| Thursday,
October 7, 2004 Dobbin's black helicopter:
N173FR is owned by:
FLIGHT RESEARCH INC BOX 1142 STARKVILLE, MS
They are in hangar 161 at Mojave.
they seem to have a few of that model.
http://www.flightresearch.com/Aircraft/BellOH-58.htm
Here's a spooky "black helicopter" factoid: There are
no photos on that page (the other pages showing the aircraft in their fleet
have some stunning photos.)
Flight Simulator?: About a year ago you teased an
article about flight simulators and operations out at Mojave. (either XCOR
or Scaled) I've scoured your pages and byte.com and haven't seen more than a
couple sentences on the subject.
I got lucky a few years ago and picked up a copy of
X-Plane. http://www.x-plane.com/ Amazing little program. I'm pretty sure
that some user has cobbled together xerus and SS1 models for that simulator.
...thanks for the pics and the story of your trips to
Mojave.
Mark Hartwell
We are looking into the details of the flight
simulator used by Rutan. We know he uses about 15 off the shelf PC's and
Windows 2000, but we don't really know the details of the installation.
================
Subject: FW: Report from the
Front Line
Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
Subject: Report from the Front Line
[For those of you who haven't gotten my "Thoughts"
before, I'm a Major in the USMC on the Multi-National Corps staff in
Baghdad. The analysts and pundits who don't see what I see on a daily basis,
in my opinion, have very little credibility to talk about the situation -
especially if they have yet to set foot in Iraq. Everything Americans
believe about Iraq is simply perception filtered through one's latent
prejudices until you are face-to-face with reality. If you haven't seen, or
don't remember, the John Wayne movie, The Green Berets, you should watch it
this weekend. Pay special attention to the character of the reporter, Mr.
Beckwith (the Journalist in the movie). His experience is directly related
to the situation here. You'll have a different perspective on Iraq after the
movie is over.]
The US media is abuzz today with the news of an
intelligence report that is very negative about the prospects for Iraq's
future. CNN's website says, "[The] National Intelligence Estimate was sent
to the White House in July with a classified warning predicting the best
case for Iraq was 'tenuous stability' and the worst case was civil war."
That report, along with the car bombings and kidnappings in Baghdad in the
past couple days are being portrayed in the media as more proof of absolute
chaos and the intransigence of the insurgency.
From where I sit, at the Operational Headquarters in
Baghdad, that just isn't the case. Let's lay out some background, first
about the "National Intelligence Estimate." The most glaring issue with its
relevance is the fact that it was delivered to the White House in July. That
means that the information that was used to derive the intelligence was
gathered in the Spring - in the immediate aftermath of the April battle for
Fallujah, and other events. The report doesn't cover what has happened in
July or August, let alone September.
The naysayers will point to the recent battles in
Najaf and draw parallels between that and what happened in Fallujah in
April. They aren't even close. The bad guys did us a HUGE favor by gathering
together in one place and trying to make a stand. It allowed us to focus on
them and defeat them. Make no mistake, Al Sadr's troops were thoroughly
smashed. The estimated enemy killed in action is huge. Before the battles,
the residents of the city were afraid to walk the streets. Al Sadr's
enforcers would seize people and bring them to his Islamic court where
sentence was passed for religious or other violations. Long before the
battles people were looking for their lost loved ones who had been taken to
"court" and never seen again. Now Najafians can and do walk their streets in
safety. Commerce has returned and the city is being rebuilt. Iraqi security
forces and US troops are welcomed and smiled upon. That city was liberated
again. It was not like Fallujah - the bad guys lost and are in hiding or
dead.
You may not have even heard about the city of Samarra.
Two weeks ago, that Sunni Triangle city was a "No-go" area for US troops.
But guess what? The locals got sick of living in fear from the insurgents
and foreign fighters that were there and let them know they weren't welcome.
