Month: May 2002

I had no intention of jumping on the bandwagon, but I just reread his page and one entry struck me as just too damned stupid not to comment on.

From his May 23rd entry:.

WHAT ARE THE ODDS: In today’s climate in France that the burning down of the Israeli embassy was the result of an accident? About as likely as president Chirac’s suggestion that there are no anti-Semites in France.

Maybe somebody burned down the embassy on purpose. Maybe it was an accident. I don’t know. And neither does Sullivan. So with no facts at all (unless he’s got some and didn’t choose to share them with his readers), Sullivan flings out wild speculation and calls it punditry.

Yeah, I know, that’s redundant.

This is not helpful.

There are anti-Semites in France. If Chirac doesn’t think so, he’s an idiot. But for Sullivan to leap to judgment on something like this — for reasons that look suspiciously like the urge to toss off a snarky, catchy remark for the blog — just lends credence to the fools who want to call those who oppose genuine anti-Semitism conspiracy nuts.

And so next time there is a real incident that isn’t quite clear, that is in that grey area where the facts are coming to light but not yet crystalized… that next time, all the rational voices that try to convince the world that yes, there is a problem here will have just a tiny little bit less credibility.

But it made a stylin’ blog entry. Thanks Andrew.

Feeling like you’re not pulling your weight? Want to give something back? Well head on over to the project!

ECHELON@home is a distributed intelligence gathering system that harnesses the power of hundreds of thousands of Internet-connected computers in the search for terrorists, hackers, drug czars, foreign military operations, and general ne’er-do-wells.. You can participate by running a free program that downloads and analyzes international and domestic emails, internet traffic, phone calls, cell phone calls, satellite communications, and more. There’s a small but captivating possibility that your computer will detect a crime and allow the NSA to report it.

(it would be a bit cooler if they at least managed to get nsa.org, but if you try there, you’ll find something equally strange.)

Richard Bennett ugly on Virginia Postrel for elitist tendencies:

She’s always struck me as a snob, mainly because of her practice of separating links to “pro” journalists from “merely amateur” bloggers. In the Blogosphere, nobody knows you’re a celebrity, Virginia, we only care about the content of your content.

If Bennett finds Postrel

Go this. And hope that he’s wrong. About some of it… about any of it.

If you figure out a way to convince me that he’s wrong, please, by all that is not holy, explain it to me.

(his archive isn’t working, so I’m referring to the “scary thought for the day”. Found via Instapundit, so not sure why I’m bothering. )

In defense of Ing

Mike Gannis writes:

I must forcefully disagree with your reader Mark Goble for criticizing the inclusion of Dean Ing on your Dream Team list. Ing has actually written a pretty good novel about how to deal with terrorists in the U.S. — “Soft Targets,” which also appeared as a novella in Jim Baen’s bookazine “New Destinies” in 1980 or thereabouts. IIRC, he was quite prescient and had a couple of good solutions to the problem of domestic terrorism. It’s been reissued, and seems to be still in print as a paperback — see link] for more info.

As I’ve indicated, I’m agnostic on Ing, having not read the fellow, but always glad to hear differing opinions…

More from the Dream Team

Benford (whose web site you can find here) responded to my e-mail regarding the Dream Team with the following note:

Good idea. Not really my area of expertise, but the most relevant story that applies is my “A Calculus of Desperation”, published about a decade ago, about a sophisticated form of bio warfare. It was reprinted by a Washington think tank and used in a conference on bio threats etc…

Okay, this is funny:

The London yoga center Triyoga came under strenuous neighborhood protest in March over the increasing noise level at its relaxation institute, according to a Reuters report; mellow music played at high volume, clients’ chanting, and group-breathing exercises (guttural sounds) were named as the major nuisances.

(From MSNBC.com’s of The Weird).

When did Onion stop being funny?

I headed over there in search of something amusing (the page is taking itself a bit too seriously today) and made it through their whole front with nary a chuckle. I think my mouth twitched once or twice in a near-smile, but that was about it.

I haven’t checked them out in a while, so I must have missed the steep decline. Come on, people, isn’t there somebody out there who’s in charge of telling me these things?

A Nation at War?

