if they need to do so.

In the F-35/F-16 comparison, this was an interesting comment:
“Hi. I have experience engineering controls for these types of systems and I would like to point out that the media has been doing an _incredibly_ poor job interpreting the leaked report.
“The report in question described the results of a very specific test of the F-35 control laws. The result of test indicated that in a particular part of the flight envelope the plane responded sluggishly to pitch inputs from the pilot. This would make it harder for the pilot to exploit the F-35 airframe’s great high-AOA capability because it means that the airplane will take longer than it needs transitioning to the requested AOA and therefore bleed more energy.
“The report also noted that the aircraft itself has sufficient control surfaces to allow for much higher pitch & yaw rates. The test-pilot recommended relaxing the control laws to allow for faster pitch rates in the part of the flight envelope where the test occurred which would give a pilot more ability to exploit the aircraft’s AOA capabilities.
“The test did _NOT_ indicate that the F-16 was a better dogfighter. The F-16 was simply used as a visual reference for the F-35 test pilot to maneuver against.
“Anyone who wants to understand what REALLY happened should read the actual report:
https://medium.com/war-is-boring/read-f … 9a4e66f3eb
“David Axe has a history of blatantly misrepresenting findings and totally misunderstanding how modern wars are prosecuted. Its a shame other journalists are repeating his silliness without much critical analysis.
“edit: Every fighter is developed and tested this way: Start with conservative control laws then relax them as needed according to tests. Same thing happened with the F-16, F-15, and F-14 during development. We just didn’t have the internet then so uninformed dilettantes couldn’t broadcast their opinion. “
I’d further note that the F-35 performance limitations largely result in compromises to the aircraft to accommodate the Marine’s STOVL version–16% of the total buy–so they can deploy/employ from assault ships (a capability that has been needed…nowhere…ever), as well as the cancellation of the higher-thrust engine for which development was nearly complete. I have serious concerns about the F-35 program, but the referenced article provides no real insight or useful analysis.

I should have made it more clear: I am no expert on particulars in the current dispute.  I do assert the general principal: there is no prize for second place in an air superiority contest.  But read The Strategy of Technology for more.  I have not spent much time at particulars.

When it is asserted that a particular airplane would be good at both air supremacy and ground support, I assert that this is highly unlikely.  Air supremacy is not cheap; but if you have it, ground support from the air can be a lot cheaper and more effective.

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

Chaos Manor View, Tuesday, July 14, 2015

Bastille Day

On July 14, 1789, the Paris mob aided by units of the National Guard stormed the Bastille Fortress which stood in what had been the Royal area of France before the Louvre and Tuilleries took over that function. The Bastille was a bit like the Tower of London, a fortress prison under direct control of the Monarchy. It was used to house unusual prisoners, all aristocrats, in rather comfortable durance. The garrison consisted of soldiers invalided out of service and some older soldiers who didn’t want to retire; it was considered an honor to be posted there, and the garrison took turns acting as valets to the aristocratic prisoners kept there by Royal order (not convicted by any court).
On July 14, 1789, the prisoner population consisted of four forgers, three madmen, and another. The forgers were aristocrats and were locked away in the Bastille rather than be sentenced by the regular courts. The madmen were kept in the Bastille in preference to the asylums: they were unmanageable at home, and needed to be locked away. The servants/warders were bribed to treat them well. The Bastille was stormed; the garrison was slaughtered to a man, some being stamped to death; their heads were displayed on pikes; and the prisoners were freed. The forgers vanished into the general population. The madmen were sent to the general madhouse. The last person freed was a young man who had challenged the best swordsman in Paris to a duel, and who had been locked up at his father’s insistence lest he be killed. This worthy joined the mob and took on the name of Citizen Egalite. He was active in revolutionary politics until Robespierre had him beheaded in The Terror.

