| Wednesday,
December 8, 2010 SpaceX successful LEO
flight, re-entry.
<http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/12/08/space.flight/index.html>
- Roland Dobbins
Hurrah!
Not quite D. D. Harriman -- not quite and not
yet. But it's a big step.
===========
Subj: Dragon heat shield can handle Mars-return
reentries
That's what Elon Musk said, during the NASA news
conference after the Dragon/Falcon-9 flight on 8 Dec 2010.
So, we need the Orion spacecraft now for ... what,
exactly???
Rod
Montgomery==monty@starfief.com
=============
It's Not War
the proper analogy is espionage/covert action, not
war.
Were we at war with Guatemala in 1954? Certainly not,
but Howard Hunt and his merry band managed to take Arbenz down, all the
same. Same for Kermit Roosevelt & Miles Copeland handing Mossadegh his
walking papers in 1953.
You don't conduct espionage and covert actions with
artillery strikes; unfortunately, the DoD/service branch uniformed
bureaucrats who spout off about 'cyberwar' can't tell a packet from a
pikestaff, and so they just assume that there's some magical place called
'cyberspace', and that with the right windage, azimuth, elevation, and
charge, you can hammer the other guy into smithereens.
The better analogy is an IED placed on the road near
some village in Afghanistan by some Taliban from the next valley over; it's
done at night, the villagers aren't aware of it and are not involved in any
way, and it's set to be remotely detonate by a radio transmission or a
mobile phone SMS message by Taliban watching nearby.
When the US troops come driving by in their Humvee,
the Taliban detonate the IED.
Now, what's the best course of action to take? Should
the survivors call in an artillery strike or an airstrike to level the
village, thus ensuring 100% collateral damage and a score of new recruits
for the Taliban?
Or should they perhaps instead a) exercise more
caution and make use of sensing devices to try and detect IEDs prior to
reaching them, b) work to interdict the detonation cue transmissions, d)
work to reinforce and up-armor their vehicles to be more resilient to
attack, and d) work with the appropriate intelligence assets to develop
enough of a picture to identify the bad actors and take them down directly,
rather than engaging in random wog-bashing?
R
============
Climate Change and a few UK Tidbits
Remember my comment about both sides in the climate
change debate assuming that a good model for climate existed, and I
suspected both were wrong about that? As I recall, one of the earliest
analyses of global warming indicated that the effect of increased CO2
emissions was to drive the climate system towards chaos--non-modelability.
Another early analysis indicated that the big ecological problem was not the
direction but the *rate* of climate change--something models handle poorly.
Well, there's a new NASA study that suggests some interesting conclusions: <http://tinyurl.com/3ywsvpj>
Please remember, this is yet another model and I stick with my original
comment.
-- "Truth is the intersection of independent lies."
(Richard Levins, 1966)
Harry Erwin, PhD
I have never entertained any suspicion at all
that anyone, anywhere, has a good model of climate change. That is why I
have been a skeptic -- now called a Denier -- for thirty years. I can only
look at trend lines. I also know some history. In particular I know it was
warmer in Viking times than it is now in the 21st Century. I do not now
how much warmer; I only know that the Viking dairy farms on Greenland were
under ice, growing seasons were longer than now in France and Britain and
apparently China ( I can't read Chinese so I haven't checked the records,
but people who do tell me that almanacs from China of that period exist)
and there is other inferential evidence. I also know that in historical
times it was colder in the Northern Hemisphere, with brackish water canals
freezing in the Netherlands, and the Hudson freezing solid in New York.
How much colder I don't know.
I have also long been skeptical of any
temperature average accurate to anything like a single degree for the
entire Earth over a full year. That's a very difficult number to obtain --
or rather there are so many ways to obtain it that it's very dificut to
choose a set of measurements, and a set of weights to assign any given
measurement, so that you have a unique way to calculate a single figure
representing the temperature of either hemisphere for any given time of
day, and when you need to average them over both hemispheres for a full
year's time I see nothing that persuades me that the figure is accurate to
a single digit degree, much less a tenth of a degree.
Since even the IPCC grants that the temperature
rise from 1880 to present is in the order of one degree, and it is pretty
clear that the temperature has been rising at about one degree a year from
the Little Ice Age to present, I do not think there is sufficient evidence
for everyone to run around with his hair on fire shouting Doom! CO2 Doom!
