| Monday
October 26, 2009
Letter From England
I can't make this up--league
tables for universities. See <http://tinyurl.com/yfhk2mb
>. From the Guardian article: "A rating system for every course, setting
out five key measures: the pass rate, student satisfaction (from surveys),
employment rate, wage gain for students, and inspection results." This was
an obvious next step ever since they put the 'Ministry for Business' in
charge of higher education. Comment by Sally Hunt: "The league table culture
has been a disaster in schools and hospitals. If applied to colleges it will
lead to a narrowing of the curriculum and an impediment to innovation." I
have watched a local university restructure itself to improve in those five
measures, and as part of its process, it dropped its advanced programmes and
research. You want it bad; you get it bad.
UK economy still in recession. <http://tinyurl.com/yj8gnlw>
<http://tinyurl.com/yjlnzmg
> <http://tinyurl.com/ylzgut5>
<http://tinyurl.com/yjhywf3>
BNP leader on radio. I listened
to a bit of it, and heard him express some really nutty ideas. Apparently,
some people found him convincing.
<http://tinyurl.com/yh5onjv>
<http://tinyurl.com/yfy57vs>
<http://tinyurl.com/yjqqb7u
> <http://tinyurl.com/yj3s6o7>
Postal strike continues. Union
activists are collecting donations to help the strikers, but are shaking
their heads privately--neither side can win. The 'Ministry for Business' is
using this as an opportunity to break the union, but it's also destroying
the Royal Mail. You want it bad; you get it bad. <http://tinyurl.com/ykrhtl5>
<http://tinyurl.com/yjbmqho
>
Swine flu worse than expected. <http://tinyurl.com/yld7cjf>
<http://tinyurl.com/ygh67x9
>
--
Harry Erwin, PhD
"If you can't be a good example,
then you'll just have to be a horrible warning." (Catherine Aird)
==========
Keeping the Subjects from
Rebelling
The snoops expand their snooping.
<http://tinyurl.com/yzbr7zz>
http://tinyurl.com/ykgoxbs
> <http://tinyurl.com/yldrch9>
<http://tinyurl.com/yhd8xn6>
http://tinyurl.com/yfpemmy
> <http://tinyurl.com/yj6x5fm>
Meanwhile the probation service
can't keep tabs on offenders out on
release: <http://tinyurl.com/ykt2sos>
<http://tinyurl.com/yzgh7y8>
Possible but unlikely changes to
vetting scheme for parents
http://tinyurl.com/yjbxfj3
Criminal libel laws to be
repealed? <http://tinyurl.com/yjy4gp2>.
Ministers back down from cutting
the Territorial Army
http://tinyurl.com/yl8bul8
--
Harry Erwin, PhD
"Those who would give up
essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither
Liberty nor Safety." (Benjamin Franklin, 1755)
================
'Amazon for example, says that people with Kindles now
buy 3.1 times as many books as they did before owning the device.'
<http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/21/technology/21books.html>
--- Roland Dobbins
A really fascinating
statistic. One wonders if it will hold up. We can hope so.
============
Reinventing Heinlein - again.
Jerry
Rigid sky-train to fly through magnetic rings on
sticks. The story covers the sky train as well as highways running
hovercraft at 500 mph:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/10/22
/ring_pole_train_psychologists_nightmare/
Hmm. Robert featured exactly both of these in Starman
Jones <http://www.amazon.com/dp/1416505504>
, which is still in print.
Hmm again. I haven't read my copy in a few years. Time
to reread it.
Ed
I want my future back. We used
to look forward to seeing such things in our lifetime.
==
Then there's
An article on "the future" from
Big Hollywood/Breitbart
Dr. Pournelle:
An interesting article that calls out your High
Frontier and Niven's Known Space.
Is safety really stifling the future?
<http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/
bwillingham/2009/10/25/ive-seen-the-
future-and-it-is-safe/>
While we've had some incredible advancements in the
last fifty years, they havn't been in the areas Mr. Heinlein and Dr. Asimov
thought.
