| Saturday,
June 7, 2003 They rebooted the
servers at Rocket, and they didn't restore the ftp service last night, so
a good bit piled up. All's well now, but some of what I put up last night
didn't get out where you can see it until this morning.
I have known Dan Duncan for
fifty years, and we have never had the same political views, but we have
remained good friends.
Jerry,
I seem to have backed into the middle-east quagmire,
the first time in 1968 when I decided to study Arabic in order to
understand the Qur'an and Islam as a source of Rumi's poetry. My teacher
was a Palestinian engineer who was evicted from his house at gunpoint by
Israeli commandos in 1948 and never allowed to return. A Christian, but an
Arab, so OUT, doncha know.
Till this point the Israelis had been the
unquestioned good guys in my mind. Likewise now, I have very mixed
feelings about the whole situation since I have both Israelis and
Palestinians whom I consider to be friends. And Orthodox Christian
monastic friends who have lived in Jerusalem.
The guy who did open heart surgery on me three years
ago goes to Syria every summer for two months and volunteers his services
to the underprivileged there.
So this article in the New York Times struck me as
worth reading. Do YOU trust anything about current White House strategies?
Funny, but I thought Condoleeza Rice was savvy and influential enough to
navigate the Iraq mess, but apparently not. Is Syria next?
In any event if you haven't seen it, here 'tis. More
of a backgrounder than an op-ed.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/07/opinion/07DALR.html?th
From monastic Christian friends in the area, the
story rings true.
dunc
P.S. Shouldn't we call Israel, Iraq, et al the
"Near East" and Afghanistan and the other 'stans the
"Middle East?"
Your experience is close to mine. I have many
Christian Arab friends, as well as others I know through the Knights of
St. Lazarus of Jerusalem, and sometimes it is very hard to see just who
are the good guys. It's also hard to see what are the American interests,
and it becomes impossible to discuss the situation because so many of the
neoconservatives are ready to shout "anti-Semite" when anyone
points out that Israel and the United States do not have identical
interests.
It is only natural that American Jews are more
concerned about Israeli Jews than about Arabs whether Christian or Moslem,
and seek to influence the United States to employ American power to serve
Israeli interests. Irish Americans mostly don't pretend to be neutral in
the Belfast conflict; I have a friend, a dean at a major university, who
will not drink the best known brand of Irish whisky because it is made in
"occupied Ireland." During the Cold War I was a involved in
organizing the Captive Nations movement which consisted of exiles from a
dozen nations under the Communist thumb, but which drew much support from
American citizens of Baltic, Czech, Hungarian, Slovak, Bulgarian,
Rumanian, etc. etc. origin. Of course in those matters US and Captive
Nations interests really were very close together -- and for that matter,
during the Cold War, US and Israeli interests were much closer than they
are now.
It is a maxim of real-politik that nations do not
have friends, only interests. I don't believe that and never have, and
sometimes one's friends have interests different from yours, and you just
have to go along with that. In my private life I don't insist that my
friends like each other; I think that a good rule for national policy as
well.
And all that said, I have deep misgivings about
American involvement in the Near or Middle East, and I would really rather
see us bring our soldiers home, invest in energy independence, and look to
the defense of the realm.
You've been saying this for some time, of course,
and here's more evidence that people are coming to similar conclusions:
(From the Wall Street Journal editorial website) http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110003596
The 'E' Word Admit it: America is an empire.
.... The Victorian historian J.R. Seeley famously joked that the British
had "conquered and peopled half the world in a fit of absence of
mind." The Americans have gone one better. The greatest empire of
modern times has come into existence without the American people even
noticing. This is not absence of mind. It is mass myopia. ....
Never go on an adventure without a hat! Indy
indy@interconnect.net, indy@cliffhanger.com http://users.interconnect.net/indy/
But of course it also depends on definitions.
Still, the Athenians called their big trade confederation an Empire, and
we certainly have and claim as much influence over most of those in our
net as they did.
Jerry,
Thanks for your succinct and forceful indictment of
spam (Byte.com, June 2003). This paragraph may be sufficiently clear and
concise that even politicians and lawyers will get the (unsolicited)
message.
