MOVABLE TYPE : TEMPLATE

Back From Vacation

...and in pain. I've been having problems with my neck and shoulder for about a week now, and it didn't clear up for the weekend, so it marred our trip up the coast. I'm going to see an orthopedic sports specialist about it this morning, but blogging will likely be light until I get it under control.

In the meantime, go read Rick Tumlinson's latest rant about NASA dropping methane from its CEV requirements. I find little with which to disagree.

[Update in the afternoon, after a trip to the doctor's office]

They X-rayed my head, and found nothing. But that's not important now.

The key thing is, when they X-rayed my neck, it revealed a slightly compressed disk, but the sawbones recommended a course of oral cortisone, and expected that to clear it up in a few days.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:17 AM

January 30, 2006
Listen to This

In today's New York Times, Philip Bobbitt says in "Why We Listen":

In the debate over whether the National Security Agency's eavesdropping violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, we must not lose sight of the fact that the world we entered on 9/11 will require rewriting that statute and other laws. The tiresome pas de deux between rigid civil libertarians in denial of reality and an overaggressive executive branch seemingly heedless of the law, while comforting to partisans of both groups, is not in the national interest.

Who watches the watchmen? On one hand, it's tricky to safeguard the data and trust the users of a vast database to stay narrowly focused. On the other hand, users do very little to secure their cordless and cell phone and internet traffic and send out email messages as plain text. Should they enjoy any privacy protection at all?

Posted by Sam Dinkin at 11:44 AM

Seals And Scenery

Just a quick postcard or two, since I'm not posting anything consequential (as though that's something new...) but go check out some of the space blogrolls to the left, and this week's issue of The Space Review should be up.

About fifteen years ago, for some reason, a group of elephant seals decided to colonize a stretch of beach by Point Piedras Blancas, just north of San Simeon. It was a surprising location, because it's hardly a remote area--Highway One goes right by it, and I remember that when they first started mating and birthing here, there were a lot of cars just pulling over to the side to look. State wildlife people put up barriers to prevent this, and set up special parking lots from which to view the beach. Several years ago, one could walk among them, but this is now strongly discouraged with fences and docents.

With all the protection, and despite the tourist interest, the population has exploded, and right now is breeding season. There were hundreds of pups on the beach, still in their black pre-weaning coats (they'll molt and go gray after about six weeks, when they start swimming and eating in the ocean). Many are almost newborn, and staying close to mom.

We drove a little farther north, and had lunch at Ragged Point. It was somewhat cloudy and foggy, but the view to the north of the Big Sur coastline was still gorgeous.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:43 AM

More Challenger Thoughts

Pat Santy has a twentieth anniversary update on her ruminations from last year's anniversary.

I'm still on vacation, though.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:47 AM

January 28, 2006
Off To Cambria

We're heading up to the California central coast for a couple days to celebrate (or mourn) the most recent anniversary of the date of my birth. I'll take my laptop, but I don't know if the place we're staying will have internet (though it's getting more and more rare to find a place that doesn't these days), so I don't know if I'll be posting. But I'm supposed to be relaxing and hiking and enjoying the scenery (and what a change in scenery and climate it is from anywhere in Florida), so maybe I should chase the blogging monkey off my back for the weekend, anyway.

Hey, I can quit any time I want...

[Update on Saturday night]

Hotel in Cambria does in fact have wireless. But I'm going to try to minimize time on the computer anyway.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:44 AM

Wrong Lessons Learned

It's twenty years today since Challenger was lost with all aboard. It was the first real blow to NASA's confidence in its ability to advance us in space, or that our space policy was sound. It finally shattered illusions about twenty-four flights a year, to which the agency had been clinging up until that event, but it wasn't severe enough to really make a major change in direction. That took the loss of Columbia, three years ago this coming Tuesday.

Unfortunately, while that resulted finally in a policy decision to retire the ill-fated Shuttle program, the agency seems to have learned the wrong lessons from it--they should have come to realize that we need more diversity in space transport, and it cannot be a purely government endeavor. Instead, harkening back to their glory days of the sixties, the conclusion seems to be that, somehow (and inexplicably) the way to affordability and sustainability is exactly the approach that was unaffordable and unsustainable the last time we did it.

But one has to grant that Apollo was safe, and probably the new system will be more so than the Shuttle was. But safety shouldn't be the highest goal of the program. Opening frontiers has always been dangerous, and it's childish to think that this new one should be any different. The tragedy of Challenger and Columbia wasn't that we lost astronauts. The tragedy was that we lost them at such high cost, and for missions of such trivial value.

This is the other false lesson learned from Challenger (and Columbia)--that the American people won't accept the loss of astronauts. But we've shown throughout our history that we're willing to accept the loss of brave men and women (even in recent history) as long as it is in a worthy cause. But NASA's goal seems to be to create yet another appallingly expensive infrastructure whose focus is on recapitulating the achievements of four decades (five decades, by the time they eventually manage it, assuming they keep to their stated schedule) ago.

Will the American people be inspired by that? I can't say--I only know that I am not.

Would they be inspired by a more ambitious program, a riskier program that involved many more people going into space at more affordable costs, even if (or perhaps because) it is a greater hazard to the lives of the explorers? I surely would. But it seems unlikely that we're going to get that from the current plan, or planners.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:19 AM

January 27, 2006
Mission Aborted

This was a memorably disastrous business trip. I flew into Seattle last night, and had my connecting flight to Edmonton cancelled for weather, with no other flights scheduled until this morning. Of course, after standing in a long line, there were no seats left on it. There was no point in my getting a later flight, because the meeting was today, and the next flight wouldn't get me up there until about 6 PM (and my return flight was scheduled for 6:30 tomorrow morning). So I got put on the standby list in the hope that I could still attend the afternoon part of the meeting.

Since it was an act of God, the airline didn't pay for my room in Seattle, but they did get me a discount at the Ramada. Unfortunately, when I got there, along with many other stranded Edmontonians, the computer at the check-in desk was down, so there was another long line there.

I finally got a room, about 11 PM (my original flight to Edmonton had been scheduled to leave at about 9), with a lottery ticket for a flight at 9:50 AM this morning. When I got to the gate, I was greeted by a sign asking for volunteers to give up their seats--the flight had checked in overbooked, and I was about fifth in line on standby. To add to the fun, there was a weather advisory on the flight, meaning that there was fog in Edmonton, and that there was a good chance that it would be diverted to Calgary. If this happened, I'd still end up not getting to Edmonton until this evening, just in time to find out what happened at the meeting and fly back to LA in the morning.

At this point, this trip was so snake bit that I was getting to be quite confident that if I did manage somehow to get on the flight, it would not only get diverted to Calgary, but the bus that was supposed to get me to Edmonton would break down on the road, and then the weather would move in with a vengeance, preventing me from getting back to California on Saturday, where I was scheduled to celebrate my birthday with Patricia, who is flying in here from Florida tonight, with a hotel room reserved up in Cambria for Saturday and Sunday nights.

So I decided to just cut my losses.

Fortunately, the people on Horizon Air (who operated the Dash 7 flight that I was supposed to take to Canada) were willing to simply refund my total ticket, and get me on the next Alaska flight back south. Unfortunately, they were having trouble finding the forms they needed to fill out in order to make it all happen. Eventually, though, they did get a credit on my credit card bill, and a return ticket to LA.

Of course, when I got to LA, the people at the place where I'd valeted my rental car couldn't take my money, because there was a problem with their receipt printer, on which one of the women was performing surgery with a pair of scissors (a servicing tool that I'm sure is not approved by the factory at which the device was manufactured). But finally, they accepted payment, issued the key to the valet, and I got my car. I just got back to my room with a sigh of relief. I'm not going anywhere for a couple hours.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:47 PM

January 26, 2006
Sleeping In Seattle

Which is better than sleepless, I guess, but I'm not supposed to be in Seattle. I'm supposed to be in Edmonton, AB, but my connecting flight was cancelled for weather. Say what you want about Florida, but they never cancel airplane flights for freezing fog. Whether I eventually get there depends on whether I can go standby in the morning. Otherwise, the trip is pointless, and it's back to LA.

Oh, well...

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:54 PM

Anniversaries

I'm pretty busy and don't have time to write anything particularly profound about it (I'm about to get on a flight to the Great White North, where we may have a mini bloggerbash in Edmonton), but as I mentioned on The Space Show a couple hours ago, tomorrow will be the thirty-ninth anniversary of the Apollo 1 fire, in which Gus Grissom, Roger Chafee and Ed White were suffocated and burned. Saturday will be the twentieth anniversary of the loss of the Challenger. Here were my memories of that event from a post four years ago. Jim Oberg takes advantage of the anniversary to explode (so to speak) several myths about the disaster.

