| Tuesday,
March 9, 2010 harvard professor opinion
piece in wsj
http://online.wsj.com/article/
SB10001424052748703936804
575108080266520738.html
A perfect example of why I don't want my kids going to
Harvard, Yale, or any of the other "Poison Ivy" Leagues.
Phil
I saw that piece this morning and thought much
the same thing. There are some odd people in the Ivy Leagues...
==========
Right and Wrong at the same time. Ye Gods!
Phil
Diane Ravitch is one of the more reasonable
advocates of central control of education...
See View for today.
=============
Rolling Back Government: Lessons from New Zealand
The following is adapted from a lecture delivered on
February 11, 2004, on the Hillsdale campus, during a five-day seminar on
“The Conditions of Free-Market Capitalism,” co-sponsored by the Center for
Constructive Alternatives and the Ludwig von Mises Lecture Series.
_________
If we look back through history, growth in
government has been a modern phenomenon. Beginning in the 1850s and
lasting until the 1920s or ’30s, the government’s share of GDP in most of
the world’s industrialized economies was about six percent. From that
period onwards—and particularly since the 1950s—we’ve seen a massive
explosion in government share of GDP, in some places as much as 35-45
percent. (In the case of Sweden, of course, it reached 65 percent, and
Sweden nearly self-destructed as a result. It is now starting to dismantle
some of its social programs to remain economically viable.) Can this
situation be halted or even rolled back? My view, based upon personal
experience, is that the answer is “yes.” But it requires high levels of
transparency and significant consequences for bad decisions—and these are
not easy things to bring about.
What we’re seeing around the world at the moment is
what I would call a silent revolution, reflected in a change in how people
view government accountability. The old idea of accountability simply held
that government should spend money in accordance with appropriations. The
new accountability is based on asking, “What did we get in public benefits
as a result of the expenditure of money?” This is a question that has
always been asked in business, but has not been the norm for governments.
And those governments today that are struggling valiantly with this
question are showing quite extraordinary results. This was certainly the
basis of the successful reforms in my own country of New Zealand.
...
http://www.hillsdale.edu/news/
imprimis/archive/issue.asp?year=2004&month=04
KEG
=============
More from England...
More discussions on science in today's UK news
Problems with publicising complex science <http://tinyurl.com/ygu58u9>
Labour science policy criticised for reducing funding
<http://tinyurl.com/yeqpl57>
<http://tinyurl.com/ydw96gm>
<http://tinyurl.com/yk9kqda>
<http://tinyurl.com/yaw9oqt> . BTW,
funding has already been decreased--currently grant proposals are being
approved for a one year duration.
University targets have devalued UK degrees <http://tinyurl.com/ykrabwu>
<http://tinyurl.com/y9xw8rm>.
Meanwhile, several hundred thousand applicants will miss university due to
government caps. Why not scrap the current system and replace it with a
system of targeted grants--for the talented poor--and loans--for everyone
else, while charging full economic costs?
-- Harry Erwin, PhD, Program Leader, MSc Information
Systems Security, University of Sunderland.
==
You want it bad; you get it bad
NHS waiting time targets cost lives. <http://tinyurl.com/yhdjy4c>
NHS funds diverted <http://tinyurl.com/yfhpvuc>
Reducing the UK national deficit by taxing food <http://tinyurl.com/ykzsdd6>
-- Harry Erwin
===========
> Final resting place of the 'Caspian Sea Monster'.
It turns out this isn't the Caspian Sea Monster - it's
Project 903/MD-160:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lun-class_ekranoplan>
-- Roland Dobbins
==========
Obama's NASA Conference
Jerry:
<http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/space/6903694.html>
Analysts point to politics over Obama's NASA
conference
By STEWART M. POWELL Washington Bureau March 8,
2010, 10:50PM
WASHINGTON ‹ President Barack Obama is scrambling
for political cover in the electoral battleground of Florida by staging a
White House conference next month to explain and defend a scaled back
vision for the nation's marquee manned space program that threatens
thousands of jobs, political analysts say.
Obama is banking that officially designating Mars
the nation's next destination in space before a high-profile gathering of
top administration officials, local elected officials and aerospace
contractors will spark inspiration, assuage an anxious, space-reliant work
force and cement the allegiance of Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., a crucial
political ally heading the Senate panel with jurisdiction over NASA and
the highest ranking Democrat elected statewide in Florida.
Nelson took to the Senate floor late Monday to
welcome Obama's April 15 visit and praise his plans to seize leadership of
the space program, even as he went on to excoriate unnamed presidential
aides and ³the budget boys from OMB² for allowing the chief executive to
create ³the perception that the president had killed the manned space
program.² <snip>
===========
'The Obama administration will accept no more public
input for a federal strategy that could prohibit U.S. citizens from
fishing the nation's oceans, coastal areas, Great Lakes, and even inland
waters.'
