| Wednesday,
February 4, 2004 More short
shrift. New Table arrives today, more testing.
===================
Subject: Bird Flu Update
Dr. Pournelle,
A very in-depth article with lots of informative links
over at Future Pundit.
One thing I hadn't thought of (though I should
have...I'm a biology major) is that eggs can't be used to make a bird flu
vaccine....the virus simply kills the eggs. (duh)
The news is good and bad.
On the one hand, there does seem to have been a human
to human transmission in Vietnam this weekend.
On the other hand, the human to human transmission
does not seem to be particularly efficient. It is not a major pandemic
threat yet.
On the gripping hand, the death rate in humans of this
virus is truly fearsome, though there are few enough cases that it is hard
to get a reliable picture. Looks to be as high as 30-50% or even greater.
It's looking like govt. secrecy and sloth caused this
to get out of hand just like SARS. Click here: FuturePundit.com: Bird Flu
Virus Outbreak Has Infectious Disease Experts Worried
Not something to agonize over, but definitely
something to watch.
Very Respectfully, Ken Talton
=============================
Subject: New Orion Varient
http://www.andrews-space.com/en/corporate/MMO(200311).html
http://www.andrews-space.com/en/news/Pub-MiniMagOrion(200307).pdf
Links to an article and paper on a new variant
of the Orion pulsed fission drive. This one uses magnetic fields to compress
the fissile material allowing more efficient use of material mass and no
heavy pusher plate. Thought you might be interested.
Brian R.
==========================
Roland recommends you
look at this site
Tia by another name
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3430987.stm
where you may find an intriguing idea
regarding spam. As well as terrorism, and a plot for a novel...
And see below
=========================
Subject: Democracy in the
Balkans
Hi,
I have trouble following your
observation that the US tried to bring democracy to the Balkans. I
really can see no rational objective in the US policy towards the Balkans.
It seems entirely driven by images on CNN to me. Certainly democracy
requires that a government can relinquish power without fear for its
members' life and liberty. You cannot demand that a country extradite an
expresident and promote democracy. These are mutually exclusive goals.
Regards Oliver Neukum
And perhaps I was unclear. The neocons are
telling us that our mission is to transform the world: to make the world
safe for democracy. The Balkans intervention was in aid of that goal. So was
the Haiti intervention. In neither case has there been any notable progress
toward democracy, and this in places that are considerably less intractable
than Mesopotamia, and with considerably less money at stake: no one will get
rich off either the success or the failure of our efforts in Haiti or the
Balkans.
Democracy does not require that a
government can relinquish power without fear that the losers of the election
will lose life, limb, and property. We imposed democracy on Zimbabwe ne
Rhodesia, and the Republic of South Africa, and the results have not been
reassuring that losers can be safe in losing an election. What you describe
is rule of law, which is a pre-requisite to a stable democracy.
Democracy, said Aristotle, is the rule of
the middle class: those who possess the goods of fortune in moderation (and
thus have something to lose; but also have some bridle on their ambitions to
acquire more). Democracy works in reasonably stable and reasonably
homogeneous countries. There are exceptions to the homogeneity rule,
Switzerland being the most notable, but Switzerland is NOT a national
democracy. It is a federation of democratic states, some of which (the
Lander cantons) are nearly pure democracy with the legislature being the
entire armed population of the canton. But note that the sovereignty of the
cantons doesn't reach beyond their borders, and can't impose language and
culture on the others, although within the canton they can and do enforce
linguistic, cultural, and until recently, religious conformity. They also
have total control of citizenship: you can't swamp a French Catholic canton
with German-speaking Protestants who then vote to change the nature of the
place, because the federal government does not control citizenship: to
become a citizen of Switzerland you must first find a canton that will
accept you.
The Swiss model might work in Iraq,
provided that there were some authority devoted to enforcement of cantonal
sovereignty, and some means of fairly allocating the oil revenues. Direct
democracy ain't going to do it.
In the Balkans the Swiss model might yet
prevail, but so far it hasn't been tried: and in the Kosovo situation the
Albanians, a minority as late as the 1920's, became the majority by illegal
immigration: after which the United States bombed Serbia into turning that
province over to the Albanians, and now faces the problem that the Albanians
want to do a bit of ethnic cleansing on their own. This does not bode well
for any future federation able to claim any loyalty of its provinces.
