I haven't read it yet, but Jack Schmitt's new book
[Update a few minutes later]
Unfortunate typo of Dr./Senator Schmitt's name has been fixed...
Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:04 AMSpeaking of not being impressed, Dean Barnett isn't with James Baker and what is rumored to be his upcoming surrender plan. Me, neither.
There's so much that James Baker doesn’t understand and never has understood; I honestly don’t know where to begin. Perhaps a good place to start would be in 1941 when the Palestinian leader, Mufti al-Husseini, journeyed to Berlin and aligned himself, his people and his movement with the Nazi agenda of annihilating the Jews. Since that time (which was actually seven years before Israel was born), extermination of the Zionist Entity and those inside of it, not any kind of peace agreement, has been the lodestar of the Radical Muslim world. To think that this leopard is suddenly going to change its spots or be satisfied with a Sudetenland-sized chunk of Israel is ludicrous. When Ahmadenijad said he wanted to wipe Israel off the map, he meant it.Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:03 PMAaah, Ahmadenijad. What does this man have to do to convince our country that he means business? Last night, John Kerry was on Larry King (there’s a convergence of some sort). Kerry was fresh from having testified before the Baker Commission. Why the Baker Commission needed the insights of this particular Senator will be yet another mystery of our era for historians to unravel.
...We know who's going to love the Baker Commission recommendations. The Democrats at home who think getting out of Iraq is the only thing that matters will jump aboard the report as an intellectual life raft. Bereft of any ideas of their own for the past five years, Democrats will seize on the report as cover for getting our illiterate children in the armed forces home.
But the Iranian mullahs will be even happier. The Baker Commission report will give them the same feeling that Hitler got in Munich – these men will not fight. They will see a solid chunk of the American body politic eager to sell out an ally while making concessions to our enemies without requiring those enemies to fire a single shot.
That's what Orson Scott Card is with Gary Trudeau and his comparisons between George Bush and Bill Clinton:
"The second president [Clinton] lies about hooking up with an intern."Aw, yeah, that's nothing. Now, if Clinton had sent her dirty messages by IM or email, then he should have not just been impeached, but convicted and thrown out of office. But actually getting her to perform sexual acts on him, and then lying about it -- heck, who doesn't do that with underage sex partners who are in an almost infinitely subservient relationship with the most powerful man on earth?
And the lying -- never mind that it was under oath in a court proceeding. Never mind that the lie was not to protect national security in any way, but merely to obstruct his opponent in a personal lawsuit based on previous sexual misconduct. It just doesn't matter because it's kind of charming that Clinton's insatiable sexual appetite could not be controlled even when he was in the White House.
Because that just makes him a "babe hound," to quote Trudeau's comic strip. And the Left finds "babe hounds" rather charming. Unless they're Republicans, in which case they must be hounded from office immediately.
This is the moral universe of Garry Trudeau -- and of thousands, perhaps millions of others who subscribe to the Smarty-Pants school of moral reasoning. President Bush, whose actions have obviously been motivated solely by the desire to protect America from a genuine danger from bloodthirsty enemies, is worthy of impeachment for the crimes of (a) not always being right, (b) doing what other presidents have done, and (c) having national media figures hate him so badly that they will happily believe any vile rumor his enemies spread about.
And lest the lefty wingnuts howl about this last, they should read the whole thing, in which their hateful loony rants are preemptively demolished.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:54 AMI haven't read it yet, but Jack Schmitt's new book
[Update a few minutes later]
Unfortunate typo of Dr./Senator Schmitt's name has been fixed...
Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:04 AMA conversation with Bjorn Lomborg.
DDT is not dangerous to humans, but it is dangerous to some animals. So if you're in a rich country where you have malaria under control, clearly you should ban DDT or severely restrict its use.Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:14 AMBut our concern about DDT in the early 70s basically meant that most of the developing world restricted their use as well. That was probably an immensely bad judgement because yes, it harms animals like birds, but it also saves human lives. These actions undoubtedly led to many millions of lives lost. So that is one example of where we need to be very careful about what we do.
But I think we are doing a little bit the same thing with climate change discussions right now. We have spent so much time over the last 10 years trying to do something about climate change. We have a treaty that will essentially do nothing whatsoever about climate change and it will still end up costing us quite a bit. And you've got to ask yourself, couldn't we have spent that amount of time and effort and consideration on addressing some of the issues in the world where we could have done an enormous amount of good?
Jon Goff has some more good posts up on exploration (and particularly lunar) architectures. Here's a key point that undercuts NASA's rationale for HLVs:
Why doesn't NASA land enough stuff to support 4 people for 6 months on a single lander? Or 6 people for a year? Because it would require much too big of a lander, which would cost too much to develop, and way too much to operate. By making the lander smaller, and less capable, but using LSR, ESAS provides a much cheaper approach than trying to do a Battlestar Galactica scale lunar lander. However, you could see where that logic goes...And Doug Stanley more or less admitted it. He said that had the 4 people for 7 days edict not been "blessed" by Mike Griffin as one of the ground rules, that EELV based architectures would have traded a lot better compared to the chosen ESAS architecture. And he's right. All the numbers I've run show that you could probably do a reasonable 2-man lunar architecture using st0ck, or nearly st0ck EELVs (or EELV equivalents like Falcon IX if it becomes available).
They admit the need for assembly on the moon, because they know that (as Jon notes) it's completely unrealistic to get a full-up base to the surface with a single launch of any vehicle short of Sea Dragon (come to think of it, that's one HLV that I could get behind, because it's innovative and wouldn't necessarily cost that much). Now admittedly, it is easier to do assembly in a gravity field (though in some ways, it's harder as well, since with weight, you need cranes, etc.). But it's not so much easier that they should have ruled out doing orbital assembly, something that we need to learn to do anyway, and that they will have to do for Mars, even with Ares V.
Again, as Jon points out, the entire architecture, and justification for an expensive (in both development and operations) heavy lifter is based on an arbitrary requirement--four crew for seven days. Remove that constraint, and the trade space blossoms tremendously. But it apparently doesn't satisfy political imperatives, whatever their source.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:53 AMWhen NASA first proposed a single-SRB-based launcher, one of the issues that jumped out immediately to many familiar with vehicle design and Shuttle design was roll control. As designed for the Shuttle, there are two SRBs, both of which can gimbal the engines. This allows roll control of the Shuttle stack by gimbaling them in opposite directions. But when there's only one, the engine gimbal provides pitch and yaw control, but there's no way for it to control roll.
There are two potential solutions to this--to modify the SRB itself to add roll-control thrusters, or to incorporate them into the new upper stage. The latter has the disadvantage of oversizing the roll-control system for the period after stage separation, which adds weight and affects performance, but it simplifies design by requiring only one system.
In any event, the concept seems to be in trouble. Now this certainly isn't a show stopper, and issues like this are inevitable in the development of a new launch vehicle, but it's just one more demonstration of the fact that deriving a new launcher from existing pieces isn't as easy as has been advertised by many, both within and out of the agency.
[Late morning update]
Gary Hudson emails one other option:
There is a third possibility: let it roll. Depending on the rate and duration, it may not be a problem. Some current vehicles do this (Taurus, for one) and we are planning a subset of it for the AirLaunch QuickReach. In our case, we have a Stage Two roll thruster but its purpose is to limit the rate, not hold a specific roll attitude. Makes for a much small thruster. It is later used as part of the normally smaller sized Stage Two attitude control subsystem.Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:35 AM
Victor Davis Hanson writes that the West faces a crisis of confidence:
Just imagine in our present year, 2006: plan an opera in today's Germany, and then shut it down. Again, this surrender was not done last month by the Nazis, the Communists, or kings, but by the producers themselves in simple fear of Islamic fanatics who objected to purported bad taste. Or write a novel deemed unflattering to the Prophet Mohammed. That is what did Salman Rushdie did, and for his daring, he faced years of solitude, ostracism, and death threats--and in the heart of Europe no less. Or compose a documentary film, as did the often obnoxious Theo Van Gogh, and you may well have your throat cut in "liberal" Holland. Or better yet, sketch a simple cartoon in postmodern Denmark of legendary easy tolerance, and then go into hiding to save yourself from the gruesome fate of a Van Gogh. Or quote an ancient treatise, as did Pope Benedict, and then learn that all of Christendom may come under assault, and even the magnificent stones of the Vatican may offer no refuge--although their costumed Swiss Guard would prove a better bulwark than the European police. Or write a book critical of Islam, and then go into hiding in fear of your life, as did French philosophy teacher Robert Redeker....Note also the constant subtext in this new self-censorship of our supposedly liberal age: the fear of radical Islam and its gruesome methods of beheadings, suicide bombings, improvised explosive de-vices, barbaric fatwas, riotous youth, petrodollar-acquired nuclear weapons, oil boycotts and price hikes, and fist-shaking mobs, as the seventh century is compressed into the twenty-first.
In contrast, almost daily in Europe, "brave" artists caricature Christians and Americans with impunity. And we know what explains the radical difference in attitudes to such freewheeling and "candid" expression--indeed, that hypocrisy of false bravado, of silence before fascists and slander before liberals is both the truth we are silent about, and the lie we promulgate.
There is, in fact, a long list of reasons, among them most surely the assurance that cruel critics of things Western rant without being killed. Such cowards puff out their chests when trashing an ill Oriana Fallaci or a comatose Ariel Sharon or beleaguered George W. Bush in the most demonic of tones, but they prove sunken and sullen when threatened by a thuggish Dr. Zawahiri or a grand mufti of some obscure mosque.
[Evening update]
Eric Raymond had a post last February that's quite relevant.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:18 PMI'm going to be very interested in this briefing on lunar architectures next week.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:56 PMI know you'll be shocked to learn this, but women talk more than men. I also found this an interesting statistic:
...what the male brain may lack in converstation and emotion, they more than make up with in their ability to think about sex.Dr Brizendine says the brain's "sex processor" - the areas responsible for sexual thoughts - is twice as big as in men than in women, perhaps explaining why men are stereotyped as having sex on the mind.
Or, to put it another way, men have an international airport for dealing with thoughts about sex, "where women have an airfield nearby that lands small and private planes".
Studies have shown that while a man will think about sex every 52 seconds, the subject tends to cross women's minds just once a day, the University of California psychiatrist says.
My, how politically incorrect.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:46 AMThis looks like an interesting book--how to think like a rocket scientist.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:41 AM| What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Inland North You may think you speak "Standard English straight out of the dictionary" but when you step away from the Great Lakes you get asked annoying questions like "Are you from Wisconsin?" or "Are you from Chicago?" Chances are you call carbonated drinks "pop." | |
| The Midland | |
| The Northeast | |
| Philadelphia | |
| The South | |
| The West | |
| Boston | |
| North Central | |
| What American accent do you have? Take More Quizzes | |
OK, they've got the general region down, but they don't seem to be able to differentiate between Michigan and Wisconsin, which is pretty weird. Just one more question (bubblers versus drinking fountains) would nail it down.
And for the record, I'm a "pop person." Soda is a thing with ice cream.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:23 PMBogus news stories from Iraq. Can you imagine?!
Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:19 PMInstapundit and Radley Balko have been on the warpath for a while against "no-knock" raids.
They should be, and so am I.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:44 PMFred Kiesche could use a new job. Help him keep blogging!
Posted by Rand Simberg at 03:29 PMSo sayeth Zoidberg. Behold, Futurama, the movie.
[Via tdr]
Posted by Rand Simberg at 03:25 PMAll of the evidence in the London assassinations indicates that Putin is behind it. Means, motive, opportunity.
So naturally, Pat Buchanan thinks that this is proof that Putin is being set up.
It's amazing to think of how many people voted for this man for president.
[Update at 7 PM EST]
I didn't read carefully enough. Putin's not just being set up. He's being set up by the Jews!
Posted by Rand Simberg at 03:18 PMSo I was reading this article by Michael Barone, about the Democrats' policy prospects, which started out with this:
What will the Democrats do with their majorities in Congress? The 2006 campaign was pretty much an idea-free zone and provides only a few clues.
Surely that can't be right?
I decided to do a search for innovative Democrat policies, though, and sure enough, they're scarce on the ground.
Maybe if we google bomb this enough, it will rise to the top of the list.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:56 PM“Realism”, then, means nothing other than trading off our enemies’ interests in one place for our own assumed advantage elsewhere. (e.g., stop the Iranian IED supply in southern Iraq and we will lay off UN sanctions; close the Syrian border with Iraq, and Assad can creep back into Lebanon, etc.). All that is a fair, not an exaggerated, description of realism as we have known it. Syria was once invited into the first Gulf War coalition by our hands-off promises about its role in Lebanon. Kurds and Shiites were once let go in 1991 on promises to the Gulf monarchies to keep the old regional dictatorial order.Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:06 AMAll this is hardly new to readers, but what is novel is the sudden liberal embrace of it. Why does the Democratic leadership seem to welcome in the thinking of a James Baker or Brent Scowcroft, especially since it once demonized realism, most notably the circumstances around the first Gulf War or the supposed Bush I failure to stop the genocide in the Balkans? Is it just petty spite at seeing GWB’s own turn on him?