The garrison of the Bastille consisted mostly of aging soldiers posted to soft duty as a form of honorable retirement. They were slaughtered to a man.

http://www.jerrypournelle.com/archives2/archives2view/view318.html

There is no way to be certain, but it is probable that the entire Earth–almost certainly the Northern Hemisphere– was warmer in the 11^th Century than today. There is more data but it has not been made available to the general scientific community. The latest solar activity predictions indicate that the next few solar cycles will be quieter. We do not have records for more than 170 years, but the last time we had a prolonged period of minimal solar activity included the so-called Maunder Minimum, and fell in the middle of what is now called The Little Ice Age.

We know the Earth was warmer during the Viking Period, possibly – I think probably – than it is now.  In 1325 there was a noticeable change in weather patterns in Northern Europe, and by the 1700’s the Thames froze over. In 1776 the Hudson froze hard enough for Col. Alexander Hamilton to bring the guns captured by Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys from the British fortress at Ticonderoga across the Hudson ice to General George Washington in Harlem Heights, thus covering Washington’s retreat from the encircling British General Howe. It was a decisive event of the Revolutionary War. During the 18^th and 19^th Centuries there was a period of unified warming (interrupted by The Year Without a Summer q.v.). Note that the interruption of solar radiation caused by Tambora had a decided and recorded effect on annual temperature; it was neither predicted nor predictable, and climate models do not accommodate it – although periodic variations in solar output can have effects on the solar radiation Earth receives.

<snip> Greg Kopp of the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado, pointed out that while the variations in luminosity over the 11-year solar cycle amount to only a tenth of a percent of the sun’s total output, such a small fraction is still important.  “Even typical short term variations of 0.1% in incident irradiance exceed all other energy sources (such as natural radioactivity in Earth’s core) combined,” he says.

Of particular importance is the sun’s extreme ultraviolet (EUV) radiation, which peaks during the years around solar maximum.  Within the relatively narrow band of EUV wavelengths, the sun’s output varies not by a minuscule 0.1%, but by whopping factors of 10 or more.  This can strongly affect the chemistry and thermal structure of the upper atmosphere.

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2013/08jan_sunclimate/

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2013/08jan_sunclimate/ has much more of interest.

Climate Scientists Road to Hell

https://diggingintheclay.wordpress.com/2012/12/27/climate-scientists-road-to-hell/

particularly the first cartoon.

Rod Montgomery==monty@starfief.com

PhD Comics: Dante’s Inferno, Academic Edition

http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1813

Rod Montgomery==monty@starfief.com

It is almost certain that the “deal” with Iran makes it certain that Iran will have one or more nuclear weapons within a year of Obama leaving office. He will be able to say it didn’t happen on his watch.

Good afternoon, Dr. Pournelle,
Regarding the treaty with Iran, I’ve added a few links from The American Conservative for a different perspective:
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/iran-past-the-paranoia/
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/obamas-legacy-will-be-with-iran/
I don’t like the current US president, but in this case I think he is making the correct choice. And the question still remains: so what if Iran gets nuclear weapons? Israel has a lot more of them, and frankly I’m more concerned about the leaders pursuing the so-called “Samson Option” in a moment of paranoia.
Regards,
Don Parker

It may well be that we have no choices now, and may not have had any for two years. Israel is unwilling to begin all-out war with Iran by striking their nuclear facilities; Iraq, their historic enemy, is weakened, and much of Iraq is now under control of Iran and Iranian Shiite allies including the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.

https://altairastrology.wordpress.com/2009/01/06/algol-and-pluto-two-astrological-hobgoblins/ 

Skimming through old journals I found http://www.jerrypournelle.com/archives2/archives2view/view370.html which is the View for the week including July 14 back in 1985. It’s mostly stuff from the past, but it does have my views of the Wilson/Plame affair, which most have forgotten. If you have any interest you will find them there.

