| Wednesday,
December 20, 2006 I will try to
catch up some with mail:
Jerry,
From yesterday's mail:
> A good brief analysis of the efficiencies (or
lack thereof) of
> hydrogen: > >
http://www.physorg.com/news85074285.html <
http://www.physorg.com/
> news85074285.html> > >
Chris I would point out that this analysis ignores
some critically important points:
Not all energy is equally valuable. The energy in a
rolling vehicle is worth more than the same amount of energy in a
filling-station gas tank, and that's worth more than the same amount of
energy in a Kuwait oil field. It's almost certainly worth spending 100 KWH
of cheap nuclear power to get 23 KWH of actual transportation.
The analysis also skips over the potentially huge
non-energy costs of electric vehicles, which include manufacturing and
disposing of the batteries. Batteries are a very unclean technology.
And it's quite possible that the industry will
eventually settle on some other way to transport hydrogen other than
compression or liquifaction. For example, metal hydride storage, or using
the hydrogen to make methanol which is then reformed before the hydrogen is
burned in a fuel cell.
I come here not to praise hydrogen, but to bury yet
another misleadingly superficial analysis.
Hydrogen isn't anywhere near ready to deploy, but it's
much too soon to give up on it.
. png
===============
Subject: Decreasing CO2
Jerry, I had a discussion with a friend about a year
ago on global warming. He was giving me a very alarmist view of it. I
mentioned that we should treat it as an engineering problem (an idea I first
got from your site) and consider reducing Co2 directly. He asked for an
explanation and I gave a couple of ideas. I said we could have a massive
reforestation effort. or we might be able to build some kind of "scrubbers"
that just remove CO2 from the air.
He got pretty upset. "Don't you understand that those
won't have any affect on the problem?"
I said sure it will, as it will reduce CO2 and
therefore slow or stop the warming trend.
He replied "But the cars and factory would still be
emitting gases".
I tried several times to explain that removing the CO2
would mean that the emissions wouldn't cause warming, but he was having none
of it. He only wanted to stop the emissions. Any other solution was anathema
because exhaust would still spew from cars. It was enlightening (for me).
- RP
Several of us have had similar enlightenments.
Manning the Legions.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/14/AR2006121400803.htmlf
- Roland Dobbins
============
Subject: A major oops....
<http://www.mikeholt.com/newsletters.php?action=display&letterID=223>
And how do you fix the damage? (I think the insurance
adjuster will be somewhat annoyed...)
Mike
===========
Subject: response from Randall Parker
Sir,
First let me say I have enjoyed every one of your
books that I have read, and I believe I have read them all.
I also enjoy your commentary on the war- I'm currently
in Iraq as a contractor and find that many people's perceptions don't match
my own, but I agree with many of the things that you write.
I wanted to point out in response to a recent post,
that there are cheap alternatives to the University credentialing process,
as well as shortcuts.
Please check out
WWW.WGU.EDU. Western Governor's University is a non-profit online
university, and I found their program immensely helpful to working adult
lifestyle. disclaimer: I am not associated with or profiting by this at all.
I am an alumnus.
Shortcuts that I've found useful are the CLEP and
DANTES programs.
http://www.collegeboard.com/student/testing/clep/about.html and
http://www.getcollegecredit.com/
<http://www.getcollegecredit.com/>
.
I was able to achieve an accredited bachelor's degree
with less than a year of wasted time in a classroom. I would have loved to
attend college and learn, however, I found that there was a lot more
'attending' than 'learning'. My military transcript from the Community
College of the Air Force helped out as well.
Perhaps your readers can benefit from these links.
Larry http://thebastidge.blogspot.com --
Half the harm that is done in the world is due to
people who want to feel important. They don't want to do harm—but the harm
does not interest them . . . or they do not see it . . . because they are
absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves."
~T.S. Eliot
==
Subject: IQ etc.
Hi Dr. Pournelle,
Your essay on IQ is very thought provoking, and from
what i've read other places, seems to be on the mark. None of which keeps it
from being politically incorrect. But I do think you're missing an important
point. Yes, indeed, there are many among us who cannot benefit from college,
and it is a shame to con them into thinking they can. But it seems to me
that the real problem is in so doing, our country winds with a dreadful
shortage of competent plumbers, electricians, and mechanics. Persons who
could have been successful, even wildly successful, in a trade, instead get
conned out of four years of life and a great deal of money, for a degree
that, at best, condemns them to a life of mediocrity. They suffer, and
society suffers for lack of their potential skills.