Or is it a deeper malaise that modern liberal internationalism is neither liberal nor international. Lacking any real belief that the United States, now or in its past, has been a continual force for good, the contemporary Left hardly wants the rest of the world to suffer the American malaise of racism, sexism, homophobia, environmental degradation, and consumerism. That self-doubt is buttressed by the idea as well that confrontation is always bad, that evil does not really exist, but is a construct we create for misunderstanding, that the world’s ills are remedied by reason and dialogue.
In essence, the progressive Leftist is often affluent, insulated from the savagery about him by his material largess, and empathizes with those who are antithetical to the very forces that made him free, secure, and prosperous—as a way to assuage the guilt, at very little cost, of his own blessedness.
Does death give life meaning? Perhaps, but that I think that there are other ways to do so.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:51 AMBoy, I'll be that Iran and Syria are quaking in their collective boots by threats from the "realists."
Democracy in Iraq? Who cares? Not James Baker, or the New York Times, obviously.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:30 AMIt doesn't follow the BCS rules, but assuming that USC beats UCLA next week, it makes the most sense. Have a playoff between the Trojans and the Wolverines in the Rose Bowl, and then let the winner play Ohio State on January 8th. Of course the Buckeyes would have an advantage in that they'd be rested for two months, but they'd also be rusty.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 03:20 PMGeorge Abbey, who ran NASA's manned spaceflight program in the Goldin years, seems to be attempting to position himself to replace Mike Griffin with the advent of a Democrat administration. There are some grammar problems with this report of a recent speech by him (it reads sort of like a live blog of the speech). I know that you will all be shocked to hear this, but he doesn't want to replace the Shuttle--he wants to keep operating it:
The space program needs realism, Abbey said. Putting an end point on the shuttle forces NASA to focus all of its remaining missions on the space station, giving little leeway for other missions.
What other missions? Other than Hubble, what does he have in mind? Surely he doesn't think that we can afford to do deep space exploration with it as a launch vehicle?
If we don't retire it, how long does he expect to be able to keep operating it? What happens when (not if) we lose another orbiter?
The major difference between the two craft, Abbey said, is versatility a handy attribute when working in space [sic--I assume that there is supposed to be some kind of punctuation after the word "versatility"]. (Orion) is not as capable as the shuttle it cant [sic] do any of the things the shuttle can do.
Well, it certainly can't do all the things that the Shuttle can do, but it can certainly (at least in theory) deliver crew to space and back, which is one of the things that the Shuttle can do. Whether or not it even should be able to do all of the things that the Shuttle can do is barely even debatable any more, given the consensus of most observers of the program that a primary problem with Shuttle is that it had too many conflicting requirements. This is thinking right out of the early seventies, and it's also thinking born of a career at NASA, in which it is automatically assumed that we can only afford one vehicle type, so it must do everything (ISS was severely crippled by this attitude as well). And of course any system that has to have so much capability, if it's possible at all, will be very expensive to develop and operate, so the notion that we can only afford one becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
I find his concern about other space nations misplaced. Certainly China isn't going to make any great strides at their current place. And his spinoff argument is typical NASA fluff. The only thing he says that I agree with, in fact, is about ITAR (at least I assume that's what he's talking about when he says):
First, Abbey said too much government red tape is making it very difficult for wanting nations to purchase satellites from the U.S. The red tape is forcing nations to other competitors those competitors are surpassing us.
Of course, it's hard to know exactly what he said, or meant, given the quality of the reportage.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:33 PMFrance and Italy have been funding terrorists in Iraq:
Another challenge for the United States, the report says, was to persuade foreign governments to “stop paying ransoms.” It gives no details, but American officials have said previously that France paid a multimillion-dollar ransom for the release in December 2004 of two French reporters held hostage by an insurgent group. Italy, these officials have said, paid ransoms on at least two occasions, in September 2004 for the release of two women, both aid workers, and in March 2005, a reported $5 million for the release of Giuliana Sgrena, a journalist for the Rome newspaper Il Manifesto.
Unfortunately, that's not their only source of funds, or even the major one.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:38 AMYouTube joins the War on (Some) Drugs.
Bad on them. The DEA is certainly welcome to post whatever nonsensical propaganda they want on the site, but the suppression of dissent is odious. What kind of arm twisting went on for that?
[Update a few minutes later]
In reading the comments, I see that there's nothing unusual about this. Anyone who uploads a video can disable comments and ratings.
[/VOICE="Emily Litella"]
Never mind.
[/VOICE]
Still, as one of the commenters points out, this could end up backfiring on the drug warriors. First, who's going to go out of their way to look at anti-drug propaganda on YouTube? Second, expect dozens of parodies of the thing to appear very soon, which will get viewed and linked.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:30 AMI'll probably have some commentary on this when I get more time (i.e., when relatives aren't visiting for the weekend), but Jon Goff has an interesting post on some candid comments by Doug Stanley on ESAS. I'm sure that Doug is sincere in his beliefs that a) Mars is more important than the moon and b) ESAS is the best way under the political circumstances to make it happen. But I think he's wrong on both counts, and more importantly it is not his place (or even Mike Griffin's) to make policy. If he has problems with VSE as stated, and wants to do a touch and go on the moon (ignoring the president's directive), he should work to get the policy changed, rather than pervert the architecture in his preferred direction without such a debate.
[Update on Monday morning]
More interactions with Dr. Stanley, from Keith Cowing.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:09 AMPatricia and I are kid sitting this weekend while their parents go to Key West for the weekend, for their first vacation alone since the kids were born. They're six and eight (almost nine) and a lovable handful. Doesn't leave much time for blogging.
I do have to say, though, that if USC beats Notre Dame tonight and then loses next week to UCLA, you can't imagine how hard I'll laugh...
[Watching game]
I should obligatorily add, that I really, really hate having to root for Notre Dame...
But it's 21-10 now, favor USC.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:19 PMI've got family visiting, and am making my traditional stuffing with cornbread, turkey sausage (I used to be able to get cranberry sausage in California, but there are no Bristol Farms here), wild rice, pine nuts, wild mushrooms, and the secret ingredient, pomegranate. My niece helped me dissect it for the berries. Her mother is from Iraq, so she knows her pomegranates.
We'll be busy the rest of the day cooking, taking kids to the beach, watching football, ingesting fermented malt beverages, etc.
I'm thankful that we have pomegranates. And turkeys. I'm thankful that at my age, I've still got enough teeth to enjoy them (I recall my grandfather having to cut off his corn with a knife to eat it, when he wasn't a lot older than me). I'm thankful for medical technology in general, which seems to be continuing to get better, and giving me hope that I'll live to see escape velocity.
I'm thankful for family and loved ones, and the ability to share my thanks with them in good health on this day.
I'm thankful for the technology that allows me to express my thankfulness to those people who read this little web site, and I'm thankful for the readers who unaccountably and seemingly masochistically keep coming back to read it.
I'm very thankful that we'll have elections again in two years. And that's not a partisan comment (particularly since I'm not a member of any political party)--it would be true regardless of the results three weeks ago. Having a sister-in-law who is from Baghdad can make you appreciate small things like that.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:21 AMVictor Davis Hanson says that we're still in the "phony war" stage:
...why would either Damascus or Teheran wish to talk? The answer is plain. The former wants to profess to cool it a bit in destabilizing Iraq in exchange for us turning a blind eye in Lebanon; the latter wants to act like stopping the sending of agents of our destruction into Iraq in exchange for cooling our rhetoric about their bomb. What we would be doing in essence by “dialoguing” is saying to both the democracies in Lebanon and Israel, “Sorry, but we have to find a way out of Iraq, and these fascists will promise to turn away from us if they can turn on you.”All this is dressed up with realist “maturity” and “concern” but it would be consistent with those who brought us Iran-Contra, aid to both Iran and Iraq in their war, stopping before Baghdad, hugs with the House of Saud that paid money to those who killed Americans, and on and on. If Syria and Iran can be assured of a truce, that we won’t destabilize them at home or stop their adventurism abroad, then they might let us save face in Iraq. That they would ever honor such a deal is absurd, that we would ever believe they would is worse than absurd.
For five long years many of us have praised this administration’s constancy and idealism, in removing the Taliban and Saddam, and then staying on to do the hard, the easily caricatured work of democratization. The liberal hawks have long bailed. The paleos have turned venomous in their criticism. Many of the neo-cons have sought escape by blaming the flawed occupation for ruining their supposedly perfect three-week take-down of Saddam. But there are millions of us still out there who, Jacksonian in spirit, close ranks and will support our troops wherever they are. But we simply cannot ask Americans to die in Anbar province while talking to the Iranians and Syrians who are doing their best through surrogates in killing them.
[Update on Thursday morning]
Sorry, link is fixed now.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:41 PMIn a victory for freedom of expression, Nonie Darwish has been reinvited to speak at Brown:
Any Arab who speaks differently from the status quo is immediately just branded as traitor, and they want to shut us up. We left the Middle East thinking we’re coming to America, our freedom of speech is protected. And then the radicals follow us here and shut us up.”
Thankfully, common sense prevailed, as happens all too rarely in these college censorship scenarios.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:45 AMJon Goff is unaccountably questioning the value of his blogging. I haven't been linking to him as much as I should, but he has been putting up a lot of well-thought-out and thought -provoking posts on potential space architectures that would be far superior to NASA's current plans. Head over there and tell him to keep it up.
I do second the recommendation to get off Blogspot, though. If nothing else, it would allow him to post his URL in comments here.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:38 AMJonah Goldberg thinks that Battlestar Galactica's writers have fallen into the "why do they hate us" trap, in a completely absurd way (and one that continues to mislead the public about the nature of our real-life enemy):
Adama concludes it's all his fault because he led the mission that proved the human race really were "war mongers" in the eyes of the Cylons.Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:39 AMI don't want to use a lot of philosophical or literary lingo here, but this is really stooooooopid. Let's say I've been feuding with my neighbor a lot. We've called a draw and built a tall fence to avoid each other. But I don't trust him and I think he may be up to something. So, I peek over the fence. Maybe I even climb over it and look around his back yard for a minute. When my neighbor sees this his immediate response is to get a hatchet and slaughters my entire family, including my relatives in other homes far away. Clearly: It's all my fault!
What is so depressing about this is that Ronald Moore and the other creators of BSG seem to think that "instigating" a conflict in any way assigns the moral responsibility to the instigator. If I step on a psychopath's toe, it's my fault when he buries a ballpoint pen in my forehead. Or, to be fair, they think this is a reasonable, morally serious view. And since they believe it's their job to illuminate the issues in the war on terror, it cannot be denied that they think this is a serious position in the debate over that conflict.
Again: This is really stooooooopid. The idea that the human race had it coming from the Cylons is moral flapdoodle (and flatly unbelievable; the creators seem to think decent humans would be deeply conflicted about declaring total war on a bunch of artificial lifeforms who slaughtered 99% of humanity).
Clark Lindsey notes that the FAA-AST web site has been revamped, by folding it into the general FAA web site. While the improvements he notes are worthwhile (though the changing of permalinks definitely is not), I'm unthrilled with the concept of entwining AST even more deeply with the FAA. AST was originally the Office of Commercial Space Transportation, reporting directly to the Secretary of Transportation. The Clinton administration demoted it, and folded it into FAA in the early nineties.
This had two deleterious effects. First, it gave it less clout within the department, since the AA for it now had to report to the SecTran up through the FAA administrator. Second, it placed it in an agency that, after the Valujet crash, had its responsibility declared solely for public safety, with none to promote the aviation industry (one of its charters in the early days).
But the infant space transportation industry needs a different balance between safety and promotion than a mature aviation industry, and there is a potential clash of regulatory cultures as long as AST remains within FAA. Its current bureaucratic abode makes it much easier to justify nannyism that could strangle it in the cradle. I think that there should be a push on by the space activist community to restore it to its original position as a separate administration within DOT, and I'm not happy whenever I see its status as a subset of FAA further entrenched.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:24 AMViolence has been dropping in Iraq.
C'mon, guys. You can tell us. The election's over. You and the Jihadis won! You can even take credit for it now, just as you can for the economy.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:02 AMJudith Weiss has some questions for Brown University, after it rescinded an invitation to a former Muslim speaker that is critical of Islam:
1) Does the Brown Muslim student group have the same compunctions about bringing in a Jewish speaker who criticizes Judaism?2) If they planned to bring one in and the Jewish students protested, would the Muslim students defer to them?
