Starswarm, Star Wars, organlegging, Godzilla, and pipelines

Mail 707 Monday, December 26, 2011

Long time readers will remember Karen Parker:

Hello Jerry, and Merry Christmas

(This is the second day of Christmas, after all, two turtle doves, etc etc)

On Saturday (Christmas Eve day) I purchased a Kindle edition of Starswarm and began reading it on my iPad. I finished about 1:00 AM that evening. What a wonderful Christmas present! Thank you!

Even though I’m 60 years old, I still enjoy so-called “juvenile” science fiction, and this is among the very best, right up there with the best of RAH, and better than even some of his. And not one, but two, new, to me at least, ideas – the Starswarm entity itself, and the idea of an embedded connection to an AI program, from infancy.

I also read with great interest your introduction, and it reminded me of my first experiences with writing on a computer. In 1980 I joined Bell Labs, and very quickly learned to use the UNIX system for writing. In this case it was via a line oriented text editor (at least initially, within a year of so we’d transitioned to “vi”, a screen oriented text editor), writing files for nroff/troff, which used embedded formatting commands somewhat similar in concept but not in detail to HTML. Like you, I found the ability to change something without retyping the entire page was a massively liberating experience, which I put to good use over the following years, when I averaged between 40 and 70 internal papers a year for several years. So thank you, too, for a pleasant walk down memory lane.

Karen

Karen Parker

Thanks for the kind words.

I was looking for something else and found myself at http://www.jerrypournelle.com/archives2/archives2mail/mail292.html . It’s another walk down memory lane. Not so terribly long ago, actually. By the way, you can find the many of the old Chaos Manor Views by going to http://www.jerrypournelle.com/view/view.html, and similarly for mail. These claim to show how to find any of them from inception on, but apparently don’t actually point back to the very early View and Mail. The very first View was http://www.jerrypournelle.com/archives/archivesview/view1.html

The first Chaos Manor Mail is at: http://www.jerrypournelle.com/ancient/mail1.htm

After the first three, mail went to /archives/archivesmail#.html where # stands for a number between 4 and 83. It gets more complicated. At some point I’d like to do a better index to some of the early stuff: early being 1998 and on. I fear all the old Genie archives are long lost, and I doubt that McGraw Hill kept the BIX archives. Perhaps MIT kept the MC and TOPS20 correspondence, but I doubt it’s easily accessible. I suspect that much of the early history of the Internet is going mythical…

The first View and Mail went up when BYTE unexpectedly shut down, and the first few weeks were frantic as I tried to build this place and come up with a way to keep it going. That was in 1998, so clearly we were able to do it.

Word processors

Jerry,

One of the earliest public users and proponents of using word processors was the late William F. Buckley, Jr. who wrote his columns and novels on one beginning with the Zenith Z-89 in 1982.

“I began using a word processor, commonplace now at Yale, 15 years ago. Most writers will acknowledge that the word processor is conclusively useful in editing. There is the convenience of instantly reshaping a sentence or paragraph with this or that emendation or addition and then looking at it and evaluating the integrated modifications. I think it safe to guess that most writers who began composing by hand or on the typewriter have traveled, since word processing came in, through the predictable stages.”

http://www.yalealumnimagazine.com/issues/97_12/Buckley.html

Larry

Ireland

Yes. We corresponded on this, a very long time ago. On paper, I think.

Stars Wars Holiday Special

Dr Pournelle

The video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbF_ecnlyTk includes the entire show including commercials. I found the GM commercials alone worth the time to watch.

Live long and prosper

h lynn keith

I fear it was not to my taste, but à chacun son gout .

Dr Pournelle

Am I the only one who finds it ironic that Kim Jeong-il’s official funeral is scheduled on the day of the Mass of the Holy Innocents?

Merry Christmas and a prosperous New Year.

A good question.

Sometimes the truth hurts, and this may be it.

In the coming New Year, 2012, both Groundhog Day and the State of the Union address will occur on the same day.

This is an ironic juxtaposition of events:

One involves a meaningless ritual in which we look to an insignificant creature of little intelligence for prognostication.

The other involves a groundhog.

Niven was right.

Merry Christmas, Dr. Pournelle! And may you have a Happy New Year. In other news, I thought you might find this:

http://www.weeklystandard.com/print/articles/xinjiang-procedure_610145.html

interesting. It’s pretty horrific.

Regards,

Tim Scott=

A free market will provide what the customers want. Morality comes from elsewhere. Chesterton is often quoted as saying that when a man ceases to believe in God, he doesn’t believe in nothing, he will believe in anything. This isn’t strictly true, although Father Brown, one of Chesterton’s characters – if you don’t know the Father Brown detective stories you may be in for a treat – comes close to saying it.

What is true is that without God it’s very difficult to derive a system of morality and ethics that forbids or even discourages the harvesting of organs from criminals. Niven’s The Jigsaw Man (published first in the Ellison edited Dangerous Visions) shows what happens next: if there’s enough demand, and no taboos, a supply will be found. This is being illustrated quite well in today’s China. It’s even logical, given a belief in the legitimacy of the People’s Republic; the question is, at what point does it become a constitutional right under a Supreme Court of the proper political correctness?

Plants no longer to be given Latin name ‘so they can be classified before they die out’

Jerry

Plants no longer to be given Latin name ‘so they can be classified before they die out’:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2077542/Plants-longer-given-Latin-classified-die-out.html

“It was once the lingua franca of science, used to name animals and plants with precision. But now botanists will no longer be required to provide Latin descriptions of new species. The move is part of a major effort to speed up the process of naming new plants – because in many cases it is feared they might die out before they are officially recognised.