A note about Outlook and the slowness thereof:
There's probably an interaction with your antivirus software. I understand
that you use Norton (Symantec). I use McAfee (Network Associates), but I
suspect both products are similar in operation. When I start Outlook the
VirusScan icon in my system tray changes to indicate that the e-mail
option is active. This surely entails some overhead in terms of CPU
loading. So does scanning each downloaded message. Indeed, my whole system
runs more slowly since I installed the antivirus package. The slower the
system, the more noticeable the delay.
I certainly don't advocate that you disable virus
checking on your e-mail, but in fairness I don't think you can lay all the
blame for sluggish operation on code bloat at Microsoft. People who
inflict software viruses on the computing public are accruing karmic debt
much faster than spammers.
John B. Proffitt
Actually it's Outlook itself: when it goes out to
find mail it's notorious for soaking up resources. It's true enough
that Norton then exacerbates the problem. One solution is to run a
mail server yourself; have it collect mail and run Norton; then have
Outlook collect the mail from that server. That works fairly well, and we
will probably do something like that. And Outlook 2003 has far fewer
problems.
And this may explain a
lot:
Looks like the senior director of the CIO office of
the Department of Homeland Security might have gotten her academic degrees
from a diploma mill according to this article:
http://www.washingtontechnology.com
/news/1_1/daily_news/20864-1.html
If this is true how can I believe these people can
even do a competent job enhancing our security?
-Dan S.
I feel so much safer already.
On the other hand, I have some misgivings here:
"accreditation" of academic institutions is highly influenced by
their political correctness, as I learned when I was at Pepperdine. If
they think you aren't PC enough they can put very unreasonable demands,
and I have absolutely no more confidence in the Department of Education
bureaucracy than I have in the Transportation Security people. Depending
on the Department of Education to determine which institutions are worthy
is insane.
Determining which academic institutions are real
and which are not is sometimes very easy, but sometimes it is not; and I
have no confidence at all in the Education bureaucracy which is mostly run
by people with "credentials" who would rather push papers than
teach.
We certainly agree about the
Department of Education, but this woman appears to have bought her
diplomas without attending classes or doing any coursework, if the article
can be believed. It says in part:
" The official under scrutiny, Laura
Callahan, senior director in the office of the CIO, lists on her official
resume that she received a bachelor’s degree in computer science in
1993, a master’s degree in computer science in 1995, and a Ph.D. in
computer information systems in 2000—all from Hamilton University. The
organization, located in Evanston, Wyo., is not accredited by any body
recognized by the Education Department. It sells degrees based on
applicants’ life and work experience but requires no coursework."
That's pretty clearly a diploma mill, if the article
is accurate. I looked at their web site < http://www.hamilton-university.edu/index2_f.html
>. It looks pretty bogus to me.
-- Robert Bruce Thompson thompson@ttgnet.com http://www.ttgnet.com/thisweek.html
http://forums.ttgnet.com/ikonboard.cgi
Oh I think you are right in the present instance,
but the "is not accredited by any
body recognized by the Education Department" is
a bit unnerving. I probably wouldn't have noticed if it had said "not
accredited by any generally recognized accreditation organization" or
something of the sort.
I really don't like handing those people at the
Department of Education any power even symbolic.
Jerry :
The Columbia investigation continues apace. The
recent foam impact test has generated a great deal of media information,
and even some speculation about basic physics. One article is :
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/05/
national/nationalspecial/05SHUT.html
Interesting that some of the folks quoted with
statements like "people's intuitive sense of physics is sometimes way
off."
Funny. I always was taught that if there was any
question about observations of Newtonian physics, we should go back to
basic principles, and make some calculations (your site obviously saw a
fair number of these proposed many weeks back), then compare the
calculated results with experimentation.
The NYT article, however, points (somewhat) in the
wrong direction for more information. Instead, you might look at :
http://caib.us/news/press_briefings/rt030604_present.html
for a discussion on the latest results from the
Columbia investigation.
Note that there is a link within the presentation to
download a movie of the test. It's quite amazing material - and to think
we were all so excited seeing a bullet go through an apple a decade or
three back ! This footage has a time indicator, and seems to run circa
0.15 secs in slo-mo.
