Post-election thoughts

Yes, it's not post-election yet, but it will be. This article mirrors my own thoughts, but better and more insightfully.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/gerard_baker/article5050705.ece

As America's government prepares to take a sudden and historic leftward turn, this might seem an odd moment to ponder what a conservative country it is.

...But the new rulers and their allies overseas would be well advised to tone down the rhetoric, play down expectations and rein in their wilder tendencies. The easiest mistake for the world to make would be to start believing the Left's own propaganda: that a vote for Barack Obama and for a Democrat in Congress on Tuesday is a vote to transform the country into a kind of social democratic paradise.

Of course none of this is to deny that Americans will be voting for change on Tuesday. After the past eight years who could possibly blame them? But I sense that the change they want is for a welcome period of competence and decency. They would rather have a government that works than a new paradigm for the organisation of American society, a radical redistribution of income and wealth or a dramatically expanded public sector. And they certainly won't be voting for a "can't we all just get along?" foreign policy that subjugates US national security to the negotiated outcomes of debates in the UN Security Council.

Odd as may sound, if Obama governs as a moderate, pro-growth President like Clinton, he will be a success (albeit without disgracing the office of the Presidency). If he spends his political capital appeasing the left, he'll be a one-term wonder like Carter. At this point, competence is the path to glory for Obama. Let's hope he's ambitious enough to take it.

-Max

--
"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)

"Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me."

Perspective

As elections approach, I hear a lot of doom-and-gloom from paleoconservatives predicting that Obama's socialism will spell the eventual doom of the United States as a Republic. Perhaps it could (although I think it won't, although it would if things continued in the direction they're going). In the long run, though, I am reminded of John McCarthy's definition:

"An extreme optimist is a man who believes that humanity will probably survive even if it doesn't take his advice."

It's a healthy attitude politically, but the underlying reasoning is interesting: it's faith that good ideas will work and be adopted eventually, while bad ideas will fail and be discarded. Or as Joseph Smith said,

"If I esteem mankind to be in error, shall I bear down on them? No. I will lift them up, and in their own way too, if I cannot persuade them my way is better; and I will not seek to compel any man to believe as I do, only by the force of reasoning, for truth will cut its own way."

Socialism will fail, inevitably. Oh well. I am determined to be there (and solvent) at the end when it does.

-Max

--
"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)

"Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me."

Public Education

Interesting quote from Brigham Young (Apr 6, 1877 conference address):

Many of you may have heard what certain journalists have had to say about Brigham Young being opposed to free schools. L am opposed to free education as much as I am opposed to taking property from one man and giving it to another who knows not how to take care of it.

But when you come to the fact, I will venture to say that I school ten children to every one that those do who complain so much of me. I now pay the school fee of a number of children who are either orphans or sons and daughters of poor people. But in aiding and blessing the poor I do not believe in allowing my charities to go through the hands of a set of robbers who pocket nine-tenths themselves, and give one-tenth to the poor. Therein is the difference between us: i am for the real act of doing and not saying. Would I encourage free schools by taxation? No! (SD 18:357)

Max

--
"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)

"Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me."

Deflation

Gas is down to 2.98 in Redmond, from a high of 4.50 or so during the summer. I'm told that the prices were pumped by speculators, and with the financial crash they aren't speculating any more. And--prices in the vending machine at work have gone *down* by five cents for some items. First time I've ever seen that happen. Interesting, no?

 

-Max

--
"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)

"Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me."

Thought for the day: Judge Not

Matthew 7:1, "Judge not, that ye be not judged," means, "You can't solve the Halting Problem," but moreso. Humans are more complicated than Turing Machines, and the end state is harder to predict.

-Max

P.S. Of course, someday you *will* be able to solve the Halting Problem. (Again, it's because humans are more complicated than Turing Machines, so the proof of intractability of the Halting Problem doesn't hold. That proof only shows that you can't solve it with a finite-state Turing Machine.)

-- "The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)

"Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me."

Getting gifted leaders into politics

The writer asks an interesting and important question, although he
doesn't have an answer for it:

http://www.forbes.com/opinions/2008/10/27/obama-mccain-politics-oped-cx_ghr_1027reynolds.html

-Max

--
"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a
man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and
desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although
he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F.
Smith (manual, p. 69)

"Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my
brethren, ye have done it unto me."

