Transterrestrial Musings

January 22, 2008
Category: Administrative

Part-Way Through

I've done an upgrade, but there are some issues, as you can see. There are no comments.

I don't think that the comments have been lost, and my data bases are backed up, but I may have to tinker with templates to get things working again.

[Update a while later]

OK, I've got the templates to display the comment field, but it's still not showing the comments. As I said, I'm sure I haven't lost them, and I can reupload them if necessary, but I may not get them viewable until tomorrow. And I'm only halfway through the upgrade (it's a two-step process to get from MT 2.66 to MT 4.0). You can comment if you want, but it won't show up until I fix this problem, whatever it is.

[Update a minute later]

OK, I know the comments exist, because I can see them from my control panel for each post. I just have to figure out what type of incantations I have to perform to make them actually display on the blog.

[Morning update]

I've decided that, if I have to rework templates and debug anyway, I might as well go all the way to the 4.0 upgrade first, to spare myself potentially having to do it twice. Hopefully I'll be through this fresh hell sometime today.

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Category: Political Commentary

A Concern With Fred's Departure

This provides a big opening for Huckabee in the south. He may pull votes that would have otherwise gone to Thompson because they don't want to vote for a northeasterner or McCain.

Let's hope it's not enough to give him enough delegates to make a difference. That's one of the reasons I wanted Thompson to stay in, at least through super Tuesday.

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Category: Technology and Society

Electronic Contact Lenses

A long and fascinating article on a revolutionary technology.

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Category: Economics

Hillary And Hayek

Some people never learn. Unfortunately, the comments don't apply just to Hillary, but to Democrats in general. And even more unfortunately, to far too many Republicans and so-called conservatives as well.

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Category: Political Commentary

Pay To Stay

Bob Krumm is doing one final fund raiser to keep Thompson in the race.

[Update at 2:30 PM Eastern]

He's out:

"Today I have withdrawn my candidacy for President of the United States. I hope that my country and my party have benefited from our having made this effort. Jeri and I will always be grateful for the encouragement and friendship of so many wonderful people."

Not a surprise, but disappointing nonetheless.

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January 21, 2008
Category: Political Commentary

Should Fred Stay In Or Get Out?

Here are some thoughts from someone who is thinking like me:

Fred Thompson would appear to still have an opening, however small, in this race. McCain is on the rise in this race but he has not sewn it up by any means.
Romney has the money, the delegates and now the poll numbers in Florida to make a race of this. If Fred Thompson leaves the race now, in its still very fluid form, not only does he embolden McCain’s challengers, he robs himself of the opportunity to be power broker or possibly a consensus candidate at a Republican National Convention.

With the exceptions of Huckabee and McCain, I want to see everyone stay in the race as long as possible, if Thompson can't get enough momentum to win it before the convention. In the hypothetical, I think that Huckabee's voters go to Thompson, and McCain's go to Giuliani, but Thompson will get his share as well. Particularly if he gets McCain's endorsement.

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Category: Media Criticism

A Worthy Cause

Order your posters, and support the Media Violence Project.

They need our help. It's time to get them the treatment they need and deserve.

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Category: Popular Culture

"A Dark Day In Cookie History"

The cookie that sounded like a rocket fuel is no more:

"...for those of you who say, 'Get over it, it's only a cookie,' you have not lived until you have tasted a Hydrox."

I never liked either of them that much, myself. But when I ate them, I ate them. I didn't lick the filling off.

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Category: Science And Society

Breaking The Aging Contract

Derek Lowe is more hopeful than many of his colleagues.

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Category: Technology and Society

Please, Microsoft

A campaign to save XP. Though I'm still using Windows 2000, myself.

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Category: Political Commentary

Why Huckabee Won't Win The Nomination

He can't get votes other than from evangelicals. Good.

The question is, how long will he carry on? Unfortunately, it looks like he will go on for a while, because he seems to be having a good time, and he'll probably continue to get funding from his own base.

One of the reasons that Thompson should stay in the race is that so many others are. As long as he persists (and if he can continue the momentum that he was starting to build out of South Carolina) he may be able to pick up enough delegates to have a seat at the table in Minneapolis (and an outside shot at becoming a consensus nominee). And he has to continue to pull conservative votes from Huckabee.

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Category: Political Commentary

Remembering Doctor King

Wise words that many have forgotten. I'm sure that the anti-Zionist left will just think he's an uppity negro, though.

[Update a few minutes later]

To commemorate the holiday, Alan Boyle has some useful links on the scientific bases (or not) of race. I agree that it's much more a social construct than a scientific one.

[Mid-morning update]

An apt thought, that applies to fans of Mike Huckabee as well:

Identity politics is bad news. Today seems like a perfect day to reflect on that.