Nor is there sufficient evidence for spending trillions of dollars. I
would grant that spending a billion a year on learning more, and perhaps a
similar amount on research into ways to extract CO2 from the atmosphere in
case we have to do that; but that is not what the IPCC recommends, and I
can't find any justification to pay them that much tribute. The costs of
CO2 emission reduction are enormous, and since China is not likely to eat
its share of those costs, the relative cost to the United States and the
resulting competitive disadvantage is prohibitive.
As to rate of climate change, I think that the
models are even less reliable for determining that. We know that a cooling
period came after Pinatubo; we don't know whether warming water by
volcanoes has had any effect since we don't know a lot about that form of
heat transfer, although it's getting clearer that there is more undersea
volcanism than previously thought. Then there's modeling the transfer of
heat from air to water, and the coefficients for absorption of radiant
energy from sunlight, none of which seem to be as well understood as the
presumed accuracy of the models indicate.
=========
Ocean's Rising Called a Fraud
Jerry:
I got this link from "Power Line" (conservative
political blog). It addresses the science of measuring "sea level rise" from
on of the pre-eminent scientists specializing in that facet of geology. The
scientist makes no bones about stating flatly that THERE IS NO OCEAN RISE
due to global warming, and points out eyewitness observation of active
fraud.
http://www.climatechangefacts.info/Climate
ChangeDocuments/NilsAxelMornerinterview.pdf
I would prefer to say it is controversial, not
fraudulent. It is well known that sea levels have been rising about a foot
a century for several hundred years; the exact cause isn't know. And of
course there were massive changes in sea levels after the last interlude
in the Ice Ages began. We know of sunken cities with no real evidence that
they sank from earthquakes. Greek shorelines have changed in the past
millennia.
There was once a considerable debate over the use
of a tide level marker in Tasmania set by a governor in the 19th century.
I Found mail giving these URL's
http://www.john-daly.com/deadisle/hobart-msl.htm
http://www.john-daly.com/deadisle/index.htm
http://www.john-daly.com/deadisle/part2.htm
http://www.jerrypournelle.com/archives2/
archives2mail/mail477.html#Tasmania
Determining sea levels from times before
satellite measurements is quite difficult.
==========
Sometimes entities must multiply
Dr. Pournelle --
New research from the University of British Columbia
on the Greenland ice sheet might be of interest to you. It seems it may not
behave the way we thought.
http://www.publicaffairs.ubc.ca/2010/12/08/
greenland-ice-sheet-flow-driven-by-short-term-
weather-extremes-not-gradual-warming-ubc-research/
"Sudden changes in the volume of meltwater contribute
more to the acceleration – and eventual loss – of the Greenland ice sheet
than the gradual increase of temperature, according to a University of
British Columbia study."
"Now a new study, to be published tomorrow in the
journal Nature, shows that a steady meltwater supply from gradual warming
may in fact slow down glacier flow, while sudden water input [such as
massive rain storms or the draining of a surface lake] could cause glaciers
to speed up and spread, resulting in increased melt."
Things get more and more interesting. Of course, the
obvious question is what has caused the apparent increase in rainfall and
the like. Is it AGW or shifts in ocean currents or something else?
Pieter
The connection between rainfall and global
climate is not well established nor modelled.
===========
Francis Hamit on getting eBooks into print"
More misery with e-book formatting
Dear Jerry:
This morning I looked at the free reading sample that
Amazon.con provides for the Kindle edition of "The Shenandoah Spy" and found
that it is still very messed up. It can be read but the paragraphing didn't
hold. So I pulled it. I read the Emma Barnes free manual and got in contact
with her and it seems that we might have to redo the typesetting entirely.
Bottom line, Amazon.com takes no responsibility for the final appearance of
the e-books they sell. I do not want to sell an inferior product, so it
comes off the market until we can find a way, an economical way. to format
the files so they look right in the final presentation.
It's that word "book". People expect it to look as
good as the printed editions. E-books are, however, an inherently inferior
product anyway. We are already compensating for the many ways that they
don't measure up to printed editions. When you sell someone a book, you
don't just sell the content, but the entire reading experience. We spent
weeks with :The Shenandoah Spy" getting everything right for the print
edition; the type, the spacing of the lines, the white space that provides
the most comfort for the eye. We wanted the best possible product. E-book
formating destroys all that.
