All posts by Rand Simberg

Political Commentary

Anthrax Hysteria

Brit Hume on Fox News just blasted what happened up on the Hill today. Apparently, the House just decided to close up shop because of the anthrax scare. The irony is that the only place that it’s been found is on the Senate side, and they’re staying in session. Brit appropriately pointed out that for all of the fuss and fury, we have had only one death, and only one serious illness from this, that the situation has been overhyped (e.g., it turns out that all the claims about the Senate attack being “weapons grade” were nonsense), and that if we’re going to react like this to such a relatively trivial concern, what will we do when we really have a major problem?

Right on, and I wish more of the press would be as clear thinking and rational as Brit. Congress is supposed to lead by example. Now, normally, I’m all in favor of Congress shutting down, and recessing early, on general principles, but this sends the entirely wrong message to whoever has been sending out these little love letters–that for a tiny investment in “powdery subtances” (aka powder, even wheat flour) and postage, they can shut down the American government.

Denny, you’re supposed to be a wrestling coach. Get a testosterone injection.

Uncategorized

Why Media Targeted for Anthrax?

Attacking the media ensures the word will get out, and that the news will be laced with fear. For example, Sam Donaldson was asking Thompson stupid questions because Donaldson’s wetting his pants in fear of being a target. This enhances the effect of a very weak weapon.

Good point. They were counting on media stupidity and wimpitude. Unfortunately, they were right on both counts.

War Commentary

The War Has Come To Us

This apparently hasn’t sunk in yet. A lot of your save-the-Earth-grandmothers-against-guns types can parade around public buildings all they want chanting and carrying poorly constructed anachronistic peace signs, but they happen to be at war while doing so.

Why, just the other day passengers on a United Airlines airplane took it upon themselves to keep a deranged passenger from trying to enter the cockpit. Hip, hip, hooray! That behavior is an act of civil defense in a time of war, is it not? It even requires that we shake the conventions of peacetime travel when we are expected to sit tranquilly in our seats and follow federal regulations.

And on that note, I point out that I was prescient, and reprint a little editorial I posted on s.s.p the day after the attack.

End of an Era

They blew their wad.

The grounding of the nation’s air fleet can be lifted–it’s safe to fly again.

Whoever committed this heinous crime yesterday did do the world at least one favor. In a single day, they ended the four-decade reign of fear over aircraft hijacking.

Forever.

This incident didn’t result from a breakdown of security–no one had weapons that the security system looks for. The reason, and the only reason, that the perpetrators succeeded in their diabolical plot was that they had the element of surprise.

Prior to September 11, 2001, aircraft hijacking was something to be prevented if possible, but if it wasn’t possible, the hijackers were people to be cooperated with until they could somehow be brought to justice, in order to save plane, crew and passengers.

This attitude allowed men armed, apparently, with only knives, to commandeer an aircraft in which they were massively outnumbered, by threatening or killing individual passengers and crew. To save those people, everyone went along, at least on three of the four planes.

Had those passengers been aware of the ultimate purpose of those hijackings, they would have failed–the hijackers would have been overcome and subdued, if not killed, by passengers and crew desperate to save themselves and their plane.

The paradigm has permanently shifted. From this day forward, passengers will now be aware that there are worse things than letting hostages die in an aircraft.

Whoever did this screwed it up for all future hijackers, regardless of their purpose. A similar scheme will not succeed today, or tomorrow, or any time that the flying public retain memories of what happened yesterday.

No need to change procedures–the potential victims themselves have changed, fundamentally, and will be victims no more.

Let the aircraft fly.

Uncategorized

Helping Terrorists

Sounds to me like the “crack suicide squads” from the Judean Peoples’ Front. (More and more, the Ladenites seem like Monty Python gone bad).

It also reminds me of George Patton’s remark that you don’t win wars by dying for your country — you win wars by making some poor stupid bastard die for his.

Yes, indeed–I think that we have finally found a convergence of goals. They want to die–we want to accommodate them. It is a marriage made in Talibanic heaven.

Space

Lunar Zion

Now, what to make of Dr. Bob Zubrin?

Not being a current Space News subscriber, I haven’t read the opinion piece that he wrote a few days ago, though I saw the following excerpt at Keith Cowing’s NASA Watch web site:

With the [Islamic] fundamentalist takeover, the most glorious civilization humanity had ever known was turned into a dung heap of misery, mental slavery, degradation and ignorance. A quarter of the world has turned into a graveyard of the mind, which for the past 700 years has not produced a single significant scientific advance.

If I am informed correctly, Bob proposes that we really spite and put it to those scientifically-ignorant medieval towel heads by colonizing Mars. Now is that in your face, or what?

What with calls for new gun control, increased wiretapping, airline and hospitality industry bailouts, more handouts for the national strategic peanut industry, etc., I probably would have been shocked if Bob hadn’t also figured out a way to hijack last month’s atrocities for his own narrow political agenda. But even for Bob (again, assuming that it’s true–I’d appreciate being emailed a copy of the editorial if anyone has it), [Update about noon PDT on Sunday, someone posted a URL on s.s.p. It can be found here], it’s almost breathtaking in its verve and audacity.

Unfortunately for Bob and humanity’s near-term future on subdividing the Red Planet, I suspect that the political establishment will find his call to arms less than compelling. Even if it were viewed as an effective tactic for ending terrorism (“Take that, Osama, you unscientific infidel”), the time frame involved in implementing his solution to terrorism would likely strain the patience of the American people, who, if we are to believe the polls, are willing to wait a few weeks or months to see some concrete action, but probably not decades.

Apparently the National Space Society and the Mars Society (at least the Canadian branch) have disavowed his comments, and made clear that he spoke for himself alone. But the little imbroglio did get me to thinking. Is there some way to hijack^H^H^H^H^H^H assist in the War on Terrorism (still need a better name) that can also advance the cause of space development? Doing well by doing good, so to speak?

A week or two ago, I started a thread on sci.space.policy entitled “Lunar Palestine.” The thread quickly drifted off to the topics of single-stage-to-orbit, and gun control, and what asses various members of the newsgroup are (no, I’m not going to name names) as threads on s.s.p are wont to do, and we never really resolved the issue of whether or not, assuming that we did make the Moon at least as habitable as, say, circa-1982 Beirut, the Palestinians could be persuaded to move there in their own homeland.

But thinking some more, I now have a better solution. In a discussion with Jim Bennett, it was pointed out that the Zionists (being socialists, and largely atheistic) were originally not even seeking to live in what is today Israel–they were looking at places like Madagascar and Siberia. The Holy Land only became the favored destination after they joined forces with the Orthodox Jews already living there (who were actually opposed to a Jewish state, but eventually went along, as long as it would be in ancient Judea, and be a real Jewish state). This marriage of convenience resulted in modern Israel, with all its quirks, contradictions, and violence.

Perhaps, with what’s been going on the past few years (you know, intifadas and stuff), the Zionists could be persuaded to say, “To hell with it!”, pull up stakes, and move to Luna. A space colony is actually pretty well suited to a kibbutz social model, and they could get back to their socialist roots. They’re already used to living places that are short of water–they’d figure out how to make do. That would be a form of socialism that I could probably get behind, because it might save us more money in reduced oil prices than it would cost, and it would push the development of the technology, making it affordable for us capitalists to do stuff in space as well.

Obviously, this idea is just in the formative stages, and it’s possible that there are some implications that haven’t yet occurred to me. But I’m sure that I’ll get abundant feedback on just how stupid an idea this is…