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January 20, 2008
Category: Popular Culture

Blahhh

If Green Bay had won, the Super Bowl would have been one of the historic games in NFL history. We would have seen a team that was attempting to go undefeated throughout the season, with a hot-shot young quarterback, against the old man who led his team to the ultimate game, and was looking to a final win and retirement on a high note.

Unfortunately, it will now be just the former. No one outside of New York will care if the Giants win. It's too bad for Eli Manning and his team, but now most of the nation will be cheering against them, because there's no compelling story on the other side.

And poor Favre. He has to decide if he wants to take one more shot. As I was watching that game, it looked to me like the foremost thought of the players on both sides was, "Damn. Goddamn this is cold. When will this [bleeping] game be over?"

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Category: Political Commentary

A Suggestion For Bill Quick

The Federalist Party is not currently in use.

[Update on Monday night]

Link seems to be broken, and Bill Quick's site seems to have problems in general. anyway, here's a new related follow-up post. I'll try to update with more at a new post as things develop, but basically, the idea was to found a new party based on small government, since the Republicans no longer seem interested in it.

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Category: Political Commentary

The Full Story

More here on the judge and the scumbag.

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January 19, 2008
Category: Political Commentary

Hope Remains

Regardless of the outcome of today's primary, Fred Thompson says that he's going on to Florida.

Why not? Unless he seriously underperforms the polls tonight, he's still got a significant amount of support, given that the winner is unlikely to even get a third of the vote. When people drop out for various reasons, their votes have to go somewhere. Where will Huckabee's voters go? Where will McCain's, if the only reason to vote for him is his Vietnam record and the war and they ignore his other positions? Not Huck. Probably not Romney. Though Rudy is a possibility. I don't think that this race will be anywhere close to settled this weekend.

There are a lot of people who will continue to send money to Fred as long as they think he has a chance. And there's still a non-zero possibility that this thing could go all the way to Minneapolis with no clear winner, which means that in a brokered convention, Thompson could have an edge. If this is true, and he remains in, I might even put up a Thompson sign on my lawn in Boca Raton.

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Category: Political Commentary

Living And Dying

...by identity politics:

The union's rank and file, the panelist explained, features a very large Hispanic contingent and there was simply no way this bloc was going to support a black candidate, no matter what the union's leadership urged.
I remember thinking at the time how extraordinary this admission was, and how nuts the media would have gone if it had been uttered by a Republican voter. Instead, one black member of the focus group made what seemed a pretty half-hearted retort (really, a mild press for more of an explanation from the Hispanic panelist, if I'm remembering this right) before Luntz, looking uncomfortable (though maybe I'm projecting) cut the discussion off quickly and threw the coverage back to the Fox studio, where no one seemed anxious to wade into the matter.

It was remarkable to see members of the Party that lives and breaths racial and ethnic bean-counting slough this off as if it were just a fact of life. And maybe it is.

I continue to find the ongoing crack-up of the race/gender-obsessed Democrats fascinating. And I confess to no little amount of schadenfreude.

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Category: Media Criticism

Words Don't Mean Things

...at least not to the AP:

Romney did better among more conservative voters, while McCain and Paul each got about one in five moderates, who made up about 20 percent of the electorate.

OK, what kind of a "moderate" would vote for Ron Paul? I can't think of any position that he takes that could be considered "moderate." He's what most people would call an extremist^*. If someone called themselves a "moderate," or someone whom the AP would call a "moderate" would vote for Ron Paul then the word has no meaning whatsoever.

And frankly, I find people who call themselves "moderate" to generally be people with no firm or coherent political principles whatsoever. All it really means is that they are neither "liberal" or conservative, so the media types find them difficult to pigeonhole. And given the large number of possibilities of positions one can have without being in either of those media pigeonholes, that means that we can't draw any conclusions whatsoever about them. We need a different word for such people than "moderate."

* Not that there's anything wrong with that--so am I, on many issues. I'm just (as I think that Glenn Reynolds once said of himself) an eclectic one.

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January 18, 2008
Category: Political Commentary

The Ex-Golden State

I didn't want to leave California, which I consider my real home state, though I was raised and spent the first quarter century of my life in Michigan. But I also have mixed feelings about moving back. Victor Davis Hanson, a true native, explains why:

At some point we Californians should ask ourselves, how we inherited a state with near perfect weather, the world's richest agriculture, plentiful timber, minerals, and oil, two great ports at Los Angeles and Oakland, a natural tourist industry from Carmel to Yosemite, industries such as Silicon Valley, Hollywood, and aerospace—and serially managed to turn all of that into the nation's largest penal system, periodic near bankruptcy, and sky-high taxes.

He understates the tourist industry, or at least the beauty of the place. There's a lot more than Carmel to Yosemite.

I weep.