They stopped hosting them in their houses and the mayor of the town brokered
a deal with the US commander to return Iraqi government sovereignty to the
city without a fight. The people saw what was on the horizon and decided
they didn't want their city looking like Fallujah in April or Najaf in
August
Boom, boom, just like that two major "hot spots" cool
down in rapid succession. Does that mean that those towns are completely
pacified? No. What it does mean is that we are learning how to do this the
right way. The US commander in Samarra saw an opportunity and took it -
probably the biggest victory of his military career and nary a shot was
fired in anger. Things will still happen in those cities, and you can be
sure that the bad guys really want to take them back. Those achievements,
more than anything else in my opinion, account for the surge in violence in
recent days - especially the violence directed at Iraqis by the insurgents.
Both in Najaf and Samarra ordinary people stepped out and took sides with
the Iraqi government against the insurgents, and the bad guys are hopping
mad. They are trying to instill fear once again. The worst thing we could do
now is pull back and let that scum back into people's homes and lives.
So, you may hear analysts and prognosticators on CNN,
ABC and the like in the next few days talking about how bleak the situation
is here in Iraq, but from where I sit, it's looking significantly better now
than when I got here. The momentum is moving in our favor, and all Americans
need to know that, so please, please, pass this on to those who care and
will pass it on to others. It is very demoralizing for us here in uniform to
read & hear such negativity in our press. It is fodder for our enemies to
use against us and against the vast majority of Iraqis who want their new
government to succeed. It causes the American public to start thinking about
the acceptability of "cutting our losses" and pulling out, which would be
devastating for Iraq for generations to come, and Muslim militants would
claim a huge victory, causing us to have to continue to fight them elsewhere
(remember, in war "Away" games are always preferable to "Home" games).
Reports like that also cause Iraqis begin to fear that we will pull out
before we finish the job, and thus less willing to openly support their
interim government and US/Coalition activities. We are realizing significant
progress here - not propaganda progress, but real strides are being made.
It's terrible to see our national morale, and support for what we're doing
here, jeopardized by sensationalized stories hyped by media giants whose #1
priority is advertising income followed closely by their political agenda;
getting the story straight falls much further down on their priority scale,
as Dan Rather and CBS News have so aptly demonstrated in the last week.
Thanks for listening. Feedback is always welcome,
though I can't promise an immediate response....
William.Truax@vcmain.hq.c5.army.mil.
Thank you.
Sunday, October 3, 2004 The debate through the eyes of
Marines
GORDON DILLOW Register columnist
GLDillow@aol.com
I don't know where you watched the presidential
debate, or which line of post-debate spin you take for gospel. But where I
was, in a tiny, two-bunk barracks room at Camp Pendleton, with five young
Marine "grunts" crowded around a small TV and a large ice chest full of Bud
Lite and Red Dog, the sentiment was unanimous.
As the current commander- in-chief, George W. Bush
already commanded that room. But during and after the debate, he owned it.
"Bush all the way," my friend Sgt. John McFarling, 31,
of Charleston, S.C., said when I asked who won.
"Bush," agreed Cpl. Adam Hartlove, 21, of Pasadena,
Md.
"Definitely Bush," said Cpl. Benjamin Hess, 22, of
Boise, Idaho.
"Bush kicked his behind," said Sgt. Erik Sphoon, 26,
of Salem, Ore. - although being a Marine, he obviously didn't actually use a
prissy word like "behind."
"Bush won," said Cpl. Bryan Carter, 21, of Altoona,
Iowa - and then he boiled down his personal view of the Kerry vs. Bush
contest into simple grunt terms.
"It's like a new platoon lieutenant. You're just not
going to trust him like you would trust a lieutenant you've been to war
with."
Now, before I go on I want to make it clear that these
Marines are speaking strictly for themselves, as citizens; they're certainly
not any kind of official spokesmen for the Marine Corps.
And before you Kerry supporters out there cry foul
about the obvious lack of pro-Kerry sentiment, let me hasten to say that of
course there are people in the military who support Sen. Kerry - and I'd be
happy to hear from them. I didn't intentionally try to stack the deck here.
Instead, these are just five Marine infantrymen I knew
in Iraq, young men I deeply admire, who have an interest in politics and who
happened to congregate Thursday night around a TV in this spartan,
cinderblock-walled room - and who happen to lean toward the Bush side.