James Crawford writes: "On
another note, you might have noticed the news about hundreds of people once
again being stampeded to death during the annual pilgrimage too [sic] Mecca.
A few observations are in order. 1. To quote from your book "Oath of Fealty"
"Just think of it as evolution in action." 2. Can you really blame the
Israelis for not wanting to trust these people to be rational?"
Interesting attitude. I remember a few years ago when
a number of concert goers were trampled to death at a "Who" concert attended
by a few thousand in my hometown of Cincinnati. (I've also heard that we're
losing a few folks to AIDS and drug abuse.) Perhaps attitudes like this
account in part for the view, held my much of the world, that we are
arrogant. I mean, someone might respond that our culture kills people with
"sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll", and we then have the nerve to point fingers
at "these people" for accidental deaths during a five-day religious festival
attended by millions.
Tal Abell
Precisely. And the half-time activities of
the Superbowl (leaving out La Jackson who was merely trying to revive a
dying career) have been described as an attempt to justify a jihad against
American culture: an observation I have trouble disagreeing with on a bad
day.
So let us continue:
>>The real question is, is it our job to take
democracy to the Muslim world?<<
If that's the best means of self-protection, I think
it's a duty and an obligation to ourselves and our posterity. On whatever
scale, a self-organized government ALWAYS forms to an initial purpose, and
it's always the same: defense.
Your alternative is laudable, but perhaps a bit quaint
in that it presumes other sovereignties are gentlemen enough to abide by
Queensbury rules of engagement.
They are not, they will not and the evidence is as
close as the next Palestinian suicide bomber in a Tel Aviv pizzeria.
The plausible chain of events Crawford outlined:
<quote>
retreating into isolationism will actually
enhance the market leverage of the Arab oil cartel which will only encourage
militancy.
Given the eagerness of some of our alleged
allies to engage in nuclear prostitution, the result is going to be a Global
Jihad armed with nuclear weapons.
While space based missile defenses might be
able to blunt a missile strike from such an emerging superpower, it would
have to be backed up with a massive civil defense effort to have any hope of
allowing the US to survive the inevitable confrontation.
<end quote>
Seems all too possible. The 'root cause' may indeed be
lack of energy self-sufficiency, and I'd love to see that addressed by the
powers that be, but right now our problem is, for lack of a better term, an
infection of anarchy. When one suffers from septicemia, the wise course of
action is systemic therapy -- not removal of the splinter which caused it.
Treating the latter will win the battle and lose the war.
Regards,
Jim
I do not concede that imperialism of the
Athenian kind -- imposing "democracy" on all peoples within reach, but
making certain that those democracies do not, like Melos, vote hostility to
Athens -- is the best or safest course.
Stationing troops in the Mideast and the
Balkans and in Korea and in Haiti does not seem to me the best way to make
the world safe for the United States. Note that Palestinian bombers are
bombing Israelis in what the Palestinians claim is their territory, or in
aid of the liberation of what they claim is their territory. Considering
that the Israeli government is even now contemplating abandoning all the
Settlements in Gaza (a big source of friction because of the military road
that has to be patrolled to protect the sea-side Gaza settlement) one may
say (1) that there may be some legitimacy to the Palestinian claim, at least
to the extent that an Israeli government is seriously contemplating granting
that claim, and (2) that the method is working. But note that recruiting
suicide bombers requires certain conditions, and the further away the
potential target, the lower the zeal for dying in order to harm it.
I do not call returning to the traditional
foreign policy of the republic -- "We are the friends of liberty everywhere
but the guardians only of our own" -- "isolationism." I advocate vigorous
and active defense of our rights abroad, and I would certainly retain the
right to disarm any enemy who credibly threatens us and is trying to acquire
the means.
But that kind of deterrence is, I think,
considerably easier than occupation of foreign lands, intervening in
territorial disputes, trying to set up unified governments among people who
hate each other to the extent that the only unifying influence is their
hatred of us -- or at least of our presence.
Come home. Develop space resources.
Develop energy independence and national manufacturing capability. Make this
the best United States it can be. That is not isolationism. It's merely good
sense.
Dr. Pournelle,
I'm sure you've probably already read this, but I
found it interesting enough to forward on the off chance that you didn't.
http://iraqthemodel.blogspot.com/
I've read with interest everything everyone has said
about the Iraq mess since it started and I find myself torn. I'm a little on
the isolationist side of things and I'm firmly for massive development of
alternative energy sources in particular nuclear since it's so well
understood at this point, but I keep coming back to the one thing that
everyone knows but no one is saying about Iraq: we sent a very strong
message to the world. Everyone smart enough to understand it, "got it" and
those who aren't smart enough are coming to Iraq to fight the oppressive
Americans where they are killed as soon as they show their heads.