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Category: Space

Unanswered Questions

OK, CalOSHA has fined Scaled Composites for not training its employees properly in the handling of nitrous oxide. But there's still no explanation of what caused the explosion, or really, how to prevent it in the future. At least, not in this story.

This can't be good news for the SS1 propulsion system.

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Category: Political Commentary

Scumbag

The Wikipedia entry on the title of this post is pretty minimal. I think that it could be usefully expanded and improved by pointing out this creature as a prominent example.

I expect too-frequent commenter "Jim Harris" to be along to defend him any minute.

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Category: Political Commentary

He Gave Them A Cigar?

He spooged on their dress? He suborned perjury from them? He got Vernon Jordan to offer them a job with Revlon? What?

Obama's racist black minister says that Bill Clinton (the first black president) gave blacks the Monica treatment:

Man should not put limits on what God can do, but that's what people always do, he told the crowd. Just as God made five loaves and two fishes feed thousands, God has provided liberators for blacks in the past - from Nat Turner to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., and now Barack Obama. But, Wright said, there were always reasons not to follow them.
Some argue that blacks should vote for Clinton "because her husband was good to us," he continued.

"That's not true," he thundered. "He did the same thing to us that he did to Monica Lewinsky."

I eagerly await further elaboration.

I'm going to run out of popcorn, watching the so-called "progressives" finally immolating themselves in their vile identity politics.

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Category: Political Commentary

Big News?

Hard to say what the effect will be, but reportedly, the day before the election, Rush Limbaugh has broken with precedent and, to all extents and purposes, endorsed a candidate in a Republican Primary:

Right after Rush finished the football segment, he popped in, out of reference or context, and read the best parts of the Human Events endorsement of Fred! I was sick in bed and heard it. He ended with asking the South Carolinians to seriously consider voting Fred Thompson if they believe in conservatism, and then went for the commercial.

Will it help? Hard to see how it can hurt.

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Category: Political Commentary

Why Bush's Foreign Policy Is Screwed Up

Because he didn't get rid of people like this a lot sooner. I hope that the next president, if a Republican, does a better job of controlling his own bureaucracy. If a Democrat, they won't need to.

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Category: War Commentary

Prescient

A few months ago, T. M. Lutas made a bold prediction in the comments section of one of my blog posts:

Out of the 18 Iraqi provinces, 3 kurdish ones have their greatest security threats being foreign incursion from Turkey and Iran. Terrorism is successfully kept out. 4 arab provinces are under local management and we rarely, if ever, do anything there. That's 7 down, 11 to go with the rest of the provinces in various stages along the road towards handover. I fully expect that when the balance is 10:8 instead of 7:11 that we're going to see a sea change in coverage because "a majority of Iraq is under local control and relatively quiet" and all the MSM is going to realize that if they don't get on the right side of this quickly, the deluge of broken credibility will very likely worsen and shorten their personal careers significantly.
I expect at least 3 more provinces to get handed over between now and the height of campaign season 2008. I'd like to think that at least 6 more would make the transition by then (obviating the need to explain Kurdistan's special situation in the stats). The defeatists have to change the natural progression of Iraqi government and security institution building and do it soon or they're going to be in deep trouble in 2008.

Well, he called it right.

Iraq's army and police could be ready to take over security in all 18 provinces by the end of this year as the U.S. military moves toward a less prominent role in the country, U.S. officials said on Thursday.
"We look at it every month. We make recommendations. I think that if we continue along the path we're on now, we'll be able to do that by the end of 2008," Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno, the No. 2 commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, said when asked when Iraqi forces could take the lead in all provinces.

Harry and Nancy are no doubt very disappointed, since we refused to surrender to the enemy as they were demanding all last year.

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Category: Media Criticism

Hey...

Iowahawk has stolen my schtick:

Unrelated incidents, or mounting evidence of that America's newsrooms have become a breeding ground for murderous, drunk, gun-wielding child molesters? Answers are elusive, but the ever-increasing toll of violent crimes committed by journalists has led some experts to warn that without programs for intensive mental health care, the nation faces a potential bloodbath at the hands of psychopathic media vets.
"These people could snap at any minute," says James Treacher of the Treacher Institute for Journalist Studies. "We need to get them the help and medication they need before it's too late."

I think that we need to set up a national data base so we can know whether or not one lives in our neighborhood. Anyway, we know that the brutality of covering a war that's being inexplicably won can cause many to snap.

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Category: History

What Happened Ten Thousand Years Ago?

...that caused the apparently contemporaneous development of agriculture on opposite sides of the world?

...fresh evidence, in the form of Peruvian squash seeds, indicates that farming in the New and Old Worlds was nearly concurrent. In a paper the journal Science published last June, Tom Dillehay, an anthropological archaeologist at Vanderbilt University, revealed that the squash seeds he found in the ruins of what may have been ancient storage bins on the lower western slopes of the Andes in northern Peru are almost 10,000 years old. “I don’t want to play the early button game,” he said, “but the temporal gap between the Old and New World, in terms of a first pulse toward civilization, is beginning to close.”

