The voting for best Middle-East/Africa blog is pretty much down to Juan Cole and Michael Totten. Please don’t sully the award by allowing Cole to win.
Something I just noticed, which is typical of leftists — false advertising. From the Bolsheviks (no, they weren’t really the majority), to “progressives” and “liberals” and support of “appropriate technology,” they have to steal a base with their misleading (to be polite) names. Not to mention, of course, Democratic. “Informed Comment” is just the latest (and even more presumptuous than usual) in the sham names.
Ah, but is Transterrestrial Musings as sham name? One might expect blogging from across and perhaps beyond the globe, and not just from Florida and California! Of course, you meant the name to imply that your musings would be about the world and beyond. But it seems to me that your musing is usually focused on only a few areas of this rather vast planet we live on. The middle East and neighboring regions get a lot more attention than, say, South America and Africa. You do muse about things beyond the world, but your musing doesn’t usually leave earth orbit, and only very seldom reaches as far as Mars. And it is a big universe out there!
More seriously, I’d like to transcend the above silliness with something of substance. Are you familiar with the OPAG? NASA’s Outer Planet Assessment Group is about to make a really interesting decision. NASA has the funds to fly one flagship-level mission (1 billion dollars or more) to the outer planets. The mission will either be to Saturn (to study Titan and Enceladus) or Jupiter (to study Europa and Ganymede).
The sobering thing about this decision is that this will be the last such mission in most of our lifetimes. The mission would nominally launch in 2020. It would arrive, depending on the target, around 2026-2028. After being captured by Jupiter or Saturn, the mission wouldn’t settle into a useful science-collecting orbit into 2030 (lots of gravitational tricks at Jupiter, Ganymede first, Europe second; , lots of tricky orbits at Saturn, Enceladus first, Titan second). The next mission wouldn’t be planned until 2035, might not leave until 2040-2045 and might not arrive until 2046-2051. How long are you going to live? So, given that we only get to see one destination and not the other, OPAG is about to make an interesting choice. Lets look at them:
Europa might be the most likely to host life, but this flagship mission won’t be landing on Europa – it will be orbiting, looking for cracks in the ice that might be a good place for a future lander. Furthermore, it won’t have an instrument suite capable of detecting microscopic life. So, this mission would be a precursor mission to a mission to Europa which could conceivably find life. That 2nd mission would be very exciting, but many of us won’t be alive to see it, (barring medical advances which will surely come, but will they come in time?) Also, the visuals will get boring fast. Lots of ice.
The Saturn mission would involve direct contact. The Enceladus mission would involve flying right through the fountains and getting samples. The Titan mission would feature a boat and a balloon. Yup, the first interplanetary boat, sailing the ethane seas of Titan (or at least floating for awhile until the power dies). The balloon portion would be much longer lived, and would give us the opportunity to explore a truly unknown world via low altitude flying. The balloons would also drop saucer shaped probes down onto the surface. You can tell I think this is the more exciting mission.
The decision will be made next month. You can read more about both missions here: http://www.lpi.usra.edu/opag/nov2008Meeting/agenda.html
So, maybe this comment didn’t float your boat, but I was hoping that this transterrestrial musing would be of interest. Also, sadly, unlike the title of this your blog post, there is not “still time to vote” — OPAG will make the decision without our input. I know you didn’t offer to take requests, but I’d really enjoy reading about your view of the unmanned space program.
PS One interesting aspect of these flagship missions is that launch costs aren’t the most serious source of cost. Even if you could launch at $1 per pound, you might still have this painful choice between Europa and Titan/Enceladus.
Here are two better introductions to the missions;
http://opfm.jpl.nasa.gov/titansaturnsystemmissiontssm/
http://opfm.jpl.nasa.gov/europajupitersystemmissionejsm/
I must admit, I find this threadjack a bit compelling. I think there are two things to note (which should be familiar to anyone who follows this stuff) about the current situation. First, the limited new missions are a direct result of the Griffin plan transfering funds from space science to the Stick. And we are running out of refined plutonium 238 which is the power source typically used for a radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG).
I see once again; Bob has decided to hijack a thread and take it on a tangent. Ironically, he does it as a comment to a post regarding the liberal tendency to be sham artist. Indeed, he starts off with a challenge to Rand’s position (1 paragraph), and then spends the rest of his time on an unrelated thought (7 paragraphs + an extra comment).
Great job, Bob. Thanks for illustrating Rands’ point.
