| Monday
May 2, 2011 Pakistani role
"It appears that Pakistan sold him out, but must be
given plausible deniability. The Pakistani government cut the electricity in
the entire area of the city. "
What is your evidence for either of these statements?
For the first one, every single source I have seen has
been repeating that Pakistan was deliberately not told anything, implying
there was a fear the target would get warned - and that the means of finding
him was following a courier, and not anything to do with Pakistani input.
For the second, I haven't seen any mention of this anywhere else.
Rollory
Every official source you will ever see will say
that Pakistan was deliberately not told anything, and that this raid,
taking place in the North East part of Pakistan, was done by stealth from
carriers in the Arabian Sea. The operations force entered Pakistan by
stealth, carried out a raid in an inland military college town, made use
of the local airport, and went back to sea without any prior arrangement
with the Pakistani government, which therefore bears no responsibility for
the actions.
============
And of course, the idiots buried him at sea.
Nobody will believe it.
R
I expect it will be believed. As to burial at
sea, I presume it is a matter of policy. One alternative would be to
display him wrapped in pigskin. There are obvious arguments against doing
that. Burial at sea gets him out of the way without leaving a tomb site.
There are arguments in favor of that as well as against it. I'm glad I
didn't have to make a quick decision on this.
The display him in pigskin argument is that it
will smoke out the mad fanatics and get it over with. The counter argument
is that this will get a lot of people hurt or killed.
===========
Look North today
Hello Jerry
Lots of interesting things going on in the world
today. Amidst the obvious, have you noticed there is an election just North
of you? What looked to be an incredibly boring Federal election in Canada
has turned out to be anything but. Advance poll turnout is way up, the Bloc
may lose seats to the NDP (as a Federalist I cheer that one although they
are not my party of choice), the leader of the Green party may finally have
a seat in the House of Commons, and the whole situation is quite volatile.
Nothing is broadcast until after the polls close in BC, so that should work
just fine for you in the same time zone. You might want to check it out.
(That is the polite Canadian way of saying - check out what your next-door
neighbours who sell you lots of oil and natural gas are doing, a change of
government to ones who actually care a tiny bit, not a lot, about the
environment could affect you.) Plus we are having serious looks at the
"first past the pole" format, with 5 parties a candidate with 35-40% of the
votes in that riding can get elected. This basically dis-enfranchises a
large proportion of the voters. There may well be a lot of strategic voting
going on.
In one hour and 17 minutes I vote - the old-fashioned
way, pencil on a paper ballot.
Pat Hennesey
PS I can't be the only one who wrote you in response
to the mail item about evolution - you
left it up, but nothing to clarify? Most people have such murky concepts of
what evolutionary theory is, that this was a good chance to clear things up.
Biology as a discipline can be very complex, but most people think of the
sub-discipline of Ecology as still "Natural History" - it has gone way past
that. Physics and Chemistry are much more predictable disciplines,
non-living things usually are.
The Harvard Law states: Under controlled conditions of
light, temperature, humidity, and nutrition, the organism will do as it damn
well pleases. Larry Wall
<http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/l/larrywall137962.html>
The subject is sufficiently complex as to require
more space and thought than I have time for just now. The interaction of
heredity and environment is both more and less complex than is usually
taught in the schools, and I haven't got any simple principles. I do like
the Harvard Law,
When I took ecology from Rufus King at the
University of Iowa a very long time ago, he required an acquaintance with
differential equations; it wasn't enough to say "everything is connected
with everything else", the trick was to describe the connections. We know
a lot more about that now than we did then, but I can't say I have kept up
beyond following it in New Scientist and other such magazines.
=========
Technical Explanations
As I wrote when I first examined the President's BC
.PDF, I was very puzzled by how such a document could be produced. Since
then, experimenting with various ways to process the document with Acrobat 9
and other software, I have been able to sorta-kinda reproduce the same odd
effects found in the White House provided e-file. If I were still a software
tester, I'd have to rate this as an UTR (Unable to Reproduce), but I can
come close. Close enough that the differences in software and hardware
involved could possibly explain the differences.
Left unanswered is WHY BHO's people released the long
awaited document so messed up. Take a paper document, scan it, post the
.JPG--one step. Simple and you're done. If you HAVE to, go ahead and turn it
into a .PDF (standard or press quality, doesn't matter). That's one
additional step. A single image converted to .PDF is a single object, if you
don't do anything else. It looks to me that in order to produce the document
as they posted it, it was *minimally* wrung though an unknown number of
additional steps for no added value, steps which unnecessarily produced a
document that prima facie appears tampered with. Is this an intentional
attempt to mess with somebody's head? Stupidity? Incompetence? Misdirection?