Matter to be considered:

8614ACommercial Space Accident Report—

In-Flight Breakup During Test Flight, Scaled Composites SpaceShipTwo, N339SS,

Near Koehn Dry Lake, California, October 31, 2014.

https://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2015/07/14/2015-17377/sunshine-act-meeting?utm_campaign=subscription+mailing+list&utm_medium=email&utm_source=federalregister.gov

: The BATTLESHIP—

Interesting facts …
Not only is the picture awesome but so are the statistics!
During the 3-1/2 years of World War 2 that started with the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941 and ended with the Surrender of Germany and Japan in 1945, “We the People of the U.S.A.”  produced the following:
22 aircraft carriers,
8 battleships,
48 cruisers,
349 destroyers,
420 destroyer escorts,
203 submarines,
34 million tons of merchant ships,
100,000 fighter aircraft,
98,000 bombers,
24,000 transport aircraft,
58,000 training aircraft,
93,000 tanks,
257,000 artillery pieces,
105,000 mortars,
3,000,000 machine guns, and
2,500,000 military trucks.
We put 16.1 million men in uniform in the various armed services, invaded Africa, invaded Sicily and Italy, won the battle for the Atlantic, planned and executed D-Day, marched across the Pacific and Europe, developed the atomic bomb, and ultimately conquered Japan and Germany.
It’s worth noting, that during the almost exact amount of time, the Obama Administration couldn’t even build a web site that worked.

“It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.” – Voltaire

You didn’t see this on the “News at Five”

But, from the UK: 
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3003142/Boys-15-charged-killing-dog-walker-botched-robbery.html

More evidence that the media is tainted.  Freedom (bs) of the press.
A man out for a walk with his dog last week was gunned down by two black teens. And when police found the man’s body, they made a heartbreaking find right next to it.   
As NBC Philadelphia reported, the three black teens got “bored” playing basketball and decided to go rob someone. After seeing one man with a large dog, and deciding not to rob him, they then saw 51-year-old James Patrick Stuhlman walking his terrier.
Stuhlman typically walked his dog with his 13-year-old daughter. But on the night of his murder, March 12, he had told her to stay home because it was getting dark out, which very likely saved her life.
As he walked down the street, Stuhlman, who owned a local landscaping company, saw three teens approach him.. Then they grabbed and robbed him, and shot him once in the leg. They could have just taken his money and ran at that point. But they did not.
“At one point, he did plead for his life, ” Captain James Clark said Thursday at a news conference, according to the New York Daily News. “He said, ‘Please don’t shoot me, please don’t shoot me,’ and they still shot him one more time.”
That second shot took his life.
So “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” really did happen   – not in Ferguson – but in a Black-on-White capital murder in Philadelphia.
So can we expect Barack Obama and Eric Holder to demand a civil right investigation? Don’t bet on it.
Police have arrested 15-year-old Brandon Smith.. They also arrested a 14-year-old whose name has been withheld – because he is supposedly a “child.”.
They said they decided to rob Stuhlman because his dog was smaller than their intended first target. The shooter who gunned down this father in cold blood, 15-year old Tyfine Hamilton, is “still at large”. Philadelphia police consider him “armed and dangerous.”
Smith has been charged in relation to the murder and is still in custody. But the unnamed teen was inexplicably just charged with robbery despite being an accessory to murder. Police are offering a $20,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of Hamilton.
  < u>
Typically, the teens have all been in trouble with the law in the past. It is stunning at what early age vicious murderers are now made. 15? Unbelievable.
Capt. Clark warned Hamilt on at a press conference: “Get with your parent and turn yourself in before we come and get you…We know where you are.”
Philadelphia Police Lt. John Walker said that when police arrived at the scene Stuhlman was laying in a pool of blood and was already unresponsive. The family man still had his flashlight in his hand.
But what police found next to him was heartbreaking. His dog was pawing him, sniffing at his face, and whimpering. “The dog was lying next to him – appeared to be scared and in shock,” Walker said.
“His daughter goes for a walk with him almost every night,” Clark said. “For whatever reason, he said to her, ‘it’s a little late tonight I don’t want you walking with me.’ So in effect, he may have saved his daughter’s life.”
Thank God he did, but that is small consolation for the young girl who is now without a father, and will forever fear walking at dusk, thanks to the savage brutality these young monsters inflicted on her own dad.
Author’s personal note: I don’t usually do this, but feel I must. The media is censoring this story. You know why. They made the Michael Brown fraud front page news for months. But they will bury this REAL “Hands up, Don’t Shoot” horror. It is up to you to share this article with everyone you know. We can bypass the media censorship and get the truth out there. Thank you.