M’Arthur in Australia as Allied Commander; Move Hailed as Foreshadowing Turn of Tide
Washington, March 17 — General Douglas MacArthur today became Supreme Commander of the United Nations forces in the Southwestern Pacific. This dramatic shift of command and promotion for the dashing officer who has held the Japanese at bay on the Island of Luzon for three months and ten days was announced by the War Department simultaneously with his arrival in Australia. Traveling by plane, he arrived with his staff and his wife and child.

Third National Army Draft Begins in Capital:
3,485 First Number: All Night is Required for Drawing That Affects 9,000,000 Men: Use in Navy is Urged: Hershey Also Suggests Assigning Some Labor for War Projects

President Warns Against Rushing Anti-Strikes Law:
No Problem Exists at Present and Things Are Going Along Pretty Well, He Cautions: He Explains 40-Hour Act: But Bill to Ban is Is Pushed to Hearings in House- Senate Also Swept by Debate

Gen. Homma Suicide Confirmed by Chilean

50% Airplane Rise Reported by Nelson:
He Warns Three-Month Gain Is Not Enough- K. T. Keller Asked to Head Output

Nazis Close Ports of North Norway:
Reported Adding to Forces- British Say Tirpitz Eluded Torpedo-Plane Attack

Uruguayan Vessel, Two Others Sunk:
Nation Seizes German Ship in Retaliation- Fourth Craft Feared Lost in Bahamas

Bill for Women’s Auxiliary Corps of 150,000 Passed by the House

Daschle is seeking a Special Inquiry on Sept. 11 Attack
Headed for a confrontation with the White House, the Senate majority leader called for an independent panel to investigate government action before Sept. 11.

Leaving for Europe, Bush Draws on Hard Lessons of Diplomacy
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said early missteps provided the president with lessons that made possible the arms pact with Russia

Bono on the Road: Old Tune, New Duo

Security Tightened in New York After Vague Threats of Terrorism
Federal and local law-enforcement officials issued a warning of vague and uncorroborated threats against the Brooklyn Bridge and the Statue of Liberty.

$100 Million Fine for Meryl Lynch
Merrill Lynch reached a settlement with New York over charges that its analysts issued misleading research on companies with which it did banking business.

Lots of Seats, but Sorry, This Car’s Taken
It sounds like the dream of an Amtrak rider the night after a really bad trip home…

In New Focus on Quality of Life, City Goes After Petty Criminals

In Guatemala, a Rhode Island-Size Jade Lode
For half a century, scholars have searched in vain for the source of the jade that the early civilizations of the Americas prized above all else and fashioned into precious objects of worship, trade and adornment…

Notes on Methodology

Headlines from 1942 come from the “On This Day” section of the York Times Learning Network. Headlines from 2002 come from the New York Times website. Where possible, I have included the sub-heads or the first sentence or so of each story.

I had hoped to be able to compare today with the same date in 1942, in order to perform a more random comparison, but was only able to locate select archives on the New York Times’ historic site. I picked March 17th, 1942 as the least-momentous date I could find in the available options during WWII which the Times had available (a subjective call, of course).

Comments

I post these without comment — for now — as for some reason, I am struck by an urge to let them speak for themselves… and to let everyone assess their import (or lack thereof) personally. I welcome your comments and thoughts, so please send them my way if you’d like to chime in. And as always, please specify clearly for me if your e-mail is for publication on the site, and if you wish to be attributed by name or quoted anonymously. (I of course reserve the right not to publish anything I don’t see as appropriate…)

This just in from the Arab News: in a democratic election is terrorism.

(found via NRO’s The Corner)

Update: Who the hell writes a headline with the word “It’s” in it, anyway?

Okay, for you HTML/Blogger knowitalls out there: how do I modify my template so that I can have the “link color” be different in my header above than it is in the rest of the page? I like the dark blue on everything except the quotes in the header…

Update: And while you’re at it, enlighten me as to why the first line of anything I post is always indented slightly.

Cheap, unlikely-to-ever-pay-off motivation: A free TTLB novelty item of your choice, should such items ever come into existence. (Yes, I have

I’ve now updated the site layout so that the latest Dream Team list appears in the left margin. I knew I’d find a use for all that space under my fat old graphic…

The Dream Team Responds

I have been wondering just what reaction the authors who have been named on our list would have to the proposal. So, I took the wacky approach of, well, asking them.

