| Saturday,
November 16, 2002
Subject: Using the term
BuReloc around our military
Is offensive as hell. BuReloc doesn't deal with
people captured under arms while shooting at our troops. I didn't see a
single family with children on that flight.
What I did see is a group of combatants being
transported to a POW camp. Since said combatants belong to a religion or
sect thereof that views death in battle against "infidels" (you,
Roland, and me, Jerry) as a religious sacrament, I also saw a group of
soldiers whose commander is fully aware of that reality and has issued
orders that accomplish the task in a manner that minimizes the risk to the
troops he commands. Anything else would be dereliction of duty on his
part. Frankly, after decades where our troops died because their
commanders were too worried about being politically correct to give
sentries loaded guns, as in Beiruit, I find it refreshing.
Sincerely,
Steve Nelson
I both agree and disagree. It wasn't intended to
be offensive, and you'd have a hard time making the case that either
Roland or I have any anti-military bias. Nor do I disagree with the
proposition that the troops have to be given the means to carry out their
orders: who wills the ends must will the means.
Having said all that it's still instructive. That
wasn't the only copy of those pictures I received: most were triumphalist
in tone, which is itself instructive.
What you saw there was an inevitable consequence
of the logic of Empire. And note that many, perhaps most, of those
transported by BuReloc in my stories were not entirely undeserving of
that, and in fact were often sent to places where they had better
opportunities than they did in their welfare islands; nor, I think, can
you make the case that I was at all disrespectful of the CoDominium
Marines who had to carry out the decisions of their political
bosses.
Who says A must say B. The course of Empire is
predictable, and includes pictures like those; that sort of thing is
absolutely necessary, and any commanding officer who did less deserves
summary punishment.
I am not always a fan of Max Boot, but his title
"The Savage Wars of Peace" about America's small wars is
appropriate. And that was under the Republic.
Subj: Microsoft: Butterfly Terror?
A few days ago, I came across an article in _The_Wall_Street_Journal_
titled something like "Microsoft: Deadly Butterflies".
That title reminded me of Vernor Vinge's _A_Fire_Upon_The_Deep_,
in which the "Aprahanti" are revealed as human-sized
"Butterflies in jackboots", who instigate an attempted
Galaxy-wide extermination of humanity, under the slogan, "Death to
vermin!"
Suddenly, I saw it! The cute butterflies in the
latest Microsoft commercials are just an attempt to soften us up, to
undermine our vigilence against the forces of the Aprahant Hegemony, that
even now may be infiltrating our world!
Don't be fooled!
Rod Montgomery == monty@sprintmail.com
Uh -- there's treatment for that...
X-86 MAC
This is pure speculation on my part, but such a
machine would be far from a Standard Clone. It would need to include the
Mac ROMs at the very least. It would be Apple Mac hardware still, even
when using standard parts that PC makers use. You wouldn't be able to
install any Mac OS on just any old x86 clone machine.
The rumour I heard about the reason the project has
remained under wraps for so long is that the x86 Macs run a lot faster
than PPC Macs and speediness has not been in Apple's favour for a long
time now. Releasing a new machine that leaves every other Mac in the dust
would create a sour taste in recent PPC Mac purchasers' mouths. Speed
might not count when comparing Apples to PCs, but it sure would count when
comparing Apples with Apples!
An x86 based Mac might be a tad cheaper to
manufacture than a PPC machine, but I doubt that it would make much of a
difference to the retail price, or Apple market share. The latter is
clearly of no interest whatsoever to Apple and as far as I can tell, never
has been.
If PPC falls far enough behind, we likely will see
x86 Macs and part of Steve Jobs' reality distortion field will get a
suitable makeover from the marketers.
Jonathan Sturm www.sturmsoft.com The world's most
famous Pompous Git according to Google and ABC Radio National!
Dave Small had those systems that ran Mac OS on
Atari and Amiga at one time, but the ROMs were the difficult part. I doubt
there will ever be X86 Macs; by the time that could happen politically,
the Open Source people will have Linux based operating systems that run
both Mac and Windows software.
Dr. Pournelle,
I don't visit Byte that often, but read your Current
Mail several times a week, if not daily. However, I don't often go to the
Current View section. I did today and signed
up a Byte subscription, but would not have seen it if I didn't go to
view.