And of course, next week will be the third anniversary of Columbia's breakup over Texas. I may have more to say on that when the date arrives.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:01 PM

Blithering Blather

I'll be on The Space Show in about half an hour. You can listen live on the net.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:17 AM

January 25, 2006
A Tutorial On Scoundrels

A Canadian who doesn't hate the US has a response to Michael Moore's idiocy:

Michael, even though you are highly political and rub some folks on the other end of the political spectrum the wrong way, we do appreciate your unabashed enthusiasm for our country.
You might be surprised to know that there are a considerable number of us who have kind thoughts and feelings toward Americans and America, even when we differ on some the policies coming out of Washington.

We wanted to elect people to national office who reflect that view and not the American-bashing one that the Liberals have spewing out for 13 years. That is why we sent the Conservatives to Ottawa.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:26 PM

Shut Up, They Explained

Brian Anderson has a long, but frightening essay in today's Journal about the steady deterioration of our First Amendment rights to free speech under the steady pressure of campaign finance "reformers," spending millions of their own money to ensure that we won't be able to express our political opinions on line.

If we don't do something to arrest this, the political blogosphere will be shut down by the election season of 2008. I, for one, say that they'll take away my keyboard from my cold, dead fingers.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:48 PM

What If?

Three days before the twentieth anniversary of the Challenger loss, Clark Lindsey muses on what might have been.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 03:55 PM

It's A Heinlein-o-Rama

Over at The Corner. Just keep scrolling up.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 03:53 PM

On The Wireless

I'll be on The Space Show tomorrow morning (Thursday, January 26th) from 9:30 to 11 AM Pacific, if anyone is possessed of sufficient masochism and fortitude to listen to my latest blather.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 03:50 PM

Missiles And Ploughshares

Rick Tumlinson has some space policy advice for the White House. As one of the people in attendance at the meeting last fall that Rick mentioned (and who has signed off on the consensus document that resulted), I encourage you to read the whole thing.

I doubt if they'll pay any attention, though. I think that this administration's space policy is pretty firmly fixed now, absent some new unexpected event (e.g., another Shuttle loss, assuming that it ever flies again), and there are many more critical issues to them at this point, both from the standpoint of the national interest and electorally. I suspect that they think that space policy is currently one of those things that ain't broke, so there's no need to fix it, relative to more pressing concerns. I think that the best we can hope for, at this point, is that the policy is sufficiently non-hostile to private enterprise that current NASA activities and expenditures won't hold things back too much. This is not to say that NASA isn't doing useful things for the private sector, but the amount of resources being expended in that direction, relative to those being spent on centralized (and ultimately unaffordable and unsustainable) fifteen-year plans, remain tragic.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:21 AM

Not Quite Dead?

As Clark Lindsey (and Keith Cowing) notes, NASA hasn't formally dropped methane propulsion from Constellation, or CEV. The final CFI doesn't, after all, forbid methane, or specify hypergolics. They simply appear to have dropped it in the final version because the earlier draft version of the CFI so emphatically required it.

However, given the risk aversion of industry, it's almost a foregone conclusion that neither bidder on CEV will propose methane propulsion, absent a strong sense of a desire to have it on NASA's part. The driving requirement at this point seems to be cost and schedule (including schedule risk), which means avoiding any unnecessary technology development programs on the critical path. So despite the fact that methane propulsion isn't intrinsically risky, the fact that it's currently non-existent in terms of the technology-readiness level that NASA will want at the Preliminary Design Review probably assures that it won't be incorporated into the CEV, at least for the initial version. It could, however, be an upgrade later, assuming that the program gets to the point at which upgrades will occur.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:10 AM

Of What Use Is A Newborn Babe?

One of Alan Boyles' readers repeats a common myth about the emerging space industry:

"OK, rocket-powered planes have been around since the early ’50s. Rocket engines are less efficient than jets when operating in the lower atmosphere, and most of these planes will be structurally limited to subsonic speed. What exactly is the point of developing racing planes with rocket engines? They sure the heck will not contribute to developments for flying into space."

This statement is, to put it simply, wrong. They will contribute to developments in a number of ways.

As Alan points out, they will help grow the business of people building rocketplanes, that will allow them to eventually build spacegoing rocket planes. But the emailer probably means that they don't make a technical contribution. This is wrong as well.

Operating rockets, even in subsonic aircraft (and they won't be subsonic for long) will help establish a base of experience for the industry in routine operations of reusable rocket propulsion systems, a critical component of building space transports. Having many hours of trouble-free operations under the industry's belt will start to dispel the myth that rocket engines always blow up, which is one of the contributors to the perception of cost and risk in space vehicles.

It's certainly not the whole answer, but it's a key part of it. We have to move the industry forward, both in a business and technical standpoint, on a number of fronts, but this is an important one, not a sideline.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:56 AM

January 24, 2006
Engage Your Fellow Anglosphere Nations

Jim Bennett has some advice for the incoming Canadian Prime Minister:

...the Prime Minister's office is a pretty good bully pulpit, and he would be smart to use it to start deconstructing the Trudeavean deconstruction of the old Canada. He should make sure the Canadian troops in Afghanistan are decorated in a visible and public ceremony, exactly what has been denied to them to date. He should make a show of honoring the Canadian WWII veterans conspicuously and repeatedly, and having a substantial ceremony on every one of the big Canadian military anniversaries: Vimy, Dieppe, D-Day, etc. He might bring back the Red Ensign in a historical context -- ordering it flown as a "veteran's memorial flag" on select days like D-Day, and for Canadian ships to fly the Blue Ensign on a suitable day as well, maybe November 11th. It would be very hard for people to criticize him for remembering the veterans more conspicuously. And perhaps he might even consider a surprise visit to the forces in Afghanistan.
In foreign policy, he and his external affairs minister can do a lot to change the tone without legislation. Rather than being conspicuously closer to Bush, (which the media is waiting to jump on him for) he should become buddies with John Howard of Australia and to a lesser extent Tony Blair (while inviting the new British Tory leader Cameron to Ottawa for a visit. Cameron might spend some time thinking about why his party is now the only major Anglosphere right party to be out of power.)

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:42 PM

Fling Me To The Moon

I'm busy writing a proposal or two, but here's an innovative way to get to the Moon. Much lower marginal cost, and exactly the kind of things that NASA should be considering.

[via Mark Whittington]

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:31 AM

January 23, 2006
Maple Leaf Election Blogging

From Mark Steyn.

The Conservatives have won, though it looks like it will be a coalition government. And it looks like Belinda will keep her seat, so she may have some bargaining leverage to keep her cabinet post if she wants to ditch her new-found Liberal friends and become a Conservative again.

Also, this will give Alberta and Saskatchewan a lot more clout in Ottawa.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:11 PM

Life As We Don't Know It

Ken Silber has a review of what look to be an interesting new book on exobiology.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:15 PM

False Consciousness

Arnold Kling talks about folk Marxism, and its unfortunate hold on much of the public, particularly in Europe, but also, sadly, in the US.

Under folk Marxism, the oppressed class has inherent moral superiority to the oppressor class... Class membership trumps individual character in determining moral standing. It should be no surprise that this belief could lead to tyranny and wanton murder by government. It should be no surprise that this belief has failed to improve the lot of those regarded as "oppressed." It inverts Martin Luther King's call to judge people by the content of their character.
Even when Marxism does not lead to tyranny, it retards economic growth, as the stagnation of continental Europe indicates. If you believe that the poor are oppressed and the rich are oppressors, then your impulse is to penalize work, risk-taking, innovation, and saving -- the engines of economic progress.

Well, at least the Canadians are on the verge of throwing off their true oppressors today.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:10 AM

Root Causes

Joe Katzman has a thought-provoking and depressing post on the source of Islamic terrorism.

There was supposedly an old saying in the wild West: "There ain't room in this town for the both of us." Unfortunately, there's not room on this planet for classical liberal western cultures and radical Islamism. This will be a battle to the death of one of those cultures, and Islam itself won't survive without a dramatic reformation, even if some people think that's not possible.

[Update at 9:25 AM PST]

Diane West writes about the silence that speaks volumes.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:40 AM

We Don't Need No Stinkin' Technology

There's an interesting interview with the authors of The Rocket Company over at The Space Review today.