Let's see if they find a monolith.

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Category: Economics

Doomsday Has Been Postponed

We're still not approaching "peak oil":

A landmark study of more than 800 oilfields by Cambridge Energy Research Associates (Cera) has concluded that rates of decline are only 4.5 per cent a year, almost half the rate previously believed, leading the consultancy to conclude that oil output will continue to rise over the next decade.
Peter Jackson, the report's author, said: “We will be able to grow supply to well over 100million barrels per day by 2017.” Current world oil output is in the region of 85million barrels a day.

The optimistic view of the world's oil resource was also given support by BP's chief economist, Peter Davies, who dismissed theories of “Peak Oil” as fallacious. Instead, he gave warning that world oil production would peak as demand weakened, because of political constraints, including taxation and government efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

That would imply falling prices, to me. I stand by my prediction that oil will never be sustained for long at its current price levels (adjusting for inflation and exchange rates).

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Category: Media Criticism

True Hate Speech

Ralph Peters is less than impressed (to put it gently) with the New York Times and its apparent war against veterans:

in the Middle Ages, lepers had to carry bells on pain of death to warn the uninfected they were coming. One suspects that the Times would like our military veterans to do the same.
The purpose of Sunday's instantly notorious feature "alerting" the American people that our Iraq and Afghanistan vets are all potential murderers when they move in next door was to mark those defenders of freedom as "unclean" - as the new lepers who can't be trusted amid uninfected Americans.

Anyone want to make book on whether there's anything resembling even a recognition of how egregious this was (forget about an actual apology) from the "public editor"?

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Category: Political Commentary

Offense By Surrogate

Lileks has thoughts on the continuing slide of the Brits into a multi-culti PC hell:

"Pc Mahmood believes it was 'not meant in a malicious way, just a bit of banter'. He told a sergeant, who was 'really disgusted', that he knew it was meant as a joke and did not want to make a formal complaint.
'I just took it on the chin. But someone else in the room must have thought it was a racist incident, and reported it,' the officer said."

So the officer who got the “gift” wasn’t offended. Everyone else in the room thought it was “below the belt” as well, and didn’t hoot at the Mooselman and shout porky porky porky, who’s got the porky now, wot? But the people who had nothing to do with the event were offended on the fellow’s behalf, and that was it.

Orwell was slightly mistaken: the future is a boot, stomping on a joke.

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January 17, 2008
Category: Political Commentary

An Ode To Laziness

I have often been accused of being "lazy." Even by people who I know and love. Even, on occasion, by myself.

But what was the basis for the accusation?

Apparently, that I am not continually busy. That I often indulge in the very effective technique of "management by procrastination." That I often do what needs to be done without breaking a sweat, and while waiting until the last minute to do it.

Once, in college (in the dark ages prior to word processors), I wrote a term paper, that I had known was due for many weeks, due the next day at the end of the semester, in an all-nighter, on a manual typewriter, with no notes, no citations, no...nothing. I had just been thinking about the subject for weeks, and the night before it was due, I sat down, and knocked out a twelve-page typewritten paper, with minor erasures, in a night. I got an A minus.

So I have mixed feelings when I hear that Fred Thompson is "lazy."

Now, I don't think that Fred Thompson is lazy. I just think that, despite the southern drawl, which many (mistakenly, as anyone who has worked with smart NASA employees and contractors in Houston, Huntsville and the Cape would know) think is a mark of a slow mentality, that he works smart, and cheap. Robert Heinlein once wrote that: "Progress is made by lazy men looking for easier ways to do things."

I believe that.

I don't want a president, or a presidential candidate, who is frenetically scurrying around, appearing to be doing something, particularly two years before the swearing in. If he's really a conservative (as he claims to be, though I'm not necessarily), I'm perfectly happy with a president who, when demanded to do something, just stands there. And as a libertarian, opposed to big government, I'm happy to have a president who will think before acting, and who believes that the first instinct should not be to pass yet another federal law.

I'm actually quite pleased with Fred Thompson's campaign style to date. It saddens me that so many others, who would be otherwise disposed to vote for him, are not. I'm saddened that they think that he needs to stoke a "fire in the belly," rather than simply employ the minimum resources needed to win the election. You would think that the warm-mongers would be pleased at Fred's lack of energy and want to vote for him, to help save the planet. As an engineer, I'm extremely impressed with his efficiency. As a result, it's very frustrating to know that, if everyone who would vote for him "if he only had a chance" would actually vote for him, that he'd have a chance. It's kind of the reverse of Yogi Berra's old saying that "no one goes downtown any more; it's too crowded."

