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A company whose president is “best friends” with Chelsea Clinton received more than $11 million in contracts over the last decade from a highly secretive Department of Defense think tank, but to date, the group lacks official federal approval to handle classified materials, according to sensitive documents TheDCNF was allowed to review.Jacqueline Newmyer, the president of a company called the Long Term Strategy Group, has over the last 10 years received numerous Defense Department contracts from a secretive think tank called Office of Net Assessment.The Office of Net Assessment is so sensitive, the specialized think tank is housed in the Office...

ALEX POURNELLE TEXTS: Hi I’m afraid that Jerry passed away We had a great time at DragonCon He did not suffer. Please feel free to post this news. Rest in peace, Jerry. You will be missed.

Being reported in several places, Jerry Pournelle has passed away. Noted Science Fiction author, strategic analyst, early popularizer of personal computers, one of the original bloggers. In his own way he was one of the more influential Americans of the 20th century. As per Instapundit in a comment to his own post, "I just talked to Alex. Basically, Jerry just laid down for a nap and passed in his sleep this afternoon. It was nice that he, Alex, and Larry Niven got to hang out and have such a good time at DragonCon. It's as easy a death as one...

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National Space Society members have voted the 2016 Robert A. Heinlein Memorial Award to Dr. Jerry Pournelle... (This award is distinguished from the Heinlein Award given by the Baltimore Science Fiction Society and co-funded by The Heinlein Society, and the Heinlein Prize for Accomplishments in Commercial Space Activities administered by The Heinlein Trust.)

I was a big fan in the early 80's. I had a week long correspondence with him in the mid 90's. I loved reading his Chaos Manner column in Byte magazine along with Garcia s circuit cellar. It was a great mag. I've been rereading some of his works lately and just reminiscing. Jerry Pournelle s Iron law: ...in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people: those who work to further the actual goals of the organization, and those who work for the organization itself. Examples in education would be teachers who work and sacrifice to teach...

A House Committee has voted that the Attorney General is in contempt of Congress. The vote was along party lines, which is a pity, because the contempt is obvious and definitely indicated. This should not be a Party Lines affair. The Congress is the Grand Inquest of the Nation, and constitutionally is empowered to see that the President does indeed take care to see that the laws are faithfully enforced. There is no compelling reason for withholding the documents demanded by Congress in this matter. To make it more interesting the President has bought into the ownership of Fast and...

Before Jerry Pournelle began writing science fiction; before, that is, he teamed with Larry Niven to write the classic Lucifer’s Hammer1, he was a political scientist. Pournelle was dissatisfied with the traditional Left-Right distinction. One variable describing such a complex situation “produces political absurdities.” Just because one is not of the Left does not mean that he is of the Right. At least, not in the way the “Right” is usually meant. Even two dimensions is not enough to capture the subtleties of any person’s beliefs. There are people calling themselves Catholics who support abortion, for instance. Just as there...

I lived through Goldwater to see Reagan and be part of his kitchen cabinet. I lived through Clinton to see Newt become Speaker. I lived through brain cancer. I'll live through this, provided I can catch up with the work piled up in front of me, and now I have to go out and GET DOG FOOD, which is more important than anything else. We sure don't want Sable to go hungry! And I am getting my platinum subscriber list straightened out and in doing so found A REAL BUG in Outlook 2007 that is not in Outlook 2003. I...

I see the Congress has busted the budget and is working overtime to create new entitlements, there are stories of amnesty for 13 million illegal immigrants, and all is normal in Washington. On entitlements: what happened to the notion of responsibility? And John Adams on each man the best judge of his own interests? I recall the furor when Lynden Johnson broke the $100 billion dollar barrier on the budget. A HUNDRED BILLION DOLLARS. And now we are up to 2.7 Trillion dollars and rising. Billions for subsidies. Buy those votes! And be sure to transfer more wealth from the...

Wednesday, January 26, 2006 The Iraqi War continues, but we don't do anything about the underlying causes of the war, which is our dependence on the Middle East for vital resources. If we were independent of Middle Eastern Oil, the Arab world would have to develop a real economy, learn to make things and sell them, and in general live with the rest of the world, instead of supporting people with too much time and too much money. They might actually learn to extract the oil themselves, which would require that they develop some actual capabilities other than bomb making...

'Mad Vlad' urges West and Russia to destroy Islam By Julius Strauss in Moscow (Filed: 13/02/2004) The West should unite with Russia against Islamic radicals and Chinese immigrants, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the flamboyant Russian ultra-nationalist, said yesterday. The firebrand politician, who is making a moderate political comeback in Russia, gave warning that if the former Cold War enemies did not form an alliance they would be overrun. In the West, the man who won the soubriquet "Mad Vlad" and who struck fear into the hearts of political leaders in the 1990s with his battery of threats, is considered a political has-been....