3) Has a Jew ever been silenced on a college campus for misrepresenting or denigrating Judaism?
4) Is the problem just that Darwish criticizes Islam, or that she compares it unfavorably to Judaism? For example, this appreciation of the self-reflection demanded during the High Holidays, contrasted with the shame/honor imperative of the Islam she grew up with. Is it that Darwish criticizes the Arab Middle East, or that she defends Israel?
5) Is it an acceptable stance at a university supposedly committed to the free flow of ideas for either group to have veto power over the others' invited speakers? Whatever happened to reasoned disagreement? If Darwish is saying things that aren't true or are unfair, let the Muslim students attend her speech and respectfully ask her tough questions.
The double standards and hypocrisy here are astounding, considering the kind of enthusiastic audiences that colleges can get for Palestinians and their sympathizers who criticize Israel and Jews.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:12 PMRight after the election, I pointed out one of the less-obvious consequences of it--Jim Oberstar's potential strangling of an infant industry in the cradle. Taylor Dinerman expands on the thought today.
In spite of some weasel wording, the hard legal requirements of Oberstar’s proposed regulation would effectively kill the whole entrepreneurial suborbital industry. The cost not only of developing a manned rocket that complies with the kind of safety burden that Oberstar wants, not to mention the astronomical cost of proving that a vehicle actually does comply with the regulations, will make it all but impossible even for the deepest pockets to build anything.Even worse, Oberstar might open the door for the tort lawyers to come in and strip mine all the investment capital out of the industry. They almost killed off the US general aviation industry before Congress stepped in and put a stop to the lawsuit avalanche. In that case, tens of thousands of US jobs were at stake, but with the space tourism industry so far only hundreds of jobs are now at risk. The greatest danger is that all the thousands of high-paying jobs that the space tourism industry will create if the industry is left to develop under current rules will simply never exist.
I wish that folks like Oberstar were more worried about that potentiality than a few tourists potentially being killed in the early years.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:26 PMClark Lindsey isn't impressed by Scott Horowitz' ability to ignore "outside noise:"
I guess this is an improvement over the deaf/mute NASA that produced the Space Shuttle, the ISS, X-33, X-34, SLI, OSP, etc. NASA leaders were then completely oblivious to the existence of any outside voices on space hardware development and never felt it necessary to address complaints from know-nothings (i.e. anyone not working at NASA). At least now they go to the window and before closing it they yell at the peons outside to shut up and stop making a racket.Posted by Rand Simberg at 04:06 PM
Or rather, still. I've noticed that my Internet connection has had leaky tubes lately. I tracked the problem down to DNS. I did quick search on "DNS problems Bellsouth," and found that my old post on the subject was number two, but number one was a post at Tony Spencer's place from over a year ago with several recent comments.
The weird thing is that the problem is primarily on my Windows box. My Fedora machine seems to be fine (it obviously has a different DNS setup, that I'll have to dig into, to see what it's doing right, and Windows is doing wrong. When I check my speed at C/Net, it tells me I've got a 1.5 Mbit connection, so it's very frustating to have slow loads of pages because the machine can't find the IP.
[Update about 7:30 EST]
In rereading my old post, I found this recent comment to it:
...did anyone notice that the DNS problems began about the same time they got to work for the NSA et al. Since I'm writing this in October 2006 and this thread started in December 2004, I assume they've had plenty of time and complaints to have long ago solved this issue if they had any intention of doing so.Just so everyone knows, the DNS problem is still there. I live in southeast GA, and there is a minimum five full second (5.0s) responses to DNS queries. Contrast that with my Comcast DNS response times of (0.05s). So my 256KB/256KB Comcast connection is 100x faster at responding to DNS queries than my 6MB/384KB Bellsouth connection.
This thread is two years old, and this problem persists. Maybe everything is actually working but the NSA has to approve your DNS request first :) There is no valid technical reason for this level of a problem for this length of time. And it doesn't matter what time of day it is, so the DNS workload defense doesn't hold up.
PS: Bellsouth did eventually deny participation, but as far as I know for certain, there were only two companies that actually refused the unconstitutional demands and bellsouth wasn't one of them, but Google was !! Too bad google won't just give us all free DNS, imagine the statistics they could derive from that. Oh well, PEACE netizens.
I don't tend to be the paranoid type, but I'm wondering if there is indeed something to this.
[Update about 8:30 PM EST]
OK, Bellsouth DNS is officially fscked. I noted that my Linux machine was hardwired to use 4.2.2.2 as primary DNS, with the Bellsouth servers as secondary. I changed the Windows machines from "get DNS servers from the service" to primary 4.2.2.2 with a Bellsouth backup, and all is well. But I probably should set up my Linux box as a DNS server, to obviate these problems in the future, since I seem to have a good general Internet connection. For that matter, I need to get a better mail server than Bellsouth, which won't allow me to access the SMTP server when I'm not on their network. Anyone have any suggestions?
Posted by Rand Simberg at 03:49 PMI'm busy with a final push to finish the house remodeling for a visit from my brother and his family for Thanksgiving. They came down from Michigan to do the Orlando thing, and will be coming down midweek. Meanwhile, lots of other good blogs, most better than this one, over on the left there.
Back to painting...
Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:39 AMIf number one beats number two by a field goal on number one's home field, sounds like they're ranked about right. We'll see what the pollsters and computers say this afternoon.
Ohio State definitely looked like the better team, though, at least after the first quarter. Michigan's first drive was impressive, but after that they seemed to sputter somewhat. I'd say that if these teams played ten games, Ohio State would win six or seven of them.
And I was pulling for a Cal victory last night, but it wasn't to be. But if Notre Dame knocks off USC, what to do, what to do? It doesn't make sense to rank the Irish ahead of Michigan, considering the pasting the Wolverines gave them in South Bend. Perhaps, though, just to be safe, USC should beat Notre Dame, and then let UCLA knock off the Trojans. That would leave Florida, I guess.
I know that a lot of people don't want a rematch, but it looks like there's a good possibility of that happening. Of course, then, if Michigan wins, people will be demanding another, and the best two out of three. Such is the silliness of trying to assign a national championship to college football teams. There simply aren't enough games for it to be meaningful.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:00 AM...and blog comments at their finest. Here's a bunch of encomia to Bo Schembechler, including a lot of classy ones from fans of other schools, including Ohio State:
Bo Schembechler not only revived college football's winningest program, he also revived this rivalry.In the mid-sixties Michigan wasn't even the best team in the State of Michigan. Michigan State was the team that played "the game of the century in 1966, a 10-10 tie against Notre Dame. And the Nat'l Champion Buckeyes beat U-M 50-14 in Bump Elliott's final game.
Bo not only shocked the college football world a year later when his underdog Wolverines beat the heavily favored, unbeaten, and top-ranked Buckeyes 24-12 in his first try against Woody, he restored the winning tradition to Michigan Football and put the emotion back into what is now considered the sport's greatest rivalry.
He also ran an airtight program. No rules violations, no favors, no cheating. Period. And his teams were held to a much higher standard of sportsmanship than the norm. No trash-talking and no cheap shots by Michigan football players were tolerated.
Bo gets a bad rap on his bowl record. Bo always had a reputation for being such a tough guy that the nation never knew that he considered a bowl trip to be a reward for his players and thus didn't crack the whip for those games quite as hard. That, combined with the tougher competition led to a .500 bowl record.
Bo's stubborn, run-oriented offensive schemes may have cost him a few games, but that same stubbornness re-established and maintained a superior level of play on the field and conduct off the field that is the essence of Michigan Football.
And here's an example (and a sadly prophetic one) from a fan of tOSU:
Bo came to Ohio State and spoke at Woody's memorial at the OSU Stadium. His words of his love for Woody made me cry. Today I cried again at the news of his death.Someone sent me an interview comment where Bo was asked what he would like the most and he said to watch the game with Woody. I guess he got his wish.
Rest in Peace Bo.
Go Buckeyes!
May be.
Jim Tressel has a hell of a job getting his players up for this game tomorrow. My advice to him for a pre-game speech:
Men, you know that with Coach Schembechler's death yesterday, those Wolverines are going to be even more fired up than they were before. They were already motivated, and now they're going to be even more so, to "win one for Bo."
And Bo sure would want them to win. But he'd also want them to win against the best Ohio State team they could, because he could never stand a cheap win. In fact, the last thing that he'd want is for his team to win just because he died the day before the game. He'd want his team to play their best, but he'd also want you to play your best, and let the best team win.
There'll be more than one team on that field today who want to win one for Bo Schembechler. Let's go out there and do it for him.
[Update a few minutes later]
I hadn't thought about this, but as the 1968 Tigers healed a wounded Detroit, still reeling from the riots the year before, Bo also healed a war-torn and fractious late-sixties Ann Arbor (a place I knew, and loved, well, from visiting my sister who was attending college there at the time). John Papanek explains.
And for those who still don't understand the significance of this game to college football, here's some interesting trivia:
• It is true that the late Ohio State coach Woody Hayes, who did more to pump up the negative feelings in the rivalry than any man, refused to fill up his car in the state of Michigan."I'll tell you why we don't," Hayes said, according to the seminal book, "Woody Hayes and the 100-Yard War." "It's because I don't buy one goddam drop of gas in the state of Michigan. We'll coast and push this goddam car to the Ohio line before I give this state a nickel of my money!"
• It is true that Michigan, leading 55-0 late in the 1946 game, lined up and kicked a field goal.
• It is true that in 1950, the teams played through a blizzard with 29 inches of snow and more than 50,000 fans sat through it. Michigan's Chuck Ortmann punted 24 times, and the Wolverines won 9-3, despite failing to make a first down. Buckeyes coach Wes Fesler quit a few days later. Ohio State hired the little-known Hayes away from Miami (Ohio).
• It is true that in 1970, a local judge in Columbus dismissed a charge of obscenity against a defendant arrested for wearing a T-shirt that said, "F--- Michigan" because the message "accurately expressed" local feelings about the university and the state.
• It is true that Hayes sometimes bunked his team in Toledo on the night before a game in Ann Arbor so the Buckeyes could sleep on Ohio ground.
And I found this interesting, too, partly because I'd never thought about it:
Hayes turned the rivalry with Michigan into his personal, 365-day-a-year war. Nearly two decades after his death, Hayes' obsession with all things maize and blue has become his legacy to the state. Hayes rarely recruited in Michigan. In 1969, perhaps the most famous game in the rivalry before Saturday, Ohio State had no players on its roster from Michigan. The Wolverines had 21 players from Ohio.
It really is an asymmetrical relationship, and I think a large part of that is due to Woody. It's been often pointed out that Michigan doesn't have anywhere near the negative passion and animosity toward Columbus that tOSU fans do to Ann Arbor, and I suspect that Woody is a major reason why. His legacy, for good or ill, lives on. Perhaps Bo's death can ameliorate it, at least to a degree. At least for a day?
[Update at 8:30 EST]
Jeez, is this really a global event?
Also, read the "subplots":
• The stats might make you think Michigan is quite vulnerable to the pass: The Wolverines have allowed 11 TD passes and rank 65th in passing yards allowed (202 per game). That's a bit misleading. though. Because teams can't run at all against UM (fewer than 30 yards per game when all the sacks are factored in) and Michigan has had the lead almost the entire season, opponents have had no choice but to go up top often.Michigan's best pass defense is obviously a strong rush from the front four, but it's not as if Leon Hall and the gang in the secondary are stiffs!
• Michigan has played with a chip on its shoulder this season. Ohio State has been the team on all the magazine covers -- almost wire-to-wire as a nearly unanimous No. 1. UM was picked between 10 and 18 in the preseason magazines I dug up this week. So, it's appropriate that an unbeaten team from mighty Michigan is arriving as an underdog (a bigger dog by the day, it seems). The Wolverines are very dangerous here.
OK, up to this point, I've made no prognostications on the outcome of the game. But now, with Bo's death, if I had money in the game, it would be on Michigan. And not just because I'm an alumnus.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 04:33 PMThe Freepers have gotten a hold of the necrobestiality story:
This guy has already sold the movie rights to his story. It's gonna be called Brokebuck Mountain.Posted by Rand Simberg at 03:11 PM
The Dutch have banned the burka. A small step toward the liberation of women, at least in Europe. And yes, it is that, despite their no longer having the "freedom" to hide their faces.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:44 PMPaul Hsieh notes that his fantasy will come to pass tomorrow. And here's some backstory and prognostications from opposing fans.
Go Blue.