“It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.” – Voltaire

F-16 kicks F-35’s tail?
Dr. Pournelle,
I’ve overfilled my quota for contacts to you today, but thought that you might not have seen this : http://arstechnica.com/business/2015/07/disastrous-f-35-vs-f-16-face-off-was-also-a-battle-of-philosophies/
Reminds me a bit of your comments on TFX. Someone apparently forgot requirement number 1: “Fight and win,” but it was probably not a career-enhancer, anyway.
-d

There are still few prizes for second place in an air superiority contest. And there are still good reasons why ground support aircraft do not make good air superiority weapons, nor air superiority aircraft make good ground support operations craft. The missions are different, the pilot skills are different, and the career paths for the people involved are different.

How World War III became possible: A nuclear conflict with Russia is likelier than you think – Vox

Jerry:

I offer some interesting speculations on how WW-3 could get started.

http://www.vox.com/2015/6/29/8845913/russia-war

IMHO, the author discredits himself at the end when he cites the prospect of Nuclear Winter. However; it is still interesting.

The bottom line is that the most probable trigger for WW-3 is NATO expansionism provoking Russia to assert itself militarily. The provocation of Ukraine crisis by Obama and Hillary Clinton by inciting the coup against a constitutionally elected government might go down in history as just as insane as the assignation of Arch Duke Ferdinand which incited WW-1.

James Crawford=

Russia doesn’t want a world war; they haven’t enough Russians to survive winning it. What Russia needs is Russians, in areas contiguous with Russia. They tried colonies (East Germany for example) and those did little for Russia. Putin is not Comintern; he is Russian. Of course he wants Crimea, and Kiev. They are part of the heart of Russia as he understands it.

I had reference to this in another conference; it is still valid, and may be of interest.

HOW TO GET MY JOB

Jerry Pournelle

This was originally published in the December 1996 BYTE as part of my regular column. I have added a few sentences here and there, but it’s mostly unchanged. It was true when I wrote it and I have no reason to think differently now.

https://www.jerrypournelle.com/slowchange/myjob.html

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

Chaos Manor View, Saturday, July 11, 2015

“Thus the average person in the world of 1800 was no better off than the average person of 100,000 BC. Indeed in 1800 the bulk of the world’s population was poorer than their remote ancestors. The lucky denizens of wealthy societies such as eighteenth century England or the Netherlands managed a material lifestyle equivalent to that of the Stone Age. But the vast swath of humanity in East and South Asia, particularly in China and Japan, eked out a living under conditions probably significantly poorer than those of cavemen.”

A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World

http://www.amazon.com/Farewell-Alms-Economic-History-Princeton/dp/0691141282

“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

The 4 O’clock Time Warner net slowdown is in effect.

We have more on climate modeling. Apparently we spent billions modeling the wrong thing. We modeled Earth and validated the models by how well predictions from the newest models fit with those from the existing ones, since none of them were worth much in predicting actual weather or climate. They should have been working to model solar output: apparently we are due for another minimum solar output period similar to the Maunder Minimum that produced the Little Ice Age.

Possibly not; but it seems to be a matter of concern for some smart people while being ignored by the Warming Believers.

When we wrote Fallen Angels http://www.amazon.com/Fallen-Angels-Larry-Niven/dp/0743471814 it was meant as a satirical satire and a tribute to Science Fiction Fandom.  We didn’t know we were predicting.