"I've been looking forward to this (debate) all week,"
Cpl. Hess told me - and then he laughed and added, "That shows you how lame
my life is."
But even though in this barracks room there wasn't
much debate over the debate, it was interesting to hear these Marines' take
on the presidential race, and the world in general.
After all, every one of them saw combat and lost
buddies during their recently completed tour in the Sunni Triangle. Most of
them also saw combat during the war last spring, and chances are that most
of them will be back in the combat zone sooner or later - probably sooner.
So while we all have a stake in national politics and
international affairs, their stakes are a little bigger. Because it's their
hides that have been, and will be, directly in the line of fire.
And yet, perhaps ironically, while they have the most
to lose in a continued struggle in Iraq, these Marines seem to naturally hew
more to the hard-line Bush stand: Toppling Saddam was necessary. We have to
stand fast. It's better to fight terrorists over there than to fight them
here.
"I'd rather fight them 10,000 miles away than have my
daughter and my family attacked here," Sgt. Sphoon said.
And even though they have firsthand knowledge of the
dangers and difficulties and frustrations of Iraq, like President Bush these
particular Marines take the optimistic view. At one point Bush said, "I
expect to win. It's necessary we win. We have a duty to our country and
future generations of America to achieve a free Iraq" - and when he said it
there were nods all around.
"I think we can win, I think we can establish a
democracy over there," Sgt. McFarling said. And then he added, simply, "We
have to."
So in this room, if not in the polls and among the
pundits, it was the president's night Thursday, with Sen. Kerry taking the
mostly jocular verbal hits.
"Flip-flop!" the Marines shouted at the senator's
image on the TV. "Be decisive!" they demanded. "It's one of the 14
principles of leadership!" And they called out in unison, "Four!" at Kerry's
fourth reference to having served in Vietnam.
"I respect his service," Cpl. Hartlove said. "He's
obviously a decent guy. But hey, I served in Iraq. Should you vote for me
just for that?"
"He was in the Navy, right? He drove a boat, right?
That's all he did was drive a boat," Sgt. Sphoon said - a comment that was
partly humorous, partly political, and partly a manifestation of the
traditional friendly rivalry between "jarheads" and "squids."
And so it went, for 90 minutes and beyond, the Marines
discussing, heckling, questioning. For me it was a hopeful and encouraging
sight. I've seen these young men engaged in war and combat; it was good to
see them engaged in peace and the democratic process.
"You know what the cool thing about this is?" Cpl.
Carter told me. "I mean, here we are in the military, and we have to follow
orders and everything. But we still get to help choose who our boss is."
Well, Cpl. Carter has got that right. No matter who
wins or who loses, seeing a corporal help choose a commander-in-chief is a
very cool thing indeed.
A cool thing indeed. So long as we are talking
about helping with the choice.
And from good news to:
Dear Dr. Pournelle,
You might be interested in Walter E. Williams latest
columns on the academic policy in place at Benedict College in Columbia, SC.
It seems that the professors are required to give a substantial portion of
freshman and sophomore grades based solely on effort and attendance. Two
professors have been fired for refusing to do this.
See more at
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/walterwilliams/ww20041006.shtml
John Prideaux
See also C S
Lewis on equality in education...
===
And from Sue:
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/world/iraq/20040930-9999-7m30disk.html
No threat seen to district; children are safe,
police say By Kelly Thornton UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER September 30, 2004
A man arrested by U.S. authorities in Iraq had
a computer disk in his possession containing a public report downloaded from
a U.S. Department of Education Web site on crisis planning in school
districts, including San Diego Unified.
The man was described as an Iraqi national with
connections to terrorism and the insurgency that is fighting U.S. forces in
Iraq. Officials in San Diego said the man's intentions were unknown.
San Diego law enforcement officials said there
was no indication of any terrorist plot against schools in San Diego or
elsewhere in the country. They did not publicly release the information
because there appeared to be no threat. The information was relayed to the
San Diego FBI office last week and then to the school district Friday.
