...in Baghdad.
Harry and Nancy are (no doubt) very disappointed.
Happy New Year to every one else, who isn't unhappy to see happiness in Iraq.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:20 PMPolitical correctness is damaging young boys:
Research by Penny Holland, academic leader for early childhood at London Metropolitan University, has also concluded that boys should be allowed to play gun games.She found boys became dispirited and withdrawn when they are told such play-fighting is wrong.
But you can bet kids will continue to get suspended for as little as drawing pictures of guns.
Remember this the next time someone complains about a Republican war on science. Yet another reason to get the government out of the schools.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:40 AMFrom presidential candidate Iowahawk. I think I should start measuring the draperies for my office as Space Czar.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:25 AM...and I'll tell you no...well, you know the old saying...
Hillary! doesn't seem to be on a listening tour this time around:
Iowa Falls resident Alene Rickels, 51, when asked her thoughts about the event, said: “Her speech was really good, but it would’ve been interesting to see how she reacted to questions.“I really thought she would take questions,” said Rickels, a middle school teacher. “It’s late in the day, so I’m assuming that that’s the reason. I don’t know what she did the rest of the day.”
Clinton took no questions from audiences at any of her stops earlier Sunday, in Vinton, Traer and Cedar Falls.
Sure. It was just late in the day.
It may be getting "late in the day" in a more figurative sense as well.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:17 AMIlya Somin writes about the clash of values between those of us who want to live, and those who want us to die. And no, I'm not referring to Islamists.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:04 AMDid Mike Huckabee, aspiring to be the Nanny-In-Chief, have gastric bypass surgery?
It wouldn't shock me. I see him as a Republican version of Bill Clinton, minus the womanizing (including the involuntary relations with women).
[Update on New Year's Eve]
This seems to be a pretty good refutation of the speculation. Not that it makes me any more inclined to vote for a nanny, even one who follows his own advice.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:35 PMRand's analysis of the restatement of the purchasing power parity (PPP) calculation for China is incomplete. As I've pointed out before, the revised 2006 PPP calculation with the economy measured at PPP nearly three times instead of four times as large as at official exchange rates still leaves China with a $2.5 trillion dollar economy (2006) at official exchange rates and $6 trillion if you consider most of what we and the Chinese buy is cheaper in dollars to buy in China than it is in the US. The relevant numbers for long term strategic security are the industrial production growth rate (from the CIA World Factbook on Intelligence) at 22%/year, the labor force of 800 million of which 45% do agriculture (2005) versus less than 1% for the US and the 11%/year real growth rate.
This indicates that China has a lot of head room as its agricultural sector mechanizes and rationalizes farm size. It has a lot of head room because per capita GDP is either $1,900/year at official exchange rates or $4,500/year at PPP. At 8% faster GDP growth than the US, it will catch us in 10 years in PPP or by 2030 at the official exchange rate. At that point it will still have substantial headroom to grow for another decade much faster than the US because per capita GDP at that point will only be 1/4 the US per capita GDP.
Like finding out that Iran doesn't want a bomb, this new statistic is a red herring. China is still on the rise. It's vainglory to hope they just topple themselves like Russia. Just because Iran doesn't want a bomb (if it doesn't) it still has a nuclear program and could have one if it wanted in a quite short period of time. Just because we recalculated the statistics to show that China has a smaller economy, it is still growing fast and with the revised calculations rates likely to grow even faster.
I am sure that single-party government will be a drag on China, but they can still field a super power's worth of hardware once they exceed our GDP. It may take them a while once they are spending as much as the US is on defense to catch up to our technology level, but a tech advantage is not always decisive. Especially if they start outspending us 2 to 1 a decade later while their per-capita GDP is still half of ours.
Posted by Sam Dinkin at 04:57 PMFred Thompson bypasses the MSM:
I am not consumed by personal ambition. I will not be devastated if I don’t do it. I want the people to have the best president they can have.When this talk first originated from people around the country both directly and through polls, liked the idea of me stepping up and of course, you always look better from a distance.
But most of those people are still there. I approached it from the standpoint of a deal. A kind of a marriage. If one side of a marriage really has to be talked into the marriage, it probably ain’t going to be a good deal. But if you mutually decide it’s going to be a good thing. In this case, if you think this is a good thing for the country, then we have an opportunity to do some wonderful things together.
I’m offering myself up. I’m saying that I have the background, the capability and concern to do this and do it for the right reasons. I’m not particularly interested in running for president, but I think I’d make a good president.
Nowadays, the process has become much more important than it used to be.
I don’t know that they ever asked George Washington a question like this. I don’t know that they ever asked Dwight D. Eisenhower a question like this. But nowadays, it’s all about fire in the belly.
One of the reasons that Washington was an excellent example as the first president was that he was a reluctant president. He could have been an American king, but wanted nothing more than to serve his country and, like Cincinnatus, return to his plow, setting the precedent for two terms.
I've never been a big fan of the "fire in the belly" theory myself. I don't trust a man (or woman) who has wanted to be president since they were a child (e.g., Bill Clinton, John Kerry--there are almost certainly Republican examples as well, but none come immediately to mind). I think that there is something wrong, almost pathologically so, with such people, and that they cannot be trusted with power.
There is an old saying that some people want to be something, and others want to do something. Ronald Reagan wanted to accomplish things that he could only do as president, whereas George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton wanted to be president, and had no particular goals in mind other than that, as far as I could ever tell. One of the reasons that I like Thompson is that I have a sense that he sees real problems with the country that he thinks he knows how to fix, or at least make a start at it, but he's not consumed with the ambition of being a president.
Unfortunately, our system (particularly in modern times) is set up such that the qualities required to be a good and winning candidate aren't necessarily those required to be a good president (as Bill Clinton proved decidedly). I hope that Thompson can overcome that intrinsic hurdle of a modern democracy.
[Sunday evening update]
In a Reaganesque manner, Fred Thompson is appealing to Democrats:
You know, when I'm asked which of the current group of Democratic candidates I prefer to run against, I always say it really doesn't matter…These days all those candidates, all the Democratic leaders, are one and the same. They’re all NEA-MoveOn.org-ACLU-Michael Moore Democrats. They’ve allowed these radicals to take control of their party and dictate their course.So this election is important not just to enact our conservative principles. This election is important to salvage a once-great political party from the grip of extremism and shake it back to its senses. It's time to give not just Republicans but independents, and, yes, good Democrats a chance to call a halt to the leftward lurch of the once-proud party of working people.
So in seeking the nomination of my own party, I want to say something a little unusual. I am asking my fellow Republicans to vote for me not only for what I have to say to them, but for what I have to say to the members of the other party—the millions of Democrats who haven't left the Democratic party so much as their party's national leadership has left them.
The other interesting thing is that he's doing it not in soundbites, but a seventeen-minute video. He's respecting the intelligence of the Iowa voter. You can hear it here.
What's interesting is that this is a primary message--in which the Democrats can't vote for him. It's really a message to Republicans that he's gong to try to reunite the country, and that it makes him the most electable of all Republican candidates that continue to maintain conservative principles. We'll see how it plays.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:02 PMOr...Honey, I shrunk the economy!
China's GDP is forty percent smaller than previously assumed. Walter Russell Meade considers the implications.
One that he doesn't point out is the hysteria by some (including the NASA administrator, except that in his case I suspect that it's just a cynical attempt to scare Congress into giving him more money for "Apollo on steroids") that they will beat us back to the moon is even less justified than it was at the higher number.
China not only has a much smaller economy than ours after the PPP recalculation, but it has a much smaller economy per capita, since their population is over four times ours (resulting in average per capita income of about an eighth of ours), with a much smaller middle class. That means that the Chinese peasants, the vast majority of whom are still in poverty by US standards, are likely to be even less happy about boondoggles to the moon than we are.
And as Meade points out, the government is not sufficiently stable to risk the popular uproar that might be engendered by large numbers of people who are unhappy to see their national wealth spent to send a few taikonauts off to Luna, while they continue to have no running water. I expect the Chinese program to continue at its current snail's pace, but to think that they will beat us back to the moon any time soon, or at all, remains a fantasy.
[Via Instapundit]
Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:43 AMPerry de Havilland discusses the real issue in the creation-evolution wars, that never gets discussed, because it's taken as a given that the government will fund education:
I have no problem with people believing whatever wacko things they want (and for me that includes all religion), but the evolution vs. creationism debate should be a non political one and the only way that can ever be true is when the state is no longer involved in education.I think creationism is nuts and it makes me think less of Ron Paul that he has a religious objection to the theory of evolution. But frankly this should not be a matter for political concern and he at least is highly unlikely to force state schools to teach it (or anything else for that matter). The fact that it is a political matter shows something it very wrong and the correct 'something' that needs debating is not evolution, it is state schooling. Return all schooling to the private sector and the whole issue goes away from the political sphere. Let the market decide if there is demand for schools that teach creationism, I have no problem with that at all.
Nor do I.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:09 AMIn his last column of 2007, Mark Steyn has thoughts on what is perhaps currently the biggest security problem in the world.
...the “Federally Administered Tribal Areas” have always been somewhat loosely governed Federal Administration-wise. In the new issue of The Claremont Review Of Books, Stanley Kurtz’s fascinating round-up of various tomes by Akbar Ahmed (recently Pakistan’s High Commissioner in London and before that Political Agent in Waziristan) mentions en passant a factoid I vaguely remember from my schooldays – that even at the height of imperial power, the laws of British India, by treaty and tradition, only governed 100 yards either side of Waziristan’s main roads. Once you were off the shoulder, you were subject to the rule of various “maliks” (tribal bigshots). The British prided themselves on an ability to run the joint at arm’s length through discreet subsidy of favored locals. As a young lieutenant with the Malakand Field Force, Winston Churchill found the wiles of Sir Harold Deane, chief commissioner of the North-West Frontier Province, a tad frustrating. “We had with us a very brilliant political officer, a Major Deane, who was most disliked because he always stopped military operations,” recalled Churchill. “Apparently all these savage chiefs were his old friends and almost his blood relations. Nothing disturbed their friendship. In between fights, they talked as man to man and as pal to pal.”Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:01 AMThe benign interpretation of Musharraf’s recent moves is that he’s doing a Major Deane. The reality is somewhat bleaker: Today, even that 200-yard corridor of nominal sovereignty has gone and Islamabad’s Political Agent is a much shrunken figure compared to his predecessors from the Raj. That doesn’t mean “foreign” influence is impossible in Waziristan. Osama bin Laden is, after all, a foreigner, and so are many of the other al-Qaeda A-listers holed up in the tribal lands. Jihadists arrested recently in Britain, Germany and Scandinavia all spent time training in Waziristan, as do Chechen rebels. If another big hit on the US mainland is currently in the works, it’s safe to say it’s being plotted somewhere in Pakistan’s tribal areas.
Intrade shows Clinton trading at about $0.67 on the dollar for winning the democratic nomination despite trailing Obama for winning Iowa and South Carolina primaries. Giuliani is leading trading at about $0.30 on the dollar for winning the republican nomination despite being behind in NH, IA, MI and SC.
Posted by Sam Dinkin at 03:27 PMBusiness Week reports on a nuclear electric battery (more like a reactor) that has 27 MW for 5 years worth of juice and it's "the size of a hot tub". It's patent pending (20040062340; search for "uranium hydride over at USPTO.gov). That's about 64 cubic feet. That's 1.2 terrawatt hours or 1.2 billion kwh. They say it's 70% cheaper than natural gas--maybe $30 million? If it's 54 cubic feet and pure uranium hydride (a high overestimate), it would weigh about 15 tons. Compare that with 15 tons of LOX and hydrogen with 66,000 kwh at 39 kwh per kg of hydrogen. Pretty good ISP. Thrust to weight not so good. Combine it with a reaction mass fill up on Mars?
Posted by Sam Dinkin at 03:18 PMIt's a little harder to mount a suicide naval attack using cheap boats now. The US Navy is using remote control machine guns. This technology on land vehicles improved force protection in Iraq too.
Posted by Sam Dinkin at 02:33 PMMichael Young is wondering:
...maybe it's time to stop referring to the neocon policies of the Bush administration. The neocons are gone, many for so long that no one seems to remember their leaving. What we now have in Washington is a mishmash of old political realism and improvisation, topped with increasingly empty oratory on freedom and democracy. That should please quite a few of Bush's domestic critics. He's returned to the futile routine in the Middle East that they always urged him to.
Well, the anti-war folks are always fighting the last anti-war.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:16 PMSpeaking of The New Atlantis, in addition to the Zubrin excerpt, the fall 2007 issue has a lot of space essays to commemorate the half century since Sputnik. It has a classic essay from the early space age by Hannah Arendt on man's limitations (which I may get around to commenting on later), with several current-day responses, some retrospection from Jim Oberg and (at long last) my review of Michael Belfiore's Rocketeers
You probably figured this out from my last couple postings, but we're safely back home. We overslept this morning, and almost missed our flight, but made it in the end. And TSA isn't any better. But at least they have a sense of humor about it: "This week, lipstick is classified as a solid. We don't know what it will be next week, but this week, it doesn't have to go in the plastic bag."
Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:46 PMI haven't had much to say about Bob Zubrin's new book
| Year | US Life Expectancy at Birth |
|---|---|
| 1905 | 47.8 |
| 1975 | 72.5 |
| 2005 | 77.9 |
Five and a half years extra life expectancy after 30 years. Not bad. An extra 30 after 100 years. Nice. I guess the combination of stress, pollution, moral decrepitude, corroded job protections, declining medical care and all the other crises of the day are actually coincident with increased lifespan. Don't be optimistic about it; it's not fashionable.
Posted by Sam Dinkin at 12:58 PMBusy packing, and heading off to St. Louis tonight, to visit a few more people, then an 8:15 AM flight from there in the morning. Probably no more posting until tomorrow afternoon, if then.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:04 PMTodd Seavey has the effrontery to thoughtfully review Jonah Goldberg's book
I always thought H.G. Wells’s stories smacked of his arrogant Fabian Society-style socialism, but even when he depicted things like a human race that suddenly gains super-intelligence and thus (naturally) decides to hold massive book burnings to destroy now-obsolete works of bourgeois art, I never thought Wells was consciously fascist — just naively socialist. Thanks to Goldberg, I now know that Wells and others took inspiration interchangeably from both socialism and fascism — and why not? Both (closely related) movements were efforts to end the fragmentation caused by capitalism, individual freedom, and industrial modernity, drawing everyone together into a single, tribe-like collective. If socialism and fascism seem like “opposites” now, it’s only because we’ve allowed the left to claim for decades that they are.But if we drop the partisan allegiances and look with fresh eyes at, say, FDR interning tens of thousands based on their race or denouncing as “traitors” any businesses that failed to display his Blue Eagle symbol and follow his industrial-planning orders, how vast are the differences between Italian, Russian, German, and American collectivism, really, at their philosophical bases (different by far though their body counts may have been — America and Italy being relatively benign and Germany and Russia each killing tens of millions)?
And of course, no good deed going unpunished, he is attacked for it by the usual suspects.
I’m sure it all seems like productive, funny activity on the commenters’ end, but — to use that imagination thing I mentioned earlier — how would the results of the week’s comment-fest have been substantially different if, say, I had posted an entry asking leftists to weigh in with evidence that they’re a bunch of spiteful assholes who find it inherently amusing to gang up on people, and they had responded with frank confessionals affirming that hypothesis?Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:49 PMKeeping in mind that what I did to get them started was write a book review, note that they’ve so far, among other things, (a) bandied about outdated financial information about me, (b) called me clinically insane, (c) used various obscenities, and (d) suggested that I’m gay or some sort of ill-defined sexual deviant (which seems to be a favorite and almost inevitable tactic of online leftist commenters, which you’d think would raise questions about their qualifications to be the great defenders of diversity and tolerance and all that). As sociologists have observed time and again, a mob, not the most imaginative of beasts, tends to do exactly the same things wherever it manifests and regardless of its cause — such as go for the genitals. Clever move, mob. Keep up the innovative work.
