A note of sanity

\\
The Chicago City Council voted to tack an added 15 dollars onto the
annual passenger vehicle tax for SUVs over 4,500 pounds because of
their additional “wear and tear” on city streets, raising it from 75 to
90 dollars effective January 1.
The increase, applicable to most SUVs except the lighter compact
variety such as Toyota’s RAV4, was approved as part of the city’s 2004
4.8 billion-dollar budget.
The additional revenue generated by the move will be applied to
infrastructure improvements, said city spokeswoman Lisa Schrader, who
said the measure was based on common-sense assumptions about the impact
of SUV traffic.\\
Thank the Lord. It’s a minor thing, but it’s a start…

The occasional advantage to procrastination…

…is that somebody does the work for you.
I was going to write a long piece saying that for a man who follows the
Bible, GWB seems to be mighty ignorant of the lessons of Genesis
regarding Joseph and Pharaoh’s dreams.
Luckily, Sam Coppersmith
has already done it for me:
\\Behold, there shall come seven years of great plenty throughout the
land. Then shall come seven years of famine, and all the plenty shall
be forgotten, and grievous famine shall consume the land.
Let Pharaoh plan for the future of his country, by decreeing the
setting aside of reserves during the seven years of plenty, gathering
food and corn in the cities and granaries against the seven years of
famine. And those stores shall protect the land during the famine, and
the people shall not perish.
And Pharaoh said to Joseph: You may be wise in interpreting dreams, but
you know nothing of politics.
You must not know, having been locked in a dungeon these past two
years, that I am a supply-side Pharaoh.
During years of plenty, we do not gather reserves nor do we plan for
the future. The grain that will grow in abundance is not the
governments grain, and such abundance instead demands that the
government set aside less grain, not more.
Right-wing Pharaohs, during years of plenty, want to cut taxes. The
surplus generated by years of plenty may pay for an occasional new
program. But conservative Pharaohs have no desire to prepare for the
futureexcept by repealing the estate tax.
When the lean years come, famine may consume the land and afflict the
people, but that hardship becomes yet another reason to cut taxes and
to continue ignoring the future.
This philosophy may strike you, Joseph, as shortsighted and foolish.
Years of famine always may come, and a wise ruler should prepare during
the years of plenty.
But Pharaohs family and friends will have enough money to buy grain,
no matter how severe the famine.
Pharaohs need not worry about famine. That is the beauty of being
richand of term limits. I will rule over plenty; the next Pharaoh can
deal with the famine.
And Pharaoh thanked Joseph for his time, gave him a snappy nickname,
and ordered him returned to the dungeon.\\
(Hmm… seven years… that was the Clinton Administration, right? And
that means that… oh boy…)

Almost there…

Putting on my old electronic publisher hat, look at this: a 300 ppi screen that’s about the size of a business card.
In color.
Perspective: I know a lot of people who were typesetting books at that
resolution 15 years ago in black and white– without even the
possibility of anti-aliasing.
Game’s almost over. This is paper quality on a portable screen.
Now, ask me if I think it’ll make the e-book market better? Maybe…
another time. (Story via http://dotclue.org.)

24, Season 2

Matthew Yglesias, a fine political writer despite the fact that he’s
not even old enough to remember Carter’s term, points out some
brilliant comments about last season of 24:

I must say that, in retrospect, the whole show seems rather
touchingly naive. We’re supposed to believe that the possibility that
the country was headed for war based on forged documents would provoke
a crisis at the highest levels of government, and then when the people
duped by the forgeries saw their mistake they would resign in shame. If
only they knew.

Hal Clement: 1922-2003

\\Harry Clement Stubbs, who under the pen name of Hal Clement wrote
science fiction for sixty years and received SFWA’s Grand Master Award
in 1999, died in his sleep at his Milton, Massachusetts home on October
29th, 2003, at age 81.
Clement was an exemplar of the hard science fiction writer, always
basing his stories in thorough and rigorous science. He held three
science degrees, a bachelor’s in astronomy from Harvard and masters’ in
education and chemistry. He was a high-school science teacher for forty
years, most of that time at Milton Academy in his home town.
His first short story, “Proof”, which appeared in Astounding in 1942,
is widely considered the first successful melding of SF with the
mystery genre. After a stint in the Army Air Force in World War II, he
published his first novel, Needle, as a serial in Astounding in 1949. A
second military stint intervened before he produced his most famous and
enduring work, Mission of Gravity. His portrayal of Mesklin, a vast and
fast-spinning planet with gravity varying hugely from poles to bulging
equator, from the viewpoint of a native adventurer trekking across its
surface was a tour de force of hard science.
Clement’s other work included two more Mesklin novels, Close to
Critical and Star Light, as well as Iceworld, Cycle of Fire, The
Nitrogen Fix, Still River, and Half Life, along with some short story
collections. His most recent novel, Noise, was published earlier this
year by Tor, and he was reportedly working on further things at the
time of his death. His enduring legacy will be his portrayal of his
favorite character: the Universe, at once wondrous and comprehensible.
Clement was also a familiar and beloved figure at SF conventions,
enlivening any panel with sharp observations, self-effacing humor, and
remarkable anecdotes. His talents did not stop there. Not three weeks
ago at Albacon, I had the unusual privilege of listening as he and new
Analog writer Carl Frederick spent perhaps a quarter-hour at a social
gathering singing Welsh folk ballads. What an abstruse and charming
thing to know; what a breadth of experience and knowledge it revealed
in him.
A memorial service will be held at Saint Michael’s Episcopal Church at
112 Randolph Street in Milton, Massachusetts, at 10 am this Saturday.
Harry Clement Stubbs is survived by his wife of over fifty years, Mary,
and his children George & Richard Stubbs and Christine Heusel. On
behalf of all the members of SFWA, Online Update offers heartfelt
condolences to his family and many friends.\\
A gentleman in every sense of the word. I did a panel or two with him
at Arisia, and he was a pleasure, even going so far as to complement me
when I brought up an interesting point about writing Superman stories
and most story writing that he said, as a hard SF guy, he never got
until that moment– the point that if your character can do anything
(be it science, fantasy, or what have you) then the only stories left
to tell are ethical ones– should the character do this or not? And
why?
That, to me, summed up the man– even at the age of 80 or so, he still
was happy to learn new things he hadn’t considered. He’ll be missed.