You might want to mention the Byte subscription in
Mail as well. (I subscribed, and I'm trying to figure out why I paid so
much more for a subscription to Salon, which suffers from a dearth of
content, since I mostly read the technology articles and gag on everything
else!)
Stephen Borchert
Thanks, but gosh, aren't you missing the best
part?
Now for a well deserved gloat:
From: Stephen M. St. Onge saintonge@hotmail.com
Date: Nov. 16, 2002
subject: The Professor Pays
Dear Jerry:
Professor Kirstein walked into a buzzsaw. The
University's president has announced:
Effective on the afternoon of November 11,
2002, Professor Kirstein was relieved of his teaching responsibilities for
the current semester and reassigned to other duties.
An administrative reprimand will be delivered
to Professor Kirstein and placed in his personnel file.
While on sabbatical leave during the spring
semester of 2003, Professor Kirstein will submit his teaching,
scholarship, professional development, and service record to peer
evaluation within the norms of the University’s procedures for periodic
review of tenured faculty. Professor Kirstein volunteered to have this
review conducted earlier than it otherwise would have been.
Any future faculty contract(s) extended to
Professor Kirstein will include a binding addendum specifically requiring
him to adhere both to institutional policies and to the norms of the
American Association of University Professors in matters relating to the
proper exercise of academic freedom and extramural activities.
Best, Stephen
Stephen M. St. Onge
Minneapolis, MN 55409
DELENDAM ESSE SAUDI ARABIA!
Astonishing. For another view:
Subject: Professor Kirsten and the "elite"
Jerry, I am a long time reader of Chaos Manor. I
used to read your columns in Byte and have always enjoyed your books. I am
also a liberal democrat, who while having some differences with the party
line, is mostly in agreement with party policy .I fail to see what is
remarkable about Kirsten, he is just another loud mouth idiot, the world
is full of them .Its just that the internet publicizes them more. Just
ignore them. Political point of view is no substitute for brains, witness
the statements by Pat Robertson and Jerry Fallwell about women's lib being
responsible for 9-11. Idiots are in all parties.
I an also tired of hearing him being referred to as
"elite", No disrespect to Xavier but being a junior professor
there is not the same as being a Nobel Laureate at Harvard. I am also
tired of hearing people like myself, who made $50,000 once in his life
being referred to as "elite" by oil barons and Wall Street
Executives. I am a semi-retired children's librarian from rural Indiana
who attended Indiana University at Ft. Wayne, while living at home and
working, I also had a small government scholarship. I paid for grad school
100% myself. Keep up the good work I enjoy intelligent discussion even
when I'm not in total agreement with whats being said. Dan Van Zile
Well elite depends on where you are looking from,
but I can't argue with any of that.
=====================
Following is relatively long, but:
Jerry,
I am corresponding with a friend on politics, and
this is his take on your View of Nov 14, 2002
Regards,
Charles Adams, Bellevue, NE
Note to Bill -- Jerry's
view appended at end of e-mail Note to Terry -- Bill was Jerry's
student, I was Bill's
-----Original Message-----From: Terence J.
Maher
OK, I'll weigh in. I was raised in a Catholic
household in Minnesota in the50s and 60s so you gotta know I was a
Democrat -- or rather DFL, Democrat-Farmer-Labor, as they are called
there. I did a little work that punk kids do, like parking cars at
fundraisers, etc, went to some receptions, met Eugene McCarthy, etc. He
even gave me his book. I still have it. I really thought Republicans were
not quite human, at least lacking in any human feeling. This persisted
through the 1976 elections.
But something happened. I chanced to read my
long time hero Thomas Jefferson's founding principles for the Republican,
or Democrat-Republican, party. There wasn't a thing in there that the
Democratic Party championed. In fact it opposed most of it. I also chanced
to read the Socialist Party platform from 1922, I think it was. (I read
everybody, Marx, Che, Mao etc) Just about everything in there the
Democrats had either pushed through already or were trying to, everything
but the seize the means of production piece. And I noticed that for our
efforts we were getting not the removal of barriers but the loss of
boundaries. We were not getting social democracy but Halloween. For a time
I held to the "social liberal, fiscal conservative" illusion.