"The children are absolutely safe," said San
Diego Police Chief Bill Lansdowne. "If there was a threat, we, the San Diego
Police Department, would be first to notify (parents). This is not a
threat."
The disk contained a document entitled
"Practical Information on Crisis Planning, A Guide for Schools and
Communities." The 50-plus page document, published in May 2003 by the Office
of Safe and Drug-Free Schools, is available to the public on the U.S.
Department of Education's Web site, said San Diego District spokeswoman Peri
Lynn Turnbull. <snip>
We saw this in the Daily News this morning. Still
digesting it... Recall what happened in Russia.
=========
Subject: The NASA satire
Dear Dr. Pournelle,
I don't blame you for being taken in
over the NASA satire "article," or being angry about the article to
begin with. Heck I was angry too, and I read your note at the beginning.
This is not only the kind of thing they could do, but the kind of thing they
have already done.
On January 1, 2000, Lori Garver (you know her; former
National Space Society Executive Director who turned coat to become a NASA
flack) was interviewed on the Today Show. When Katie Couric showed her
footage of the Rotary Rocket Garver giggled and said "Isn't that cute and
funny looking? But in ten years NASA will have something So much better!"
She then described Venturestar. Uh...yeah. You bet. I'll say. Uh huh. Now
Rotary Rocket did have all sorts of problems. But they sure could not have
been helped by the funding that got pulled after that.
Napoleon may have said "Never ascribe to malice what
can be attributed to incompetence." However, finding out that it Was malice
all along can sure get one's blood up.
I was born a year and a half before Sputnik. I have
dreamed the Dream since my parent's got me up early to watch Alan Shepard's
first Mercury hop. I was raised on Heinlein, Clarke, Niven and..well, You.
When I was a boy I fully expected to have the opportunity (if not the skills
or money) to travel to space by now. I have been embittered for many years,
wondering if my children would l ever have the chance, let alone me. I see
these latest developments as a breath of fresh air, and my hope is at least
rekindled.
Sincerely yours, Frank Luxem
==========
Dr. Pournelle:
I watched Jay Leno's interview following the Space
Ship 1 flight, with Mr. Rutan and the pilot of the first flight. They had
the fortune to meet Mrs. Bush backstage.
Jay Leno commented that the conversation was like
interviewing the Wright brothers.
Apparently, NASA wasn't much help. Mr. Rutan had to
jump through many, many hoops to get launch permission.
Mr. Heinlein's "Future History" had a false dawn for
spaceflight. It occurred to me while watching Jay Leno's interview that
perhaps our own false dawn is past.
I hope so. I also confess envy: You were there.
Now, what can we do to make sure private initiatives
are not stifled? Write your favorite Congresscritter? Find a modern Cicero
to proclaim that NASA must be destroyed? I'm not sure I like that last, as
there may be a place for a reformed NASA. Is there hope that a way can be
found to create your dinosaur farm.
Marvelous pictures. Thanks for posting them.
Jomath
Regulations have been a real problem (remind me to
tell you about desert tortoises and Mojave Airport some time). Whether we
are past the false dawn isn't clear.
====
Subject: First-Grader Arrested, Handcuffed After
Fight'
the link:
http://www.local6.com/news/3788347/detail.html
Message from David K. M. Klaus: Have these cops no
sense of discretion? Arresting eight-year-olds? As you say, Ye Gods!
No comment.
Dear Dr. Pournelle,
I, too, can't believe they would arrest an 8 year old
for fighting. Then I thought 8, and he's still in the first grade? What am I
missing here?
Bill Grigg
=====
And more on the
FAA system failure:
Subject: FAA voice system failure
I read this in comments on Slashdot, so take it with a
grain of salt. The story is that the Harris software was the problem. Its
idea of the current time comes from the Windows GetTickCount() function,
which returns the number of milliseconds since system start as a 32-bit
number. It wraps around to zero after 49.71... days, which is clearly
documented by Microsoft and has been for ages:
<
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/sysinfo/base/gettickcount.asp
>
Microsoft's fault? Not really. When you use
high-resolution timers, you think about overflow--end of discussion.
