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Bad Guys Versus Context

Arnold Kling writes about his journey from leftism to libertarianism (similar to mine, except his took a lot longer), and the ways in which both philosophies are similar, and those in which they are different:

Far Leftists and libertarianism have much in common.
Libertarians know something that Far Leftists do not.

What I believe that Libertarians have learned is what social psychologists call the Fundamental Attribution Error. The error is to attribute behavior to a person's character when this behavior is in fact based on context. In one classic experiment, the subject is asked to watch a person read a speech that the subject knows that the speaker did not write. Subjects attribute to the person the beliefs contained in the speech.

The Far Left believes that bad policies come from evil motives. In this view, villains, such as powerful corporations, oppose good policies, and political incumbents lack the strength and courage to overcome the villains.

Libertarians believe that context is more important. We believe that government power is inherently corrupting, regardless of who holds leadership positions or how they are influenced. We believe that the market does a relatively good job of channelling self-interest toward socially desirable ends.

This encapsulates my views toward NASA. Contra the strawman views that I'm occasionally falsely accused of holding, it is not a diabolical, hegemonic government agency, run by evil people who want to Keep Humanity Out Of Space (though it's often hard to figure out just what it would be doing differently if it were). It's simply a blundering government bureaucracy seeking rent, as government bureaucracies are wont to do, with many good and smart people working for it responding to the incentives within. Sadly, the administrator seems generally to not understand this.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:50 AM

Ramadanadingdong

Why are these riots, in the capital of the EU, not getting any coverage? When it is reported, why only say "of North African descent"? Can't Reuters or AP at least fake a photo? And this should be of great concern:

The authorities are especially nervous since the Belgian municipal elections are being held on Sunday October 8th. It is likely that the elections will be won by anti-immigrant, “islamophobic” parties. Since ramadan will not be over on October 8th and many immigrants might perceive a victory of the indigenous right (as opposed to their own far-right) as an insult, Muslim indignation over the election results in major cities may spark serious disturbances. According to a poll published today the Vlaams Belang party is set to win 38.6% of the vote in Antwerp (compared to 33.0% in the previous municipal elections six years ago).

Sharia is coming, unless the Europeans grow a spine.

LGF has more.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:27 AM

Meltdown With Keith Olbermann

Iowahawk, in the service of all of those of us still possessed of sanity, and doubtless under the influence of some fell combination of hallucinogens and household cleaning products of which one can only guess, and shudder in vague horror, has been dumpster diving over at MSNBC, and found a first draft of one of KO's deranged rants:

Thus and forthwith in his supposed emeritus years hath Mr. Clinton dispatched a forceful and triumphant action for honesty, and for us; in one virile act at once vital and as courageous as it was a brilliant tour de force of Churchillesquian statesmanship, Mr. Clinton assured his immortality as the sage of this dark time, the sexually electric love child begotten of a tryst between Voltaire, Thomas Moore, Gandhi and Ron Jeremy. Had He witnessed the selfless magnificence of the former president’s honesty, Christ Himself would have been inspired to rip His very hands free of their crucifixial spikes, switch the channel to ESPN-Palestine, and punch Himself in His nards out of unworthiness.
So thus let us therefore follow in the path of our blessed Saviour and Redeemer who suffered for us on the Fox. Let us reflect on His trying, how he tried, and His many trying trials. We must ask, “what would Clinton try?”

Careful. Hilariously dumb sports metaphors abound.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:57 AM

September 27, 2006
The Corn Mafia

With oil prices plunging, and new discoveries occurring, it's time to take a fresh look at the ethanol boondoggle.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 04:07 PM

Meanwhile, In The Pacific

Speaking of hurricanes, while the Atlantic remains quiet, the biggest storm of the season so far is pounding the Phillippines, and due to hit Manila directly. It unexpectedly went from a tropical storm to a Category 4 typhoon in twenty-four hours. It just shows that we have a long way to go to be able to predict these things. It also shows that we don't pay much attention to tropical cyclones unless they affect the US, because I haven't seen anyone reporting it.

Anyway, the lack of predictability brings up our immediate dilemma. We're about to go out of town for ten days. Should we shutter up before we leave (which would be a royal pain, amidst the other packing)? It seems unlikely that there will be a storm that hits south Florida during the first week of October, but you never know.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:52 AM

Don't Know Much About History

Not only the public school system, but universities are failing to teach American history and civics.

Among college seniors, less than half--47.9%--correctly concluded that "We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal" was from the Declaration of Independence. More than half did not know that the Bill of Rights prohibits the governmental establishment of an official religion, and "55.4 percent could not recognize Yorktown as the battle that brought the American Revolution to an end" (more than one quarter believing that it was the Civil War battle of Gettysburg that had ended the Revolution).

Of course, a lot of these things they should have been taught in high school, but weren't.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:11 AM

The Rovian Plot Continues

Bush's refusal to relinquish power diabolically marches on.

First it was low unemployment. Then he made the gas prices fall, no doubt in connivance with his oil buddies. Then he got Rove to turn off the hurricane machine. And now, through machinations unknown, but probably having something to do with Skull and Bones, he's conspired to bring the Dow within fifteen points of an all-time high.

How much more devastation can we allow this evil man to wreak on our beleagered nation?

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:46 AM

A Woman Of Mass Instruction

Dennis Wingo has some thoughts on Anousheh Ansari's excellent adventure.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:29 AM

Say I'm Peaceful Or I'll Kill You

More on the irony of the Muslim world's reaction to the Pope's speech.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:16 AM

September 26, 2006
Anousheh's Flight

Keith Cowing has been critical of the overhyping of all the firsts. In that context, he has an interesting posting to her blog.

Bravo.

[Via Robin, who is apparently managing Anousheh's blog]

Posted by Rand Simberg at 04:38 PM

Space And Society

Dwayne Day has a good rundown on a conference I missed last week because I was attending one on the left coast.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:38 AM

The Mask Falls

Dick Morris writes that the public finally got to see the private Bill Clinton that those who worked for him saw. He also takes apart his disingenuous strawmen and falsehoods.

Apparently, the times that Clinton seems most angry and finger poking ("I did not have sex with that woman, Ms. Lewinski") are the times that he's most vociferously defending his lies.

[Update at 4 PM EDT]

Paul Sperry recalls his own encounter with an enraged Bill Clinton:

What happened over the next 10 minutes was nothing short of a "scene." The party-goers collapsed in around us. I watched the blood rush to Clinton's gargantuan face as he launched into a tirade against ex-Republican National Committee Chairman Haley Barbour, the FBI, Bob Dole and Republicans in general, similar to his Sunday attack on right-wingers and Fox News and Rupert Murdoch and Karl Rove during the Wallace interview. All the while, he tried to intimidate me by getting in my face, just as he did Wallace.
Clinton's not just intellectually intimidating, he's physically imposing. He's tall (6 feet 2 inches) and big-boned. Luckily, I'm the same height and was able to stand toe-to-toe and eye-to-eye with him. I'll never forget the maniacal look in his bloodshot eyes. There was a moment, fleeting, where I sensed he wanted to try to take a swipe at me. His volcanic temper, hidden so well from the public by his handlers, erupted less than 12 inches from my eyes.

[Update at 6 PM EDT]

Myrna Blythe says that Bill is Hillary's biggest problem.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:07 AM

Islamophilia

Lileks condenses all of the foolishness of the multi-culti left on our war of cultures into one neat column:

See, the real problem is the West and its bluenose brigade, its Wal-Marts and Hummers and Big Gulp lifestyles. The Christianists, as some clever equivocators call them, are an impediment to Utopia as great as the terrorists. No less a philosopher than Rosie O'Donnell said so on "The View" recently, proclaiming Christian fundamentalists and Islamicists equal threats to America. They're both judgmental — boo, hiss! — and that makes them equal.
O'Donnell had a point, one supposes. Using the legislative process to pass faith-based initiatives, driving jets into skyscrapers: madness, everywhere.

At the risk of making a generalization: The secular right seems more tolerant of Christianity, and skeptical toward large swaths of Islam. The secular left often seems annoyed and contemptuous towards American religion — unless the pastor on the dais insists Jesus would have been a board member of Planned Parenthood — and oddly protective of Islam. Not because they believe in it; heavens, no. Some progressives are simply besotted by any civilization not their own.

Others have no vocabulary to oppose its more radical manifestations, because, well, we cannot judge other cultures. (Unless they're in the American South.) Others are less concerned by Islamicists because they have greater dislike for the people who oppose radical Islam, who are probably bigots. (Boo, hiss!) When those theo-neos get tough on radical Islam, it's just a convenient mask for their dislike of the Scary Non-Christian Dusky Hordes. Besides, what about the Crusades and the Inquisition? Huh? OK, then.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:48 AM

More On Rocketplane Kistler

Taylor Dinerman had an article in yesterday's issue of The Space Review, but it doesn't have the latest news about the OSC deal falling apart.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:16 AM

Weightless Surgery

This experiment doesn't make a lot of sense to me, if they're really trying to understand what surgery will be like in weightlessness:

Whizzing above southwest France aboard a specially modified Airbus, strapped-down surgeons will attempt to remove a fatty tumor from the forearm of a volunteer in a three-hour operation.
The Airbus A300 Zero-G, based in Bordeaux, is designed to perform roller coaster-like maneuvers that simulate weightlessness. It will make about 30 such parabolas during the flight.

The problem is that you only get about twenty-five seconds of weightlessness at a time. In between, you get two or more gees as you do the pullup maneuver going in and the pullout on the way down. So in addition to probably making the surgeons nauseous, they'll have to deal with tools being pulled down in the high gees (and any fluids will also be pooled, rather than continuously floating). I really don't think that it will usefully replicate the problems of surgery in a continuous weightless environment (and it really is a problem). This is the kind of research that has to be performed on ISS, or some other orbital facility.

I also found this a little strange:

The patient, Philippe Sanchot, and the six-person medical team underwent training in zero-gravity machines, much like those astronauts use, to prepare for the operation.

What "zero-gravity machines" are they talking about? I'd like to get one.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:36 AM

Losing World Sympathy

Iowahawk has found an early draft of the Arizona memorial design.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:22 AM

September 25, 2006
Top Or Bottom?

I am increasingly running into problems with email communications. My normal posting style (as established by ancient Internet rules, and my email software configuration (Eudora)) is that the response comes above, and I reply below. Unfortunately, many people seem to have adapted the Microsoft/AOL/Morondujour standard of top responding. This becomes a mess when engaged with an extended email discussion between two people of differing protocols.

I find it very frustrating to do a top post, but if I don't, then it becomes very difficult to find the history of the exchange, since they switch back and forth.

Is there a solution to this problem?

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:27 PM

A New Space Blogger

Not to mention an astrophysics blogger.

I met Louise Riofrio last week at the conference in San Jose. She has a lot of posts, and pictures. And she likes to put herself in the pictures, for an "I was there" feel to it. Keep scrolling.

(Note to readers from the distant future--this is just a link to the blog, not a permalink, so you'll have to dig into the archives for the date of this post.)

She's also going on the blogroll.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 03:24 PM

Irreconcilable Differences

This is interesting news: if this story is true, OSC is pulling out of the deal. I'm guessing they pulled a bait and switch on George French. When they made the original deal with RpK, OSC wasn't expecting a CEV win for Lockheed Martin, but now that they're on the Orion team, the COTS deal doesn't look as good to them, so I'm speculating that they tried to renegotiate it.

It's not clear what this means for the overall COTS deal going forward. I don't know to what degree having OSC in the proposal was a factor in the NASA award. But if they can't raise the money, they'll have to get out of the game, and NASA will have to award another COTS contract to one of the runners up.

[Update a little before 5 PM EDT]

Just to clarify, per the first comment. Why did things change when Lockheed Martin won the Orion contract? OSC was hungry, and they committed to a ten million dollar investment in RpK in order to get a lot of the work on COTS. Once they had their plate full with the Orion work, it didn't look like such a great deal to them any more. They pushed too hard for a do over, and RpK pulled the plug (partly, no doubt, because they didn't want to do business with someone who would renege on a deal).

[Late evening update]

Here is a semi-official statement from RpK:

In June 2006, Rocketplane Kistler and Orbital Sciences initiated discussions regarding a strategic relationship in which Orbital would have both a significant role in the development of the K-1 and a significant financial interest in Rocketplane Kistler.
Rocketplane Kistler has been very pleased with the programmatic and technical interfaces with the Orbital personnel.

However, in recent weeks, Orbital has conditioned investment in Rocketplane Kistler on changes to the K-1 Program that Rocketplane Kistler does not believe are in the best interests of Rocketplane Kistler and would be inconsistent with the goals and objectives of NASA in entering into a Space Act Agreement with Rocketplane Kistler.

As a result, Rocketplane Kistler and Orbital have decided to terminate their strategic relationship.

As part of its planning processes, Rocketplane Kistler has anticipated the possibility that one or more of its contractors may elect not to participate in the K-1 program. While the company regrets Orbital's decision, the decision will not impair the ability of the company to meet its obligations to NASA under the SAA. Among other things, we are increasing near term RpK staffing plans for conducting SE&I related activities that were previously planned for Orbital. RpK is also continuing discussions with several potential industry strategic partners who have recently approached Rocketplane Kistler about participating in SE&I and other development and operational areas of interest on the K1. We anticipate completing those discussions in the very near future and finalizing appropriate agreements that will provide the best strategic and economic value to Rocketplane Kistler.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:20 PM

How Do You Check Their Pulse?

A continuous-flow artificial heart:

Frazier and his team have implanted pairs of commercially available ventricular-assist de-vices* into calves that had their hearts removed. The researchers say the de-vices* were able to pump blood and respond to the animals' needs based on their activities. "You put this in cattle and they stand up and moo and eat and wonder why everyone is looking at them so weird," says William Cohn, a collaborator on the research and director of minimally invasive surgical technology at the Texas Heart Institute.
...Cohn hopes that in the future, artificial heart technology will become much safer and easier to use, broadening the potential pool of patients. "It wouldn't surprise me if at the 2050 Olympics, there were standard and modified [competitor] divisions," he says.