<http://sports.espn.go.com/outdoors/saltwater/news/story?id=4975762>
- Roland Dobbins
But we were born free.
============
Mystic Met Office abandons long range forecasts,
Jerry
It seems the British weather service cannot predict
the weather several months hence:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/03/05/mystic_met/
"The Met Office has confirmed it is to abandon long
range weather forecasts, finally acknowledging criticism. The most recent
forecasts were so inaccurate, that even the BBC is reconsidering whether to
appoint an alternative supplier, such as Accuweather, after 88 years of
continuous service from the 1,700-strong MoD unit.
The Mystic Met predicted a barbecue summer for 2009,
and the third washout in a row, with the wettest July since 1914, duly
followed. A mild winter was then given a high probability, only for the UK
to suffer its coldest winter for 30 years. Yet Met Office staff received
performance-related pay bonuses worth over £12m over 5 years, it was
revealed last week, in response to a Parliamentary question."
Ed
I noticed that. But the models tell us what the
climate will be in fifty years.
==============
On toyota and fly by wire
Jerry,
Long time fan. Just wanted to give you my two cents on
the Toyota fly by wire issue.
I've been a computer programmer since 1975 and while I
would be the first to brag about the value of fly by wire, I also understand
the down side of it. Take Toyota's current problems. I find it difficult to
believe that a floor mat could possibly cause sudden acceleration. I'll buy
that it's possible that the mat may interfere with the movement of the pedal
and cause the accelerator pedal to stick in position (something a heavier
spring should be able to deal with, or at worst, putting in a mat with a
slightly different shape) but to cause the car to accelerate? I just don't
buy it.
In the interest of full disclosure, I own three, count
them, three Toyotas, a 92 with 217k, a 95 with 97k and a 2005 with 56K So
it's not like I'm anti Toyota. I expect that, despite the current problems,
my next car will be a Toyota.
Still, as a programmer, roboticist, and electronics
engineer, I'm thinking that the problem will turn out to be their fly by
wire computer. Almost everything that car companies do these days assures
that this is possible; Different computers for each model, each requiring a
hardware development team, software development team, and a QC team. While
in theory they should all be running the same code, it's like computer
companies and cell phone companies; In real life having more than one
platform to support almost always results in both platforms being
substandard.
From my point of view, every computer in every Toyota
should be identical. The economy of scale should make it less expensive to
make a million of the same thing than 100,000 each of ten almost identical
things. It's not like car computers are any more sophisticated than your
average PC. I think that if there was only one computer to deal with,
development and QC would be a lot easier to deal with. After all, the
lowliest toyota and the most luxurious Lexus still perform almost all the
same functions (getting you to your destination)
The real problem is of course, in the programming of
their fly by wire systems. Anyone who has ever built an RC model airplane,
or anyone who has ever built a robot knows well that you can have the best
hardware in the world and screw it up with crappy software. These systems
hold people's lives in their hands. There is no room for anything less than
absolute perfection. From some of the comments made by Toyota in the last
week ("we're going to make the brakes override the accelerator") it seems to
me that they KNOW the problem is in their fly by wire system since they
should have figured THAT problem out before they put it in the cars.
The hardware should not be proprietary, nor should the
software. This is something that needs to be so transparent that ANY
possible problem can be spotted and corrected long before the car gets into
production, and if it is discovered in post production, all cars can be
retrofitted by replacing the ROM.
I think the NTSB should require that all car computers
using fly by wire be standardized and must pass a standardized battery of
tests conducted by NTSB and those tests should include every imaginable
scenario before they are allowed to be put into a production model. I think
the NTSB should publish specs to which these fly by wire systems must be
built.
We may never know what the real problem is as it will
almost be a certainty that Toyota would like to keep anything like that
quiet.
Anyway keep up the good work at Chaos Manor and keep
writing. -- Regards,
Dave Evartt Sr. Programmer Analyst
This morning we have the story of a driver who
panicked: he went to pass someone on the freeway, and got a stuck
accelerator. Apparently he couldn't put it in neutral. The story has a
happy ending, and Toyota will have the car to study. It sounds like a
problem in the speed control software?
===========
Ben Bova: 'Since my novel was really a
thinly-disguised satire of the book-publishing industry, things go
drastically wrong. Little did I realize how prophetic I was.'
<http://www.naplesnews.com/
news/2010/mar/06/ben-bova-
i-saw-e-books-and-related-problems-coming/>
-- Roland Dobbins
===========
Unexpected implications of the Large Hadron Collider
I'm sure you recall the LHC's apparent unwillingness
to be completed. This item takes another look at the phenomena, and gives
the lie to the popular notion that scientists have no head for business.
http://www.salon.com/entertainment/
comics/tom_the_dancing_bug/
2010/03/03/tom_the_dancing_bug
--Gary Pavek
============
Subject: Health Insurance Companies and Non-Profits
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/08/AR2010030801703.html?hpid=topnews
I see that President Obama is attacking health
insurance companies. It seems that the president wants health insurance
companies to be non-profit and insure everyone regardless of existing
conditions. Health insurance seems to be a pretty simple concept. A group of
people pay into a fund. When someone is sick, money is pulled from the fund
to pay the bill. If a lot of people become sick in one year, everyone has to
pay more into the fund to cover the expenses. If few people become sick in
one year, fewer funds are withdrawn from the fund and people don't have to
pay as much that year. There are expenses to managing the fund and
collecting the contributions.