Solar activity predicted to fall 60% in 2030s, to ‘mini ice age’ levels: Sun driven by double dynamo

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/07/150709092955.htm
Stephanie Osborn

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

Is a mini ICE AGE on the way? Scientists warn the sun will ‘go to sleep’ in 2030 and could cause temperatures to plummet

• New study claims to have cracked predicting solar cycles
• Says that between 2030 and 2040 solar cycles will cancel each other out
• Could lead to ‘Maunder minimum’ effect that saw River Thames freeze over

The Earth could be headed for a ‘mini ice age’ researchers have warned.

A new study claims to have cracked predicting solar cycles – and says that between 2020 and 2030 solar cycles will cancel each other out.

This, they say, will lead to a phenomenon known as the ‘Maunder minimum’ – which has previously been known as a mini ice age when it hit between 1646 and 1715, even causing London’s River Thames to freeze over.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3156594/Is-mini-ICE-AGE-way-Scientists-warn-sun-sleep-2020-cause-temperatures-plummet.html

The Daily Mail is not what I call a totally reliable source. Science Daily is closer, but still likes drama. They cite much more reliable sources; it seems to be serious. I am not surprised that the Believers have ignored this. Their jobs are at stake. We can rejoice that it gets attention, although whether it will make any True Believers reconsider is another matter.

There is also a publication by the Royal Astronomical Society:

Irregular heartbeat of the Sun driven by double dynamo

A new model of the Sun’s solar cycle is producing unprecedentedly accurate predictions of irregularities within the Sun’s 11-year heartbeat. The model draws on dynamo effects in two layers of the Sun, one close to the surface and one deep within its convection zone. Predictions from the model suggest that solar activity will fall by 60 per cent during the 2030s to conditions last seen during the ‘mini ice age’ that began in 1645. Results will be presented today by Prof Valentina Zharkova at the National Astronomy Meeting in Llandudno.

It is 172 years since a scientist first spotted that the Sun’s activity varies over a cycle lasting around 10 to 12 years. But every cycle is a little different and none of the models of causes to date have fully explained fluctuations. Many solar physicists have put the cause of the solar cycle down to a dynamo caused by convecting fluid deep within the Sun. Now, Zharkova and her colleagues have found that adding a second dynamo, close to the surface, completes the picture with surprising accuracy.

http://www.ras.org.uk/news-and-press/2680-irregular-heartbeat-of-the-sun-driven-by-double-dynamo

It is worth your attention.  Apparently there has been serious modeling effort.

…If I had to say, I think they may need one more dynamo layer in there, to account for the slight irregularities in when the extended minima show up. I think that’d take ’em past 97% matching observations.

And that this offset between the dynamos has already begun to a limited extent, because of the decreasing activity for the last couple of cycles.

(But again, this is just what I’ve been saying at conventions all over the southeast — solar astronomers are not in agreement about the AGW science. Note that the Daily Mail is blatant about it, but that the article in Science Daily tapdances around it and references not only the Maunder Minimum but the Little Ice Age. Quote: “Predictions from the model suggest that solar activity will fall by 60 per cent during the 2030s to conditions last seen during the ‘mini ice age’ that began in 1645.” So direct, and yet not direct.)

Stephanie Osborn

“The Interstellar Woman of Mystery”

Jerry,

Incidentally Stephanie and I are working through

http://www.amazon.com/Atmospheric-Electrodynamics-Physics-Chemistry-Space/dp/3642698158/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1436631696&sr=8-2&keywords=atmospheric+electrodynamics

Apparently all atmospheric electrodynamics is fundamentally driven by charging due to the combination of ionizing radiation from radioactive decay in the soil, and cosmic radiation.  (That should be fundamental, but I don’t recall seeing it before.) That would suggest, though I haven’t seen any studies, increased thunderstorm activity during solar minimum because of the increased cosmic ray flux under the reduced solar wind conditions at solar minimum. It certainly ties to the Swedish research suggesting increased cloud cover under solar minimum increased cosmic ray flux.

J

Fortunately it has the attention of some of my friends who are more capable of assimilating the evidence than I am. You will understand that a Little Ice Age would be extremely expensive, and carbon taxes would be no help at all.

