| Monday
June 22, 2009 It's a
Spoof Site - Evolution/Mac Users
The Site linked to by Harry Erwin is, in fact, made
up. It's a spoof (though, sadly, very similar to some real websites), as
might be guessed by the last name of its alleged founder "Dr. Richard Paley."
(As in Paley's watch.)
Thanks,
Ian Perry
I suppose I should have known. Thanks.
==
Harry and Jerry,
The site is a parody one.
I determined this by a little digging around the
Intertubes, as well as examining the site itself. As an example - a real
fundamentalist WOULD not claim spiritual kinship with Mormons (just ask
Orson Scott Card).
Calvin
==========
Subject: Cow Burps
Dr. Pournelle,
Apparently the Obama Administration has decided that
removing beef from the US diet in the name of Climate Change probably won't
go over well. I'm still not sure how I'll get my beef without diesel trucks,
or cook it without my coal or gas grill, or my coal powered electric stove,
but then I do like my steaks raw.
http://www.physorg.com/news164735430.html
Thanks,
Ryan Brown
The flatulence -- actually burps -- of cows turns
out to be an important source of greenhouse gasses. Now what?
===========
Harry
Erwin's Letter from England
The MP expense reports were
released--heavily redacted. <http://tinyurl.com/m2zlcv
> <http://tinyurl.com/nnnf8e>
<http://tinyurl.com/ms6xb7>
Follow-on stories: <http://tinyurl.com/ns46bz>
<http://tinyurl.com/ltqnnw>
<http://tinyurl.com/mz2gyf
> Parliament plans to block future release of these data. <http://tinyurl.com/nk7zpt
>
The police coming out after the
battle to finish off the wounded: <http://tinyurl.com/mjavbt
>
France may ban the burka <http://tinyurl.com/kjgwhz>
<http://tinyurl.com/m6nbws
>
ID card scheme likely to be
delayed or cancelled. <http://tinyurl.com/mk67kv
>
Bizarre health and safety rules
in UK education. <http://tinyurl.com/kp8tvp
>
Social policy 'ruining
childhood'. <http://tinyurl.com/n3povw>
Royal Mail refuses to deliver
mail after postman was attacked by kitten. <http://tinyurl.com/lwsphv>
--
Harry Erwin
=============
'She says agencies that receive the food may not
charge residents for food or ask them to work for it.'
<http://www.wsbt.com/news/local/48557542.html>
-- Roland Dobbins
============
Proud To Be An American
http://www.blackfive.net/main/
2009/06/proud-to-be-an-american.html
"Georgia recently sent elements of its 48th BCT to
Afghanistan. Within 3 weeks 3 of their warriors were killed by an IED
explosion. The following video is simply magnificent. It's 12 minutes long,
but it makes an incredible point - the people of America love and honor
their warriors and appreciate the sacrifice they make. The video is shot
from inside the procession which picked up the remains of SSG John Beale and
shows the crowds which turned out to honor him as it traveled through
various parts and towns in Henry County, GA, where SSG Beale was from. "
Last time I got back, we were escorted from the
airport by the highway patrol, who called in to the local radio stations. As
we passed towns, some people were waiting outside, with chairs and
umbrellas. Others were running outside as we convoyed past. It was a
supremely moving experience.
==========
'They may well wish for democracy — but not always or
necessarily if it comes with unconstrained capitalism and the assumption
that to be a democrat means sacrificing your national interests to those of
the United States.'
I don't agree with all of this (certainly not the
parts about the ABM Treaty or about Gary Kasparov), but it's well worth
reading, IMHO:
<http://www.nationalinterest.org/Article.aspx?id=21586>
-- Roland Dobbins
==========
Subj: Multiple Intelligences - Do those arguing even
agree on what they're arguing about?
I've seen no indication that anyone is interested in
reaching even second-order agreement.
http://www.jerrypournelle.com/mail/
2008/Q2/mail520.html#Kahn
Rod Montgomery==monty@starfief.com
The concept of "g" is not intuitive to some. It's
a mathematical inference but does conform somewhat to common sense
concepts of "smarts". Many of those who write about the subject don't
really want to understand what "g" is; they have another agenda.