Who knows? The kind of investigation needed to get to the bottom of what's
really going on is technically doable, but politically impossible.
This was supposedly in support of an answer to a
Constitutional issue which a large number of citizens think important. I
produce print and e-documents for a living, and I'd never get away with
producing crap like this for a newspaper insert, let alone to purportedly
'settle' something of this import.
Greg Hemsath
I would have thought the simplest way would be
the best. Get a certified copy -- a non-digital photograph, perhaps -- and
release it. Why be complex? It's a moot point.
==============
Letter from England
Hello, Jerry,
I hope you've seen the very
belated Letter from Crete.
I have a strong recommendation
for anyone worried about their retirement savings--diversify into
international investments (Brazil, India, China, Taiwan, South Korea, etc.).
See <http://tinyurl.com/3r3rq4x>,
<http://tinyurl.com/6fpnv7f>
and <http://tinyurl.com/3bkdwlm>.
Getting up this morning, I heard
the news about Osama bin Ladin. About time... I had been working to stop him
since long before 9/11--perhaps now we'll have a little peace. UK stories: <http://tinyurl.com/3j8x22o>
<http://tinyurl.com/3fyxma7>
<http://tinyurl.com/6fr73xw>
<http://tinyurl.com/3c6aqu3>
<http://tinyurl.com/6yh6erj>
I missed the Royal Wedding--we
were flying into Gatwick from Crete. I understand the UK police were a bit
heavy-handed in suppressing anything resembling republican sentiments. <http://tinyurl.com/33wp2q2>
<http://tinyurl.com/5sg2tbv>
<http://tinyurl.com/65ju7jk>
Professor Richard Holmes died. <http://tinyurl.com/5vpbkff>
<http://tinyurl.com/6kj75bm>.
He was the highest ranking officer in the Territorial Army, so he wrote
about an area in which he had some professional as well as academic
experience.
UK companies play hardball with
Osborne (UK Chancellor) over taxes. <http://tinyurl.com/67d43af>
<http://tinyurl.com/3tbhqv5>
Blowback--using
super-injunctions to protect your privacy discredits you if you're an
investigative journalist <http://tinyurl.com/6y6vkvr>
"Kia Hora Te Marino" (May Peace
be Widespread)
Harry Erwin
==
Letter from Crete
Hi, Jerry,
This is a very belated letter from Crete--I've had
very limited access to the internet.
We showed my son, daughter-in-law, and 15-month-old
granddaughter around the sights of Crete: Kato Zakros, Palaikastro, Moni
Toplou, Sitia, Knossos, Festos, Gortys and Lassithi. They've been teaching
our grandchild American Sign Language. As a neuroscientist who studies
auditory communication, I'm gobsmacked by how fluent she is using signs when
her spoken vocabulary is no more than a half dozen words. We certainly
confuse physical limitations with lack of comprehension!
Also noted in passing: a recent report in the
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that IQ tests measure both
innate intelligence and motivation. If you remember the work on how sensory
thresholds are modulated by reward and also the data on the Flynn Effect,
this should not come as much of a surprise. It does suggest a mechanism for
culture to influence IQ test performance.
Crete has been hit hard by the downturn.
Infrastructure investment by the EU Social Fund ceased by about five years
ago, and currently the economy in Greece seems to be waiting on the
reappearance of capital, much as in America and the rest of Europe.
International demand is present, particularly in China, India, and Brazil,
but resource production has not caught up, so commodity prices are inflated.
Capital is currently moving into expansion of primary resource production,
but wages remain stagnant except in that sector. Those of us willing to
invest internationally are doing better than fine, but I suspect most
Americans saving for retirement are sticking with American companies, many
of which are currently refusing to repatriate their foreign profits. This
will sort out when the economy rebalances, but there are a lot of people
hurting right now in Europe, Japan, and North America.
The weather in Crete this year is wet and cold. The
climate is usually similar to southern California, but this year the last
snow in the White Mountains was in March, Mount Ida remains snow-covered and
the winter rains are continuing. As an orange grower's son, I see the rain
as money, but it's affecting tourism.
We went to Lassithi on Holy Saturday and visited the
cave of the Diktean Zeus. Coming back, I had to drive carefully due to the
number of drunks on the road. Adjusting to the differences in culture is one
of the challenges and (usually) pleasures of foreign travel. The last time
we visited Central Crete, most of the tourist sights were shut for much of
Easter weekend, but this year, they were open and free. It's worth seeing!