[Update at 12:30 PM EST]
What timing. It's an end of a era. On the day before this monumental game involving a team with which he was so closely associated, no mo' Bo:
Broadcast reports say Michigan coaching great Bo Schembechler has died at age 77 after collapsing at a television studio and being rushed to the hospital.
Wonder how that will affect the psychology of the game tomorrow? None of the players played for him, of course, but I'd imagine that they'd met him (he remained Athletic Director, I think), and knew what he meant to Michigan. If they weren't motivated enough, this may inspire them to go out and win one more for the old man. Hail to the Victor.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:33 AMI'm hearing that Milton Friedman died last night. RIP and condolences to Rose.
More thoughts later.
[5 PM Update]
Glenn has some relevant links
As many have noted, he wasn't just an economist, but (like Hayek) a tireless fighter for human liberty.
[Update at 7:30 PM EST]
Here's another link roundup. Here's one from Brian Doherty:
Undoubtedly the most successful and influential proponent of libertarian thought in the 20th century, Milton Friedman, died last night at age 94. His successes as both a technical economist and libertarian polemicist are enormous. We can thank him, in large part, for happy events from the elimination of the draft to the conquest of inflation. Just a quick note now–his impact was staggering, and there could never be enough words said in praise of him.
And as is pointed out, the collectivist ghouls at Democratic Underground are partying.
[Late update]
For the uninitiated, here's a list of Milton Friedman books
I don't have anything to say, but I just thought I should knock the necrobestiality post off the top of the scroll...
Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:11 AMIs having amorous relations with a deceased ungulate a crime? Should it be?
The lawyer of a man accused of carnal activity with a dead deer says no, at least to the first question (registration may be required).
Hathaway called it a dead deer, Boughner said, not a carcass.“It did not lose its essence as a deer, an animal, when it died,” he said.
Anderson argued that the statute, which falls under the heading “crimes against sexual morality,” was meant to protect animals. That would be unnecessary in the case of a dead animal.
“If you look at the other crimes that are in this subsection, they all protect against something other than simply things we don’t like or things we find disgusting,” he said.
Other crimes in that subsection include incest, bigamy, public fornication and lewd and lascivious behavior.
Boughner said the focus of the statute was on punishing the human behavior, not protecting animals.
“It does not seem to draw a line between the living and the dead,” he said.
Interpreting the statute to exclude dead animals would also exclude freshly killed animals, Boughner said. That, he said, could lead to people who commit such acts with animals to kill them.
What would we do without lawyers? The judge will need the wisdom of Solomon for this one.
But what kind of perv would even want to do this? Hey, maybe it had a nice rack (yuk, yuk)...
And of course, this raises the usual question. Was it in fact, a male, or female?
(Punchline answer: "Female of course! What do you think, I'm queer?")
Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:44 AMGlenn writes about a new book on traffic congestion
I've often thought that it is a massive economic waste. I also think that there are things that could be done about it that would be relatively low cost, and don't involved construction of new highways or relaning the roads. As I've noted before, if I were king, I'd launch a massive public education campaign on lane discipline, and enforce it with tickets. I'd be harder on left lane hogs than on speeders.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:38 AMPete Fiutak thinks that Saturday's game should be dubbed the national championship:
Not only have Ohio State and Michigan had the two best teams all year, there isn't anyone else deserving to be in the picture. In the storied history of college football's greatest rivalry, and it is college football's greatest rivalry, this will be the biggest game ever played between the two. That makes this, arguably, the biggest regular season game in the history of the sport. So let this weekend be it. Crown the winner the national champion, and let's get the talk about the 2007 season going. USC, Florida or Arkansas as the preseason No. 1 ... discuss.
That's the way it looks to me. The national championship is mythical anyway, might as well do what makes sense. But of course, that wouldn't generate all the revenue that they're expecting in Glendale in January. And of course, it's easily conceivable that the computers will decide to do a rematch, anyway.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:22 AMDavid Barash asks if we should be teaching evolutionary psychology.
Answer: yes, but carefully:
What to do? One possibility — unacceptable, I would hope, to most educators — would be to refrain altogether from teaching such dangerous truths. Teacher, leave them kids alone! Preferable, I submit, is to structure the teaching of sociobiology along the lines of sex education: Teach what we know, but do so in age-appropriate stages. Just as we would not bombard kindergartners with the details of condom use, we probably ought not instruct preteens in the finer points of sociobiology, especially since many of those are hidden even to those expected to do the teaching. For one thing, a deeper grasp of the evolutionary biology of altruism reveals that even though selfishness may well underlie much of our behavior, it is often achieved, paradoxically, via acts of altruism, as when individuals behave in a manner that enhances the ultimate success of genetic relatives. Here, selfishness at the level of genes produces altruism at the level of bodies.Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:16 AM...Beyond the question of what our genes may be up to and the extent to which we are independent of them, those expected to ponder the biology of their own "natural" inclinations ought also to be warned (more than once) about the "naturalistic fallacy," the presumption that things natural are, ipso facto, good. I'd even suggest pushing this further, and that the real test of our humanity might be whether we are willing, at least on occasion, to say no to our "natural" inclinations, thereby refusing go along with our selfish genes. To my knowledge, no other animal species is capable of doing that. More than any other living things, we are characterized by an almost unlimited repertoire; human beings are of the wilderness, with beasts inside, but much of the beastliness involves gene-based altruism no less than selfishness.
Contra Chris Mooney's thesis
More than anything else, even the misrepresentations themselves, the collective willingness to overlook bad policy arguments unsupported (or even contradicted) by the current state of science while at the same time trumpeting the importance of scientific consensus is evidence of the comprehensive and pathological politicization of science in the policy debate over global warming. If climate scientists ever wonder why they are looked upon with suspicion among some people in society, they need look no further in their willingness to compromise their own intellectual standards in policy debate on the issue of disasters and climate change.Posted by Rand Simberg at 03:48 PM
Rick Tumlinson challenges the space activist community:
The most disappointing thing about the state of the Centennial Challenges is that the pro-frontier/pro-NewSpace community hasn't made Congress change its position.Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:01 PMGiven the importance we have all attached to prizes and new ways of NASA/USG doing things in space, the tepid response of this community and its inability to raise enough pressure to get the prizes funded shows we are either too weak to effect significant change, too disorganized to do so, or we simply don't care or aren't willing to put our muscle where our mouth is.
We have a few weeks to put that pressure on and bring one home for the cause. The leaders of this community, including many of the great bloggers out there, need to wake up and make this happen. We need to both focus attention on the committee(s) involved and on NASA to fight for one of the brightest spots in its otherwise dark future. This isn't about who does the prizes or competes for them, or even how soon anyone wins, it is about the concept of trying something new with hundreds of years of proven track record, changing how we do space, supporting the fledgling NewSpace industries and movement, and showing that those of us who care about humanity's future in space is worth fighting for.
I noticed someone posted links to the Appropriations committee and its staffers. Those in the know as to how the machine operates should enlighten their readers, and we all should step up to this one.
I saw Pixel (Armadillo’s vehicle) hovering above the desert [at the X Prize Cup], and it was a magical sight. Not just because it was accomplished so cheaply and by pseudo volunteers, nor that it and the tether challenges inspired so many and generated such news, not even for the looks of the amazed children in the audience, but because it signaled what is possible at a fraction of the cost of today’s old space industrial complex.
There are many who would be quite happy to see this sort of symbol just fade away, but for those of us believe in the dream of an open frontier in our lifetimes it is time to stop whining and get something done.
I urge you and your readers to take action. Organize your local space groups, spend a tiny bit of the time they use typing at each other on these forums and weigh in with those who need to feel the heat.
If we can’t win something this relatively small in the battle to change our national space agenda, it bodes extremely ill for our chances not only to force NASA to implement a pro-frontier strategy, it also is an ill omen for our ability to defend the newborn child of NewSpace and our chance to move beyond governments into space.
In the next weeks I and my associates in the Foundation are going to do what we can. I ask those others who care to do the same.
Charlie Rangel has apologized for his slur against Mississippi:
There is no excuse for my having said that. I am fully aware that every American loves their respective state and city, and I'm afraid that my love and affection for New York got in the way of my common sense and judgment, and for that I sincerely apologize.
Well done.
It's a good think that he didn't get advice from Kerry. It probably would have come out something like this:
I'm sorry that the people of Mississippi are too stupid and crazy to realize the inherent and nuanced truth of my statement, when I asked who would want to live there. Of course, it hadn't occurred to me, or any other well-bred, educated people, that the place is full of ignorant inbred rednecks who probably love the place.Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:17 AM
Keith gathers up internal criticism of The Shaft, and of its management. I hope that NASA folks feel free to do that here as well--as our troll(s) demonstrate almost daily, it is possible to post anonymously.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:14 AMI'd been hearing rumors about this for a few days, and I've even had an email exchange or two with Elon in the last couple days on other subjects, but Clark apparently asked him what I didn't. Falcon 1 first launch has been delayed until early next year.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:07 AMIranian newspapers continue to beat the war drums against Israel. Will this be the first move in their hoped-for Armageddon?
And the so-called "realists" from the first Bush administration continue to make plans to appease them.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:17 AMDean Barnett is as unimpressed as I am with the election of Trent Lott as Minority Whip:
If there’s one message that the electorate sent the Republican Party last week, it’s that we hadn’t given them enough of Trent Lott....Is it just me, or is it becoming increasingly apparent that the Republicans and Democrats are determined to engage in a two year dumb-off? If it weren’t for the fact that there are some very determined lunatics out there trying to kill us, this would be funny.
And in honor of the pork-loving, segregation-missing helmet head, I bring you this reprise of my take on his downfall, which didn't happen soon enough, and now seems to have been stupidly reversed. (Hard to believe that was almost four years ago.)
Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:01 AMJohn Wixted says that Europe is an economic and demographic failure--a cultural evolutionary dead end:
What's wrong with Europe? The same thing that was wrong with states that chose communism as an economic model, though to a lesser degree. The Europeans are not communists, but their generous social welfare state has moved pretty far in that direction. It is not an inherently evil economic approach -- it might even be morally superior in some ways. The problem is that it just doesn't work.Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:10 AMIt is important for people to come grips with this reality because Western Europe is the embodiment of the liberal ideal. Even if you think that liberal thinking is morally superior, the empirical evidence would appear to suggest that it is not practical.
...The Europeans are driving off a cliff, but they don't see it coming because they spend so much of their time reveling in their own moral superiority. I believe that, in their own minds, they are on the cutting edge of societal evolution (to borrow a phrase from Rush Limbaugh), but the forces of natural selection would appear to be working against them.
For those of you with HDTV, the Discovery Channel will be doing a live broadcast from space in a few minutes, at 11:30 Eastern time. This will be the first time ever that there's been such a broadcast in HD And if you miss it live, it will be repeated at 9 PM.
[Watching]
Some random thoughts. They spend a lot of time up front justifying and defending a space station. The problem is that this is a straw man. Many critics of the program agree that we should have a space station (I think that we should have multiple ones). The issue is not a space station, but this space station.
Also, there are no stars. They obviously filmed this in a movie studio, with hidden wires on the floating astronauts... (that's a joke, for those unfamiliar with my posting style).
The beginning is just the astronaut floating and describing experiments. Not that interesting a use of the medium, I think. Now they're showing views out the window, which is much more useful.
Now they've gone back to interior views, and are showing astrofood. I'm not fascinated by this, but I guess a lot of people are. Hope they won't demonstrate use of the hygienic facilities...
[A few minutes later]
OK, broadcast over. They needed to do more views of the earth below, which is really the feature attraction. I think there's a market for a camera that does nothing except orbit the earth at this resolution and show it in all its seasons, weather and diurnal cycles. It's almost like a living kaleidoscope.
[Update about half an hour after broadcast end]
Glenn agrees. Great (or some kind of) minds think alike, I guess:
It was pretty good, but it was the images of Earth from space that were really captivating -- they came across as IMAX-like -- and they didn't show enough of those. The stuff from the station interior was okay, be we've all seen people eat in zero gravity before and the demonstrations weren't especially exciting just because they were HD. I would have rather had half an hour of pictures of Earth from low orbit, with only minimal talking-head involvement.I wonder if you could make money with a cable channel that just showed pictures from a low-earth-orbit satellite in HD? It would certainly be cool -- bringing the "Overview Effect" down to Earth -- though I don't think the technology's really there for that yet.
[Update]
I'd like to see HD of the view of this from space:
KFC Corporation today became the world’s first brand visible from outer space by unveiling a record-breaking 87,500 square feet, updated Colonel Sanders logo in the Area 51 desert.