If you run the mpeg file full screen, you can easily
see the panel flex with the impact, moving in and out multiple times. It's
quite a tool to see the effects of the impact shown so clearly. The next
step will be seeing the results on the carbon composite materials, as well
as the post-impact analyses of the materials.
While none of this is definitive at this stage of
the investigation, it is extremely tantalizing as a potential cause of the
vessel wing failure.
As for the questions in the general media about how
long it's taking to get this investigation to unfold, I could compare this
to my previous job investigating ground-level explosions and fires. In
cases where we had all of the materials pretty much available, labs
on-hand, and a much simpler set of circumstances surrounding an accident,
it wasn't in any way uncommon for an investigation to run well more than
six months. That the investigation has reassembled as many parts as it
has, developed a photographic timeline, assembled reasonable field-tests,
and is starting to derive data from an accident that happened to a vessel
on re-entry, is actually a substantial and impressive accomplishment.
John P.
Indeed. Thank you.
And I have much mail about this:
Subject: Oil from Anything
Jerry,
Anything into Oil - "Technological savvy could
turn 600 million tons of turkey guts and other waste into 4 billion
barrels of light Texas crude each year "
A fascinating bit of technology, I can't help but
wonder where the catch is. It uses the same conversion process that put
the petroleum in the ground, just speeds it up and scales it down.
http://www.discover.com/may_03/featoil.html
Also http://www.changingworldtech.com/.
Roy Harvey rmharvey@snet.net Beacon Falls, CT
The numbers look good, but I don't know about the
engineering. The devil is in the details. I took a pass at this back when
I wrote the columns that became A STEP FARTHER OUT, and certainly we can
reclaim some energy at reasonable economics. Having such capabilities puts
a cap on what overseas oil nations can charge, too.
Another View (long but
worth reading):
Dear Mr. J. Pournelle
This being the first time I ever sent you a message,
I would like to take the time to thank you, not only for the wonderful
books and stories you have written, but also for the strong influence you
exercised on the development of my views and character via them.
I am a Greek, 40 years old Master Mariner. I have
read most of your books and story collections, and I confess that one
strong reason I was buying the old "BYTE", and I subscribed to
the new "BYTE", is your column. I have only lately really
discovered your personal site, due mainly to the way I use the Internet.
That is for about 3 months every year, the rest being at sea as I am a
professional mariner, and accessing the Internet from the sea is either
extremely difficult, or really expensive (last year I was connecting for
e-mail at $2 per minute with a 14.4 connection).
[I wonder if you can't get a satellite connection
much cheaper? Perhaps one of the readers will know. JEP]
So when I am using the 'net, I am mostly
trying to keep up with professional interest stories and such. Well, I
intend to subscribe to your site as I find it pretty interesting, although
I connect (when I am home) with a slow 56.6 connection, and that makes it
difficult following the links.
Anyway, I am writing in response to the discussion
about why the world hates U.S. (if they do). Firstly, let me state that I
definitely do not hate U.S.. I grew reading US science fiction writers,
seeing US TV series and US films. I have been visiting the US quite often,
especially in the 80s, and the overall view I have of the US, is that it
is a wonderful country, a culture that no matter its problems, will lead
the world for the next century as it did for most of the last.
But the truth is, that even from my admittedly
biased (pro US) view, the U.S. is behaving like the proverbial 1000 pound
gorilla (or is it a 1000 kg gorilla nowadays?), especially lately, and a
drunken gorilla at that. The US foreign policies, I think can at best be
described as spasmodic, without continuity, and almost designed to
alienate each and every single country in the world (well, there might be
a few exceptions). Can you really see a consistent and logical approach
towards any single international problem or country in the long run (say
since World War 2)?
Even with the old USSR, I think no one really knew
what the US policies were going to be from day to day. No doubt, at any
single time, the US policies are of course pro-US (at least as the then
current administration sees them), but the world does not see things from
moment to moment as the US administration (and most governments) seem to
do nor does the world takes a really independent view?I do not think that
I need to go into details as I am sure you can see them as well as I
do.
