Evolution of System Development

In the 1970s, Tom Demarco believed that we should spend a significant amount of time developing a description of the "current system".  This meshed well with the development of Information Systems in accordance with DoD Standard 7935A.

About 2000, Tom Demarco revisited his Structured Systems Analysis methodology and stated that nobody would devote that much time to developing a description of something that needed to be replaced.  Countries which could afford a significant defense budget could make faster progress using prototyping.  A rich country such as the United States of America could  fund thousands of engineers doing fun stuff.  Even rich countries had problems funding all their engineers during cyclical economic downturns.  The United States of America had a surplus of scientific and engineering professionals during the 1969-71 RETRENCHMENT.

Demarco was right in the late 1970s when information systems science was getting started and he was right about 2000 when Information Systems Engineering was going strong.

MIL-STD 490 A established the format and contents of specifications for program–peculiar configuration items, processes, and materials~.  It was published on June 4, 1985.  It superseded the previous edition of 30 October 1968.

When a change in scale is involved, it is likely not to be noticed unless one spends a significant amount of time on the current system description.  Several changes of scale were involved in developing the System Description for the World-Wide Military Command and Control System (WWMCCS) [pronounced WIMEX].

The WWMCCS accomplished 6 Operational Tasks..These exist in the JCS requirements statement.  In general, they accomplish the "military operational process" (sense, analyze, decide, act, communicate) which has been documented in various places.  My earliest reference is AD0479368 "Concepts for Command and Control Systems",by Henry M. Parsons and William E. Perry, 23 December 1965.

The sense function included Tactical Warning.  One of the first systems to support this function was SAGE.

The Semi-Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE) was a system of large computers and associated networking equipment that coordinated data from many radar sites and processed it to produce a single unified image of the airspace over a wide area. SAGE directed and controlled the NORAD response to a Soviet air attack, operating in this role from the late 1950s into the 1980s. Its enormous computers and huge displays remain a part of cold war lore, and a common prop in movies such as Dr. Strangelove and Colossus.

The command center displays were upgraded http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a242965.pdf is from the TRW Technology Series and describes this upgrade.

The WWMCCS included separate processes for "conventional" and "nuclear" planning and execution.

The WWMCCS Information System (WIS) was supposed to support the "Warfighters" in the National Military Command System (NMCS) and their command subordinates.

The Massachusetts Mafia won the WIS development contract but could not deliver.  The Global Command and Control System (GCCS) was an effort to meet the needs of the NCA and the Warfighters.    

Your Grandfather was a Theist

Our Founding Fathers Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson were avowed Deists.

To my daughters I can say, "Your Grandfather Brown was a Theist."

His beliefs were strongly influenced by The Fundamentals. The Fundamentals: A Testimony To The Truth (generally referred to simply as The Fundamentals) is a set of 90 essays published from 1910 to 1915 by the Bible Institute of Los Angeles. The Fundamentals were edited by A. C. Dixon and later by Reuben Archer Torrey. The Fundamentals was first published as a 12-volume set, and later as a four-volume set retaining all 90 essays. The 90 essays were written by 64 different authors, representing most of the major Protestant Christian denominations.

The essays were written to affirm conservative Protestant beliefs, especially those of the Reformed tradition, and defend against ideas deemed inimical to them. They are widely considered to be the foundation of modern Christian fundamentalism.

The project was initially conceived in 1909 by California businessman Lyman Stewart and his brother Milton. They anonymously provided funds for collecting essays to set out what they believed to be the fundamentals of Christian faith, and for printing and distributing copies of the collected essays.  The Fundamentals  was sent free to ministers, missionaries, professors of theology, YMCA and YWCA secretaries, Sunday School superintendents, and other Protestant religious workers in every English-speaking country. Over three million volumes (250,000 sets) were sent out.

The volumes defended orthodox Protestant beliefs and attacked higher criticism, liberal theology, Catholicism (also called Romanism by them), socialism, Modernism, atheism, Christian Science, Mormonism, Millennial Dawn, Spiritualism, and evolutionism.