Are we nearing the end of COTS? Happy New Year.
It's probably not too late to do anything about it:
If you're even half as angry about this as I am, then it's time to let Congress know that you're mad as hell and not going to take it any longer. Even if it doesn't do any good, won't it just feel grand to let your Representative and Senator know how you feel!? And while you're at it, write a letter to your local newspaper editor.If you want to communicate with the Member of Congress who is sponsoring this destructive anti-COTS language, I recommend calling or writing to Senator Barbara Mikulski, who can be reached at:
Senator Barbara Mikulski
Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20510
PHONE: (202) 224-4654
Here's the Space News story from Brian Berger.
I guess I'd be more disappointed if I had had higher hopes for the program. But it was conceptually flawed to begin with, in many ways, and while the people executing it are good people, they had to battle a bureaucracy whose primary focus was on maintaining jobs and Constellation, many of whose cohorts (along with the porkmeisters on the Hill, such Senator Mikulski) no doubt viewed it as both a threat and a distraction.
I don't know whether or not this effort will save the program or not, but I'm not sure that it really matters. SpaceX always had a plan that didn't involve COTS, and will continue to move forward without it. Bigelow is continuing to offer his market incentives. The suborbital business will go on in the absence of COTS. As for how ISS is supported, that will continue to be a slow-motion train wreck into the next decade. I think that in the end, it will go off the tracks, as more and more people realize in Washington that the federal human space program is FUBAR, and likely to be replaced by a private one.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:54 AMOn the Constitution Party ticket?
The story isn't well sourced, but it certainly wouldn't shock me if true. Despite the fervent hopes of his followers, his chances of getting the Republican nomination are nil, and I can easily imagine them continuing to support him as an independent or another party.
The conventional wisdom would be that this would be bad news for Republicans, but I disagree. When you look at where most of his support is coming from (mostly anti-war), and the fact that none of the Democrat candidates will surrender as fast as the anti-war left wants them to (plus all his support from Soros & Co.) I think that he'd pull more from the Democrats than from the Republicans.
But that depends a lot on who the Republican nominee is. In the unlikely event that it were Huckabee, I can actually imagine a four-way race with another independent run by someone, so that there would be at least one candidate for those who want to actually win the war. And I think that it would fracture both major parties along libertarian/collectivist lines (something that is long overdue).
Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:40 AMThis isn't good news. Benazir Bhutto has been assassinated by a suicide bomber. I'm a little surprised that Musharraf himself has lasted this long, but I imagine he's pretty fanatical about security. I also hope that he has the bombs under control.
Pakistan is probably the most intractable problem we have right now, and in many ways is at the heart of the war. And the notion that "non-interventionalism" will make it go away is hopeless naive.
[Update a few minutes later]
Some thoughts from Michael Ledeen:
The freedom of women in the world—with the frightening prospect of the domination of men by women in any form, from the classroom to the ballot box—drives them around the bend. As she knew.She was one of many women in the front lines of the war against the terror masters, and I often think that, after the American armed forces, brave women are indeed the greatest threat to our fanatical enemies. And they know it, which is why they killed her.
We can only hope that some good will come out of this. We need a "Peshawar awakening."
[Update at 10 AM CST]
Since her last spell in power, Pakistan has changed, profoundly. Its sovereignty is meaningless in increasingly significant chunks of its territory, and, within the portions Musharraf is just about holding together, to an ever more radicalized generation of young Muslim men Miss Bhutto was entirely unacceptable as the leader of their nation. "Everyone’s an expert on Pakistan, a faraway country of which we know everything," I wrote last month. "It seems to me a certain humility is appropriate." The State Department geniuses thought they had it all figured out. They'd arranged a shotgun marriage between the Bhutto and Sharif factions as a "united" "democratic" "movement" and were pushing Musharraf to reach a deal with them. That's what diplomats do: They find guys in suits and get 'em round a table. But none of those representatives represents the rapidly evolving reality of Pakistan. Miss Bhutto could never have been a viable leader of a post-Musharraf settlement, and the delusion that she could have been sent her to her death. Earlier this year, I had an argument with an old (infidel) boyfriend of Benazir's, who swatted my concerns aside with the sweeping claim that "the whole of the western world" was behind her. On the streets of Islamabad, that and a dime'll get you a cup of coffee.
I've been dismayed since September 11th that the federal leviathan saw it as an opportunity to aggrandize itself and perpetuate its foreign-policy fantasies. My biggest disappointment with the Bush administration is that it didn't see this as an opportunity to clean house in both Foggy Bottom and the intelligence community, instead leaving the incompetent Tenet in charge (who should have been removed before the attacks), and letting the milquetoast Powell and the usual pin-stripers at State continue to run the transnationalist show. And if a Dem, any Dem, is elected next year, it will just go on.
And unfortunately, civil service rules are such that even the most fervent attempts at reform generally lose the battle with the bureaucrats.
[Update at 11 AM CST]
John Podhoretz writes about the American voters delusions about "holidays from history." The campaign so far has been amazingly unsubstantive and pathetic. Particular in the moderating of the clown-show "debates" by the media. I hope that this assassination will create an "Ottumwa" or "Manchester" awakening.
[Early afternoon update]
The idiotic reaction of Bill Richardson:
Democratic New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, called on President Bush to force Musharraf to step down. Until then, Richardson said the U.S. must suspend military aid to the Pakistani government."A leader has died, but democracy must live. The United States government cannot stand by and allow Pakistan's return to democracy to be derailed or delayed by violence," Richardson said.
And this is the Democrat with the best foreign policy credentials? As Captain Ed warns:
Richardson fortunately doesn't have a prayer of victory in the primaries. It's worth considering, however, that he will likely be a candidate for Secretary of State in any Democratic administration that wins in November 2008, if not a running mate on the ticket. Keep that in mind when thinking about whether to get involved in the next election.
Indeed.
[Update in the afternoon]
Blame America first. Mike Huckabee is apologizing. Not in my name.
And of course, he doesn't explain just what it is for which we should be asking forgiveness. But isn't it obvious that anything that goes wrong in the world is always our fault?
He really is the Republican Jimmy Carter.
[Update a few minutes later]
Unsurprisingly, Fred Thompson isn't apologizing. Unlike Huckabee, he seems to recognize that we're at war, and not against smokers and overweight people.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:59 AMFred Thompson is doing a fundraiser.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:22 PMThe IDF is being criticized because it doesn't rape enough women:
The next sentence delineates the particular goals that are realized in this manner: "In the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it can be seen that the lack of military rape merely strengthens the ethnic boundaries and clarifies the inter-ethnic differences - just as organized military rape would have done."The paper further theorizes that Arab women in Judea and Samaria are not raped by IDF soldiers because the women are de-humanized in the soldiers' eyes.
No, it couldn't possibly be that that the Israeli government (like Jews everywhere) abhors rape, and that Israeli soldiers are discouraged from raping women, and punished when they do.
Either way, in the minds of the anti-semites in academia, they can't win.
[Update before bed]
I continue to be boggled by this. Refusing to rape women? Just how evil can you get?
[Thursday morning update]
Jeez... What is it about the self-hating Israeli left and its rape fantasies?
Contacted by the Jewish Week, Laundau confirmed the statements, but said his views had been delivered “with much more sophistication.” He admitted: “I did say that in general, Israel wants to be raped — I did use that word — by the U.S., and I myself have long felt Israel needed more vigorous U.S. intervention in the affairs of the Middle East.”
I think these people need to be on a couch. Not so they can be raped, though.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 04:06 PMRoger Kimball, on political correctness, good intentions, and moral accountability:
In The Social Contract, Rousseau warned that “Those who dare to undertake the institution of a people must feel themselves capable … of changing human nature, … of altering the constitution of man for the purpose of strengthening it.” Robespierre & Co. thought themselves just the chaps for the job. The fact that they measured the extent of their success by the frequency that the guillotines around Paris operated highlights the connection between the imperatives of political correctness and tyranny—between what Robespierre candidly described as “virtue and its emanation, terror.”That is the conjunction that should give us pause, especially when we contemplate the good intentions of the politically correct bureaucrats who preside over more and more of life in Western societies today. They mean well. They seek to boost all mankind up to their own plane of enlightenment. Inequality outrages their sense of justice. They regard conventional habits of behavior as so many obstacles to be overcome on the path to perfection. They see tradition as the enemy of innovation, which they embrace as a lifeline to moral progress. They cannot encounter a wrong without seeking to right it. The idea that some evils may be ineradicable is anathema to them. Likewise the traditional notion that the best is the enemy of the good, that many choices we face are to some extent choices among evils—such proverbial wisdom outrages their sense of moral perfectibility.
Will Smith is (unjustly) involved.
One of the dangerous (and false) assumptions underlying the "progressive" project is the notion that there is no human nature, and that human beings are almost infinitely malleable and mutable. All that is needed is to pass the proper laws, and to punish those who refuse to bend to the dictates of the superior morality. Such notions lie at the heart of most of the human catastrophes of the last couple centuries, from Robespierre, to Lenin and Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot. And of course, it is at the heart of the war in which we're now engaged, with the new totalitarians who would, if they could, bend us to their extreme Islamic will.
[Update a few minutes later]
I don't think so, and neither do most of the commenters. This is just the old "poverty causes terrorism" myth gussied up a bit. The problems with the Arab and Muslim world go far beyond that, as noted. It doesn't explain why Hindus don't do these things.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:27 AM
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I don't know how much I'll be posting before Wednesday, but this will stay bumped at the top, so look below it for fresh stuff. Have a great Christmas, for those who celebrate it, and a great holiday in general, even if you don't.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:59 PMScientific American published a grand plan for nationwide terrestrial solar power generation system in the January issue. Its highlights:
- A massive switch ... to solar power plants could supply 69 percent of the U.S.’s electricity ... by 2050.
- A vast area of photovoltaic cells [and solar concentrator power plants] would have to be erected in the Southwest.
- Excess daytime energy would be stored as compressed air in underground caverns to be tapped during nighttime hours....
- A new direct-current power transmission backbone would deliver solar electricity across the country.
- But $420 billion in subsidies from 2011 to 2050 would be required to fund the infrastructure and make it cost-competitive.
It's an ambitious plan that could sharply decelerate CO2 emissions and increase the US output of "green" power. Heroic plans require heroic proof. A critical analysis follows.
Some high level critiques are the following:
Consider investing in terrestrial solar power for security reasons or as a contingency, but it's a lot of faith to get the case to work for half of daily electricity demand.
Posted by Sam Dinkin at 06:13 AMFor Christmas:
...al-Qaeda has been rooted out of Doura and the hundreds of Christian families who left the area are returning.On Christmas Day they will congregate in the battle-scarred St Mary's Church, where part of the crucifix on its tower is still missing after being shot at.
"We closed the church two years ago because of all the trouble," said the priest, Father Younadim Shamoon, 45, who has decorated its bullet-cratered walls with modest fairy lights.
"But many people are coming back after word got around that the local Muslim people were welcoming us again. We thank God and hope that we can live together again as brothers."
No thanks to Harry Reid.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:14 PMFrom Fred Thompson. Compare it to Huck and Hill's.
[Evening update]
Per comments, I'll be amazed to see Jim Harris' panicked response to this.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:35 AMThere's a new blog devoted to freeing Mark Steyn. That's in addition to the post that created the button on the left, which I wrote about here. I think that I'll redirect that button to this post, and use it for updates from now on.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:30 AMJust in case anyone wondered, I was traveling yesterday. We're in Columbia Missouri, the Ann Arbor of...errrrr...Missouri, visiting Patricia's relatives. Posting will not be non-existent, but perhaps light, due to ongoing work load and celebratory Christm...holiday activities. Hope you're having a good one as well, so far.
Milk prices hit $3.84/gallon in September which was about a buck more than gasoline. My solution: put ice in milk glasses, then add 15% ethanol to the milk to be required by law. The solution's also known as (White) Russian.
--- Update 12/21, 9:00 PM CST ---
Ethanol should be mandated for 15% of the rocket fuel used in US rockets. That might get ADM to stump for more launches.
Posted by Sam Dinkin at 04:03 PMOne wonders if the photog is a one-trick pony:
...look at the differences. The crop, of course, is exceedingly important. Here the focal points are the regal hands and imperial glare instead of the giant hands and, well, crotch. Whereas Clinton comes off like a thoroughly pleased guy about to run off to a party, Putin looks like he's deciding whether to have you killed.Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:24 PM
Some of these are pretty funny, albeit cruel. I particularly like this comment:
He better get those tiles checked out before he attempts to reenter the atmosphere.Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:19 PM
If Obama isn't the next president, it will be because of America's inherent racism. And if Hillary! isn't, it will be because of America's inherent sexism. It won't, it goes without saying, be because of any inherent deficiencies in them as candidates that are independent of their melanin content or genital configuration.
And it's guaranteed to be one or the other, because only one of them (if either) can win. And of course, if neither of them do, and another Rethuglican steals the election, it will be because we're both racist and sexist. Because, you know, it's always America's fault.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:19 AMI've added a new button over to the left on my sidebar, supporting Mark Steyn and Macleans against the Canadian Human RightsWrongs Commission. Here's the latest in the saga.
If someone sets up a legal fund to support a counter suit by Mark, I'll link the button to it, instead of to the web site that came up with it, as it is now.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:13 AMMisreporting a Thompson campaign event, over at the Politico. I'd call it more media malpractice.
Of course, I've had my own run-in with this particular reporter.
[Update a few minutes later]
Roger L. Simon (not the one who is the above journalistic hack) has some further thoughts. And as he says, he knows his hats.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:29 AMThis seems like good news:
In his memoirs, Sharif recalls serving time with Zawahiri in 1981 after the assassination of Anwar Sadat. Sharif specifically accuses Zawahiri of informing on his associates to get out of prison. He also calls Zawahiri and Osama bin Laden cowards, accusing them of running out of Afghanistan and leaving wives and children behind to die in the American invasion. He wants them tried before a shari'a court, which would be at least poetic justice for the radical Islamists.Zawahiri could give a press conference at CENTCOM and still not live down those kind of accusations. The entire mythos of AQ relies on the personal courage of its leaders, who claim to have bested a global superpower in personally liberating Afghanistan. Leaving behind women and children while fleeing a battle doesn't quite match that mythology. If it gains resonance in the ummah, Zawahiri and Osama will discover that interviews with Western journalists won't make up the lost ground.
Critics of Sharif claim that he has been tortured into his recantation. Undoubtedly, the Egyptian authorities have applied their usual techniques to Sharif, but Rohan Gunaranta says it matches a trend in Egypt over the last few years. The author of Inside al-Qaeda believes that Muslims have begun to see the disaster that 9/11 has brought to their standing in the world, and even the radicals want a new direction. The personal revelations of Zawahiri as a snitch may make it easier for them to make that transition, and for us to then destroy what remains of AQ.
I think that Ed is a little overoptimistic on that last, but it would sure be nice if he's right.
[Update a few minutes later]
Here's some more good news that would seem to be related:
We have failed to offer a robust response to the brutal wave of human sacrifice. This failure has allowed extremists to garner headlines and define the agenda without meeting an equally passionate response from the moderate center. It is long past time to mount a vigorous campaign against the cult of death and reaffirm a culture of life.An essential first step is admitting we have a problem. The terrible attacks of recent days occurred during the annual pilgrimage to Mecca, Islam's most solemn act of atonement. The introspection and self-criticism of this sacred time offer an ideal moment to acknowledge the sacrilege of terrorism and the sin of being a passive bystander.
We must also avoid the temptation to rationalize murder. "The attack is wrong," goes a common refrain, "but we must understand the root causes." There can be no "buts" - no qualifications or justifications that indulge the political grievances and religious sanction claimed by extremists.