Ahhh, life in the twenty-first century.

* Note: misspelling deliberate. For some weird reason, MT won't allow me to create a post with the word "dev i ces" in it. The script actually breaks.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:21 AM

September 24, 2006
Executive Jet "Liberals"

Debra Saunders writes about the sham of the environmentalist liberal glitteratti:

Last week, they flew to their Mecca, the Clinton Global Initiative conference in New York. For the left-leaning and loaded, this is the meet that has it all -- the mega-rich paying to be seen caring about poor people and the environment, while posing for photos with former President Clinton.
You see, they care so much more about the environment than President Bush because they support the Kyoto global warming pact, which they believe would save the planet from greenhouse gases, if only Bush had not rejected it. (Never mind that Clinton never asked the Senate to ratify the pact, probably because senators voted 95 to 0 for a resolution rejecting any treaty that exempted China and India.)

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:07 PM

Clinched

The Tigers are in the playoffs with today's win against Kansas City--they're guaranteed to at least get in as the AL wild card. But it could be a neck and neck race with the Twins down to the last game for the division title. Detroit is playing the Rangers, and then gets to beat up on the Royals again, but Minnesota gets to play the Royals for a while, then finish up with the White Sox. Detroit has an arguably easier final schedule, and they've finally started hitting again, so they've still got a good shot at the title. The good news, though, is that if they can keep hitting the way they have been (and hopefully it's not all lousy Royals pitching) they might actually be able to acquit themselves well post season.

This is a big morale boost for the Motor City, which badly needs one.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 03:25 PM

September 23, 2006
Back

I was at Ames most of the day yesterday, with no net access, and then took a red eye back from SFO via LAX. Probably no posting today, because there's a lot of stuff to catch up on around here.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:42 PM

September 22, 2006
Anti-Krugman 2:
Single Horrible Payor

Paul Krugman today attempts to answer the question, "Why is the insurance industry growing rapidly, even as it covers fewer Americans?"

In 2005, the percent of uninsured was 15.9%. In 2000, it was 14.0%. In 2000, private insurers covered 72.4% of Americans or 204 million. In 2005, they covered 67.7% or 201 million.

Total number of covered individuals increased from 243 million to 249 million. From 2000-2005, the number employed rose from 137 million to 142 million. The number unemployed rose from 6 million to 8 million.

Could it be that we were experiencing a boom in 2001 and coverage peaked as a percent and that it will rise again if we have another boom with 4% unemployment? The percent of the population working has dropped from 67.1% to 66%.

Could it be that people are feeling secularly more healthy and feel like they can go without health insurance? Between 1999 and 2004, life expectancy at birth has risen from 76.7 years to 77.9 years. At least average health overall is improving by that indicator.

Could it be that the sector is over-regulated? CATO estimates that about 1/6 of daily uninsured would buy insurance if it was less heavily regulated. That would allow health care deregulation to take us from 15.9% to 13.3% uninsured and allow everyone else to save a total of $170 billion a year or $680 per covered individual per year or about 1.4% of GDP.

In short, insurers are covering more people. They are helping increase the average lifespan of all Americans. They are doing it despite a substantial burden of regulation.

Many of the uninsured are immigrants and illegal aliens. There were 8 million immigrants with a little under half of them illegal settled in the US between 2000 and 2005.

I would prefer health savings accounts to insurance. If people shop aggressively because they get to keep the last dollar they would spend on health care instead of having it heavily subsidized and pay only $0.20 on the dollar for their care like an old fashioned blue cross/blue shield plan, people would get much more value for their money. Krugman should know as an economist that if something is free it gets overused and ends up in shortage. If it is heavily subsidized, the value of the marginal dollar of use is equal to the price paid, not the cost. That is, at the margin we are wasting up to 80% of our spending. Health savings accounts--not single payor--will get us to stop wasting health service and start imposing market rigor on providers.

Single payor is a monopoly. We can't exit any more if we switch to single payor. I want choice. Choice breeds research and development and pain amongst bad care givers. Was phone service better value for the money under Ma Bell? Competition is good. Don't squander it.

Krugman also states:

Every other wealthy nation manages to provide almost all its citizens with guaranteed health insurance, while spending less on health care than we do. And there’s no mystery why: we’re paying the price for pointless, destructive reliance on private insurers. Medicare, which is a universal health insurance program for older Americans, spends less than 2 cents of every dollar on administrative costs, leaving 98 cents to pay for medical care. By contrast, private insurance companies spend only around 80 cents of each dollar in premiums on medical care; much of the remaining 20 cents is spent denying insurance to those who need it.

That 2% of every dollar on administrative costs is suspicious. Merely complying with the payroll tax code costs employers $100 billion or 6% out of $1.6 trillion collected. That's nearly 1% of GDP. I can attest as an employer that I do spend about a few minutes every week filling out federal tax, medicare and unemployment withholding amounts and some hours at tax time compiling them all. I would prefer if there were just one line for what the feds got instead of several for the employee and several for the employer.

What good are other countries health care "guarantees"? Canada has a life expectancy at birth of 80.2 according to the CIA World Fact Book for the entire population. That's over two years higher than the US at 77.9. So far so good. On the other hand, our per capita GDP is $42k to their $34k. Would you rather get an extra two years or an extra $500k to live on while you are alive? People vote with their feet. There are 678,000 in the US born in Canada. About twice as many people come to live in the US born in Canada as to move to live in Canada from the US. That makes a Canadian about 20 times as likely to come to live in the US as a US person to come to live Canada because Canada is 1/9 the population.

I agree with Krugman that bankrupting people to get them to qualify for free care is not such a good system. I would use market means to obtain provider of last resort health savings account services for the tweeners who don't qualify for government care. I would shift from extreme regulation to a free market and instead of free medicare services give people access to low interest government loans. The Government loans could survive bankruptcy and the payments on the loans deducted from tax refunds and social security payments.

One parting cheap shot. Krugman started with “When Steve and Leslie Shaeffer’s daughter, Selah, was diagnosed at age 4 with a potentially fatal tumor in her jaw, they figured their health insurance would cover the bulk of her treatment costs.” But “shortly after Selah’s medical bills hit $20,000, Blue Cross stopped covering them and eventually canceled her coverage retroactively.” quoted from LA Times and later said "you do wonder how the people who cut off the Schaeffers can look themselves in the mirror".

The next paragraph of the LA Times article says "The company accused the Shaeffers of failing to disclose in their coverage application an undiagnosed bump on Selah's chin and physician visits for croup. Had that been disclosed, the company said in a letter, it would not have insured Selah."

Perhaps the doctor did know that the bump was potentially fatal and told the Schaeffers to go out and get insurance, wrote something inconclusive and told the family to get a second opinion. If so, can the doctor look in the mirror? It would be theft from the rich to give to the poor, just like if BC/BS employee violated company policy. How can Krugman look himself in the mirror for condoning grand theft? And what makes Krugman more special than BC/BS? How can Krugman look himself in the mirror for not writing the Schaeffers a check on the spot personally?

Posted by Sam Dinkin at 03:10 PM

September 21, 2006
The First Space Hotel

Bigelow announced at lunch that he will be putting up a three-person space station in late 2009 or early 2010, about fifty percent bigger than an ISS module. He is putting up a destination in hopes that the transportation will come along (and in order to spur the transportation providers). Station will last for several years. Will be executing contracts in 2008 for transportation contracts to Sundancer. Expects between four and eight trips (people and cargo) per year, after six-month shakedown. Then trips will commence whenever transportation becomes available. 2012 will see the launch of another module providing 500 cubic meters of habitable volume. Will support sixteen launches a year for full utilization (again, cargo and people). Minimum three-week stay, but market limited at ten million, so wants to establish private astronaut program for other nations (this is not news). Make sixty instead of eleven countries with an astronaut corps. Could represent on the order of a billion a year in revenue. Launch estimates from fifty to a hundred million per flight. About time to take human spaceflight from the exclusive domain of governments. Will be changing that in the next half decade.

He also announced that he and Lockmart have a joint agreement to study what it will take to human rate the Atlas V for commercial passenger transport.

A press conference is about to start at which he will have more details and take questions. I'll try to live blog it, despite my lack of mouse.

[Update at start of conference]

Conference with Bob Bigelow and George Sowers from Lockheed Martin. Bigelow saying that he's happy to simply take questions. Dr. Sowers saying that they're pleased to be working with a pragmatic visionary like Bob Bigelow to get the human spaceflight industry started. Handing a model of the Atlas V with the Begelow payload on top. Two-stage, one engine per stage, most reliable Atlas ever built.

Bigelow saying that he's been looking at the Atlas for a while, and impressed with the family track record. Has a lot of faith in the people of Lockheed.

In response to question from David Livinston, this will be handled by ULA if ULA happens, won't be outside.

Warren Ferster asks if Bigelow will continue to self finance. He says yes, and he's looking for another job (joke). Has sufficient funds to go through 2010-2012, but wants to start to establish relationships with other companies, because he expects it to be huge. Will be looking for joint venture opportunities.

Each organization will handle its own contribution to feasibility studies, but Sowers says that Atlas V human rating is not a new subject. They have a lot of info to bring to bear.

In response to a question from me, expects to use NASA standards for human rating absent a large document from the FAA.

TBD situation as to who will build crew module. Bigelow is providing destination, and focusing their resources on that. Have had conversation with various people. Bigelow can't say what cost situation will be, but thinks it's between three and twenty millions.

Sowers won't directly answer my question as to whether or not Lockheed Martin is considering a variant of Orion as a crew module. Says that discussions have taken place, and that there are options, and the focus of this announcement is on the launch vehicle and destination.

Not considering any launch site other than the Cape currently.

In response to question from me, says that they currently plan to be at forty degrees inclination for "early out" options in the US (didn't quite understand this comment from Bob--didn't seem to be ascent abort, but rather some kind of "early" return from orbit).

Definitely don't want to discuss cost (particularly with respect to the module).

Wired reporter asking how many people. First module is three, second is five, for a total of nine. Want to reduce costs initially as low as possible to spawn industry and create demand. Will be aggressive with low lease cost (Bigelow).

Sundancer will be as close to forty as possible (response to Warren Ferster). Won't know specifically until they know launch provider and location. Will be able to change altitude to accommodate launch provider. BA-330 is name for the second module.

Considering EM tether and other methods for maneuvering in response to question from me. Can't specify electric power level yet.

Conference over.

Thoughts and analysis later.

[A couple minutes later]

I think that this has upstaged the major Orion discussion at the plenary this morning. I haven't been to an AIAA conference in a while, but this is the first one that I've been to that had some of the feel of a NewSpace conference.

[Update a little while later]

Apparently NASASpaceflight.com had the story earlier (I've been too busy reporting to know what's going on, though I was hearing rumors in the morning). Also, there was some speculation in comments in my previous post. Clark Lindsey has thoughts. as does Jon Goff, even if I don't have time to gather mine right now.

Shutting down the computer now. Back later, probably tonight, after the conference is over. Be nice in the comments section.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:54 PM

Conference Reporting

Yes, sorry, I know that it's been non-existent (other than deleted whining about wireless problems and the overwhelmingness of it). But Bob Bigelow is the luncheon speaker, and he's going to make some kind of news announcement at 1:30, so I'll try to get the word out on that, at least.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:08 AM

Why Are We Afraid?

Hard to disagree, at least for me:

Culturally and religiously we are on the defensive in this War on Terror. And it makes no sense to me. We accept immoral expressions of outrage by Muslims across the world and yet fail to have any of our own justified moral indignation at their actions. Instead we apologize for causing their reactions. Perhaps I should apologize to my four year old for his little temper tantrum this morning and for the time he slugged his sister in the face with a toy.
We hold the high ground - we believe in individual liberty, we believe in religious tolerance, we believe in women’s rights, we believe in a narrow window for the just use of war - and we should not be afraid to stand tall and to express our outrage at the insane reactions we are seeing across the Muslim world. In fact their actions prove the point made previously in Danish cartoons and the quote from Pope Benedict. It is all well and good to be sensitive but it is quite another thing when Muslims actually manifest what we criticize. It is quite another thing when there is lack of reciprocity in Muslim treatment of Jews and Christians. They have yet to practice what they preach - except for the spread of Islam by the sword and the convert or be killed part.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:52 AM

Crippled

Light posting due to being overwhelmed. One of the reasons these AIAA conferences drive me crazy is that it's not like trying to drink from a firehose--it's like trying to drink from Niagara Falls. There are a dozen or more sessions going on simultaneously, plus trying to network with various people in the hallways. There's simply no time to sit down and write anything. This is compounded by the fact that I lost my mouse yesterday, and dealing with a touchpad really slows me down. And I have no time until after the conference tomorrow to run over to Fry's and get a new one.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:40 AM

September 20, 2006
Warning To Deranged Anchors

Particularly those on cable news networks struggling to get enough viewers to even count as being in last place. Do not exude idiotic commentary if there's any chance that James Lileks will hear of it:

Hear ye: if ever I announce that the lightning is sending me messages about how the government seeks to control what I think, please have me commited for paranoid schizophrenia.

He is also spectacularly unimpressed with Ahmadinejad coddlers.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:08 AM

September 19, 2006
Media Unsavvy

[Note: The dangers of blogging.

I put up a regrettable post last night. The title of it is all that remains (well, also comments), but it takes on a whole new, and appropriate meaning. As I said in it, I was grumpy from lack of sleep, and frustrated from a seeming inability to post all day, but that's not an excuse. I can't even claim that I had overimbibed, but that's not an excuse, either--no one (at least as far as I can remember) has ever strapped me down, cackling, and thrust a one-gallon funnel down my gullet. Short version of it: I was childishly whining because I couldn't log on from the conference.