So here's where the mixed feelings come in. As an engineer, one needs margins. I'm concerned that he cut it a little too close. I'm afraid that in waiting just a little too long to get in, and in waiting just a little too long to finally go after the Elmer Gantrys and other pretenders to Republicanism and conservatism, that he's just missed the boat.

Despite this fear, I will continue to support him, and hope that I'm wrong, into South Carolina and beyond. Because if so, he will prove to be the most parsimonious president in American history. And I think we could use not just a little, but a lot of that right now.

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Category: Political Commentary

More Thoughts On The Tenth Anniversary

From Tim Noah:

It was 10 years ago on Jan. 12 that Linda Tripp notified Whitewater Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr's office that she had audiotapes of Monica Lewinsky telling her that she'd had an affair with President Bill Clinton, and that he'd urged her to lie if asked about it under oath.

Hint for the terminally clueless. This wasn't "getting a BJ." It wasn't "lying about getting a BJ." As clearly stated by Noah, it's called suborning perjury, in order to prevent a vulnerable young woman from getting a fair trial in a civil suit under a law that the suborner had signed with his own pen. Not to mention bribing and/or intimidating a witness to perjure herself, which is a more egregious instance of same.

Maybe I'm weird, but it seems very hard to reconcile that with upholding an oath to see the nation's laws faithfully obeyed. King William didn't think that the law should apply to him, either when in Arkansas when he allegedly raped a woman as the state Attorney General, or as President of the United States.

That was what the Lewinsky scandal was about.

And when considering whether or not to elect his wife, who helped orchestrate the attacks on the women that he wronged, to the highest office in the land, that is something to be considered. Particularly if one considers oneself to be a feminist.

I would also point out to Mr. Noah that, there is one person who, throughout, told the truth in this affair, and was never caught out in a lie, or lack of probity, despite all the attacks on her weight, her looks, or her "infidelity" to the "friend" who asked her to commit perjury. Her name was Linda Tripp.

And his comments about Jonah Goldberg are pathetic. If he doesn't like the idea of the book, he should read it and give it a serious review, something that no one else in his camp seems willing to do. And if not, like them, he should STFU.

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Category: Space

Boy, Does This Need A Follow Up

ESMD has finally responded to Keith Cowing's questions to NASA PAO.

One bit of explanation is required, I think. When Keith refers to a "five-by-five" matrix, he's talking about the standard risk assessment tool that NASA (and ARES Corporation, for whom I casually consult, and others) use to track program risk.

Here's an example from the Mil Standard, but it's a five by four (five levels of probability, four levels of consequence). Anything that is in one corner (low likelihood, low consequence) can be ignored, and anything that is in the opposite corner (high for both) should be receiving the bulk of the program resources. Things that are in between are tracked, and measures are taken to move them down to the 1,1 corner of the matrix. Though I can't find an example of one at my fingertips, the five by five is a little more fine grained in consequence level.

It can be used either for safety issues (in which case, "catastrophic" corresponds to loss of mission or crew), or for programmatic issues, in which case "catastrophic" would probably be complete program failure. It's a little harder to evaluate in this case, though, because that depends on how "program failure" is defined. Does it mean that the program is cancelled? Or does it mean that the program is restructured beyond recognition? Ares 1 seems to me to be vulnerable to either one.

What exactly is the issue? The problem is that any structure has a resonant frequency at which it naturally vibrates. If you excite the structure at that frequency, you can develop a positive-feedback system that will literally shake it apart (the Tacoma Narrows Bridge is the classic example).

Solid rocket motors don't run particularly smoothly (compared to well-designed or even poorly designed liquids) and large solid motors provide a very rough ride. Everyone who has ever ridden the Shuttle to orbit has commented on how much smoother the ride gets after staging the SRBs.

Now, one way to mitigate this is to damp it out with a large mass. The Shuttle does this by its nature, because even though it has two of the things, they are not directly attached to the orbiter--they are attached to a large external tank with one and a half million pounds of liquid propellants in it, and it can absorb a lot of the vibration. Moreover, the large mass has a frequency that doesn't resonate with the vibration.

As I understand it (and I could be wrong, and I'm not working Ares, but this is based on discussions, many off the record and all on background with insiders on the program), there is a very real concern that the upper stage on top of the SRB in "the Stick" will be excited at a resonant frequency, but that even if not, the stage will be too small to damp the vibrations of the huge SRB below.

If this is the case, there is no simple solution. You can't arbitrarily change the mass of the upper stage--that is determined by the mission requirement. Any solution is going to involve damping systems independent of the basic structure that are sure to add weight to a launch vehicle that is already, according to most reports, underperforming. Or it will involve beefing up the structure of the upper stage and the Orion itself so that they can sustain the acoustic vibration loads. In the case of the latter, it is already overweight, with low margins.