Adobe Indesign may be a solution, but the program
costs $700 and I'm not sure it's worth the money or the time to fool with
it. We can buy the service elsewhere. "Make or buy" decisions are part of
any business, but the return on investment had to be reasonable. "If you
build it, they will come" is a fantasy, not a business plan.
As previously stated, every writer has unique
products. If people want them, then they will have to pay a price that we
can live with too. Otherwise, it's literally not worth doing. Books are not
fungible commodities, interchangeable with each other. They provide unique
reading experiences. You get what you pay for. Right now, if you want to
read "The Shenandoah Spy", buy the print edition. It's available on Amazon
too.
Sincerely,
Francis Hamit Brass
Cannon Books.
My daughter is finding similar problems with
getting her Mote sequel up for Kindle on Amazon. I have been watching it
all with some interest.
I do note that Norman Spinrad seems to have
solved a good bit -- but not all -- of the formatting problems with his
Kindle editions of Mexica and The Druid King. I believe he started with
Word, and it's my suspicion that, given that Word is ubiquitous, Amazon
probably devoted more time to making that come out well than most. I am
also told that converting to .mobi from Word produces an acceptable book.
Most of my eBooks come from Baen, and Jim did a
lot of work on making those formats work; his survivors have continued the
effort with some effectiveness. I confess I haven't put the time
into this that I would have in previous days.
============
TSA patting down ambassadors?
While not being a specialist on international
relations isn't having the TSA pat down the Indian ambassador a diplomatic
faux pas?
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40579937/ns/us_news-airliner_security/
Arondell Hoch
I would have said it was illegal: surely
diplomatic immunity protects ambassadors? Of course the average TSA
"inspector" may not have heard of diplomatic immunity. And perhaps
Congress has given TSA some exceptional authority?
=============
Climate science
Hello Jerry,
It strikes me that the climate modelers are doing the
equivalent of collecting about 50 samples of an extremely noisy 1 Hz sine
wave using an A/D with a 1 MHz sample rate, performing an FFT on the sampled
data, and using the results to describe the waveform that they have sampled.
If it were done in an EE lab to demonstrate to budding signal analysts the
pitfalls of ignoring the warnings of Messrs. Nyquist and Shannon when
performing such analysis, it would be mildly amusing. And educational. When
the results of the climactic equivalent are being used to justify bringing
western civilization to a halt and establishing a world government with
essentially infinite power to ensure that it stays halted, it is neither
amusing NOR educational.
Bob Ludwick
Well, I wouldn't say that. But it's bad science.
==============
Hello Jerry,
Thought you might find this interesting.
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/
11/26/secret-agent-crippled-irans-nuclear-ambitions/
Regards,
Eric Buchanan
It was an interesting story, and certainly part
of the "cyberwar" picture. Uranium hexafluoride centrifuges must be shut
down properly; a power failure would ruin them as I recall. I have no idea
whether anything of that sort happened in Iran.
============
Dear Doctor P,
Their economic plan makes perfect sense
They 'll take Bill Gates money, sans recompense
To spread his wealth their object all sublime
And what shall be our fair share of Bills dimes?
Sixty-Six dollars and Sixty-Six cents!
Petronius
==============
: FW: Ebooks and Consumer Rights
Dear Jerry:
I agree that consumers should get what they pay for.
Unfortunately there is little I can do as a publisher to correct that at any
kind of reasonable cost in time and money. Mr. Rauleson can now buy the
Kindle version of that story, for his iPad and have an audio presentation --
of sorts. It will be robot voice, unless, as I've predicted elsewhere,
someone in the distribution chain has upgraded to a "natural voice" system
similar to what is used in some advanced telephone reply systems.
When I started putting titles back up on Kindle I
capitulated on the audio book version question. At the time I raised my
original objections, I was negotiating for an audio book edition on "The
Shenandoah Spy" with another publisher that never materialized, in part
because the recession made everyone risk adverse and partially because the
playing field, once more, was changed by the onrush of events and new
formats. I do not have the option of not allowing text to voice on Kindle.
Amazon.com is very much a "our way or the highway" customer.
The cost of creating our own audio book edition is
several thousand dollars. It requires hiring a studio, and voice talent and
scripting the presentation. One might as well put the time and money into a
film or radio play. But the real question is how many can you sell, and to
whom? These are niche products and if that's the game, then it makes more
sense to spend the resources in another way by producing more e-books.