I'm not deleting it completely because that always seems a little Orwellian, but it was, as Keith correctly notes in the comments that I am leaving up, an epistle that the AIAA neither would or should appreciate, and it should not remain on the web (this note is mainly for those who might still manage to read it if Google was so unfortunately overdiligent as to have cached it last night).

Even if it were true (I understand now that it was not), it was completely unjustified, and simply a symptom of how spoiled we (or at least I) have become in the early twenty-first century, with expectations, if not outright demands, of the instant gratification of ubiquitous abundant bandwidth. I have had my differences with AIAA over the years, but they are a vital institution to this industry. Like NASA, they are staffed and supported by great people operating under the constraints of their institution. This conference in particular is great (of which I'll write more later), and despite that churlish growl, I do appreciate them much.

Mark Twain once wrote, "A dog will not bite the hand that feeds him. This is the principal difference between a man and a dog." Although you can't always tell on the Internet, I am not a dog.]

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:43 PM

Made It

But the plane got in at 10:30, and it took me over an hour to get my luggage. Didn't get to bed until after 1 AM. I'm headed over to the conference, so maybe I'll check in from there, bandwidth permitting.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:47 AM

September 18, 2006
Off To California

But not LA, this time. Do you know the way to San Jose? I do. Fly into SFO via Dallas, rent car, and down the 101.

Excuse me. Make that down 101, just so the locals don't confuse me with one of those degenerate hicks from southern California. In Sherman Oaks, it's the 101, but no definite article is required in Silicon Valley. I've always wondered, driving up, just where it loses the "the." I'm guessing somewhere around Paso Robles.

Anyway, that digression aside, I may do some conference blogging, but I'm there to schmooze mainly. I will feel an obligation to write up interesting things that go on there at some point, though. I have a press pass waiting. I hope.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:02 PM

The Sick Man Of The Midwest

Rich Lowry, on the self-imposed economic woes of my home state. In a lot of ways, Michigan reminds me of California. A place of great national beauty, being run into the ground by its elected officials.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:51 AM

Good News On The Life Extension Front

The Methusaleh Foundation just got a major donation.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:52 AM

Anti-Krugman 1

Paul Krugman brought some great analysis of economics, the dismal science, to the New York Times Op-Ed page, but has consistently beat the drum in recent years for being dismal about every Bush decision and inaction. I am going to start an anti-Krugman column to take apart each criticism. These antibodies might allow us to have a debate that would allow both less reactive talking points for Democrats and more constructive criticism for the Administration.

The Krugman column is behind the Times Select wall. The cheapest way to pierce this wall is to order home delivery of the Times and go on regular three-month vacations.

Today's Krugman column has the title "King of Pain".

Starting with the ending:

The fact is that for all his talk of being a “war president,” Mr. Bush has been conspicuously unwilling to ask Americans to make sacrifices on behalf of the cause — even when, in the days after 9/11, the nation longed to be called to a higher purpose. His admirers looked at him and thought they saw Winston Churchill. But instead of offering us blood, toil, tears and sweat, he told us to go shopping and promised tax cuts.
Only now, five years after 9/11, has Mr. Bush finally found some things he wants us to sacrifice. And those things turn out to be our principles and our self-respect.

World War 2 saw US government spending soar to nearly 40% of GDP and I'm guessing higher for Churchill's UK. This was from 3% in 1925. That kind of increase in Government spending was good to hoist us out of the depression by our own bootstraps after Hoover mucked up monetary policy and banking and securities law. It is hugely inflationary once the economy can demand the goods that it produces as optimism returns. Thus Churchill requested that people make sacrifices to avoid crippling inflation. Bush on the other hand is spending about $400-$500 billion on Iraq and far less on the War on Terror before the Iraq invasion. That amounts to 3-4% of GDP. So much for monetary and goods sacrifice. At the time we were worried about deflation. The backdrop here was a global slump in Japan and Europe. They were experiencing a bigger demographic oldster overhang and lower birth and immigration rates than the US making our demographic bulge look positively peachy in comparison. GDP doesn't carry over. If an individual saves, great. If the whole country saves and does not invest and spend, nothing gets built for the savers to use later and the production is wasted. So all of our catchup savers for retirement left us with people willing to work extra without other people who wanted to spend extra. Exports were out. Thus a fiscal stimulus was called for in retrospect. (My opinion is Bush was lucky with the timing of his tax cut and prescription drug benefit.) You need not know this about the economy. Krugman knows this well and is distorting it on purpose to make the Bush tax cut and increased deficit and lack of economic sacrifice seem suboptimal in retrospect. A Democrat might have chosen subsidizing national health care instead, but to do neither would have resulted in unutilized capacity.

As for tears, World War 2 saw 400,000 deaths of US servicemen (about 2.5% or 1 in 40 of the 16 million). Iraq saw 3,000 deaths (out of about 1 million active duty or 1 in 300 of active duty. But also as percent of US population it fell from 0.3% to 0.001%. So tears are down also.

How about sweat? Keep an 1/2 a tank of gas in your car and buy some duct tape? Filling up your car twice as often which was recommended by Ridge at Homeland Security would be an extra 15 minutes a week which would reduce GDP by about 0.6%. Inform on your friends? Sweat the telephone and library data until it confesses? In retrospect, that didn't help us much.

The technique Krugman is using here is a multiple untruth. By stating an incorrect premise, Krugman makes it very difficult to sort out what the incorrect nature of the statement is and the correction must be quite lengthy to refute the false implication and will perforce be neither glib nor intuitive.

Krugman uses this to paint an awful president doing awful management of the war on terror. Specifically, it is trying to do torture to expand Presidential power.

Let’s be clear what we’re talking about here. According to an ABC News report from last fall, procedures used by C.I.A. interrogators have included forcing prisoners to “stand, handcuffed and with their feet shackled to an eye bolt in the floor for more than 40 hours”; the “cold cell,” in which prisoners are forced “to stand naked in a cell kept near 50 degrees,” while being doused with cold water; and, of course, water boarding, in which “the prisoner is bound to an inclined board, feet raised and head slightly below the feet,” then “cellophane is wrapped over the prisoner’s face and water is poured over him,” inducing “a terrifying fear of drowning.”

First, Congress can outlaw this. Second, the Geneva Conventions outlaws all interrogation of prisoners, not just aggressive interrogation. Remember name, rank and serial number from old TV programs? Third, terrorists do not abide the Geneva Conventions and assault civilians on purpose, kill captured soldiers and mutilate them, don't wear insignia and don't provide all the other civilized niceties. Can we all agree that soldiers that break the laws of war should get the least common denominator between prisoners of war and common criminals? That is, they can't be released until the "war" is over and they can be questioned. The Supreme Court does not disagree with this. The rest is up to Congress.

Personally, I think it is a poor political strategy to lock up enemy combatants and throw away the key. It will not be so easy to declare a war on terror over. But that puts me in a much much smaller minority than Krugman and Bush are appealing to with their rhetoric.

Back to Krugman. He clearly thinks simulated drowning is cruel and unusual punishment. I agree with him, but that is debatable. I agree with him about the quality of the data recovered being low. But we as a polity demanded action against terrorism. This is action and the Administration argues that we have prevented more terrorism. Personally, I think that terrorism is not a big threat to life, liberty or property in this country and with zero major terrorist atrocities in the US since 2001, it's hard to prove the Administration did anything with it's policies pro or con. Pursuit of happiness demanded a big dose of revenge after 9/11/1. Consider these prisoners collateral damage. If so, the collateral damage in the war on terror has been quite low. This does not rise to the rights losses at Manzanar for the Japanese Americans. We are addressing it before the war has even ended.

Credit Bush with poor spin in this area and overly aggressive about Presidential power, deaf to international criticism. Credit Krugman with criticizing the spin and mishandling of the details to the exclusion of the basic points which there would be strong bi-partisan agreement for. The basic points can be spun almost as badly as the Bush policy to the international community. Presidential power is checked. Krugman offers no alternative. (The vacuum gets filled by being an indignant Bush hater giving anti-terrorists little ability to do anything other than vote out realists like Leiberman because they haven't done enough and they have done too much already).

The rhetorical techniques are to use the specific to imply an overarching evil generalization. Krugman is quite effective and will be difficult to neutralize.

Posted by Sam Dinkin at 08:27 AM

Code Pink Has No Shame

But they should:

"You did not treat my brothers with respect. You refused to acknowledge them, like you're refusing to acknowledge me. You mocked their southern accents. You literally turned your backs on them, like you're turning your backs on me tonight.
"You should be ashamed of the way you treated those soldiers. Ashamed! If that is what you think supporting the troops means -- turn your backs on them when they come to talk to you -- then you are either a fool, a coward, or a hypocrite. I leave it to each of you to decide which word fits you best.

"The charade is over. We all know that you do not support the troops. If you did, you wouldn't turn your backs on them. You disrespected my brothers, on our front porch. So let me be absolutely clear: You may have a slip of paper from the City of Washington recognizing your right to stand here, but you are not welcome here.

Speaking truth to...well, not power, but to self-righteous foolishness.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:44 AM

Truth In Flying

I'd enjoy this pre-flight announcement a lot more than the stuff they usually say. Speaking of which, I'm flying to San Jose this afternoon to attend Space 2006. Blogging may be light this week.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:29 AM

The Space Review

Bob Clarebrough says that space settlers should take some lessons from the Polynesians, and Jeff Foust writes about the continuing debate over the term "space tourist."

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:21 AM

Working With Fallaci

James Gibbons has some memories from Apollo.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:13 AM

"A Stupid War"

Michael Totten has an interesting interview with an Israeli about Lebanon and Israeli politics.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:53 AM

September 17, 2006
An Open Letter To The Pope

From Catholic Ed Morrissey:

If Islam is ever to peacefully co-exist with other faiths in the manner that Christendom finally learned how to do, then it has to start abiding questions and criticisms without resorting to violence. Islam has to learn to persuade and to attract people through reason, not through forced conversions and coexistence through violent supremacy. Muslim leaders around the world still believe that our faith can only exist at their sufferance, and any question of their doctrinal beliefs has to be met with violence or demands for apologies, not with rhetoric, facts, and reason.

I've heard no denunciations from any Muslim of the forced conversions of the Fox News reporters a couple weeks ago. If anyone is aware of any, please let me know.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:22 PM

Overhyped

That's what Keith Cowing says that Anousheh Ansari's flight is being.

I agree. It's great that she's flying, and I hope that it provides useful inspiration, but Space Adventures has gone overboard. I'll be much more interested in what she does with her money and time when she gets back, in terms of helping private enterprise.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:25 PM

She's No Oriana

The Anchoress compares La Fallaci and Rosie O'Donnell:

So great is my respect for Fallaci, that to mention Rosie O’ Donnell in the same post feels like dipping roses into a land-fill. Both are fragrant but one rises in graceful beauty and the other simply emits noxious gas.
But I must mention O’ Donnell, because while she claims herself a woman of the left, she is the polar opposite of Fallaci, and I cannot let Fallaci go without focusing for a second on how far the left as devolved. Where resistance-member Fallaci was intelligently confrontational, trendy-cause committed O’ Donnell is merely shrill. Where Fallaci dared to look at the effects of Christianity and Islam on civilizations and see real differences and moral distinctions, O’Donnell casts a vapid, bigoted glance and calls them all cake, declaring: “Radical Christianity Is Just As Threatening As Radical Islam.”

After all, she doesn’t have to think. The thinking has been done for her by her co-ideologues. All she has to do is fall in line and parrot.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:21 PM

Oh, Well

At least there's one good football team in Michigan. Maybe the Wolverines should have played Chicago today. The Lions are already down 17-zip in the first half.

[Update with three minutes to go in the game]

Down 34-7. Hey, they can still come back. They only need one touchdown every forty-give seconds.

And the Tigers are losing to the Orioles in the bottom of the eighth, with Minnesota winning. so their lead in the Central Division will be down to one game. Looks like they're going to blow it, and they may not even make it as a wild card.

Glad we at least have the Wolverines today.

[Update a little after 4 PM EDT]

Hey, they Tigers have tied it up at eight each in the bottom of the eighth. Maybe they can pull it out.

[Update at 4:30]

They're in extra innings. Unfortunately, in the top of the tenth, the Twins have a man on second with nobody out. A single would bring in the go-ahead run.

[Couple minutes later]

Crap. The Tigers' bull pen is letting them down. Two runs in, bases loaded, with only one out. They're going to have to have a heck of an inning at the bottom of the tenth to recover.

[Update]

Sigh. You know, maybe it's just as well. The way they've been playing for the last few weeks, they'd never make it through the playoffs anyway.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:30 AM

A Sad Age

Victor Davis Hanson has thoughts on Oriana Fallaci and the Pope.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:45 AM

Housing Prices: Chicken Little vs. Pollyanna

Chicken Little
"The sky is falling"

We want a housing crisis so the Republicans won't get re-elected

Housing price rises moderating

Overhang of variable rate loans from boom

Middle income wages stagnant in real terms

Evidence of flipping in hot markets suggesting bubble

Pollyanna
"what a perfectly lovely, lovely house! How awfully glad you must be you're so rich!"

No capital gains taxes

Thick mortgage backed securities market

Fewer new buyers chasing money

Falling real estate commissions

Rising incomes

Changing commuting patterns

"breathtaking profit"

Active Federal Reserve Board

Industry sensitive to interest rates

Rising population

Middle income wages rising in money terms

Median age rising

Family size falling

Rise in ownership of 2nd homes

Rise in telecommuting

Home entertainment such as video games eclipsing movies

Capitalization and standardization of home building industry (e.g. Toll Brothers)

A moderation in an accellerator suggests just a slow-down in the rate of growth of housing prices to me, but don't listen to me--I just cashed out a 40% capital gain in my last house tax free and locked in a super low rate from a private equity mortgage lender and didn't use a real estate agent to buy and used a cut commission agent to sell. Clearly I'm a Pollyanna.

