| Sunday, January
16, 2011
Paramilitary: Mobilizing The
Ancients,
Jerry
You and I are too old, but for the rest of you, “if
you are an adult American male between the ages of 17 and 45, you are part
of the militia, whether you knew it or not, whether or not you want to be,
and whether or not you are armed:”
http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htpara/articles/20110115.aspx
The first part of the story has to do with using
recently retired military and National Guard soldiers to augment the
National Guard in times of need. But then it goes on to discuss “the Militia
Act of 1903 (popularly known as the Dick Act), the unorganized militia.”
So, the Second Amendment (not discussed in the
article) actually makes some sense. Certainly if someone had been armed, she
might have put a stop to the recent bloodshed in Arizona, just as the armed
sergeant put a stop to the killing at Ft Hood. Funny that arguments about
gun control never mention the fact that because the sergeant was armed she
was able to intervene.
Ed
==============
Rounding Up the Guns - Interview - National Review
Online -
John Lott, author of More Guns, Less Crime <http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0226493660/jerrypournellcha>
, was interviewed by National Review Online regarding Loughner. One key
comment closely mirrors yours:
While Loughner had an arrest record and exhibited
strange behavior, he was not a convicted criminal, and had not been
involuntarily committed, and had not been deemed as a risk to himself or
others. Do people really want to forbid gun ownership to law-abiding
individuals who have never been convicted of a crime?
Lott covers significant other related factual
territory in the interview, a good thing given the general hysteria
surrounding many of the statements and legislative proposals regarding
firearms being made in the wake of the Tucson atrocity.
Rounding Up the Guns (an interview with John Lott) <http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/257026/rounding-guns-interview>
Regards,
Jim Riticher
Clearly there are those who think that the Tucson
crisis should not be wasted. It's an opportunity to increase state power and
restrict freedom in the name of safety and public order.
===========
Stuxnet Worm Used Against Iran
Was Tested in Israel - NYTimes.com
Jerry
I know that you will be shocked, shocked to learn “By
the accounts of a number of computer scientists, nuclear enrichment experts
and former officials, the covert race to create Stuxnet was a joint project
between the Americans and the Israelis, with some help, knowing or
unknowing, from the Germans and the British:”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/16/world/middleeast/16stuxnet.html
Apparently a joint effort between Israel and the US.
This bit is choice:
“The worm itself now appears to have included two
major components. One was designed to send Iran’s nuclear centrifuges
spinning wildly out of control. Another seems right out of the movies: The
computer program also secretly recorded what normal operations at the
nuclear plant looked like, then played those readings back to plant
operators, like a pre-recorded security tape in a bank heist, so that it
would appear that everything was operating normally while the centrifuges
were actually tearing themselves apart.”
“Officially, neither American nor Israeli officials
will even utter the name of the malicious computer program, much less
describe any role in designing it.” So who’s been talking to the NY Times?
“The attackers took great care to make sure that only
their designated targets were hit,” he said. “It was a marksman’s job.”
“For example, one small section of the code appears
designed to send commands to 984 machines linked together.
“Curiously, when international inspectors visited
Natanz in late 2009, they found that the Iranians had taken out of service a
total of exactly 984 machines that had been running the previous summer.
“But as Mr. Langner kept peeling back the layers, he
found more — what he calls the “dual warhead.” One part of the program is
designed to lie dormant for long periods, then speed up the machines so that
the spinning rotors in the centrifuges wobble and then destroy themselves.
Another part, called a “man in the middle” in the computer world, sends out
those false sensor signals to make the system believe everything is running
smoothly. That prevents a safety system from kicking in, which would shut
down the plant before it could self-destruct.
“Code analysis makes it clear that Stuxnet is not
about sending a message or proving a concept,” Mr. Langner later wrote. “It
is about destroying its targets with utmost determination in military
style.”
And lots more. It’s nice to know we have competent
people working on stuff like this.
Ed
Well, you can infer the authorship of Stuxnet, but
you can't be sure. You generally can tell from the tracks whether it was a
fox or a wolf, but not always.
============
re: naval strike IRBM
Dear Jerry,
While it is understandable that the Chinese would try
and develop such a weapon, I wouldn't be that afraid of it in the short and
medium term if I were the US Navy - or the French Navy if it still deserved
the name.
The only way I see it could be effective is if it were
fitted with nuclear warheads, and no sane government would use nukes against
US warships because I don't think there's any doubt in anybody's mind that
this would entail retaliation in kind.
Even with nuclear warheads a naval strike ballistic
missile is still a dubious proposition. Before you can launch any kind of
weapon to strike a ship, you need to detect and acquire it first, that is
you must know where it is precisely enough in space and time for the
guidance package aboard the missile to be able to take over from your
information. This takes a platform within direct line-of-sight to the target
from the time you launch until the terminal guidance system can acquire the
target for itself.
You can't do this with a satellite, so you have to do
it with either a plane, ship or submarine.
If you're able to keep an emitting ship, plane or
submarine within line of sight of a US carrier task force, why would you
bother with naval strike ballistic missiles?
You have to keep in mind that missile warheads aren't
very large, 1-2t is on the high end for an IRBM, and you want to sink
100,000t warships, so odds are you'll need several hits to ensure at least a
mission kill and you'll have misses too - that's why I said earlier that
nuclear warheads would likely be necessary.