More of this, please.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:03 AMA mathematical analysis that I'd always assumed was the case, but had never actually seen. This is where smarter cars could help.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:23 AMAn interesting result I hadn't seen before. I'll sometimes go all day without eating, just because I don't have the time, or get around to it. But I never do a whole twenty-four hours. I wonder if the effect works at all for a two-thirds day fast? Of course, for people with blood-sugar problems, it would be kind of tough to do. Lots of other interesting stuff over at Future Pundit as well (as usual) including robot sex, eco-disaster tourism, huge battery breakthroughs, and other things.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:18 AMWe need to be worrying more about smaller ones than we have been:
Simulations show that the material of an incoming asteroid is compressed by the increasing resistance of Earth’s atmosphere. As it penetrates deeper, the more and more resistant atmospheric wall causes it to explode as an airburst that precipitates the downward flow of heated gas.Because of the additional energy transported toward the surface by the fireball, what scientists had thought to be an explosion between 10 and 20 megatons was more likely only three to five megatons. The physical size of the asteroid, says Boslough, depends upon its speed and whether it is porous or nonporous, icy or waterless, and other material characteristics.
“Any strategy for defense or deflection should take into consideration this revised understanding of the mechanism of explosion,” says Boslough.
We really need to become much more spacefaring to be in a position to do anything about this, and ESAS doesn't cut it.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:31 AMWhen even the Grauniad can't avoid reporting it, you know things have to be getting pretty good:
Not so long ago Sunni and Shia gunmen were fighting for control of the suburb, near the road to Baghdad's airport. As a result, the once religiously mixed housing projects that lie either side of al-Amil's main street soon separated into Shia or Sunni enclaves.But Muhammad, a Sunni Arab, and his Shia colleagues in the neighbourhood watch group are determined to reverse the ethnic cleansing. Last month, the group agreed to protect a Sunni mosque in his street from local Shia militias. They have also been mediating between the divided communities either side of the highway.
The result was an understanding: Sunni families would return to their former homes in the heavily Shia areas, while Shia families crossed back into the mainly Sunni streets. The two communities agreed to guarantee the safety of the returnees. Such was the popular backing for the deal that even the local Mahdi army commander had to acquiesce.
"We've been neighbours for 25 years and we feel like brothers," said Muhammad. "We will help them to guard and respect their mosques, and they won't harm me or my family."
Nobody tell Harry Reid. Or if you do, make sure that he doesn't have any sharp objects around, in his despondency.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:22 AMLileks says that Time Magazine is too easily impressed:
...gosh, convincing the Russian general population to accept illiberal strong-man autocracy; that's hard work. What do you do with your afternoon?
I don't know if Petraeus should have been the pick, but he should have been ranked above Vlad. I was kind of disappointed that they didn't pick me again. Not that it did much for my hits this year.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:16 AMWell, actually not brand new--the archives actually go back to September, but relatively new. It's called "Rockets and Such" and reads like it's written by an insider, either a NASA employee or a contractor (I'm guessing the former). Presumably, "the Emperor" (who also presumably has no clothes) is Mike Griffin. The references to pony tails are almost certainly about Doug Stanley.
There's been a lot of programmatic chaos going on in Constellation and ESAS that I haven't been commenting much on. The program remains in big trouble, both because it has weight/schedule and budget issues, and because the budget issues are getting tougher, with continuing resolutions and the like. These are all the result of bad initial choices made in the architecture, which focused on an unnecessary new launch system, instead of coming up with concepts for sustainable in-space infrastructure that could use existing commercial launchers, as recommended by some of the CE&R teams.
The latest problem is that the lander design apparently won't close, a problem exacerbated, as pointed out in comments, by its requirement to do part of the lunar orbit injection burn. This is a problem that would be greatly mitigated by an architecture employing a depot in lunar orbit or (more likely) L1, or even in LEO. The former would also enable reuse of the lander. And ultimately, after the collapse of ESAS, I hope that's the direction that the program will go, assuming it survives at all.
One other interesting point is that the J-2X engine development for Ares 1 will probably be delayed by the Shuttle ECO sensor problems, because they don't have enough test stands at Stennis. And in another bait and switch, it turns out that while based on the classic J-2, the engine is basically a completely new one, in terms of development costs and testing--very little of the original design can be used, due to escalating requirements. One more nail in the coffin for the program ultimately, I suspect.
Anyway, I'm adding it to the space blogroll--it looks like a good place to track this stuff, at least for now.
[Mid morning update]
Rob Coppinger has more on the lunar lander problems.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:01 AMThirty-five years ago, the last mission to the moon ended. We haven't been back since (by definition), and who knows when we'll return again. No time soon, and no time affordably, with NASA's current plans.
And nine years ago, Bill Clinton was impeached, the first time that happened to an elected president, though the Senate, under the dubious "leadership" of Trent Lott, had a sham trial afterward that let him off.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:34 PMFred has won another key endorsement, from Frank J.
Somehow, I don't think that this was one of the surprises that Thompson told us to keep an eye out for.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 03:03 PMSome encomia to his fellow hog wranglers and soy growers, from Iowahawk, who recently suffered a fourth-year bloggiversary:
As a native of the Hawkeye State, with family roots stretching five generations deep into the fertile black topsoil of America's heartland pork basket, I have to roll my eyes when I hear these ignorant, envious complaints, which sometimes shows up in cruel jokes like "do you know what 'Iowa' stands for? Idiots Out Walking Around!" Hardy har har. Well guess what? You never hear Iowans joking about "Nerds Eating Weak Yellowy Overcooked Rubbery Kernels" or "Corn Appears Like It's For Old Rats, Not Iowa Animals." We could, but we don't, because we're not a bunch of jealous, insecure people with inferiority complexes about our corn production, and ear length and girth, like some 'Super Tuesday' states I could name.Unfortunately, the jealous resentment of non-Iowa states sometimes takes a more pernicious form, such as trying to "leapfrog" Iowa by scheduling their primaries earlier and earlier. Nice try, non-Iowa states. You want to move to January 20th? Fine, we'll reschedule to the 14th. January 7, you say? We'll take Christmas Eve. No matter how early you set your political alarm clocks, Iowa will already be down in the electoral kitchen, waiting to serve you a couple of delicious sizzling strips of candidate bacon from our caucus frying pan. It's our job, and it's not like we've got anything better to do.
If you are a political activist from one of the various non-Iowa states, let me first say I understand the hurt and frustration and resentment you probably feel toward my state, and the overwhelming attention it gets during the campaign season. But I will also tell you that the most important step toward healing is acceptance: acceptance of your own natural insignificance, and the fact that Iowa will always be first because it is the one state uniquely qualified to be America's official Presidential Sniff Tester.
Aren't you glad we have Iowans to pick our presidents for us? Let us give thanks.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:36 PMDennis Kucinich has lost a brother:
The county coroner said that an autopsy is set to be performed to determine the exact cause of death.There were no signs of foul play.
Seriously, condolences and best wishes to the Kucinich family.
Why monkeys shout during s3x:
To investigate the purpose behind these calls, scientists at the German Primate Center in Göttingen focused on Barbary macaques for two years in a nature reserve in Gibraltar.The researchers found that females yelled during 86 percent of all sexual encounters. When females shouted, males ejaculated 59 percent of the time. However, when females did not holler, males ejaculated less than 2 percent of the time.
To see if yelling resulted from how vigorous the sex was, the scientists counted the number of pelvic thrusts males gave and timed when they happened. They found when shouting occurred, thrusting increased. In other words, hollering led to more vigorous sex.
What a job. Counting pelvic thrusts in macaques. Is this a top-ten, or bottom-ten science-related occupation?
And of course, no article would be complete without an accompanying thread at Free Republic, complete with pics:
Next study: 45% of Monkeys Who Scream During Sex, Faking It.
and...
The thread is quite tame.Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:47 AMI suspect that everyone fears the mods for all the great posts that we know can be made.
A few days ago, Bill Whittle responded to a mindless minion of the BushitlerCheneyChimpyMcHalliburton crowd in my comments section. Some of you may have seen it at the time. He took it and made it into a blog post, with comments.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:42 AM...the 2008 edition of Al Gore?
There are a lot of similarities.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:05 AMThe numbers that indicate that Congress has record low approval ratings historically, is sort of like a political Rorschach test. People (and particularly the media) tend to project their own feelings about it on the rest of the population, and assume that others are unhappy for the same reasons they are, but in fact, the upset comes from two entirely different directions.
Democrats are unhappy with the Congress because it has failed to do many of the things that they thought they were promised when they elected them in 2006 (e.g., surrender in Iraq, raise taxes, socialize medicine, impeach Bush, etc.) The rest of us are unhappy because they're attempting to do so (well, OK, only the loons are actually trying to impeach Bush). Their incompetence and inability to do the wrong things has gotten everyone angry at them.
They're really in a no-win situation. And it couldn't happen to a more mendacious bunch.
But having said that, this is just cruel. But in a funny way.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:59 AMA debate, that I've only skimmed, but it looks interesting.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:40 AMSome thoughts from Vernor Vinge himself.
What's a real space program ... and what's not
- From 1957 to circa 1980 we humans did some proper pioneering in space. We (I mean brilliant engineers and scientists and brave explorers) established a number of near-Earth applications that are so useful that they can be commercially successful even at launch costs to Low Earth Orbit (LEO) of $5000 to $10000/kg. We also undertook a number of human and robotic missions that resolved our greatest uncertainties about the Solar System and travel in space.
- From 1980 till now? Well, launch to LEO still runs $5000 to $10000/kg. As far as I can tell, the new Vision for Space Exploration will maintain these costs. This approach made some sense in 1970, when we were just beginning and when initial surveys of the problems and applications were worth almost any expense. Now, in the early 21st century, these launch costs make talk of humans-in-space a doubly gold-plated sham:
- First, because of the pitiful limitations on delivered payloads, except at prices that are politically impossible (or are deniable promises about future plans).
- Second, because with these launch costs, the payloads must be enormously more reliable and compact than commercial off-the-shelf hardware—and therefore enormously expensive in their own right.
I believe most people have great sympathy and enthusiasm for humans-in-space. They really "get" the big picture. Unfortunately, their sympathy and enthusiasm has been abused.
Humankind's presence in space is essential to long-term human survival.
That is why I urge that we reject any major humans-in-space initiative that does not have the prerequisite goal of much cheaper (at least by a factor of ten) access to space.
He has identified the fundamental flaw in NASA's approach. Of course, it's nothing that many of us haven't been saying for years (that's what the Space Access Society is all about, after all), but it's nice to hear it from him as well.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:27 AMI think that Harry Reid is living in an alternate universe:
"Who's winning?" Reid asked a group of reporters. "Big Oil, Big Tobacco. ... Al Qaeda has regrouped and is able to fight a civil war in Iraq. ... The American people are losing."
I'm pretty sure that he's the most incompetent and idiotic Senate Majority Leader in my lifetime, and that's saying something. And I thought that Tom Daschle was bad. If I were a Democrat, I'd be embarrassed.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:26 PMA "How To Spot A Cylon" poster.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:45 PMIsn't this a little premature? There are still a couple weeks left in the year. One or two of them could still get edged out.
Of course, I'm not sure that any of them top this guy:
Earl Mott: Did you just shoot at me?Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:10 PMKen Kessler: No, there's police men everywhere.
Earl Mott: Do you think that I look that stupid?
Ken Kessler: Yes, you do!
Lt. Bender: GIVE THE BAG TO BOZO, DROP THE GUN, AND PUT YOUR HANDS IN THE AIR.
Earl Mott: Who said that?
Lt. Walters: This could very well be the stupidest person on the face of the earth. Perhaps we should shoot him.
Lt. Bender: IT'S THE POLICE DEPARTMENT.
Earl Mott: Really?
Lt. Bender: NO! WE'RE THE NATIONAL RIFLE ASSOCIATION!
Pejman has a long endorsement of Fred Thompson. I agree with most of it. If I were a Republican, he'd get my vote.
[Update in the evening]
Matt Lewis says don't write off Fred Thompson..
[Late night update]
OK, call me crazy [raucous chorus of Transterrestrial readers: "You're crazy!"], but I think that this could be a winning campaign ad for Fred.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:59 AMThere's apparently a military application for what I thought was an advertising technology:
It appears that some of the troops in Iraq are using "spoken" (as opposed to "screeching") LRAD to mess with enemy fighters. Islamic terrorists tend to be superstitious and, of course, very religious. LRAD can put the "word of God" into their heads. If God, in the form of a voice that only you can hear, tells you to surrender, or run away, what are you gonna do?
What's cool about this weapon is that it's one that will be particularly effective with this enemy. If it happened to me, the voice of God isn't the first theory that I would come up with, since I'm an unbeliever, but with these guys, it probably would be.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:24 AMThey are if lunar land prices are really a leading indicator. If so, I wonder why?
Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:11 AMMichael Totten provides a critique of one of his "colleagues" in Fallujah.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:04 AMI read about this on Arocket last week, but Masten now has it up on their blog. They lost their test vehicle last week.
This is not a setback. It's a learning experience, and a demonstration of the virtues of cheap incremental testing.
[Afternoon update]
Dave Masten has a good point over at Arocket:
This morning I got a phone call from the landlords (Mojave Air and Space Port folks) asking about the "explosion, injuries, cats and dogs living together" and all other sorts of terrible calamities. OK, I exaggerate a bit, but I was specifically asked about an explosion. Seems Stu Witt is in D.C. visiting FAA/AST and he was asked about an explosion, so he called his staff here in Mojave and asked about it.Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:47 AMI would like to take this opportunity to point out that there is no physical law that says a launch vehicle must explode if something goes wrong. I know that if this were a Zenit, Delta, or STS there probably would be an explosion. But, we are not building that type of vehicle. In fact several of us on this list specifically design our vehicles and operations so that the risk of explosion is negligible. It is not difficult to do. Just starting with the assumption that safety margins are more important than payload margin takes one a very long way towards that goal. Add in a little thought about survivability of a vehicle takes one the rest of the way.
So, if I could beg a favor from those of you on this list who are with AST, please let your colleagues know that a crash of our vehicle does not imply an explosion or even a fireball.
Stephen Bainbridge (no fan of the Iraq war) makes the case against Ron Paul.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:38 AMSome thoughts on fear of religion.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:08 PMThere are three topics that will launch endless threads at Free Republic: evolution, homosexuality and the the War On (Some) Drugs. These are the cleavage lines in the conservative movement.
Anyway, this one, from an evolution/creationism post, made me laugh:
Posted by Rand Simberg at 04:09 PMI guess the some apes just refused to stand up in an effort to avoid putting on clothes and going to work. These are probably the apes that want to hold on to their culture. I have a neighbor that appears as though he's reverting back to an ape. He even put up a tire swing for his kids.
I'm not a big Giuliani fan, and a lot of people have been talking up McCain as tough on the war, but I found this an interesting contrast. I'd have trouble pulling the lever for McCain. He's not Jimmy Carter, or Huckabee, but I don't think that he'd have any problem with the current State Department, which is one of the many federal agencies that needs to be azed and rebuilt.
[Update]
A good (and related) point about Giuliani:
Frum argues, in response to a post of mine, that Giuliani is the anti-terrorists' candidate because he has a proven track record of riding herd on the bureaucracies beneath him to accomplish his objectives. This line of argument would be a lot more persuasive if, in the years preceding Sept. 11, Giuliani had managed to get his fire and police departments to be able to communicate with each other in emergencies.Posted by Rand Simberg at 03:05 PM
There is a non-chemical way to control them:
The lead researcher also examined vacuum bags for toxicity and exposed fleas to churning air in separate tests to further explore potential causes of flea death. He and a colleague believed that the damaging effects of the brushes, fans and powerful air currents in vacuum cleaners combine to kill the fleas. The study used a single model of an upright vacuum, but researchers don't think the vacuum design has much bearing on the results.
What I don't get, though, is how you get the cat to lie still while you run the Hoover over her. I know that Jessica wouldn't stand for it for a microsecond. And it would be tough to do a good job on the tail. Maybe they'll do some further research.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:14 PMI don't think that there's a single federal agency that wouldn't be improved greatly by simply razing it to the ground and starting over. The CIA should have been disbanded years ago, and replaced with something else.