Posted by Sam Dinkin at 05:35 AM

September 16, 2006
Nonviolence

How could the "Religion of Peace™" be against what the Pope said?

Glenn Reynolds explains.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:26 PM

Wow

Still a lot of game to go (it's early in the second quarter) but Notre Dame is looking pretty overrated. They haven't gotten a first down.

Note, I'm not saying Michigan is that great, but at least it looks like they may get through September without a loss, if they continue like this, and that's an accomplishment in itself.

[Update a few minutes later]

27-7 with a lot of time remaining in the first half (two of the Michigan touchdowns were off turnovers). And the only reason that Notre Dame got the touchdown was a (rare) interception off Henne--they still haven't gotten a first down, I don't think. The Irish have to be in shock.

[Near the end of the half]

The Irish finally managed to put together a drive. 34-13 at the half. I have to think that the Michigan defense is letting up, because they're becoming complacent. Don't do that. You're playing God's team. Or at least they think they are.

I'd love to be a fly on the wall in both locker rooms at half time.

[Update at the end of the third quarter]

40-13, Wolverines.

Still thinking that the Irish were overranked, because they were the Irish. But I'm sure that Michigan will be overranked as a result.

Still, it's starting to look a lot like 1997...

Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:01 PM

Huh?

Can anyone else figure out what or who Jon Goff is talking about here? Because I sure can't:

NASA figures that making our nation look like petty hypocrates regarding freedom of speech is a better plan. Inflammatory cartoons about another relgion? No problem. Publically calling for nuking another country off the map? No worries. Wearing the flag of your native land on a spacesuit that you bought for a spaceflight that you paid several million dollars of your own hard earned cash? Sorry, no can do boss.
It's been sad seeing friends who have told me ithat they'd rather just see Iran and most of the rest of the Middle East nuked off the face of the map, all the sudden trying to turn Ansari's flight into some sort of political event. Let someone who actually cares about the Iranian people as an end, rather than merely a means, say what she wants to say. It'll probably do far more lasting good for the people of Iran (and the rest of us too) than all of the words that the spacenut side of Right Blogostan would prefer to put in her mouth.

First of all, there's an implication that the same people are advocating different policies under different circumstances (otherwise the talk about "hypocrisy" would make no sense). But NASA didn't publish, or approve the publication of any cartoons of which I'm aware, or publicly call for nuking any countries off the map. In fact, I'm unaware of anyone doing that, other than Jacques Chirac, but maybe I just missed it.

I'm also unaware that anyone who did publish the cartoons, or defended the right of the publishers to do so, has cheered, or even noticed NASA actions with regard to the Ansari flag issue.

(And I'm not sure what Jon's point is with regard to the cartoons--he calls them offensive, but that's only because some Muslims consciously decided to be offended when the cameras were around. What was much more offensive, as is the case with the Pope's recent speech, was all of the violence and death threats over cartoons. Is it only pictures of Allah that offend Jon, or is he also outraged by crucifixi in urine and pictures of the virgin painted with elephant dung?)

So who is it that Jon is kvetching about here? (I'm also curious to know which of his friends would like to see Iran and most of the Middle East being nuked off the map.)

Here's a suggestion. Don't blog when angry. You don't make much sense.

[Update on Saturday evening]

Jon, who is an extremely standup guy, has second thoughts, as I expected he would. I should be so reconsiderate.

I do think, though, that he should leave the original words up for posterity, with accompanying retraction. I correct stuff that I put up, but I don't delete it. Simply removing it (albeit with apology) seems a little too Orwellian to me...

Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:57 PM

Hey, No One Claimed He Was A Good One

The burglar that was strangled by a nurse in her home a few days ago was a hit man.

...after an investigation, police now say the intruder Kuhnhausen strangled was apparently a hit man hired by her estranged husband -- Michael James Kuhnhausen Sr. -- to kill her.
The 58-year-old husband was taken into custody Thursday and charged with conspiracy to commit murder and attempted murder. He was ordered held on $500,000 bail.

Haffey had worked as a custodian under Kuhnhausen at an adult video store, according an affidavit filed by the Multnomah County District Attorney's office.

Guess his new profession didn't work out all that well. Gotta hate when the wacker becomes the wackee. And as for the husband, just goes to show what happens when you go for the low bid.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:24 PM

We Must Prevail

Ed Koch is concerned that we're losing our will to win the war.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:09 AM

No Apologies

Tigerhawk talks about the infantilization of seething Muslims by condescending western elites:

Neither the pope nor the Muslim clerics are the only actors here. Tens of thousands of Muslims chose to act in violence or condone violence yesterday. Millions more supported them in this, the evidence being that Muslim politicians jumped on the bandwagon. These millions of Muslims are hardly candles in the wind, helplessly manipulated by the imams. They chose their religion. They chose their mosque. They chose not to "listen carefully" to the words of the pope. They chose to take to the streets in rage, and they chose to burn and attack and kill perfectly innocent people, all on the say-so of one or another demagogue in a turbin. They are not children, however much the cultural relativists who absolve the rioters and their sympathizers infantalize them. I condemn these people for making bad choices; liberals, such as the editors of the New York Times, refuse to condemn them because they believe that Muslims are incapable of choices. I may deplore the choices of these rioting Muslims, but the New York Times holds them in contempt, regarding them as nothing more than wild animals. Just as we all blame humans who antagonize an animal into a violent response, the New York Times blames Westerners who "sow pain," as if Muslims have the free will of a cornered wolf.
For my part, I am sick of "Muslim rage." Whether inspired by the pope or Danish cartoonists or the clumsy use of the word "crusade" by a Western politician, there is simply no defense for the behavior of these imams and their followers. It is barbaric, and everybody who is not barbaric or an unreconstructed apologist for barbarians knows it. The Muslims who commit arson and mayhem in response to some Westerner speaking his opinion -- and the pope, as leader of the Roman church, is exactly that -- have chosen to act as enemies of reason, peace, and everything that is good in the world.

...Islam needs jihad, which I understand means "struggle." It needs a jihad against illiteracy. It needs a jihad against ignorance. It needs a jihad against sloth. It needs a jihad against corruption. It needs a jihad in support of women, without whom it cannot succeed in the modern world. It needs a jihad against the clerics who have -- allegedly, according to "moderates" -- perverted the truth of its religion. It needs a jihad against its governments -- secular and Islamic -- who have destroyed the future for more than a billion people. It needs a jihad against despair.

Until I see the arsonists and rioters among Muslims embracing these jihads, I will hold them responsible for the bad choices that they make, including the choice to reject secular education, the choice to destroy rather than construct, the choice to dwell in the past instead of dream about the future, the choice to obsess about Jews rather than wonder how they might emulate the Jews, and the choice to have so little confidence in the power of their own religion that they oppress and condemn and kill those who choose otherwise.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:28 AM

September 15, 2006
More Space Blogging

Anousheh Ansari and Peter Diamandis continue to post over at the new X-Prize blog.

[Update at 4:30 PM EDT]

Here's another interview with her. Note (to those who continue to talk about the "first Muslim woman in space") that she never mentions her religion, or the word religion.

[Saturday morning update]

Alan Boyle has more on the nationality/religion angle.

As to the Iranian flag issue, just out of curiousity, did the flag change when the mullahs took over, or is it currently what it was during the time of the Shah? If not, it would be an interesting statement for her to have a pre-mullah flag. But in general, she seems to be avoiding the politics as much as possible.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:13 AM

Gravitas

Katie Couric has a blog:

Add to that my first piece on 60 Minutes on the illnesses that thousands of first responders are experiencing five years after September 11th. To be a part of that broadcast was needless to say, an enormous thrill. My father called me afterwards and said, “Well, you’re doing what you’ve always wanted to do…reporting for 60 Minutes.” I used to watch the show when I was in high school sitting on the floor in my parents bedroom. I think it’s really what made me want to get into this crazy and wonderful business in the first place. Of course while I was preparing this piece I was in meetings with our producers, going over copy, doing promos, putting my spackle on (it takes a village to make me presentable on television) and helping shape the Evening News. It’s really exciting and really fun. I still can’t believe I’m privileged enough to have this job. One of the first things I said to the crew when we were rehearsing was…”can I ask you guys a question? How did this happen?” The sign off thing has been fun too. The suggestions are great to read, and as I said last night, even Letterman got into the act. Always happy to provide Dave with material! Bob Barker wants me to implore viewers at the end of every broadcast to “have your pets spayed or neutered.” mmmmmmmmmmm…interesting.

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...ditzy.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:06 AM

A Brave Woman

And a great journalist. Oriana Fallaci, rest in peace. Don't know where she'll end up--she was a devout atheist, but unlike many of her (non)religious cohorts, she was able to make the distinction between modern Christianity and the medieval Islamists with whom we are war.

[Update at noon]

Michael Ledeen, who was her friend, has some thoughts. Also, as Monte Davis notes in comments, her book If The Sun Dies is a classic for those interested in space. Perhaps Apogee could do a reprint in her honor, if they could get permission of the estate. And wherever she is now, if she sees Pete Conrad there, maybe she'll finally pay off the bet.

[Update at 5:30 PM EDT]

A more extensive eulogy from Michael Ledeen:

Those who know Italy will recognize Orianna as the quintessential Tuscan, right out of the texts: tough, intellectually brutal, brilliantly and eloquently disparaging of anyone who doesn’t meet impossibly high standards, utterly loyal to “the cause.” Tuscans were the worst fascists and the worst communists, uncompromising, cruel and dogmatic. Happily for us, Orianna’s cause was the pursuit of truth, whatever the political and social consequences. Once considered a fashionable leftists, she positively reveled in her ostracism in later years by her old admirers. She immersed herself in the words of her critics much more than in those of her allies, because she wanted to be able to demolish the criticism. I once spent half a day in her Manhattan town house, deconstructing the attacks against her in the Italian and French press. When we’d been through it all, she laughed happily, and raced to the kitchen to cook lunch.
...Lots of people were surprised to learn that she lived as a virtual recluse in New York City, rather than Florence, but America was a big part of her soul. A real freedom fighter has to love America, and she did, just as she hated America when it failed to meet her high standards. Her writings on America were extraordinary; the words she wrote right after 9/11 deserve to be remembered for a very long time:

The fact is that America is a special country, my dear friend. A country to envy, of which to be jealous…and it is that way because it is born of a spiritual necessity…and of the most sublime human idea: the idea of liberty, or better, of liberty married to the idea of equality…

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:06 AM

September 14, 2006
Great Balls Of Fire!

Jerry Lee Lewis is the last man standing.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 03:02 PM

Tragedy Of The Century

I just heard on the teevee that Anna Nicole Smith has suffered from a mammary loss.

The poor woman. First her son dies, and now this. The only thing that she had going for her, really, was her mammarian endowment. How will she get through life now?

[whisper, whisper]

What?

[whisper]

A memory loss?

Ummmm...

Never mind.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:52 PM

Worried About Arctic Ice?

Read Professor Pielke.

I was amused at the unintended irony of this story at the BBC:

President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, John Holdren told the BBC that the climate was changing much faster than predicted.

What does that say about their ability to make predictions?

Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:39 PM

Absurdity

I've been listening to this fight between the Senate and the White House over clarifying what Common Article III means.

You know, I'm open to the argument that we should follow the Geneva Conventions because it's the right thing to do and right way to behave, but the argument that we should do it to ensure good treatment of our own troops is simply laughable in the real world (and I suspect that most of those in uniform think so, too). When is the last time we fought an enemy that actually obeyed the Geneva Conventions?

And of course, I think that it's a perverse travesty, and counterproductive of the purpose of the conventions, to reward people who trample on them by treating them under their provisions. All we do thereby is encourage them in their barbarity. That is a Supreme Court decision that needs to be revisited.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:38 PM

The Key To High-Protein Diets?

This may be a breakthrough for obesity:

After the volunteers had eaten, Dr Batterham took blood samples from them every 30 minutes for an hour and a half, and measured the concentration of peptide YY. As she suspected, it was the high-protein meal that coaxed the greatest production of the peptide.
Having proved the point in people, she then turned to a more reliable laboratory animal—the mouse. First, she showed that mice do, indeed, respond to a high-protein diet in the way that people do. Both the short-term response (more peptide YY) and the long-term one (a reduction in obesity) were the same in rodents as they were in humans.

Having confirmed that similarity, she was able to experiment with the idea that peptide YY might be used directly as a slimming agent, thus getting rid of the side effects of a diet composed of meat, eggs and cheese—such as diabetes, heart disease, kidney disease, and liver and bone abnormalities. She did that by using mice that had had the gene for peptide YY knocked out of their DNA, and thus could not produce the hormone.

In this case, obese mice stay obese even when fed on the murine equivalent of Atkins. Dose them with peptide YY at appropriate levels, though, and they will lose weight even on a normal, non-Atkins mix.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:24 PM

Don't Know Much About Statistics

Megan McArdle and Stuart Buck have an opinion piece in the Washington Examiner on the innumeracy, economic and otherwise, of many reporters:

...many conservative readers attributed the misleading figures to liberal media bias. But it is more likely ignorance than malice. Every year, scores of fledgling journalists pour out of liberal arts programs. Though many will need to pick through mountains of statistics in search of the truth, few have been taught the skills to do it.
They quickly become victims of advocacy groups pushing skewed statistics. Through ignorance, they may also start manufacturing their own flawed numbers. Since number-crunching beats (such as business and finance) are generally viewed as a tedious waystation en route to more interesting beats, few are enthusiastic about developing these skills. And their editors may not be in any position to help them.