Of course, other countries do, from time to time,
show similar behaviour, but the U.S. being who they are (the only
superpower), do not show any interest in the views of the others and
continuously take unilateral decisions that affect the whole world. Do
they have the right and power to do so? Yes they do. But can then expect
the world to love them? No they cannot. I continuously fight with people
trying to explain to them my pro-US view, I even fight with my wife and I
cannot really blame her.
When the Iraq war started, I was definitely
pro-war. I did not think that the war would last even as long as it did,
and it is my firm belief that even with many more civilian casualties than
actually resulted, the Iraqi people will be better off. But can you
explain it to the the kids-men-women that died? Can you explain to the
world that due to certain policies, reasons, or whatever, instead of
getting rid of Saddam 20 years ago, the Iraqi people suffered for a long
period, and finally, without obvious and really defensible (in a court?)
reason, a new war started now? Can the U.S. really explain it?
Can the U.S. really explain and justify to the world
say Yugoslavia, where they took action, versus Turkey and the Kurds,
Cyprus and Africa where they did not. I was last autumn in Saudi Arabia
and the view of the people, as far as a simple visiting person could see
it, was not so much pro-Iraqi, but the old story "Yankee go
home". Never mind that without the U.S. the Saudi Arabia would most
probably be an Iraqi province. Any welcome and any gratitude soon wears
thin when the protector overstays or behaves imperially.
And on the Iraqi situation. Do you really think that
the U.S. will stay long enough to really help Iraq? Do you think that, say
the Kurdish problem will go away or that the U.S. will not find itself in
another quagmire? The U.S. does not seem capable of either playing empire
or even playing fair and with a constant policy, and will unfortunately
suffer the hate of much of the world and they do not even try to do
something about it.
Let me tell you a personal story. As I already
wrote, I have been visiting the US pretty regularly for more than twenty
years. The U.S. policy was (and still is), that a Visa was required for
every crewmember in order to obtain a shore pass and be able to leave the
ship for recreation or even to phone home. The usual reason stated, was
that it was necessary in order to stop illegal immigrants and such. Well,
if you were going to be an illegal immigrant, you could as easily jump
ship without a shore pass, and that was exactly what many times was
happening. Only the law abiding crewmembers were staying onboard if they
did not have a shore pass, and they were not going to jump ship
anyway.
But the Visa procedure for a ship's crew, was
relatively simple and cheap (about $60 and then $100 per ship), although
on arrival at the U.S. you were screened by a local INS official who could
refuse you entry even with a Visa. At the time (80s), the only other
countries with similar screening, were the hard-core communists, and you
can easily guess what comparisons were made, and whether such behaviour
tended to endear the U.S. to many seamen.
Then, the Visa procedure became much more expensive
(the cost of the visa now is about $100 per person), but still, unless the
shipping company was really cheap, practically everybody got a Visa. Then
came 9-11 and now getting a Visa is a gamble. If you have a US Visa on
your seaman's book, you get a shore pass, if not ... well who knows. There
does not seem to be a real INS policy but listen to what happened to me.
Last August we came to US from Japan. We applied for Visa in Japan as per
INS regulations at a cost of $1800. Result? Visa denied to everyone for no
reason. Next voyage from Brasil in January. Everybody got a Visa (almost
the same crew).
Frankly during the first voyage, I assure you that
the Greek and Filipino crew were "very grateful to the US for their
kind hospitality". Behavior well guaranteed to increase good feelings
towards US. And we are lucky. As Greeks we can usually easily obtain a
personal Visa by visiting twice the US Embassy in Athens. But what about
Filipino and other nationalities. As seamen we spend long times at sea, in
a ship. When we arrive at port, and the stay there these days is very
short, we hope for if nothing else, a walk ashore and some entertainment
or shopping. We seamen got used to be the target for any perceived problem
with shipping whether we are responsible or not (and that's a very long
story).
But it is the first time we are considered as
possible terrorists and a major danger to the public safety and need to be
punished by imprisonment, and that is what it is being denied shore leave
as anyone who ever served in the armed forces does well know. Well it is
entirely logical as everyone knows that many terrorists arrived in the
U.S. as professional seamen and jumped ship there instead of flying there
with a good visa and a green card. Given such policies and behavior is
there any doubt about the reason people hate the U.S.? Do you think that
people consider long range policies and such? I think the U.S.need some
really good PR people and horse sense. Sorry for the extreme length of the
e-mail but it just came out. Best regards and keep up the good work.