==
The whole idea of the suggestion of multiple
intelligences is indicative of a field that has not yet matured to the point
where it has any relevance or predictive ability. To my mind, anything so
overly complicated has an unfinished quality to it. The beginning stage of
any field of enquiry (I wouldn’t quite call it a science at this point) is
exploration, cataloging, and creating definitions. From here, there are two
possible directions. The preferred direction is for the items of the various
lists to be integrated, and their relationships defined. The exploration
then becomes a science. Should such an integration not be possible, then the
subject is not a science.
In physics, things started out when the early
philosopher/physicists began to measure, record, and catalogue. They noted
the different types of matter, and then the different types of energy. Where
things really got moving, understanding was achieved, and progress was made,
was when these forces - painstakingly discovered, and separately cataloged -
were unified. Similar observations can be made about the cataloguing and
descriptive energies that went into taxonomy, before the sciences of
biology, and ecology were derived. Thus it goes – we start out by breaking a
subject into all of its separate parts, and then learn its principles though
the unification by which we put these parts together.
Certain subjects have no basic principles, and thus do
not exist as science. This is discovered after the cataloging phase has
ended and attempts are made to unify discoveries made, into a framework. In
biology, physics, chemistry, and all of what is today considered science,
basic principles were uncovered through unification, and led down a path of
further discovery. In some other cases, no such unification could be made,
and a dead end was reached. Phrenology and astrology are two directions of
exploration which dead ended (though doubtless there are some who would
argue the point). To my mind, such a dead end indicates that there are no
basic unifying principles, and the subject is not a science, and never will
become one.
Even should it turn out that many of today’s soft
sciences can be made into true science, this change has not yet occurred. As
I mentioned above, any exploration at the point of cataloging and listing is
an exploration which is not yet sure of itself, is amassing facts, and is
not yet useful science. So, it may be possible, someday, to turn some of
these soft sciences into real science, or they may end up dead ending, and
becoming the same sort of pseudo science as astrology.
Presently, the list of such subjects includes
education, economics, sociology, and most of what we like to call the soft
sciences. It is interesting to note, that the major employer of those who
study such subjects is the government. It is also interesting to note that
one of the few valid predictive principles of the soft science of economics,
that of supply and demand, seems consistently to be ignored when making
government policy. Economics is one of the few soft sciences that I think
might someday become real science; but not in its present form. As with the
transformation of alchemy into chemistry, economics may well be scrapped,
and some of its valid principles integrated into quite a different field of
study, which may turn out to be valid science.
Back before alchemy had passed into chemistry, some
tried to turn lead into gold; before the scientific approach to biology,
medicine often consisted of blood-letting and drilling holes in the skull to
let out evil spirits, humors, and vapors. Both alchemy and the spiritistic
practices of medicine turned out to be wrong, dead ends, yet some of the
misunderstood facts in those bodies of knowledge were integrated into what
would become the sciences of medicine and chemistry.
In a true science, things are taken down to their
component functional parts, and then reassembled. In a non science, things
are generally taken at face value and are either not broken down, or no
reassembly is made. As a bit of an aside, the differences in approach
between a science, and a non science, is the difference between reading by
phonics, and reading by whole word. I wonder if it is coincidence that the
same so called progressives who are heavily involved in the soft sciences
are big supporters of whole word. I also wonder if, by training the mind to
phonetically break down and reassemble letters as component parts of words,
we are creating structures in the brain/mind, which facilitate the
scientific deconstruct/construct way of thinking. The corollary to that is
that when we stop training in phonics, we also cease to encourage this type
of thinking.
Neal Pritchett
An interesting theory. I haven't thought about
that.
==============
Duct tape
I'm worried about SpaceShipTwo. I just saw a photo
with the nose attached with duct tape. I know Rutan is innovative, but….
http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com
/archive/2009/06/19/1971623.aspx
RH
Heh. I'll have to ask Burt about that next time I
see him.
In my day it was baling wire. We didn't have duct
tape.
=============
Going, Going...
http://www.google.com/hostednews/
ap/article/ALeqM5hNE3DMbUR1JF
gMdyf_i5s4aDM9rQD98VNPP81
"Sorry, Paul Simon, Kodak is taking your Kodachrome
away."