I have always wondered if the models can possibly take account of the radiation to interstellar space on cloud free nights, and the consequent warming effects of night time clouds; I have not seen the modelers discuss it, but of course it is not my area of expertise.  Still, experiments with a globe thermometer on cloudy and cloud free nights can be educational.

Holly Lisle is an old and dear friend.

Hi, Jerry,

This is my assessment of the state of being human and facing the hard stuff in life, posted right before I go offline for the next two weeks. I hope you’ll find this heartening.

http://hollylisle.com/life-pain-fear-and-the-whole-wide-world-breathe-in-breathe-out/

I appreciate your kindness and good thoughts in my direction, and wanted to let you know that I’m in good shape physically and mentally for what is to come.

And I’ll let you know what the results of this mess are when I have them.

Hugs,

Holly

Ad Astra

Hello Jerry,

Got this from my son.

If you haven’t received it from a couple hundred of your other readers already I suspect that you will appreciate it:

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/plutos-discoverers-ashes-will-be-the-first-human-remains-to-leave-the-solar-system-%e2%80%94-glued-to-the-side-of-a-space-probe/ar-AAcLEUk?ocid=iehp

Bob Ludwick

I knew Clyde Tombaugh. Had dinner with him and Harry Stine and met him several times when I was on the board of the Lowell observatory.

More on this another time, but note the date on this report, and the lack of mention of it in popular press.  We can model the sun’s variability much better that we model the annual average temperature of the Earth, but no one pays attention.

Solar Variability and Terrestrial Climate

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2013/08jan_sunclimate/

Jan. 8, 2013:  In the galactic scheme of things, the Sun is a remarkably constant star.  While some stars exhibit dramatic pulsations, wildly yo-yoing in size and brightness, and sometimes even exploding, the luminosity of our own sun varies a measly 0.1% over the course of the 11-year solar cycle. 

There is, however, a dawning realization among researchers that even these apparently tiny variations can have a significant effect on terrestrial climate. A new report issued by the National Research Council (NRC), “The Effects of Solar Variability on Earth’s Climate,” lays out some of the surprisingly complex ways that solar activity can make itself felt on our planet.

<snip>

One of the participants, Greg Kopp of the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado, pointed out that while the variations in luminosity over the 11-year solar cycle amount to only a tenth of a percent of the sun’s total output, such a small fraction is still important.  “Even typical short term variations of 0.1% in incident irradiance exceed all other energy sources (such as natural radioactivity in Earth’s core) combined,” he says.

<snip>

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

Chaos Manor View, Friday, July 10, 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

Wednesday Steve Barnes was out of town, but Larry Niven and I had a SKYPE conference with Dr. Jack Cohen in England. His laptop was dying so he used his companion’s, which worked, and the conference confirmed that my MacBook Pro, approaching seven years age, works just fine; we got the SKYPE conference going while the Pro was still on the Ethernet, then unplugged it – it doesn’t have a docking station although one would have been very handy – and it immediately went to Wi-Fi and the conference continued without a hitch. Jack will go buy a new laptop; it’s about time anyway.

We continue to work on the Encyclopedia Avalonica, the master book for the series, and we now have 50,000 or so words of text, which I have been busily rewriting. I am also making a Dramatis Personnae of The Secret of Black Ship Island, http://www.amazon.com/Secret-Island-novella-Avalon-Series-ebook/dp/B007MSK4HM , a novella that fits between The Legacy of Heorot http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&field-keywords=The+Legacy+of+heorot and Beowulf’s Children http://www.amazon.com/Beowulfs-Children-Heorot-Book-2-ebook/dp/B005AZ533O/ref=sr_1_2?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1436570472&sr=1-2&keywords=The+Legacy+of+heorot . Our next work is a sequel to Beowulf’s Children with a story that has its roots in The Secret of Black Ship Island, even though the events of the novella don’t appear in the books. There’s a reason for that, and it’s important to the story line.