I think it is legal to start such a non-profit health
insurance company. I am surprised that President Obama does not start such a
non-profit health insurance company himself. At least he could use his
position of influence and leadership to inspire others to start such
non-profit health insurance companies. Pardon my ignorance, but I think that
is what a President of these United States should do - state his beliefs and
inspire others to follow those beliefs. History shows us that it is
incredibly difficult to pass legislation that requires people to be good.
There are also many unintended consequences of such laws. Just a thought. I
will now stop commenting for today.
-- Dwayne Phillips
Kaiser is a non-profit. No insurance company can
take on all comers for equal premiums, admit all, pay for all -- and
survive. That includes the government. It will be unable to do that,
meaning that it rations something.
============
Iran and Obama's "no preconditions" foreign contacts
campaign promises
No preconditions for talks with Iran?
Dr. Pournelle,
Do you think President Obama has any doubts about the
value of more open contacts with Iran, after the Iranian madman came up with
a new fantasy speech? This time, he's repeating 9-11 conspiracy theories
right before visiting President Karzai in Afghanistan.
http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/
meast/03/07/ahmadinejad.afghanistan/index.html
I really do want President Obama to visit Iran.
Ahmadinejad came here, Obama ought to be polite enough to go there. I want
to see what happens, I really do. Because Obama was SO convinced that
Ahmadinejad is a rational leader, he really needs to go give it a shot,
talking to him in person over there. Put up or STFU and let some real
leaders work on our national security issues.
S
But suppose both of them see each other as
rational?
==============
'Snowball Earth': Glaciers, ice packs once met at
Equator, buffy willow
Jerry
Says here, Glaciers, ice packs once met at Equator:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/03/05/snowball_earth/
Seems there was near total glaciation 717mya and
615mya, with an intervening epoch of zero ice. "Thereafter more moderate
glaciations and warmings have been seen."
Apparently the constriction of open ocean to a few "refugia"
stimulated the development of animal life.
If this is what was needed to kick start development
of higher life forms, microbes might be the norm around the galaxy. How
disappointing that would be.
Ed
Throw another log on the fire?
==========
Subject: How engineers open the curtains…
http://www.chilloutzone.de/
files/player.swf?b=10&l=197&u
=ILLUMllSOOAvIF//P_LxP92A
42lCHCeeWCejXnHAS/c
Tracy Walters, CISSP
===========
Paul Ryan and Ezra Klein debate fiscal scoring of
health care proposal
Jerry, a couple of good links discussing Paul Ryan's
analysis of the fiscal impact of the Democrats' health care proposal.
The first is Ezra Klein critiquing Ryan's analysis:
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/
ezra-klein/2010/03/paul_ryan_and
_the_true_cost_of.html
The second is Rep. Ryan's response to Klein's
critique:
http://www.facebook.com/notes/
paul-ryan/paul-ryan-responds-to-
ezra-klein/362893127447
Between the two, they seem to cover the ground nicely.
Best,
Jon
============
Jerry,
Comment on the boom box fuel cell and CO2 production
discussion.
Yes, fuel cells operating on natural gas still produce
carbon dioxide. However, since natural gas is CH4 and higher hydrocarbon
fuels are generally -CH2- with terminal hydrogens, the proportion of CO2
produced by burning natural gas is reduced per unit of energy delivered.
Secondly, fuel cells produce electricity directly rather than through using
the energy generated by combustion to drive a generator, which results in an
improved molar efficiency factor of about 2. Third, placing fuel cells near
the point of consumption reduces transmission losses, which average about
another factor of 2. Thus fuel cells represent a potential savings in CO2
generation of around 75% per unit power delivered when compared to
centralized natural gas power plants on the grid (not including in decreased
efficiency of delivering CH4 to the point of use relative to delivering
electricity to the point of use via the grid), with further marginal
improvements related to burning of fuel oil or coal in power plants.
That said, given the higher unit cost of fuel cells at
the point of use, this becomes economically viable using current technology
only if one determines that CO2 generation is a sufficient liability to
justify approximately doubling the amortized cost of delivered electricity
in order to reduce CO2 by 75-100%, the price point implicitly sought by the
cap-and-trade regime. (Of course, nuclear reduces CO2 by 100%
competitively...) I don't believe that has been demonstrated...
Jim
================
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