"The world's first commercially successful color film,
immortalized in song by Simon, spent 74 years in Kodak's portfolio. It
enjoyed its heyday in the 1950s and '60s but in recent years has nudged
closer to obscurity: Sales of Kodachrome are now just a fraction of 1
percent of the company's total sales of still-picture films, and only one
commercial lab in the world still processes it.
"Those numbers and the unique materials needed to make
it convinced Kodak to call its most recent manufacturing run the last, said
Mary Jane Hellyar, the outgoing president of Kodak's Film, Photofinishing
and Entertainment Group.
"'Kodachrome is particularly difficult (to retire)
because it really has become kind of an icon,' Hellyar said."
Charles Brumbelow
==
Subject: No more Kodachrome!!!??
"Kodak Retires KODACHROME Film..."
http://www.kodak.com/eknec/
PageQuerier.jhtml?pq-path=2709&gpcid
=0900688a80b4e692&ignoreLocale
=true&pq-locale=en_US&_requestid=3726
When they came for the astronomers' special emulsions,
we did nothing, because we were not astronomers...
Do you think the Chinese will buy the technology?
Or will a consortium of wealthy photography
enthusiasts buy one production line -- and the sole(!) surviving processing
lab -- and keep them going as a museum, and to serve afficionados?
I wonder how much of the tech, for making and
processing complex, multi-layer emulsions, has other applications -- perhaps
to biotech?
Of course, Perkin-Elmer's application of
spy-satellite-making tech, to the Hubble Space Telescope, did not go
entirely well...
Rod Montgomery==monty@starfief.com
Creative Destruction in action. At least they
didn't ask for a bailout. If the military needs to preserve the
technology, doubtless they can find support for doing that. And perhaps
some university will adopt it.
=========
Solar Power Calculations
You wrote:
The answer to this, of course, is that if we have
space solar power to generate kilowatts, we won't need to burn coal and oil
and natural gas to get those kilowatts. Or even run nuclear power plants.
Power generation from coal and oil will never be more than about 60%
efficient. Even were it 75%, it would mean that 25% of the heat produced
goes into the atmosphere (or into cooling ponds or whatever) without being
useful at all; whereas with space solar power, about 90% of the power beamed
down is useful power, and all the power wasted in converting sunlight to
microwaves never enters the atmosphere at all.
I can't fully agree with this. Heat is the most
randomized form of energy. Virtually all Solar power beamed to Earth will
wind up as heat, one way or another, as is virtually all of the energy
produced by other means. Unless we wind up somehow beaming it all back into
space. Which makes sending it here a pointless exercise...
On the other hand, a quick back of the envelope
calculation suggests this won't be much of a problem.
Assume a human population of 6 billion using 10kW each
continuously. That makes a total human power consumption of 1.44E15 watts.
Assume total insolation of 1kW per m^2, which is 10E9W/kM^2. Surface area of
the Earth is 510E6 kM^2, so the total Solar input is 5.1E18 watts. So the
added heat input from human use works out to about 300 parts per million.
(1.44E15/5.1E18 = .282E-6)
Geoff
Perhaps I wasn't clear enough. When I burn coal,
40% of the heat produced does not become useful energy. (Actually more,
but call it 40% for now.) When I convert sunlight to energy, only about
35% of the heat becomes useful energy. However, if I am doing that on
Earth it doesn't matter so far as the total heat load be concerned because
that heat was already here (well most of it was; some would have been
reflected back if Ed Begley Jr. hadn't intercepted it on his roof top, but
again we can neglect what would have been reflected back). However, if I
intercept sunlight in space, then the only energy that comes down to Earth
from my solar power satellite is the microwave energy I want; and 85% of
that gets to the power grid. Thus, for any given Kilowatt, 85% of the heat
added to the Earth's heat balance will be useful energy, whereas with coal
only about 40% will be useful energy; thus to make a kilowatt adds less
energy to the Earth's heat balance if I use a solar power satellite and
don't burn the coal.
Note that the above is only talking about heat
balances. We haven't mentioned pollution, CO2, and such like. Space solar
power requires making stuff and that's a different analysis.
============
Cow Methane Redux
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_climate_bill_cow_tax
"Belching from the nation's 170 million cattle, sheep
and pigs produces about one-quarter of the methane released in the U.S. each
year, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. That makes the
hoofed critters the largest source of the heat-trapping gas.