I cringe at the losses our troopers are taking, but I
think it will be worth it in the end. I also think that the troops believe
that too, but I don't really have any direct evidence one way or the other.
Robbie Walker Atlantic Printing
I will have a look. I more or less share
your sentiments: we sent a message, and I am sure the Army believes they are
doing good for the country. My reservations have to do with alternative
strategies, and the effect of all this on the republic. As to "the message"
was not Afghanistan sufficient?
====================
And Roland finds this:
Subject: Goodbye to all that?
Typical smug, dismissive article about outsourcing to
India (the URL gets it right - 'India PR', indeed):
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.02/india_pr.html
Roland
==============
==========================================
Subject: Bill Gates will stop spam
in two years...
Bill gates thinks he has a way of curbing spam:
http://news.com.com/2100-1032_3-5151925.html?tag=nefd_top
The comment 'The very notion that I have to get
permission to send you a marketing message doesn't make sense and is not
good public policy, said Richard Gingras, Goodmail's chief executive' made
me shake my head in disgust.
A pathetically bad idea.
Rob Madison
I eagerly await comments. I would be
willing to pay a tenth of a cent for each email I send, but I would want to
have some control over where the money went. Money corrupts.
I do not want to make anonymous political
tracts impossible. I believe people ought to be able to denounce the
government and advocate bringing down a foul regime in blood without
revealing themselves to the secret police. At the same time, I don't want to
be inundated with such messages to the cost of my free time.
And I am very weary of "no luck
en.lar.ging it?" messages designed to get into my attention span after I
have taken the trouble to set filters to get rid of it unread. Those people
deserve being hung in iron cages and fed bread and water. But then I am
basically a kind person. I know some people have other alternatives in mind.
But in general, if we can get rid of
anonymity for the spammers -- make it difficult to send more than, say,
1,000 messages a day without either paying or identifying yourself -- we
might be able to move ahead. After all, if you really want to send an
anonymous political broadside, shouldn't you have to pay about what it would
cost to have the pamphlets made up by letter press? It was the protection of
pamphleteers and Committees of Correspondence that the Framers had in mind.
Not the chap who invades a public meeting and shouts at the top of his
voice: or worse, hides a loudspeaker in the Hollywood Bowl and exhorts us to
vote for his candidate when we thought we were coming to listen to Mahler's
Second.
=====================
One more thing to worry about:
It doesn't take a very big comet to cause global
problems
<
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/
science_medical/story.jsp?story=487550 >
................................Karl Lembke
=============================
On Electronic rights
and free books
Subject: Tor author offers second novel as free e-book
Greetings, sir. I bought a paperback copy of your
"Fallen Angels" after reading a free electronic version, so I thought you
might be interested in this announcement.
<excerpt>
Tor is watching what happens to this book
nearly as keenly as I am, because we' re all very interested in what the
book is turning into.
To that end, here is the book as a non-physical
artifact. A file. A bunch of text, slithery bits that can cross the world in
an instant, using the Internet, a tool designed to copy things very quickly
from one place to another; and using personal computers, tools designed to
slice, dice and rearrange collections of bits. These tools demand that their
users copy and slice and dice -- rip, mix and burn! -- and that's what I'm
hoping you will do with this.
Not (just) because I'm a swell guy, a
big-hearted slob. Not because Tor is a run by addlepated dot-com refugees
who have been sold some snake-oil about the e-book revolution. Because you
-- the readers, the slicers, dicers and copiers -- hold in your collective
action the secret of the future of publishing.
Here's the link - the free download option is
in the upper left corner:
http://craphound.com/est/000041.html .
(Link to Cory Doctorow web site)
Old-fashioned paper copies available for sale, too.
Regards,
Tim Elliott
It's an interesting experiment. Fallen
Angels has always been available free (legally; many of my works are up on
sites which don't have permission or rights to do that) and the effect on
sales is not anything I can determine. You can't tell how books will sell.
It certainly sold fewer than most Niven/Pournelle books, fewer copies than
Heorot series, but it's still in print and still selling, so we can't know
even that much. It has earned us decent money, which is all one can hope
for.
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