TSR: With all the information you've presented, shy of seven relatively sympathetic and understanding billionaires and an engineering group from heaven, what other missing pieces are needed for someone to develop The Rocket Company?
Dave: That’s really all it would take! Seriously, we don’t need any exotic technical breakthroughs, we don’t need a government mega-project. We just need a well-funded, competent team to build on the rocket and space vehicle technology that has been developed over the past 60 years and go out and do it. It will probably take more money than some of the alt.spacers like to guesstimate, so it may indeed take more than one “angel” to pay for all of it.

Patrick: Although we've done some “back of the envelope” calculations and simulations, and have run the idea by a few experts in the field, nothing like a complete engineering study has been done. The point of the book is to flesh out a scenario for developing a vehicle that everyone with some understanding of the field would have to agree could be done. The problems for which there aren’t such straightforward solutions, like heat shields and recovery systems, are ordinary engineering challenges not requiring any large technology development program.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:03 AM

January 22, 2006
Why We Will Ultimately Win

Despite their political differences with the US (most of which are driven by totalitarian government propaganda), Syrians love KFC:

...as the country worries about bird flu, surely KFC "examines its chicken before cooking it ... I trust KFC chicken more than any rotisserie", said Farzat.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:24 PM

Don't Know Much About Geography

I'm reading Old Man's War by John Scalzi, and while it's entertaining, I was irritated early on by technical errors in it. In the discussion about the "beanstalk" (which I can only infer is a space elevator), the supposed physics professor explains that it's used so that that it's not necessary to "reach escape velocity" with a rocket to get to earth orbit. Of course, it's not necessary to reach escape velocity to get into orbit--in fact, it's not possible to do so. Escape velocity is the velocity necessary to leave orbit, and depart from the gravitational pull of the body you're orbiting altogether.

This one is forgiveable, though, and a common error. What really boggled my mind was the next one, in which he explained that the earth physicists didn't understand what "held it up."

Either Scalzi is appallingly ignorant of physics himself, or this is some future in which the people of earth have forgotten basic physics (though if that's the case, this is the only hint of it that I've seen in the book so far). The physics of space elevators is well understood. A space elevator is "held up" in exactly the same way that water is held inside a bucket being swung in circles on a rope--through inertia which appears as a centrifugal "force" in the rotating reference frame. The intergrated mass of the elevator times its centripital acceleration exceeds its weight if it extends sufficiently far beyond its natural orbital altitude (in this case, geostationary orbit, since it rotates with the earth once every twenty-four hours).

Scalzi has been compared to early Heinlein by many reviewers, but Heinlein always worked pretty hard to get his basic science right (which is one of the reasons that I liked to read him--it was entertainingly educational). It's disappointing that Scalzi doesn't seem to take the same care in his exposition, particularly since many may take his descriptions at face value.

[Update a few minutes later]

I discussed this topic more extensively last fall.

[Sunday night update]

When I was a kid, if I had a question about one of Bob Heinlein's books, it would remain a question. There was no place to discuss it, except with my (few) friends who'd also read the book. But now, I can read a book, I can make a comment on it, and the author himself shows up to clarify the issue in my comments section. Just how cool is that?

And I've no idea how he knew that I was whining about the book. I'd be both flattered and amazed to learn that he reads this blog daily, so I'm guessing that one of my other readers emailed him to tell him.

Of course, if you visit his bio section, and read the comments (including his), in addition to being a very imaginative and entertaining writer, Mr. Scalzi seems to be a genuinely good guy.

Anyway, don't consider this post a book review. It's just a comment that occurred to me shortly after beginning reading it. Other than what I wrote above (which may be just a consequence of misreading on my part, as noted in comments), I expect to enjoy it quite a bit.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 03:11 PM

Now That's Confusion

In States of Confusion in today's New York Times, we find the following paragraph:

Abortion-rights states would undoubtedly respond in kind [if other states made out of state abortion a crime]. For example, Rhode Island, where 63 percent of residents favor abortion rights, has rebuffed efforts at regulation in the past. Just as Utah could make it a crime for a resident to go to Rhode Island for an abortion, Rhode Island could forbid Utah's law-enforcement officials from interfering with her decision to get one. Similarly, if an anti-abortion state places a fetus in protective custody, an abortion-rights state might do the same for the woman. And so on.

How does putting a woman in protective custody help her?

Posted by Sam Dinkin at 12:43 AM

January 21, 2006
Not Quite Like Being There

But, hey, if it was, no one would bother to shell out a couple hundred thousand for the real thing, right?

Chuck Lauer of Rocketplane emails that they have a streaming video of a computer-generated movie of one of their suborbital flights over at Pure Galactic (apparently a new spaceline on the block). I was surprised to see that the modified Learjet has a "V" tail.

He's interested in comments on the soundtrack. It's a little too new agey and native Americany for my taste, and the musical transitions don't evoke the visual ones to me. But what do I know?

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:18 PM

Saving The Earth From Rocket Exhaust

Thomas James beats the eternally clueless Bruce Gagnon with a heavy cluebat. One could say that he beats him senseless, but it's so short a journey that it would be pointless.

It does bring to mind an interesting issue. If we do ever achieve the desideratum of low-cost, high-volume launch, will it become a significant contributor to atmospheric pollution? As Thomas points out, Jet A and oxygen overwhelm rocket exhaust by orders of magnitude, so it's hard to imagine lox/RP, lox-hydrogen or even lox-methane as being a problem, but I can see a point at which solids might be banned (though I suspect that they'd have long before that point been eliminated as unsafe and uneconomical).

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:29 AM

What Would Pocahontas Say?

Alan Boyle has an interesting story of the restoration of a lost Algonquin dialect. I don't know whether or not the movie is any good in general, but I'm always impressed when a director works hard to get it right, even if few people would know the difference.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:59 AM

Minimizing Collateral Damage to Civil Liberties

Rand makes a compelling case in The Scope of Collateral Damage discussed at Collateral Damage for Whom? that good intelligence can save lives. The questions I want to address is, "How much does it cost to save those lives in terms of liberty?" Left unaddressed will be "How do we define 'good intelligence' so the benefits outweigh the cost?"

We decided not too long ago that butter knives and toenail clippers in an airplane have more benefits and costs avoided than the security value of blocking them. The calculus was that the time and annoyance of the security procedures combined with the slight indignities of plastic silverware and long toe nails outweighed the slight increase in security from not having them.

For roving wiretaps on our enemies who may talk to US citizens we may get valuable information to stop an attack. We may abuse the wiretaps to gather information on domestic political opponents. Who gets to designate who is an enemy?

A start to protect civil liberties would be to bar information gathered in warrantless searches from being used as evidence in a criminal prosecution. But it may still be too much power to concentrate into the hands of the executive branch.

Millions of people die in the United States every year. Al Qaeda action is not yet a leading cause of death in the US. Our war was triggered more by the novelty of the attack than its threat to national security. The flu kills 36,000. Heart attack many times more. Those deaths don't rankle as much because they are common and expected.

It is not necessary to use unusual counterespionage techniques in this war to win it. There may be a cost in blood of both US soldiers and the Iraqis and Afghanis we have dragged into our struggle if we insist on keeping to pristine methods of intelligence gathering at home.

The lost liberty in the event we embrace the blurred lines between domestic and foreign spying may be far more costly than the lives that can be saved by prompt intelligence. If we embrace wiretaps, it is a step on the road toward any means necessary.

Patrick Henry said, "Give me Liberty or give me death." The soldiers in the Revolutionary war were prepared to die at a time when life was viewed much more cheaply. Now life is so dear that matters of war and peace turn on atrocities and combat deaths that kill far fewer than infant mortality (62500 or 50% of births at about 50 per thousand) in an America that had less than 1% as many people as it does today (2.5 million vs 300 million).

But let us not elevate the value of life so highly that we empower an unchecked executive to use war powers such as espionage on citizens. That is a step toward the tyranny that eighteenth century Americans died to vanquish. Perhaps we should be willing to give up a few of our much more dear lives as the price to pay for continuing liberty.

Posted by Sam Dinkin at 08:58 AM

January 20, 2006
Back On The Air

I've moved out of the Homestead Suites, and into the TownePlace Suites in Manhattan Beach. Ten bucks more a night, twice the room size, twice the number of burners on the stove, a dishwasher (the other place had a dishwasher, too--me). It also has fast ethernet. Last night, when I was futilely struggling to transmit packets on the net on the wireless at the Homestead room, I noticed that I had a signal/noise ratio of one: -79 dB signal, -79 dB noise. No wonder that it was dropping packets.

