| Sunday, July
19, 2009
We have a large and mixed bag of mail.
Up or Out, redux
Your correspondent Brad (Thurs, 16
July) acknowledged both the ‘Peter Principle’ and some of the downsides.
He neglected to mention, didn’t consider, or was edited for brevity, one of
the more tragic consequences of the principle identified.
Many of the officers/senior NCO’s who fall into the
category of rising to the level of their incompetence do manage to get
themselves killed. Unfortunately, all too often they have taken far too many
young men with them.
And the military has the some of the most dramatic of
these failures, Challenger/Discovery anyone? The Executive is not immune.
Most respectfully,
Jonathan P Gilbert “If everyone is thinking alike,
then somebody isn’t thinking.” - Gen. George S. Patton
Clearly. And there has to be room for promotion,
meaning that you can't fill the intermediate positions with time servers.
At the same time, long term enlisted troops can often be the backbone of
the army. See Kipling on color sergeants.
==
The Solution to Up or Out (that will, of course,
never happen)
Dr. Pournelle,
A far better way would be to implement a true
regimental system where promotions and assecions were locally controlled.
Much like giving control back to local school boards as a cure for our
education system, this would allow local commanders to retain who they
wanted, promote who they saw fit and move out those who had no business
being there.
This would, of course, eliminate the need for much of
our personnel system, which is the primary reason it will never happen. It
would also concentrate way too much power in the hands of Junior and Field
Grade Officers, which probably worries a certain class of people.
I will now hear many many reasons why this just could
never work (even though it has many times in the past).
Matt Kirchner
CPT, IN (in a former life)
==
Up or Out and the Peter Principle:
Jerry,
A software company my dad worked for a few years back
had a technical career path available for those who deserved promotion for
merit but were not cut out for managerial positions. Pay raises &
recognition came without being attached to responsibility beyond the
person’s ability. If this is done well it can be a defense against the Peter
Principle.
—Joel Salomon
==
40 year old recruit == 48 year old out on his ear
Dr. Pournelle,
A correspondent wrote '"Up or Out" may still be needed
to assure quality performance across the board.' and that today's
40-year-old recruit expected to stay in 20 years and receive a nice pension.
ProblemS: that a 20 year pension in today's service delivers a pension at
somewhat less that 20% of pay at the time of retirement (<40% base pay,
which is less than half of total pay and allowances), that there will be a
probable mandatory separation at 57 or when/if the soldier can no longer
meet combat standards, and that 20 year career won't be possible unless said
soldier meets promotion requirements as interpreted throughout that career.
My personal experience is somewhat dated, but that "nice" family medical
insurance is not all its cracked up to be, either. Military family doctors
do well when not over run and understaffed, but are subject to the Iron Law
in most situations. Tricare is okay if you don't have to use it for more
than bandaids and aspirin.
The only career that that recruit is guaranteed is the
term of his first enlistment. Meanwhile, experienced soldiers excess to the
manning requirement du jour will continue to be discharged at the
convenience of the service.
I wish that soldier well, but recruiters are still
recruiters.
Imho, high year of tenure "up or out" programs have
forced out a lot of the competent before their contributions were ended, and
has reduced readiness since the end of the draft. Not Mr McNamara's only
such contribution. Your service-of-choice mileage may vary.
-d
============
P C costs nonexistant money
The State of Ohio has passed a law requiring the state
and all the 88 county Boards of Mental Retardation to change their names,
signs, and stationary to something else, I forget what. Meanwhile the state
has no budget.
R
=================
Webcams, printers, gizmos - the untold net threats,
Jerry
"The biggest security threats to business and home
networks may be the avalanche of webcams, printers, and other devices that
ship with embedded web interfaces that can easily be turned against their
masters:"
http://www.theregister.co.uk/
2009/07/16/buggy_web_interface_peril/
"The device that posed the highest number of threats
was NAS, or network-attached storage, units, which were susceptible to all
five attack classes considered in the study."
Oops. That is very, very bad news.
Ed
============
Surprising advice
From the San Francisco Examiner.
http://www.examiner.com/x-8266
-SF-Relationship-Advice-Examiner~
y2009m7d15-I-take-thee-though-
not-thine-surname-Women-and-n
ametaking-traditions
BTW, Isn¹t it THY not THINE?
Steve
=========
I was a teen age nerd
Why I won't be at my high school reunion...
http://scienceblogs.com/goodmath/
2009/07/very_off_topic_why_i_
wont_be_a.php?utm_source=
combinedfeed&utm_medium=rss
Julie
===========
Feedback
Our friends Alex and Mina Morton took us out to dinner
last night at a new local restaurant called Artisan Eats. A small sign on
the wall near our table made us all grin:
“UNATTENDED CHILDREN WILL BE GIVEN ESPRESSO AND A FREE
PUPPY.”
Spider Robinson
Hey ho.
===========
Re: dum-dum bullets
Ah yes, another "Powerpoint is DESTROYING AMERICAN
THOUGHT" article.
It's a bad craftsman who blames his tools. There's
nothing special about slideshow presentations that keep people from being
able to collaborate, or take notes, or make decisions, or discuss things.