On topic, I voted 3 times at the weblogawards. Twice for Totten and once for isreallycool.
“Sully the award”? The award is based on multiple voting by people with an axe to grind, who may never have read any of the sites at all. Pure as the wind-driven slush, as one of my philosophy profs used to say. I hope Totten wins, but it hardly matters.
Sorry, I was slightly under the influence and I’ve been waiting for an opportunity to mention the big OPAG decision, and that combination allowed the above comment to sneak out. Rand, I apologize. Karl, I was aware of the 238 shortage (and the plans to use Stirling engines to stretch out supplies) but I wasn’t aware that launchers and space science were in a zero sum game.
I hope Totten wins, but it hardly matters.
You’re right that it hardly matters. Basically it has turned into a pissing contest.
What is interesting is that the blogosphere, or the Internet in general, was supposed to be the big solution to the dastardly “mainstream media”. (As if Fox News and Rush Limbaugh weren’t “mainstream”, but that’s another question.) But that’s not the way that it turned out! Yes, Instapundit and the National Review have achieved some measure of success on-line. But the Huffington Post and the New York Times are even more successful on-line. Yes, the New York Times Company is having business trouble, but not because people don’t read nytimes . com. And the biggest one of all is Wikipedia.
For that matter, Juan Cole gets more traffic than Michael Totten, regardless of who “wins” the weblog award.
Meet the new media, even “worse” than the old media.
Jim, the preference for the left might change as the online population ages. It could also change much faster if the Republicans unify but remain in opposition. I think the Huffington Post wouldn’t have done so well if Bush had been a more popular president or if Kerry had won.
Bob, sure, one may always speculate that the winds will blow in some new direction in the future. The online population might age. But then again, American users are going to mix more and more with the rest of the world, and that’s going to pull things in the opposite direction.
One thing is for sure though. The old cadre of Republican/libertarian engineers — that is, students and professionals in engineering — that once dominated the Internet has lost control forever.
Jim, I’m not disagreeing, but on a note of whimsy, I want to note that when I read “Republican/libertarian engineers on the internet”, I think of sci.space. And when I think of sci.space, I think of Henry. And when I think of Henry, I don’t think “Republican/libertarian”.
(Henry is the one who convinced me that, for the big picture, manned and unmanned space aren’t in a zero-sum game, but maybe this time, the stick did shaft the flagship missions – I’ve gotta learn more about that.)
“One thing is for sure though. The old cadre of Republican/libertarian engineers — that is, students and professionals in engineering — that once dominated the Internet has lost control forever.”
What a pile of dog excrement. What are you, 10-15 years behind the times?
If Rush was mainstream, he’d be on TV and the far left nuts in Congress wouldn’t be trying to bring back the fairness doctrine.
“But then again, American users are going to mix more and more with the rest of the world, and that’s going to pull things in the opposite direction.”
Unless, of course, you live in a communist country or are subject to Islamic fundamentalism. That’s about 2.5 billion.
What is interesting is that the blogosphere, or the Internet in general, was supposed to be the big solution to the dastardly “mainstream media”. (As if Fox News and Rush Limbaugh weren’t “mainstream”, but that’s another question.) But that’s not the way that it turned out! Yes, Instapundit and the National Review have achieved some measure of success on-line. But the Huffington Post and the New York Times are even more successful on-line. Yes, the New York Times Company is having business trouble, but not because people don’t read nytimes . com. And the biggest one of all is Wikipedia.
For that matter, Juan Cole gets more traffic than Michael Totten, regardless of who “wins” the weblog award.
Meet the new media, even “worse” than the old media.
This being the internet, I am used to people making claims and backing those claims up with non sequiturs. Jim, you just made a whopper of a non sequitur. Just because blogs are not individually as popular as the New York Times doesn’t mean that they aren’t working very well.
Let me point out the obvious. There are orders of magnitude more active blogs than there are traditional news sites. Blogs tend to be much more focused and informed than news sites are. Here’s some examples. If you want to read about NASA policy discussion, why read Transterrestrial? A) I keep type “transterrestrial.com” instead of “nyt.com”, by accident (“the keys are like right next to each other”), or B) Simberg and crowd often has insight into the process that I can’t get from the NY Times?
