| Monday
February 28, 2011 USN
deployments
Dear Dr. Pournelle,
I recently wrote that the US had fewer ships in the
Med than Iran did. That appears to have changed.
http://www.alarabiya.net/articles/
2011/02/28/139526.html
Although the newspapers don't spell it out, I suspect
the carriers were originally deployed to cover Bahrain, which is of course a
major base in that area. I'll wager they'll still want adequate ships to
cover a blowup there, but it appears we are now preparing for contingency
operations against Libya as well.
I must also give President Obama credit for not
calling for Quadafi to resign until AFTER the American citizens in the
country had been evacuated. While we can argue that he showed insufficient
force, the fact that our people were extracted without the need for armed
intervention is probably a good thing .. certainly in the eyes of those
people who actually rode the ferry.
Respectfully,
Brian P.
Well, the Navy's here. Deo Gratia.
==========
There's hope yet for America
Jerry,
People send you a lot of news about how the Legions
are getting shafted in one way or another. I thought you might like to see
one example of spontaneous support for a down-on-his-luck vet selling his
pistol for cash.
http://www.texashuntingforum.com/
forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/2146854
/Iraq_Afghan_vet_needs_to_sell_#Post2146854
Greatest Regards, Preston DuBose
Texas
============
Letter From
England
First the news and then some
stories from the academic zoo.
Libyan events. Meanwhile, the UK
Government mis-manages the evacuation of UK citizens: <http://tinyurl.com/6crl45p>
<http://tinyurl.com/4c34xtg>
<http://tinyurl.com/66vjeh7>
Perhaps this is part of the reason: <http://tinyurl.com/48jq55y>
UK GDP shrinking faster than
previously thought. <http://tinyurl.com/6b64g2n>
Research funding cutback
uncertainty means that grants are not currently being funded. This is making
planning at the sharp end a bit fraught. Hopefully, we'll know more in
April. Neuroscience was previously cut back 20%, supposedly due to the high
quality of the proposals being submitted and probably due to the departure
of a lot of biotech research from the UK. The Government is also threatening
to cut research funding further as punishment for universities raising fees
to the maximum (£9,000/year).
The Government believed that
OFFA could impose by fiat the fee levels the Government wanted. It can't. <http://tinyurl.com/6l2tbuy>
University College London
considered ignoring the Government's mandates on fees and student numbers to
address a major budget gap. <http://tinyurl.com/62rbglh>
David Willetts' position on £9K
fees. <http://tinyurl.com/6ejzoro>
<http://tinyurl.com/6eqtger>
<http://tinyurl.com/6yaftw7>
<http://tinyurl.com/6ad5xyy>
<http://tinyurl.com/6xt2o34>
Changes to student visa system
aggravating the problems: <http://tinyurl.com/5thu6lo>
<http://tinyurl.com/68amron>
"US undergraduates' lack of
learning bodes ill for the UK, says Alan Ryan." <http://tinyurl.com/6a2o83f>
--
Beware Outside Context Problems
--Harry Erwin, PhD
==========
THE EVILS OF AXUM
Looters at The Egyptian Museum have reportedly
excavated a crisis management cartouche of the 21st dynasty Vice Pharaoh
Tutankhbiden:
My fellow Amerankhans, Uneasy lies the head that wears
a cobra for a crown.
As Pharaoh Obamhotep is busy smiting Libyans this
week, the Speaker of the House of the Dead has asked me to add to add a
Nileside chat to the State Of The Union of Upper and Lower Egypt address, so
listen up ye mighty and despair :
Our vizier Hoznymandias was once a scepter of
stability in a region full of strategic bitumen reserves. But now former
next Pharaoh Hillaryshepsut ,daughter of Rhodames, informs us that all that
remains of him is a colossal wreck round which, boundless and bare, the lone
and level sands stretch far away.
Ra knows, Hoznymandias’s son Gamaltiti is not worth a
canopic jar of warm spit, for he was fond of waterboarding crocodiles, but
his father is a real son-of-a-Sun, and an up front guy for a king of kings.
So may the beak of Horus devour the liver of any
scribe who tweets Hoznymandias is a dictator, or suggests he pack his
sarcophagus and take the next solar boat out of here, for without him, we
couldn’t float a basket of bulrushes in the Red Sea, let alone ships loaded
with ivory, apes and peacocks.
Without Hoznymandias’s vast and trunkless legs of
stone standing in the desert in an antique land, the peace process would be
in the hurt locker beneath the Great Pentamid, and Philistine extremists
would be smashing the wash pots of Moab, smiting the Israelites and
unleashing a plague of frogs of book of the dead proportions.
Instead, Hoznymandias has moved his own street’s
dynastic concerns forward in a dynamic way, shifted the pylons of democracy
from Tunis to Tanis by backing free elections in Kush and erased the evils
of Axum by smiting the pirates of Punt.