So this constitutes a major program risk, that could result in either cancellation, or a complete redesign (that no longer represents the original concept, because the problem is fundamentally intrinsic to it).

Now, let's take apart the response a little:

Thrust oscillation is...a risk. It is being reviewed, and a mitigation plan is being developed. NASA is committed to resolve this issue prior to the Ares I Project's preliminary design review, currently scheduled for late 2008.

The problem is that NASA can "commit" to resolve it until the cows come home, but if it's not resolvable, it's not resolvable. They can't rescind the laws of physics, and we're approaching a couple of anniversaries of times when they attempted to do that, with tragic results.

Now this next part is (to put it mildly) annoying:

NASA has given careful consideration to many different launch concepts (shuttle-derived, evolved expendable launch vehicle, etc.) over several years. This activity culminated with release of the Exploration Systems Architecture Study in 2005. Since then, the baseline architecture has been improved to decrease life cycle costs significantly.
NASA's analysis backs up the fact that the Ares family enables the safest, least expensive launch architecture to meet requirements for missions to the International Space Station, the moon and Mars. NASA is not contemplating alternatives to the current approach.

The problem is that NASA didn't give "careful consideration" to the previous analyses after Mike Griffin came in. As far as can be determined, all of the analysis performed under Admiral Steidle's multiple CE&R contracts, performed by major contractors, was ignored, and put on the shelf to collect dust while NASA decided to build what the new administrator, along with Scott Horowitz and Doug Stanley, were predisposed to build. I have never seen "NASA's analysis" that supports this statement. Steve Cook made a valiant attempt to justify it at the Space Access Meeting last March, and was given kudos, at least by me, for having the guts to come in and defend it to a hostile audience, but no one was convinced, or even saw convincing data. He simply stated the conclusions, but didn't show the numbers.

But the most troubling thing to me is the end:

Thrust oscillation is a new engineering challenge to the developers of Ares - but a challenge very similar to many NASA encountered during the Apollo Program and development of the space shuttle. Every time NASA faces an engineering challenge - and it faces many - agency engineers examine all the options for addressing the issue. NASA has an excellent track record of resolving technical challenges. NASA is confident it will solve this one as well.

The problem is that, in reality, despite its confidence (or at least its stated confidence) NASA's record on this score is, at best, mixed. For instance, think about (as just two examples) the X-33. Or the OMV (I did a Google on it, and couldn't come up with any good histories of it--one needs to be written). Or many of the original space station concepts, which required complete redesigns. Sometimes engineering challenges are just too great to overcome, and a new approach is required to overcome a flawed concept. I don't know whether that's the case with Ares 1 or not, but this response doesn't instill in me any confidence that it's not.

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Category: Political Commentary

A Tale Of Two Oil Despots

To paraphrase Euripides, those whom the modern-day gods would destroy, they first give too much oil and power.

We have today two stories of oil-fueled despots in alliance. First, Iran's Ahmadinejad's economic illiteracy is coming home to roost:

Ahmadinejad, with his peculiar and literal belief that he has divine backing, was not inhibited by this record of prudence. With a total oil revenue in the first two years of his presidency of $120 billion (£61billion) — more than Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani had in his eight years as President — the administration still found it necessary to deplete the emergency oil reserve fund set up by Ahmadinejad's presidential predecessor, Mohammed Khatami. According to the Iranian central bank he took $35.3 billion from the fund in his first year and $43 billion in his second year, as a new book, Ahmadinejad, by Kasra Naji, records.
Nor is it easy to work out what Ahmadinejad has spent it on, because he has channelled much of it through religious foundations and to contracts of his own nomination rather than leaving it under the control of ministers and elected parliamentarians. But the predictable result of the spending was inflation, rising from 12 to 19 per cent. Many were put out of work by his sudden decision to raise the minimum wage by nearly half. The climax of this spectacle was the petrol rationing announced so suddenly on June 27, 2007, that motorists could not complete their journeys. For the fourth-largest exporter of oil in the world, that is a humiliation. In the run-up to the March elections to the parliament, the Majlis, there have been signs of a rift between Ahmadinejad and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme religious leader. The President's critics, once silenced, are now allowed full voice. MPs say openly that the real jobless figure is near 20, not 10, per cent.

Emphasis mine. Presumably, this is earmarking, Tehran style. In any event, divine will or not, he may be on his way out. Meanwhile, over in the western hemisphere, Hugo is losing his support among the poor, his key constituency, as a result of high crime rates and potholes:

Ninety percent of Venezuelans believe Chavez is doing too little to catch criminals, according to a report by pollster Datanalisis in the El Nacional newspaper this month.
Half the population was a victim of crime between 2006 and 2007, making Venezuela the most crime-ridden nation in the Americas, the Latinobarometro survey group says.