But this connection flies. I just used it to download Firefox 1.5 (I hadn't upgraded this laptop yet), and it grabbed the few megs in less than a minute. So, now the only thing to keep me from blogging is all the other things that I need to do.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:38 PM

Collateral Damage For Whom?

OK, I don't have much time (or technical ability) to blog, but I do have a new piece up at TCS Daily, on collateral damage of intelligence gathering. The links in it are broken, but I hope they're being fixed.

[Update late on Friday afternoon]

There's a countersuit being filed against the ACLU. You can contribute here.

[Update on Saturday morning]

The problem with FISA.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:24 AM

January 19, 2006
Faux Pas

I'm struggling through my Internet issues to do a little posting tonight. Mike Griffin was interviewed by the BBC, and had some interesting comments. Think of this less as a fisking, than an analysis of what's really going on in the agency.

...having spent about £1.5bn on returning the shuttle to flight last August, how could the same problem that killed seven astronauts on Columbia have happened again?
The agency did the best it could, according to Dr Griffin. His engineers couldn't carry out test flights to understand what went wrong, so they had to rely on modelling the problem and then try to fix it for Discovery's mission.

This, in a nutshell, is the problem not only with the Shuttle, but with current launchers in general, and the reason that we cannot either reduce costs or improve reliability. We can't "carry out test flights to understand what went wrong." This is because the marginal cost per flight of all of them (including, perhaps exemplified by the Shuttle, which was supposed, by virtue of its reusability, to have low marginal costs) is so high as to be unaffordable for the purposes of doing test flights. And NASA is doing absolutely nothing to change this.

Before the Columbia tragedy, the space station was in trouble - ambitious plans to build a research lab in the sky were being scaled back as its costs began to increase beyond expectations.
Now Nasa has to make up for lost time and somehow finish off the ISS before the remaining shuttle fleet is retired in four years' time.

Dr Griffin claims it can be done, but only by using all the remaining planned shuttle missions to take up and bolt on the outstanding modules.

All of them? What happened to the Hubble mission? I hope that this is a misquote, or a slip of the tongue.

Publicly, Dr Griffin defends the International Space Station and the shuttle programme. But my sense was that he regards them as follies from a bygone age.
He will do whatever he needs to in order to meet international commitments; but he's keen to move on to President Bush's programme to send people back to the Moon, Mars and beyond. So I asked him directly - was the shuttle and all that went with it a mistake?

Dr Griffin says it is time for Nasa to move on and do other things. "I wouldn't characterise the space shuttle as a mistake. I would characterise the decision that America made 35 years ago to retreat from further lunar and Mars missions as a mistake.

No, of course he wouldn't characterize it as that--he learned his lesson from the last time that he committed that faux pas (defined as a politician accidentally telling the truth). But the fact that he now denies it doesn't mean that it isn't true.

And in response, here's a nice bit of understatement by Joe Rothenberg:

Joe Rothenberg, head of NASA's manned space programs from 1995 to 2001, defended the programs for providing lessons about how to operate in space. But he conceded that "in hindsight, there may have been other ways."

Yes. Yes, there may have been.

[Update on Friday afternoon]

Clark Lindsey has additional thoughts on this, and on some other things that Dr. Griffin has said recently.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:39 PM

I'm Still Busy

...but head over to Space Transport News, and keep scrolling. Lots of good stuff.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:05 AM

January 18, 2006
OK, So Not Quite As Soon

Well, the "safe, simple, soon" launch vehicle doesn't seem to be as simple or soon as advertised. I'm shocked, shocked, I tell you.

Whether or not it's safe remains to be seen.

[Update on Thursday morning]

Chair Force Engineer has some further uncharitable thoughts:

It would be wise to ask the engineers behind the Exploration Systems Architecture Study, Was "The Stick" really better than Delta & Atlas, or did you just do what Scott Horowitz told you to do?

[Another update on Thursday afternoon]

Jon Goff isn't impressed, either.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:42 AM

January 17, 2006
Sorry

I'm working in California, and I'm swamped during the day, with a lousy internet connection in my hotel (when I say lousy, I mean that it's wireless narrowband--I could move the data faster by tapping out Morse code by hand, and I don't know Morse code).

Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:37 PM

January 16, 2006
Preemptive Victimhood

Rather than digging up old Reuters pieces about past events, the Sanity Inspector seems to have found one about future events. In the future. Or something like that:

The D.C. Islamic Eternal Justice Endeavor against War and Stereotyping (DIEJEWS) yesterday issued a strongly worded statement condemning a rising backlash against Muslims following next month's nuclear bombing of Tel Aviv, Israel by Iran. The press release warned against an increase in anti-Muslim discrimination, hate crimes, and government harassment following the destruction of the unofficial Israeli capital city next month, as announced by the Iranian government.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:48 PM

Two Years On

Saturday was a little-noted anniversary for the space program. Jeff Foust has some thoughts.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:29 AM

January 15, 2006
Governor of Outer Space Territory

FAA's authority from Congress extends only to takeoff and landing. This is duly implemented in the new proposed regs. The Outer Space Treaty makes the US liable for damages caused by US spacecraft and citizens to other signatory's people and stuff whereever they are. That includes outer space and the rest of the planets. These areas too should be considered and governed for every US citizen and corporation that wants a US flagged spacecraft. There are excellent opportunities for US (mobile home) colonies in unoccupied territory. It's time to appoint someone whose job it is to make that happen. A new position should be created: the Governor of Outer Space Territory.

Like the Space Paidhi in C.J. Cherryh's Foreigner series, there would be a need for bridging tremendous cultural gaps between political leaders and spacers, quick thinking about governance modes, and even some rough frontier justice.

Why stop there? We should have an Ocean Territory Governor, a Sky Territory Governor and (an underground) Crust Territory Governor.

Posted by Sam Dinkin at 09:27 PM

Gee, I Can't Imagine Why

...Joe Biden, usually a fixture on Sunday morning, wasn't on any of the political talk shows. Maybe he's figured he already said enough on television this week to last for a couple weeks. The questioning from Chris Wallace or Tim Russert would have no doubt been amusing, and not of much value to his presidential ambitions. I suspect he'll lay low for a while, and hope that people forget.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:11 AM

"The Great Gulf War"

A frightening, and unfortunately plausible (given the inevitable insouciance of Europe, and much of the American electorate itself), future history:

The ideological cocktail that produced 'Islamism' was as potent as either of the extreme ideologies the West had produced in the previous century, communism and fascism. Islamism was anti-Western, anti-capitalist and anti-Semitic. A seminal moment was the Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's intemperate attack on Israel in December 2005, when he called the Holocaust a 'myth'. The state of Israel was a 'disgraceful blot', he had previously declared, to be wiped 'off the map'.
Prior to 2007, the Islamists had seen no alternative but to wage war against their enemies by means of terrorism. From the Gaza to Manhattan, the hero of 2001 was the suicide bomber. Yet Ahmadinejad, a veteran of the Iran-Iraq War, craved a more serious weapon than strapped-on explosives. His decision to accelerate Iran's nuclear weapons programme was intended to give Iran the kind of power North Korea already wielded in East Asia: the power to defy the United States; the power to obliterate America's closest regional ally.

No, nothing like Munich at all.

As Dennis Miller once quipped (though it wasn't really funny), "To believe the left, Bush is Hitler, Cheney is Hitler, Ashcroft is Hitler, Rumsfeld is Hitler, but the guy with the mustache who gasses people and hates Jews and wants to conquer the world isn't Hitler. Go figure."

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:05 AM

January 14, 2006
Turnabout's Fair Play?

Not really. Cathy Young says that the American Thinker piece that I linked the other day gave the New York Times treatment to the New York Times:

It's true that liberals who accuse Bush of ushering in a police state forget that it was the Clinton administration that first pushed for a rather dramatic expansion of surveillance and other government powers in order to combat the threat of terrorism. (Conservatives are prone to forget it as well.) But that's a far cry from the blatant double standard Tate claims to have detected. So the bloggers might want to hold off on the gloating about hypocrisy and media bias; all that's exposed here is a very shoddy attempt at an exposé.

I frankly didn't take the time to delve into it the way she has, but I thought it was worth linking to, regardless. I link, you decide.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:35 AM

January 13, 2006
Another Fox

...goes to Fox. FNC has finally picked up Rudi (link slightly work unsafe). The smart folks at CNN can read the handwriting on the wall.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:50 PM

Keeping Methane Propulsion Alive

Mark Whittington has an idea to solve the methane problem (no, not that methane problem--that one we'll solve by burning down the rain forests):

If NASA feels that building a methane/LOX engine is too risky for the ESAS, there is a solution. Make such an engine one of the Centennial Challenges. Critics of the Vision for Space Exploration will be less unhappy because that would be another piece of technology developed by non traditional means. NASA will benefit because it gets the engine for the CEV and Mars Lander relatively cheaply.