Let it be graven on an obelisk of red porphyry that
Death comes on swift wings to him who cuts foreign aid to the land of the
lotus-eaters, so let the granaries be opened, and a cataract of
frankincense, myrrh and gold flow forth to the East.
Thank you, and as it is written, let it be done.
-- Russell Seitz
=============
Re: Orbital Democracy Projector
Emailer John Strohm writes: "One can almost envision a
device that could incinerate an individual tinpot dictator, in the middle of
giving a rabble-rousing speech, out of a clear blue sky."
There was an amusing movie called "Real Genius" which
began with exactly that scenario!
-- Mike T. Powers
Of course there is such a weapon. It is called an
assassin, or ninja, or ... And Poul Anderson wrote that story long ago. Of
course one person's tinpot dictator is anther's beloved president or king.
So it goes.
============
This may interest you (Nuclear
Power)
Dear Dr. Pournelle:
This link
http://online.wsj.com/article/
SB1000142405274870440900
4576146061231899264.html?
mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTTopStories
goes to a WSJ article about Bill Gates taking a hand
in the nuclear power industry.
Regards, Tim Scott
We have safe and effective reactor designs: see
France and Japan. A new design will not stop the opposition. Perhaps Gates
thinks so. But the only physics the anti-nukes take is ExLax.
===========
A real analysis of climate
change?
Dear Dr Pournelle:
Are we about to get our wish?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/
2011/feb/27/can-these-scientists-end-
climate-change-war
"The team will also make every piece of data it uses –
1.6bn data points – freely available on a website. It will post its workings
alongside, including full information on how more than 100 years of data
from thousands of instruments around the world are stitched together to give
a historic record of the planet's temperature."
Michael Houst Barrington, NH
==
Can a group of scientists in California end the war on
climate change? | Science | The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/
science/2011/feb/27/can-these-
scientists-end-climate-change-war
This is news to me. I'm happy to see Dr. Richard
Muller and Dr. Judith Curry work on the data, as well as respected
scientists from other disciplines. I think that scientists from many
disciplines are just as capable, if not more so, as Climate Scientists at
looking at measured data.
The article mentions that some of the data comes from
as early as the 1700s, which does concern me that this new effort might not
look at the Medieval Warming Period.
Randy Lea
We can hope. I cheer.
=============
re: loss of jobs to
automation or to overseas workers.
The requirements to sustain life are what I call the
basic 4: food, clothing, clean water, and shelter. With the advance of
technology it requires less and less time to meet these basic needs, in fact
we end up with a surplus of basic stuff. With our extra food we can pay
people to do other "work" such as sing songs, write novels, play doctor,
teach, program the internet, and create reality TV shows. Some of these
activities improve our effectiveness at the basic 4, others just make our
lives more enjoyable.
This process has been going on for the last 200 years
or so. Farm automation allowed one farmer to feed hundreds of people. These
99 former farmers lost their "jobs" and started doing something else to make
a living... we call that the industrial revolution.
As we export jobs we improve the standard of living of
those who are living at a subsistance farming level. This has happened
before. The textile industry has moved from England to New England to the
Carolinas, to Taiwan, to China, and now to Vietnam. In each case there was
dislocation and unrest in the areas that lost the jobs, but with good
education, rule of law, and a strong work ethic the original economy seemed
to recover pretty well.
As long as the process doesn't proceed too quickly
human ingenuity seems to do well. Or perhaps speed is good because you
develop new things faster than the iron law can keep up and create rules to
limit productivity and stifle new business creation.
As you have said before, technology requires energy.
Farmers with good land can become extremely productive 1000x or so, because
of fertilizers, pesticides, water pumps, and tractors. Fertilizers and
Pesticides come from the chemical industry which is a huge user of energy.
We are spending the capital resources of our planet
(oil, coal, uranium) to improve our standard of living. If we run out of
capital before we develop sustainable replacements (space solar perhaps) we
will follow the path of the Moties.
---------- Jim Coffey
At one time the giant sucking sound was to the
South, and created jobs in the border areas; Free trade with Mexico gave
them an advantage, but the jobs didn't go to China. Now...
==
Release the Giant Cobra Robot:
Bollywood's Big, New Global Bet on Sci-Fi,
Jerry
A lovely new Bollywood trailer for a robot super hero,
with accompanying story:
http://www.wired.com/underwire/
2011/02/bollywood-sci-fi/
Now here’s the ominous bit:
“India was never known for special-effects movies, but
things are changing because the country now has so many effects houses doing
work for Western filmmakers,” says Gitish Pandya, who tracks the Indian
movie industry and runs Box Office Guru. “We’re going to be seeing more
Indian sci-fi because the technology and staffing is there.”
I read the warnings about outsourcing something like
30 years ago: you put the equipment there, then there are engineers, then
you have competitors with a lower cost basis than yours. We saw it in
electronics. Now we’re seeing it in special effects. Pretty soon only the
actors will live in Hollywood. All else will be elsewhere, and your company
town will be a shell. Nice, eh?