Physics

ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA said:

PHYSICS:  GENERAL SURVEY.  Physics, which may be defined broadly as the study of nature, was long called natural philosophy (from the Greek physikos); its exact scope is not fixed nor easily delimited.  From decade to decade in modern times, the principal effort in physics has changed as, on the one hand, fields of scientific knowledge were reduced to practice, whereupon they were regarded as branches of engineering or applied physics; and, on the other hand, new fields were opened by fresh experimental or theoretical discoveries.  Physics may be called a point of view about the natural world and a method of attack on its problems, a method based upon certain general principles and disciplined by the close interplay between experiment and theory.  With a kind of confidence that the understanding of nature may be reduced to a few comprehensive principles, physicists seek for those central ideas by which great areas of common experience may be brought into order and coherence.  To achieve their purpose, they proceed by use of mathematical and logical tools, and by experimentation.

                        ----  sometime back in the good old days.

I see the “close interplay between experiment and theory” as being an instance of the Hegelian dialectic.  I also see a correspondence between theory and several other things such as doctrine, economics, policy, ....  With experiment corresponding to operations, engineering, practice, ....   The terms “top down” and “bottom up” were used in the Washington DC area.  Top down is policy/management driven and bottom up is operations/technology driven.  In the operations research/management science community, the term “middle out” was also used.  Physics is a balanced approach.   It may be more “both ends to the middle” rather than middle out but it is “balanced.”

The new part this time is the realization that the physicist who “seeks the central ideas” is seeking the OR/MS type’s starting place.

Weapons of Mass Destruction

The Boston Marathon Bomber was convicted of using Weapons of Mass Destruction, yet Jeb Bush is saying he would not have invaded Iraq.

Our counter-terrorism people have gone ape.

There were no machine guns in Iraq? no pressure cookers? no SUVs that could have been moved to Time's Square?

Weapons of mass destruction (WMD)s should be reserved for serious cases.  George W. Bush had his Hispanic attorney general explore the hypothetical.  Would have been better to have left it unexplored and relied on mercy at a trial by one's peers.

The Presidential Commission

In the United States, a Presidential Commission is a special task force ordained by the President to complete some special research or investigation.  They are often used politically in one of two ways:  either to draw attention to a problem (the publication of a report by a commission can generally be counted on to draw attention from the media, depending on how its release is handled); or, on the other hand, to delay action on an issue (if the President wants to avoid taking action but still look concerned about an issue, he can convene a commission and then let it slip into obscurity).  However, there have been cases (the Tower, Rogers and Warren Commissions) where the commission has created reports that have been used as evidence in later criminal proceedings.

The National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling is a bipartisan presidential commission, established by Executive Order 13543 signed by Barack Obama on May 21, 2010, that is “tasked with providing recommendations on how the United States can prevent and mitigate the impact of any future spills that result from offshore drilling.”  It came about as a result of the April 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill.  The first public hearings, held on July 12 and 13, 2010 in New Orleans, included scheduled testimony from Federal government officials and representatives of BP on the status of the spill and clean-up efforts, as well as from local officials, community leaders, and scientists on the economic, cultural, and ecological impacts of the oil spill on Gulf Coast communities and ecosystems.

On October 6, 2010 the commission released preliminary reports criticizing the Obama administration for mismanagement of its response to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.  Amongst other things cited were, not being fully candid with the American people, and giving the impression of not being fully competent.

On January 11, 2011, the commission released its final report,^[6] with recommendations to Congress for new spending and regulations.^[7]

The commissioners presented their findings to President Obama and several top advisers on Tuesday afternoon.  The president said he was working to adopt many of their recommendations but also noted that any actions requiring new financing and regulations would be a hard sell in the current Congress, said William K. Reilly, co-chairman of the commission and a former administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.

David Gergen was the first, and only, person I heard ask, “When is the Commission going to be established?”  I wasn’t aware that one was.  Once that I found that a Commission was established, I was going to look at the membership and show that nobody had the background necessary to see the Federal Government’s Command and Control failures.  For perhaps the third time in my life, I was wrong.

