| Monday
April 27, 2009
Letter from England
From the UK, it appears to me that Obama is
desperately trying to preserve judicial deference to executive branch
decision-making. There is already blood in the streets, and there may be a
need for a Truth and Reconciliation Commission before this is over.
The UK Budget was released, and it's 'soak the rich'
(and everyone else). Labour has always liked to spend money; but finding the
money is the hard part. The maximum tax band back in 1974 under Labour was
83%, and it was clear then that nobody with mobility, money, and sense
stayed in the UK to be taxed. New Labour won in 1997 by promising to keep
the 40% maximum tax band, so Blair and Brown had to find the money
elsewhere. They did that by encouraging a financial services boom in London
and turning a blind eye to risky investment practices. The inevitable has
happened, and Labour is now living beyond its means. Taxes will go up, and
services will be cut. I'm in a bind here, since my research grant goes up
for renewal in July. Last time, approval was delayed by Brown's Treasury for
three months until money became available; this time there may be no money.
The Government is already refusing to allow universities to offer enough
university places to meet the demand, and I suspect 30-40 universities may
disappear over the next ten years <http://tinyurl.com/dg2wkx>
.
Blair snipes from the sidelines and related stories: <http://tinyurl.com/caczr4
> <http://tinyurl.com/d5tvkh>
<http://tinyurl.com/cczhss> <http://tinyurl.com/dn77yw
> <http://tinyurl.com/dkef7e>
Retired Gurkha soldiers anger over Home Office actions
to prevent them from settling in the UK: <http://tinyurl.com/cj4pqt>
<http://tinyurl.com/cpcs5y >
Perhaps this Home Office initiative will go away now
that the money has disappeared: <http://tinyurl.com/d85cnm>
Other Home Office stories: <http://tinyurl.com/cmvu5f>
<http://tinyurl.com/caayrn > <http://tinyurl.com/dd8gkd>
Independent comment on the crisis of Liberalism: <http://tinyurl.com/cwbktb
>
-- Harry Erwin, PhD, Senior Lecturer of Computing,
University of Sunderland. Computational neuroscientist modeling bat
bioacoustics and behavior. http://osiris.sunderland.ac.uk/~cs0her
===========
A 3rd Party For Whigs
Why not try...The Whigs?
http://modernwhig.org/
I thought it was a joke when I heard about it. In fact
it is an interesting group. Organized initially by returning veterans of the
current war it seems to be remarkably sane, in part because its organizers
are under no illusions about the odds they face. Note that with most of the
founders being military they like the idea of solving problems at the lowest
level possible. The seem to be big advocates for federalism.
I particularly like their Science and Technology
statement: "Exploration is in our blood. Whether it is the brain, the
oceans, the wilderness or space, people have always been fascinated by the
unknown. Perhaps more importantly, science has a way of bringing people
together in a manner that no politician could ever dream. Science also has a
way of transforming the economy. The Modern Whig Party supports the
privatization of space and continued exploration of our oceans. Taking away
the government monopoly and allowing capitalism into the exploration
business will exponentially expand our technology base and further the
growth of mankind."
On the debit side they have not one word about nuclear
power and endorse the Pickens plan.
The owl is a nice touch though.
Very Respectfully, Ken Talton <http://modernwhig.org/>
==============
Alone? Or not?
Hi Jerry,
Without advocating a position one way or another
regarding the presence or absence of ET's among us, there are a bunch of
problems involved with either verifying or discrediting either position.
First, there is the scientific credibility problem.
Let us suppose that Elvis really, truly DID appear in the living room of
David Bond while Dave was winding down from a tough day of directing the
Engineering and Technical Management of Wright Patterson AFB. Where the ET
debris is reportedly stored. Elvis breaks into a stirring rendition of 'Blue
Suede Shoes', does his traditional 'Thank you vurry much' at the end, and
'leaves the room' in a puff of smoke. Really. From the point of view of
science it is irrelevant whether it 'really' happened or not.