Then I started reading some guys -- Richard
Weaver, Irving Kristol, Hayek (though these days the Hayek I most admire
is Salma!). And this guy came along, who I had previously thought was a
second rate actor and not very good host of Death Valley Days, Ronald
Reagan. But he put these ideas in ordinary language. It made sense for me
of books I had read years earlier -- The Conscience of a Conservative, A
Choice Not An Echo, etc. He spoke of the same thing I saw, not leaving the
Democratic Party but the party leaving him. By 1980, I was riveted at the
convention by the keynote address of Guy Vander Jagt. I was a Republican!!
At least that kind of Republican.
I became aware that we were not well liked by
the other kind of Republican, of whom my opinion had not changed. And by
the end of the convention I thought, it might be a politically wise deal
at the moment to choose one of them as VP running mate in the person of
Bush I, but in the long run it will ruin the whole thing.
I chanced to visit the hospital in the part
of town where I was born in Chicago. By adoption, I didn't have to grow up
there. But now I was back with those who did. And after 50 (at the time)
some years of New Deal some other new deal white liberals and their
non-white hangers-on pouring tons of other people's money into
"programs" we had more of precisely what they were supposed to
alleviate -- poverty, crime, broken families, and generations of people
who cannot envision improvement other than lining up for the latest "program",
the only concrete product being a secure class of government workers,
everybody dressed up for Halloween 24/7.
We were pretty well there when the roles were
reversed, and one of them, Bob Dole, chose one of us, Jack Kemp, as his
running mate, who immediately recanted and began to voice the tired old
echo, not the choice. We are totally there with Bush II, completely
co-opted.
So I return to where I began, Thomas
Jefferson, of whom Kennedy once said at a White House dinner for Nobel
laureates that this was the most brilliant assemblage of minds ever
gathered at the White House, except for when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.
I asked Terry if I could send his note to you. He
added
well, it's fine by me. There's one thing I'd
add though. On the improvement only through liberal programs. This is not
to say that everyone who is down is down through their own fault. The left
always thinks we mean this. We don't. There is a role for government
programs. The problem is when it becomes a lifestyle. The problem is when
compassion isn't acknowledged unless it is tax funded and government
administered. I believe the whole essence of liberal arrogance is the
separation of reward from effort -- from each according to his ability, to
each according to his need, a Marxist axiom that all leftists hold to in
some degree. The leftist agenda has this morality built into it, whereas
the right advocates simply ameans of exchange of goods and services.
That's why you have leftists opposing conservative morality saying you
can't legislate morality, then legislate morality by attempting to erect a
system in which moral outcomes will happen regardless of the people. And
on the other hand why you have conservatives saying get the government off
people's backs economically yet attempting to legislate personal morality.
Both are mistaken, both ironically do exactly the same thing.
Terry
from www.jerrypournelle.com (for Bill Allen)
As I have said often, generally the best solution
to all this is to leave things t0 the states. Yes, sometimes that produces
very bad results in some states; one reason why the guarantee of the right
to get the heck out is so important. But rushing in with national fixes
for what are essentially local and state problems produces in general a
far worse result. Segregation was bad; marginalization and national
paternalism is potentially much worse. The Congress explicitly has the
power to enforce voting rights by appropriate legislation.
It doesn't have any authority at all over
education; and I grew up in a place where the legally segregated Booker T.
Washington high school in Memphis gave its black graduates a better
education than they are getting in the integrated schools now.
I can live with legislation of personal morality
at a state level. I'd prefer it at a city level, as when the Memphis I
grew up in had a Commission to review what movies could be shown there. I
didn't particularly like having to go across the river to West Memphis,
Arkansas, to see Jane Russell in The Outlaw (particularly because the
Arkansas state police always shook down any Tennessee driver they could
catch for $5 when five bucks was folding money) but it was
endurable. The pursuit of national perfection has led us to some
pretty odd situations, and that will all get worse: and once you have it
established that morality is the business of the national government, it
will cease to protect freedom and begin to implement the will of the
majority. Just you watch.
Incidentally, I find Hamilton, Washington and
Adams at least as inspiring as Jefferson, and the Jefferson Adams debates
are very much so. The tension between Hamilton's nationalism and
Jefferson's states rights made for some interesting discussion...
====
On Homeland Security:
That is truly terrifying.
How long can it be before the HSHA folks come up
with a nice new uniform, say black with silver piping? I also wonder what
kind of ID they'll use. Those laminated plastic cards are passé. They
should consider stamped metal oval discs instead. I think I even have a
sample around somewhere if they need one.
