this is an experiment. Roberta
is driving. I am trying to write with the Tablet. It's not working too well,
partly because the new power system seems intermittent: the Tablet keeps
thinking it is not connected to external power. Jiggling the connector fixes
that, but that's not much fun.
=====
Home. Cleaning up. Lots of mail to come. But: have to Pay
Bills and Do Taxes, neither being my favorite activity.
I keep hearing stuff from Republicans
that I dislike. Then I hear the Democrats who have no alternatives, and
complain that the election was stolen. "Democrats vote on Wednesday."
Apparently there were some pamphlets that said that, and some voters
believed them. I doubt there were very many, but I do wonder, is it gaining
"consent of the governed" to count the opinions of those who know so little
about civic affairs they do not know when election day is the same as every
other vote? We used to have literacy requirements and poll taxes. Those may
have been unfairly applied to produce racial discrimination, but is it a bad
thing to require voters to read English and pay less than the cost of a pack
of cigarettes to take part in an election?
-- Ordinary users shouldn't even know the words
"operating system," much less "device driver" or "patch." Paul Graham
Of course the BEST thing we could do for education is to
abolish the Department of Education, get Washington including the courts out
of the education business except in the District of Columbia where the Feds
can set a shining example of how well their expertise works; if they are any
good the States will copy their methods, and otherwise--
And let the States decide how to finance education.
Of course we will not do any of that. And things will get
worse and worse, because THE PURPOSE OF PUBLIC EDUCATION is to hire and pay
members of the UNIONS. But that isn't the REAL purpose. The REAL purpose is
to see to it that the children of the wealthy stay on top, allowing a few
upstarts to climb up but providing a real head start for those who can
afford to send their kids to real schools instead of the horrors that the
public system generates. IN some communities the local public schools will
be fine; in most, only those who send their children to private schools will
be sure of getting them enough education to be competitive with the children
of the rich. THIS IS HOW IS IS SUPPOSED TO WORK.
If you don't believe it is intended to work this way, ask
yourself what, if you were wealthy and knew your kids weren't really any
brighter than the others around them, you would do to give your children an
edge, a head start, a leg up. Be sure to keep your intentions concealed
since you do not want the mugs to catch wise and upset the system. Design me
a method to give your kids an edge.
You'll come up with something like this, and throw in No
Child Left Behind to be sure that none in the public schools Get Ahead.
Won't you?
Mojave, CA, Wednesday, April
11, 2005: – Today,
XCOR Aerospace announced it has signed a contract with the National
Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to develop a composite cryogenic
tank to hold liquid oxygen (LOX). This contract is part of NASA’s
Exploration Systems Research and Technology (ESR&T) program to develop key
technologies for manned exploration of the Moon, Mars and beyond. The value
of this firm fixed-price contract is $7 million with all options included,
and will pay $1 million in the first year.
“This is a wonderful opportunity for NASA and for XCOR,” said
XCOR’s president, Jeff Greason. “NASA is reaching out to small businesses
and this contract is an excellent example. Both private industry and the
government will benefit from this project, as well as future users of space
vehicles.”
Now if NASA will just keep helping small companies with
innovative systems.
As we were driving home yesterday the big story on the radio was man
outside the Capitol with bombs. Later they said police had overpowered him.
Then -- well, nothing. There was nothing in this morning's paper about it,
either.
It transpired that the man had wheeled a couple of
carryon bags up to the Sherman Fountain. How far beyond that he got I don't
know. The the cops grabbed him threw him on the ground, and demanded to know
what was in the bags. He wasn't talking, apparently, so they blew up one of
the bags. They will now charge him with something or another, disorderly
conduct perhaps: for some reason after they grabbed him and threw him to the
ground he wasn't talking to them. The story doesn't say whether anyone tried
to talk to him before throwing him to the ground.
I can
recall some years ago pulling one of those travel bags up to the Capitol, up
the stairs, and inside. I had a new computer I wanted to show one of the
Congressmen. But that was in another country, when the Capitol was the
people's house, accessible to all. The times, they are a' changing, although
perhaps not quite as anticipated.
I am no at all sure I have
any solution to the problem. I do know that before we decided to rearrange
everyone else's affairs, I could walk up to the Capitol building with brief
case or suitcase. Once I took the shortcut from the House Office Building to
the Capitol through the tunnel; someone did ask me where I was going, then
kindly directed me to the proper wing for the Minority Whip's office. But
that too was in another country.
Perhaps the world is safer
now that we are involved everywhere, and have had to close the people's
house of government, the building most recognized everywhere in the world; a
building anyone would walk up to, walk inside, photograph; visit the seat of
government of the land of the free, and it wasn't disorderly conduct to do
it. But permit some of us to remember earlier times, when there were 26,000
nuclear warheads aimed at us, but we did not close down the symbols of
freedom.