The problem is compounded by the fact that journalists who do know how to read a balance sheet, run a regression, or analyze economic data, can generally get a job that pays a lot more than journalism. Some stay in the field out of love for their work (journalism is a really great job), but in our experience some of the best flee to greener pastures.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:32 AM

Must Be Peak Oil

Prices could plunge:

...many of the conditions that drove investors to bid up oil prices are ebbing. Tensions over Israel, Lebanon and Nigeria are easing. The hurricane season has presented no threat so far to the Gulf of Mexico. The U.S. peak summer driving season is over, so gasoline demand is falling.
With fear of supply disruptions ebbing, oil prices began sliding. With oil inventories high, refiners that turn oil into gasoline are expected to cut production. As refiners cut production, oil companies increasingly risk getting stuck with excess oil supplies. There's already anecdotal evidence of oil companies chartering tankers to store excess oil.

All this is turning financial markets increasingly bearish on oil.

"If we continue to build inventories, and if we have a warm winter like we had last winter, you could see a large fall in the price of oil," said Gary Pokoik, who manages Hedge Ventures Energy in Los Angeles, an energy hedge fund. "I think there is still a lot of risk in the market."

As it stands now, the recent oil-price slump has brought the national average for a gallon of unleaded gasoline down to $2.59, according to the AAA motor club. In the Seattle area, prices per gallon have fallen to $2.856 currently from $3.071 a month ago, a decline of 7 percent, according to AAA.

Should oil traders fear that this downward price spiral will get worse and run for the exits by selling off their futures contracts, Verleger said, it's not unthinkable that oil prices could return to $15 or less a barrel, at least temporarily. That could mean gasoline prices as low as $1.15 per gallon.

I, of course, blame George Bush. Like the booming economy, it's all part of the evil Rethuglican plot to maintain control of the government, and not relinquish power this fall. Speaking of which, maybe I should put up a Bruce Gagnon countdown clock. It would be updated daily, counting the number of days that Bruce remains correct, and the number of days that Bush has continually refused to relinquish his power since January, 2001.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:34 AM

Shocking

Amnesty International is actually accusing Hezbollah of war crimes. After all these years of bashing Israel and the US, and ignoring the other side, has it decided to finally do something to try to reestablish its credibility?

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:30 AM

Race Heating Up

Leonard David has a story on progress in the X-Prize Cup and Rocket Racing League.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:26 AM

Gracious

Considering some of the things that she said about him, I thought that this was pretty classy:

The president said Richards "became a national role model, and her charm, wit and candor brought a refreshing vitality to public life."
He concluded that "Texas has lost one of its great daughters."

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:45 AM

The Best Thing About The Air America Fiasco

Al Franken is finally getting paid close to what he's worth:

...you know things must be bad when even your top star can't get paid. "I don't know if that's true or not," Al Franken told Radar late Wednesday, when asked about the bankruptcy report. "We do know that there have been cash-flow problems. I haven't been paid in a while. Like, there's no cash flowing to me."

To really make it right, though, he'd have to send them big checks.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:35 AM

"Useless"

But pretty cool. Behold, metallic oxygen. It's red.

And I wouldn't bet against someone coming up with a use for it. Or something like it:

...high-pressure techniques have already been used to create ultrahard materials such as diamond. Other chemicals, such as nitrogen and carbon monoxide, form solid polymers under pressure that store a lot of energy. If similar structures could be retained at atmospheric pressure, they might make excellent rocket fuel, suggests McMahon.

[Via Geek Press]

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:41 AM

Scenic

Professor Hall has a pictorial motorcycle tour of northern New Mexico, here, here and here. I'm envious--it looks like it was a beautiful trip.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:33 AM

Just In Case You Weren't Already Aware

Bruce Gagnon is nuts:

I am now convinced, more than ever, that the Bush pirate crew is going to pull another 9-11 before the November elections. I think they are going to declare martial law. Then when the public hits the streets in protest, they are going to trot out these "active denial" microwave weapons for crowd control. And if anyone stands around too long they will be killed, just like is happening today in Iraq.
They will use these weapons in order to "dissuade" the American people from thinking that we can non-violently protest to save our country from fascism. They are then hoping that activists will either give up and go home, or turn violent and then the military will be given the go-ahead to take people out - just like we see them doing in Iraq today.

The clamp down is coming. Folks had better come alive now before it is too late. The Bush team has decided that they do not intend to give up power. They are going to make a play for total control of the oil in the Middle East and Central Asia and will not be slowed down by elections.

[Via Thomas James, who reads sites like this so we don't have to]

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:21 AM

Progress?

Here's an interview with Danny Davis, manager of the ARES I upper stage at Marshall. I wish that Ross had asked about roll control, though.

I find this fascinating, albeit confusing:

NASA selected a Shuttle-derived launch architecture after a thorough apples-to-apples study last Summer - the Exploration Systems Architecture Study. NASA carefully weighed a wide variety of launch options for both crew and cargo - a Shuttle derived architecture was the clear winner when considering total cost, schedule and safety/reliability to achieve an exploration-capable system. NASA did not do this in a vacuum - in fact, we received inputs from industry, including studies funded by the agency, in the year prior to ESAS. The ESAS results were independently reviewed and concurred-in by experts outside the agency.
Last Winter and Spring, after a series of trade studies, NASA elected to alter the launch architecture to a 5 segment RSRM-derived 1st stage and a J-2X upperstage for Ares I and an Ares V core stage powered by an RS-68 (still boosted with a 5 segment RSRM and a J-2X earth departure stage).

So, are they saying that they originally were Shuttle derived, but have backed off from that ( with the abandonment of the SSME, there's nothing left of the Shuttle derivation other than RSRMs), or that they recognize that the initial choice was mistaken? Are they still claiming that it's significantly Shuttle derived?

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:14 AM

A New Resource

Clark Lindsey is building a new section at Hobby Space devoted to NewSpace.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:53 AM

Unprepared

American's aren't ready for an apocalypse.

I blame George Bush.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:47 AM

"A Volcano Of Terror"

Michael Totten has a fascinating report about life on the Gaza front, where the place seems like a hellish bedlam, run by the inmates:

“I will take you to Karni," he said. "But you cannot see the tunnel. It is inside the Palestinian territory. One kilometer inside. You understand? It is one kilometer inside the Palestinian territory." In other words, the tunnel diggers are determined. They will spend Lord only knows how many hours digging and digging and digging, knowing most tunnels are discovered before they're completed, just on the off chance that they'll make it all the way into Israel and get to maybe kill one or two people.
“One more thing I want to say," he said. "We will not stop the military action until Gilad Shalit comes back to us. But -- and I say this to the press all the time -- if there will be silence on our side for our villages it will be quiet on the Palestinian side.”

"How many soldiers have been killed since Gilad Shalit was kidnapped?" I said.

“All the year, before Gilad Shalit, no one. In the Shalit event, two soldiers died. And after that one more soldier died from friendly shooting. That’s all. So this is the big question for them. The spokesman of the government for Palestinians three days ago said the same thing I say all the time. For what? For what? For three soldiers who were killed in Gaza. In all the year something like 500 terrorists died in Gaza. So for what? The organizations of terror need to understand that it’s not worth it for them. And they can choose. We left the territory in the Gaza Strip, so it’s up to them. We will not stop the Qassam only with military pressure. They need to decide that they want to stop it. And if they will stop the Qassams, if they will stop the terror, free Gilad Shalit, we won’t have anything to fight about. And Karni will be open more. And everything will be better for them, not for us. This is the question. This is the biggest question, I think. And if you have time to read what the spokesman for Hamas government said, I think he can replace me.” He laughed. “Yeah? This is the truth. He is a good man.”

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:37 AM

September 13, 2006
You'll Be Very Relieved To Know

...that people in Iran wear seatbelts.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:11 AM

A Dose Of Reality

Here's a video of the recent PBS "debate" between the "Loose Change" wackos, and the Popular Mechanics editors on the 9/11 conspiracy theories. Do these people really think that reasonable people are going to be convinced by continual accusations that their debating opponents are "liars"? This seems to be a much more prevalent tactic of the left. More projection, I guess.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:26 AM

Criminal Negligence

A long interview with a contractor in Iraq on the misreporting and malreporting of that country:

For all the complexities and risks associated with our work, (I carried two calculators, satellite and computer equipment, and a ridiculously heavy AKSU-74 submachine gun around with me most of the time) it was impossible for us to miss seeing what coalition and Iraqi forces were dealing with. Let me please emphasize that. If we simply woke up in the morning, walked outside and did our jobs, it was completely impossible to miss the profound efforts and accomplishments of coalition and Iraqi forces in securing and rebuilding the national infrastructure.
But it wasn't impossible for the western press to miss. In fact, as I think about it, it's quite possible they've actually missed the whole war. Unless reporting can be described as burying oneself in a few relatively safe places with others of one's own kind, they have missed far more than they have covered. It is difficult for myself and many others to have respect for western journalists in Iraq because they so very rarely committed themselves to actually going out and covering what was going on.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:24 AM

September 12, 2006
A Talk With Anousheh

Alan Boyle has done what I couldn't--scored an interview with her. Of course, that's why he's a pro.

And, of course, I might have had a better chance if my URL said "MSNBC" instead of "Transterrestrial." But he done good nonetheless.

She does seem to be in this for the long haul, as I'd hoped.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 03:26 PM

Not So Close

This is interesting. Many human social rules carry over into cyberspace.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:59 AM

Taking Back Manhood

"Grim" says that we need to go back to wearing arms.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:47 AM

Stability

The conservative case for life extension.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:17 AM

A New Space Blog

The X-Prize blog, from Peter Diamandis and Anousheh Ansari. Go wish her a happy birthday in quarantine.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:00 AM

September 11, 2006
The Long War

[Note: This post will remain at the top all day, so if you're on a return trip, you might want to scroll down to see if there's any new stuff below.]

Michael Ledeen is still angry. I never was. But then, I didn't lose anyone I personally knew.

It's always chancy to try to recollect emotions from an event five years on, but thinking back to that day in San Juan, watching the first tower burning, I don't recall anger. When I saw the second plane strike the second tower, the only feeling that I had, I think, was resignation, along with the instant knowledge that we were now at war, in a way that we had never been in my lifetime. This, I thought, was what it was like for my grandparents (whose age I was closest to when the event occurred for them) when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. I remember a sense of foreboding, and wondering what the future held. On a more practical and personal note, I remember wondering when and how I would get back to California, since all flights in the US would surely be grounded soon, including the one that I was about to depart to the airport to catch.

That earlier war, at least for my parents and grandparents, lasted less than four years (though for Asia and Europe it was much longer). Last year I wrote an essay on the fourth anniversary comparing the two wars. I still think it holds up well (or at least as well as it did the last time). Here's a replay:

For better or worse, other than my postings on space policy, to the degree that I've any repute at all, I've become best known in the blogosphere through spoofing the modern media by showing how they would have reported an earlier war. A war that, instead of being kicked off (at least for us) by a surprise attack on New York on a sunny Tuesday morning in September, was kicked off (at least for us) by a surprise attack on a sunny Sunday morning on Oahu, Hawai'i.

On the first anniversary of that attack, it was just a month after the US invasion of northern Africa, to take on Rommel's Afrika Korps, on the heels of the British and Allied victory at El Alamein. Earlier that year, in the summer, we had engaged in the first all-US air attack on Europe. It would only be a few days before we would first learn of massacres of Jews by the Nazi SS.

On the other side of the world, in the Pacific, on that very day we were establishing a beachhead in Buna, New Guinea, and engaged in bloody ground and naval warfare to evict the Japanese forces from Guadalcanal, following up on our landmark victory over the Imperial Japanese Navy at Midway in the summer.

And five days before that anniversary in 1942, a physics professor named Enrico Fermi first set up a secret laboratory in Chicago to build the world's first nuclear reactor, to manufacture the fuel needed for the first nuclear weapons.

On the first anniversary of September 11, we had removed the Taliban from power in Afghanistan, and were preparing to expand the war into the Middle East itself, with plans advancing to remove the brutal dictator Saddam Hussein from power, and in his place establish a beachhead for democracy in the very heart of Arabia.

On the second anniversary of Pearl Harbor, we were engaged in continuing island-by-island warfare in the Pacific, with fierce fighting in the Gilbert Islands, Tarawa and other places, seeing the Japanese forces in a slow and bloody retreat. In Europe, Mussolini's Italy had fallen to Allied forces and changed allegiances two months before, declaring war on Nazi Germany. A week and a half before, on November 28th, 1943, the three Allied leaders--Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin--had met in Teheran, Iran, and determined to continue the war and liberate France. They also elicited a pledge from Stalin to join the war in the Pacific once Germany was defeated (which turned out in retrospect to be a lousy deal, as he clearly had not only no interest, but an opposition to a free post-war Europe).

In September, 2003, we had deposed Saddam, and were commemorating the second anniversary of the attack on the twin towers. But unfortunately, it became clear at that point that much of the media no longer took the war seriously, based on the foolish themes that appeared in their stories at the time, and their actions in almost avoiding remembrance. I mocked them with this piece, demonstrating how they would have covered the second anniversary of the US at war.

In early December, 1944, three years after Pearl Harbor, we were liberating northwest Europe, and advancing on Germany. The last major German counterattack of the war, the so-called Battle of the Bulge, would occur in less than two weeks (events relating to which would have been covered by today's media like this, and this). In the Pacific, we were starting to attack the Japanese homeland by air on a regular basis, and the bloody invasion of the island of Iwo Jima by US Marines, that would last several carnage-filled weeks, would begin the following day, on December 8th, with an initial naval bombardment.

On September 11, 2004, no one was paying much attention to what was happening in the war, because much of the media was engaged in trying to drag the rotting carcass of John Kerry's presidential campaign across the finish line. The only war coverage was that of the daily attacks on our troops and the Iraqi people by the "insurgents" (many of whom were foreign saboteurs sent across the border into Iraq from Syria and Saudi Arabia, and supplied by Iran--three nations with whom we are at war, a reality that the administration remains unwilling to publicly acknowledge). But rather than attacking the president on this legitimate issue, the media preferred to prop up Dan Rather's pathetic story about the president's national guard service, while ignoring the many legitimate issues about Senator Kerry's Vietnam record, both during and after his tour of duty.