George P. Asteros
Thank you. O wad
some Power the giftie gie us To see oursels as ithers
see us!
[Paragraphing and minor editing in the above done
by JEP]
Dear Doctor Pournelle-
It seems like its been a long time since any good
news has come out of NASA. Instead, NASA looks to be another of those
respected institutions now crumbling under its own dishonesty and
sloppiness.
Sort of like the FBI, the New York Times, or the
Catholic Church in America. So, was Senator William Proxmire right about
NASA? When he gave out all those Golden Fleece awards, did he know
something that the members of the L5 Society and readers of Galaxy
magazine didn't?
Sincerely yours, Carl Zeichner
Good questions. I think at the time we had no
choice, and NASA didn't have to go the way it went -- indeed it
accomplished some good things. But the iron laws of bureaucracy caught up.
Long time readers will remember my diatribe against lack of vision in NASA
as far back as the Carter Administration and Robert Frosch.
I am in the middle of rereading The Mote in God's
Eye and this caught my err..., umm... eye. http://www.jhu.edu/news_info/news/home03/may03/coalsack.html
Thanks,
Carl R. Beevers "All that is gold does not
glitter; not all those that wander are [not] lost." J.R.R. Tolkien
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and/or exempt from disclosure under applicable law. If you are not the
intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any disclosure, copying,
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===================
I do presume that we all know this is, uh, not
real?
Dr. Pournelle,
I got this from an all hands' e-mail at work. The
following page from Equifax's web site states this e-mail is in error. The
message seems to be relatively benign, but it might warrant reporting.
http://www.equifax.com/corp/pressroom/
pressreleases/2003/2003_04_16.shtml
Sincerely,
Bruce Jones
E-mail Message: Your Credit: Personal
Information goes public
Starting July 1st, 2003, the four major
credit bureaus in the US (Equifax, etc.) will be allowed to release credit
info, mailing addresses, phone numbers, etc., to ANYONE who requests it.
If you do not want to be included in this release of your personal
information, you can call 1-888-567-8688.
Once the message starts you will want option
#2 (even though option #1 refers to this email, push #2) and then option
#3.
Be sure to listen closely, the first option
is only for a two-year period. Make sure you wait until they prompt for
the third option, which opts you out FOREVER. You should receive their
paperwork in the mail confirming the "opting out" in less than
one week after making the call.
PASS THIS MESSAGE ON TO ALL IN YOUR ADDRESS
BOOK, FRIENDS AND FAMILY.
I missed all this excitement but I think it can
all be safely ignored...
Apparently I wasn't emphatic enough. It can all
be safely ignored. I only put it up to show just how silly things can get.
But alas:
Regarding your mail item in Sunday 6/8/03:
"Starting July 1st, 2003, the four major credit bureaus in the US
(Equifax, etc.) will be allowed to release credit info, mailing addresses,
phone numbers, etc., to ANYONE who requests it."
This is a hoax, according to several sites,
including this from the Urban Legends site http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/pending/credit.htm
, this is an excerpt:
"It is not true that consumers must call this
number before 1 July 2003, nor is it true that recent legislation allows
credit bureaus to share private information with "anyone who requests
it." This misinformation has been circulating since 2001, and the
same message keeps getting get dusted off and sent around every year with
an updated deadline. "
And this, from the US Federal Trade Commission: http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2003/06/bogus.htm
, which says the same thing.
Note to your readers: I found this by doing a Google
on the phrase: "four major credit bureaus ", which I took
directly out of the email. Google is (usually) your friend in
investigating these things before you pass them along.
Rick Hellewell Information Security Dweeb
digitalchoke@digitalchoke.com
All of which is reasonably true, but I never
thought anyone would take that thing seriously.
This does give me the chance to point out that
Snopes can be useful, but they have an agenda and a viewpoint that cause
them to make decisions some of us would not when it comes to judgment
calls.
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