I didn’t do it!

1. I, Glenn Hauman, do hereby attest that on or about the dates of June
1, 2003, through July 14, 2003, I did not contact, whether by
telephone, facsimile, e-mail, in person, or by any other means, any
reporter, correspondent, journalist, or any other member of the media,
with the intent to or purpose of naming former Ambassador Joseph
Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame, as an operative for the Central
Intelligence Agency.
2. I, Glenn Hauman, further attest that on or about the dates of June
1, 2003, through July 30, 2003, I did not have any conversation,
whether by telephone, e-mail, in person, or by any other means, with
any reporter, correspondent, journalist, or any other member of the
media, during which the employment of Valerie Plame was discussed in
any way.
I declare, under penalty of perjury, that the foregoing is true and
correct. Did you do it? If not, please sign here and sign your own copy.

For you, Teresa:

She wished this could get more exposure. So I’m going to reprint it all here.

From James D. Macdonald,
posted on July 31, 2003 09:00 PM:
By the “president from CA” do you mean Ronald Reagan? Let’s not be
overly cute about all this.
Okay, on economic warfare. That isn’t the same as men with rifles lying
in the dirt and blowing one another’s heads off. A confusion in terms
doesn’t help anyone.
I’ve long maintained that under some circumstances war is necessary or
inevitable — attack by a foreign power, for example. (How about
Japan’s preemptive war against the USA in 1941? Or North Korea’s
preemptive war against South Korea? Or Germany’s preemptive war against
Poland? Preemptive war has a lousy history.)
War is so terrible that it must only be used when there is no other
choice. I am not convinced that that situation existed in Iraq.
How about those economic means, though? According to the CIA world fact
book, Iraq’s GDP in 2002 was $58 billion.
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/iz.html
The FY 2002 US DOD budget was $329 billion.
http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Jun2001/b06272001_bt287-01.html That is
to say, the US could have bought Iraq with less that 20% of the DoD
budget. I see no compelling reason to believe warfare, the
bullets-and-bayonets kind, was the only or best choice.
Now the economic boycott and “sanctions” were a bad choice too. As
Rocky used to say to Bullwinkle, “That trick never works.” Forty years
of sanctions have hardly removed Castro from power. But Castro was a
young man when he took control of Cuba. Saddam was 65 this year — and
the Iraqi life expectancy is 67 years. How long could he hold out,
especially if his sons got ambitious? And when he died, two men can’t
sit on the throne at once. The vile Uday and the unspeakable Qusay
might have fought one another, leading to a chance to overthrow the
entire government.
But rather than use our true strength in Iraq, we’ve taken another
path. We just lost two more soldiers killed today. That makes
twenty-eight just since this discussion thread started. And we’re
standing virtually alone in the world, our alliances strained, our
foreign support tarnished, our government’s reputation under question
everywhere. For what? What was so important that we couldn’t wait to
forge the diplomatic ties to solve the Iraq problem?
For that matter, how did Saddam, who didn’t attack or pose a threat to
the US, take priority over Osama, who both attacked us and poses a
continuing threat? I see from the news that we’re being warned of more
suicide airline hijackings. I see that a “Parliamentary Committee Says
War May Have Helped Bin Laden’s Terror Group”
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7299-2003Jul31.html)
“LONDON — The war in Iraq failed to reduce security threats against
Britain and may have harmed efforts to tackle the al Qaida terror
network, a parliamentary committee said Thursday. “In a report, the
House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee said the war may have helped
the terror group led by Osama bin Laden to recruit new members.”
I seem to remember several people warning of just this happening before
the war. What have we gained? I don’t see a net victory here. I don’t
see a victory in the future.
What I do see is this: Osama bin Laden came up with a plan to start a
war between the West and Islam, much as Charlie Manson tried to start a
war between the Blacks and Whites with his “Helter Skelter” plan. While
the war is raging, Osama will hide out in the hills somewhere (it
doesn’t matter to him if Mullah Omar lives or dies — what’s Omar to
him?) like Charlie planned to live in the desert with his “family.”.
When the fighting is over between the West and Islam, both sides will
be reduced to ruin. Osama will return from the hills in triumph to rule
over the smoking remnants of civilization, like Charlie planned to
return to rule over the wreckage of America.
A mad scheme, perhaps. It didn’t work when Manson tried.
But George W. Bush was dumb enough to go for it.
Now we’re on the rollercoaster, and I don’t see any way to get off.
Or maybe one. We have to vote Bush out of office, attempt to mend our
alliances with our traditional friends, then root out terrorists using
our strengths — international cooperation, the rule of law, fair
trials (universally seen to be fair), and our very seductive lifestyle.
This is a police matter, not a military one. Using the wrong tool
doesn’t help us.

From James D. Macdonald,
posted on October 8, 2003 05:04 PM:
In the two months since that last comment, several things have
happened:
The Valerie Plame affair has exploded.
Bush’s job approval has plummeted.
The latest round of WMD inspections has ended — with no WMD found.
Bush has gone to the UN to beg for help, and not gotten it.
The Israeli/Palestinian “road map” has collapsed.
And we’ve had 73 more US troops killed in Iraq.