Scientifically, it didn't. Science works on repeatable, verifiable
phenomena. Elvis in the living room is neither. If Dave goes into the office
next day, calls a staff meeting, and describes the (actual) visit of Elvis
with the accuracy traditionally attributed to a Xerox machine he would be
lucky to be Director at quitting time the same day. The same with eyewitness
accounts of UFO's. A person (or persons) sees something in the sky that
cannot be readily identified and reports it. The report can be analyzed
scientifically to identify a deliberately concocted hoax or a report
fabricated out of whole cloth, or identify a known natural phenomenon that
accounts for the sighting. Science can address the ET'ness of the reports
only to the point of saying that if the objects are actually interstellar
visitors they are either using technology based on scientific principles
unknown to us at this time or are being piloted by beings with extremely
long life spans. It cannot disprove--or prove--the existence of a real,
genuine extraterrestrial UFO without a sample in hand.
Which brings us to the question of whether or not we
collected samples of interstellar spacecraft--in the '60's--and 'reverse
engineered' them. From my point of view, this is even more unbelievable than
the 'fact of' interstellar spacecraft. If, in the 1960's, an iPhone had been
transported back in time and dropped into the Monday morning staff meeting
at Bell Labs, or any other lab on Planet Earth, the chances of 'reverse
engineering' it and reproducing it would have been exactly zero. Never mind
reverse engineering an interstellar spaceship based on scientific principles
which our science says are not possible even in theory and built by beings
whose mental processes may differ from ours more than the mind of an octopus
differs from that of a grasshopper. Would you want to be the one to
disassemble the little black box from the middle of a spaceship which you
suspect can access energies and forces capable of driving said spaceship
between the stars? The ONE data point that would make the salvage of such a
space ship of incalculable value is that it would prove once and for all
that interstellar travel IS POSSIBLE. . If the crew had simply landed on the
Mall in DC, climbed out, handed us the keys, and started viewing the cherry
blossoms, the chance that we could simply build copies and start touring the
stars is VERY remote. The chance of reverse engineering a pile of crash
debris from a ship based on scientific principles of which we are not even
aware is even slimmer.
As for the 'debunkers' conclusively 'proving' that
interstellar spaceships are NOT flying around all over our skies by pointing
out that if they were that they would be detected and tracked by our huge
array of air surveillance sensors. Well, no, they wouldn't. Lets assume that
there really are alien ships providing regularly scheduled sightseeing tours
of the earth to residents of NGS 549672. And that they really are powered by
reactionless drives and capable of accelerating and decelerating at hundreds
of gravities, as reported. What would they look like to a typical air
surveillance system? Essentially, they wouldn't. They wouldn't even have to
have 'stealth' technology. They would BE stealth technology. They could be
plated with a 100% reflective superconducting film and they wouldn't be
seen. Or at least not recognized as something strange. If they were cruising
around at normal speeds they would look like an airliner or something
similar. If they were doing ET stuff, they probably wouldn't be recognized
as a valid 'target'. Things in the sky traveling at extremely high rates of
speed and/or changing velocity with accelerations of hundreds of G's simply
wouldn't be recognized as a valid contact. In fact, modern systems would
probably be even less likely to detect them than would the primitive systems
of the '60's. For example, how would the MTI doppler FIR filter of an
AN/SPS-49 react to the doppler from a Mach 10-20 ET tourist craft? Would the
doppler shifted return be within the RX bandwidth at all? Or if the
spacecraft were 50 miles out and not traveling radially, would returns that
changed bearing by 35 degrees or so on successive 10 second sweeps be
recognized as a valid contact? Or random noise? Our surveillance tools are
very effective at detecting and tracking things that we expect to detect and
track; not so hot at either if the objects are actually capable of the
actions reported by observers.
Of course, if you want a really stupid opinion on the
subject, and for some reason mine won't do, you probably want to go straight
to the government source ( http://www.nasa.gov/centers/glenn/technology/warp/warpfaq.html
) (Actually this approach works pretty well on any subject. If you are peak
searching on stupidity, go straight to the authoritative government
statement re the subject in question.):
From the above link:
"What about UFOs?
There is an expression that engineers use: "signal to
noise ratio." It refers to the difficulty of getting the real signal, say a
voice over the telephone, to stand out and be heard above all the noise and
clutter that is also on the line. On the subject of UFOs the signal to noise
ratio is so abysmal, that it does no good to listen.
