View 284 November 17 - 23, 2003 (original) (raw)
Friday,
I have this from many sources:
Subject: Permian-Triassic event?
http://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/story/
RTGAM.20031120.wmete1120/BNStory/International/
and in fact had an embargoed version earlier. Lucifer's Hammer yet one more time. It's past time Earth had defenses.
And it's past time to walk my dog. Back in a bit.
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Sable has figured out how to get in the shed and shred things. She's also got more tar although not as much as before. Margarine doesn't work very well for removing it. It's back to the turpentine. I'll clean the turpentine off with margarine...
It is a sign of the times that the President is derided in London, bombs go off in Istanbul, there are only 4 homicide detectives in all the San Fernando Valley and their case clearance rate is down to 50%, and the media are filled with stories about Michael Jackson, who was put in handcuffs. Why he needed to be in chains isn't quite clear. To whom was he a danger?
And the LA City Council has to pay $15 million in compensation to a Miami surgeon who was forced to lie face down on the pavement and was handcuffed so tightly that they cut off circulation and did enough permanent damage that he now can only direct surgery rather than perform it. His crime? The rental car company had put the plates of a car reported stolen on the car he had just rented at LA Airport. He was on the way to a surgical conference. LAPD thought it best to make him lie on the ground and handcuff him real tight.
Police love to put people in chains. It's a result of the fact that many criminals are violent, and if you chain up everyone then you can't be accused of 'scriminating against anyone you think actually may be dangerous. In the Miami surgeon case all they had to do was look in the glove compartment, or listen to the man, but of course that wouldn't be in "policy" either: they waited until the car company spent a hour or so looking things up. Budget Car Rental gets to pay about 20milliononthisandLAPDabout20 million on this and LAPD about 20milliononthisandLAPDabout15 million. I don't see that any individual was punished: the police names are not in the LA Times stories. Those cops it seems to me ought to have an exciting new career in garbage hauling, but who knows, they made a righteous collar even if they were a bit brutal about it afterwards.
And yet: there are dangerous people out there. The police are scared. They want to protect themselves.
There are a few police units who actually go looking for really bad guys, try to catch them in the act, and deal with them. They are of course in big trouble with the ACLU and other outfits that worry about the morality of allowing armed robbers to finish their robbery then be taken down when outside the place they were robbing. This is said to be entrapment, because the police could have arrested them when they were going into the place. Catching them in the act, and shooting a couple of them, violates the criminal rights, and also makes less work for lawyers, so this is bad, and those police should, according to standard theory, be hounded out of law enforcement.
The police are supposed to protect us from really bad guys. They can't, and the few who try usually get in trouble. But they don't want to let the citizens protect themselves. It's fairly easy to make a "good arrest" of a car thief, and making him lie on the pavement for an hour or so rather than look into the glove compartment lets you avoid anything really dangerous for a couple of hours. A way to get through the day.
Note that on Law and Order the criminals are almost always Park Avenue surgeons, who surely commit the vast majority of murders in Manhattan. I can't think of a criminal class that's more likely to commit murder in Manhattan? Can you? Watch our or you will be politically incorrect.
But surgeons and the middle class are not dangerous to the police, who can go about intimidating citizens rather than being in harm's way. And God forbid that you encourage the citizens to defend themselves.
It's called anarcho-tyranny. Remember this useful phrase. You will find you need it again and again.
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For a lighter view try http://cagle.slate.msn.com/news/thanksgiving2003/3.asp
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At http://www.techcentralstation.com/112003B.html you will find a partial biography of Richard Pipes whose Survival Is Not Enough was a key book in the Cold War. It says in the article that he wasn't interested in science and technology. He certainly was not compared to Possony who understood that technology was the key to winning the Cold War; but I was with Pipes in Moscow in 1989 for a couple of week, and had breakfast with him several times and shared a seat on a bus with him on half-hour trips, and I found he was quite interested in technology, and had readThe Strategy of Technology.
While we are on the subject of the history of the Cold War and military history in general, COMDEX interfered with my posting this:
Dear Dr Pournelle,
A link which I found quite provoking;
http://www.newcriterion.com/archive/22/nov03/kagan.htm
I am rather inexperienced in the history of these matters, though Kagan's remarks have left me somewhat bewildered.
Kind Regards,
David Peters.
Which calls attention to an important essay.
Efficiency is the enemy of reliability. Remember this useful phrase. You will find you need it again and again.
Military "efficiency" is one of those notorious self-contradictory expressions...