In part because of an adept farm lobby campaign that
equates government regulation with a cow tax, the gas that farm animals pass
is exempt from legislation being considered by Congress to limit greenhouse
gas emissions.
"It really has taken on a life of its own," said Rick
Krause, a lobbyist with the American Farm Bureau Federation, which coined
the term cow tax and spread it to farmers across the country. "This is
something that people understand. All that we have to say is that (cows) are
the next step with these proposed permit fees. And people are still talking
about it."
Cow burps, cow taxes, and why is it that EVERYONE on
Capital Hill understands that if you tax cow/pig/sheep emissions, you get
less cows/pigs/sheep and more expensive food and wool, but they just cannot
seem to grasp that if you tax fossil fuel power plant emissions you will get
less power, at greater cost, and much more expensive products?
Let's play a little game called "It this goes on..."
(When in doubt, always go back to Heinlein, Can't miss. Never fails.)
If 170 million farm animals emit a quarter of our
national methane output, how much comes from the 300 and some odd million
residents? (I began to write "citizens" there, which was but a kneejerk
reactionary moment so please forgive me Herr Komissar), but five to ten per
cent of "us" aren't :"citizens", and it increasingly doesn't matter anyway
to our masters.
"If this goes on...", follow the logic: If methane is
to be regulated as a greenhouse gas, do we allow exemptions? I can see a
"Zero Tolerance" lobby already for this sort of thing. Logic says someday we
will pay a hefty "fee" (tax) every time we eat Mexican. I can see it now,
the "Taco Bell Bill". "
Say, perhaps "illegal immigration", oops, I mean
"Undocumented Immigrants" (forgive me Herr Komissar!) is adding to our
Greenhouse Gas emissions? Do we discourage immigration, legal or ill, ifthe
poor and huddled masses are methane spewing Baby Polar Bear Killers from
legume eating cultures? Dare I mention which nation to our south loves beans
in their cuisine, and sends more "undocumented" visitors here each year than
any other? Is there a looming alliance between hardline "Minuteman" style
border control advocates and Global Warming Greenies? Stranger bedfellows
have come from saner causes.
"If this goes on..." AKA "The Crazy Years"
"Eat a burrito, kill a Polar Bear!"
"Abstain from beans!"
Do we go from burning down car dealerships that dare
to sell SUV's (which has happened) to firebombing beanfelds, laying waste
broccoli farms, and sniffing out/plowing under cabbage gardens?
I recall reading years ago about one of the sons of
Louis Leakey (not Richard) spending years searching for a legendary bean
that did not gresult in Human Enteric Emissions (the technical term for this
matter). He found his Magic Bean in South America. Who knew he might one day
be hailed as savior of thousands of jobs in the food industry? A "Jack"
whose beanstalk might save an enitire ethnic cuisine from the ignominy of
the Death Of A Thousand Regulations!
To parlay the punch line of an old joke: "What's the
most painful part of entering government service? The part where they the
take out half your brains!"
You just cannot make this stuff up.
"If this goes on...": Since exercise makes people emit
more CO2, does this mean we need to have a workout tax? Every gym membership
gets a Carbon Fee added on? Do we start to sneer and frown at obviously fit
people for being CO2 emitters? Will it be legal to run joggers and bicyclers
into the ditch, or at least understandable as we are trying to Save The
Planet, so it;'s not road rage, but justifiable probative behavior? Can
citizens stop such Carbon Crooks and demand to see their receipt for their
CO2 Emissions Fees?
Your walks up the hill with Niven are Killing The
Polar Bears! You cruel, heartless beasts
"Jog a mile, go to jail!"
"Less Sweat, More Polar Bears!"
I am beginning to think if Mephistopheles appeared and
offered to trade the Green Nannies "even up" for the return of the old Red
Menace, I might consider it.
The commies were ruthless, but they (mostly) werem't
barking mad.
And the last, deepest, unkindest cut of all: As much
fun as I have had here, none of ithe above is impossible, or even all that
unlikely given the fullness of time. It's'all completely, perfectly logical,
once you accept tthe premise of the soi disant AGW consensus.
As for me, I am buying stock in whichever Big Pharma
Corp. it is that produces "Bean-O"!. After all, it's an ill wind, indeed
,that breaks to nobody's good.
Petronius
Pythagoras would be proud. Abstain from flesh and
beans...
==================d
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