This link was sent to me labeled as ‘the ultimate dumbing-down’.

Ed

Neither you nor I find this astonishing. And the education system continues…

Hidden Dragon: The Chinese cyber menace [printer-friendly]

Jerry

A current fairly extensive summary of the Chinese cyber menace:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/12/24/china_cybercrime_underground_analysis/print.html

Apparently a workmanlike crew: “what’s striking is that all these attacks happen between 9am and 5pm Chinese time,"

Ed

On motivations 

 

Jerry,

On motivations:

As Dan Simmons reminded us (in his excellent "message" at http://www.dansimmons.com/news/message/2006_04.htm) ,

“Thucydides taught us more than twenty-four hundred years ago … that all men’s behavior is guided by phobos, kerdos, and doxa, Fear, self-interest, and honor."

Responsible capitalism is self-interest mitigated with honor — in the sense of doing things right and considering also the rights and interests of others. Irresponsible capitalism is unmitigated self-interest – caveat emptor.

Fascism and communism replace self-interest and honor with various degrees of fear, which gets worse, the worse the tyranny, ending with unmitigated fear as the only motivator.

Socialism attempts to replace self-interest without creating fear. That leaves honor — which is probably the laziest of the three drivers — as the only motivator for independence and excellence.

Honor is also the most easily perverted, because it is defined in a cultural context. Suicide bombers are honorable, in their own light … (which is NOT an endorsement of either them, or a system which finds honor instead of horror in such actions).

JIm

Actually it depends on your brands of fascism and national socialism, doesn’t it? Mussolini claimed to be restoring national honor and that share of glory to which Italy was entitled as the descendent of Rome, and held honor and patriotism in high regard. He did not in general reject conventional behavior although he often disregarded its restrictions.

Without a fountain of honor and justice and morality it becomes difficult to decide what is honorable and what is not. In modern France, the society is becoming anti-Semitic because there is a demand for toleration of the Islamic population and its prejudices. Hardly unpredictable. But then the victory of Charles the Hammer at Tours appears to be undergoing renegotiation.

National Health Care by Yuri Maltsev

Dr. Pournelle,

I thought you might be interested in this, it is a presentation by Yuri Maltsev. The talk he is giving is about his experience with the Soviet system. Formerly of the Soviet Union, he is now an educator in Wisconsin, a prof. of economics with close ties to the medical profession. He speaks about nationalized health care with some authority and much consternation.

best regards

Steve Mackelprang

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytLqGU4sjhs

Instructive. Thank you.

Godzilla Shrugged

The resurrection of a 1932 Japanese juvenal SF novel may explain Ian Plimers enthusiasm for fictitious CO2 eruptions calculated to rival the human flux:

Miyazawa Kenzi, 1932: Gusukô Budori no Denki (A Biography of Gusukô Budori).

Translation of the quotation by Kooiti Masuda

Budori:

Will it become warmer if carbonate gas increases in the atmosphere?

Dr. Kûbô:

Yes, it will. It is even said that the temperature of the earth since its birth has been basically determined by the content of carbonate gas in the air.

Budori:

If the Carbonado Island volcano erupts now, will it emit carbonate gas much enough to change the climate?

Dr. Kûbô:

Yes, I have calculated it. If it erupts, its gas will soon join the upper-level winds of the general circulation and will cover the whole earth. It will prevent radiation of heat from the lower atmosphere and from the surface, and I think that it will warm the whole globe by five degrees on the average.

Translator Masuda goes on to relate this to how Arrhenius;s work on CO2 was received in Japan:

http://macroscope.world.coocan.jp/en/sayings/volcano.html:

Russell Seitz

Fellow of the Department of Physics

Harvard University

We’ll see. I have no more confidence in Japanese models than in anyone else’s. No less, either. I will agree with Freeman Dyson that we don’t understand the effects. I also advise research on methods for dealing with possible problems including both warming and cooling, and increased atmospheric CO2; these are not likely to be solved by cap and trade.

Pipeline Decision

Jerry,

My understanding is that the Senate two-month compromise payroll tax-cut extension does retain the House’s provision that Obama must decide on the Keystone Pipeline within 60 days.

A quick scan of news stories seems to back that up – from http://www.cnn.com/2011/12/20/politics/congress-payroll-tax-cut/index.html, "While there are sharp differences over how to proceed, both the House and Senate versions of the legislation extend the tax cut, unemployment benefits and the doc fix. Both measures also would push for presidential action on the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico…"

Meanwhile, a nameless White House official claims that Obama will simply deny permission for the pipeline if forced to decide in sixty days. But then he said he’d veto any bill with a pipeline decision deadline, and that promise seems to have evaporated.

Boehner’s problem seems to be that many House Republicans simply don’t want to vote for something as demonstrably impractical as a 60-day payroll tax-cut extension. Everybody who’d be involved in administering that seems to agree that it’ll be a huge pain, fwiw. Expensive too.

Senate Republicans seem to be better than their House colleagues at voting for something ridiculously impractical, on grounds it’ll get fixed later, FWIW.

On principal, I agree with the House Republicans – do it right the first time rather than let it drag on into next year. There’ll be more than enough other things for the Congress to deal with next year.

Practically speaking, they seem to have been massively wrong-footed by the Democrats, helped by media coverage unclear at best and far too often partisan. (Newt, as you note, could have warned them that media malpractice would happen.) Will they stick to their guns, or just pass the Senate 60-day mess next week? Good question.

Henry

Well, we know the answer to that now, don’t we.