The above information is from Wikipedia and the New York Times (reference 7 in Wikipedia).  Reference 6 leads to http://www.oilspillcommission.gov/sites/default/files/documents/DEEPWATER_ReporttothePresident_FINAL.pdf

The members of the Obama Commission panel to investigate the Gulf Oil spill are listed by Wikipedia as:

·         Bob Graham, former Governor of Florida and U.S. Senator (co-chair)

·         William K. Reilly, former Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (co-chair)

·         Frances G. Beinecke, President of Natural Resources Defense Council

·         Donald Boesch, President of University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science

·         Terry D. Garcia, Executive Vice President for Mission Programs for the National Geographic Society

·         Cherry A. Murray, Dean of the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and John A. and Elizabeth S. Armstrong Professor of Engineering and Applied Sciences

·         Frances Ulmer, Chancellor of the University of Alaska Anchorage and former Lieutenant Governor of Alaska

Where was Brian Williams on January 11, 2011?

Measles, White House, and Surgeon General

The science is clear, vaccinations protect a population from measles.

Where is CINC Obama on this?  Where is the Surgeon General?  Who is the Surgeon General?

Schools, counties, and states should be able to mandate medical care.  The Federal Government should not.  Repeal ObamaCare.

Strict Theory vs Just a Theory

Bill Nye's, the science guy, book,UNDENIABLE, addresses the evidence supporting evolution as a theory.

Theists despise Secular Humanism (aka France).

Some theists realize that the Big Bang is compatible with the concept of our world having a beginning.

My former father-in-law is/was such a theist.

The youth pastor at our in Florida church referred to evolution as "just a theory" in a sermon at our church in 2006.  I feel that referring to General Relativity and Quantum Electrodynamics as "just theories" is approximately equivalent to saying that Christianity is "just a Myth".

The best description of the proper role of theory that I have encountered is in William Feller's two volume work on Probability.  Copyrights should be outlawed for policy statements (e.g. General Petraeus would not state strategy in "his own words") and good technical writing.  Any changes from the "best version" degrades the communication and the concept.

Footnote on page 3 of Volume II of "An Introduction to Probability Theory and its Applications," William Feller.

The roles of rigor and intuition are subject to misconceptions.  As was pointed out in volume I, natural intuition and natural thinking are a poor affair, but they gain strength with the development of mathematical theory.  Today's intuition and applications depend on the most sophisticated theories of yesterday.  Furthermore, strict theory represents economy of thought rather than luxury.  Indeed, experience shows that in applications most people rely on lengthy calculations rather than simple arguments because these appear risky.  [The nearest illustration is in example 5(a).]

In volume I, Feller (page 4) states, "It must be understood, however, that we are concerned not with modes of inductive reasoning but with something that might be called physical or statistical probability.  In a rough way we may characterize this concept by saying that our probabilities do not refer to judgments but to possible outcomes of a conceptual experiment.  Before we speak of probabilities, we must agree on an idealized model of a particular conceptual experiment such as tossing a coin, sampling kangaroos on the moon, observing a particle under diffusion, counting the number of telephone calls.  At the outset we must agree on the possible outcomes of this experiment (our sample space) and the probabilities associated with them.....

In physics and chemistry, the ideal gas law represents economy of thought and includes mathematical rigor.  Economy of thought and minimal data are used to show that the Patriots nor Tom Brady were caught cheating in #DeflateGate.

The mathematical formula is PV=nRT.

The data needed for a baseline calculation consists of the following:

Atmospheric pressure = 14.7 lbs/in**2

Temperature at deflation observation = 51

Temperature at "room temperature/inspection":  72

Pressure requirement at inspection:  13.5 to 12.5 lbs/in**2

Tom Brady made it clear in his 1 hour interview on the topic that he prefers the lower part of the range.

To use the equation, T must be with respect to absolute zero.  The Rankine temperature is measured in Fahrenheit degrees.   T = Tf + 459.67

Pressure P is equal to Gauge pressure + Atmospheric pressure 

Evolution may or may not be "just a theory" but the Big Bang, General Relativity, QED, and the ideal gas law are strict theories.

With the above data, the gauge pressure at the beginning of the second half (51 degrees F), should be 11.43 lbs/in**2.