We didn't get to visit Santorini--perhaps next time.
A question--I'm thinking of writing a science fiction
story or science fact article looking at the evidence for 'fine tuning' of
the various free parameters of physical laws. Any advice on the way to go?
-- If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not
be called research, would it? (Albert Einstein)
Harry Erwin PhD
Too bad you missed Phaistos,
which for me showed much of the comfortable wealth of Minoan Crete and was
sort of my favorite spot. Ah. I see Festos, which I presume is a modernizes
spelling.
The bronze age naval base at
Zakros was interesting too. Much of Knossos was so thoroughly rebuilt that
either you accept their interpretation or you really have to work to see
another. I very much enjoyed backpacking through Crete way back when, and
spending a week on Thera with Spiradon Marinatos. Fortunately I had a letter
of introduction from the Minister of Antiquities and a formal arrangement
through the government -- not hard to do, but it took a lot of bureaucratic
moves and a letter from National Geographic. All long ago.
========
wow
Jerry,
The Minister mentioned one of the coup's leaders,
Solomon Anthony Joseph Musa, who shot the people who had paid for his
schooling, "in order to erase the humiliation and mitigate the power his
middle-class sponsors held over him."
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/
archive/1994/02/the-coming-anarchy/4670/
--------
Most Respectfully,
Joshua Jordan
Civilization is a great deal
thnner than most suppose.
==========
The swarm of tornadoes we have seen in the last month
are not indicative of anything special, the same for the snow storms, ice
storms, hail storms, etc. So the tornado cluster was the worst since . . .
some year. Not forever but since sometime in the past. So what?
The news media talk about global warming without the
caveat, that geological history indicates that a warming trend has been
present since the peak of the last ice age. And from what we know about
weather, and by extension the climate, the natural warming trend is not
smoothly linear, in fact we know nothing about it except what you have
repeatedly mentioned about ice on the Hudson, grapes in England, ice on the
canals in Holland, and so forth. It is not a smooth and predictable process
but one that is chaotic with a long term general warming. So when there is
talk about global warming caused by human activity, it really means that
someone has extrapolated a normal warming trend and projected on top of that
some quantity attributed to human activity. As they cannot state with any
degree of accuracy, the first quantity, the second is meaningless.
CBS
==
Huntsville is 75 miles away and we can get one
Huntsville station so I have been able to follow local coverage of the
tornado there. Yesterday, I mowed my back yard and found several pieces of
roofing material while my neighbor found a letter from Cullman, Alabama,
over 100 miles away. Things like this brings home just how destructive
tornados can be. Here’s hoping nobody ever picks up pieces of my house 100
miles away.
Chuck Anderson
==========
Raw milk and vitamin pills
Jerry:
Saw the post about the FDA's daring raid on some Amish
farmers.
Some 50 years ago or so, Analog SF/SF published a poem
-- either in a Campbell editorial or in the letters column -- about the
FDA's penchant for ignoring real health issues while going after things that
people didn't care about or even wished they'd leave alone. The refrain at
the end of each stanza (detailing some real health issue) was, "And the
FDA's gunning for vitamin pills." I've never been able to find the poem
again; perhaps one of your readers can. ..bruce..
-- Bruce F. Webster
Part of the FDA can be placed
in the "government we can do without just now" category. Truth in
advertising is important: if it says it contains snake oil, there ought to
be oil of snakes in it -- and warnings make sense. "The FDA believes you
would have to be out of your mind to believe this stuff will do you any
good." But prohibitions of things that don't harm you, enforced by gunmen,
seems a bit much.
==
Raw milk..
Dr. P:
Before I discovered at age 51 that I can't tolerate
dairy products any more I was a member of a "raw milk" dairy co-op here in
Colorado. The dairy tests *all* their milk every day before it goes to its
members, invites you to come and see the operation and talk to them before
becoming a member, *never* has cows in the milk chain that are on
antibiotics, never feeds their cows anything but what they evolved to eat
(grass!) and produces a top-notch product. They are a fantastic contributor
to the local food chain in my area. And are periodically hassled by the
state. And are constantly worried that the FDA will do what they are doing
with the Amish farmer in Washington.
Meanwhile the only contribution the FDA makes to meat
safety is to acknowledge that virtually every piece of beef or chicken you
buy has been in contact with feces and needs to be treated as a poison until
it's been cooked to the point where most of the pathogens are dead. A point
far beyond what many people consider palatable.