[Update late Wednesday evening]
Jesse Londin wasn't impressed, either.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:50 AMRalph Peters says we have to take off the kid gloves in Iraq, if we're to have any hope of pacifying it:
Our "humanity" is cowardice masquerading as morality. We're protecting self-appointed religious executioners with our emphasis on a "universal code of behavior" that only exists in our fantasies. By letting the thugs run the streets, we've abandoned the millions of Iraqis who really would prefer peaceful lives and a modicum of progress.Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:45 AMWe're blind to the fundamental moral travesty in Iraq (and elsewhere): Spare the killers in the name of human rights, and you deprive the overwhelming majority of the population of their human rights. Instead of being proud of ourselves for our "moral superiority," we should be ashamed to the depths of our souls.
Jonah Goldberg writes about institutionalized racism in the academy.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:28 AMJohn Fund has the lowdown (and it's pretty low) on potential incoming Majority Leader John Murtha:
Mr. Murtha has said his only interest in the purported Saudi sheiks' money was that he hoped it would be invested in businesses in his district. But the full tape makes clear that Mr. Murtha was primarily interested in talking about such investments as a possible cover should he later decide to have the money transferred."And what I'm sayin' is, a few investments in my district, a few you know, is big to me, to this guy apparently is not too big, to a couple of banks which would get their attention. And investment in a business where you could legitimately say to me--when I say legitimately, I'm talking about so these bastards up here can't say to me, well, why, in eight years from now, that's possible, we'd never hear a thing for eight years, but all at once, ah, some dumb bastard would go start talking eight years from now, ah, about the whole thing and say, '[expletive], ah, this happened,' then he, then he, in order to get immunity so he doesn't go to jail, he starts talking and fingering people and then the [expletive] all falls apart."
The undercover FBI agent in the meeting then spoke up and said "You give us the banks where you want the money deposited."
"All right" Mr. Murtha responded. "How much money we talking about?"
"Well, you tell me" replied the FBI agent.
A few moments later in the tape, Mr. Murtha continues his discussion of how "a business commitment" in his district would be structured: "A business commitment that makes it imperative for me to help him. Just, let me tell you something. I'm sure if--and there's a lot of things I've done up here, with environmental regulations, with all kinds of waivers of laws and regulations. If it weren't for being in the district, people would say, 'Well that [expletive], I'm gonna tell you something this guy is, uh, you know, on the take.' Well once they say that, what happens? Then they start going around looking for the [expletive] money. So I want to avoid that by having some tie to the district. That's all. That's the secret to the whole thing."
...Crile reported that prior to Mr. Wilson's arrival on the Ethics Committee, it had largely given Mr. Prettyman, the special counsel, a free hand in his probe. That quickly changed: "Before Prettyman could fully deploy his investigators to move on the Murtha case, he was informed that the committee had concluded there was no justification for an investigation." The Ethics Committee chairman, Rep. Louis Stokes of Ohio, suddenly declared "This matter is closed."
Mr. Prettyman, who had already likened the Ethics Committee to "a misdemeanor court faced with a multiple murder," was furious at the dramatic change of course. He abruptly resigned his post the same afternoon the committee voted to clear Mr. Murtha. While Mr. Prettyman continues to refuse to discuss the case, he told Roll Call newspaper in 1990 that it would be "a logical conclusion" that he resigned over the committee's exoneration of Mr. Murtha. Crile's book notes that "a teary Murtha had confided to a colleague that Wilson's effort had saved his life."
Does Nancy Pelosi really think that this is the route to long-term power?
Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:19 AMPhil Bowermaster (who's not the man he once was) has a some musings on virtual children. His co-blogger responds.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:41 AMGerry Williams has a report from a space awards ceremony in San Diego, featuring Peter Diamandis and Burt Rutan.
Pet peeve--I wish that people would learn the difference between "risk averse" (correct) and "risk adverse" (incorrect).
Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:34 AMGlenn has a column today on how democracy is like sex:
My thought has been that elections play the same role for the body politic that sex plays for the body physical: Every so often, the voters throw the rascals out, and vote in a new set of rascals, meaning that the special interest groups, lobbying outfits, etc., that parasitize the body politic have to adapt to a shifting target. As scientist Thomas Ray has said, one rule of nature is that every successful system accumulates parasites. The American political system has been successful for a long time.It's not perfect, of course -- neither is sex, since parasites remain a problem -- but it does mix things up and help prevent special-interest relationships from becoming too fossilized. When the Democrats come in, Republican interest groups lose influence, and vice versa. The question is, does it mix things up enough?
He goes on to suggest additional anti-parasitical measures, such as term limits, but I still think that a sunset amendment to the Constitution could be very powerful in limiting government (since the growth of government power is the culture medium for parasitism). If we could keep the rascals busy renewing (and rejustifying) old laws, they'd have less time for creating new ones, and rent seeking. Unfortunately, it's probably infeasible, politically.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:07 AMJon Goff has an interesting post on deciding when to quit, a critical ability for success.
Is it always right to keep going and see any difficult task through to completion, no matter the difficulty? Or is it best sometimes to reevaluate and change course when the going gets tough? How do you know which situation is which?One of the things I got hammered into me growing up was the power of determination. If you set your mind to it, the saying goes, there is almost nothing you can't accomplish. Unfortunately, I've ran into several situations in the past which have made me wonder when it really is best to keep slogging through a tough problem, and when it truly is wisest not to keep slogging away at it, but to completely change courses.
In a sense, this is a trap into which NASA has fallen many times (Shuttle and ISS both being excellent examples, and Ares may be as well), but they are often forced by politics to forge ahead with bad ideas. This is one of the many reasons that we will have to privatize space in order to make much progress.
There's probably a lesson here for the administration vis a vis Iraq as well--clearly, we'll have to do something different. The problem is that now the different thing that the people in charge want to do is give up and claim defeat, instead of coming up with a way to win.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:56 AMIs Hezbollah on the verge of taking over Lebanon? Walid Phares thinks that Tehran and Damascus have decided to take advantage of the current political disarray in the US to make their move. I hope that if this happens, Israel hits Damascus this time.
[Update at 10:40 AM EST]
Michael Totten has a podcast interview with a Lebanese blogger.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:39 AMJoe Katzman is trying to understand the selection of Gates for SecDef. Me, too. Bush has only made me unhappier with him (if that were possible) in the wake of the election.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:33 AMDonald Sensing has an interesting post (with equally interesting comments) about science as a religion.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:30 AMHere's an interesting story in the Gray Lady this morning:
Most astronomers doubt that any large comets or asteroids have crashed into the Earth in the last 10,000 years. But the self-described “band of misfits” that make up the two-year-old Holocene Impact Working Group say that astronomers simply have not known how or where to look for evidence of such impacts along the world’s shorelines and in the deep ocean.Scientists in the working group say the evidence for such impacts during the last 10,000 years, known as the Holocene epoch, is strong enough to overturn current estimates of how often the Earth suffers a violent impact on the order of a 10-megaton explosion. Instead of once in 500,000 to one million years, as astronomers now calculate, catastrophic impacts could happen every few thousand years.
If an asteroid or comet hit the Indian ocean five thousand years ago, and caused a megatsunami, as the article points out, this could provide an explanation for the almost-universal flood myths of ancient times.
But it also means that we have to continue to look out for these things, and become sufficiently spacefaring to manage them. Unfortunately, NASA's current plans are just the opposite. But then, I'm not sure that protecting us from asteroids is in NASA's current charter. I certainly wouldn't trust them with the job.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:44 AMThere's apparently more to wearing of the abaya than fashion:
Because of her sympathy for Arabs and Muslims, Donna, an American woman, decided to wear an abaya in an attempt to see how it felt and how it influenced her behavior. She wanted to show sympathy to women wearing abayas, especially after various incidents against Muslims in the post-9/11 world. She wore an abaya and walked along one of the busiest streets in a major American city. She tried to be as normal as possible, talking to people, laughing and behaving as usual. She said that she never felt the abaya was restricting her or limiting her movements or her freedom.Among those who observed Donna, however, were some Muslims, Arabs, and even some Saudis. The Saudis were upset by what they saw and told Donna so. When she asked why, they explained that she was using the abaya in an invalid way. She then became curious to find out what they considered a valid way to use it. They explained to her that she must walk slowly, must look down when walking and keep her eyes more or less in front of her - no glancing from side to side, in other words. She must not talk to anyone or laugh loudly and certainly must not address any remarks to anyone lest they misunderstand her purpose in doing so.
To say the least, Donna was astounded by their remarks and realized that they were not simply talking about a garment to be worn but about their perceptions of what an abaya symbolized. They seemed determined to deny that a normal human being was under the black material. The truth is that those Saudi men articulated something that the Saudi lifestyle and customs have created. The abaya indeed covers a typically weak and frightened character (a woman of course), who views herself as a sexual entity confined in a well-defined space she can never escape from. This is why the whole culture of the abaya imposes so many restraints upon women. One of the restraints is that she must walk as if her feet were hobbled and she was unable to move easily and normally. Nor is she allowed to look around and observe the surrounding world comfortably, as slowly or quickly as she might like. The abaya has also contributed directly to preventing certain basic movements; for example, she can no longer move her hands normally. Aside from that, ordinary free conversation is forbidden and is replaced with low and often unclear speech that makes little sense."
If this isn't oppression, what is?
Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:51 AMBrian Berger has a roundup of political impacts on NASA from the new Congress.
I think that there are some additional nuances here, but it's a good start on understanding the implications. Bottom line--when it comes to space, there's only one party--the Pork Party.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:44 PMAlan Boyle has an interesting scoop on progress from Blue Origin.
That's a dedicated space reporter.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 04:32 PMBoy, the folks at Red State are less than impressed (to put it mildly) with the new pick for head of the RNC.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 03:22 PMOver at The Space Review today, Dwayne Day brings some clarity to the "debate" over the administration's new space policy, and Jim Oberg demonstrates the cluelessness of many commentators on space weaponry.
Also, Jeff Foust reviews a recent attempt at space commentary by the Utne Reader. It shows that "progressives" are as out to lunch on this topic as most are.
Just as a side note, this is my eight thousandth post here, and I neglected to note my fifth bloggiversary last month.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:04 AMTranscript from Meet the Press:
MR. RUSSERT: Jim Jeffords of Vermont crossed over and joined the Democrats.SEN. LIEBERMAN: Yeah.
MR. RUSSERT: And they gave—they gave him his committee chairmanship.
SEN. LIEBERMAN: Yeah.
MR. RUSSERT: You’re, you’re not ruling that out at some future time?
SEN. LIEBERMAN: I’m not ruling it out, but I hope I don’t get to that point.
Sounds like a shot over the cut'n'run Dems' bow to me. If we don't see people hanging on to helicopters at the embassy in Baghdad in a few months, it may be because of Joe Lieberman.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:08 AM...al Qaeda exploited what was already an inherent opposition to the war. Some mainstream media outlets had opposed the war from the start. The failure to immediately find weapons of mass destruction added to the media's growing doubts. As long as al Qaeda detonated IEDs in Iraq and Afghanistan, they could increase the perception of a quagmire. By getting the media to focus on the IED-of-the-day, al Qaeda was able to bury the good news (like the training of the Iraqi Army and reconstruction efforts), and was able to weather the loss of senior leaders like Abu Musab al Zarqawi.The other factor going for them was the fact that members of the mainstream media generally were not sympathetic to the U.S. government. In the last year, media outlets revealed several intelligence programs – often spinning them in a manner that put the intelligence community and the military in a bad light. A reporter for Time magazine, who embedded with the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, had his article completely rewritten by editors who felt his portrayal of American troops was too positive. The media did not even admit that documents, recovered during the liberation of Iraq, showing Saddam Hussein was pursuing nuclear weapons, until it could be spun in a manner that made the Department of Defense look bad. The media even started to refuse to publish letters from Department of Defense officials which challenged misreporting on the war. Heroes like Paul Ray Smith, who was awarded the Medal of Honor posthumously, were studiously ignored.
Emphases mine. Read the whole thing.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:14 PMThe Indian President seems serious:
He said that he visualized India launching a manned space mission with two astronauts into low earth orbit and recovered after planned orbits in the Bay of Bengal in 2014.“It is a beautiful site to see the two Indian astronauts coming jubilantly towards the shore; Coming majestically towards the cheering gathering and being greeted by the enthusiastic scientific community presided by Chairman, ISRO. Of course, among the welcoming crowd is a 83 year man who is none other than myself”, he said.
Of course, the notion that this is a "race" remains ludicrous.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:11 PMWhat a wonderful phrase. Josh Trevino writes about the folks who have just taken over the Congress.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:50 PMI'm back from Wyoming, but busy painting the house. But Clark has a lot a lot of good stuff over at his site. Just keep scrolling.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:51 PMThey don't understand, or don't believe, posts like this.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:03 PMGlenn comments on Webb's classy behavior.