Well, maybe. The problem is, I guess I don't see LOX/methane engines as particularly risky, at least no more so than any other generic propulsion development. It's not a technology risk (in the sense that there may be some unknowns out there that prevent it from being possible) so much as a programmatic risk, in terms of schedule delays or cost overruns. NASA has a lot of experience with these in propulsion programs, so they're wary of new engine developments (though I suspect that XCOR has broken a lot of the conventional industry cost/schedule estimating models for propulsion system development). Our lack of methane propulsion isn't because it's a Hard Problem, but because no one has had sufficient requirement to date to fund it.

If we have unlimited money for prizes, I guess that a prize would be a good way to fund this, but prizes are better employed in those cases for which innovation is required to solve a really difficult problem that many have attempted and no one yet solved, not for a straightforward development program. Rather than offer a prize, I'll bet that someone like XCOR (or the other companies working on the problem) would be happy to take a fixed-price contract to develop engines to NASA's specs (they could use the technology contract they have from Marshall to develop a reusable cryo tank as a model), and it would be a lot cheaper than funding a cost-plus contract to Aerojet or Pratt. There are lots of other ways to do innovative procurement than offering prizes.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:52 PM

Alfred Hitchcock, Call Your Office

Apparently our ancestors had more to worry about than bears, snakes and sabre tooths:

...small human ancestors known as hominids had to survive being hunted not only by large predators on the ground but by fearsome raptors that swooped from the sky, said Lee Berger, a senior paleoanthropologist at Johannesburg's University of the Witwatersrand.

Apparently the Taung Baby was snatched and killed by an eagle.

I hate when that happens.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:16 PM

Sign Me Up

For busting the pork. I'm not now, and never have been a Republican, but I sure hope that they can get their act together. It would be nice to have at least one serious political party.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:21 PM

Liberation For The Great White North?

Polls indicate that the Conservatives have a chance of getting a majority in the Canadian parliament. At the least, they may be able to get a governing coalition by peeling off just a few members, rather than having to do a grand deal with the Block Quebecois. As is the case down here with the Democrats, I'm less thrilled with seeing the Tories win than I am in seeing the Liberals lose big. Sic semper tyrannis corruptis.

I'll bet Belinda Stronach is having a big-league case of buyers' remorse now, for her thirty pieces of silver. What a difference a few months makes. Maybe she and fellow turncoat Jim Jeffords can start a club.

On the other hand, if it's that close, she'll no doubt be one of the MPs that they peel off to form their majority. She knows she doesn't have much future with the current Liberals, and we already know what she is--it will just be a matter of haggling over the price. Simply letting her keep her current cabinet position would probably suffice, considering the alternative.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:13 PM

Stop Global Warming

Cut down the rain forests:

Keppler and his colleagues discovered that living plants emit 10 to 100 times more methane than dead plants.
Scientists had previously thought that plants could only emit methane in the absence of oxygen.

David Lowe, of the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research in New Zealand, said the findings are startling and controversial.

"Keppler and colleagues' finding helps to account for observations from space of incredibly large plumes of methane above tropical forests," he said in a commentary on the research.

But the study also poses questions, such as how such a potentially large source of methane could have been overlooked...

Hey, I can answer that one--maybe because we haven't come up with a way to blame it on the rapacious, capitalist, resource-scarfing western world.

Seriously, it really is amazing, given that living animals definitely emit a lot more methane than dead ones (particularly after a Mexican meal).

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:57 AM

Is Anyone Surprised

...that Ted Kennedy is satire challenged?

The 1983 essay "In Defense of Elitism" by Harry Crocker III included this line, read dramatically by Kennedy: "People nowadays just don't seem to know their place. Everywhere one turns blacks and hispanics are demanding jobs simply because they're black and hispanic..."
The essay may not have been funny, D'Souza acknowledges, but Kennedy read from it as if it had been serious instead of an attempt at humor.

"I think left-wing groups have been feeding Senator Kennedy snippets and he has been mindlessly reciting them," D'Souza said. "It was a satire."

Emphasis mine.

Well, I can understand why. I mean, the guy's practically a walking (well, staggering) gasbag parody of himself.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:13 AM

Guess We'll Have To Try Harder

The global test is no longer number one on Google! It's been demoted to numero dos.

C'mon, blogosphere. Are you going to let some cheesy marketing firm get away with that? Open up your hearts, and links.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:08 AM

A Horrible Choice And A Worse One

Victor Davis Hanson has some thoughts on what he views as the inevitable American air strike on Iran.

As I've said, this is our Munich moment. A world in which the mad mullahs have nukes is a frightening one indeed. Our previous totalitarian enemy in the Cold War at least had a keen sense of self preservation, that allowed MAD to work, at least for a while. We can't bet on that from the Iranian government.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:02 AM

A Feyn Man

In honor of the rerelease of some classic books, Cathy Seipp has some stories about a quirky genius.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:33 AM

Short-Term Thinking

We're starting to see the programmatic consequences of NASA's political inability to get the Shuttle/ISS monkey off its back. I was reading the final Call For Improvement from NASA on the CEV program, that just came out this week, and noted that one of the biggest changes in it from the draft that came out late last year was that the word "methane" had been excised from it, whereas in the draft, it had been baselined. Apparently, NASA doesn't have the funds to pursue this propulsion technology, despite its potential for improved safety, reduced operational costs, and extensibility to eventual Mars (and Near-Earth Object) missions.

The Shuttle and ISS have both been programmatic disasters exactly because of decisions made early in their development to skip key technologies that could have dramatically reduced down-stream costs, and (as seems to be inevitable with a space program funded on an annual basis by a Congress that's focused on the next election), we're apparently following the same path with CEV.

NASA Watch has more on this subject, as does Clark Lindsey:

The fundamental criticism of the Exploration program that has come from the alt.space community is that the program as currently designed will make little progress towards development of a sustainable, long-term, in-space infrastructure. This decision further pushes the program towards "flags and footprints" rather than "return to stay" or "steppingstone to Mars."

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:47 AM

No Sauce For The Gander

Apparently, the NYT is fine with unwarranted domestic spying, as long as there's a Democrat in the White House, and we aren't at war.

Speaking of which, I wonder if there's any relationship between the Times' unilateral (though they had accomplices, if not allies) decision a few weeks ago to tell the enemy how we're tracking their communications, and this:

Federal agents have launched an investigation into a surge in the purchase of large quantities of disposable cell phones by individuals from the Middle East and Pakistan, ABC News has learned.
The phones — which do not require purchasers to sign a contract or have a credit card — have many legitimate uses, and are popular with people who have bad credit or for use as emergency phones tucked away in glove compartments or tackle boxes. But since they can be difficult or impossible to track, law enforcement officials say the phones are widely used by criminal gangs and terrorists.

The timing is certainly suspicious.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 04:59 AM

January 12, 2006
No Long Pork For Them

The Donner family didn't resort to cannibalism:

No cooked human bones were found among the thousands of fragments of animal bones at that Alder Creek site, suggesting Donner family members did not resort to cannibalism, the archaeologists said at a conference of the Society for Historical Archaeology in Sacramento, Calif.
"The Donner family ended up getting the stigma basically because of the name," said Julie Schablitsky, one of the lead authors. "But of all the people, they were probably the least deserving of it."

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:56 PM

Just In Case You Had Any Doubts

The goal of the enemy:

He said democracy was crumbling and laid out a two-stage plan to replace it with a Muslim nation.
The first he said meant "bleed them from their sides, their heads, their economy, everything until they surrender."

The preacher went on: "Like you imagine you have only one small knife and you have a big animal in the front of you, the size of the knife you can't slaughter him with this.

"You have to stab him here and there until he bleeds to death, until he die, then you cut his meat the way you like it or leave it for the maggots."

After that he claimed: "The people who called you terrorist before, they will call you khalifas (Muslim rulers) and the scholars who used to call you khawarij (rebels against Islam) yesterday, they will write poems about you."

The second stage involved taking control of the whole world, he added.

"Don't be a shield for the kufr because we will get you," he added. "Even if you are not a target and you are in the target area. If you fear them, you should fear Allah more. It's a bloody way."

Hamza told his followers they would eventually see a Muslim ruler in the White House and added: "The whole earth, it will be for Muslims, this is a promise from Allah.

No, they're nothing like Hitler.