I also wonder if the guy they just hired will have
the rank of admiral, or if they'll promote him to Oberstgruppenführer.
That'd be appropriate for the head of the Heimatsicherheitshauptamt.
-- Robert Bruce Thompson thompson@ttgnet.com http://www.ttgnet.com/thisweek.html
http://forums.ttgnet.com/ikonboard.cgi
Well, I would not expect things to go that far,
but nationalizing all problems, then having an imperial foreign policy,
leads to a great deal of centralization. Indeed, you can't have national
glory without a fair amount of centralization.
====================
On American economics:
Jerry,
You've often had much to say about the blind spots
of modern economic theory. You thus might find the following article
interesting:
http://www.techcentralstation.com/1051/techwrapper.jsp?
PID=1051-250&CID=1051-110502D
Your friend David Friedman gets mentioned as a
quintessential "sweetwater" economist.
--Erich Schwarz
A postscript to my last e-mail:
You've often complained that economists have refused
to pay serious attention to your questions about free trade.
It looks like there is at least *one* Nobel-laureate
economist, Robert Solow, who has at least partially paid attention to the
issues you've raised:
"Where I think the open-economy
partisans run into problems -- and it is a respect in which a lot of
market-oriented economics and economists fail -- is that they tend to look
at overall progress and brush off the fact that a lot of people lose in
this process. They brush it off as 'That's just distributional. That's not
my business. After all, any country that wants to can make transfers from
the gainers to the losers.' I think that's a bad mistake, not only
politically, but in a deep way. It's a socially bad mistake. A society in
which a small number of people get very rich and a large number of people
get very poor is not really progressing, even if when you add it up and
average it, it appears to show rapid progress.
"Economists who see the marvels of trade
and markets wonder why these people complain so bitterly. They're
complaining so bitterly because a lot of them aren't sharing. It's not
enough to say -- and everybody knows it's not enough -- that 'oh well, if
these countries really wanted to redistribute income they could do that.'
They can't do that. They can't do that because the people who are
profiting from the open economy -- and who usually have the political
power -- are not about to give any of it away to the people who aren't
profiting. When a poor country gets attached to the world market and
profits from it, the people who gain from this process immediately become
politically conservative because they're the ones who have something to
protect.
"If you listen to the people in the
streets of Seattle or Genoa or wherever, what they say is so dumb that
it's hard to take them seriously. But if you say to yourself, OK, they're
representing some very unhappy people; what could you say that made sense
about the situation? You'd find plenty of things to say. In the United
States and Europe, we've done very well in redistributing income. We're
far from perfect, but we've done much better in making sure that nearly
everybody profits from progress. But you could not say that about a lot of
poor countries."
The full interview with Solow is at:
http://minneapolisfed.org/pubs/region/02-09/solow.cfm
--Erich Schwarz
Well, I agree with that and I will go a lot
farther: you do not want one class of people who are getting rich and
trying to figure out how not to share, and another class that has no
choice but to turn to politics as a way to get a share. I don't want a
large class of people in the habit of thinking that their major
contribution to society is to vote for people who will take care of them,
nor do I want a class of politicians who think their job is to find
unhappy people and give them something for their votes.
I do not want to have to use politics as the
distribution mechanism, because once you get in that habit there is no way
I know of to get out of it.
I would far rather have something like a tariff
that requires the wealthy to hire their fellow citizens, and allows those
fellow citizens to feel and be important to the national economy, than to
have a more efficient economy and a larger pie that is then redistributed
by welfare.
I will agree that we have done better at this
than most, but we are now falling into "The Trap" ourselves.
It may be that there is no way to have most
people feel and be useful; but if there is not, then there is likely to be
class warfare for real.
Dr P:
Since you did the intro to Karl Pflock's book, I
thought you may have a mild interest in this.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid
=570&ncid=753&e=2&u=/nm/20021116/sc_nm/life_ufo_dc
Different subject. No need for "Actung!
Papers!"
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=569&ncid
=738&e=3&u=/nm/20021116/tc_nm/tech_identification_dc
Regards,
Steven
Well I think Pflock has done the definitive work
on Rosswell and what really happened. I'd be startled to see anything
really new that would refute his thesis.
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