"The government is in a severely tight spot," said Edgardo Lander, a sociologist at the Venezuelan Central University. "It could face an electoral catastrophe if there aren't signs of change by the middle of the year."

The common denominator is the black gold that provides far too much wealth and power to those unfit for it. The dictators may go away, but there's no guarantee that those who replace them will be any better as long as this moral hazard continues to exist. Ideally, nation's oil wealth and revenue would be privatized, perhaps by distributing stock to the citizenry. But that would require a real revolution, which is the last thing that these faux revolutionaries want.

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Category: Political Commentary

This Isn't Exactly News, But...

Marcy Kaptur is an idiot.

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Category: Political Commentary

Hard To Believe It's Been Ten Years

Since Drudge broke the story of Clinton's intern, that Newsweek had been sitting on.

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Category: Science And Society

Irrational Economics

Michael Shermer, who has a new book out on the subject of the evolutionary basis of markets, has a piece on why we often make foolish economic decisions. Envy counts for more than money, apparently.

[Update a little after noon]

More evolutionary psychology: why the pill has reduced the need of men to marry.

I've often pointed out that the people who really change society are not the politicians and ideologues, but the engineers.

[Update in the afternoon]

I thin that the first article provides a good example of why, despite their irrationality, socialism and wealth redistribution schemes are so intrinsically appealing to so many, and why they won't die out, despite their manifest empirical failures. Too many people would prefer that everyone be poor than that a lot are wealthy while a few are superwealthy. Which is sort of depressing, because it means that the ideological wars over this will go on as long as human nature remains what it is.

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January 16, 2008
Category: Space

Cooperate

Jeff Manber writes that we should be inviting China to participate in the ISS program, and space in general.

I have a hard time getting worked up about it, either way. I don't consider either NASA or China relevant to the future of space at this point, though if they actually start flying this thing, I may start to take them more seriously.

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January 15, 2008
Category: Political Commentary

Wow

I'd love to get a transcript. I hope that Team Thompson was listening to ~~Elmer Gantry~~Mike Huckabee's Michigan concession speech in South Carolina, because the mendacity in it will be fodder for several campaign commercials this week. The man who wants a federal smoking ban wants government to leave us alone?

Please.

[Update]

Finger to the wind?

Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee has reversed his position on a federal ban aimed at workplace smoking and now believes the issue should be addressed by state and local governments.
The about-face is apparent in a Huckabee campaign statement, sent to The Hill Tuesday evening in response to questions about the smoking ban proposal. It clashes with the stance Huckabee has taken during his race for the White House and with his record as governor of Arkansas, when he signed into law a measure prohibiting smoking in most indoor public places.

Must be pre-emptive against the inevitable ads in SC. Maybe they should just be pictures of flip flops...

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Category: Political Commentary

Ouch

This would seem to be an indicator of the civil war that is brewing in the Democrat Party, and it's not just the long-overdue (and delicious) class identity war between blacks and women. It's about a lot of Democrats finally, at long last, getting fed up and frustrated with the Clintons.

“What happened in Michigan is not very different from what used to happen in the old Soviet Union,” Riegle said. “The Clinton machine manipulated the ballot. They don’t care how they win, only that they do. It’s wrong and people need to know that.”
Riegle said the Democratic candidates had an understanding, after Michigan defied the party and tried to become the first state to hold a primary, that none of them would compete in Michigan. Obama and Edwards honored the agreement, but Clinton did not and put her name on the ballot, he said.

“People should not permit the Clintons—both Bill and Hillary—to have an unfair advantage in Michigan,” said Riegle.

Full disclosure: I used to deliver Don Riegle's Detroit Free Press (he lived a block away from me) and occasionally even collected payment from him at the door, and some of my grammar-school classmates worked on his first congressional campaign. But I gave up on him politically within a term or three of his congressional career (when he switched from Republican to Dem, and I was becoming a libertarian). He later (thankfully and appropriately) resigned as one of the five Senators in the Keating scandal that caused John McCain (one of the others) to go to war with the First Amendment. I agree with him on very little, politically, but if he's finally trying to flush the Clintons from his party, I'll cheer him on.

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More Anglospherian Defense Of Free Speech

First it was Ezra Levant in the Great White North (not a permalink--for readers from the future, go search the archives of early January, 2008), and now it's Janet Albrechtsen, Down Under:

This is not simply a defence of Levant because he is a conservative columnist. Far from it. If a bleeding heart on the Left was dragged before a human rights commission for thinking and saying unpalatable things, even stupid things, the defence would remain the same. Defending the right to say the right things is easy. Defending the right to say the wrong things, even offensive things, is what counts if we are serious about free speech.
That's why, some years ago, I wrote in defence of my colleague Phillip Adams when he was accused of racial vilification by an American who was offended by Adams's assertion that the US was one of the most violent nations on earth and was largely to blame for the events of September 11. The comments were daft but Adams has a right to be wrong and so it was important to stand up for his right to say it.