I hope, if not expect, that this is why the Dems victory will be short lived.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:37 PMI'm in Longmont, Colorado, looking at a cloud-shrouded Long's Peak behind the front range. Checking out, and heading up to Boulder for a few hours, then back to Florida this afternoon.
As Dale Amon notes, we've been getting a new company off the ground, named Wyoming Space and Information Systems. More anon, but probably not today.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:19 AMI had never realized that the anniversary of the founding of the Marines was the day before Armistice Day. It's been two hundred thirty one years. They're older than the nation itself--there's never been a US of A without them.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:38 AMJacob Weisberg writes about the illiberal, Lou-Dobbs Democrats:
For some reason, economic nationalists never seem to complain about job-killing Dutch or Irish competition. The targets of their anger are consistently China and Mexico, with occasionally whacks at Dubai, Oman, Peru, and Vietnam....Economic nationalism is not unique to Democrats—nor is it a new theme. The protectionist wing of the party emerged in the 1980s when America's manufacturing decline was first linked to imports and foreign competition. For years, the protectionist urge was exemplified by Richard Gephardt (who focused on Japan and Korea rather than China). But during his 1992 campaign, Bill Clinton made a key decision to support NAFTA. Clinton espoused a strong free-trade position and embraced globalization through his presidency. This set the direction for his party, despite significant resistance in Congress. Clinton's argument was always that government should address the negative consequences of open trade through worker retraining programs and by providing benefits not tied to employers, like health care and portable pensions. But that human-capital part of Clinton's globalization agenda never went anywhere, which partially explains the current backlash.
Free trade was one of the few things that the Clinton administration actually got right (at least, in the absence of pressure from the Republicans). Aside from the war, this is one of the worst potential consequences of the election.
[Via Virginia]
[Update at 8:15 Mountain Time]
Jeff Flake says that one of the reasons that the Repuplicans lost Congress is that they forgot these lessons as well:
The Farm Bill probably provides the best example of where we've gone wrong, and what we need to do to hew back to our first principles.During the 1990s, then-Sen. Phil Gramm accurately described U.S. farm policy as "enough to make a Russian Commissar puke." The Republicans assembled the "Freedom to Farm Act," which, starting in 1996, put U.S. farmers on a glide path toward an end to subsidies. Somewhere between the field and the silo, however, we became mired in the political mud. In 2002, we repealed the Freedom to Farm Act and in its place installed the "Farm Security Act" -- those who value the adage about trading freedom for security can pause and shudder here -- with even more lavish subsidies.
Now, with reauthorization of the Farm Bill on the horizon next year, we have to decide whether we will up the ante with Democrats in terms of red state/blue state politics in the heartland, or whether we believe our own rhetoric about free markets. This debate will have implications larger than the fiscal one. Most notably, it will determine if we are serious about the future of free trade.
But it's about more than that. Read the whole thing.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:57 AMIf I were the administration, I'd try to talk Joe Lieberman into becoming Secretary of Defense, and then replacing him with an appointee by Connecticut's Republican governor. Lieberman probably made a deal with Reid and Pelosi that he wouldn't switch parties, but I'll bet he didn't promise to serve out his term.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:22 AMJon Goff has a good overview of the alternatives to ESAS, with commentary. Read the comments, also, particularly regarding propellant delivery. I am getting more and more intrigued by Lockheed Martin's approach, and starting to think they're really serious.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:52 AMAnd not enough words. Virginia makes a point that I was vaguely feeling on election day about PJM coverage:
Personally, I hated the PJM election coverage, because I don't want to have to watch video online. I want to read, and PJM offered way too little written material. But with the right technology, video is much easier to provide--especially if you don't care about shaky-cam production.
I want to read, too. Given a choice between watching a video (or even listening to audio) of people saying stuff, and reading a transcript, give me the transcript every time, unless there's some particular reason to want to parse tone/expression, etc.
Save the video for things that need video (rocket launches, explosions, bikini contests, etc.) and give me text for more straightforward information.
I don't take in and retain information that well through my ears. I always preferred to read the textbook to listening to a professor lecture. The baud rate is just too low. Similarly, whenever (say) Glenn links to something that looks (sounds?) interesting, and it turns out to be a podcast or video, there's always this resistance to click, or wait for the words to dribble out, whereas if it's to text, I eagerly read it. I don't have time to listen to someone tell me something when I can read it much faster.
I hope that as voice recognition gets better, we'll get more and better instant transcripts of talking-head stuff.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:29 AM...but I can sympathize with Montgomery Burns, who famously said, "Ironic, isn't it Smithers? This anonymous clan of slack-jawed troglodytes has cost me the election, and yet if I were to have them killed, I would be the one to go to jail. That's democracy for you!"
Smithers: You are noble and poetic in defeat, sir.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:22 PMSo, I was flying from Dallas to Denver this morning, reading the WSJ, and looking over the new committee assignments, and I noticed that Rep. James Oberstar (he who would have us overregulate the fledgling space passenger business, perhaps fatally) will be taking over the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. I wondered if he was planning to take another run at that, now that he's in the majority, instead of minority.
Now that I have Internet access again, I see that Jeff Foust already indicates that he just might have such plans.
If it happens, the main effect, I think, will be to chase people overseas, perhaps to Australia. We'll still get there, but it won't happen in the US.
The other issues that aren't mentioned in Jeff's post are the fate of Centennial Challenges and COTS under a Democrat Congress. I can see them preserving VSE/ESAS because of the jobs in Houston et al, but it's not obvious that prizes and commercial activities will continue to be supported by the Dems. They were by the Republicans due to White House pressure (at least in the case of COTS), but the White House won't have as much influence (to put it mildly) over the new budgetary sheriff in town, barring veto threats.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:56 PMI've got an old laptop that has some data on it that I need (or at least desire) for my trip. I haven't used it in a year or so. I just tried to boot it up, and it seems to load Windows, but when I hit ctrl-alt-del to log in to W2K, as it prompts me, nothing happens.
The shift lock key lights up the light, so at least that part of the keyboard is working. Does anyone know what the problem might be, or if there's some way around the three-finger salute to boot into Windows? My only other option (assuming that I don't have a serious keyboard problem) is to boot into Linux, and then try to mount the Windows drive. If I have to do that, I'll have to give up, because I have too many other things to do tonight. Though I guess I could throw the machine in the suitcase and try to figure it out when I get there.
[Update on Wednesday night, in Laramie]
OK, booted into Linux. Or rather, attempted to boot into Linux. When I type "root," it comes out "rt." No "o." No lots of keys. Probably bad contacts from lack of use. I might try hooking up a USB keyboard tomorrow, at least to get the data off it. I suspect that if I wanted to invest the effort, I could open it up and get things good again with some contact cleaner.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 04:50 PMI'm leaving warm and flat south Florida for cold and mountainous Laramie, Wyoming in the morning. It will be a nice change, but blogging may be insubstantial.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 04:39 PMIf the Republicans lose tonight, they'll have gotten what they deserved. I hope that at least they'll do some soul searching.
Unfortunately, the Democrats will have gotten what they didn't and don't deserve--political power, in wartime.
We really need a new party.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 04:38 PMN. Z. Bear (where does he find the time to program this stuff?) has set up a very readable page to track election results as they come in.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:22 PMAccording to the betting at Tradesports, the Republicans have a 66-69% chance of retaining the Senate, which is down from a few days ago.Yet the Democrats are ahead in all of Tradesports’ closest Senate races...
Probably not. Of course, as the Lindgren notes, and is discussed extensively in comments, the individual races are individual, whereas the Senate overall is a joint probability of them. And there's little way to figure out how independent they are of each other.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:39 AMGreg Mankiw has some thoughts. I don't believe that high voter turnout is an intrinsically desirable goal, which is why I'm opposed to "motor voter" and other means designed to increase participation. If people aren't willing to do a little work for their franchise, they don't deserve it, as far as I'm concerned. The goal should be informed votes, with quality, not quantity. Of course, that wouldn't work out well for the Dems.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:11 AMThey had to evacuate the OPF due to a hydrazine leak yesterday. But they plan to continue to use hypergolics in Orion.
Just one more sign of business as usual at NASA.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:42 AMFor those stuck to computers, follow the goings on at Pajamas Media.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:22 AMFrom Lileks. He seems a little pessimistic (perhaps with good reason--we'll find out as the sun goes down across the nation):
It’s been an interesting election season, I’ll grant that. Our would-be gubernator, Mike Hatch, called a reporter a “Republican whore,” and it yielded a piece in the paper about how “stress” and “scrutiny” lead candidates to make mistake in the final days. Any who knows Mr. Hatch knows the comment had nothing to do with stress or scrutiny, but rather with the fellow’s personality; he is a mean, small man. But if he wins, Garrison Keillor will write a column about how the ancient true Minnesota virtues of Decency have been reasserted, because Mr. Hatch will quite possibly raise the gas tax, and nothing confirms our essential decency like the ever-steady rise of state levies sloshed off to indistinct purposes....Those are my local races; I expect they’re mirrored one way or the other around the country. I expect the next two years to go poorly, I’m afraid. Then again, I’m often wrong; perhaps it’s possible for a country to win a war with apologies and investigations. Perhaps we’re not at war at all; perhaps Iran and the jihadists are merely an illusion conjured up by the puppetmasters, just as they turned Iraq – the veritable Monaco of Mesopotamia – into a Threat, and just as they defended Israel against the brave Defenders of the Apartment Buildings in Lebanon. I really should relax. I mean, if you’re driving down the road and you see a car coming towards you head on in your lane, there’s no reason to worry. You’re in the right. What else matters?
[Update a few minutes later]
And to continue on a downer note, Joe Katzman has a post on the road to atomic perdition:
Wretchard's famous 3 conjectures, and related posts, talked about the current window of time as equivalent to "the golden hour" during which a trauma patient can still be saved and death averted. This announcement tells us, very clearly and in no uncertain terms, that The Golden Hour has just about passed us by. Welcome to a future in which the use of nuclear weapons in war approaches certainty, followed by the inevitable responses. Welcome, in other words, to Fibonacci's propagating nuclear spiral of a multi-proliferation future. One that features nuclear weapons in the hands of death-cult barbarians, the vast majority of whom grew up in an atmosphere glorifying suicide-martyrdom as mankind's greatest moral achievement.Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:06 AMThe world in which your children will live.
Bill Whittle has a new essay up. It's (as usual) a long one, but worth reading. I've only gotten started, but this bit appealed immediately, given how many moron trolls have repeatedly made the argument over the past few weeks in comments:
CHICKENHAWKSLet’s shag a few easy fly balls to warm up, shall we?
The Chickenhawk argument goes something like this: anyone who favors military action should not be taken seriously unless they themselves are willing to go and do the actual fighting. This particular piece of work is an anti-war crowd attempt to silence the debate by ruling that the other side is out of bounds for the duration. Like all ad hominem attacks, (argumentum ad hominem means “argument against the person”) it is an act of intellectual surrender. The person who employs an ad hominem attack is admitting they cannot win the debate on merit, and hope to chuck the entire thing out the window by attacking the messenger. This is a logical fallacy of the first order, because the messenger is not the message.
The messenger is not the message. That’s all you need to throw away the entire Chickenhawk response. But why stop there when this one is so much fun?
If you are ever see this charge again, you may want to reflect that person’s own logical reasoning in the following fashion: You may not talk about education unless you are willing to become a teacher. You may not discuss poverty unless you yourself are willing to go and form a homeless shelter. How dare you criticize Congress unless you are willing to go out and get elected yourself? Your opinion on a National Health Care System is negated out of hand since you are unwilling to get a medical degree and open a clinic. And as far as your opinions regarding the Democratic Underground or The Huffington Post are concerned, well, you can just keep them to yourself, mister, unless you can produce an advanced degree in Abnormal Psychology and Narcissistic Personality Disorder.
Using the internal reasoning behind the Chickenhawk argument means you cannot comment on, speak about or even hold an opinion on any subject that is not part of your paying day job. It is simple-minded and profoundly anti-democratic, which is why it so deeply appeals to those who sling it around the most.
On the eve of a very important election in our nation's history, enjoy.
[Update, on further reading]
Ooooohhh, another nice bit:
People like Michael Moore and Bill Maher and Keith Olberman would not be able to figure out how to close the canopy on an F-102. These people would be weeping with fear when those afterburners light up and you barrel down that runway hoping that engine doesn’t flame out and roll you inverted into the asphalt, or when you’re rocketing through the soup at 300mph watching two little needles chase each other, praying the next thing you see out the window is a runway and not a mountain goat.George W. Bush is not stupid. It’s not possible to be a moron and fly a supersonic jet fighter, and everyone knows it.