It should still be. My biggest disappointment (among many) with the Bush administration is that, while it talked tough on the war, it was never willing to refocus the government on fighting and winning it, instead increasing and consolidating bureaucracies, and continuing the war on US citizens (e.g, drugs). That's the problem with having a "compassionate conservative" and a big-government Republican in charge. It's why I pine for a Fred Thompson, who at least talks like a federalist.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:36 PMAre political campaigns unfair to women? Probably. There are many, many reasons why electing Hillary Clinton president would be a bad idea, but the fact that she looks her age isn't one of them.
[Update a few minutes later]
I guess other people have to be wondering, though, if this haggard look is the result of a campaign (and one that is still in a primary, having not even gotten to the general), what would she look like after four years of the presidency? Will she even survive a general campaign? I recall being shocked in 1980 at how much Jimmy Carter appeared to have aged in his term.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:01 PM"There wasn't a thing on the table that I could eat" said a frustrated Love. "They kept putting food in front of me, but I kept trying to tell them that I was a vegan. I pointed to the food and said it really loudly and slowly 'vegan, veee-gaaan' but they didn't seem to understand. They just kept encouraging me to eat."Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:07 AMLove's lack of Mongolian language skills coupled with the families lack of English language skills provided the perfect environment for a cultural misunderstanding to take place. And before long the Mongolian family had come to understand that "vegan" meant "sick" and quickly began to set out to find a remedy for their guest's illness.
Oyon left the table for a moment and returned with what appeared to be two recently severed chicken's feet. She then dipped the feet into some of the congealed pig's fat and took Love to a back room where she proceeded to try to spread the substance on her ears in an effort to remedy her sickness.
Is Hillary! building up to one? She's always struck me as pretty tightly wound.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:23 AMThis upcoming "bi-partisan" (if you really believe that Ahhhnuld is a Republican) disaster of a health-care plan.
Apparently Sacramento has never learned the story of the goose that laid the golden eggs.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:51 AMJeff Foust has a good roundup of current events over at The Space Review today.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:44 AM...that atheists and Christians can, and must agree on. From, of all places, Cracked.
[Via emailer Eric Akawie]
Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:41 AMWhen I was digging through my December 2003 archives to see what I was writing about the Wright brothers anniversary, I ran across this space policy essay that I wrote a few days later. As long as I'm doing reruns today, it still holds up pretty well, I think, so here's an encore, from almost four years ago.
A Vision, Not A Destination (First published on December 22nd, 2003)
Jason Bates has an article on the current state of space policy development. As usual, it shows a space policy establishment mired in old Cold-War myths, blinkered in its view of the possibilities.
NASA needs a vision that includes a specific destination. That much a panel of space advocates who gathered in Washington today to celebrate the 100th anniversary of powered flight could agree on. There is less consensus about what that destination should be.
Well, if I'd been on that panel, the agreement would have been less than unanimous. I agree that NASA needs a vision, but I think that the focus on destination is distracting us from developing one, if for no other reason than it's probably not going to be possible to get agreement on it.
As the article clearly shows, some, like Paul Spudis, think we should go back to the moon, and others, like Bub Zubrin, will settle for no less than Mars, and consider our sister orb a useless distraction from the true (in his mind) goal. We are never going to resolve this fundamental, irreconciliable difference, as long as the argument is about destinations.
In addition, we need to change the language in which we discuss such things. Dr. Spudis is quoted as saying:
"...For the first time in the agency's history there is no new human spaceflight mission in the pipeline. There is nothing beyond" the international space station."
Fred Singer of NOAA says:
The effort will prepare humans for more ambitious missions in the future, Singer said. "We need an overarching goal," he said. "We need something with unique science content, not a publicity stunt."
Gary Martin, NASA's space architect declares:
NASA's new strategy would use Mars, for example, as the first step to future missions rather than as a destination in itself, Martin said. Robotic explorers will be trailblazers that can lay the groundwork for deeper space exploration, he said.
"...human spaceflight mission..."
"...unique science..."
"...space exploration..."
This is the language of yesteryear. This debate could have occurred, and in fact did occur, in the early 1970s, as Apollo wound down. There's nothing new here, and no reason to think that the output from it will result in affordable or sustainable space activities.
They say that we need a vision with a destination, but it's clear from this window into the process that, to them, the destination is the vision. It's not about why are we doing it (that's taken as a given--for "science" and "exploration"), nor is it about how we're doing it (e.g., giving NASA multi-gigabucks for a "mission" versus putting incentives into place for other agencies or private entities to do whatever "it" is)--it's all seemingly about the narrow topic of where we'll send NASA next with our billions of taxpayer dollars, as the scientists gather data while we sit at home and watch on teevee.
On the other hand, unlike the people quoted in the article, the science writer Timothy Ferris is starting to get it, as is Sir Martin Rees, the British Astronomer Royal, though both individuals are motivated foremost by space science.
At first glance, the Ferris op-ed seems just another plea for a return to the moon, but it goes beyond "missions" and science, and discusses the possibility of practical returns from such a venture. Moreover, this little paragraph indicates a little more "vision," than the one from the usual suspects above:
As such sugarplum visions of potential profits suggest, the long-term success of a lunar habitation will depend on the involvement of private enterprise, or what Harrison H. Schmitt, an Apollo astronaut, calls "a business-and-investor-based approach to a return to the Moon to stay." The important thing about involving entrepreneurs and oil-rig-grade roughnecks is that they can take personal and financial risks that are unacceptable, as a matter of national pride, when all the explorers are astronauts wearing national flags on their sleeves.One reason aviation progressed so rapidly, going from the Wright brothers to supersonic jets in only 44 years, is that individuals got involved--it wasn't just governments. Charles A. Lindbergh didn't risk his neck in 1927 purely for personal gratification: he was after the $25,000 Orteig Prize, offered by Raymond Orteig, a New York hotelier, for the first nonstop flight between New York and Paris. Had Lindbergh failed, his demise, though tragic, would have been viewed as a daredevil's acknowledged jeopardy, not a national catastrophe. Settling the Moon or Mars may at times mean taking greater risks than the 2 percent fatality rate that shuttle astronauts now face.
Sir Martin's comments are similar:
The American public's reaction to the shuttle's safety record - two disasters in 113 flights - suggests that it is unacceptable for tax-funded projects to expose civilians even to a 2% risk. The first explorers venturing towards Mars would confront, and would surely willingly accept, far higher risks than this. But they will never get the chance to go until costs come down to the level when the enterprise could be bankrolled by private consortia.Future expeditions to the moon and beyond will only be politically and financially feasible if they are cut-price ventures, spearheaded by individuals who accept that they may never return. The Columbia disaster should motivate Nasa to set new goals for manned space flight - to collaborate with private groups to develop a more cost-effective and inspiring programme than we've had for the past 30 years.
Yes, somehow we've got to break out of this national mentality that the loss of astronauts is always unacceptable, or we'll never make any progress in space. The handwringing and inappropriate mourning of the Columbia astronauts, almost eleven months ago, showed that the nation hasn't yet grown up when it comes to space. Had we taken such an attitude with aviation, or seafaring, we wouldn't have an aviation industry today, and in fact, we'd not even have settled the Americas. To venture is to risk, and the first step of a new vision for our nation is the acceptance of that fact. But I think that Mr. Ferris is right--it won't be possible as long as we continue to send national astronauts on a voyeuristic program of "exploration"--it will have to await the emergence of the private sector, and I don't see anything in the "vision" discussions that either recognizes this, or is developing policy to help enable and implement it.
There's really only one way to resolve this disparity of visions, and that's to come up with a vision that can encompass all of them, and more, because the people who are interested in uses of space beside and beyond "science," and "exploration," and "missions," are apparently still being forced to sit on the sidelines, at least to judge by the Space.com article.
Here's my vision.
I have a vision of hundreds of flights of privately-operated vehicles going to and from low earth orbit every year, reducing the costs of doing so to tens of dollars per pound. Much of their cargo is people who are visiting orbital resorts, or even cruise ships around the moon, but the important things is that it will be people paying to deliver cargo, or themselves, to space, for their own purposes, regardless of what NASA's "vision" is.
At that price, the Mars Society can raise the money (perhaps jointly with the National Geographic Society and the Planetary Society) to send their own expedition off to Mars. Dr. Spudis and others of like mind can raise the funds to establish lunar bases, or even hotels, and start to learn how to operate there and start tapping its resources. Still others may decide to go off and visit an asteroid, perhaps even take a contract from the government to divert its path, should it be a dangerous one for earthly inhabitants.
My vision for space is a vast array of people doing things there, for a variety of reasons far beyond science and "exploration." The barrier to this is the cost of access, and the barrier to bringing down the cost of access is not, despite pronouncements to the contrary by government officials, a lack of technology. It's a lack of activity. When we come up with a space policy that addresses that, I'll consider it visionary. Until then, it's just more of the same myopia that got us into the current mess, and sending a few astronauts off to the Moon, or Mars, for billions of dollars, isn't going to get us out of it any more than does three astronauts circling the earth in a multi-decabillion space station.
There's no lack of destinations. What we continue to lack is true vision.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:20 AMThat's how long it's been since the Wrights first launched their first airplane from the dunes of Kitty Hawk. That also means, now, that it's been four years since the X-Prize was won. We haven't made as much progress since then as many of us hope, but I think that things are moving along reasonably well. I in fact expect to see an acceleration of suborbital activity, in the near future, with John Carmack hoping to fly into space in the next two years. I think it was Arthur Clarke who pointed out that we tend to be overoptimistic in the short run, and overpessimistic in the long run, partly because we tend to think linearly.
Anyway, I'm going to reprint my thoughts from four years ago, including links to two other pieces that I wrote at National Review and TCSDaily (then TechCentralStation).
Daring (First published on December 17, 2003)
A hundred years ago, two airplane scientists took off, and landed a heavier-than-aircraft, inaugurating the past century of powered flight.
On that chilly December morning on the Atlantic dunes of North Carolina, looking at the fragile forty-foot box kite, with its noisy gasoline engine, a man lying gingerly on the lower wing, tugging at control wires, few if any of those present could have imagined where it would lead in the coming decades. The notion of a man flying solo far beyond the dunes, across the Atlantic less than a quarter of a century later, of aircraft releasing tons of bombs over European and Japanese cities, setting them ablaze in firestorms killing tens of thousands, of aircraft that split the air at speeds so fast that sound could not keep up, of jumbo airliners with wingspans longer than that first flight, carrying millions of people all over the world every year, or with cargo compartments carrying nothing but fresh-cut flowers--all of these would have seemed notions fantastical. Perhaps, had they had an inkling of the events they were setting in motion, and powers they were unleashing, the brothers Wright, devout sons of a midwest Bishop, would have hesitated themselves.
But probably not. Like all pioneers, successful or otherwise, they were risk takers. They would have had no fear of the future that they were ushering in--after all, they had no fear even of losing their own lives, at least not enough so to hinder their progress, though they knew that others had died in similar attempts, and even been inspired by them.
They had a competitor, though--one who was risk averse, and partly because of that, he failed. It should be no surprise that he was funded by the U.S. government.
Professor Samuel Pierpont Langley had successfully built small unmanned flyers. On the basis of this work, he was provided with a grant from the War Department of fifty-thousand dollars (which was matched by the Smithsonian Institution, of which he was the Secretary). There were many flaws in his approach, but a major one was his unwillingness to do flight test over land. Instead, he devoted a large amount of his budget to building a houseboat that could launch his craft over water via catapult.
Though his aircraft almost certainly wasn't capable of flying anyway, due to numerous design flaws arising from a lack of understanding of aerodynamics, the problem was compounded by the fact that it couldn't sustain the acceleration loads of the catapult. On both flight attempts, it underwent severe damage from the launcher, and on the second was nearly destroyed, plunging the remains into the Potomac River and almost drowning the pilot.
Of course, the real risk aversion, as always, was on the part of the government. On paper, Professor Langley looked like a good bet, compared to the Wrights. He seemed qualified--after all, he was a professor, while they had no college at all. He had built flying machines--they had only built bicycles. It was only natural that the government would lay their bet on what they perceived to be the best horse in the race--they had to safeguard the taxpayers' money, after all--they couldn't go gambling it on unknowns with dangerous and crazy notions.
But there's another, almost inevitable symptom of risk aversion that plagued Professor Langley's project, and many government-funded projects today.
In Greek mythology, it was said that Athena sprung fully formed, in full armor, from the head of Zeus.
Unfortunately, that often seems to be the goal of government agencies as well. A long, drawn-out program, with many incremental tests, offers many opportunities for test failures with their attendant bad publicity and potential for embarrassing congressional hearings. Moreover, the risk of such failures is increased if there is inadequate analysis before committing to hardware--hardware made all the more expensive by attempting to minimize the risk of failure, thus making any possible failure more expensive as well.
This leads to a vicious cycle of spending money to prevent failure which in turn increases the cost of the failure, which in turn results in further expenditures of funding for analysis and increased reliability, which in turn...
Professor Langley's Aerodrome was an example of this, in which he went directly (after analysis, though not good analysis, even given the paucity of aerodynamics knowledge of the times) from small-scale models to a full-scale powered manned vehicle, with no intermediate steps.
The Wrights, in contrast, slowly developed and understood each aspect of the problem, testing as they went, with many failures, but with lessons learned from each one. So, when they rolled out their powered version of their glider, in which they had many hours of flight experience, they could have some confidence that they were adding only one new element to the mix, and it worked.
Unfortunately, the same mindset prevails in modern government programs as well. The most notable example is the Space Shuttle.
While there was a lot of testing of individual elements of the system, at the end, the goal was to take a lot of pieces that each worked individually and integrate them into a system in which they all had to work together the first time, with crew on board. Because the goal was to jump immediately to an orbital vehicle, there was no way to do incremental testing of the system, because once a Shuttle leaves the launch pad, it has to go into orbit, or at least all the way across the Atlantic. But even if it had been designed to be capable of incremental testing, the costs of operating it were so high that a test program would have been unaffordable. Ironically, in their efforts to avoid risk, they've ended up with a program that is, on almost any measure by which it was originally advertised, a failure.
As the Wrights opened up the air, the people who open up space will take a methodical approach, testing, flying a little, expanding the envelope, until they become comfortable in the new environment of suborbital space, then slowly increase their speed and altitude until the trajectory simply drops the "sub" and becomes orbital. Perhaps the government will learn the lesson, but history and the very nature of governments show that the incentives for them to continue along the past failed path are still in place, and strong.
Fortunately, a hundred years after the first true airplane flight, spurred by new markets and prizes, and just fun, we're seeing new innovative people emulating those resourceful and daring brothers, with a potential to once again transform the world in ways at least as amazing as the Wrights did ten decades ago.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:04 AMHuckabee on foreign policy.
I can't believe that this guy could really get the Republican nomination. And of course, just because he's in the lead doesn't mean that he has a good chance, since he only has a plurality, not a majority, and seems unlikely to get one. And if he does somehow get the nomination, I can't see the party rallying behind him.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:22 AMRon Paul's supporters and a former Federal Election Commissioner are turning the operation of political speech inside out by turning individual donors into political organizations and the delivery vehicle (pun intended) into a for-profit universal-access media company. Bravo! Or as On the Media puts it:
...a campaign reform loophole as big as the Ron Paul blimp.
Expect ever tighter epicycles from the FEC to try to hold back the Internet and the innovative business processes that low transactions costs make available via personal computers and the Internet. They will nullify all limitations on free speech.
Posted by Sam Dinkin at 04:48 AMOK, this isn't what I had in mind as an alternative.
Though I have to say, if all you care about is the war, there would be a lot worse tickets...
Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:01 PMNoah Pollack finds one:
O.K., I'm no expert on monster trucks, but how do you lose the key while driving? Doesn't it have to be in the ignition? And don't monster trucks have brakes, or did we lose those, too? And where is the driver — can't he steer the monster truck away from the rainforests and the spotted owls?
Well, it's not that surprising. After all, it is Tom Friedman we're talking about.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:42 PMThis is for "Hillary Supporter." Glenn Reynolds disputes someone who still fantasizes that it's about the national guard.
[Late Sunday update]
For those who have already read Glenn's post, you might want to do so again--he has an update:
...it's important to understand that to the Framers the "militia" wasn't some specialist unit of government employees, but a group consisting of the armed populace; one that, though in some ways organized by the government, was also in some ways set against the government, as a check. As Akhil Amar says, think jurors, but with guns. Thus, any reading of the Second Amendment that would allow the government to extinguish that militia is impermissible, since it would lead to a state that is insecure, or unfree.
Also, on his comment that "...the 'militia' was said to consist of 'the body of the people') was essential as a check on government power, the government couldn't be allowed to disarm it by neglect."
Doesn't that imply that we should have federal subsidies for firearms for US citizens?
You know, an affirmative action program for gun purchasers? Wouldn't anything less be neglect? The more firepower, the bigger the check you get from Washington?
Leave no gun owner behind? ;-)
Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:26 PMOK, is it just me? Even after fixing my Amazon search problem by moving it to the center column, it is still not showing up in Firefox in Fedora. Can anyone else running that browser/OS confirm the same problem? If my computer is the only one in the world that doesn't see it, I can deal with it, but I'd hate to think that a lot of my readers aren't.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:16 PMI'm reminded by a commenter that today is the 234th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party. I had never really thought about the date before--it hadn't occurred to me that it took place in the winter in Boston. What did Narragansetts wear in that clime?
Anyway, sometimes, particularly given how little difference there is between the two parties, I think we're overdue for another one.
This little counterfactual (for people who came here via Instapundit) is one of the reasons.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:02 PMBecause we put birds inside other birds.
Just an extreme example of the lunacy and denial on the part of the left about the Islamists.
And here are some related thoughts on denial in Canada about the Religion of Peace™:
It's cultural, it's because of colonialism, it's because of Palestine, because of Iraq, because of misunderstanding. Because of anything other than Islam.Posted by Rand Simberg at 04:32 PMOnly a bigot would argue that every Muslim was violent or opposed to Western freedom. But only a coward or a liar would argue that there was not a profound and deeply worrying link between conservative Islam and myriad acts of terror, intolerance and hysterical anger.
As Mark Steyn notes, here's a good example of "liberal" fascism.
[Update about 5 PM]
Heh:
They told me that if George W. Bush were re-elected, fearmongering would be the end of democracy. And they were right!Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:12 PM
I just accidentally munged my archive pages. I'll try to figure it out, but I may have to await my webmaster.
Anyway, I've given up on putting the search tool in the sidebar, since it insists on being 180p wide, and I don't want to do a site redesign for it right now, so it's going in the top.
For those planning to shop at Amazon, if you use the search bar, I'll get a cut. It's a way of supporting the site by doing something you were going to do anyway. And tomorrow's the last day for Super Saver shipping before Christmas. And thanks in advance for anyone who does!
Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:23 PMI want to add an Amazon search button to my template, and I have (right below the Amazon Honor System box to the left). But it doesn't show up, as it does in this post. Can anyone take a look at the source and tell me why?
[Update]
Oh, this is weird. Not only does it not show up in the sidebar, but when it shows up in this post, it doesn't show as a searchbox--it comes in as Jonah's new book. When I did "Post Preview" it was fine, but something strange is going on here when it actually posts to the page.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:14 AM...by Fred Thompson. I don't really care that much about pro-life issues, myself, but I suspect that will leave a mark for a lot of people.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:30 AMI've been meaning to comment about this piece at TAP, which is a few weeks old, but I haven't had time to give it much thought. Among many other problems, though, one thing really jumps out at me; it has absolutely no mention of space, or who should handle it. That by itself makes it hard to take the rest seriously.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:28 AMThis bad. Glenn Reynolds:
I think I'd vote for Edwards over Huckabee, though I'd feel dirty the next morning. And I'd be even more likely to vote for Hillary or Obama.
Of course, Glenn was a Democrat for a long time (and even worked on Gore's campaign in 1988, about the time I first met him). He apparently wasn't as put off by the party in the nineties as I was.
I think I'd just write someone in.
[Evening update]
In response to a commenter here, Glenn expands on his reasoning:
Basically, I believe that both would have similar socialist/populist programs, but that Republicans would combine against Edwards' programs, producing useful gridlock. On the other hand, Dems would be only too happy to go along with Huckabee's programs, and too many Republicans might do so too, out of party loyalty. The main thing Huckabee has, policy wise, that Edwards doesn't is that he favors Second Amendment rights, but I wonder if he wouldn't jettison them in some sort of "for the children" compromise at a crucial point, knowing that he'd get media adulation for doing so. Plus, the more I watch him [in] operation, the more Clintonian his campaign seems. Edwards', on the other hand, is just inept, which suggests that he wouldn't be very scary in office. And both would probably be equally Carteresque in foreign policy.
Do we really want another Arkansas governor "from Hope"?
Of course, this argument assumes that the Democrats will retain Congress...
Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:06 AM"Don't fight, adapt.
Also, is oil production really peaking? Not in Brazil:
Wait a minute. Wasn't oil supposed to be running out? Wasn't all the oil out there already discovered? If this new "Sugar Loaf" field in Brazil pans out, the world oil picture won't be the same.Brazil will become an even bigger exporter in a decade or so than projected and could put pressure on the club of petrotyrants that now has a monopoly on resources. Best of all, it throws doomsday assumptions about oil "peaking" on its head.
The world produces about 85 million barrels of oil a day, according to the International Energy Agency. Global energy demand is expected to rise 55% from 2005-2030. Peak oil theories abound that new discoveries are not keeping up with oil usage. But it's significant that the new demand also is fostering big new discoveries, largely from the very countries where demand is growing most.
It's gloomy times for gloom mongers.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:54 AMI don't always agree with Dick Morris, but I think he's right here, and he knows the Clintons very well:
The conclusion is obvious: neither Hillary nor her staff know how to campaign. After the Clinton re-election in 1996, they have never been tested in a competitive race. When Giuliani dropped out of the New York State Senate race and the young Congressman Rick Lazio had to enter at the last minute to try to stop Hillary’s bid, the conclusion was pre-ordained. Hillary’s re-election was a cakewalk against a totally under funded opponent. She doesn’t know how to win.Hillary’s experience has been limited to the insider back biting of Washington where she is an expert at using her secret police — a small army of private detectives — to unearth negatives about her or Bill’s opponents. (Even former U.N. Ambassador Andrew Young recently admitted that Hillary ran the effort to discredit women who might come forward and accuse Clinton of misconduct.) But, when it comes to campaigning, advertising and winning an election, these folks and this candidate don’t have a clue.
I'm a little disappointed, actually. As much as I don't want another president Clinton, I would have preferred the gamble of having her be the Democrat candidate, because I don't think that she can win a national election.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:14 AMWe're still tweaking permissions and cgi access on the new server, so you may occasionally get errors when attempting to comment. I hope we've got it straightened out now, but if not, that's the problem.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:52 AMDave Kopel has some "do"s and "don't"s for the media to minimize copy-cat killing. I doubt if they'll listen, though
Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:46 AMThat's what Freeman Hunt thinks that Mike Huckabee would be. Sounds about right to me. I think that if the choice is another big-government Republican against a big-government Democrat, it opens up a huge opportunity for a new party.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 04:11 PMTo the transistor, which will be sixty years old tomorrow.
It has to be in the top five all-time inventions.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:11 AMHere's another example of the insanity of the War on (Some) Drugs, and its incompatibility with waging a real war:
It's a bad idea to keep so many people in prison, and it's a worse idea to do so and then have them exposed to radical "clerics."
Yes. A really bad idea.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:44 AMI'm not doin' hand shows today.
Running for President is serious business. We're facing pressing issues like national security, bankrupt entitlements, a broken tax code, and out-of-control judges. So what did the liberal moderator want at Wednesday's debate? A show of hands. We deserve serious discussion not kindergarten antics.Don't you want a conservative leader who won't grovel to the liberal media?
I'm not a conservative, but it's sure as hell what I want. One more reason to hope that he's the nominee.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:00 PM"Let me refer you to everything I've said in the past."
Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:24 PMToshiba has come up with a lithium battery that can get to a 90% charge in five minutes. This is huge for electric cars, if it pans out. Anyone want to work out how much power/voltage/current that would be for the equivalent of a tank of gas?
Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:15 PMFrom Ron Silver.
Since 2001 it has become apparent to me that many people are indeed afraid. It has also become apparent to me that the people who are most afraid are behaving hypocritically and cowardly. I do not make these assertions lightly. It’s a horrible thing to call a person or persons cowardly. A little less so with hypocrisy, a little bit of which attaches to all of us. Cowards, in that the fear of confronting the real enemy who wishes us harm is displaced by ranting against a liberal democracy where they know no harm will come to them. Is it so heroic to make a film or a speech that has the support of everyone in your community? What kind of courage does it take to go after the Bush administration if you’re a member of the Hollywood community, and most everyone agrees with your position and will reward you for it — or you’re part of the political class in Washington, D.C. or in New York or in parts of California? Forget the tenured and not so tenured academics, who while not being able to change the world in 1968 have devoted their lives to teaching future generations about the evils of the one, seemingly dispensable sovereign nation that evidently makes the world unlivable. Our country.When a novelist has a death sentence on his head, when a filmmaker is shot in the street and then stabbed through the heart for making a film that the murderers found offensive, when newspaper editors and publishers, as well as network executives, refuse to show us the cartoons that created havoc and mass protests around the world, I think something more than good taste is involved. The reason we haven’t seen the cartoons in the New York Times (apparently this was news that wasn’t fit to print) or Newsweek, or on our TV screens, is fear. Of what? Pissing them off? From my perspective they are apparently quite pissed off already.
RTWT
Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:10 PMDecember 14th, 2007
COLORADO SPRINGS (APUPI) As a mass memorial service was held today for the seventy-three victims of the massacre at the New Life Church, one of the largest such grim tolls in the nations' history, gun-control advocates pointed out the continuing folly of allowing civilians access to pistols and assault weapons.
"This never would have happened had Matthew Murray not been able to get his hands on those weapons, " said Sarah Brady, head of Handgun Control, Incorporated. "He had two handguns, an assault rifle, and a thousand rounds of ammunition. Seventy-three people are dead now, and thousands more wounded, because the NRA continues to block reasonable gun-control measures."
With Sunday's slaughter still fresh in the minds of many, she pointed out that now was the time to end such incidents once and for all, with effective laws against both handguns and assault weapons.
The toll was horrific for the church, which lost not only many parishioners, but its senior pastor, Brady Boyd. Also killed was Jeanne Assam, one of the church's security guards. She had bravely stood up and warned the gunman as he entered the building after killing two girls in the parking lot, and pointed out the "gun-free zone" sign at the church entrance. However, she herself was unarmed, per church policy, and was shot down before Murray went on to shoot numerous others behind her.
While the police are to be commended on their fast response of twelve minutes from the time someone had the presence of mind to call 911 on their cell phone, by the time they could bring in someone to take out the shooter, he had had time to kill sixty nine others, and wound another hundred and twenty one.
Some have made the controversial suggestion that the death toll might have been lower had Ms. Assam been allowed to carry a firearm herself, something which, as a former police officer, she was well trained to do. In addition, she held a permit to legally carry a concealed weapon in Colorado. But the church rules, for obvious safety reasons, didn't allow weapons on the premises.
Mrs. Brady finds such suggestions dangerous and ludicrous. "What is a woman going to do with a handgun against a man with two pistols and an assault rifle?" she asked. "Adding more weapons to the mix would only have increased the carnage. What they needed was bigger letters on the sign."
[Copyright 2007 by Rand Simberg]
I believed, with a lot of other conservatives, that the Clintons were really good at destroying people. Judging from the last three weeks, they are really bad at destroying people. Maybe all those people they destroyed in the 1990's were just easily destroyed? This is very disorienting...
I think that there are several factors here. First, when they were successfully destroying people, they had political power, either as Arkansas governor, or as co-president. I don't think that being an ex-President and senator give them as much clout or ability to hurt their enemies. Also, most people weren't aware of their record in that regard in the 80s and 90s. Now, it's their most famous feature. Now, when they attempt to smear someone (as they did with Obama), the press calls them on it, instead of simply being stenographers for the smear. Of course, it helps a lot that the people they're trying to destroy are fellow Democrats, so even those in the media who want to help them are conflicted in a way they wouldn't be in the general election.
And, finally, I think that a lot of their former allies and toadies are tired of them, had enough, and starting to turn on them (watch this trend accelerate once people decide that she's not "inevitable" and they don't have to worry about being on the wrong end of the wrath of another president Clinton). Without the help of all these others, they are more powerless as well.
Plus, is Hillary Ed Muskie?
Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:23 AMThe basic problem liberals have a hard time grasping: Murray is a soaked-to-the-bone libertarian. He doesn't think the government is qualified or entitled to do much of anything. But whenever liberals hear conservatives or libertarians talk about race they automatically leap to images of Nazism or Fascism when virtually all serious or mainstream rightwing thinkers endorse, at most, benign neglect AKA colorblindness. You can take exception to such arguments, even passionate exception, but it is outrageous to suggest that Murray or Bill Bennett (remember his Freakonomics hypothetical?) or pretty much any other conservative or libertarian worthy of the label wants to use state power to oppress or eliminate minorities. It is a slanderous projection of liberal biases onto conservatives and it has been with us since the days when Herbert Spencer was demonized for being a radical liberal.
This is the same mindless jumping to conclusions that causes some people to call me a Republican, or "right winger" or "conservative," or "neo-con."
By the way, Jonah's new book looks pretty interesting.
I love the cover.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:08 AMFrom Mike Potemra:
To the readers..who have written me about how I should be worried about the (in the words of one) "extremely strange" and "Scientology-level strange" beliefs of Mormons, here's my response: In my own faith, we believe that the cause of all evil was a single mistake by human beings many millennia ago—but that the situation was set right . . . because we murdered an innocent man 2,000 years ago. Therefore: I'm not about to throw stones about beliefs that sound weird to people who don't share them.
I saw a signature on the Internet once, that went roughly like this: You are almost as much an atheist as I am. I only believe in one less god than you do. When you tell me why you don't believe in all the others, you'll know why I don't believe in yours.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:06 AMThe more I learn about Huckabee, the less appealing he becomes:
Huckabee doesn’t just embrace big government in the form of big taxes. He truly appears to believe that if something is a good idea it should be a federal government program.For example, having become health conscious while losing more than 120 pounds (a remarkable feat), he now calls for a national smoking ban. Because he believes that "art and music are as important as math and science" in public schools, he wants these programs funded -- and thus, directed and administered -- federally.
Huckabee is, incidentally, the only Republican candidate for president who opposes school choice.
And he was endorsed by the NEA in New Hampshire. Appalling.
I can't figure out why he even calls himself a Republican.
This is kind of disturbing:
The billboard uses technology manufactured by Holosonic that transmits an "audio spotlight" from a rooftop speaker so that the sound is contained within your cranium. The technology, ideal for museums and libraries or environments that require a quiet atmosphere for isolated audio slideshows, has rarely been used on such a scale before. For random passersby and residents who have to walk unwittingly through the area where the voice will penetrate their inner peace, it's another story.
I predict a lawsuit at some point.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:13 AMWell, actually, replace "sincere" with disingenuous. Nonetheless, this is one of the reasons that, if I were a Republican, I'd be voting for Fred Thompson.
And I should add that I don't actually agree with the Cuba embargo, but it's not a huge issue for me either way.
And speaking of Huckabee, one can see why the Dems would think him the most beatable candidate. I pretty much agree with everything here. I can't stand Huckabee, either. My nightmare is a Hillary!/Huckabee choice.