On the fourth anniversary of Pearl Harbor, the war was over.

It had ended in Europe in May of 1945, and in the Pacific almost exactly sixty years ago, with the signing of the surrender treaty with the Japanese on the deck of the Missouri in Tokyo Harbor. There were storm clouds on the horizon, due to Stalin's perfidy, but a relieved nation had fought off what was perceived to be an existential threat, with many military casualties (though nowhere near as many as other participants), and virtually unscathed on the home front (unlike much of Europe and Asia, in which many millions of civilians died, most quite brutally), and wanted to get back to normal life.

But four years after September 11th, and now five years, we remain at war with another totalitarian ideology (and one that is in some ways an offspring of the Nazis, in both its hatred of those unlike the holders of it, and particularly of the Jews). And we've never been compelled, as a nation, to take this war as seriously as we were that one. There has been no draft, and despite daily death counts from the media, and parading bereaved mothers as proxies for their own war against the administration, there have not been thousands of gold stars in windows across the nation--the US casualties in the entire war to date would be dwarfed by those of any number of single battles in the second world war. As Lileks wrote two years ago, this war has a much different feel to it:

The old wars were simple: the other side had accents, uniforms, nations, cruel habits and urbane sneers. The old wars took years. The old wars were in black and white. The old wars were monophonic, scored by Max Steiner, released by Warner Brothers, and the only proof they really happened at all was the small battered box in the back of Dad’s sock drawer, the box that held some oddly colored metal bars.

Out of political correctness, the president continues to misname this war as one against a tactic--"terror," instead of one against an ideology that wants to ultimately impose itself on the entire world (though that has started to slowly change, as he starts to call it what it is--a new form of totalitarianism and fascism). Such, in fact, is the political correctness of the times that we could, last year, actually contemplate honoring the first Americans to fight back against it, five years ago, with a memorial that looks like this. Can anyone imagine the equivalent sixty years ago--a memorial to the USS Arizona stylized to look like a rising sun?

We've not been asked to sacrifice, either on a governmental level (the pork continues to flow in highway and energy bills), or on a personal level (rather than being asked to save tinfoil and plant "victory gardens", the populace was advised to go out and win one against Osama by going to the mall).

Five years ago, the big news was shark attacks, and a missing woman. We were at war, but didn't know it. It took a sudden enemy attack, on a cloudless morning, to (at least momentarily) wake us from our national lethargy. This year, the sharks and missing girl were knocked out of the news not by an enemy attack, but by a natural disaster, nature and entropy being entities with which we have warred since the dawn of history and before, and ones over which we only gradually gain the upper hand, and will probably never completely conquer.

But if we didn't know that we were at war on September 10th, 2001, the enemy did. They still do. We must not forget it again, until they are decisively defeated, as we defeated the brutal Nazis and the Japanese imperialists sixty years ago, even if it takes decades.

I wasn't angry then, and I'm not angry now. But I am resolved.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:59 PM

The Luxury Of Nonresponsibility

Instapunk has some useful thoughts on the deranged Bush haters.

Only one of the 300 million people who live in America wake up every day to a briefing from the nation's intelligence agencies about what threats might become reality today. That's a fact. The man's name is George W. Bush.
I'm NOT saying this makes him immune from criticism. In fact, the exact opposite is true. Forget all the invective about his cowardice or shirking of military duty when he was a twenty-something. Five years of such briefings would be enough to give most of us Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. It's probably the case that the President of the United States has been damaged by what he's been through. It's the most obvious explanation conceivable for why the White House seems so slow to respond to the daily firestorms the mass media engender. My guess is, not too many of us would want to be living inside George W. Bush's head right now. It's too much. For anyone. He needs advice and constructive criticism and thoughtful opposition. But who -- and I'm including all of you in this -- is served by characterizing the advice, criticism, and opposition as the obvious response to a criminal idiot?

Though I myself am slow to anger, and relatively unemotional, I'm glad that I didn't have to make the decisions for the past five years.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 03:13 PM

Science Wars

I just got review copies of Chris Mooney's book, The Republican War On Science, and James Lovelock's most recent work, The Revenge Of Gaia. Both titles seem a little overwraught to me, and I've already expressed skepticism on Chris Mooney's thesis. But I'll report anon, after reading them.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:54 PM

America The Brave

Brit (and space buff) Gareth Slee has a tribute to the NY firefighters.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:02 AM

Suborbital Supply/Demand Mismatch

Burt Rutan said in Mojave Desrt News (via Leonard David)

“I expect we will see at least two space flights a day in the next few years,” Rutan said, noting that the spacecraft and the launch vehicles he is designing “will be able to make two flights per day,” the newspaper story stated.

730 flights a year carrying 5-7 passengers each has capacity for over 5000 paid seats flown per year. Futron's new white paper updating the assumptions used to do its 2002 suborbital tourism study predicts demand for 600 paid seats flown in 2008 using its model. So "in the next few years" means 2017 according to Futron and that is for the entire suborbital industry combined.

The white paper still excludes games and promotions demand, but only a few firms have emerged with offerings so far (including mine, Space-Shot.com). Even if that doubles the quantity predictions from Futron, the industry won't hit 5000 flights a year until 2014. The Futron study does predict a steady S-Curve adoption and capacity addition. If there are four or more players with overcapacity such that two of them can serve the market, expect the price to drop to just below the marginal cost per flight of the 4th or 3rd cheapest to operate. That would not include development cost or overhead, just fuel, maintenance, pilot and training. That would allow the market price to hit $100k or less as soon as overcapacity arrived and drive ticket prices down to the 2017 levels that would support 5,000 seats a year. $500 million is still pretty good revenue. 10,000 seats a year if there are two such firms (with the third and fourth going bankrupt, yet operating anyway at marginal cost to keep the price down on the first two) isn't seen until 2020 by Futron at a price point of about $65,000. But that price point is not implausible in an overcapacity situation. Again, $650 million is a pretty good chunk of change so don't weep for them.

If you recall that firms were selling seats retail for $100k, you might expect that the wholesale price for some of the firms doing suborbital are south of that, and that was all-in including development costs.

Posted by Sam Dinkin at 09:32 AM

Into Whacked-Out Conspiracy Theories?

Brendan O'Neill has found some folks who are turned all the way up to eleven on them:

Sitting on the comfy couch, their cups of tea in hand, they try to convince me that the 11 September 2001 attacks were executed by elements in the west who wanted to launch wars and "make billions upon trillions of dollars".
"We know for certain that the official story of 9/11 isn't true," says Shayler. "The twin towers did not collapse because of planes and fire; they were brought down in a controlled demolition. The Pentagon was most likely hit by an American missile, not an aeroplane." Machon nods. In black trousers and black top, this sophisticated blonde in her late thirties comes across more like a schoolmarm than a 9/11 anorak. "The Pentagon's anti-missile defence system would definitely have picked up and dealt with a commercial airliner. We can only assume that whatever hit the Pentagon was sending a friendly signal. A missile fired by a US military plane would have sent a friendly signal." She says this in a kind of Anna Ford-style newsreader's voice, as if she were speaking the truth and nothing but the truth. She takes another sip of tea.

Say the phrase "conspiracy theorist" (but don't say it to Shayler and Machon if you can help it, because they angrily deny being conspiracy theorists) and most people will think of those nutty militiamen in redneck areas of America who hate Big Government, or of taxi drivers with possibly anti-Semitic leanings in some hot, dusty backwater of the Middle East who revel in telling western clients in particular: "America and the Jew did 9/11." Yet, here in Highgate, I am talking to a man and woman who have worked in the British secret services and who, together with their landlady Belinda, a professional linguist, truly believe that American elements facilitated 9/11 in order to "justify their adventurism in oil-rich countries in the Middle East", in Shayler's words. Here we have a new kind of conspiracy theorist: the chattering conspiracist, respectable, well-read, articulate, but, I regret to report, no less cranky than those rednecks and misguided Kabul cabbies.

Amazing.

[Late afternoon update]

Jim Robbins finds another refugee from Toontown:

Meyssan's purpose is to uncover a much deeper plot of the United States against the world. He reveals other interesting facts, like bin Laden was an agent of the U.S. who was used by President Bush to destroy secret CIA offices in the World Trade Towers. Seems like a lot of effort — when Stansfield Turner wanted to do it he just fired a bunch of guys. And if the WTC planes were part of the plan, and presumably also United Flight 93 that crashed in Pennsylvania, why go to the trouble of fabricating a strike on the Pentagon instead of just using another aircraft like the missing Flight 77? At some point Occam's Razor has to come into play. But to the tortured mind of Meyssan, whose other causes include hard anti-Catholicism and "rejection of a return to a moral order" it probably makes a lot of sense.
Today is Yom Hashoah, the Day of Remembrance of the Holocaust, and Meyssan's theory fits neatly with those of the Holocaust deniers. In both cases, the premises of their originators are indefensible, which forces them into a position where they have to throw the facts overboard to sustain their arguments. But notions like this are kept alive by people who have a predisposition to believe them, those who have pre-existing grudges and will engage in whatever reality-denying behavior justifies their baseline prejudices. For example, it is already widely believed in the Middle East that Sept. 11 was not perpetrated by bin Laden but by the Mossad, the CIA, or some other group, in order to give the United States a pretext to intervene in the region. Meyssan's theory is a qualitative step beyond the idea that al Qaeda was not behind the attacks — he denies that the attack on the Pentagon even happened, at least not "the way the government says it did." This story is certain to find fertile soil in some of the more radical quarters, especially among those that both deny the Holocaust happened and wish it had been more effective. For example Ibrahim Abu-al-Naja, the first deputy speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council, who complained about how the world was going to make the Palestinians "pay the price for what happened to [the Jews], if indeed anything had happened to them." Or the recent editorial on WAFA, the Palestinian Authority news service, that admitted that a few Jews went to the gas chambers, but "about whose number there is some ambiguity." (WAFA had no trouble counting the 12 million Native Americans allegedly exterminated in the 17th-19th centuries.) If Meyssan has any sense at all, he will rush out an Arabic edition pronto.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:27 AM

Inspirational

One small step for a small man. Behold, the Mercury Joe story.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:46 AM

He's Dead, Jim

I agree with Jonah:

While I don't subscribe to so-called ass-brained theories that Bin Laden never existed, I am coming around to the view that he's dead as Michael Ledeen has suggested. I mean why wouldn't Bin Laden issue a video for the five year anniversary of 9/11?

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:22 AM

Continuing To Shed Innocence

Hitchens says that it will get worse before it gets better (particularly because we don't seem to be able to unite before the enemy), and it's too early for commemorations:

The time for commemoration lies very far in the future. War memorials are erected when the war is won. At the moment, anyone who insists on the primacy of September 11, 2001, is very likely to be accused--not just overseas but in this country also--of making or at least of implying a "partisan" point. I debate with the "antiwar" types almost every day, either in print or on the air or on the podium, and I can tell you that they have been "war-weary" ever since the sun first set on the wreckage of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and on the noble debris of United Airlines 93. These clever critics are waiting, some of them gleefully, for the moment that is not far off: the moment when the number of American casualties in Afghanistan and Iraq will match or exceed the number of civilians of all nationalities who were slaughtered five years ago today. But to the bored, cynical neutrals, it also comes naturally to say that it is "the war" that has taken, and is taking, the lives of tens of thousands of other civilians. In other words, homicidal nihilism is produced only by the resistance to it! If these hacks were honest, and conceded the simple truth that it is the forces of the Taliban and of al Qaeda in Mesopotamia that are conducting a Saturnalia of murder and destruction, they would have to hide their faces and admit that they were not "antiwar" at all.

Steven Den Beste has related thoughts.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:09 AM

Stupidity

We can have a war on drugs (which is absolutely unwinnable) or a war against the Jihadis, but it's nuts to think that we can have both.

Want a criticism of the Bush administration? Here's one: the blindness of the drug warriors is appalling, and has set us back dramatically in the real war.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:55 AM

Where's Human Rights Watch

Michael Huang says that we need human rights in space.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:27 AM

September 10, 2006
Showdown

OK, here's where the Wolverines show whether they're real, or not. They'll be playing the number two team (sorry, no permalink, but it's Notre Dame) in the nation next Saturday. They're perennially overrated during past opening seasons, but in this one, so far, they haven't been.

We'll see if that motivates them. More importantly, we'll see if it motivates Lloyd Carr, whose job may be in trouble in the same way that John Cooper's was...

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:51 PM

Another Tuesday, September 11

Four-hundred-and-forty-one years ago:

The lessons for us today, almost five centuries hence, are equally important. The same enemy exists today. Instead of galleys he uses airliners, and instead of Janissaries he uses suicide bombers. He hates and fears western civilization, and seeks to convert or enslave us. We have to meet him and engage him everywhere he is, just as the Knights did. What it will take to win against him is what it took to win at Malta: preparation, skill at arms, leadership, and above all faith and an iron will.

This has truly been a long war, and no immediate end is in sight.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:04 AM

Overconservative

The entire drive up from Boca Raton to Titusville, I was listening to the radio, wondering why they were still talking about the failed ECO sensor as a potential flight issue, and hoping that they weren't going to scrub on account of it, but if they were, I wished the entire way up, with every mile, that they would do it now, so we could stop wasting time and gas. What I couldn't understand was what the MMT expected to change in the hours leading up to flight that would make them suddenly decide that they were going to follow the (absurd) flight rule.

They knew in the early morning hours that they had a problem. There was no reason to think that it was going to fix itself prior to launch. So if it was a violation of the launch commit criteria to fly with a failed sensor an hour before launch, why wasn't it eight hours before launch? Why did they put the crew in the vehicle, and have them sit on their backs for hours, why did they let everyone drive from all over the place to attend the launch, if they weren't going to fly with it?