I’ve corresponded with a few members of our theoretical dream team, at this point, and reprint here their comments (with their permission). The good news is, I’m hearing a fairly consistent response that — at some levels, at least — the idea of bringing ‘creative types’ into the planning process seems to have some traction. The bad news is, it sounds like it has a ways to go.

Brin, who has a relevant web site here, replied with the following:

Actually, it might surprise you how many bright people are thinking along similar lines… and inviting we sci fi types to express thoughts about threats. At the middle and upper-middle level, there are brilliant people in the military and government, deeply concerned and working their butts off. I attended a conference in Washington (as dinner speaker) where several geniuses spun terrifying scenarios.

Alas, (1) it is a complex world and we make a big/complex target (2) our leadership is not very smart.

Your concern is the same one that motivated my nonfiction book The Transparent Society: Will Technology Force Us to Choose Between Freedom and Privacy? Only in a mostly open society will commonfolk stand a chance of holding the mighty – or the dangerous – accountable.

Good luck!

You can find The Transparent Society at Amazon, of course. I’ve been aware of it for a long time, and I am now consumed with guilt for having not yet read it. The shame!

Greg Bear responded with the following note:

Cool name! And thanks for posting the nomination. Truth is, I was in Washington a few weeks ago attending a conference on bioterrorism, so there are some folks listening.

The rest of the list is terrific. There are some sad spots, however–Harry Stine died a couple of years ago.

Yup, Mr. Stine’s passing has been noted. And I of course tip my hat to Mr. Bear for the compliment on my nom de plume.

I’m still waiting on a whole bunch of other inquiries I’ve sent, and I’ll of course post appropriate replies here as I receive them. Also: I have not attempted to contact every name on our list; mainly those whose work I am familiar with personally. If you’d like to attempt to contact someone yourself, please go right ahead, but drop me a line first to ensure that I haven’t already sent them a message. Mailbombing our dream team is impolite.

Clark Goble writes in regarding the creative dream team effort and has a few points o’ constructive criticism. I include his note in its entirety below, along with my comments / responses interspersed:

Regarding your list of authors for your think tank. I’d take a couple of exceptions with it. First the claim that some of them are good authors. While they may have interesting plots and ideas many are *horrible* authors. Take Dean Ing. He may be a creative, smart guy, but a good novelist? Come on. His prose is so stilted that it makes High School fiction look like Shakespeare. Of course you didn’t pick these fellows for their prose, but it does make me wonder if a few “James Bond” like scenarios that seem cool is behind your list.

Can’t vouch for Ing myself, so I won’t try — and recall that I’m not putting any filters on the process here, just collecting the list of suggestions from the masses. I would agree that literary merit isn’t a precondition for being a good candidate for our list here — but having a creative mind is.

I mean if you are going to do this sort of thing, at least pick a novelist who has some experience in the field. Take, for instance Dick Marcinko who actually formed one of the top Navy Seal teams, has experience in hands on counter-terrorism, and has lots of books with very creative terrorist attacks on the US. Plus he has a helper-writer so his prose, while expletive-ridden, is at least entertaining and not at all stilted. About the only downside with him is that he screwed up the hostage rescue of the Iranian hostages back under Carter. But I’m not sure you can necessarily blame him for that.

Don’t know but he sounds ok — sort of. The military background is good, but frankly, the government has access to plenty of people with Navy Seal experience. If they want to know what a Navy-trained counterterrism expert thinks is going to happen, I’m sure they’ve got plenty of them. What I’m trying to do here is get the folks who have different perspectives that you won’t find in traditional military or government circles and get their minds applied to the problem.

Jerry Pournelle I’ll actually go along with. Ing, I’m more leery about as I think he is too much into the “techno-thriller” sort without the pragmatism that Pournelle has. A lot of the other science fiction authors I’m dubious about for similar reasons. I think you should have perhaps one or two, but beyond that and you’re biasing you panel too much. Get some “keep it simple” low tech guys in there. Novelists are fine and dandy, but probably I’d throw in a few criminals. They know how to think in non-standard ways but also are aware of a lot of low-tech “holes” that even novelists don’t know about.