But the meat industry and the big dairy industries pay
big money to the FDA to make sure that they beat on the little guys that are
actually trying to produce the food that people WANT.
Drives me crazy.
Rob
I am all for freedom with
enforcement of truth in advertising. I drank raw milk when we had cows in
Capleville. Everyone did. We didn't sell it, though. Purely for home
consumption.
Capitalists generally use
government regulation to restrict entry into their particular part of the
market. Adam Smith warns us of that. Economists apparently don't read that
part of the Wealth of Nations.
==
The Iron law marches on!
Madison —Gov. Scott Walker's proposal to privatize
work determining who is eligible for food assistance in the state would
violate federal law and could expose the state to a loss of more than $20
million in federal money, federal officials say.
In an April 14 letter to state Health Services
Secretary Dennis Smith and Children and Families Secretary Eloise Anderson,
Ollice Holden, a Midwest administrator for the USDA's Food and Nutrition
Service, warned that the work of interviewing applicants and deciding who is
eligible for the Wisconsin FoodShare program needs to be done by public
workers who are essentially civil servants. If not, he said, the state could
lose some of the federal funds supporting FoodShare, the successor in
Wisconsin to the food stamp program.
http://www.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/120933409.html
John
“In preparing for battle I have always found that
plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.”
Dwight David Eisenhower
==========
Government We Can Do Without Just Now
Dr. Pournelle,
Here's an idea (just off the top of my head). Pay all
government employees about 25-30% less and stop having them pay Income
Taxes. I bet you could save a lot in processing costs.
It has always seemed absurd to me that people who are
paid by the Federal Government should go through this ritual. It'll never
happen though.
Matt Kirchner
==========
Teddy Bear Time
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2011/05/01/libya-says-qaddafis-son-killed-airstrike-nato-confirm/
J
And indeed I have now seen a
teddy bear. Possibly quite genuine, possibly not. But there was one among
the children's effects shown to Arab newspeople.
=
Qaddafi Escapes NATO Missile Strike That Kills His
Son, Grandchildren - FoxNews.com
Jerry,
Are a leader's children and grandchildren considered a
legitimate military targets?
Could anyone blame Gadaffy for reciprocating?
If I was Gadaffy I'd be offering the North Koreans or
the Pakistanis gold for nukes, then using them.
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2011/05/01
/libya-says-qaddafis-son-killed-airstrike-nato-confirm/
J
The question is one worth
discussion. Can there be laws of War and Peace?
Sun Tzu says to build golden
bridges for your enemies. We have pretty well burned all those for Qadaffi.
==
Spellign
Hi Jerry
I noticed that you seem to alternate amongst a variety
of different spellings for the Libyan leader's name. Is there some point to
that? Unless you have been having more radiotherapy on the brain, it seems
most unlikely to be accidental. :-)
Just wondering.
Michael J Smith
I have used none but
permissible spellings for the name of the Libyan leader. I began with the
"accepted" Gaddafi but no one seems to agree on that or anything else, so I
use what I feel like.
===========
Green solar cell production
Dr. Pournelle:
Can a self-sustaining solar cell factory be powered
exclusively by solar cells? How large would the array be to generate the
necessary wattage? Is it economically viable?
The questions came up during a discussion that solar
cell production is like any other semi-conductor fabrication, in that a lot
of electrical energy is necessary and has to come from somewhere. “Dirty”
electricity generated by fossil/hydro/nuclear is presently used, justified
that once the cells are connected to the grid and generating power they
eventually “payback” the energy used to manufacture these cells. This seems
to be an energy accounting trick; a huge loan from the energy bank now, to
be paid back in small installments. The environmental consequences don’t go
away, and each solar cell is responsible for a portion of that pollution.
There must be someone among the readership who can
answer this question.
Best Regards,
Fred Foster
I have not done the math on
solar cell energy costs (raw materials, manufacturing cost, disposal of
waste materials, systems including storage, etc.) but back in the days when
I was doing the Galaxy columns, ground based solar would never break even;
but solar cells have become a great deal more efficient since those times.
The analysis is fairly tedious even to get things accurate to an order of
magnitude because there are a lot of hidden costs.
As a rule of thumb, for
daytime air conditioning without power storage, roof top solar is generally
economical. In places like Southern California where it is cool in the
evening it makes sense if you use the building during the daytimes. At
least that was true the last time I did the calculations. We didn't try it
for LASFS because the meetings are usually after sundown and an exhaust fan
is generally sufficient in the evenings; Los Angeles cools down fast unless
Santa Anna winds are blowing.
==========d
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