We've had revolutions in communications, computing,
medical care, and even in distribution. That's great, if you want to talk to
your Mom in Paducah, surf the net for the perfect hummus recipe, get an MRI,
or find fresh strawberries in December at your local supermarket. A lot of
these technologies are safe. There is little "daring" anymore. I see the
private company adventures toward space as thrilling, but will they ever
lead to anything more than LEO? I'll be 49 in December. Will I ever go to
the moon? Thirty years ago I thought, "Yeah, baby!" Today, not so much.
Alas.
Best regards,
Bill Kelly
Director of Technical Writing
I want my future back.
==================
the tax returns of F. Scott Fitzgerald
http://www.theamericanscholar.org/living-on-500000-a-year/print/
<http://www.theamericanscholar.org/living-on-500000-a-year/print/>
He fairly consistently earned 24,000 /year; roughly equal to half a million
today an interesting read from several points of view
Mike
==============
Iron Law and Canada
The breakdown for the Canadian
public service, is hardly an aristocracy that permeates all our lives. Over
40 percent of our public service consists of the military and the Federal
police department. When it comes to recessionary periods, there is usually
a giant layoff of public service employees, in the 90’s over 40000 layoffs,
I believe. Then it tends to gradually rebuild itself. The US has 1.2
percent in the public service, though I don’t believe the Military counts
for that total.
Size and distribution
The public service has expanded
over the years as population has grown, the number of services provided to
Canadians has increased and with the introduction of new offices throughout
the country. The service has also been reduced several times, often due to
restraint programs designed to reduce the cost of the civil service.
Year Size of civil service
(CS)[3] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Service_of_Canada> [4]
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Service_of_Canada> national pop.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_Canada> [5] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Service_of_Canada>
CS as a % of national pop.
1918 ~ 5,000 ~ 8,500,000
0.05%
post-World War I <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I>
55,000 (1923) ~ 13,500,000 0.41%
1970 198,000 21,500,000
0.92%
1975 273,000 23,400,000
1.2%
1986 217,000 26,101,000
0.83%
2006 454,000 32,248,000
1.4%
As of September, 2006, there were
approximately 454,000 members of the Canadian civil service,[6] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Service_of_Canada>
divided as follows:
* Core public
administration: 180,000
* Canadian Forces
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Forces> and Royal Canadian Mounted
Police <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Canadian_Mounted_Police> (RCMP):
106,000
* Federal business
enterprises (including crown corporations): 88,000
* Separate agencies:
60,000
* Other (e.g., Senate
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senate_of_Canada> and the Canadian House of
Commons <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_House_of_Commons> ): 20,000
There are approximately 100
distinctly different positions in the Canadian public service; most work in
policy, operations or administrative functions. About 15% are scientists and
professionals, 10% work in technical operations and 2.5% are executives.[7]
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Service_of_Canada>
About 42% of Canadian public
servants work in the National Capital Region <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Capital_Region_(Canada)>
(NCR) (Ottawa-Hull), 24% work elsewhere in Ontario <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontario>
or Quebec <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quebec>
, 21% in Western Canada <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Canada>
, and 11% in Atlantic Canada <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_Canada>
. Since the headquarters of most agencies are located in the NCR, about 72%
of executives work in this area.[7] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Service_of_Canada>
Canadian civil servants are also
located in more than 180 countries and provide service in 1,600 locations in
Canada.
David March
Transport Coordinator
Thanks
============
Continuing
Again, the demand for something free is infinite...
<http://slatest.slate.com/id/2233576/entry/2/>
David Couvillon
Colonel, U.S. Marine Corps, Retired.; Former Governor of Wasit Province,
Iraq; Righter of Wrongs; Wrong most of the time; Distinguished Expert, TV
remote control; Chef de Hot Dog Excellance; Collector of Hot Sauce; Avoider
of Yard Work
==============
Coming soon to a bank near you?