Oh, one more comment. I was listening to Dennis Miller this morning in the car on the way to the dentists, and they said "Hey, he misspoke about Mormons thinking that Jesus and the devil were brothers. He meant to say Jews."
Posted by Rand Simberg at 03:08 PMMarc Kaufman of Washington Post finds that in zero g, "Microbes May Threaten Lengthy Spaceflights[;] Immune Systems Of Astronauts Found To Be Weakened". I guess the whole spinning-like-a-carnival-ride thing is far too obvious a solution even if the problem is not worthy of a "crash program or anything like that".
Posted by Sam Dinkin at 11:53 AMLee Harris points out the fatal flaw in the argument of the "non-interventionists":
We may agree with Ron Paul that our interventionist policy in the Middle East has led to unintended negative consequences, including even 9/11, but this admission offers us absolutely no insight into what unintended consequences his preferred policy of non-intervention would have exposed us to. It is simply a myth to believe that only interventionism yields unintended consequence, since doing nothing at all may produce the same unexpected results. If American foreign policy had followed a course of strict non-interventionism, the world would certainly be different from what it is today; but there is no obvious reason to think that it would have been better.Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:51 AM
For that special geek in your life, here's a list of Christmasholiday gift suggestions. And here's a list of things to be sure not to get him or her--the ten worst gadgets of 2007.
To tap the F1's full accuracy, scientists have to know their precise relative position to the clock, and account for weather, altitude and other externalities. An optical cable that links the F1 to a lab at the University of Colorado, for example, can vary in length as much as 10 mm on a hot day -- something that researchers need to continually track and take into account. At F1's level of precision, even general relativity introduces problems; when technicians recently moved F1 from the third floor to the second, they had to re-tune the system to compensate for the 11-and-a-half foot drop in altitude.Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:34 AM
Joe Gandelman thinks that the Hillary! campaign shot itself in the foot. But I find this comment kind of naive:
After this episode, it will be difficult for Ms. Clinton or her husband Bill Clinton to ever denounce “the politics of personal destruction” that occurred during Bill Clinton’s term as president, or any other instances in the future. How can the campaign condemn Karl Rovian tactics when it is practicing them?
Is this a joke? They're the Clintons. These aren't "Rovian" tactics. They were indulging in this kind of hypocrisy all throughout the nineties. They (with Carville and Blumenthal) invented the "politics of personal destruction," all the while rubbing the crocodile tears out of their eyes and decrying it. Why does he think that they will stop now, or even find it "difficult" to do?
[Update a few minutes later]
Gerard Vanderleun reminisces about the summers of love.
In the late night, stoned streets of Berkeley in 1971 whenever you heard that Light My Fire you knew somebody was getting laid.... maybe even three or four somebodies. Ensemble. I don't know about Bill, but by 1971 I was on my second copy of The Doors album.Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:52 AMNow, I am sure that you will never, ever have the ghost of a chance of getting either Hillary or Bill to, as we used to say, cop to any of this. But it happened that way, a long, long time ago, in a stoner's universe far, far away.
Believe me, the last thing Hillary Clinton wants is for anyone on her campaign or any other campaign to start looking into drug use. Especially for Candidates shacking up in Berkeley, just down from Telegraph Avenue, in the lovin' summer of 1971.
John Tierney had a discussion with one of the researchers. As he notes, the public reaction to this research is fascinating. Sexual orientation (like evolution) is one of those areas where people check their rationality at the door.
And (as is more and more the case the longer I blog), this isn't the first time I've discussed this issue.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:45 AMIf you see this post, you've found the new server, and you can comment again.
This move is long overdue. It will give me more bandwidth, and more disk space, and more up-to-date tools. I may start doing more multi-media stuff, but that will depend on my time availability.
And yes, I should do a site redesign, too, but I've always been one more for function than form.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 04:07 PMI'm moving to a new server. I've shut down comments on this server. You'll be able to comment at the new site once you get there. I'll be putting up a new post on the new server, announcing that the move is complete. If you see it, you'll know that you've found the right place, and can comment again.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:47 PMThat's Huckabee's new campaign slogan. The comments are great: "In this election, we obey the laws of thermodynamics."
Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:44 AMElon Musk has a long update on progress on the new Merlin engine, the Falcon 9 and Dragon. Those are the first pictures I've seen of the Hawthorne facility. It sounds like they have a lot of room to grow.
I'm disappointed, but not surprised, that they've gone with hypergolics for reaction control. That's going to complicate turnaround.
But overall, (in contrast to Orion/Ares) progress seems to be good. Note that they're continuing to hire, and even offering bounties, if you know anyone to refer to them.
[Update a few minutes later]
SpaceX should look into this engine for RCS. Presumably, the hypergolics were chosen for reliability (no igniter required) and storability, but XCOR has pretty reliable engines, and they don't use such nasty propellants, and they have been working on well-insulated LOX tanks.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:41 AMHere are a couple of posts on the dress code for top programmers. Beards seem to be required, unless you're a woman. And as he notes, nothing says programmer like flannel.
[Via Virginia]
Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:01 AMRadley Balko has a long, but interesting (and sad) report on the ongoing injustice in the Cory Maye case:
One of the people I spoke to during my visit two years ago is Linda Shoemaker, who runs the Prentiss tobacco shop. Shoemaker’s a white woman, middle-aged, and was described by many to me as the town’s unofficial historian. She knows everything that happens—judging from my time there, likely because nearly everyone in town stops by her shop to buy tobacco. Shoemaker knew Ron Jones well, for most of his life, and was quite fond of him. But she’s also one of the few white people in the area who doesn’t believe Cory ought to be in prison. I still have a quote from her in my notes from two years ago. “If somebody every broke in on me and my grandbabies…” She then paused. Her eyes filled with tears and she glanced upward. “Forgive me for saying this, Ron,” she said. “You know I love you. But if anybody broke in on me and my grandbabies at night, I’d have done the same thing Cory Maye did.”Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:30 AMYou have one man taken from his family, in the prime of his life. You have another man, also taken from his family, now losing the prime of his life. You have a son taken from his mother and father. And you have a loving father being taken from his son and daughter.
Thank this war. The goddamned drug war. It is so incredibly senseless and stupid. And it’ll continue to claim and ruin lives, because too few politicians have the backbone to stand up and say after 30 years, $500 billion, a horrifyingly high prison population, and countless dead innocents, cops, kids, nonviolent offenders, decimated neighborhoods, wasted lives, corrupted cops, and eviscerations of the core freedoms this country was allegedly founded upon, the shit isn’t working. It’ll never work. It never has. It’s a testament to the facade of truth that is politics that no leaders from the two majors parties have in thirty years been able to say this. That maybe, just maybe, we’re doing it wrong. Maybe, just maybe, kicking down doors in the middle of the night and storming in with guns in order to stop people from getting high….isn’t such a good idea. Maybe, just maybe, the idea getting tips from racist, illiterate, drug-addicted informants about which doors, if you kick them down, will lead to drugs? Well maybe that isn’t such a sound policy, either. We can’t even get one of the leading candidates for president to say that. The safe position is always to advocate for more money, more government power, more militarism—and less freedom, less common sense, and less worry about collateral damage. Sensibility, honesty, or compassion? Too risky.
Apparently, many people (particularly young people) are unable to condemn, and are willing to tolerate anything. Except "intolerance," of course.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:22 AMRamesh Ponnuru has a great question, that occurred to me as well, when I read this. This discussion is in the context of whether or not earmarks are a winning issue for Republicans. Well, they certainly aren't unless they're willing to embrace it. Which apparently they aren't...
Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:46 PMEric Hedman has some ideas. I agree with Clark Lindsey--he is far too optimistic about the prospects for scramjets providing a solution to the problem:
Scramjet propulsion theoretically has the advantage of increasing a vehicle’s mass fraction for payload by reducing the oxidizer load it has to carry. The big question is, can this theoretical advantage be turned into a practical advantage with a solid, sustained research and development effort? I think it’s time we find out.
The answer to his big question is...probably not. While the military may have applications for scramjets, I still think that it would be a foolish priority for technologies to reduce launch costs.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 03:34 PMA very nasty new virus. If you get a cold that gets very bad, particularly with lung congestion, get to the doctor immediately.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:19 AMIn Jones’ Road Runner cartoons, starting with “Fast and Furry-ous” (1948), nothing happens to Wile E. that Wile E. does not initiate. The Road Runner can only harm him after the chase has already begun by suddenly beep-beeping (the Road Runner’s one characteristic sound) and startling Wile E. into falling off of a cliff, jumping upward and hitting his head on a rock formation, etc..”
It is an apt analogy. Particularly for Reid and Pelosi.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:02 AMIs it possible that the Steyn imbroglio could be used to shut down the Canadian Human RightsWrongs Commission? It's something else that's long overdue.
[Afternoon update]
More thoughts from Damian Penny.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:19 AMProposed legislation to make liable entities that create "gun-free zones."
All this does is make clear that whoever creates an obviously dangerous situation, by forcing the disarmament of innocent people entering, ("legitimate" coercion by the property owner) -- which they're fully entitled to do under the bill -- there's a consequence for that risky action. As there should be for creating such a self-evidently unsafe situation. And it only matters if the danger manifests, and some psychopath turns the hair parlor into a victim zone. If there's no assault, then there's no problem. Gun-o-phobes can sleep tight thinking the rest of us are just a bunch of paranoids. The bill merely addresses criminally misguided notions of safety...Try thinking of this as the Luby's Massacre Act. Maybe that will help emphasize the blatant and profound fraud of proposing gun-free zones as safety nets. The heartless, insensitive, thoughtless perpetrators of defenseless victim zones should be ashamed of themselves.
This kind of thing should have been done after 911. If Virginia had had such a law, the death and injury toll at VTech probably would have been a lot lower.
Of course, Sarkozy won't like it, but fortunately, this is America, not France.
[Update a few minutes later]
Here's a profile of the woman who stopped the killing in the Colorado church. Good thing it wasn't a "gun-free zone."
[Afternoon update]
Here's someone else of whom Sarkozy would disapprove.
Here’s the thing. Gun control advocates love to say that actual “defensive shootings” are rare. True. The statistic they always leave out is how many violent crimes are prevented without a shot being fired as was the case here.Clearly these were gang members — a group known for violence — who decided not to continue their thuggery when the store owner showed he was capable of fighting back. So, the punks moved on — no doubt to find an unarmed victim.
No doubt.
[One more update]
Apparently, the Colorado church shooting was a "hate crime."
Feel no remorse, no sense of shame, I don't care if I live or die in the shoot-out. All I want to do is kill and injure as many of you ... as I can especially Christians who are to blame for most of the problems in the world."
But it was against Christians, so that's OK.
[Update a couple minutes later]
This from the story above is kind of appalling:
After that final posting, one of the other Web site users realizes what's happened and wrote, "Oh no. I just saw this on the news."Another wrote, "Yes, please don't do it. You'd only make them into martyrs and yourself into a fanatical, hateful zealot, in the public opinion."
Yes, stupid public. It would be so unfair to think that.
[Early evening update]
How many lives did Jeanne Assam save?
...this is the folly of "gun-free zones". Lunatics looking to kill people either will attack at places for which they have some animus (as in the case of the church) or where they can find a lot of unarmed people (as in Omaha). They don't stop because someone puts up a sign designating a site as gun-free, any more than people stop taking drugs because a city puts up a sign that designates a neighborhood as a "drug-free zone", as in my own neighborhood.Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:53 AMAll that sign does is prevent the Jeanne Assams from being able to defend the defenseless. That's all it does. It doesn't make anyone more secure or safe, and it has the potential to make a lot of people into victims.
After the Virginia Tech shooting, people asked whether a CCL holder could have made a difference once the shooting started. Jeanne Assam answered that question on Sunday.
I doubt if this will work for humans (for one thing, I'm pretty sure that my heterosexuality has nothing to do with my sense of smell), but it does show that sexual orientation is a lot more complicated that most people want to think.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:09 AMCynthia! is in the race:
The former six-term Democrat Congresswoman was ousted in 2006 from Georgia’s 4th Congressional district for the second time. In 2002, she spoke to the Black Congressional caucus claiming that President Bush had foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks. She also openly solicited $10 million from the Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal; New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani rejected the check after the prince suggested U.S. foreign policy had brought on 9/11. McKinney’s actions resulted in her first electoral defeat in the 2002 Democratic primary, after serving five terms in office. On the night of her 2002 primary defeat, McKinney’s father told media, “Jews have bought everybody...J-E-W-S.” She came back in 2004, and promptly signed a “call for immediate inquiry into evidence that suggests high-level government officials may have deliberately allowed the September 11th attacks to occur.”
Whatever else this election season will be, it won't be boring.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:05 AMFirst draft. This is pretty funny. I particularly like the "Pentecostals" options.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:00 AM...not a bogus one, is what is needed to solve the subprime crisis.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:36 AMFor those who weren't paying attention during the 90s, Stuart Taylor has a reminder:
I will not excavate Clinton's own kindergarten confessions. Nor will I compare the honesty quotient of her campaign-trail spin with the dreadful drivel dutifully uttered by Obama and other candidates to pander to their fevered primary electorates.Instead, let's take a trip down memory lane -- from the tawdriness of the 1992 presidential campaign through the mendacity of the ensuing years -- to revisit a sampling of why so many of us came to think that Hillary's first instinct when in an embarrassing spot is to lie.
He doesn't mention that she not only had the Travel Office employees fired, but had the FBI prosecute them, with such flimsy evidence that the jurors acquitted almost immediately.
Unfortunately, it's not a permalink. But it's a useful read right now for "Hillary Supporter" (and Hillary! supporters in general). And as Ann Althouse asks, "How smart is it for a woman with such a bad reputation for truthfulness and veracity to put those character traits at the center of the campaign?"
Gee, maybe she's not the smartest woman in the world?
Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:21 AMDennis Wingo thinks so. So do I.
In over 30 years of reading space literature from NASA, congress, and the president, this is the first time that the presidential stamp has been placed on the development of extraterrestrial resources. This was not the only step in the development of this thought at the highest reaches of our government. In 2006 at the 44th Goddard Symposium the presidential theme was extended and amplified."As I see it, questions about the VSE boil down to whether we want to incorporate the Solar System in our economic sphere, or not. Our national policy, declared by President Bush and endorsed by Congress last December in the NASA authorization act, affirms that, "The fundamental goal of this vision is to advance U.S. scientific, security, and economic interests through a robust space exploration program." So at least for now the question has been decided in the affirmative."
These two speeches, one by President Bush, and another by his science advisor, the head of the Office of Science and Technology Policy laid the foundation and provided the ground rules, and gave very explicit policy direction to NASA regarding what we are to do in the return to the Moon and conduct exploration to Mars and beyond.
The problem is that NASA has not embraced this expansive goal for our national space program. Why is this? It seems to be just the kind of red meat goal that NASA has dreamed of forever. Even in the SEI era there was never this kind of clear cut, practical direction for a policy, as Marburger states, from the President and Congress. It boggles the mind that this has not been incorporated as a core value for the lunar exploration program--it is exactly this type of effort that has the potential to connect to the American people.
Just as was the case with SEI, VSE is being done in by NASA, though in a different way this time. In SEI, they did it by deliberately sabotaging the program with outrageous cost estimates, and actually lobbying against it in Congress. With VSE, it's more a case of negligent manslaughter, rather than premeditation. ESAS, and NASA's lack of vision, is killing the Vision. And the administration is too preoccupied with other things, and long in the tooth, to do anything about it.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:35 AMI'd love to be compared to Heinlein. Particularly since I don't (at least deliberately) write fiction. Or even attempt to.