Especially when dealing with APIs from the 16-bit era, that are
well-documented to overflow.
Harris should have fixed their program. It would be
trivial to write a thin wrapper around GetTickCount() to either fix the
wrap-around or rescale the count. However the problem _was_ identified, and
a correct work-around _was_ developed.
The real question is why the person in charge of that
FAA facility did not consider it their personal mission to keep that box
working. They and several staffers should have personally visited that box
every Monday morning and made sure it had been reset recently enough. To put
a single, unsupervised, poorly-trained, low-level employee in charge of a
high criticality function is idiocy.
-- Daniel Newby, me@teco-xaco.com
===
Subject: Windows in control of the friendly skies
It was not a Windows problem. It was a bug in the
application. Windows has a function that tells you how many seconds the
system has been running. This variable resets to zero every 49 days. It is
supposed to do that and is well documented. In fact IIRC the documentation
even has a warning not to use this for certain time functions due to the
reset.
The application programmer used this function anyway
and when the computer got to the reset date the program would crash because
it would get a negative value. A quick and dirty fix was to just reboot the
computer every 4 weeks rather than to spend the money to rewrite the
software.
IIRC there was a similar issue with the OS in Windows
3.X and/or 9X as one of the system programs (printing?) had the same bug. It
was never a high priority to fix with MS as these OSs were designed for home
use where multi-month uptime was not a material factor.
Remember, any resemblance between a network news
article and reality is merely a coincidence....
Gene Horr
=====
Now a very Un-PC letter:
One of my favorite public policy "trick questions" is,
"Of all the 'occupational categories' tracked by the BLS (Bureau of Labor
Statistics), which one leads to 'affluence' for the most American women?"
The more "liberated" a person is, the less likely they
are to reply "homemaker", even though that *must* be 10-to-1 vs. any other
occupational category.
I woman consultant I mentioned this factoid to at San
Diego Airport actually got *angry* at me. The funny thing was that her
(futile, of course) public education reform project was being funded by the
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. (So I asked her what, exactly did Melinda
do to get her name on the door?)
Jim
===
I suspect, with no proof, that the new Mrs. Woods set
her cap for Tiger, the world's most eligible bachelor, before she even met
him. First, even though she could make a living as a swimsuit model in
Sweden, she took a job as a nanny for Sweden's top golfer Jesper Parnevik.
She went with the Parnevik family to US tournaments, where her spectacular
appearance made a stir along the sidelines. Her looks spoke for themselves,
but her boss introduced her to Tiger, with good recommendations to him
beyond her looks: she's good with children, honest, hard-working, nice, acts
interested when I talk to her about golf, etc. It's actually a rather
Victorian story. Lots of young women could profit from studying it.
Then again, my wife says that maybe Mrs. Parnevik
decided to marry her off to Tiger Woods before she became the second Mrs.
Parnevik.
S
===============
And an exchange of letters on
jihad from another forum:
Bonjour,
On 30/09/2004 R wrote: > P,
> I've previously hypothesized that Bush's
invasion of Iraq, even though it was a huge miscalculation, may turn
out to be a net benefit to the West. Why? Because if it causes the
Muslims to rise up in the West much sooner then the response from
Westerners will prevent a total demographic catastrophe in Europe.
> France would be better off in the long run if
the Jihad started next year than in 20 years. Better to crystallize
the nature of the fight now before many more immigrants are allowed in
and many more babies are born. It is not too late to deport illegals
and to cut off all Muslim immigration. In the extreme it would even be
possible to start revoking citizenships and deporting Muslims.
> The EU mandarins want to ignore the obvious.
Well, an insurgency in Europe would so enrage the populace that the
mandarins would be forced to take action.
> So are you really certain that Jihad is
coming to France? Holland too? And London?