Tax time. And of course my mail is not being
sent. Glitch from Outlook? Problem with local service? So far as I can tell
the FTP system works. Sigh. I have a pile of stuff to get done. Why
not have email problems?
Well, shutting down Outlook and restarting Windows fixed this. Last night
we had one of those Microsoft Surprises: the machine had reset itself when I
got here. Some kind of system update. Microsoft was kind enough to tell me
they had restarted my system for me.
Maybe not enough? Anyway, shut down Outlook and restart and my mail goes
out properly. What next?
There's some good stuff in mail. Be sure to visit
http://shurl.org/pizzadata
so you can worry for the rest of the week. Lipid Leggin!
I seem to have got my taxes done all but the
actual paying bills and writing checks, but it sure ate the day. I owe Niven
a lot of work on Inferno, and my wife some work on the plot on our next
book. It's a great life if you don't weaken.
When I was younger, America made things. We were a creditor nation.
During the Clinton Administration we became a debtor nation, and now we are
very much so. It gets worse. We buy things. We sell services. But we don't
sell anything like the amount of services it would take to cover the things
we buy. We buy things from overseas because we can't make them cheaper than
people overseas can. And we pay our taxes. And endure our regulations. Most
of which don't plague the Chinese and others who make the things we buy.
So how do we pay for all this? By selling production values, and also
selling calls on our labor: by going into debt and by selling capital
assets. How long can this continue? I honestly don't know, but since our
education establishment is set up to service the unions and is run for the
benefit of the administrators and teachers rather than the students, we are
unlikely to educate our way to higher productivity.
We are in real trouble.
So am I. InBoxer used to filter spam. Now it filters everything and marks
it as unread. I will have to deal with that, because all my mail is now
marked as unread and I'll have to go through it all.
I do not usually harbor thoughts of torture and inflicting pain, but
spammers are beginning to get me thinking that way. Eric Pobirs once said
that until things very physical, very painful, and very public happen to
some spammers, nothing will ever change. He has so far been right. Not even
jailing them helps.
Is this one of the "services" the US exports to balance our unbalance of
trade? We are selling the nation, we can't make anything any more to
compete with anyone else, and our schools are designed to keep the rich on
top. Why not?
I seem to be sounding more shrill lately. Not sure why. But the numbers
keep accumulating. The education system gets worse, not better, and this
almost daily. The export situation is horrible and not likely to get better.
Billions constant dollars
Year
2002
2003
2004
Trade Deficit
$421
$496
$618
Goods Deficit
$482
$547
$666
Services Surplus
$61
$51
$48
From Access to Energy December 2004
"Lawyers may scheme all they wish; politicians may make all the laws they
can imagine; economists may draw all the graphs they like; bureaucrats may
posture at their convenience; and ecclesiastics may intone with the greatest
enthusiasm. In the end, however, if a man can make a better product and
deliver it at a lower price, the market will award to him the privilege of
making that product and the wealth, prosperity, and power associated with
doing so."
Very clearly the US no longer has the ability to make better products and
deliver at lower prices, nor are we very interested in doing so. Adding
regulations and taxes will not cure this problem. And we don't owe these
deficits to ourselves. We owe these debts to other people. They will be
paid. Perhaps in dollars, perhaps in our labor (likely to be worth a lot
less in future) and perhaps in blood. One thing we can do very well is
fight. Perhaps we have an export after all.
Are we likely to change? Will be bring back freedom? What party speaks
for liberty? And yes, I know the answer to that one; but every time I get
near Libertarians their first move is to denounce conservatives as fools and
idiots. That isn't likely to make an alliance easy. I was with Russell Kirk
during some of the debates between Kirk and Frank Meyer the National Review
"fusionist", and of course Possony and I were always more "fusionist" than
ideologues. But now there is neither a fusionist nor a libertarian wing to
either major party, and the people called "conservative" are scattered and
broken up into little groups. Neo conservatives were never for small
government, and their opposition to regulations and taxes was apparently
ephemeral. The schools operate to perpetuate the system. Changing to
Democrats will do what, other than fill the Courts with activists for
programs that can't get past legislatures?
Perhaps it is the day, but I am feeling a bit gloomy about the future of
this republic. Tocqueville seems to have been prescient; and the days of the
voluntary society, with much of the activity done by "associations" rather
than governments, with self government that was limited, small,
non-intrusive, and cheap are gone. I would far rather have government
"intrusion" through censorship of books and magazines in my city than have
what we have now: a government that can prevent neither pornography nor
crime, and offers me the freedom to pay taxes while avoiding potholes, but
not to smoke in a bar in which every patron wants to smoke; a government
that minds my business for me, but can't teach the kids next door to
read. A government that protects the rights of the handicapped, unless
they're really handicapped...