What George W. Bush is, however, is inarticulate. English is his second language. From what I can see he does not have a first language. Abraham Lincoln spoke in simple frontier language in an age of rhetorical flourish. Like Bush, he was considered a bumpkin and an idiot, and like Bush, he realized that there were times when having people misunderestimate you repeatedly was a real advantage. That’s goal-oriented. That’s playing the deep game. That’s cunning.
I personally have gotten to the point where Bush’s malapropisms cause me to look at the floor and shake my head with an affectionate smile, in much the same way supporters of his predecessor used to do with every new revelation of coerced sex from former employees. He is what he is. But he is a damn sight more intelligent than the graphic designer in the Mini Cooper with the Village Idiot sticker. Me, personally, I look at the man’s entire catalog of flaws in the same way Lincoln looked at Grant and his drinking: I can’t spare this man. He fights.
So to me, anyway, given the above information I feel that anyone calling President Bush a moron and an idiot comes off sounding like…well…a moron and an idiot.
Yes, that's always been my impression. Just like John Kerry calling the troops idiots and underachievers.
[Update about 10 PM EST]
One more bit:
I cannot think of a single example of where appeasement – giving in to an aggressive adversary in the hope that it will convince them to become peaceful themselves – has provided any lasting peace or security. I can say in complete honesty that I look forward to hearing of any historical example that shows it does.What I do see are barbarian forces closing in and sacking Rome because the Romans no longer had the will to defend themselves. Payments of tribute to the barbarian hordes only funded the creation of larger and better-armed hordes. The depredations of Viking Raiders throughout Northern Europe produced much in the way of ransom payments. The more ransom that was paid, the more aggressive and warlike the Vikings became. Why? Because it was working, that’s why. And why not? Bluster costs nothing. If you can scare a person into giving you his hard-earned wealth, and suffer no loss in return, well then you my friend have hit the Vandal Jackpot. On the other hand, if you are, say, the Barbary Pirates, raiding and looting and having a grand time of it all, and across the world sits a Jefferson – you know, Mr. Liberty and Restraint – who has decided he has had enough and sends out an actual Navy to track these bastards down and sink them all… well, suddenly raiding and piracy is not such a lucrative occupation. So, contrary to doomsayers throughout history, the destruction of the Barbary Pirates did not result in the recruitment of more Pirates. The destruction of the Barbary Pirates resulted in the destruction of the Barbary Pirates.
Donald Sensing thinks that there's only one issue in this election.
Despite how pathetic the Republicans are on most other issues*, I agree.
On terrorism, novelist Roger L. Simon quoted Leon Trotsky: “You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.” So to all the sleepwalkers out there, or those who simply swim in the Egyptian river about the nature of Islamism and its jihadis, undertand this: You may not be interested in al Qaeda, but al Qaeda is interested in you.No, not me? you reply. Not me, I’m a peace-loving, non-iedological, live-and-let-live, hyper-tolerant citizen of the world, they don’t hate me or wish me ill!
But are you Muslim? More accurately, are you a radicalized, reactionary Muslim? Because Islamists who bomb and murder don’t care about your gentle, organic-foods lifestyle and your self-congratulatory tolerance culture or your identity politics and they don’t care whether you think Muslims are oppressed or misunderstood or whether you think that Islam itself is the paradigm of religious practice, if religion must be practiced at all. They don’t care whether you oppose the Religious Right, what candidates you vote for or the kind of car you drive.
*and yet, there will always be anonymous moron trolls in comments who claim that I'm a "Republican stooge."
Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:19 PMThe CPUSA has endorsed the Democrats. And the libertarians are supposed to? Really? You'd have to have a real bad case of cognitive dissonance.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:18 PMPaul Spudis writes that there's still a good possibility of lunar ice.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:17 AMNo matter how atrocious they've been on so many issues. Just to wipe the smile off of Chris Matthews' face. And of course, there's hardly an issue on which I disagree with the Republicans on which the Dems wouldn't be much worse.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:03 AMHere's an amazing demonstration of the cluelessness and credulity of reporters, particularly when it comes to NASA and space:
With the cost of gas hovering between $2 and $3 a gallon and the oil supply declining, scientists at NASA have discovered a potential new energy source -- helium-3.When combined with water, the element creates energy.
Just add water? What a breakthrough! Guess we don't have to figure out how to do that complicated fusion thing.
Grigsby said he also plans to discuss NASA's other creations, including the ion motor. It's an engine that accelerates so quickly in space, picking up speed as it moves, that it creates artificial gravity.
A high-acceleration ion drive? Another breakthrough!
And of course, we get the usual spinoff argument.
Grigsby said most Americans don't understand the importance of NASA. It's more than space travel, he said."The problems we solve in space have a direct spinoff on people," he said.
Well, actually, maybe not that usual:
Even tennis shoes, with their rubber soles, are partly a NASA creation. Before the 1960s, shoes were all leather and, often, not comfortable.
Wow. Tang, teflon and tennis shoes! Who knew?
Guess those old Converses I wore before we got to the moon were a figment of my imagination. Or maybe I just forgot about the leather soles--it's been so long, after all.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:46 AMDwayne Day completes his fascinating speculations about what would have happened with Apollo had Kennedy lived.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:29 AMThough he doesn't say it explicitly, Randall Parker explains why we'll have to eventually settle space.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:11 AMDan Schmelzer checked out the Blue Origin site on his way back from New Mexico, and provided a photo tour.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:07 AMOver at NASASpaceflight.com. The Italian proposal is quite intriguing (I'm guessing that some of the people involved were the same ones teamed with Boeing on CE&R), and the Lockmart proposal seems better as well. Of course, from an affordability and sustainability standpoint, it's hard to do worse than ESAS.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:51 AMAustin Bay has written what I'd like to hope is John Kerry's political epitaph:
John Kerry’s simply not ready for the YouTube world.Follow his career, such as it is. Kerry’s made it to the lofty perch of Senator from Massachusetts by:
(1) planning a political career from the age of 15 (if not age 11)
(2) riding the coattails of the Kennedy political machine (ie, brown-nosing and carrying water for the clan)
(3) marrying rich women
This nifty route to power works for a mediocre, arrogant politico in a world where the friendly political machine and a friendly media mask his foibles, incompetencies, and inadequacies.
The friendly machine and media also blunt criticism. The arrogant mediocrity (backed by clan and family cash) can float along within a machine and media bubble, slowly rising from preening young poseur to Beltway Clerk to Senator.
The Internet and talk radio have burst that bubble. The bubble is a puddle of slippery soap. I suspect Kerry now knows it. His Tuesday (October 31) press conference was a dismal failure. He essentially pounded his chest like an eighth grade boy and shouted “I’m a man.” That conference was designed to focus his (Kerry’s) media enablers on the White House, and spin the story as a “Kerry versus Bush” conundrum rather than Kerry responding to the people he’d slandered. The New York Times bought that meme, but the Internet didn’t. Troops responded with the now classic “Jon Cary halp” photo, which Drudge slapped on his page. Kerry then went into “seclusion” — as safe a place as any for a “man” insistently destroying himself. But seclusion sounds so un-manly, doesn’t it? (Seclusion– that’s where Victorian ladies retreat after their latest affair becomes London’s topic du jour.)
[Update about 10 AM EST]
Mark Steyn has further thoughts on Kerry, and the extinction of the Henry Jackson Democrats.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:36 AMSaddam says that's how we'll leave Iraq. Under which US party's rule is that more likely?
Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:26 PMChristopher Monckton excoriates the Stern Report and the "science" behind the global warming policy pushes:
First, the UN implies that carbon dioxide ended the last four ice ages. It displays two 450,000-year graphs: a sawtooth curve of temperature and a sawtooth of airborne CO2 that's scaled to look similar. Usually, similar curves are superimposed for comparison. The UN didn't do that. If it had, the truth would have shown: the changes in temperature preceded the changes in CO2 levels.Next, the UN abolished the medieval warm period (the global warming at the end of the First Millennium AD). In 1995, David Deming, a geoscientist at the University of Oklahoma, had written an article reconstructing 150 years of North American temperatures from borehole data. He later wrote: "With the publication of the article in Science, I gained significant credibility in the community of scientists working on climate change. They thought I was one of them, someone who would pervert science in the service of social and political causes. One of them let his guard down. A major person working in the area of climate change and global warming sent me an astonishing email that said: 'We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period.' "
And Chris Mooney thinks that there's a Republican war on science?
Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:45 PMHow Dems really feel about the military.
Hey, next time, do a little research?
You know, in the future, when you look up the phrase "botched joke," there will be a picture of John Kerry.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:11 AMThe people quoted in the recent Vanity Fair piece on "neocons" having second thoughts aren't very impressed with it:
Richard Perle: Vanity Fair has rushed to publish a few sound bites from a lengthy discussion with David Rose. Concerned that anything I might say could be used to influence the public debate on Iraq just prior to Tuesday’s election, I had been promised that my remarks would not be published before the election.Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:48 AMI should have known better than to trust the editors at Vanity Fair who lied to me and to others who spoke with Mr. Rose. Moreover, in condensing and characterizing my views for their own partisan political purposes, they have distorted my opinion about the situation in Iraq and what I believe to be in the best interest of our country.
Stern’s novelty was to produce two figures: that global warming would eventually reduce the size of the world economy by 10% if left to fester; but that curbing emissions at his recommended level would cost only 1% of global wealth.Between those two suspiciously certain figures lies a world of conjecture, supposition and stabs in the dark. Stern is the ecological equivalent of a dodgy intelligence dossier revealing weapons of mass destruction which don’t exist – which makes it a typical Blairite production. Doubts have been hardened into certainties, contradictory facts downplayed or omitted. The result is a tax-raising manifesto which could see Great Britain – which generates just 2% of world carbon emissions – sleepwalk into a growth-destroying agenda which will hit the poorest hardest.
Meanwhile, at the University of Arizona, Roger Angel has a better idea:
"The concept builds on existing technologies," Angel said. "It seems feasible that it could be developed and deployed in about 25 years at a cost of a few trillion dollars. With care, the solar shade should last about 50 years. So the average cost is about $100 billion a year, or about two-tenths of one percent of the global domestic product."
Much cheaper!
Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:48 AMArthur Herman discusses the military option.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:41 AMGrassfire.org says that we should apply the "Pelosi Standard" to Kerry's apology:
“[Lott] can apologize all he wants. It doesn’t remove the sentiment that escaped his mouth that day at that party. And I find it something that is unacceptable. I don’t know what the remedy is to it but I do know what Sen. Lott said. I know that it was completely inappropriate. I don’t know if any apology is adequate.”Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:12 AM
...or abandon the Iraqis. John Podhoretz says that Ralph Peters is wrong to throw in the towel.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:47 AMSciAm reports a potentially interesting breakthrough in biofuels:
Dreyer and his colleagues built a reactor capable of producing hydrogen from soybean oil, biodiesel or sugar water without any of the buildup that would have resulted from a conventional process. To get the reactor warmed up, the researchers ignited a mixture of methane and oxygen in order to bring the catalyst to a searing 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit.Addressing concerns about keeping the process carbon-neutral, Paul Dauenhauer, another graduate student working on the project, notes that while methane is a fossil fuel, there are other ways to heat the catalyst that don't involve burning petrochemicals. What's more, once the reaction is running, it's self-sustaining, and methane and oxygen are no longer required.
A fuel injector like those used in a car atomized the biofuels into tiny droplets that landed on a hot rhodium-cerium catalyst, which converted the fuel to syngas. This reaction released energy and heated the catalyst. The heat and ratio of carbon and oxygen in the reaction kept the buildup from sticking to the catalyst. For each type of biofuel, nearly all the fuel was converted and about 70 percent of the hydrogen bound up in the fuel molecules was given off as gas, the researchers report in this week's Science. "We find we reach the theoretical maximum," says Dauenhauer.
Cool.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:42 AMFrom a comment in this post:
AQ thrives on war and chaos.
(Implying that we've actually empowered Al Qaeda by removing Saddam, and that all the other problems in the world as well are, as usual, Amerikkka's fault).
This is a fascinating statement. The last time that I recall Al Qaeda "thriving" was in Afghanistan, under the Taliban. Then, they had training camps, were training people by the hundreds, and were able to plan and execute things like 9/11.
I don't think that they're thriving in Iraq today, unless by "thriving," you mean losing hundreds of Hirabis monthly. Much is made of the loss of American troops, and the deaths of civilians, but there's much less reporting of the deaths of the Al Qaeda types, or it's mixed in with the "civilian" deaths. Their current losses aren't sustainable, and I think that they've ramped up the action only in hopes of influencing the US election. The only place they're winning, really, is in the western media (just as was the case for the North Vietnamese in Tet).