Thanks, Jerry Boyd
Precisely. Well put.
==
Subject: Skills
Jerry,
As has happened before, I read your recent essay on
education with a mixture of recognition, resignation, and frustration. I
can't add much to what you have already said -- except to draw an example
from my current experience. We have bright young engineers lining up to join
our company -- more than we can hire. Meanwhile, I've been trying to hire a
master machinist for over a year now without success. Several of our rocket
fluid technicians have worked their way up from entry-level positions; we
have had much better luck training them ourselves than finding anyone with
relevant experience.
When I was in school, we had "vocational education"
for students who wanted to be technicians, electricians, mechanics, etc.
Whatever happened to that kind of education?
Jeff Greason XCOR Aerospace
=
There may be enough of you in Mojave to prevail on
the local school board? And even contribute to shop classes? Surely there
are enough businesses out there who have this problem?
Government isn't going to come up with answers but
sometimes it can be prevailed on to implement solutions others come up with.
=
You may print the letter. And you have anticipated the
steps we're taking; we're in touch with the local school and job placement
officials to see what we can do about it, and we're looking for some
candidates with aptitude who want to train under our more senior machinists.
There's always some way to move forward.
I just don't understand how, in one generation, public
education has gone from having the solution already implemented to having
forgotten there was ever a problem, let alone what the solution was!
Jeff
Of course that is the definition of a Dark
Age: when you no longer remember that you ever could do something. As we no
longer remember that it was unusual for anyone to be illiterate with the
only exception being hillbillies who had never gone to school; the Army used
to find few illiterates who had been past fourth grade. We no longer
remember that. As we no longer remember that a nation of high school
graduates built the Army, Navy, and Air Corps that won World War II in a
very few years.
Since we don't know we ever did such
things, our teachers never try to do them.
==
Subject: IQ essay
With respect to the point you address about assuming
everyone wants to be an egghead-- Homogenously intellectually incapable
ghetto schools don’t have kids killing each other for their Air Einstein
Action Protractors. Charles Murray has also noted this, obviously in other
terms, in an essay I ran across years ago.
Most people talk about the situation with black
intelligence as if blacks are entirely innocent of the fact that the system
is rigged for them and why it’s rigged. They are not. It’s a major parameter
of their American life. They know all about it.
I know that Asians and Ashkenazi Jews are smarter than
whites on average, and I am white, and it does not make me feel inadequate
or that whites are inadequate. Why do people assume blacks are writhing in
agony over the fact of racial differences in IQ?
If you pressed me on why I still think white people
are interesting and worthwhile even though we’re not on average the
smartest, I would point to any number of things white people seem to be
super good at despite the differences, such as literature and music. Blacks
physically superior to all other races in almost all ways when it comes to
performance -- something blacks know and are quite proud of. That’s not
exactly a third-rate consolation prize. I wouldn’t trade—but do I really
know they would? Why should I assume so? I don’t want to be an Ashkenazi
Jew, particularly.
When it gets right down to it, I tend to think of the
root of liberal intellectual resistance to the science on this subject looks
a lot more like narcissism than compassion. A *lot* more. But maybe it’s
just the ivory tower to blame. It’s sad to think a primary effect of
concentrating brains in one place devoted to scholarship might create a kind
of intractable myopia.
As a postscript—I have been quite interested in this
subject ever since I read The Bell Curve and realized everything I knew was
wrong. I have until recently always thought that the dominant ideological
paradigm on these issues was completely intractable. Now I’m not so sure.
Things seem to be changing the past few years. Perhaps it’s just the aging
and crumbling of the influence of the Worst Generation.
Gerard Knorr
==============
Jerry:
You wrote in Thursday View that Microsoft has done it
to you again and then say solution was to turnoff Symantec Firewall. Would
it not be more proper to blame Symantec or whoever configured it the way it
was set? Was the problem with the 2006 or 2007 version?
While I have seen numerous posts knocking recent
Symantec products, I see PC Magazine gave an editor's choice to the 2007
version of the suite. Take your pick which to believe.
Meanwhile, here is a case where Microsoft messed up
Mac users this week. And while they recommend uninstalling, they do not
provide an uninstaller.
<http://blogs.technet.com/msrc/archive/2006/
12/13/information-on-accidental-posting-of-pre
-release-security-updates-for-office-for-mac.aspx>
Welcome to the Microsoft Security Response Center Blog
Information on accidental posting of pre-release
security updates for Office for Mac
We¹ve seen some questions from customers about some
security updates that posted for a while today for Office for Mac that they
didn¹t see any security bulletins for.