Hitler only had ambitions to rule Eurasia.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:52 PM

Space Tourism On The Beeb

Clark Lindsey points out a potentially interesting program tonight for those of my readers who get BBC2.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:26 PM

Then What?

Europeans leaders say that Iran should go before the UN Security Council. What will they do, send in Hans Blix to wander around for a few months?

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:28 AM

SpaceShip Three

This isn't really big news--Burt has always said that he wants to get to orbit, but it looks like Virgin Galactic has made an announcement recently. What will be really interesting is when they reveal the design (if they have one), because the current "badminton birdie" approach isn't going to work for orbital entry velocities.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:50 AM

Peggy Noonan Loves Joe Biden

Just ask her:

The great thing about Joe Biden during the Alito hearings, the reason he is, to me, actually endearing, is that as he speaks, as he goes on and on and spins his long statements, hypotheticals, and free associations--as he demonstrates yet again, as he did in the Roberts hearings and even the Thomas hearings, that he is incapable of staying on the river of a thought, and is constantly lured down tributaries from which he can never quite work his way back--you can see him batting the little paddles of his mind against the weeds, trying desperately to return to the river but not remembering where it is, or where it was going. I love him. He's human, like a garrulous uncle after a drink.
In this, in the hearings, he is unlike Ted Kennedy in that he doesn't seem driven by some obscure malice--Uh, I, uh, cannot, uh, remembuh why I hate you, Judge Alioto, but there, uh, must be a good reason and I will, um, damn well find it. When he peers over his glasses at Judge Alito he is like an old woman who's unfortunately senile and quite sure the teapot on the stove is plotting against her. Mr. Biden is also unlike Chuck Schumer in that he doesn't ask questions with an air of, With this one I'm going to trap you and leave you flailing like a bug in a bug zapper--we're going to hear your last little crackling buzz any minute now!

Actually, she's not very impressed with the denizens of the upper house. Me, neither, but that's nothing new.

[Update at 11 AM EST]

More Biden love from Jonah Goldberg:

... He says interesting things, from time to time. I think he makes a fair point here and there. He was correct, for example, that Congress needed to have a real debate over the war. I think he has some obvious verbal intelligence. But, again, what's fascinating -- and what might be distracting some folks from seeing his underlying-yet-occassional smarts -- is that he lets his ego and vanity get in the way. The man loves his voice so much, you'd expect him to be following it around in a grey Buick, in defiance of a restraining order, as it walks home from school. He seems to think his teeth are some kind of hypnotic punctuation marks which can momentarily disorient the listener and absolve him from any of Western civilization's usual imperatives to stop talking. Listening to him speechify is like playing an intellectual game of whack-a-mole where every now and then the fuzzy head of a good point pops up from the tundra but before you can pin it down, he starts talking about how he went to the store and saw a squirrel on the way and it was brown which brings to mind Brown V. Board of Ed which most people don't understand because [TEETH FLASH] he taught Brown in his law school course and [TEETH FLASH] Mr. Chairman I'm going to get right to it and besides these aren't the droids you're looking for....

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:35 AM

Earth Strikes Back?

Lileks isn't impressed with the latest doomsaying trope from the scientifically illiterate.

This is the same kind of blinkered and dyspeptic mentality that says we shouldn't expand life into the universe. And here and here are some related golden oldies.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:17 AM

January 11, 2006
Hearts And Minds

The New York Times, of all places, reports that Iraqi insurgents are fighting with Al Qaeda:

According to an American and an Iraqi intelligence official, as well as Iraqi insurgents, clashes between Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia and Iraqi insurgent groups like the Islamic Army and Muhammad's Army have broken out in Ramadi, Husayba, Yusifiya, Dhuluiya and Karmah.
In town after town, Iraqis and Americans say, local Iraqi insurgents and tribal groups have begun trying to expel Al Qaeda's fighters, and, in some cases, kill them. It is unclear how deeply the split pervades Iraqi society. Iraqi leaders say that in some Iraqi cities, Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia and local insurgent groups continue to cooperate with one another.

American and Iraqi officials believe that Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia is largely made up of Iraqis, with its highest leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian. Even so, among Iraqis, the group is still perceived as a largely foreign force.

Bad news, for those hoping for bad news from Iraq.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:44 PM

O Tempora, O Mores

Speaking of evolution, our modern car technology seems to be breeding lousy drivers:

Fewer than 30 of those questioned in a recent survey knew what anti-lock brakes were, and less than 5 percent understood traction control. To test some skills of the average driver, the U.K.’s Times newspaper brought along a 15-year-old BMW 3-series devoid of every modern safety feature and asked some regular drivers to take it through the test track at the Graham Griffiths of Ultimate Car Control training school. While all the drivers were able to drive their modern Volvos, Hondas, and Subarus successfully in all conditions, they failed when forced to drive the classic car.

I grew up in Michigan, and drove sixties British sports cars through my formative driving years. They didn't even have redundant brake master cylinders, let alone automatic braking systems (in fact, my 1960 MGA had to share the hydraulic reservoir for both brakes and clutch actuator, so if you got a brake leak, you eventually lost your clutch as well--made for fun times occasionally). On snowy winter nights, I used to go over to the parking lot at the neighborhood golf course to practice driving my '67 MGB-GT in an area where there was no danger of hitting anything if you spun out.

I remember a few years ago when I was in St. Louis at Christmas, and they got a sudden blizzard the night before we were to fly out. Our flight ended up being canceled, and we rented a car to get back to the relatives' home where we were staying. I noticed that when I hit the brakes in the snow, they would chatter, and that was the first time I'd experienced ABS. I didn't like it, because I felt like I didn't have control of the car (the same problem I have with automatic transmissions). But apparently, modern drivers just learning are going to know nothing else, and not understand the physics or techniques of driving in low-traction conditions.

I'm afraid that as we get further and further from the era in which certain skills were required to survive, we'll have a larger and larger population that won't manage even the slightest breakdown in our technology. I want to see the future, but this is, I think, one of the real downsides of it--a population that becomes Eloi.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:06 PM

Is ID Conservative?

I was going to comment on the post from Tom Bethell here, but Derb handles the situation well, and I'm busy as hell, what with NASA releasing their final CFI for CEV today (I'm working with one of the major subcontractors for one of the bidders on the proposal), which I have to read, pronto. Not being a conservative, I don't really have a dog in that particular fight, but I do find it amazing that so many people who call themselves conservatives are so profoundly anti-science, even if they don't realize it. It's certainly not a classical liberal (which is probably the best description of me) position.

But actually, I guess I do have a few more thoughts, or expansions on Derb's thoughts, regarding the flawed logic in the argument of the blind watchmaker.

William Paley's flawed argument has been refuted over and over again, and yet Tom Bethell repeats it. Here it is:

In crossing a heath, suppose I pitched my foot against a stone, and were asked how the stone came to be there; I might possibly answer, that, for anything I knew to the contrary, it had lain there forever: nor would it perhaps be very easy to show the absurdity of this answer. But suppose I had found a watch upon the ground, and it should be inquired how the watch happened to be in that place; I should hardly think of the answer I had before given, that for anything I knew, the watch might have always been there.

There are significant differences between watches and living creatures, that render this argument specious. If one examined a living creature, one would first discover that it is, in fact, living, and not a mechanical artifact that would wind down after time and cease to work, unless one wound it again, at which point it would be resurrected. The living creature reproduces, and its offspring, while resembling it, are not exact replicas. The watch would not reproduce, no matter in how much proximity one brought it to other watches, of whatever watch gender (if such a thing even existed and could be determined by examination). In other words, unlike the living organism, there are no obvious mechanisms by which a watch could possibly have descendants that were different from, and perhaps improved over, itself.

And there is a ready explanation for the watch that requires no invocation of supernatural powers--simply put, watchmakers exist. They are real, material beings, whose existence no serious rational person doubts, for whom the evidence of existence is in fact indisputable from a scientifically objective viewpoint, from whom one can procure watchmaking and watch repairing services.

Life in general, on the other hand, appeared long before man. Even biblical literalists admit to this--man (and woman) weren't created until the sixth day, after all the other beasts, over which they would have dominion.

The same argument applies to Tom Bethell's archeological artifact. The most natural explanation for an archeological artifact is that it was created by a human, because that is, as Derb points out, one of the fundamental precepts of archeology.

But that doesn't satisfy when explaining life, because in order to postulate life as designed, one must postulate a designer. In the case of the watch, it's easy--people done it, and there are plenty of people around to blame it on, and no one disputes the existence of people. Their existence is scientifically, indisputably provable.