Communism vs. The Law of Consecration

That's not exactly what this essay is about, but you'll probably see some application.

http://www.jerrypournelle.com/view/2008/Q4/view541.html#Distributism

-Max

--
"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)

"Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me."

Climate change

[Cc'ed T.]

J.,

More data, from a source who obviously does have an opinion but is much more familiar than I am with the relevant scientific literature.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/10/an_open_letter_from_the_viscou_1.html

-Max

--
"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)

"Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me."

Security Theatre

Bruce Schneier and company penetrate TSA security to show that the TSA is a waste of tax dollars.

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200811/airport-security

Schneier has his biases (he tends to assume a highly-competent enemy when the evidence from Michael Sheehan is that Al Qaeda is not such) but I'm inclined to agree. It's a lot of money and hassle spent for little return except a sense of (illusory) security. We would probably be better off without it.

-Max

--
"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)

"Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me."

China

http://www.thomaspmbarnett.com/weblog/2008/10/a_huge_but_necessary_step_long.html

Read the comment, follow the link. Interesting, no?

--
"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a
man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and
desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although
he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F.
Smith (manual, p. 69)

"Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my
brethren, ye have done it unto me."

Poem

Though much is taken, much abides. And though
We are not now that strength which in the old days
Moved Earth and Heaven, that which we are, we are;

—Alfred Lord Tennyson, "Ulysses"

--
"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a
man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and
desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although
he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F.
Smith (manual, p. 69)

"Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my
brethren, ye have done it unto me."

ACORN

If this CNN story can be believed, 2100 of the first 2100 voters ACORN registered in Lake County, Indiana were fraudulent. Impressive, no? Sources tell me this occurs because ACORN pays their personnel per voter registered.

 

http://ace.mu.nu/archives/275523.php

 

-Max

 

--

"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)

 

"Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me."

Monkey Business & the Market

I got this from Chaos Manor (www.jerrypournelle.com). It's a hoot.

Monkey Business 

Once upon a time, in a place overrun with monkeys, a man appeared and announced to the villagers that he would buy monkeys for $10 each. 

The villagers, seeing that there were many monkeys around, went out to the forest, and started catching them. 

The man bought thousands at $10 and as supply started to diminish, they became harder to catch, so the villagers stopped their effort. 

The man then announced that he would now pay $20 for each one. 

This renewed the efforts of the villagers and they started catching monkeys again. 

But soon the supply diminished even further and they were ever harder to catch, so people started going back to their farms and forgot about monkey catching. 

The man increased his price to $25 each and the supply of monkeys became so sparse that it was an effort to even see a monkey, much less catch one. 

The man now announced that he would buy monkeys for $50! 

However, since he had to go to the city on some business, his assistant would now buy on his behalf. 

While the man was away the assistant told the villagers, "Look at all these monkeys in the big cage that the man has bought. I will sell them to you at $35 each and when the man returns from the city, you can sell them to him for $50 each." 

The villagers rounded up all their savings and bought all the monkeys. 

They never saw the man nor his assistant again, and once again there were monkeys everywhere. 

Now you have a better understanding of how the stock market works. 

Tracy Walters

-Max

--
"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)

"Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me."

Radioactive Taiwan

D.,

Here's a link to the study. I don't know whether anyone has followed up on it.

-M.