And the reason the text looks like a PDF file is
because it IS a PDF file. That's the original format and one of only two we
can submit in. The other is Word,which we don't use. There are kinds of
hidden code booby traps in the conversion process that make providing a
satisfactory textual experience close to impossible for most of us and a
nice little service business has sprung up, doing conversions. Even Amazon
CreateSpace will not guarantee their own work on formatting a stage play. I
am trying to do that with "MARLOWE: An Elizabethan Tragedy" my 1988 stage
play that was produced here in Los Angeles. I've put it out for bid on
Freelancer.com and we will see, but it is only the fact that providing a new
edition of the original playscript is part of the promotion for the film
version that will be made next year that makes us do this and spend extra
money on it. . And it will not be cheap. First of all the original edition,
if you can find it, is now about $140 at a used and rare book dealer, so
$9.99 is a comparative bargain.
And it is a unique product. It is true that you buy
for less elsewhere, but you can't buy that! This is why we have copyright
laws, to prevent people from stealing the work that supports new art. It
becomes very much a matter of "you get what you pay for". If they are giving
away the text, then you are going to get typos. The outrage should be saved
for finding typos in $30 hardbounds, which also happens fairly often these
days. I employ my own editor, who also designs the interior type on our
printed books. We don't bother to do that with e-books, not just because of
the poor sales, but because of the options that allow customers to choose
their own typefaces and spacing. Seriously, why bother?
I have been producing e-books since 2004 and have
learned many lessons along the way. One is that the lowest price is not the
best price. The customer base for most books is very small, whether or not
it is an informational product or an entertainment one. Traditional
publishing values nothing but sales. With them it's all about producing a
product that can be sold as widely and quickly as possible in as many
channels as possible. There is no backlist now and Maxwell Perkins and his
like will not been seen again under this ethic.
What readers have yet to grasp is that new work need
support. Literature is not a fungible commodity and if you want to share
those stories, you need to step up and pay full price. Otherwise how are
those who create these work supposed to live? I can make more money with
less sales to those who understand this. Yes, you can buy something else for
less, but not all of us are going to join this race to the bottom. I
recently raised the suggested retail price of "The Shenandoah Spy" print
edition to $22.50 and my net is somewhere about half of that, depending on
the channel. I did this because , when we go over to print-on-demand when
the current stock of offset-run copies is exhausted, my per-unit cost will
go up by quite a bit. If customers want to read it on Kindle then that
edition is $9.99, and I make even more money per copy. Which is why I did
this. This is a business, not a hobby, and something I depend upon for my
livelihood.
I had the Sony Reader edition at 49 cents for over a
year and it sold many more copies that my high tech titles at $4.95 but it
took eleven copies to equal the profit on one of those. Now it is at the
house minimum for Kindle of 99 cents, and will sell less copies but I will
make more money. I was one of the Amazon Shorts authors and those sold
hardly at all because Amazon.com did no real promotion and had no real staff
for that program. Now they want to do short works for less than 99 cents,
but I do not see the appeal of this for authors and independent publishers
like myself. "We lose a little on every sale , but make it up on volume"
does not really work if you don't have critical mass. Amazon.com has over
three million titles and makes very little on any one of them, but they sell
hundreds of thousands of books every day. This is what I mean by "critical
mass".
I would love to produce a better electronic book
experience for my customers, but unfortunately the current system, built on
the cheap, with few easy and affordable options, does not permit that. And
my best path right now, from a business standpoint, is to keep raiding my
files and putting up new e-books. We still edit them and write them with
care, but the formatting problems are really something we have no control
over. Complain to the retailers and maybe that will change, but understand
we are as frustrated by the current lack or quality presentation as you are.
Sony Reader got my material when they offered to do all the formatting
without charge and took responsibility for what they sell.
Sincerely,
Francis Hamit Brass Cannon Books
Spinrad has been able to get reasonable looking
copies of books on Kindle, but apparently it takes a certain amount
of fuss and bother. In my case it turns out that most of my works are
either on Kindle or headed there, and they don't look all that bad -- but
I had nothing to do with getting them there. Which is a bit ironic, given
that I practically invented the ebook (well, as a concept) way back when,
and I was the sort of archtypical power user for a long time. I should
have been ahead of this curve. Ah well. I'm not too far behind it.
It will not be long before there are competing
services for preparing mss. for eBook publication, and there will be
script programs for doing it yourself. Apps galore...
=============
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