The only possible excuse that I could come up with was that they were waiting for the best possible weather report for a next-day launch. If the weather was deteriorating for Saturday, then they might have made a last-minute decision to waive, and flown on Friday. As it turned out, the forecast for Saturday was good (and in fact better than existing conditions on Friday), so they may have decided that, since they'd have one more shot, they might as well do a tank drain, see if the problem cleared up, and do it then.

Nonetheless, it's not the decision I'd have made. A delay of another day lost them a day of contingency at ISS, and it risked something else going wrong in the recycle. They were all ready to go on Friday, other than the failed sensor, and that shouldn't have kept them on the ground, since the new rule was an overreaction to Columbia, anyway, and they should change it back to what it always was--fail operational (i.e, only two sensors are needed, and the other two are available for redundancy). When I was at KSC yesterday, I talked to one of the briefers in private after a status briefing, and said that they were crazy not to launch Friday. He agreed that they've overconstrained the system to make it almost impossible to meet scheduled objectives, and done so in a manner that makes little contribution to true safety--settling for appearances instead.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:52 AM

September 09, 2006
Back From The Cape

I had a long two days, but saw the launch this morning. Suffice it to say for now that I'm both amazed that they didn't launch yesterday, and angry that they waited until an hour before liftoff to make the decision. More later.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 04:45 PM

Refuse to be Terrified

Terrorism is not a leading cause of death. As Tierney notes in his column today (subscription required):

Outside of Afghanistan and Iraq,” [John Mueller, author of Overblown] says, “the number of people killed around the world since Sept. 11 by groups in sympathy with Al Qaeda is not that high. These are horrible and disgusting deaths, but they’re not a sign of a diabolically effective organization. The total is less than the number of Americans who drowned in bathtubs during this period.”
As it is, he figures, the odds of an American being killed by international terrorism are about one in 80,000. And even if there were attacks on the scale of Sept. 11 every three months for the next five years, the odds for any individual dying would be one in 5,000.

Get over the fear and refuse to be terrified and the terrorists have lost. For more comps, read on.

In 2001, terrorism in America killed about as many people as category E66 "Obesity" according to US mortality tables and thousands of people fewer each year since. Half as many as F10 "Mental and behavioral disorders due to use of alcohol (F10)". Seems like our dependence on foreign alcohol and chocolate is causing death. Jerry's kids with MS warrant one weekend a year and they die 3,000/year.

So now that it's been 5 years, terrorism has still only killed 3,000 in the US and we are down to 600/year over the past 5 years. Like Thrombosis (I74) which suggests letting people get out of their seats on airplanes. Terrorism kills about as many as "Exposure to excessive natural cold (X31)". How about a war on stranglers (X91) which kills 690 per year.

3,000/year out of 2,400,000 is one in 800/year. 600/year is one in 4,000/year.

A 3,000 person attack every three months forever would be 12,000 dead/year out of approximately 2.5 million dead per year or a one in 200 lifetime chance of dying from terrorism.

Posted by Sam Dinkin at 10:15 AM

September 07, 2006
So Much For That Pesky First Amendment

Disney is being threatened by the Democrat Senate leadership.

[Friday morning update]

Lileks has further thoughts:

I don’t think this is the “veiled threat” some are calling it, because there’s no way on earth the Democrats would introduce legislation to strip Disney of its broadcast license. It’s like threatening to interrupt the broadcast with winged monkeys. Disney lawyers would say, correctly, well, you and what army of winged monkeys? But I don’t recall Congress getting so deeply involved in the content of a specific television show before. Chilling effect? Heck no, not if the result is the truth. And who can possibly be against the truth.
Just so you know: 9/11 reset the clock for me. All hands went to midnight. I’m interested in what people did after that date, and if the movie shows that before the attack one side lacked feck and the other was feck-deficient, I don't worry about it. It's like revisiting Congressional debates about Hawaiian harbor security in November 1941. Y'all get a pass. The Etch-A-Sketch's turned over. Now: what have you said lately?

Indeed. Read entire.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:07 PM

Off To The Cape

They've made a decision to fly tomorrow with the flaky pump (probably the right one under the circumstances) and it's seventy percent chance of good weather for an 11:40 AM launch. Morning is better than afternoon, when the showers start to cook up. So I guess we'll get up early, drive up and take our chances.

[Update early Friday morning]

Dang. Another fuel sensor problem, just like last year. I would waive the rule, or change it entirely (it was an overreaction to Columbia) and fly with only three, but I wish I knew they were going to do that before we drive up.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:48 PM

Decision Explained

The source selection rationale is apparently out for the CEV decision:

Doug Cooke, NASA's source selection authority, wrote in the Aug. 31 document that although both team's proposals were sound, Lockheed's possessed a "clear advantage." Both received ratings of "very good" in overall mission suitability, but Lockheed's was numerically ranked somewhat higher because of its superior technical approach.
...Cooke deemed Lockheed's past performance on Phase 1 of the CEV program "exceptional," saying there is "no better predictor" for how a company will perform in Phase 2. Lockheed's past performance was rated "very good," and Northrop/Boeing's was rated "good."

Good apparently wasn't good enough.

I wonder if Northrop Grumman and Boeing are reconsidering their future relationship. I think that part of the strategy of the team became obsolete when Admiral Steidle was forced out by Mike Griffin. It looked as though the team was designed to appeal to him (having Northrop Grumman, a major Joint Strike Fighter contractor) leading would give him more comfort than Boeing (Steidle was in charge of the program during its development). But with Steidle's departure, the spiral development concept vanished, as did the NGB basic strategy.

I suspect that there was a lot of complacency on the team as well, though, due to all of the manned space heritage within Boeing. Many probably couldn't imagine NASA going with anyone else.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:28 PM

Time To Negotiate

Drinking From Home has miraculously managed to find some old screenshots of the BBC web site, circa 1943.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:25 AM

September 06, 2006
Another Way The Bush Administration Screwed Up

Here's a post, just for those morons who continue to believe that I'm a Bush shill, or parrot Republican talking points:

...as a proud Briton, I am not prepared to be a client of the United States. The coalition of the willing was, in effect, a coalition of two. Of course Britain is the junior partner, but she is a partner, and not a low-level employee. What is special about the relationship for us? America gets a European partner, world class intel, nuclear subs, men, whole regions pacified and many millions of your taxpayer dollars saved.
What does Britain get? MFN trading status?

America is going to have to give something to this relationship, and I do not mean a standing ovation for the PM in Congress. We stand with you far more than any European ally, but receive no special treatment in dollars or in trade. Usually, we do not even receive respect.

Yes, Bush is incompetent, in many ways. But as Lincoln said of Grant, "he fights." At least occasionally.

Governments in general are incompetent. But a Kerry administration would have been even worse. We always have to choose between the less evil of two lessers.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:50 PM

Finicky

We were thinking about getting up early and driving up to the Cape in an attempt to see the launch today. Good thing we didn't.

As I've said in the past, it's amazing that this thing ever launches, with so many things that have to go right.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:11 AM

Splog Overload

Here's an interesting article at Wired about spam blogs, a problem that could take down the blogosphere if the search engines can't get it under control. I've had to ban blogspot.com from comments and pings a few months ago because there were so many comments and pings coming from blogspot splogs. One other warning for people like Jeff Foust:

Another giveaway: Both Some Title and the grave-robbing page it links to had Web addresses in the .info domain. Spammers flock to .info, which was created as an alternative to the crowded .com, because its domain names are cheaper – registrars often let people use them gratis for the first year – which is helpful for those, like sploggers, who buy Internet addresses in bulk. Splogs so commonly have .info addresses that many experts simply assume all blogs from that domain are fake.

Maybe he should see if personalspaceflightblog.com is available.

[Via Geek Press]

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:06 AM

September 05, 2006
Good For Mitt Romney

He gives Khatami exactly the amount of respect he deserves:

Governor Mitt Romney today ordered all Massachusetts state government agencies to decline support, if asked, for former Iranian President Mohammed Khatami’s September 10 visit to the Boston area, where he is scheduled to speak at Harvard University.
“State taxpayers should not be providing special treatment to an individual who supports violent jihad and the destruction of Israel,” said Romney.

Romney’s action means that Khatami will be denied an official police escort and other VIP treatment when he is in town. The federal government provides security through the U.S. State Department.

Romney criticized Harvard for honoring Khatami by inviting him to speak, calling it “a disgrace to the memory of all Americans who have lost their lives at the hands of extremists, especially on the eve of the five-year anniversary of 9/11.”

I'm not a Republican, but if he wins the nomination, this will count a lot for me in 2008.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:54 PM

Resurrection

Cathy Seipp says that Futurama is coming back. Hooray!

Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:09 PM

It's A Looooonnnnggg Time

I'm puzzled by this post by Clayton Cramer, who thinks:

I am prepared to believe (at least for sake of argument) that all of these complex mechanisms could have developed as a result of blind, random chance. But what are the chances that all of these complex mechanisms managed to develop in less than 700 million years? More importantly, what are the chances that cells that blindly, randomly developed one of these structures or enzymes were the ancestors of cells that blindly, randomly developed all the rest of these useful mutations?

On my planet, 700 million years is a really long time. Is there some kind of mathematical analysis that he's done to indicate that it's for some reason insufficient?

I think that part of the problem is his continued use of variations of the phrase "blind, random chance." This is a common misperception among evolution skeptics (who have apparently never read "The Blind Watchmaker" or other books that describe how evolution actually works). They seem to think that it stumbles around blindly, as though it were like the million monkeys randomly typing Shakespeare attempts. In fact it is directed--it simply isn't directed by intelligence. It's directed by what works. If a mutation occurs that has an advantage in the environment, it is preserved, and the next generation builds on it.

Imagine the monkeys, except when one of them accidentally gets a letter of the sonnet right, they don't have to type that part any more--it's preserved in their next attempt, and they just bang on the keys to fill in the spaces around it. Each time they get one right, it becomes more sonnet like. If the sonnet has, say a couple thousand characters, then the monkey might get each one right within a few dozen keystrokes (assuming that he's really typing randomly, and not skipping some keys entirely--which is an interesting analog to the concept of future development paths limited by existing morphology, described in Gould's book The Panda's Thumb). Even with thousands of characters, a rapidly typing simian would pound out the poem in a couple days, while having no knowledge of what he's doing.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:13 PM

Condolences

To Josh Marshall, who just lost his father. I know the feeling, though the pain is long dull now--I lost mine half a lifetime ago.

[Update in the afternoon]

While Josh has written a beautiful eulogy, am I the only one to wonder why he has a different last name than his father?

[Update]

Commenters, who read his piece more carefully than I, point out the numerous references as to why they don't share the same last name, which makes his eulogy even more heart felt and sad. He was his father in deeds, if not biology, and the reverence, love and grief should be respected all the more.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:38 AM

Stop The Presses!

In a "man bites dog" moment, Lester Brown gets something right:

Just a single fill of ethanol for a four-wheel drive SUV, says Brown, uses enough grain to feed one person for an entire year. This year the amount of US corn going to make the fuel will equal what it sells abroad; traditionally its exports have helped feed 100 - mostly poor - countries.
From next year, the amount used to run American cars will exceed exports, and soon it is likely to reduce what is available to help feed poor people overseas. The number of ethanol plants built or planned in the corn-belt state of Iowa will use virtually all the state's crop.

This will not only cut food supplies, but drive up the process of grain, making hungry people compete with the owners of gas-guzzlers. Already spending 70 per cent of their meagre incomes on food, they simply cannot afford to do so.

Time to stop this latest nuttiness in farm subsidies.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:32 AM

The Stifling Of Dissent

Begins day after tomorrow:

Something almost without precedent in America will happen Thursday. That’s the day when McCain-Feingold — aka the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 — will officially silence broadcast advertising that contains criticism of members of Congress seeking re-election in November. Before 2006, American election campaigns traditionally began in earnest after Labor Day. Unless McCain-Feingold is repealed, Labor Day will henceforth mark the point in the campaign when congressional incumbents can sit back and cruise, free of those pesky negative TV and radio spots. It is the most effective incumbent protection act possible, short of abolishing the elections themselves.

If I were going to impeach Bush, signing McCain-Feingold would be a lot better grounds for it than any of the loony Dem conspiracy theories, to me. We have him dead to rights on that one.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:47 AM

For Space Geeks

Jon Goff has an interesting post on the potential use of the Kistler K-1 upper stage as a lunar transport vehicle, using aerobraking. He also wonders of the Ares 1 is already obsolete.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:31 AM

This Is Beyond Parody

Are the Dems really going to be so foolish as to put out a report titled "The Neo Con"? I just saw a crawl on cable indicating that they will.

Way to play to your nutty fringe base, and turn off the sensible electorate. I hope they do it.

[Update in the early afternoon]

Robert Goldberg, on the increasing (and increasingly hard to hide) anti-semitism of the left. And I think that, at this point, most of us know what "neocon" is code for.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:32 AM

September 04, 2006
On The Internet Radio

I'm interviewed by Popular Mechanics for this weeks blogcast, about the recent Orion award.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:40 PM

Birds Of A Feather

Gerry Adams is meeting with Hamas.

Reminds me of the old joke about the guy walking down the street in Ulster, when he feels the barrel of a gun against the back of his neck.

"Now would you be Protestant, or would you be Catholic?"

Thinking quickly, he says, "I'm a Jew!"

There's a pause, and then, "Begorrah, and I'm the luckiest Palestinian in Belfast."

And then there's the variation.

"So, then would you be a Protestant Jew, or a Catholic Jew...?"

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:36 AM

New Boss

Ron Radosh reviews Bruce Springsteen's return to musical roots. In a technological century, I am gratified to see more and more musicians unplug.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:16 AM

September 03, 2006
Creating More Terrorists

I'm sure that any minute, we'll see editorials railing against radical Islamists about this:

FAR-RIGHT extremists have adopted the tactics of Islamic jihadis by posting videos on the internet in which they threaten to behead British Muslims.
The films show balaclava-clad white British men brandishing guns, knives and clubs, calling on all Muslims to leave Britain or be killed. One appears to be a soldier who has served in the Gulf.