That whole subject is really irrelevant to our own
human quest to travel to space. If we humans are going to figure out how to
build space vehicles, then WE have to build our own space vehicles. It
doesn't matter if it has or has not been done by someone else. (I say that
having a spaceship with Eta Carina plates on it parked on the White House
lawn, with little green tourists waltzing around taking pictures and
ignoring the bullets from the Secret Service, would matter quite a bit,
scientifically speaking. Especially if they hopped back in, fired it up, and
were observed passing the moon about 5 seconds after liftoff.)
Its been suggested that we might have something to
learn by studying UFO stories. I disagree. First there is this signal to
noise ratio problem. Even if the stories are correct, they are only as
useful as science fiction. Science fiction can be useful to give you some
mental picture to get you started thinking about the real issues, but it is
no more useful than that. Even if UFOs were completely real, which is
doubtful, and even if I had a film of one in front of me, it wouldn't be of
much help.
For example, if someone in the previous century saw a
film of a 747 flying past, it would not tell them how to build a jet engine,
what fuel to use, or what materials to make it out of. (All true, but it
WOULD tell them that 747's COULD INDEED BE BUILT.) Yes, the wings are a
clue, but just that, a clue. To do real work, to really determine how to
build the next generations of vehicles, we need our own information. There
are plenty of possibilities for credible approaches emerging from our own
scientific literature. It would be a waste of our limited time to go chasing
down mere hearsay. "
Thus sayeth NASA.
Bob Ludwick
============
Subj: Sugar Labs -
Pythonic platform for developing constructivist educational software
http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/
go/Community/FAQ
I'm ambivalent about constructivism.
On the one hand, I've seen reports that constructivist
approaches to teaching math (for example) simply don't work.
http://www.coreknowledge.org/
blog/2008/02/21/math-instruction
-an-inconvenient-truth/
On the other hand, how does a kid, who could become a
Master Scientist, get in his (or her) 10k hours (as per Malcolm Gladwell's
_Outliers_) of "doing science", other than by ... doing science?
http://www.gladwell.com/
outliers/index.html
And you don't "do science" just by reading textbooks
and following recipes for "experiments" taken from cookbooks. You have to
ask real questions of Nature and struggle to understand the answers, which
are often unclear.
Or so it seems to me.
On the Gripping Hand:
Maybe constructivist approaches work better for some
purposes, for some students -- like getting future scientists started on
their 10k hours -- but not uniformly over all students and all purposes --
like maybe not for grounding all kids in the basics of arithmetic, or even
for grounding future scientists in the basics of algebra and calculus?
Rod Montgomery==monty@starfief.com
Education is still primarily a parental
responsibility. Recall that in the Roman Republic, it was considered more
admirable to educate one's children oneself. Of course that was long ago.
The theory of public education is that requiring
people to pay for other's education is justified because that is an
investment: it makes the economy run better if everyone has some basic
skills and basic understanding of their civilization. Democracy cannot
operate when the people are without skills and understanding.
The problem here is described well by Charles
Murray in his
Simple Truths, Not everyone benefits from all education. Progress
depends on the education of the top 20% or so of the population, while
sustaining a society depends on find a productive place with dignity for
the lower 50% of the population. Obviously this is an oversimplification.
Our present school system does not do either job
very well in most places. The federalization of education has made things
worse while spending more money.
But education of one's children remains a
parental responsibility. Everyone should learn to do something well.
That's what schools used to be for, but parents have always know this.
=========
Escape from Hell
Dr Pournelle,
With Borders closing, my wife and I redeemed a gift
card at our local store. Their entire stock was on shelves -- I was told
nothing was in the back of their normal fiction inventory. I was able to
pick up the last copy of Escape, along with Niven/Lerner's Fleet of Worlds,
the latter in paperback. Escape from Hell is a good read. I enjoyed it more
than my initial reading of its predecessor, which has stuck with me in
memory and re-reads for more than 20 years and many moves.
I think that I'll probably miss Borders, if only for
the competition they provided others with a brick-and-mortar presence.
I'm looking forward to more on Rick Galloway. Please
keep them coming.
-d
Despite the near stealth of the launch, Escape
From Hell has sold fairly well and those who read it have like it.
Thanks.
=========
Subj: Build your own copy of
Colonel Falkenberg's desk?!
http://www.maximumpc.com/article/
features/maximum_pc_builds_a_
multitouch_surface_computer
Rod Montgomery==monty@starfief.com
Of course I described that desk some years ago.
It seemed pretty advanced then... See
The Prince.