This from another
conference, on the Scalia opinion:
James here:
What Scalia said was this:
Let me be clear that I have nothing against
homosexuals, or any other group, promoting their agenda through normal
democratic means. Social perceptions of sexual and other morality change
over time, and every group has the right to persuade its fellow citizens
that its view of such matters is the best. That homosexuals have achieved
some success in that enterprise is attested to by the fact that Texas is one
of the few remaining States that criminalize private, consensual homosexual
acts. But persuading one's fellow citizens is one thing, and imposing one's
views in absence of democratic majority will is something else. I would no
more require a State to criminalize homosexual acts--or, for that matter,
display any moral disapprobation of them--than I would forbid it to do so.
What Texas has chosen to do is well within the range of traditional
democratic action, and its hand should not be stayed through the invention
of a brand-new "constitutional right" by a Court that is impatient of
democratic change. It is indeed true that "later generations can see that
laws once thought necessary and proper in fact serve only to oppress," ante,
at 18; and when that happens, later generations can repeal those laws.
But it is the premise of our system that those judgments are to be made by
the people, and not imposed by a governing caste that knows best.
There are a couple of other good points made by Scalia:
State laws against bigamy, same-sex marriage,
adult incest, prostitution, masturbation, adultery, fornication, bestiality,
and obscenity are likewise sustainable only in light of Bowers' validation
of laws based on moral choices. Every single one of these laws is called
into question by today's decision; the Court makes no effort to cabin the
scope of its decision to exclude them from its holding. See ante, at 11
(noting "an emerging awareness that liberty gives substantial protection to
adult persons in deciding how to conduct their private lives in matters
pertaining to sex" (emphasis added)). The impossibility of distinguishing
homosexuality from other traditional "morals" offenses is precisely why
Bowers rejected the rational-basis challenge. "The law," it said, "is
constantly based on notions of morality, and if all laws representing
essentially moral choices are to be invalidated under the Due Process
Clause, the courts will be very busy indeed." 478 U. S., at 196.2
and the point about gay marriage:
One of the benefits of leaving regulation of
this matter to the people rather than to the courts is that the people,
unlike judges, need not carry things to their logical conclusion. The people
may feel that their disapprobation of homosexual conduct is strong enough to
disallow homosexual marriage, but not strong enough to criminalize private
homosexual acts--and may legislate accordingly. The Court today pretends
that it possesses a similar freedom of action, so that that we need not fear
judicial imposition of homosexual marriage, as has recently occurred in
Canada (in a decision that the Canadian Government has chosen not to
appeal). See Halpern v. Toronto, 2003 WL 34950 (Ontario Ct. App.); Cohen,
Dozens in Canada Follow Gay Couple's Lead, Washington Post, June 12, 2003,
p. A25. At the end of its opinion--after having laid waste the foundations
of our rational-basis jurisprudence--the Court says that the present case
"does not involve whether the government must give formal recognition to any
relationship that homosexual persons seek to enter." Ante, at 17.
Do not believe it.
Emphasis added. I find this a succinct statement of
Constitutional principles that seem obvious to me, and are anathema to a
large but vocal minority which seems to have control of the judicial system.
Rule by judges in defiance of the popular will has the same defects as any
other form of rule by elites without consent of the governed, but with the
additional defect that there is no time-honored sanction to generate
respect. One may follow a king or a lord from prescriptive reasons: my
father swore fealty to your father, and I to you, and Sire, I obey though I
think you be wrong. One does not say such things to judges.
"Rule of law" is a principle that when said to
"law" neither historical nor enacted by the people diminishes respect for
law. The abortion matter is a good illustration: had this been left to
legislation it would in fact be law, but the discovery of rights not
suspected for 200 years has not persuaded those who disagree that "rights of
choice" are in fact actual law. Had the matter been left to states and
legislatures it would be long settled now, as divorce, once rare (some of us
can remember when going to Reno for 6 weeks was routine for those wealthy
enough who lived in states that didn't have divorce) is now obtainable
almost everywhere.
We went to the MWA meeting, then a concert by
Susan Graham. Graham is worth going to if you enjoy classical music. She is
a six foot tall dish. Being a mezzo, she sings a lot of trousers roles; but
you ain't seen nothing until you've seen a six foot tall Graeme do the
habanera from Carmen...
This is a day book. It's not all that well edited. I try to keep this up
daily, but sometimes I can't. I'll keep trying. See also the monthly COMPUTING AT CHAOS MANOR column,
8,000 -
12,000 words, depending. (Older
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