British cops raid safety deposit boxes. Thousands of
law-abiding people's assets confiscated to catch a handful of criminals.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/
moslive/article-1222777/The-raid-rocked
-Met-Why-gun-drugs-op-6-717-safety-
deposit-boxes-cost-taxpayer-fortune.html
Most poignant was the line "POCA was never intended
for this. No one objects when criminals are caught and their assets seized -
but shaking down everyone to get to them is specifically not what lawmakers
wanted."
Perhaps "never intended" should become some sort of
enshrined classicism for out-of-control law-enforcement and the laws that
abet them? As a wordsmith, perhaps you can give us the proper phrasing?
I envision something like: ". . . but we _never_
intended _that_ when we changed the law!" or something similar. Might make a
thought-provoking bumper sticker, no?
Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose.
John
"Better a thousand innocents convicted than one guilty
man go free." - attributed to Heinrich Himmler
============
Why we're losing in the Middle East
They are JUST NOW getting around to thinking about
maybe painting the Stryker armored vehicles in Iraq and Afghanistan tan.
Instead of dark green.
http://www.military.com/news/article/
strykers-going-tan-for-desert-look.html
This is wholly unbelievable.
-- Tim of Angle
============
Train them up young! -
http://www.reuters.com/article/
oddlyEnoughNews/idUSTRE59P3KL20091026
ARRGH! Teach them to read, write, and do arithmetic.
Have them do some homework and chores. Let them play! I can't imagine having
to decide what to do with your life at age 9.
R,
Rose
===========
: re: runaway Lexus
When I was in engineering school around 2000 there was
talk that the car companies were talking about eliminating the mechanical
rack and pinion steering mechanism in cars and replacing it with sensors in
the steering wheel and servos to turn the steering. Everyone seemed mightily
impressed by that until I said, "But what happens if there's a malfunction
and the motor goes on and you turn a sharp left on the expressway?"
"Well, they'll have failsafes on that."
I shook my head. "I wouldn't trust it. Nothing
replaces having a mechanical conection between my hands and the ground."
I couldn't convince the rest of them that it was a
Very Bad Idea.
Looks like some of them work for Lexus now, maybe...
Paul
==
Simulations and Reality
Some interesting thoughts about simulations that don't
necessarily head where one might think...
http://perrinelson.com/2009/10/26/1383.aspx
"...All of these models were simulations of reality.
Mine were merely crude simulations of reality, but the ones my dad built
were more refined and accurate, with the model aircraft being the most
accurate of all of them. None of them worked exactly the way their real
world counterparts did though, although the aircraft came closest. And,
while my models and my dad’s were built over thirty years ago, people still
do this kind of model building today. Some still choose to do it with
physical materials, but not all models can be built that way.
A computer simulation is a tool that can show you what
/might /happen when a particular event occurs. The accuracy of a simulation
depends on many things. The most important part of a computer simulation is
the underlying model. For computer simulations this generally involves
iterative calculations of many mathematical equations. How accurately the
mathematical equations describe the physics of the world has a significant
effect on how accurate the simulation is when compared to reality. Another
factor that affects the correspondence of a computer simulation’s results to
reality is the fudge factors used – values supplied to various parameters in
the equations being processed that have to be assumed or measured and input.
Yet another factor affecting how closely a simulation matches the real world
is the assumed initial conditions. In chaotic systems, like particle flow in
viscous media for example, small differences in initial conditions can have
significant effects on the end product of the calculations...
...Computer simulations are fantastic scientific
tools, but they’re NOT science. They’re merely technology applied to
scientific theory. You cannot prove a theory using a simulation, but you can
disprove one by comparing the results of the theory’s predictions against
reality. Ultimately, scientific theories, and computer simulations are
nothing more than models. They’re not reality. They can help you predict
what might happen if your assumptions are correct, but they’re not a
substitute for actual experimentation and measurement...."
David Needham
An old discussion in the
operations research community.
Even older:
The map is not the territory.
First principle of General Semantics.
==================d
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