===============================

http://www.jpands.org/vol9no1/chen.pdf

ABSTRACT
An extraordinary incident occurred 20 years ago in Taiwan. Recycled steel, accidentally contaminated with cobalt-60 (half-life: 5.3 y), was formed into construction steel for more than 180 buildings, which 10,000 persons occupied for 9 to 20 years. They unknowingly received radiation doses that averaged 0.4 Sv—a "collective dose" of 4,000 person-Sv. Based on the observed seven cancer deaths, the cancer mortality rate for this population was assessed to be 3.5 per 100,000 person-years. Three children were born with congenital heart malformations, indicating a prevalence rate of 1.5 cases per 1,000 children under age 19. The average spontaneous cancer death rate in the general population of Taiwan over these 20 years is 116 persons per 100,000 person-years. Based upon partial official statistics and hospital experience, the prevalence rate of congenital
malformation is 23 cases per 1,000 children. Assuming the age and income distributions of these persons are the same as for the general population, it appears that significant beneficial health effects may be associated with this chronic radiation exposure. The findings of this study are such a departure from expectations, based on International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) criteria, that we believe that they ought to be carefully reviewed by other, independent organizations and that population data not available to the authors be provided, so that a fully qualified, epidemiologically valid analysis can be made. Many of the confounding factors that limit other studies used to date, such as those of the A-bomb survivors, the Mayak workers, and the Chernobyl evacuees, are not present in this population exposure. It should be one of the most important events on which to base radiation-protection standards. The data on reduced cancer mortality and congenital malformations are compatible with the phenomenon of radiation hormesis, an adaptive response of biological organisms to low levels of radiation stress or damage–-a modest overcompensation to a disruption-–resulting in improved fitness. Recent assessments of more than a century of data have led to the formulation of a wellfounded scientific model of this phenomenon. The experience of these 10,000 persons suggests that longterm exposure to radiation, at a dose rate of the order of 50 mSv (5 rem) per year, greatly reduces cancer mortality, which is a major cause of death in North America. Medical scientists and organizations may wish to seriously assess this and other current evidence in deciding whether chronic radiation could be an effective agent for enhancing defenses against cancer.

--
"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a
man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and
desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although
he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F.
Smith (manual, p. 69)

"Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my
brethren, ye have done it unto me."

Perspective: Dow Jones history

The Dow Jones recently dropped below 9000. People are scared. Here's a history:

http://www.djindexes.com/mdsidx/downloads/xlspages/DJIA_Hist_Perf.xls

-Max

--
"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)
 
"Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me."

Two soldiers and an A-bomb

Keywords: army experiment, nth country, nuclear fission, militarily significant yield

It turns out that, except for getting the fissiles, making a nuclear bomb is neither as easy nor quite as difficult as one might have wished. A fascinating story.
 
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2003/jun/24/usa.science

They would be working in a murky limbo between the world of military secrets and the public domain. They would have an office at Livermore, but no access to its warrens of restricted offices and corridors; they would be banned from consulting classified research but, on the other hand, anything they produced - diagrams in sketchbooks, notes on the backs of envelopes - would be automatically top secret. And since the bomb that they were designing wouldn't, of course, actually be built and detonated, they would have to follow an arcane, precisely choreographed ritual for having their work tested as they went along. They were to explain at length, on paper, what part of their developing design they wanted to test, and they would pass it, through an assigned lab worker, into Livermore's restricted world. Days later, the results would come back - though whether as the result of real tests or hypothetical calculations, they would never know.

"The goal of the participants should be to design an explosive with a militarily significant yield," read the "operating rules", unearthed by the nuclear historian Dan Stober in a recent study of the project published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Sciences. "A working context for the experiment might be that the participants have been asked to design a nuclear explosive which, if built in small numbers, would give a small nation a significant effect on their foreign relations."
 
-Max

--
"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)

"Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me."

Miss Manners

T. & J.,

Miss Manners remains, as always, a genius. Quote:

Dear Miss Manners:

What's your beef with a cash bar at wedding receptions? Weddings are incredibly expensive, and a couple starting out shouldn't have to go in the hole for thousands of dollars just to throw a reception where Miss Manners and a bunch of other deadbeats can have unlimited liquor. I thought you were a classy broad!

If we should encounter each other at a wedding reception, then your first drink will be on me, and you can hustle the rest yourself! I DARE YOU TO PRINT THIS!

Suppose you go first and explain why anyone would want to stage a thousands-of-dollars event for people whom they think of as deadbeats, and why other people would want to attend the wedding of those who thought that of them. This will give Miss Manners a moment to think of a tactful way of saying that she does not care to drink with you. 

End quote. I am continually impressed with how deftly she is able to deal with potentially-awkward situations. This time she dealt with one on her own behalf.

-Max

--
"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)

Be pretty if you are,
Be witty if you can,
But be cheerful if it kills you.