I’m all for criminals. For the team, I mean. Clark’s point is a classic one and is well taken — to catch a thief, and all that.

For that matter, if you want someone good, throw in the guy who runs Slash-dot. (www.slashdot.com) His “blog” is the most popular among techies. He moderates all the comments, and believe me there is nothing like geeks with too much time on their hands to hash things down to their core and find the holes. Plus he reads and edits all these sorts of stories that points out weaknesses in computer *and* dumbassed weaknesses in policy.

So for my ideal panel you have one sci-fi author, Pournell. Marchinko who has the experience, thinks nasty, and already has experience launching attacks on US soil. (He broke into air force one and placed smoke bombs in it) “Cowboy Neal” from slash-dot to represent the “too much intelligence and not enough challenges” anarchistic hacker community. Then some criminal used to breaking security. (Although Marcinko may have plenty of experience there) Perhaps one other person – preferably a mideast expert with experience in Islam. Keep it small. Any bigger and it’ll become unweldly.

I like the Slashdot suggestion. Despite being a self-described geek, I am not actually a Slashdot junkie (head hangs in shame). But I’ll send a note their way and see what they think of the idea.

Thanks for the comments Clark, and keep them coming all…

New York Newsday has a web site up with designs for rebuilding the World Trade Center area. I was going to include my own commentary, but I’m not going to bother, because VodkaPundit nails it, so just go read his. I thought he was just being his usual grumpy self, but then I looked at the designs, and he’s actually being way too generous.

I do, however, like the Liberty Square proposal (which isn’t on the Newsday site), also pointed to (approvingly) by our favorite martini-quaffing blogger, via a column in Reason Online by Ronald Bailey.

I’m adding Robinson as one of my personal nominees for our creative dream team to brainstorm future terrorist scenarios & prevention.

I originally had Spider in my mental category of writers whose work I enjoy greatly, but who weren’t necessarily well suited for the task at hand. But the more I think about it, the more I think he’d have much to offer. His novel Night of Power is a rather original take on a takeover of New York City (the whole thing!), and his Mindkiller shows he knows how to explore the dark side of new technologies. (Not to mention that his excellent short story “Melanacholy Elephants” has some interesting insights for anyone paying attention to current debates on the how long copyrights should extend — no, really). My only complaint with Spider is that I wish he’d write more stuff outside of his Callahan’s short stories universe. Some of these, especially the earlier ones, are absolutely brilliant and touching works of SF, but I must admit I’ve tired of the crew over the years. But a man must pay the bills, so I’m not going to quibble with Mr. Robinson too much.

Anyway, check him out & send feedback my way if you have comments, as always…

To recap, our full list now is as follows:

Tom Clancy
John Barnes (see Mother of Storms).
Kim Stanley Robinson
Christopher Hitchens
Iain M. Banks
Ken MacLeod
Larry Niven
Jerry Pournelle
Al Franken
P.J. O’Rourke
George Carlin
Greg Bear
Gregory Benford
David Brin
Greg Egan
S.M. Stirling
Stephen Baxter
Stanislaw Lem
Dean Ing
Harry Stine*
Thomas Harris
Vince Flynn
Peter O’Donnell
Robert L. Forward
Vernor Vinge
Charles Sheffield
L. Ron Hubbard*

*Indicates deceased and not expected likely they will serve if called. (Hubbard I knew; it was pointed out to me in correspondance that Harry Stine has also passed on.)

Translation Update

I just noticed in my tracking stats that I’ve got some gov.uk users dropping by, so I figured I should apologize:

The translation engine does not currently support translating from American to English.

Sorry, chaps!

Next stop: Total Global Dominiation

Experimenting with a new feature on the site: automatic translation to other languages. With an hour or so of playing around, I seem to have gotten auto-translation working via

The service is limited to Spanish, French, German, Italian, Norwegian, and Portuguese for the moment. I’m bummed about the lack of Chinese, Japanese, Hindi, Arabic, and Farsi, and the translation process is a bit slow, but oh well. It’s free, I can’t (or at least, shouldn’t) complain too much.

For now, I’ve just got the setup working for the front page… I don’t think it works from the archives. I’ll check that out later.