Anyway, enjoy the trailer. It’s fun.
Ed
I can hardly wait.
================
Wisconsin's is not the first
runaway legislature
I cannot find an exact reference, and I don't remember
on which C-SPAN or BookTV show I heard the story told, but...
When the legislature of the Commonwealth of
Pennsylvania met, in 1787, to vote on calling a convention in that State to
ratify the newly-proposed Federal Constitution, the Federalists had the
necessary majority of legislators, but were two short of having the
necessary quorum.
The anti-Federalist legislators had run away and
barricaded themselves in a tavern.
The Federalists thereupon convened a mob, broke into
the tavern, seized two of the anti-Federalists and dragged them through the
streets to the State House (now known as Independence Hall), thereby
securing the necessary quorum. The bill to call a ratifying convention
passed forthwith, with two dissenting votes.
This story is generally consistent with (though
somewhat more colorful than) this reference:
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/today/dec12.html
Rod Montgomery==monty@starfief.com
I am not sure I ever heard that one before. Thank
you.
===================
LA Snow
Dr. Pournelle,
From Sunday, Feb 27: "...I am not sure the consensus
has agreed on an acceptable theory on how warmer air in cold dry areas has
caused snow in the Hollywood Hills..."
I've heard a plausible explanation for this. Sans
global warming, the winter temperature at the North Pole is say -20 degrees.
This cold dense air causes an intense high pressure that effectively bottles
up the cold air with a strong circumpolar circulation. If the polar
temperature 'warms' to say 0 degrees, the high pressure is not so intense,
the circumpolar circulation becomes wobbly, and this 'warmer' air (zero
degrees) spills out to lower latitudes.
Best Regards, Art Vaughn
Perhaps. But of course plausible is not what
science needs. Plausible is for novelists like me. Lawyers want evidence
of their views and leave counter examples to the opposition. Science needs
evidence and must take account of all of it, including why this didn't
happen last year, and an hypothesis about what will happen next year.
Freud could explain everything that anyone ever did. So can L. Ron
Hubbard. Science works differently.
==========
Subject: Septimius Severus
Jerry, you wrote on Sunday that Septimius Severus was
the first emperor of Rome to be proclaimed in the provinces. I don't think
so, and Wikipedia agrees. That "honor" goes to Vespasian who was proclaimed
in Judea in the Year of Four Emperors after Nero died, over 120 years before
Severus came to power.
Joe
You are of course correct. Indeed, it was of
Vespasian that Tacitus wrote of the discovery of the dread secret that
emperors could be made in places other than Rome. The parallels between
what happened after Commodus and what happened after Nero are close enough
to be confusing when I'm writing an essay and don't look things up.
Severus ruled purely by the consent of the army and didn't even pretend to
the consent of the people, so he's a better example of what I was trying
to show.
The real questions tested here are the limits of
rule by force in these times of communications. Not may science fiction
writers including me really saw all this coming, certainly not so soon. I
used to write of the computer as the great equalizer. giving a great deal
of power to the people, and Arthur Koestler noted that the free exchange
of ideas will end a totalitarian state (but not an authoritarian
dictatorship: totalitarians want you to believe; authoritarians like
Franco are content that you do not actively oppose).
Septimius Severus was the first non Roman emperor
of Rome. He was also the last Italian Emperor of old Rome.
=========
“Everyone was greedy. I just went along. It’s not an
excuse.”
<http://nymag.com/print/?/news/features/berniemadoff-2011-3/>
- Roland Dobbins
One of the characters in Mary McCarthy's Groves
of Academe is so liberal that if the President of the CIO burned down her
house and sowed the ground with salt, she would want to know why he had
done such a thing. I presume there are those who want to understand Madoff.
==========
GO - as in the game
Jerry,
I happened to be cleaning out some old boxes when I
happened across a column from Byte that you wrote in 1986. (And yes, I was a
subscriber and a BIXen back then) This little column was about a GO playing
game called Nemesis which played at 20 kyu. Back in those days, in an
artificial intelligence class I was taking, I took a brief stab at writing a
small GO program and then became enchanted with the graphics side of it and
never did much else with it. Last week I happened to download GOBan, and
have been trying to remember all the things I've forgotten in the 20 years
since I last played seriously, so I was amused to find this in a box along
with a flyer from Nemesis about ordering the game. GoBan apparently can be
pushed to about a 5kyu but I don't think anyone has really tested it in
years.
Anyway, there isn't much point to this note other than
to say that the more things change, the more they stay the same. 25 years
later, I still enjoy a good rummage around the inside of a computer and Go,
and you are at Chaos Manor enjoying the view.
Ann
I used to get a new Go player -- either a small
dedicated system or a DOS program -- every few months. I havent seen or
thought about a Go teacher/player in years. For that matter I haven't
thought about playing Go in years. I'll have to have a look to see what's
out there. Thanks!
================d
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