Then Larry and I went to lunch. Back before I had the stroke last December, Larry wrote a short story sequel to Lucifer’s Hammer http://www.amazon.com/Lucifers-Hammer-Larry-Niven-ebook/dp/B004478DOU and it has been waiting all this time for my input. I hadn’t even seen it since the stroke – and it’s time and past time we finished it and got it off to our agent. I went home from lunch and started in on it, and Thursday night I finished it. Larry approved of my additions, and it’s on the way to our agent. I don’t know what she’ll do with it.

I’ve been playing, cautiously, with the Surface Pro 3, and it’s like the little girl who had a little curl; when she’s good she is very very good, and fun to use; and sometimes she is horrid. But in her defense. Sometimes the problem is me and my understanding of Windows 10. I can say categorically that Windows 10 is better than Windows 8.1; whether it’s better than Windows 7 is still in question, although I will say that 10 makes use of the touchscreen features, and often does that well. I’ll keep working on it.

today’s consensus?

Dr. Pournelle,
Models can be crafted to predict anything. This one predicts a new ice age: http://www.ras.org.uk/news-and-press/2680-irregular-heartbeat-of-the-sun-driven-by-double-dynamo
Climate science predictions are like the weather, wait around a little and they’ll change.
-d

A new model of the Sun’s solar cycle is producing unprecedentedly accurate predictions of irregularities within the Sun’s 11-year heartbeat. The model draws on dynamo effects in two layers of the Sun, one close to the surface and one deep within its convection zone. Predictions from the model suggest that solar activity will fall by 60 per cent during the 2030s to conditions last seen during the ‘mini ice age’ that began in 1645. Results will be presented today by Prof Valentina Zharkova at the National Astronomy Meeting in Llandudno.

As we’ve said all along we don’t know; but ice may be more probable than warm in the next hundred years. I’d rather be warm with larger crops than cold.

Omar Sharif, RIP.

<http://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la-me-actor-omar-sharif-dies-20150710-story.html>

—————————————

Roland Dobbins

Dr Pournelle

Have you read the latest Fred? http://fredoneverything.org/paybacks-a-bitch-rural-wisdom-and-the-gathering-storm/

I shall be grateful for your thoughts on his essay.

Live long and prosper

h lynn keith

“Payback’s a Bitch”: Rural Wisdom and the Gathering Storm

Posted on July 9, 2015 by Fred Reed 

The furor over the Confederate flag, think I, has little to do with the Confederate flag, which is a pretext, an uninvolved bystander. Rather it is about a seething anger in the United States that we must not mention. It is the anger of people who see everything they are and believe under attack by people they aren’t and do not want to be—their heritage, their religion, their values and way of life all mocked and even made criminal.

The talking heads inside Washington’s beltway, in editorial suites in New York, do not know of this anger. They do not talk to people in Joe’s Bar in Chicago or in barbecue joints in Wheeling. They are cloistered, smug, sure of themselves. And they are asking for it.

We are dealing with things visceral, not rational. Confusing the two is dangerous. Hatreds can boil over as syllogisms cannot. The banning of the flag infuriates, for example, me. Why? Although a Southerner by raising, I would far prefer to live in New York City than in Memphis. Yet I value my boyhood in Virginia and Alabama. My ancestors go back to the house of Burgesses, and I remember long slow summer days on the Rappahannock and in the limestone of Athens, Alabama.

When the federal government and the talking heads want to ban my past—here, permit me to exit momentarily the fraudulent objectivity of literature—I hate the sonsofbitches.

A lot of people quietly hate the sonsofbitches.

To them, to us, the Confederate flag stands for resistance to control from afar, to meddling and instruction from people we detest. It is the flag of “Leave me the hell alone.” And this Washington, Boston, and New York will…not…do.

As usual, Fred has far more to say. As usual I agree with a lot of it.

I grew up in the Old South. I never had a slave, I never met anyone who had owned a slave, and I never so far as I know met anyone who had been a slave. When we learned of the Civil War, tariff was as much a reason for the war as slavery, which all my teachers agreed was an economically unviable institution doomed to be ending; and I never knew any religious people who justified slavery. I wasn’t raised to hate Negroes.