So has anyone else played around with tools like this? Something is telling me I just re-invented the wheel, but I’m not sure I’ve seen translation tools on other blogs. I’ll have to look more closely in my rounds today. Anyway, if you have any suggestions or comments, or information on other tools, please send them my way.

I must admit I find the potential here staggering. The community o’ the blogsphere is a wonderful thing, but to imagine if it were possible to have bloggers planetwide, blogging merrily away in their native languages, and have everyone else be able to read them… damn, makes me want to go re-read my archive issues of Wired from 1993 or something.

Anyway, by all means, if you’re a non-English speaker reading the site, drop me a line, and let me know if the translation is working properly. If your language is one of those I have translation for, you can even do so in your native tongue and I’ll try to auto-translate your email — but in this case, please use as simple language as possible, so we don’t confuse the poor machines at FreeTranslation. I speak American High School Spanish, and am very slowly learning Persian (Farsi), so I’ll have to mostly trust the translation engine, I’m afraid.

Come to think of it, I don’t really have a way of verifying whether the translation of my own tortured prose is truly working. For all I know, when I say:

Let’s establish a dream team of creative types to brainstorm future possible terrorist scenarios.

My Norwegian users might now be getting:

Please help urgently my hovercraft is full of eels.

Ah well, we’ll see, I guess…

I corresponded with Bill Patterson, editor of Heinlein Journal, who provided some additional detail on science fiction writers’ contribution during WWII. But first, he begins with a correction to my earlier anecdote regarding Heinlein’s story “Solution Unsatisfactory”:

The story about government agents checking out a writer’s sources for atomic information does not relate to Heinlein or to “Solution Unsatisfactory” — that was, after all, before the war and before any security restrictions; it happened to Cleve Cartmill who found FBI agents waiting for him in John Campbell’s office during the war. The name of the story that appeared in ASF escapes me at the moment.

Patterson continues with the following additional detail on the war effort:

Second, you have assumed that Heinlein, de Camp and Asimov wound up working at NAES because of some attempt to get sf writers, and this is not quite correct. Shortly after Pearl Harbor, RAH took off for New York to use John Campbell’s place as a base from which to seek some kind of military post. He was ultimately unsuccessful in this — the reason given was that he was an “old lunger” (TB patient) and the Navy didn’t want old lungers in contact with active duty personnel, or at least that was doctrine at the time. He felt it was rather that he had offended the head of the Department of the Navy in an incident in his political career. He and Campbell and several others talked about what they would do in the war effort. Heinlein put out feelers and was pulled in by his friend Albert Scoles who was then running the Materials Center at the Naval Air Experimental Station at Mustin Field in Philadelphia, to act as a Civilian Engineer until his reactivation could come through. At that time L. Sprague de Camp, who was also trained as an engineer, was going to Naval Officer school. Heinlein suggested that Scoles tap him as well. And Asimov, a graduate chemist, was also at loose ends, so Heinlein suggested that Scoles recruit him as well. During Heinlein’s time at NAES, he is widely credited with acting as a personnel recruiter, and these two were simply the ones we know about, and they were recruited because they had useful engineering skills. It happened that Heinlein’s social life had mutated into hanging out with his writer colleagues, so that’s how it all came about.

Now, I don’t have all the details about the Kamikaze task force, but there were several SF writers in it, and it does seem to be true that they were recruited for their writerly imagination. It appears that the group RAH headed was outside of regular channels and they hoped for fast results from unorthodox thinkers. But the war was over before anything useful could be produced and implemented. However, there were more and other people at these group meetings than the sf writers we’re familiar with (including Sturgeon and Hubbard and at least occasionally Campbell).

So far as I know the imagination of sf writers was Heinlein’s idea, and it may never have entered into anything official. The most likely scenario is that somebody thought that the official group in Naval Intelligence would never produce anything (or at least not timely) and King or someone on his staff authorized another operation on the Q-T that became the Kamikaze group. It’s not entirely impossible that King contacted RAH directly, but it’s not likely either. King had been RAH’s captain in the Navy from 1930-1932. He was advanced to head the Naval War by Roosevelt, apparently over the objections of his advisors, but that is a matter of public record so I won’t go into it here.

Thanks to Bill for the clarification and additional information!