In one film, a man tells Muslims to "go home" or risk being burned alive. He threatens, "I'll cut your head off", and claims to have "comrades" across Britain who have "had enough".

Any minute now.

[SOUND="Crickets Chirping"]

[/SOUND]

Posted by Rand Simberg at 04:29 PM

Iranians Love America

And aren't that thrilled with their government. Someone at the WaPo (in the travel section) got off script:

What took place over the next fortnight astonished me. Everywhere I went -- from the traffic-choked streets of Tehran in the north to the dusty desert town of Yazd in central Iran, to the elegant cultural centers of Isfahan and Shiraz -- I was overwhelmed by the warmth and, dare I say it, pro-Americanism of the people I met.
Ponder the irony of that last statement for a moment. While much of the rest of the world seems to be holding their collective noses at us Americans, in Iran people were literally crossing the road to shake an American's hand and say hello. Who knew?

Initially, when Iranians asked me where I was from, I'd suggest they guess. But this game quickly proved too time-consuming -- no one ever guessed correctly. So instead I would simply mumble "American." And then their faces would light up. For better or worse, Iranians are avid fans of America: its culture, films, food, music, its open, free-wheeling society.

Which reraises the question. How to punish a rogue, tyrannical government without harming its people?

Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:36 PM

The Real Reality-Based Community

"Hatewatch" over at Winds of Change has a nice roundup of links, including one called Idiotarian Seethings. Control-F twice on that phrase to get to the meat, though the whole thing is fun, as usual. I particularly liked this bit:

Early in July, NRO's Jonah Goldberg did his part to entertain the right-wing blogosphere by tracking down this piece of comedy gold, wherein an ambitious DU denizen attempts to demonstrate that 9/11 was a conspiracy by failing to collapse steel rabbit fencing. The true entertainment only starts, as is often the case in these swamps, when other budding scientists attempt to explain why they too are moved by his demonstration. By all means, enjoy yourselves.
But there's a serious point here for political discourse, one that often gets lost in the growing populism on both the left and the right: experts are good. Not everyone can do or know the things that they do. It's not just that being an expert causes you to have the knowledge that you need to evaluate things within your field - it's that immersion in a way of thinking that seems to be related to particular objects gets you in the habit of thinking a certain way. It's why chess masters can 'see' a board and topologists can 'see' a knot. Not to be overly pedantic, but it seems like certain objects are easier to understand by thinking in certain ways. An expert has developed cognitive habits as well as broad knowledge. That why an amateur and an expert can know exactly the same amount of things and can be exactly as smart, and the expert might have insights that the amateur might never stumble into.

Of course, that's beside the point in two ways. First, this guy isn't an amateur in anything - he's just an tool (click through if you want some entertainment). Second, however, this anti-expert populism (most often expressed in blog triumphalism) isn't distributed evenly across the left and right of the political spectrum. To be more specific, when the right challenges ostensible experts, it seems that the people doing the challenging are actually better at the matter at hand than the people being challenged: Allahpundit and Dr. Shackleford are very, very good at Photoshop and that Reuters idiot is very, very not.

Meanwhile, on the left, we've got American Apparel checkout workers and Starbucks baristas going toe to toe with MIT architects on the weight that reinforced cross-sections can bear - a matchup hilarious but for the passion with which the checkout workers and baristas insist that they have an opinion that they're entitled to. The urge to debunk the reasoning of experts is dangerous across the board, a seed that can blossom into full-blown anti-intellectualism. It just seems that when the right does it, they end up being right. And that's a difference worth noting.

Of course, expect the usual idiotarian seethers in the comments section to seethe at this.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:55 PM

Why Buy The Cow?

When you get the milk for free? Mark Steyn can't figure out why the Jihadis even bother to abduct journalists:

Did you see that video of the two Fox journalists announcing they'd converted to Islam? The larger problem, it seems to me, is that much of the rest of the Western media have also converted to Islam, and there seems to be no way to get them to convert back to journalism.
...One can understand the agonies the politically correct multicultural journalist must go through, distressed at the thought that an infelicitous phrasing might perpetuate unfortunate stereotypes of young Muslim males. But, even so, it's quite a leap to omit the most pertinent fact and leave the impression the Sydney constabulary are combing the city for mullets. The Boston Globe's Jeff Jacoby wrote the other day about how American children's books are "sacrificing truth on the altar of political correctness." But there seems to be quite a lot of that in the grown-up comics, too. And, as I've said before, it's never a good idea to put reality up for grabs. There may come a time when you need it.

Read the whole thing.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:30 AM

Prelude To Jihad In America

Walid Phares notes the most recent rejoinder to those who keep their heads in the sand, and don't believe that we are at war with an enemy whose ultimate goal is world domination:

...the “Azzam” video reconfirms clearly, in an English language that academic translators [cough...Juan Cole...cough--ed] won’t be able to distort, that al Qaeda’s movement worldwide and in the United States is seeking total annihilation or conversion of the enemy: American and other democracies.

It also indicates that they know who both their friends, and their enemies are:

Sensationally but not unexpectedly, he “name” a number of intellectual-enemies in this country: Daniel Pipes, Steven Emerson, Robert Spencer and Michael Spencer. Rarely Jihadi Terrorists at this high level media exposure named symbols of their enemy’s intelligentsia. And in addition to “experts” named in the tape, Gadahn goes on a ferocious attack against American “Tele-Evangelists” and their media, showing the other type of foes al Qaeda is very upset with.
...“Azzam” names “sympathetic” personalities for whom he has messages for action; He asks journalist Seymour Hirsh to “reveal more” than what was published in a New Yorker article on the War: Obviously an open call by al Qaeda to M Hirsch to resume the attack against the US War on Terror. Then “Azzam” turn to two British journalists and thank them for their “admiration and respect for Islam” encourage them to do the final step: Convert. He names British MP George Galloway and journalist Robert Fisk. But more troubling in Gadahn’s tape was his direct call to Jihadists within the US Armed forces to work patiently till the time comes and they should continue to aggregate while escaping the surveillance of their military authorities.

Unfortunately, I'm not sure that either party is sufficiently serious about the threat, though Bush at least talks a good game once in a while.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:24 AM

Cost Versus Price

Mark Whittington has a useful overview of COTS. The only problem is in this paragraph:

The Falcon 9 is designed to launch up to 24,750 kilograms into low Earth orbit for a cost of seventy eight million dollars, according to the SpaceX web site. That compares to a cost of two hundred fifty four million dollars to launch 25,800 kilograms into low Earth orbit estimated for the Delta IV Heavy, a competitor to the Falcon 9 built by the Boeing Corporation.

No. Those numbers are the price, not the cost. Confusing the two words is one of the reasons that people get confused about whether or not we've made any progress in reducing launch costs over the years (partly because we don't really know what launches actually cost, particularly in Russia, but also with the Shuttle, due to opaque bookkeeping).

Price is what is charged to a customer. Cost is the amount of resources that the launch provider has to devote to providing the service. If cost is less than price, then the provider makes money; if it's the other way around, then the provider is operating at a loss. I'm sure that SpaceX costs (at least its marginal costs) are less (and probably quite a bit less, to account for the business risk factor of developing it) than the published price, or there would have been no point in going into the business. I'm also sure that Lockheed Martin is not losing money on Atlas launches.

In both cases, of course, the average cost is highly dependent on flight rate. This is one of the reasons that EELV prices have gone up dramatically over the last few years. In fact, I used that example in my piece in The New Atlantis a couple years ago as an explanation to why vehicle design is at best a secondary issue of launch costs, while flight rate is a primary one. There's an appalling amount of ignorance, even within the professional space community, as to the reasons for high launch costs, not to mention low reliability (see comments in this post for an example), which is one of the barriers to improving the situation. And of course, the problem is made worse by the lack of recognition of their lack of knowledge. As the old saying goes, it's not what we don't know that hurts us, it's the things we know for damn sure that are wrong.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:10 AM

But Wait! There's More!

Well, actually, there is no more. Arthur Schiff has died.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:44 AM

Apparently She Is

We finally have an answer to whether or not Anousheh Ansari is a Muslim. Sort of.

In this USA Today article (per a commenter in the other linked post), she's quoted as calling herself a "liberal Muslim" (whatever that means).

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:23 AM

September 02, 2006
Whether To Laugh Or Cry, Take Two

Such may indeed be the state of our edumacational system. Early to bed, early to rise, makes one have no fear except fear itself.

[Sunday morning update]

Alan K. Henderson has some more misnamed action figures.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:24 PM

Quiz Question

Who discovered the mouth of the Columbia River?

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:57 AM

Religion Of Peace™ Update

The group that kidnapped and converted the Fox News guys has declared that they will attack all non-Muslims in Gaza and "Palestinian" territories. They call themselves "Holy Jihad Brigades." Gee, consider: names like this, and Hezbollah (Party of God).

Good thing this isn't a religious war. Lord only knows what they'd call themselves if it were.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:17 AM

September 01, 2006
Interesting Side Effect

Boeing had a successful test of a missile defense system. But it seems to have exceeded...errrr...expectations:

Although not a primary objective of the test, the kill vehicle intercepted the warhead and destroyed it.

Dang. As John Miller notes, talk about burying the lede.

[Update after 7 PM EDT]

Well, at least Reuters (of all people) managed to figure out the significance of the test, even if the Boeing PR people couldn't. Here's the lead of their story:

The U.S. military shot down a target ballistic missile over the Pacific Friday in the widest test of its emerging antimissile shield in 18 months, the Defense Department announced.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:07 PM

Should I Laugh, Or Cry?

Really, this was just an idle question:

...what would they say at Turtle Bay if Iran offered up "peacekeeping troops" in south Lebanon? Since they don't formally recognize Iran's role in the war, how would they refuse? For that matter, why wouldn't they accept an offer from Syria to help "police" its border with Lebanon?

Well, now we know the answer:

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Friday that Syria has pledged to step up border patrols and work with the Lebanese army to stop the flow of weapons to Hezbollah.

Well. That should sort things out.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:42 PM

Blame Bush

Why not?

The demotion of Pluto was seized on by the Democratic National Committee as another Bush Administration failure. “Not since the days of Herbert Hoover has our solar system had only eight planets,” said Howard Dean, DNC Chairman. “Bush has wrecked the economy, mismanaged the war on terror and, now, he’s lost an entire planet. Is there no end to the bungling of the worst president any country has ever had?”
Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.) asserted that the humiliation of the downgrading of the only planet discovered by an American was due to Bush’s diplomatic ineptitude. “I would have worked closely with our European allies to build the kind of international coalition necessary to avert tragedies like this,” Kerry proclaimed.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:26 PM

Having Their Say

If you want to see some really ignorant and moronic commentary on space policy, check out the public thoughts on this BBC bulletin board. I couldn't make myself click past the first page of it.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:43 AM

If They Take Away Our Guns

...how will we shoot the UN bureaucrats, who don't believe in an individual right of self defense?

Will Franklin has some thoughts:

The report goes out of its way to clear up any silly confusion about self-defense for States, including totalitarian regimes, as somehow also applying to lowly individual human beings:
"Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations applies to the States acting in self-defence against armed attacks against their State sovereignty. It does not apply to situations of self-defence for individual persons."

How ironic, that the preeminent human rights organization in the world, the UN, gives the full panoply of protections and immunities under international law to someone like Kim Jong-Il, whereas if you engage in self-defense you are 'violating the rights of another.' This goes to the heart of an entire belief system rampant in the world today that thinks that all violence is bad regardless of circumstances and context, and that the problems of violence are caused by weapons and not those that wield them.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:25 AM

The Hoover Economy

Unemployment is down to 4.7%.

I blame George Bush. Having a robust economy is just an evil Rovian plot to retain Republican control of the Congress this fall.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:19 AM

Who Lost Britain?

Mark Steyn, on a nation that seems willing to fight Islamism everywhere except on its own soil:

But, in a world in which the prospects for the Anglosphere are better than almost anybody else's, there is one bleak exception. At some point soon, we're going to be asking: Who lost Britain? In the weeks after last year's tube bombing, I doubted that the clarion call for a reassertion of "British identity" would last, and so it proved. By the first anniversary, Britain was back in its peculiarly resistant multiculti mush in which the proper reaction to such unfortunate events is to abase oneself ever more abjectly before the gods of cultural relativism. What matters after mass slaughter on the Underground is not the wound to the nation but the potential for hurt feelings of certain minorities. Had the latest disrupted terrorist plot to take down up to ten UK-US airplanes actually succeeded, I'm sure it would have gone much the same--BBC discussion panels on which representatives of Muslim lobby groups warn of outbreaks of Islamophobia. Even as Heathrow and all other British airports were shut down, Shahid Malik, MP for Dewsbury, the neighborhood that produced the July 7th bombers, explained the situation: "The action of Israel and the inaction of the West is contributing to the difficult task of tackling extremism." Deconstruct that--because it's the most artful extension of Jew-blaming in centuries: even Hitler never thought to complain that those bloody Jews were provoking Germans into blowing up their fellow Germans. Of course, it's ludicrous. This plot was well advanced long before the first Israeli strike against Hezbollah--despite the truly contemptible way Reuters, the BBC and other British media outlets inserted reflexively a causal connection.
But suppose Mr. Malik's words were true--that the actions of the Zionist Entity are so repellent they drive British subjects to plot mass murder against their fellow British subjects. What does that imply? That, well before push comes to shove, the primary identity of those nominal "Britons" is not British and never will be.

...On the broader cultural front, where this war in the end will be won, there's little evidence of any kind of will. When one considers the impunity with which the country's incendiary imams incite treason, it requires a perverse genius on the part of Tony Blair to have found the political courage to fight an unpopular war on a distant shore but not the political courage to wage it closer to home where it would have commanded far more support. That's the sad lesson of the July 7th bombings: the British government has a strategy for southern Iraq but not southern England.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:31 AM