The fact that they're capable of causing chaos (unfortunately, it's much easier to cause chaos than otherwise--entropy's a bitch) doesn't mean that they "thrive" on it. Believe me, they'd much prefer a stable government that they controlled. They certainly don't have that now in Iraq. In fact, the majority Shia government is starting to hunt them down and make their lives thoroughly miserable.
Is this a disaster for Iraq? Perhaps.
Is it a disaster for the US? Only if we're unwilling to accept any casualties whatsoever--by any previous standards of war, they remain low.
Is it a victory for Al Qaeda?
Only if we elect the Dems, and pull out.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:23 PMIraq had a nuclear weapons program, and was only a year away from a bomb. Less than a week before the election, the New York Times says so.
[Update about noon EST]
I thought that the tongue in cheek was obvious, but I guess not. The point of the post was that the Times was reporting it the way they did, when they did.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:28 AMJohn Keegan says that Israel will have to take out Hezbollah's tunnels in a renewal of the war in Lebanon, probably by the end of the year.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:20 AMCommercial space, that is. I got a call a couple weeks ago from the author of this piece for the Jewish Journal. He was looking for Jews involved in NewSpace (and he guessed I was from my last name, though I'm not). I gave him a couple other names (notably Goldin's, which he misspelled, though he's not exactly NewSpace). But I see that he found some others. For instance, I wasn't previously aware that Paul Allen was Jewish.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:21 AMJeff Foust has found a story of some people who are clueless on multiple levels:
According to Net#work BBDO’s creative executive director, Julian Watt: “So, given that Virgin’s plan is to send a passenger airplane into space; shouldn’t there be some advertising right up there with them? Why can’t there be a space billboard to read?… Never before has a billboard roamed the stratosphere for commercial consumption.”How exactly are they going to pull this off? The report says that the ad agency has sent a letter to NASA, which Watt calls “our official appeal to NASA to set in motion our project plan to engineer, build and launch the idea.”
First, why would these genii think that people who are paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for their suborbital experience would want to have to watch commercials? This is pay per view, on a grand scale, morons.
And as Jeff points out, the notion that they think that NASA has anything at all to say about this is also mind-numbingly ignorant, and a sad reminder that NASA still remains too wedded to the concept of space in too many people's heads. And also as Jeff points out, the reporter doesn't demonstrate much knowledge either, to let this go unremarked in the story.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:00 AMAn interesting discussion over at Winds of Change. Meanwhile, Andrew Bolt says that Australian Muslims have failed the test, and he's fed up.
Oh, and the Dems will be happy to know that they have the Jihadi vote wrapped up. They could usefully ask themselves why that might be the case.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:41 AM...of rocket cars. From Iowahawk. I missed this when he posted it in April.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:41 AMA liver grown from umbilical cord blood. Leon Kass can't be happy about this.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:17 AMRalph Peters has given up on Iraq. For the sake of the Iraqis, and the larger war effort, I hope he's wrong.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:21 AMModel rocketeers need some pro bono help against an out-of-control government agency.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:46 AM...of John Kerry. It takes a Brit to point it out:
US servicemen are revered in a way that the British squaddie can only dream of. Soldiers travel in uniform and are routinely ushered to the front of queues and given upgrades to business class with no questions asked. On an American Airlines jet from Dallas last Sunday, a flight attendant made a spontaneous announcement about "the sacrifice our young men and women are making to keep us safe". The whole plane applauded her.Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:09 AMThis is not just rah-rah jingoism. The aching reality of war is also apparent. At Houston airport on Wednesday night I pulled up behind a white hearse with two soldiers in dress uniform inside it. "That's one of our boys coming home from Iraq," said a sombre Avis representative, waving me past.
As Kerry has found out, you try to exploit this sentiment for political gain at your peril. The military is the most integrated sector of American society. Poor youths with a bit of get up and go about them use it to get funding for college to pull themselves up a rung on the economic ladder.
I have sat in Humvees and Bradley fighting vehicles with black sergeants from Alabama, marines from Mexico and good ol' boy snipers from Kentucky in places like Fallujah and Ramadi as they described their hopes with an affecting optimism that belied the mortal danger they were in. In many ways, they embody what is great about America.
Will India beat NASA back to the moon?
At a forthcoming meeting of the country's top scientists on November 7, ISRO will, for the first time, unveil two of its ambitious plans - to send an Indian into space around 2014 and then to have one walk on the moon about six years later. Both missions will be accomplished without any foreign assistance. ISRO will even find a Sanskrit word equivalent for the US's 'astronaut' and Russia's 'cosmonaut' to describe the Indian in space.
They seem to be taking the same high-cost approach, though, so I'm not sure where this will lead, or how affordable it will ultimately be. Of course, they also have to avoid a nuclear war with Pakistan.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:00 AMSome have asked my opinion of the Direct Launcher concept. Frankly, I haven't taken a close enough look at it to have one, other than it suffers from the same fundamental flaw as ESAS--that NASA will once again be developing its own vehicles, for its own unique purposes, and they will be very expensive to operate for very little in the way of results, and won't move the ball down the field much in terms of opening up space for The Rest Of Us. But for those into arguing the technical issues, here's a discussion page on the concept. Jon Goff has some related thoughts:
NASA may be lousy at doing commercially effective R&D, but they are far worse when they try acting like an airline. If NASA deserves to exist at all, they should be spending most of their money on trying to help "encouraging and facilitating a growing and entrepreneurial U.S. commercial space sector," not trying to fund and run their next Amtrak in the Sky. People like to point at how much X-33, SLI, NASP, and other such programs have wasted, but what they seem to be missing is that while these were "R&D" programs, they were "R&D" programs trying to lead to another NASA operated space transportation system. Which is basically what the money for CEV, Ares I, and Ares V are. Sure, Ares I and Ares V aren't trying to break new technological ground, but they are trying once again to establish the national space exploration transportation system. The fundamental flaw in all of those failed research programs wasn't so much that they were trying new technology, and new technology is bad. It's that they were trying to make yet another NASA owned and operated transportation system. Ares I and Ares V aren't so much a bold break with past mistakes as they are an unimaginative repeat of the same.
[Update at 1 PM EST]
No, Mark, I don't "hate" it (once again, one must wonder at his feeble powers of reading comprehension). I'm indifferent to it.
[Late afternoon update]
OK, I will say that Direct Launcher has one thing to commend it. It is indeed preferable to develop one new launcher than two. Of course, my point is that it would be even better to develop none, and let the private sector provide crew and cargo deliveries to LEO, so that NASA can concentrate on getting to the moon affordably.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:37 AMHe was probably just speaking from his own experience. After all, he didn't study that much, had lousy grades in school, and ended up in a hot-fire zone in Vietnam. He just figured that's the way it was for everyone.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:04 AMFrederick Turner has some thoughts:
The figure of the village atheist is a rather comic one. He proves his superior intelligence by mocking the sheeplike conformity of the poor benighted believers. The old word "enlightened" has now been replaced by the word "bright" as the self-description of this sort of atheist. He is a variant of the "Cliffie the mailman" wonk who knows it all, or Sportin' Life the cynic in Porgy and Bess. An older version is Flaubert's character Homais the bourgeois anticlerical pharmacist in Madame Bovary, and an even older one is Thersites the scurrilous doubter in Shakespeare and Homer. Much pleased by their own originality, they take their mishaps as the martyrdom of the bold intellectual pioneer, and they have produced a group of arguments that should probably be taken apart.One is that religious ideology is a unique inspirer of terrible wars. In the current perspective, such an opinion sounds plausible. But anyone with an historical sense will recognize that the few hundred people who die each month in religious conflicts are absurdly dwarfed by the tens of millions, almost all of them religious believers, who died, within living memory, under the savage atheistic regimes of Hitler, Stalin, Mao Zedong and the various dialectical materialist dictators of eastern Europe. We have seen what atheism looks like on the large scale, and it is not pretty: the Holocaust, the Gulag, the Cultural Revolution, the Killing Fields. Religion has indeed been a cause of appalling slaughter during the course of human history; but it must take fifth place behind atheist ideology, nation-state aggression, mercantile colonialist expansion, and tribal war in the carnage sweepstakes.
Another argument brought by the village atheist type is that to base one's life on faith is intellectual suicide. This argument might be persuasive if there were any alternative, but there is not. Reason is not a basis for thought, but a method of thought. Kurt Gödel showed conclusively that every system of reasoning contains self-referential statements of the form of "This statement is unprovable", which are correctly formed propositions that must be true or false, and must, if reason is fundamental, be provably one or the other. Analysis quickly shows that the statement must be true, but cannot be proved to be true. Reason is a process of proof, but reason is incapable of proving a certain true proposition, one that must take its place among the axioms of any logical system. Rationality cannot prove itself. The fundamental validity of reason therefore must be taken on faith; the only difference from a purely logical point of view between an atheist who believes in reason and a religious person who makes a primary act of faith is that the religious person recognizes the pre-logical basis of his beliefs, while the atheist does not.
If the village atheist dismisses this sort of thing as logic-chopping and takes his stand on the empirical down-to-earth evidence of the senses, the ground similarly disappears from under his feet. David Hume is rightly hailed as a hero of atheism, for his dismissal of the traditional arguments for the existence of God. But what his atheistic admirers miss is that his argument against empirical knowledge is even more devastating. Hume showed that the concept of cause has no logical necessity—that just because one event has often followed another, that does not mean that the same sequence must necessarily happen again, or that there is any necessary causal connection between them. Our expectation of causal connections in general, not just those that attribute the cause of events to God—is at best an emotional and practical habit. The religious person, by this logic, is actually more aware of the shaky basis of his commonsense than is the confident atheist.
RTWT
Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:38 AMArnold Kling has an interesting alternative to the preferred solution of many European bureaucrats (deindustrialization) to global warming, and it's one that would warm the hearts of space enthusiasts.
I think it would be a mistake to get the NSF involved, though. This is a job for engineers, not scientists. I'd work with the engineering societies (e.g., AIAA) instead. And I wouldn't let NASA anywhere near it.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:23 AMHere's a story on plans for a suborbital space port in Singapore.
But don't try to smuggle any drugs through it...
Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:48 PMWell, I'm ready to drink my hundred glasses of red wine a day. Vive la vin!
Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:46 PMDonald Sensing, on Al Qaeda strategy (such as it is) in Iraq.
[Update about 11 AM EST]
Democrat Orson Scott Card doesn't trust his party with power in war time:
If control of the House passes into Democratic hands, there are enough withdraw-on-a-timetable Democrats in positions of prominence that it will not only seem to be a victory for our enemies, it will be one.Unfortunately, the opposite is not the case -- if the Republican Party remains in control of both houses of Congress there is no guarantee that the outcome of the present war will be favorable for us or anyone else.
But at least there will be a chance.
I say this as a Democrat, for whom the Republican domination of government threatens many values that I hold to be important to America's role as a light among nations.
But there are no values that matter to me that will not be gravely endangered if we lose this war. And since the Democratic Party seems hellbent on losing it -- and in the most damaging possible way -- I have no choice but to advocate that my party be kept from getting its hands on the reins of national power, until it proves itself once again to be capable of recognizing our core national interests instead of its own temporary partisan advantages.
That seems unlikely to happen if they're rewarded with a return to power now, something that they haven't earned by their behavior or attitudes. Sadly, neither party deserves to win.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:22 AMIf I were a member of the Mars Society, I'd be looking for a new leader, or looking to form a new organization. This seems like a very unprofessional press release to me (but hardly out of character for Bob Zubrin). Does he really imagine that this is going to win support for any cause associated with him?
I agree that O'Keefe's decision was a mistake, and that the robotic mission was a waste of money. I also think that he should have left earlier, and let someone else make that decision, because he was obviously unable any longer to deal with risk after the trauma of Columbia. But that doesn't justify this kind of vicious, personal attack on a good man.
Also, this is simply wrong:
Alone among space advocacy groups, the Mars Society responded the former NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe's stupid and cowardly decision to desert the Hubble with forthright opposition, exposing as fraudulent the technically illiterate oaf's claims that a mission to Hubble was more dangerous than missions to the Space Station...
There was nothing fraudulent about it. It was true then, and remains true, that a Hubble mission is in fact riskier than an ISS mission. O'Keefe's mistake wasn't in believing that it was riskier, but rather in believing that it was too risky. He was wrong, but that doesn't mean that we should pretend that the risk isn't greater. I agree with Mike Griffin's decision to go forward (and think that, if anything, it's late--he could and should have made it much sooner), but only because we are continuing to fly Shuttle for ISS. It certainly wouldn't have been worth keeping Shuttle alive just to fix Hubble.
In the meantime, Bob might want to invest in a Dale Carnegie course.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:38 AM