I wanted to let you know that these weren¹t security
updates related to this month¹s release or the two Word issues we¹ve written
about in Security Advisory 929433 and on our weblog: those investigations
are still underway and we¹ll release updates for those issues once we¹ve met
the appropriate quality bar. The updates posted in error were pre-release
binaries that had been staged internally as part of our testing for an
upcoming release. Due to human error, they were accidentally published to
the public websites before our full testing release process was complete.
As soon as we discovered the error, we moved quickly
to address it and remove the pre-release binaries from our public sites.
Once our investigation into this issue is complete and
we have security updates that meet our quality bar for release, we¹ll
release those final security updates for all products affected along with a
security bulletin. We¹re also taking steps to ensure a mistake like this
doesn¹t happen again.
We recommend that anyone who may have installed these
pre-release updates to uninstall them.
I¹m sorry for any confusion this might have caused.
Thanks.
Mike
*This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties,
and confers no rights. *
=
Subject: Education links
http://www.rense.com/general74/ebon.htm The Farce Of
Multiculturalism & Ebonics
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1215/p01s01-ussc.html To fix US
schools, panel says, start over
Just in case you've not seen these.
=
Subject: IQ
Nice essay on IQ. Problem is, you're an egghead too.
So am I. I have a biological son who is also an EH. I also have an adopted
son, part black, black enough to be called black or afro American or
whatever nutty term you yanks use these days.
Darrin is not an egghead. No more academic ability or
interest than a tomato. Drove me nuts. Went to the quacks. They claimed ADD,
ADHD, etc. etc.
I am also a hunter. Hunt in a very eggheady manner.
Think, plan, cogitate. Darrin walks into the bush with a .22, disappears,
and shoots things. No training, none. He shot my .22 5 times at age 12
before picking off gophers at 100 yard with iron sights on a depression era
.22 with a shot out barrel. ADD, horse pucky. He has PTP (Perfect Trajectory
Prediction) and AES (Attention to Everything Skills). When I hunt with
Darrin game never surprises us. He has similar skills for any mental
activity related to 'hunting' style pattern recognition as opposed to
egghead 'analytical' pattern recognition.
The race has many strengths, the mind has many skills,
eggheadery is just one of them. Useful today, maybe not so much tomorrow.
Egghead that I am I cannot understand or duplicate what he can do. He has
taught me to be very careful about denigrating 'other' skills.
Cheers, keep on thinking, think about how we can use
his type, and others,
Fred Z
============
Subject: Two ends of the "using
the web to do math" spectrum Buffy Willow
I sent you the first one a few years ago:
Java Slide Rule!
http://www.taswegian.com/TwoHeaded/UniVirtual/UniVirtual.html
And now, for something else fun...and the other end of
the mathy-fun spectrum:
http://www.calc5.com/
Truly, we live in an age of wonders...
I'm wondering when someone is going to use AJAX to
reverse engineer something like Mathematica as s "free web app".
==========
Subject: The Blogosphere - A Contrary View
As the creator of the first "blog", and as one who
takes the time to select and frequently comment on proposed posts, you may
find this of interest, Dr. Pournelle.
http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110009409
"The blogs are not as significant as their
self-endeared curators would like to think. Journalism requires journalists,
who are at least fitfully confronting the digital age. The bloggers, for
their part, produce minimal reportage. Instead, they ride along with the MSM
like remora fish on the bellies of sharks, picking at the scraps.
"More success is met in purveying opinion and comment.
Some critics reproach the blogs for the coarsening and increasing volatility
of political life. Blogs, they say, tend to disinhibit. Maybe so. But
politics weren't much rarefied when Andrew Jackson was president, either.
The larger problem with blogs, it seems to me, is quality. Most of them are
pretty awful. Many, even some with large followings, are downright
appalling.
"Every conceivable belief is on the scene, but the
collective prose, by and large, is homogeneous: A tone of careless
informality prevails; posts oscillate between the uselessly brief and the
uselessly logorrheic; complexity and complication are eschewed; the humor is
cringe-making, with irony present only in its conspicuous absence; arguments
are solipsistic; writers traffic more in pronouncement than persuasion . .
."
Enjoy!
Charles Brumbelow
TOP
CURRENT
VIEW Wednesday
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