But who is the designer for those things that came before people? If Behe et al want to pretend they're talking about space aliens, to avoid the issue of bringing religion into the classroom, then they have to also confess that they're only delaying the problem, because who then designed the space aliens?

It's not possible, ultimately, to talk about "intelligent design" without talking about a god of some kind, and once one does that, one leaves the realm of science which, like it or not, is the realm of materialism. Humans, being a form of life, are material beings themselves, capable of designing things, so artifacts requiring designers that were designed after humans came along are readily explained. The mystery is how life came to its diversity in the absence of humans, since humans came to the show pretty late. And once we resort to designers, we end our scientific inquiries, and simply yield to the same ignorance we had before the enlightenment.

The IDers (and creationists) may be right, but they're not being scientific. My predilection remains with the people who have given us the knowledge and technology that allow me to live a long, comfortable and healthy life, relative to the nasty, brutish and short one that prevailed prior to the scientific method.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:21 PM

It's 8:45, Do You Know Where Your Cat Is?

Patricia has been trying to keep the guest bedroom cat-free, in deference to potential allergenic guests. But occasionally she forgets, and Jessica, for whatever perverse feline reason, has decided that it's her favorite room (in fact, her very own room, which we unjustly keep her out of), and lives for the times that the door gets left open.

She's not thrilled to be caught in the act, but on the other hand, she can't be bothered to show much deference to our recognition of her insubordination. She's too mellow and relaxed, and she is, after all, a cat.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:11 PM

January 10, 2006
Another Mockingbird In The Gunsights

In the twenty-first century, this is very disturbing.

For those who don't get the reference, here's a clue.

[Wednesday update]

A commenter asks who Cory Maye is. Here's the story at Wikipedia.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:23 PM

Call For Papers

This year, the Space Studies Institute is doing what used to be known as the Princeton Conference on Space Industrialization in conjunction with the National Space Society's International Space Development Conference, in LA in May. They have a call for papers up for anyone interested in presenting relevant ideas.

[Update on Wednesday morning]

As Lee Valentine notes, the full name of the conference is Conference on Space Industrialization and Space Settlement, making it rare, if not unique, among regularly held space conferences.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:18 AM

New Falcon Attempt Date

February 8th, at 4:30 PM Pacific time.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:11 AM

Abramoff Is A Republican Scandal

So says Rich Lowry. He's right, but of course not because there's something uniquely corrupt about Republicans per se (though there is something uniquely hypocritical about their corruption, because they were supposed to be the party of smaller government, and present fewer opportunities to seek rent, as George Will eloquently points out). It's because Lord Acton had it largely right--power does indeed corrupt.

The Republicans should view this as an opportunity to get back to their small government roots. Unfortunately, they probably won't. Not that I'm inclined to vote for Democrats in preference, of course, because we know they'd be even worse. There is a "culture of corruption," but it's a culture of power, not of party.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:43 AM

January 09, 2006
I Thought I Was Going To Have To Shut Down

...when I read that there is now a federal law against annoying people via the Internet. I mean, I'd probably get fifty to life. Or consecutive life terms, to judge by some of my commenters.

But then I saw the loophole, that says it's OK to do it, as long as you don't do so anonymously.

But what will Atrios do?

[Update on Tuesday morning]

A lot more discussion on this here.

It seems to be possible to read the law as applying to Internet telephony only (perhaps to extend existing anti-harassment laws that apply to phone calls to VOIP, but it's vague enough that we can be assured of some pretty broad prosecutions that will result in court interpretations (hopefully interpretations that the law is unconstitutional nonsense).

[Late morning update]

Orin Kerr confirms that it is a VOIP issue.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:20 PM

Blogging Without Thinking

Or at least without educating oneself on the subject. Over at this week's Carnival of the Capitalists, the very first post is a libertarian (my guess) whining about government regulation of space tourism. This is always the knee-jerk response of small-government types (of which I'm one) when they're completely unfamiliar with the history of commercial space and space law in general.

The FAA NPRM that Mr. Cohen is so exercised about was not a spontaneous power grab by the federal government, and didn't appear ex nihilo, even if he wasn't following the subject--it was the result of years of discussion with the industry, and a result of a consensus between them and the regulators (though there are a few dissenters, but even they don't want no regulation--they just want a different set of rules and a different part of the FAA to regulate it).

Like it or not, the 1967 Outer Space Treaty obligates the federal government to regulate launches. It will continue to do so until we decide to renegotiate or withdraw from it (good ideas, in my opinion, but unlikely to happen soon). There was never any option for non-regulation--the only question was what form the regs would take. Absent any defined regulations for it, it was impossible to raise money for it (because investors hate uncertainty in general, and regulatory uncertainty in particular), which is why the nascent American space tourism industry fought very hard a couple years ago to get legislation to legally define this new flight regime, and expand the FAA's legal authority to explicitly deal with space passenger launches, in a way that would green light investors and not stifle the industry. So far, it has been quite successful, since the money is now flowing, and no serious player (other than Burt) is complaining about the regulation level. If you look at the comments on the NPRM so far (and ignore the nutty ones), you'll see that they're constructive, and meant to fine tune a good first cut by the agency. So far, they seem to be in keeping with both the letter and intent of the legislation.

Before people let loose with their keyboards on this issue, they might serve their readers better if they review and familiarize themselves a little with the history first.

[Update on Monday evening]

Here's an equally naive, but more optimistic (and realistic) take:

Last week, for probably the first time in my life, I got excited by the prospect of U.S. government bureaucracy. The Federal Aviation Administration took a step toward developing rules for space tourism, issuing more than 120 pages of proposed guidelines for “space flight participants.” The initial set of regulations is set to go into effect in June, and to me it’s a sort of tipping point, cementing the reality that in just a few years any one of us may be able to blast off into the cosmos the same way we can fly Jet Blue to Vegas for the weekend. That’s an awesome thing, in the true sense of the word.

It is. The government is not always evil, and the people who worked on Congressional Hill (against many other staffers and Congressman who were on the wrong side of the issues) and at the FAA deserve big kudos. They understood the issues, and their own potential failings, and I know, from working with and talking to them myself, that many of them share the dream.

When they get things right (which thankfully happens much more often than one would reasonably expect from a big bureaucracy) we should congratulate and thank them.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:47 AM

How Should History Treat Clinton's Impeachment?

An interesting article from a history professor:

Clinton, however, had no...lofty ideals in his self-made scandal. He brought sex into the arena by first lying to the public during the campaign over Jennifer Flowers; then again by attempting to hush Paula Jones in her civil suit; then finally by giving false testimony to a Grand Jury. In the process, he managed to become the only president ever to be disbarred by allowing his attorney to submit a false statement to a federal judge. (There must be a standing joke here to the effect that if you aren’t moral enough to be a lawyer...) Clinton’s Lewinsky scandal was also worthy of historians’ treatment because it possibly marked the demise of the “mainstream media” as a journalistic monolith. The key stories were broken by Matt Drudge on his Internet site, and indeed, the mainstream media sought to contain the story that would damage the Democratic Party. Talk radio, the Internet, and Fox News all took center stage for bringing new information to the attention of the public. Teachers might examine the rise of these “alternative” news sources with the rapid and steady decline of the circulation of so-called mainstream papers and the incredible drop in viewership of the “Big Three” nightly news shows.
In light of the revelations by the 9/11 Commission that Clinton, with almost wanton disregard for the evidence, dismissed warnings about al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, and terrorism; that he turned down three offers by the Sudanese government to hand over bin Laden; and that his Justice Department, courtesy of Jamie Gorelick, erected “the wall” between the CIA and the FBI that later had to be torn down after the horror of 9/11, the central question that many students will have about the Clinton impeachment is, “Why was lying under oath all that the prosecutors could indict Clinton for?” It will take good teaching, indeed, to explain why laundering campaign money through sources of a hostile Chinese government, or why insisting on a law enforcement model of pursuing terrorists as opposed to a wartime model, were not themselves impeachable offenses. When these issues are addressed in detail, it might well be concluded that, in fact, the Clinton years not only “included” impeachment, but that the impeachment of William Jefferson Clinton was, in the big picture, the most important thing that occurred in his two terms.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:53 AM

More Of This, Please

The UCLA Alumni Association is fed up with nutty professors. Alumni associations actually have a lot of power in the war to take back academia from the radical left, but they have to care, and exercise it.