[Update on Tuesday morning]
In comments, Paul Spudis links to this LA Times piece which was discussed over at Scalzi's place. Note in particular this comment. And the LA Times piece is what prompted all the discussion, including this post.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:55 PMI just got my fall issue of The New Atlantis--its focus is space, in keeping with the Sputnik anniversary in October. I just glanced at it, but it's got lots of good stuff in it, by Oberg, Mike Griffin, and others, including a long review of Rocketeers
Ron Bailey doesn't think so. Neither do I. And I sure hope we don't.
I've noticed this kind of "argument" a lot with people who want to hold back true progress (as opposed to the "progress" proposed by many "progressives"):
So what about the social consequences of radically longer and healthier lives? In that regard, Diana Schaub in her reaction essay raises many questions for reflection about those consequences, but curiously she fails to actually reflect on them. Schaub isn’t “willing to say that agelessness is undesirable,” but she simultaneously “can’t shake the conviction that the achievement of a 1,000-year lifespan would produce a dystopia.” She then simply recapitulates the standard issue pro-mortalist rhetorical technique of asking allegedly “unnerving questions” and then allowing them to “fester in the mind.” Sadly, all too many bioethicists think they’ve done real philosophic work by posing “hard” questions, then sitting back with steepled hands and a grave look on their countenances.
Yeah, these sorts of questions have been "festering" in my mind for decades. I don't ever seem to come up with the sort of scary answers that she won't tell us, though.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:43 PMNo launch today, either. Maybe tomorrow, but I don't think I'll hang around for it--Patricia has to work.
Anyway, I'm guessing that they'll ultimately have to roll back, and launch in January. These sensors seem to be even more flaky than usual.
[Update about a minute after posting]
Yup. I just got a text message that they've decided to give up on it for the year.
[A couple minutes more]
Here's confirmation on the web site. January 2nd at the earliest.
[11:20 update]
Here's more info.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:08 AMPatricia's up in Orlando this weekend, so I'm driving up this afternoon. We may go over to the Cape to see the launch tomorrow.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:15 AM...but he's still idiotic on some issues:
Last year, Mr. Sarkozy told French radio: "Security is the responsibility of the state. I am against the private ownership of firearms. If you are assaulted by an armed burglar, he will use his weapon more effectively than you anyway, so you are risking your life."
But of course, there is no risk to your life if you're unarmed...
[Update on Monday morning]
As noted in comments, this thread got hijacked by the usual suspects, but here are some interesting thoughts on another Frenchman, Tocqueville, who was a lot smarter than Sarkozy on these issues. Also, on what happens when mass killers meet armed citizens, as was demonstrated over the weekend in Colorado.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:18 PMWas there trade between China and the west five millennia ago?
Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:54 PMThere have been a new development in the story about Mojave potentially losing its spaceport license.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:19 PMShould this be a necessary characteristic of a president?
If so, I suspect that none of the major candidates, of either party, would qualify (though perhaps Ron Paul might, being an MD). Hillary!, Obama and Edwards are all lawyers. So are Giuliani and Thompson, and Romney has a JD and an MBA (though McCain might have picked up math and science at Annapolis). Why would they know much about science? And historically, while there have been exceptions, not that many people come to politics at all, let alone the presidency, via science.
There's a lot more to scientific literacy than understanding (and agreeing with) evolution, and being in favor of embryonic stem cell research. In fact, I don't think that Al Gore is scientifically literate (in the way I understand that phrase--a good understanding of basic scientific principles, and able to both perform and recognize good analysis, including the math, as well as a facility with logic).
Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:35 AMI just installed it, and am having problems configuring it. I'm not going to bother with the gory details here, unless someone pipes up, though.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:22 AM...not universal health care. An essay by Lin Zinser and (Dr.) Paul Hsieh (of Geek Press).
Contrary to claims that government-imposed “universal health care” would solve America’s health care problems, it would in fact destroy American medicine and countless lives along with it. The goal of “universal health care” (a euphemism for socialized medicine) is both immoral and impractical; it violates the rights of businessmen, doctors, and patients to act on their own judgment—which, in turn, throttles their ability to produce, administer, or purchase the goods and services in question. To show this, we will first examine the nature and history of government involvement in health insurance and medicine. Then we will consider attempts in other countries and various U.S. states to solve these problems through further government programs. Finally, we will show that the only viable long-term solution to the problems in question is to convert to a fully free market in health care and health insurance.
What a concept...
Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:12 AMThomas James has found another way for NASA to get around the Congressional prohibition on human Mars exploration, as a result of the blinkered mentality of the people who wrote the language. As he says, though, it's unlikely that NASA would use it.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:31 AMOn a beautiful Sunday morning in Hawaii, a sleeping giant was awakened, and filled with a terrible resolve.
I was at the memorial about a year ago. Some of the tour guides there were present at the scene, and described the chaos and heroism. There is a project to capture their memories and pictures, before they're all gone.
The memorial itself is deteriorating, and needs to be replaced. If you'd like to help, today might be a good time to do it, while we remember.
[Update mid morning]
Here's a story about five of the survivors.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:11 AM"...it's worth it."
I haven't said much about the Omaha mall shooting, either, but I agree completely with Glenn. No more "gun-free" zones. I, too, would like to see some lawsuits against those who (pathetically) attempt to establish them.
Because they're a chimera, and a fantasy, and only enable the murderers and muckers.
[Friday update]
Scott Ott (in an uncharacteristically unfunny piece) has an alternate history:
As the would-be famous mass killer raised the rifle to his shoulder, the unnamed shopper commanded him to stop. Mr. Hawkins turned the muzzle of the AK-47 toward the commanding voice, a single shot rang out and Mr. Hawkins staggered, dropped his weapon and fell against the railing.By this time, two other shoppers were aiming their pistols at Mr. Hawkins — a young, single woman pulled a .40 caliber Glock 27 from her purse, and a retired farmer drew his 9mm Ruger SR9 (an early Christmas gift from his wife). Together with the first man they moved in to separate Mr. Hawkins from his gun, search him for other weapons and restrain him until law enforcement arrived.
You know, there used to be an agreement among the press not to publicize the name of a rape victim, to spare her the embarrassment. Why not do the same thing for these people? There should be some way to shame them into not reporting this the way they do. The public doesn't have a need to know the names of these would-be fame seekers.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:00 PMHere's a classical example:
I can not prove it, but from the comments and messages I have received from Diggers I believe there are a couple of reasons I am buried. First, Geeks are generally progressives and I am a conservative, albeit of a libertarian mindset—but they don't understand that. Second, like many Geeks, their sexual development is rather stunted—and are quite misogynistic and homophobic in an adolescent sort of way. So they do not like their progressive viewpoints ridiculed by an intelligent conservative lesbian.
One of the reasons that I don't bother with providing Digg links on my posts.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:34 PMBased on what I'm reading here, this is extremely disappointing, given how supportive FAA-AST has been of this fledgling industry to date:
MOJAVE - The nation's first inland spaceport could lose that designation by the end of the year.The Federal Aviation Administration informed officials at the Mojave Air and Space Port of its intention to suspend or revoke the space launch site operator's license Dec. 31.
"I have no reason to be optimistic we're going to keep our spaceport license," said General Manager Stu Witt, reporting on the issue to the East Kern Airport District board of directors Tuesday. The district governs the Mojave Air and Space Port.
...Witt said the FAA has asked airport officials to dream up possible launch vehicle scenarios, imagining various types and amounts of propellants and devising safety plans for dealing with those chemicals.
"I'm not in the business of dealing in stories; I deal in fact," he said.
The airport does have safety and storage plans in effect for those propellents and other energetic materials in use at the site.
The facility's 2006 safety inspection found no compliance issues, Witt said. However, the safety inspection this year resulted in a notice that the facility had 90 days to come into compliance but failed to state what the problems were, he said.
One of the implications of this is that companies like XCOR and Masten Space Systems (not to mention the SpaceShip Company) are going to have to pull up stakes and move somewhere else, though it's not clear how any other US spaceport can meet what seem to be unreasonable FAA demands.
Look. One has to go back to the original intent and basis of the regulations. FAA-AST (and its predecessor, the Office of Commercial Space Transportation, which reported directly to the Secretary of Transportation, and was not part of the FAA) exists for one reason--to meet the obligations of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty. Our participation in that treaty means that the US government (unlike any other mode of transportation) is liable for any activity involving spaceflight that occurs from its boundaries or its citizens/corporations. (In fact, that means that suborbital flight within the confines of the US is not even relevant to the treaty, but that's a discussion for another time.)
But ground testing, and development that doesn't involve actual spaceflight is not covered in any way by that treaty. No part of FAA-AST should be involved in, or even interested in, vehicle development activities that do not involve vehicles that don't go into space, let alone ones that don't leave the ground at all. These were accidents in propulsion testing on test stands. If any federal agency should be involved (I would argue that none should) it would be OSHA. The FAA (and particularly FAA-AST) should only be involved when testing of actual flight vehicles occur. They have no business worrying about what kinds of propellants are used in vehicle development (let alone engine development), until operators and developers actually seek launch licenses for flight testing using those propellants.
I know, and have friends, at FAA-AST. I hope that one of them will (convincingly) explain to me why I'm wrong.
[Update late evening]
I don't actually hope they'll explain to me why I'm wrong, because if they can do that, it's bad news for the industry. What I really hope is that they'll realize that they're wrong, and not strangle this young industry in the cradle.
And Clark Lindsey is more succinct than I in describing the problem.
[Friday update]
Patti Grace Smith is denying the report:
Earlier I noted a report noted by Rand Simberg and several other space bloggers that the Mojave Space Port was in danger of closure by the FAA. I also emailed Patricia Smith, the FAA's Associate Adminstrator for Commercial Space Transportation. She responds: "The report is totally inaccurate."
That's good, and like Glenn, I appreciate the fast reply, but it would be nice to see a more expansive, and clarifying response. If the report is "totally inaccurate" (hard to believe that anything can be totally inaccurate) what is accurate? What, if anything, is going on?
And if Stu is crying wolf, that won't help him the next time he needs to deal with AST.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:05 PMMuch hoopla was made of the fiftieth anniversary of Sputnik a couple months ago.
I haven't seen anyone mention that a half century ago today, the first Vanguard mission, the American response to Sputnik, was a spectacular (and televised) failure on the launch pad, which simply heightened the concern we had about the Soviets being ahead of us in space ("Our rockets always blow up"). I wonder if history might have been much, or any different had it succeeded?
Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:34 PMFred Kaplan makes the case. I hadn't been aware of how much the quality of the sound was degraded to compress it into an MP3. Of course, I've never gotten into the MP3 thing, other than to listen to interviews and the like on my Treo. When I want to listen to music, I still go with CDs and vinyl.
And I don't think that Teachout is going to persuade very many people to give up their high-end equipment. One would think that he, of all people, would remember the old dictum that there's no accounting for taste.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:12 AMA monument to Che Guevara, put up by the Chavez government, has been destroyed in Venezuela:
"We do not want a monument to Che, he is not an example for our children," said a note left at the scene of the monument shattered by six gunshots, according to El Universal newspaper.
Can't say that I blame them. I wonder if the people who did this were emboldened by Hugo's poll defeat? And if and how the government will punish them?
Given Che's methods, taking it down with six gunshots seems appropriate.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:19 AMI'm not planning to drive up to see the launch this afternoon--I'll try to see it from here (something I've never done, but the sky is quite clear). But it looks like they may have to scrub, anyway. Fuel sensors again.
By the way, The Flame Trench is probably the best place to go in general to stay on top of what's going on for launches from the Cape.
[Update at 10:20 EST]
Today's launch has been scrubbed. Another attempt tomorrow at 4:09 PM.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:39 AMWell, new to me, anyway. I discovered Amanda Bauer via the latest Carnival of Space, over at Robot Guy's place. Good stuff, but I hope that she uses the shift key when she writes her job applications and thesis.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:17 AMFrom Amazon, who have been running a series.
The main reason I'm linking is to explain this, because it struck me that some might wonder why:
Unless you have a high-end receiver and speakers capable of generating a lot of bass, I recommend setting them to "small." This will send their bass to your subwoofer.
Some might ask, "...but what about the stereo for the bass? I thought that stereo required separation. How can you get that if it's all coming from a single speaker?"
Here's the deal. The ability to discriminate the direction of sound is a function of its wavelength. The wavelength of notes in the bass frequency is substantially longer than the distance between your ears, so there's no way for you to tell what direction the sound is coming from at those frequencies. Can you tell where thunder is from the sound? Yes, you can tell how far away it is, if you see the lightning and count the time until you hear it (about five seconds per mile), but absent visual clues, there's no way to tell the direction purely from the sound.
That's why you can not only get away with sending all bass to the subwoofer, but it doesn't even matter where the subwoofer is. So you can place it where it's convenient, or aesthetic (as long as it's at least in the same room). It's the high frequencies where speaker placement matters.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 03:27 PMNot from me, but from Victor Davis Hanson. Here are a couple:
Why would a country that produces 4 million barrels of oil per day at $90 per barrel not use its windfall profits to expand and refurbish an ailing oil industry to get in further on the obscene profit-making, rather than divert resources in the billions for the acquisition of a reactor that is not needed for power production (natural gas is still burned off at the wellhead)?We suffer collective amnesia in suggesting that the chill in Iranian relations was a phenomenon of the last few years alone. Not restoring formal diplomatic relations was a bipartisan policy, presumably based on the notion that neither the Carter nor the Clinton administration ever got genuine positive feedback from their efforts to expand diplomatic channels with the Iranians. After all, what President wanted to be responsible for opening-and losing-another embassy in Teheran? In this regard, the recent hostage-taking of British soldiers abroad reaffirms that Iranian ways have not changed much since 1979.
They are food for thought.
[Thursday morning update]
Some more thoughts, from John Bolton:
...the NIE is internally contradictory and insufficiently supported. It implies that Iran is susceptible to diplomatic persuasion and pressure, yet the only event in 2003 that might have affected Iran was our invasion of Iraq and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, not exactly a diplomatic pas de deux. As undersecretary of state for arms control in 2003, I know we were nowhere near exerting any significant diplomatic pressure on Iran. Nowhere does the NIE explain its logic on this critical point. Moreover, the risks and returns of pursuing a diplomatic strategy are policy calculations, not intelligence judgments. The very public rollout in the NIE of a diplomatic strategy exposes the biases at work behind the Potemkin village of "intelligence."
It is amazing how many people who have been quick to criticize the NIE in the past have been so eager to embrace it now.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:47 PMAce says not to nominate another liberal"compassionate conservative" Republican for president.
And do we really want a man who was completely unaware of some of the biggest foreign policy news of the week?
I really think that a Huckabee nomination would result in some kind of third-party or independent run, by someone.
[Update in the early evening]
But not by Mike Bloomberg. By someone who actually has some sense of libertarian/conservative principles.
In fact, it strikes me that most viable third-party candidates are "centrists" (assuming for the sake of the argument that political positions really are simple enough to put on a one-dimensional left/right scale) who attempt to appeal to the so-called moderates (John Anderson, a liberal Republican in 1980, being a representative example).
In this case the cause for a new entrant wouldn't be a perception of polarization, but from a sense that there was little choice between the two candidates. I mean, if you're a Democrat, what's not to like about Huckabee, other than his position on abortion and guns? I can imagine that in a Clinton/Huckabee race, he might very well pull a lot of the Democrat vote. Most Republicans would vote for him purely out of an antipathy to Hillary!, albeit while holding both nostrils tightly shut. He may, in that sense, be the most electable "Republican."
The question is, if a true conservative ran, how much would he take from Huckabee? Would it be like Perot (who wasn't really a conservative--he didn't have any coherent beliefs whatsoever), who took enough votes from Bush to give the election to Clinton? Or would a charismatic conservative candidate manage to get a majority, and split the Dems between the two liberal candidates?
I don't know, but this promises to be one of the most interesting (and probably depressing, for a classical liberal) elections in my lifetime. My guess is that Huckabee won't get the nomination, for many reasons, like the ones that started off this post.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:16 AMAll week so far. Here's Monday's installment, yesterday's and today's.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:04 AMSo sayeth Robert Reich. Actually, I think that it's true in more than one sense of the word...
Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:09 AMJohn Tierney has an interesting piece on the current state of the art.
I don't really look forward to this particular future--I like driving (though I have to confess that having a computer replace most of the other lousy drivers out there appeals to me greatly).
But my biggest concern, that I never see addressed, is reliability. Not just of the smarts in the car, but in the car itself. What happens if cars are barreling along at ninety miles an hour ten feet apart, and a tire blows? Or the brakes fail? Or the engine dies?
There simply won't be the margin to avoid a collision, as we (generally, but not always) have at current spacing. You can make the cars as smart as you want, but physics will remain physics.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:21 AMJonah Goldberg on the sad state of the American educational system:
A study earlier this year titled "Egos Inflating Over Time," led by Jean Twenge of San Diego State University, found that — you guessed it (Good for you!) — egos are inflating over time. They concluded that America's youth are the most self-absorbed since we began testing.Confirmation of Twenge's findings abound. CBS' 60 Minutes profiled the so-called Generation Y, which is so fond of itself that employers cannot keep up. These new employees demand to be told how wonderful they are. They want to hear that nobody has ever photocopied better. They want a gold star for getting coffee. This demonstrates that our new educational regimen is showing real-world results. Teach a kid that merely having a pulse is a major accomplishment, and he'll carry that lesson for the rest of his life. Teach him how to do trigonometry, and he'll forget it before his Xbox even warms up.
I think that this post is relevant in that regard.
True self esteem has to come from accomplishment, and from yourself. You can't get it from other people. That's why they call it "self" esteem.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:00 AMBruce Bawer hasn't caught Obama fever:
...on whom does Barack’s memoir focus? On his father – whom Barack, against all evidence (which suggests that Dr. Obama was colossally selfish and narcissistic), seeks to portray as heroic, sympathetic, indeed near-mythic. Obama père was a polygamist (and a lousy husband to all his wives), but Barack gives no indication that he finds this morally problematic; on the contrary, he seems determined to excuse his father’s many failings as consequences of imperialism, colonialism, and/or racism. One can, of course, well understand why a small boy – or even a young man – might idealize out of all proportion the father he never met. But Obama shows few signs in this book of recognizing that he’s doing this. Meanwhile, perversely, he treats his mother and grandparents, who by his own account raised him with extraordinary devotion, all but dismissively. At one point he even suggests that Gramps and Toot were really racists – and that all white people, in fact, are racists, and that black people have been so deformed by this racism that black individuals can hardly be held responsible for their own moral lapses.Forget the content of our character; this is a work preoccupied with skin color. It’s drenched with the legacy of Malcolm X (whom Obama, at least in this book, openly idolizes). At times it’s as if there were no historical injustices in the world other than those visited upon blacks by whites. Obama routinely refers to other black men (but never white men) as “brothers”; he exhibits considerably more concern for the dignity of black men than for that of women or non-black men; and he’s acutely sensitive to perceived racial slights (yet even as he deplores the subordination of blacks in America, curiously enough, he appears to accept as his due his family’s lofty position in Kenya). While occasionally gesturing toward an ideal of colorblindness à la Dr. King, in his heart of hearts he’s anything but colorblind, fervently endorsing black solidarity while repeatedly expressing distrust of, and even contempt for, whites. When, lamenting Kenya’s intertribal rivalries, he tells a relative that “We’re part of one tribe. The black tribe. The human tribe,” the last three words feel like an afterthought – as does his attempt, in the book’s closing pages, to move beyond strict racial line-drawing and to articulate broader sympathies. As if all this weren’t enough, it seems clear by book’s end that his heart’s home is not America but Kenya.
Maybe he's just a "citizen of the world."
I suspect that I have a natural immunity to Obama fever myself.
I really don't think that any of the Democrat candidates can win the presidency. I also think that the first black president, and first woman president, is likely to be a Republican.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:46 AMI suspect that the impulse to bring all these untidy unhelpful examples of flagrant individualism under the steady hand of the Ministry of Rational Allocation has something to do with that fretful busybody insistence that people are simply not living right. If we had Star Trek replicators in every house that would conjure goods and meals out of boundless energy produced by antimatter teased from a three-micron fissure that opened into a universe populated entirely by unicorns who crapped antimatter in such abundance they were happy we used it up, and used their shiny pointy horns to poke more of it through the aperture into our dimension, columnists would bemoan the disconnect between labor and goods, and the soul-corrupting influence of endless ersatz vegetables. You can’t win. Because you shouldn’t.Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:11 AM
I disagree with more than Simberg in Snead's presentation of a case for an aerospace plane and space based solar power (SBSP):
At $100 per barrel, America’s annual cost of imported oil is about $440 billion per year. During the six to eight years required to bring the aerospaceplanes into operation, America will send to foreign countries $2.6–3.5 trillion for imported oil. Every year that we fail to act to substantially decrease our need for imported energy is $440 billion spent unnecessarily in the future.
The $440 billion that we spend on imported oil is primarily going to fuel cars. SBSP would provide electricity. We can already save 90% on energy expense by switching from oil to electricity. If SBSP replaces the energy we are importing, there is still the expense of batteries and electric propulsion or similar. The cost of the batteries and hybrid or electric propulsion system is more expensive than the fuel saved for many drivers.
In sum, we can already achieve energy independence from foreign oil simply by building more coal-fired power plants and implementing electric cars. But we are not implementing electric cars with cheap power from coal. Why would we do so with expensive power from SBSP? And expensive it would be.
The near-term system Snead refers to costs $70 billion to develop and will cut costs to orbit to $1000/lb (including development costs) if there are 240 missions per year to deliver six million pounds to LEO. More expensive to GEO. With manufacturing costs $160/lb and solar only 4x as efficient as terrestrial solar, Snead's space plane has done nothing to reduce the cost of solar from terrestrial costs much less make it competitive with coal for electricity or electricity competitive with oil for transportation.
---- Update 12/5/7 4:00 PM CST ---
Charles Miller pointed out that there are plenty of high value off-grid uses of power where terrestrial solar is unsuitable. Anywhere that generator fuel is being flown in comes to mind: that's about $6/kwh; 625,000 lbs of solar cells can deliver 20 MW of continuous power at that price ($1B/year) for perhaps $20 billion (which would be $32,000/lb all in). For 1 GW at $0.30/kwh (a good guess at the value of the median off grid use for which terrestrial solar is unsuitable), it's $2.5B/year revenue which at $1,000/lb in launch costs + $150/lb in manufacturing costs at about 45w/lb would cost about $25B. That's definitely achievable by current space technologies at a flight rate sufficient for 1 GW/yr in installed capacity (22 million pounds) much less 20 GW/year for 10 years for 10% of US 2040 power needs (440 million pounds/year or trillions of dollars of launch demand over the ten year window). $440 billion in launch demand per year would be about 150 times the current annual money demand and would require a steep ramp up.
I am forced to retract my criticism of Snead since this closes the revenue portion of the business case for his space plane: demand for $1000/lb launch costs would allow 150 million pounds of SBSP to deliver 6.75 GW of electricity after 25 years at between $0.50 and $1 per kwh which is worth $30-60 billion per year. The plane/SBSP program could be paid for out of revenues in less than 10 years after it starts flying and after three years if the SBSP generators can be sold for ten times annual revenue.
Posted by Sam Dinkin at 02:57 PMA long but very worthwhile essay by Aubrey De Grey on the societal resistance to ending aging--"old people are people, too":
Geronto-apologists simultaneously hold, and alternately express, the following two positions:* They refuse to consider seriously whether defeating aging is feasible, because they are sure it would not be desirable;
* They refuse to consider seriously whether defeating aging is desirable, because they are sure it is not feasible.Like a child hiding in a double-doored wardrobe, they cower behind one door when the other is opened, then dash to the other when it is closed and before the first is opened. Only when both doors are flung open in unison is their hiding-place revealed. They are both well and truly open now, and the time when this sleight of hand was effective has passed.
There is no question that indefinite lifespan will cause a host of new problems to be solved. But that doesn't mean that they're insoluble, or that they'd be so bad as to want to continue the current holocaust that has been going on since the dawn of humanity, in which everyone is sentenced to death after only a century or so. In any event, it's probably inevitable, barring some societal catastrophe in the next few decades, so we'd better start thinking about how to solve them.
[Update a few minutes later]
A comment I just made in the comments section made me think about this flawed argument that De Grey pointed out:
The litany of obfuscation begins by exploiting the terminological ambiguity of the word “ageless” with observations such as “An ageless body is almost a contradiction in terms, since all physical things necessarily decay over time.”
Assuming that this is not just a straw man on De Grey's part (and I don't think it is--I've seen opponents make the argument myself), this is the argument from entropy. It's a good argument, except for one flaw--a fatal one. It's simply not true that all physical things necessarily decay over time.
Negative entropy can, and does exist. That is, in fact, exactly what life is--a negentropic process (at least locally). If all physical things necessarily decay over time, how to explain the transition from fertilized egg, to embryo, to baby, to youth, to full healthy adult? Surely they don't believe that this is a "deterioration," or "decay"?
The only things that decay over time are things left to nature, and are not properly maintained, and repaired as needed. But as long as one is willing to invest energy in repair and improvement, there is no necessity for physical objects to "decay over time." The human body grows over the first couple decades of life, and continually improves (and repairs as necessary), so clearly, there is no law of physics that requires that it decay over time. It's simply a bad design, and there is no reason that we can't fix it so that it continues to repair itself indefinitely. Figuring out how to do so, not circumventing physics, is the challenge.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:10 AM...until the next Space Investment Summit, this time in San Jose. If you're a potential space investor, or investee, this is a good opportunity to do some matchmaking.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:52 AMMike Snead has a very interesting piece on the need for developing infrastructure in space, in this case for the deployment of space-based solar power, but the system he describes would also make it much more cost effective for NASA to do planetary exploration, both manned and unmanned. And it's a goal toward which they're making, to first order, zero investment.
There's very little in the piece with which I would disagree, though there is a quibble:
I do not use the term “reusable launch vehicle” or RLV because the design and operations heritage of expendable launch vehicles is not the approach that will lead to the needed level of passenger safety and operability required for successful industrial operations in space. The better model is taken from aircraft. However, the use of the term “aircraft-like,” or “aerospaceplane” to name the reusable space access system, does not relate to the physical design of the system—such as an expectation for horizontal takeoff on a runway. Rather, it relates to the aircraft systems engineering principles and practices that will be used to design, develop, produce, test, operate, and maintain the new systems to achieve “aircraft-like” levels of safety and operability.
I prefer the phrase "space transport" (as suggested by Mitchell Burnside Clapp several years ago) but I agree with the dislike of the phrase RLV--it carries too many connotations of existing vehicles, with all their flaws.
I also agree with the point that reusability is needed not only for lower costs, but also for higher reliability. I don't believe that we will ever get better than a couple nines with large expendable vehicles:
The need for full reusability comes from the fact that the primary objective of flight system design is to achieve airworthiness. It is a characteristic that will be needed by aerospaceplanes (and spaceships for in-space transportation) to enable the level of spaceflight operations necessary to support space industrialization. Each and every production aircraft is demonstrated, through ground and flight acceptance testing, to be airworthy before it is placed into operation. Only fully-reusable flight systems can meet this standard because the airworthiness of each production expendable component cannot be demonstrated without using up its life. When one thinks about it, every terrestrial human transportation system meets this reusability acceptance test standard.
This was a point that I made in my original draft of my piece at The New Atlantis, that got left on the cutting-room floor.
One of my concerns with the Pentagon SBSP report was that it implied, though didn't explicitly say, that a two-stage reusable launch system needed to be developed, presumably by the government, and that we only needed one such system (i.e., another phrase that I hate--the so-called "Shuttle II). I'd like to see a more explicit recommendation that 1) a robust space logistics infrastructure will have multiple ways of getting to and from space (and around in space) and 2) that they should be privately developed and operated, though perhaps with some artificial market incentives from the government.
I complain in the comments section of this post over at Space Politics on the GAO report (lot of good comments over there, by the way) about all the false lessons learned from the Shuttle. Well one of the valid lessons that we should have learned is to not have NASA develop its own launch vehicle, particularly not to have it develop a single one, with no backup. But Ares indicates that they missed that most important lesson from the Shuttle, illogically concluding instead that the problem was reusability.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:35 AMWell, at least Sophie gets it right. If she's his wife, she married an idiot. Or at least an ignoramus.
[Update while later]
Perhaps it's not so surprising:
Well of course that's what they'd say. Aren't the French told from birth that the entire Universe revolves around them?
I wonder how Americans would do? Sadly, probably not much better.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:32 AMRon Rosenbaum is worried about Pakistan. With good reason, I think.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:46 AMThe distinction between hardware and wetware is going to really start to blur in the coming years:
Charles Higgins, an associate professor at the University of Arizona, has built a robot that is guided by the brain and eyes of a moth. Higgins told Computerworld that he basically straps a hawk moth to the robot and then puts electrodes in neurons that deal with sight in the moth's brain. Then the robot responds to what the moth is seeing -- when something approaches the moth, the robot moves out of the way.Higgins explained that he had been trying to build a computer chip that would do what brains do when processing visual images. He found that a chip that can function nearly like the human brain would cost about $60,000.
"At that price, I thought I was getting lower quality than if I was just accessing the brain of an insect which costs, well, considerably less," he said. "If you have a living system, it has sensory systems that are far beyond what we can build. It's doable, but we're having to push the limits of current technology to do it."
There are going to be some humdinger ethics issues to deal with along this road.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:18 AMHere are this guy's opinion of the top ten for 2007. And by "technology" he means IT.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:55 AMAn anti-aging drug is about to go into human trials, even if its makers won't admit that it has this effect.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:51 AMI was going to just link something, but after quite a Google search, I couldn't find a good explanation on line that focused on just this issue (I found lots of hits, but none of them satisfied). It's been bugging me for decades now (ever since I first went on line, and found so much misuse of the words). I don't know if it's a new phenomenon, or if we just see a lot more of it because we see a lot more people's written material. I also don't understand why it's so hard for some people to get right, though perhaps because of the "oo" sound in "lose." Anyway:
"Lose" = "to not win, or to misplace."
"Loose" = "not tight, or not bound."
"Loser" = "someone who has lost."
"Looser" = "making less tight (or more loose)."
"Losing" = "in the process of achieving a loss, of a sporting event, or political race, or valuable assets."
"Loosing" = "to set free (e.g., loosing the horses to let them run free, or loosing the dogs to chase a criminal)."
[Sunday update]
Behold, a blog devoted to needless quotation marks.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 03:48 PMHere you go. Particularly this page, about the secret German moon base, from 1942 through 1992.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:16 PMIt's moon mania over at Out of the Cradle, and here is the 31st Carnival of Space.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:39 AMI see that Mark Whittington is planning a new work of fiction:
I am also reminded that soon I must write an essay about the Internet Rocketeer Club, how does one spot a member, and how to avoid being a member.
I'll grant him this--he has a rich imagination.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:20 AMHillary seems to be quite confident that she will be the next president:
Couric asked, "How disappointed will you be" if she doesn't win; Clinton replied: "Well, it will be me." "Clearly," the CBS anchor persisted, "you have considered" the "possibility of losing"? "No, I haven't," said Clinton. "So you never even consider the possibility?" "I don't. I don't."
Really?
In that case, why not give up your Senate seat? You'll have to quit next year, anyway, and you'd be able to devote full time to your campaign, and not short change the good people of New York of one of their Senator's services. And the governor (at least until he's indicted and has to resign) is a Democrat who would nominate another to replace you, so there'd be no change in the Senate party alignment.
What are you waiting for?
Or is it just an act?
The amusing thing is that it isn't clear that such arrogant statements even help her. Novak, after all, calls it a gaffe (though I don't know why he thinks it's her first). I think that it will reinforce the negative feelings that a lot of people already have about her.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:10 AM