Another example. On my imaginary personal blog, I type: “Puppy pooped on the sofa. MOOD: disgusted and grossed out” For the very few people who care to read that, they now are informed (maybe to too great a degree, if there are pictures involved). Needless to say, that wouldn’t make the NYT. Blogs are great for information that is either too specialized or narrow in scope that a major news source wouldn’t cover it.
Another example of specialization is mathematics. The major news networks are hopeless. They rarely understand math well enough to say anything useful about it. Instead, a good baseline resource is wikipedia. About 90-95% of the time, it spits out a coherent, useful explanation along with a few references for further reading. There’s also relatively timely discussion of new math results by real live mathematicians in blogs. That’s something new. In 1993, John Baez of the University of California at Riverside started posting a newsletter (“This Week’s Finds in Mathematical Physics”). Since then, there has been considerable growth in the area. Other sciences share similar growth into blogs. The traditional media sources cannot hope to be this informed.
Finally, blogs serve a different role. They evaluate, aggregate, and interprete information. For example, it’s not a true blog, but slashdot.org is excellent for evaluating the credibility of stories that manage to get posted there. I can get a feel from reading some of the posts, if a story has major flaws or is even a fraud (product and new technology announcements are commonly picked apart there). There’s the bloggers who catch photoshopping and other hoaxes.
Aggregation is fairly straightforward. Often you’ll see a blog dump a bunch of related links to a story. It’s great for quickly getting a feel for the background of the subject the blog is posting about.
And finally there’s interpretation. Blogs are the land of editorials. Ideas and opinions that wouldn’t see the light of day in traditional media.
The point is that blogs have their roles that they as a group do well. That’s why people read them. They aren’t “worse” than mainstread media. I don’t understand why one would expect individual blogs to collect as much readership as the most popular online news sources like nyt.com or bbc.com.
A long time ago, I wrote “what is best about blogs is that people write about what they know.” That is what makes Transterrestrial.com far more valuable than nyt.com. I have a little knowledge about Rand’s background, and I know that what he writes about comes from that background. From that, I can make a very informed decision of how to take the knowledge he provides. For space topics, particularly for a newspaper that doesn’t have a NASA center (or space related company) in its circulation area, newspapers tend to put a pure journalist on the staff that wouldn’t know the difference between the Space Shuttle and the Orbiter. Rand knows better, and better, he knows there is more about the space industry than NASA.
And this is what makes Michael Totten a very special blogger. He is a guy that goes to the places for which he will blog. Want to know about the situation in Israel, Michael Totten is there. Iraq, he’ll go there. Juan Cole isn’t that bad either, particularly compared to the nyt.com. I simply believe Michael Totten does a better job of getting the sense of the situation on the ground. I will give credit that the nyt.com, cnn, others will hire people to provide stories from the areas of interest, but their is little individual history of the writer and too few stories to really gauge their particular biases.
As for the Hannity/Rush comments, the only people I know who seem to regularly listen to either of them are leftists. For leftists are the ones constantly telling me what either had to say. Personally, I don’t have the 6 hours a day necessary to listen to them, or 3 hours for either one. I will admit to LMAO everytime Rush gets leftists in a tizzy over something he said. One would think if he was so offensive, then those offended would quit listening to him.
Just because blogs are not individually as popular as the New York Times doesn’t mean that they aren’t working very well.
The reason that you thought that I made a huge non sequitur is that you misinterpreted what I was saying. Yes, blogs are very successful in the sense that they have many readers. But are the better or worse by the measure of perceived leftist bias? In fact, most blogs, and the most popular blogs, are even further to the left than the New York Times.
Again, Juan Cole vs Michael Totten is a case in point. Whoever wins their pissing contest, the fact is that more people read blogger Juan Cole than read blogger Michael Totten.
If you are afflicted with Archie Bunkerism, that is, if you are tired of all of the liberal crap spewed by the mainstream media, then the fact is that the blogosphere has made the problem worse. And so have a lot of other web sites. Yes, there are Republican/conservative/libertarian web sites, but they are in the minority. Compare Wikipedia to Conservapedia.
If Rush was mainstream, he’d be on TV
Well, he had a TV show for a while. And Hannity is a lot like Limbaugh and he has a TV show.
MSM is starting to get into blogging too. In Australia, they have the right idea, with the top two Weblog awards in the ANZ category both belonging to Rupert Murdoch’s NewsCorp through holding companies.
Then again, a simple blogspot blog with zero funding did come third, ahead of several other MSM blogs. And it has significant space content, one of the few blogs in a non-specialist technical category that does.