The Confederate Flag – and the battle banner – were symbols of state’s rights in a state where it was rare to know a Republican (joke was the Republican candidate got two votes, which were cancelled because it was obvious he voted twice). As Fred says, it was the flag of “Leave us the hell alone.”

We were taught critical reading of:

Oh, I’m a good old Rebel,
Now that’s just what I am;
For this “fair land of Freedom”
I do not care a damn.
I’m glad I fit against it-
I only wish we’d won.
And I don’t want no pardon
For anything I’ve done.

I hates the Constitution,
This great Republic too;
I hates the Freedmen’s Buro,
In uniforms of blue.
I hates the nasty eagle,
‘Tis dripping with our blood,
And I hates the Yankees that come here,
I fought them all I could.

Now I followed Ol Marse Robert,
For four years thereabout.
Got wounded in three places,
And starved on Mount Lookout.
I cotched the rheumatism,
From camping in the snow,
But I killed a chanc’t of Yankees,
And I wish I’d killed some mo.

Three hundred thousand Yankees
Lie stiff in Southern dust,
We got three hundred thousand
Befo’ they conquered us.
They died of Southern fever
And Southern steel and shot;
And I wish it was three million
Instead of what we got.

I can’t take up my musket
And fight’ em now no mo’,
But I ain’t a-goin’ to love’ em,
Now that is sartin sho’;
And I don’t want no pardon
For what I was and am;
And I won’t be reconstructed,
And I do not give a damn.

We read it critically, and we didn’t hate the United States, or even Yankees. I remember in third grade wishing I could find Sherman still alive, but I knew that was a dream.

And a lot of my classmates carried Zippo cigarette lighters showing an old rebel dragging his battle banner behind him as he retreated muttering “Forget, hell!” And they carried those lighters as they volunteered for the US Army in late June 1950, and all through their tour in the Korean War, because we were Americans as well as Southernors.

stars and bars 
Dr. Pournelle,
Agree with you on the confederate battle flag, even though I suppose that I’m not a southerner. The idea that it symbolizes racism is a new thing, promulgated through a poor grounding in American history and what Dr. Jack Cohen, Ian Steward, and Terry Pratchett have referred to as “lies to children”: oversimplification taught in schools because complex causes are thought to be too difficult for them. The danger comes when this is the last thing the children ever learn on the subject.
The Lies to Children are that the Confederacy and Civil War were only about slavery, that black slavery is the sole source and cause (and extent) of racism, and that white southern racism is the sole source of white violence against blacks.
The South that you and I remember, and that Fred writes about, was re-popularized in the ’70s, and personified by Jimmy Carter. It was only later that the confederate flag as a symbol was co-opted by the white supremacist movement in the U.S. prison system — giving the only credence to the simpleton’s viewpoint.
There are a host of tragedies here — the violent act that set this off, the loss of the real legacy of the Confederacy, and the failure of removal of the misunderstood symbol to eradicate racism are only a few. I consider your post of 7 July under the heading “I reckon…” to be perhaps the only positive.
-d

The actual Klan was disbanded by its founder as part of the Hayes/Tilden election compromise.  The original Klan was largely Confederate officers who during Reconstruction were forbidden from holding any public office. Think resistance to occupation.  The modern Klan never thrived in much of the South and was considered very lower class when I was growing up. And I never met anyone who actually hated Blacks to the point of violence until my father had a radio station in Ohio. After visiting I didn’t want to live there and ended up in a Memphis boarding house so I could continue high school at Christian Brothers College in Memphis.  Of course I was thought weird because I thought the law ought to be colorblind, but that’s another story, and it never got me in trouble.

State’s rights and the right to leave the state seemed fair to me. The world is never going to be perfect; but you can sometimes live under laws you consent to.  I left Memphis for the Army and never came back, but that’s where I grew up.

See also http://www.unz.com/pgottfried/the-neocons-confederate-problem-and-americas/ for political implications of the anti-Southern movement. and some on who’s behind it.

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