============
Gored again
Bear in mind that there has been at least talk about
suing Gore and the company that is making him so much money off CO2for
fraud.
------
GORE before Congress last week: I’m not saying that
you have, but he gave them that information and committed a massive fraud
that ended up hurting most of all the people who trusted him. Senator Warner
made reference in his opening statement to the story on the front page of
the New York Times this morning, absolutely incredible. The largest
corporate carbon polluters in America, 14 years ago, asked their own people
to conduct a review of all of this science. And their own people told them,
“What the international scientific community is saying is correct, there is
no legitimate basis for denying it.” Then, these large polluters committed a
massive fraud far larger than Bernie Madoff’s fraud. They are the Bernie
Madoffs of global warming. They ordered the censoring and removal of the
scientific review that they themselves conducted, and like Bernie Madoff,
they lied to the people who trusted them in order to make money. And the CEO
of the largest . . .
BARTON: I will stipulate that CO2 concentrations are
going up. there is no debate about that....
GORE: It is on the front page of the New York Times
today, by Andrew Revkin. They themselves conducted review and found a
science about it’s valid. And to the point you made a moment ago: they
verified in their own studies that man-made global warming is raising
temperatures and causing this crisis. Like Bernie Madoff, and they lied
about it in order to make money. And they themselves profited. The ceo of
the largest got a onetime payment of $400 million. Now, again, those who
have trusted them and believed them are due an apology. These corporations
ought to apologize to the American people for conducting a massive fraud for
the last 14 years.
-----
Here is the actual key quote from the GCC report from
Revkin’s article:
“The potential for a human impact on climate is based
on well-established scientific fact, and should not be denied. ”
------
Here it is in context:
” The potential for a human impact on climate is based
on well-established scientific fact, and should not be denied. While, in
theory, human activities have the potential to result in net cooling, a
concern about 25 years ago, the current balance between greenhouse gas
emissions and the emissions of particulates and particulate-formers is such
that essentially all of today’s concern is about net warming. However, as
will be discussed below, it is still not possible to accurately predict the
magnitude (if any), timing or impact of climate change as a result of the
increase in greenhouse gas concentrations. Also, because of the complex,
possibly chaotic, nature of the climate system, it may never be possible to
accurately predict future climate or to estimate the impact of increased
greenhouse gas concentrations.”
Interesting. no?
== Source for the quotes: Prof. Roger Pielke, Jr.
============
Nature Mag. Creates online educational publishing
In order to offer online educational material with
some credibility Nature magazine has created Scitable, "A free science
library and personal learning tool brought to you by Nature Publishing
Group, the world's leading publisher of science." Currently the site
"concentrates on genetics, the study of evolution, variation, and the rich
complexity of living organisms." It also offers the ability to create groups
for people studying the same topics.
The site is currently free, but I'm sure that will
change in the future. It will probably give the textbook printers a run for
their money.
http://www.nature.com/scitable
Tim Boettcher
============
Even for a California congresscritter this is just
breathtaking.
From an interview on NPR of Henry Waxman (D-CA) as
relayed by Tavis Smiley:
“We’re seeing the reality of a lot of the North Pole
starting to evaporate, and we could get to a tipping point. Because if it
evaporates to a certain point - they have lanes now where ships can go
that couldn’t ever sail through before. And if it gets to a point where it
evaporates too much, there’s a lot of tundra that’s being held down by
that ice cap..”
A
===========
Mr. Ludwick's letter (
http://www.jerrypournelle.com/mail/2009/Q2/mail568.html#ETI ) reminds me
of an editorial in Analog in the sixties, "Unidentified Flying Observations"
I think it was titled. Campbell pointed printed various photos of aircraft,
and non-aircraft, and asked rhetorically 'If these had been available to
scientists in the 1890s, would they have proven anything, or made flight
possible?' Probably not. And when it comes to spacecraft from another star,
it's more like asking 'If drawings of aircraft had been available to
stone-age New Guinea highlanders in 1890, would it have advanced their
technology?' Aside from proving 'It CAN be done!', no.
All of which leads to my position on UFOs: "We're in
the book." If they want to get in touch with us, they can. If they don't,
there ain't a damn thing we can do about it. So, until the real-life version
of The Day the Earth Stood Still occurs, fuggedaboudit.
Best,
Stephen M. St. Onge
=============d
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