[Update on Monday evening]

As Jane Bernstein points out in comments, if you read the fine print, it's not the UCLA Alumni Association--it's another group (probably less official) called the Bruin Alumni Association. Kudos to them anyway.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:51 AM

January 08, 2006
The Housing Bubble Bursts

In Shanghai:

Shanghai's housing bust comes after a doubling of prices in the previous three years, a run-up fueled by massive speculation. With China's economy booming and Shanghai at the center of worldwide attention, investors from Hong Kong, Taiwan and elsewhere were buying as fast as buildings were going up. At least 30% to 40% of homes sold were bought by speculators, says Zhang Zhijie, a real estate analyst at Soufun.com Academy, a research group in Shanghai.

This is bad news, because it could be the first stage of a collapse of the Chinese economy, with potentially very dire results for all of us.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:17 PM

Religion Of Capital Punishment

I'm sure that all the people (many of whom were no doubt self-styled feminists) who were wailing and keening about Tookie Williams will be protesting this any minute now:

An Iranian court has sentenced a teenage rape victim to death by hanging after she weepingly confessed that she had unintentionally killed a man who had tried to rape both her and her niece.

[crickets chirping]

Well, maybe tomorrow.

But it's probably not the Iranian government's fault. I'm sure they just do things like this out of an inferiority complex, and in response to the evil Western influences, and McDonalds, and Britney.

I'm sure they'll behave better when they get nukes.

[Sunday evening update]

Just for the record, I don't agree in any way with the commenter who is pining for a "Curtis LeMay type, who won't care who's in office."

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:18 AM

Natural Jamming

Well, you learn something new every day (more, if you're lucky, and work at it).

Here's an interesting story for WW II buffs. There were several reasons that Operation Market Garden was a failure, but this is one that I'd never heard before. The troops didn't get properly reinforced because they couldn't communicate with radios, due to high concentrations of iron in the ground around Arnhem. It's the old story of "for want of a nail." If they'd had satellite phones, the war might have ended months earlier (and the Battle of the Bulge been prevented).

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:33 AM

Polywhatever

Glenn thinks that a lot of the current concern about polygamy is an offshoot of the gay marriage debate. I think that's right, but we need to clarify terms here:

There's a pretty good argument that polygamy is usually bad for the societies it appears in, producing a large surplus of sullen, unmarriageable young men.

Polygamy per se (a marriage of more than two individuals) doesn't result in frustrated young men--that would be polygyny (the specific case in which it is one man married to multiple women). It could be balanced out with polyandry (in which one woman has several husbands). Judging by the fact that males are...ummmmm...orgasm challenged relative to healthy females, and the prevalence of porn fantasies (and perhaps real incidents, though I have no personal experience) about one woman satisfying a number of men, and all enjoying it, at least at the time, could in fact be popular if it weren't for that pesky male imperative to know whether or not your kids are really yours.

But I'm not aware of many societies that have general polygamy--it seems to be one or the other, with polygyny dominating for fairly obvious evolutionary-psychological reasons.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:21 AM

Is Science Politicized?

Of course it is. And, as Ron Bailey points out, there's never been a time when it wasn't, for all the reasons he describes and more, and the Dems are just as (if not more) guilty of this than the Bush administration (contra Chris Mooney's ideologically blinkered thesis).

The same applies to space "science" (though in fact much of NASA spending has very little to do with science, despite the popular myth). And in light of how something as supposedly objective as "science" can get politicized, it's foolish to think that major government-funded engineering projects (like the president's Vision for Space Exploration) aren't, or that the politics don't drive the architecture decisions much more strongly than economics or the loftier goal of building a space-faring civilization.

It may indeed be the case that the "stick" and a Shuttle-derived heavy-lift vehicle are necessary to maintain (at least in the short term) Congressional support for the overall program (though that's not at all clear to me), but we shouldn't fool ourselves that this will result in significant progress in our space capabilities, particularly relative to more flexible, versatile, diverse and ultimately lower-cost means of achieving the desired goals.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:02 AM

K Street a Bargain

In today's New York Times, the article "Go Ahead, Try to Stop K Street," an argument is quoted from Newt Gingrich that you have to shrink government to curb lobbyists. "There is $2.6 trillion spent in Washington, with the authority to regulate everything in your life," he said. "Guess what? People will spend unheard-of amounts of money to influence that. The underlying problems are big government and big money."

Curbing the budget will only reduce the acceleration of lobbying, not reduce lobbying. It is a bargain. The Indian tribes are just smart to get in on it (if not in their choice of representation). In my joint paper with Livingston and Jurist, we say the following:

National lobbying of Congress and the President in 2004 totaled $1 billion. That may seem like a lot, but it is a pittance compared to the $2.3 trillion in Federal outlays. Congress and the President also pass laws and make executive orders that implicitly subsidize through loan guarantees, forbid activities altogether, impose work and investment rules that implicitly tax certain activities, and establish through the courts and federal agencies how property rights are defined. Thus, it is possible that Congress and the President influence perhaps twice as much of the economy as the Federal Government spends. Given that, $1 billion to buy influence on Capitol Hill is surely a bargain. With 589 bills passing both houses of Congress (enrolled) in the 108th Congress, that works out to about $3.3 million of lobbying per enrolled bill. Adding in campaign contributions per enrolled bill (about $400 million per session for the President—contributed to both parties—and $900 million in Congressional campaign contributions) the total is $7.5 million per enrolled bill....
One concern is that lobbying and contributions are like an “all-pay” auction where the contribution is non-refundable even if someone else contributes more and seeks the opposite policy outcome. A more equitable system would give refunds to contributors who do not get their policies adopted (otherwise known as honest bribes). We wonder what would happen if people posted prizes that they would pay directly to the Federal Government if they adopted certain policies.

Posted by Sam Dinkin at 08:37 AM

January 07, 2006
Maybe He Can Tell Us About Warp Drives

I've always thought that Ted Kennedy lived in an alternate universe, but now he admits it:

Briefly, Kennedy rewrote the outcome of the 1964 election. "This nominee was influenced by the Goldwater presidency," he said. "The Goldwater battles of those times were the battles against the civil rights laws." Only then did Kennedy acknowledge that "Judge Alito at that time was 14 years old."

Harry Turtledove ought to hire him for some new story ideas.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:30 PM

They Still Don't Get It

Derb explains science to his fellow conservatives Tom Bethell and Peter Robinson (and no doubt many more, such as Hugh Hewitt):

Evolution is not the end term of a syllogism: it is an explanation for the observed variety of living species--an extremely successful and fruitful explanation. For 100 years and more, every new fact brought to light has conformed to the theory; none have contradicted it. Nor is any alternative theory in play. Nobody is doing science -- tackling problems, uncovering new facts, generating testable hypotheses, making predictions -- on the basis of any other theory. Nobody, nowhere...
...yes, material causes only are admitted in science, because science is the attempt to find material explanations for observed phenomena. Likewise, only hollow balls 2.5 inches in diameter are allowed in tennis, because tennis is a contest played with 2.5 inch diameter hollow balls. Whether other kinds of balls exist is a matter of opinion among tennis players and fans, I suppose; though if a player were to come on court and attempt to serve a basketball across the net, the rest of us would walk away in disgust.

Just so.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:05 PM

How Low Can He Go?

Just when you thought that twisted f**k Fred Phelps, and his "congregation" couldn't get any sicker, guess what they're protesting now?

A hate group based in Topeka, Kan. released a press release on Wednesday entitled “Thank God for 12 dead miners” and promises to picket the funerals for the slain men.
The hate group, which operates as Westboro Baptist Church, runs the website www.godhatesfags.com.

The release states, “God is laughing, mocking and deriding hypocritical fag-infested West Virginia.”

The release also says the WBC will picket the funerals of the miners.

When reached by phone, member Shirley Phelps-Roper confirmed that 10 to 15 picketers were making plans to protest at the funerals of the West Virginia miners.

When asked why the group was planning protests at the miners’ funerals, she responded with questions of her own.

According to the press release, “They died in shame and disgrace, citizens of a cursed nation of unthankful, unholy perverts who have departed from the living God to worship on ‘Brokeback Mountain’ and who have replaced the Bible with ‘The Da Vinci Code.’”

You know, military people tend to be pretty disciplined, so they're relatively safe when they do this at military funerals, but I'm not sure they'll get such a safe reception at a funeral for West Virginia coal miners. And while I don't approve of violence, it will be hard to feel much sympathy if they get exactly what they deserve. These people make Pat Robertson look like a benificent genius by comparison.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:15 AM

Behind The Hype

A few days ago I posted on an article about how boy monkeys and girl monkeys have differing toy preferences. Cathy Young dug into the study a little deeper.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:46 AM