There's no reason that you can't write up the meeting minutes and append
them to the presentation file.
I _will_ say that people's presentation skills are
often thoroughly rotten; if I never have to sit through someone reading 500
bullet-points at me again, it'll be too soon. But Powerpoint didn't create
that situation--it just made it obvious.
========
Without The Hot Air
Jerry,
I've come across an interesting book, "Sustainable
Energy - without the hot air" by David MacKay. Professor MacKay is a
physicist at Cambridge and he explains the math about how we use and produce
energy in a way that lets you do apple to apple comparisons and which
exposes many absurdities in our energy policies. What is also interesting is
that you can download it for free here:
http://www.withouthotair.com/
It is also interesting that the paperback is selling
well in the UK, even with the free download. Amazon has a text only version
for the Kindle, but the illustrations are very important for this book.
Joel Upchurch
It is worth more comment than I have time to give
it. And as you say the illustrations are important.
==========
Asia's Rise? Think Again
Don't believe the hype about the decline of America
and the dawn of a new Asian age. It will be many decades before China,
India, and the rest of the region take over the world, if they ever do
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/
articles/2009/06/22/think_again_
asias_rise?page=full
Jason
========
Dear Dr Pournelle,
Your website doesn't suck. (I can't say the same for
the 21st century so far...)
Modern trends in website design seem to involve
packing 5k of textual content deep within 150k of CSS formatting, javascript,
IFRAMEs, and Cthulu alone knows what-all other cruft. "To use this site you
must enable cookies, javascript, install the very latest Flash update,lower
your security settings to TSA-quality, and always depend on the kindness of
strangers!"
Your website is a pleasure to read; great content
unencumbered by Dancing Hampsters. It would be more than worthwhile even if
you DID require all that chrome-and-tailfin cruftware. It's even better
because you don't!
My prayers for your continuing good health,
--DCA
I couldn't find the dancing hampsters...
==========
SF Writers, Survival With Style, and Despair is a
Sin
I echo your thoughts that we CAN use our knowledge of
science to get out of the mess into which we've put our civilization. I am
increasingly admonished by your exhortations of "Despair is a sin" when I
see that we're NOT doing so.
My mother recently showed some interest in reading
science fiction. Since I've been reading the true quill for about 35 years I
thought I could suggest some good representations. Of course prudence
suggested I reread my choices to make sure they wouldn't turn her off or be
over her head. One thing that jumped out at me was a scene in Starship
Troopers where a future high school teacher was comparing raising a child to
rearing a puppy, and showing how horribly the late XXth century people
raised their kids. It read very much like a current article on education.
When I showed that to my mother she was astonished it was written in 1959.
That led me to explaining that SF writing is not just
about starships and lasers. I pointed out stories from Heinlein, Niven,
Clarke and yourself and have added a lot to her reading list. After some
discussion, I finally gave her a definition of "science fiction" and science
fiction writers. The definition was greatly influenced by you as a person
(as inferred from your website) as well as you're writing. Here's what I
told her:
Science fiction writers look at our current world, our
current technology and science, our current beliefs and values. They then
project those things through the lens of scientific knowledge into the
future and ask "what if?"
We also discussed current politics, in light of the
Heinlein example, which led to discussing your web site and many of your
recent commentaries. At one point I was amused to hear her say: "I wish HE'D
run for president."
I can only agree. Thanks for being you.
Wishing you health, happiness, and prosperity,
Brent
===========
Stephen Hawking: “Humans Have Entered a New Stage of
Evolution”
Although It has taken homo sapiens several million
years to evolve from the apes, the useful information in our DNA, has
probably changed by only a few million bits. So the rate of biological
evolution in humans, Stephen Hawking points out in his Life in the Universe
lecture, is about a bit a year.
“By contrast,” Hawking says, “there are about 50,000
new books published in the English language each year, containing of the
order of a hundred billion bits of information. Of course, the great
majority of this information is garbage, and no use to any form of life.
But, even so, the rate at which useful information can be added is millions,
if not billions, higher than with DNA.”
This means Hawking says that we have entered a new
phase of evolution. “At first, evolution proceeded by natural selection,
from random mutations. This Darwinian phase, lasted about three and a half
billion years, and produced us, beings who developed language, to exchange
information.”
But what distinguishes us from our cave man ancestors
is the knowledge that we have accumulated over the last ten thousand years,
and particularly, Hawking points out, over the last three hundred.
Full article, plus check out the image of Hawking with
Earth, Luna, and Mars in the background around him:
http://www.dailygalaxy.com/
my_weblog/2009/07/stephen-hawking-
the-planet-has-entered-a-new-
phase-of-evolution.html
For those looking for Tocqueville:
Subj: Tocqueville online
A friend sent me these:
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~Hyper/DETOC/toc_indx.html
(Hypertext version)
and
http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/815
http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/816
(Lots of versions) Project Gutenberg spells his name
"Alexis de Tocqueville" (two l's in Tocqueville)
Rod Montgomery==monty@starfief.com
===========
Man-made star...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/
science/nature/8044620.stm
Charles Brumbelow
=============w
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