I'm not so sure the intervention in Irak is so
positive for France : it has indeed accelerated the cristallyzation, but in
a negative orientation, which will lead to civil war more than anything
else. This week end, we met with C a friend who is a French MP, and his
answers to the questions about anti-americanism (everything is the fault of
Americans) and anti-semitism were 100% the same as we can find in the French
newspaper, that is, according to me, completely out of the reality. The wife
of this MP (a very close friend) told me that the current problems were
caused by the fact that Americans had STARTED a war ! She had no knowledge
at all of what is written in the Qoran, and when I tried to explain her the
first verses of the sourate 9, she answered that I was an extremist. Of
course, this MP has an access to non public informations, and is obliged to
keep secret : I believe a big part of his answer was just to hide what he
knows. But it scared me anyway.
About Holland and London, I've no information, but for
France, the Jihad has already begun, even if it's not yet very visible :
about 70 areas of France are officially considered as outside the control of
police and are totally controlled by Muslims. My impression is that
there is a debate inside the different extensions of the Muslim Brothers
about how to achieve the Jihad :
- The internal organization of Muslims is that a
self-defined leader will dictate a Fatwa, that those who recognize him will
follow. If such a leader has not enough followers, his fatwa will be
completely unsuccessful. The dominant leader in France are from the UOIF
(the official representation of Muslim Brothers in France).
- For the moment, the Tariq Ramadan, Dr Milcent (= Dr
Abdallah), and others, from the UOIF seem to prefer a non-terrorist but
legal Jihad.
- Some other groups have already declared the Jihad
against France, but did not succeed (probably a success of Police) : an
Algerian group had done this in 1994, Al Qaida has done this this summer,
etc.
- It seems that many people are getting guns and other
firearms
So, my impression is that, at one moment, some groups
linked to the Brother Muslims will consider that the present strategy is not
efficient enough, and one leader will make a successful fatwa, and it will
probably be the start of an intifada.
A bientôt,
P
Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it,
doesn't go away Philip K. Dick
Which may tell you more than you want to know about
jihad in Europe.
====
The only commentator that I have located to date who
knows what WW-IV is all about is a "neocon", so what is a fellow to do?
Jim
> in the late 1990s when Egyptian newspapers
claimed
> that chewing gum Israel was selling in Egypt was laced
> with sexual hormones that aroused insatiable lust
> in young Arab women
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/charleskrauthammer/ck20040507.shtml
This war is also about sex
Charles Krauthammer
I had not realized that the Arabs were *that* crazy on
the matter of
sex. If Big Pharma came up with a drug that could do *that*, the
Egyptians would be 'way at the end of the line to get some <grin>.
Jim
=============
Dr Pournelle,
Would you buy a used submarine from this navy?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3723124.stm
Jim Mangles
======
TSA BITES A REAL LIBERAL:
Fix What's Wrong at the Airport: Start
Profiling
Susan Estrich Wednesday, Oct. 6, 2004
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2004/10/6/82807.shtml
Why me?
I almost didn't make it to Cleveland today for
the vice presidential debate. I was in Newark, being searched.
An interesting article...
==
Jerry,
A couple of things struck me reading Ms. Estrich's
article
> The head of security agreed. It's all the fault of
the ACLU, he explained. They make us do it this way. > > My friend Nadine
Strossen, who is the president of the ACLU, would be surprised to find out
how much power she has.
Does she really think the Bush administration would
have implemented the system this way if they didn't have to? It's pretty
disingenuous for the PC crowd to saddle the rest of us with their goofy
ideology and then disavow its concrete manifestation.
Also,
> When I landed in Cleveland, I learned that half the
big-shots on the Washington flight had also been subjects of the "big >
search." They had one-way tickets, too, since most of them are headed > to
St. Louis from here. Lots of time wasted > today. Hopefully no terrorists
slipped through while they were > searching journalists.
When did journalists get to be "big-shots", and why
are journalists above suspicion when the rest of us are not? The sheer
arrogance is astounding.
She may be right about one thing, though, even as she
dances around plain speech:
>The conservatives are the ones who put this crazy
system into effect. >It took Nixon to go to China. It will take liberals >
to fix what's wrong at the airport.
Yes, indeed. It may take liberals to implement a
security system that preferentially searches young men from Muslim
countries. If the conservatives try they will certainly be attacked at every
turn - by the liberals, of course, especially those in the press.
Eric Baumgartner
h
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