When everything's said, such a weapon system sounds
like it would only be effective in a surprise peacetime attack. Somehow I do
not see the Chinese as being desperate enough to start a war with the US
hoping they could win a decision before the other ten carriers come for
vengeance.
Jean-Louis Beaufils, Paris
==============
They've invented slow glass!
Jerry
I remember when The Light of Other Days was published.
Bob Shaw had an interesting concept. Now it looks like folks are getting to
the point where they could make some:
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/01/slow-light-chip/
“As the light passed through the rubidium atoms, they
acted like a speed bump, slowing it down by a factor of 1,200. The
6-meter-long incoming light pulse was squashed like a Slinky, fitting into
just 5 mm on the chip. Reducing the second laser’s intensity could slow
light even more, potentially even bringing it to a stop, Schmidt said.”
Getting there, they are.
Ed
===========
Fox shoots man,
Jerry
Fox hunting is not illegal in Belarus, but now the
foxes are shooting back:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/us_
belarus_fox;_ylt=Anaio1QYos_5VVn.0OJI1nJzfNdF
Heh.
Ed
=========
Placebo? and Irritable Bowel
Syndrome
Jerry,
If the Placebo is inert and does not change as it
passes through the digestive tract is really a Placebo so far as IBS is
concerned.
Perhaps a new treatment for IBS has been discovered.
An inert pill shaped object taken at regular intervals. The clinical trial
might involve several groups each taking pill shaped objects of different
sizes and a group taking a "real" Placebo, a sugar pill that dissolves in
the stomach.
Bob Holmes
Actually that's not bad idea, but I cannot think of
anyone who would fund that study.
============
General
'Black Jack' Pershing vs. Muslim Terrorists -
Urban Legends,
Jerry
I was going to send that Pershing
article to my friends, but I didn’t want to link to your site. So I did
a Google search to find the original. That’s how I found this - General
'Black Jack' Pershing vs. Muslim Terrorists – an Urban Legend:
http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/bl_black_jack_pershing.htm
There are other examples as well.
Ed
I'm sorry, I thought it obvious that the story was
a legend at best. The US Army does not have the authority to do summary
executions of 49 people letting one of them go. Back in Burma in the time of
the grave of the hundred heads such things might have happened when there
was no actual British commissioned officer present, but not likely:
Kipling's poem describes nothing I know of that actually happened. There are
stories of incidents like this in the early days of the British conquest in
India, but even there it's likely that most such incidents, including people
blown from a cann0n, were psychological warfare. The story of burying men
wrapped in pigskin was certainly circulated, and it may even be that some
burial details did that after a battle, but as a policy following execution?
In any event, I did not include it because I
thought the incident was true.
============
Are you spacey?
http://www.slate.com/id/2281146/pagenum/all/#p2
'Type professionals can get amusingly—if
justifiably—overworked about spaces. "Forget about tolerating differences of
opinion: typographically speaking, typing two spaces before the start of a
new sentence is absolutely, unequivocally wrong," Ilene Strizver, who runs a
typographic consulting firm The Type Studio <http://thetypestudio.com/>
, once wrote <http://www.itcfonts.com/Ulc/4111/DoubleSpaces.htm>
. "When I see two spaces I shake my head and I go, Aye yay yay," she told
me. "I talk about 'type crimes' often, and in terms of what you can do
wrong, this one deserves life imprisonment. It's a pure sign of amateur
typography." "A space signals a pause," says David Jury, the author of About
Face: Reviving The Rules of Typography <http://www.amazon.com/gp/
product/2880467985?ie=UTF8&tag=
slatmaga-20&linkCode=as2&camp=
1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN
=2880467985> . "If you get a really big pause—a big hole—in the
middle of a line, the reader pauses. And you don't want people to pause all
the time. You want the text to flow." '
Charles Brumbelow
When I began writing in the days of the typewriter
(I know, I know, no one remembers typewriters, but really they existed) I
was taught that one typed two spaces after a period that ended a sentence.
This made it clear to the typesetter that it was an actual sentence end and
not just an abbreviation. I continued to do this after computers when I was
submitting material on paper. After electronic submission became common
(which was well into the 1980's) it became customary not to add two spaces
after a period, and eventually the practice ended. I just looked this up in
Skillin and Gay, and while I can't find where it says to terminate a
sentence with a period and two spaces, I note that the professionally edited
manuscripts used as illustrations all have a period followed by two
spaces...
I no longer have the habit of two spaces after a
period, but I developed it when I was using a typewriter as a direct result
of a command by Robert Heinlein.
===========
Detroit and Decay
<http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424
052748703959104576081783880635012.html>
"The city may abandon half its [remaining] schools to
pay union benefits."
"Under the emergency plan, consolidated high-school
class sizes would increase to 62 by 2014, "consistent with what students
would expect in large university settings." Yet under the terms of the
Detroit Federation of Teachers contract, the district must pay bonuses for
class enrollment over 35, thus imposing some $11.1 million in new costs
through 2014.
"Note that this dispensation carries about the same
price tag as the school abandonment windfall: In other words, Detroit may
end up destroying serviceable capital assets so it can pay its public
workers more over the short term."
Detroit Decay Tour on Flickr
http://www.flickr.com/photos/synthetic_tom/sets/22995/
Charles Brumbelow
===============w
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