Allowing a state body to investigate it as a speech crime sends a chill down the spine of Western progress. As Levant argued, "Freedom of expression is only meaningful when it trumps other values, such as political sensibilities, or religious dogma, or personal sensitivities. Indeed, Western civilisation's progress in all realms, ranging from science to art, to religion, to feminism, to civil rights for racial minorities and gays, has come about from the free expression of ideas that necessarily offended some earlier order." In short, self-criticism is at the core of the West's progress. The battle of ideas may be no place for the faint-hearted, but it produces exceptional results by thrusting forward the better ideas.

Indeed.

We can tolerate intolerance (as long as the intolerance is peaceful), but the Islamist enemy seemingly cannot. That is one of the (many) irreconcilable differences that make this such a difficult war. And it's a war that's made all the more difficult because they use our own tolerance and freedom against us.

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A Postmortem

On the Ron Paul controversy, from Robert Bidinotto.

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Category: Space

Lindsey Replies

Clark Lindsey talks some more about Steven Weinberg's space and science budget opinions in reply to my interview of him.

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Category: Political Commentary

Hit 'Im Again

Harder. Thompson is finally going after McCain. I've been thinking that he was going to hold off on this until after the Michigan primary, but maybe he thinks that's pretty much over now, so he's finally softening him up for the election in South Carolina on Saturday.

And as he says, the notion that he'd go through all this just to be a stalking horse for McCain is indeed "ludicrous."

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Gluttons For Punishment

Christopher Hitchens wonders why anyone would want to once again place the ongoing and corrupt soap opera that is the Clintons back at the center of our national politics.

What do you have to forget or overlook in order to desire that this dysfunctional clan once more occupies the White House and is again in a position to rent the Lincoln Bedroom to campaign donors and to employ the Oval Office as a massage parlor? You have to be able to forget, first, what happened to those who complained, or who told the truth, last time. It's often said, by people trying to show how grown-up and unshocked they are, that all Clinton did to get himself impeached was lie about sex. That's not really true. What he actually lied about, in the perjury that also got him disbarred, was the women. And what this involved was a steady campaign of defamation, backed up by private dicks (you should excuse the expression) and salaried government employees, against women who I believe were telling the truth. In my opinion, Gennifer Flowers was telling the truth; so was Monica Lewinsky, and so was Kathleen Willey, and so, lest we forget, was Juanita Broaddrick, the woman who says she was raped by Bill Clinton. (For the full background on this, see the chapter "Is There a Rapist in the Oval Office?" in the paperback version of my book >No One Left To Lie To. This essay, I may modestly say, has never been challenged by anybody in the fabled Clinton "rapid response" team.) Yet one constantly reads that both Clintons, including the female who helped intensify the slanders against her mistreated sisters, are excellent on women's "issues."

Poor Bill. All those people always lying about him.

[Update a few minutes later]

Is Obama the new Bill Clinton?

In some of the most unfortunate ways, the Barack Obama phenomenon — that swell of adoration that lifted him up in Iowa to practically deposit him in the still-occupied White House — is cut frighteningly close to the Clinton mold. In particular, the fetishization of image and lack of conviction are all too familiar. Forget the talk of Bill Clinton having been the “first black president.” If Barack Obama wins in November we may best understand the coming age by thinking of him as the second President Clinton.
I first became suspicious of Obama’s charms when I found myself praising the Illinois junior senator without so much as a data point’s worth of evidence. “Unlike Hillary,” I heard myself say, “Obama at least believes in something.” It occurred to me, at once, that I had no sound reason for uttering this. And I was disturbed. The effortless oratory; the vast, glassy smile; the whole kinetic promise of the boy wonder rising — I’d been suckered.

Not me. Of course, I was always immune to Bill Clinton's supposed charisma as well.

Also pointed out are two key vulnerabilities that a smart Republican (if there is such a thing) could attack:

In this Wednesday’s New York Sun, Robert Samuelson singles out Barack Obama for failing to address the coming income transfer from young to old that will leave today’s American children overtaxed and underserved. Obama is not alone in having no plan of attack, but as Samuelson observers, “The hypocrisy is especially striking in Mr. Obama. He courts the young, promises ‘straight talk,’ and offers himself as the agent of ‘change.’ But his conspicuous omissions constitute ‘crooked talk’ and silently endorse the status quo.”
But there’s much worse. On July 20, 2007, the Associated Press reported “Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama said Thursday the United States cannot use its military to solve humanitarian problems and that preventing a potential genocide in Iraq isn’t a good enough reason to keep U.S. forces there.” Forget the immediate depravity of such a pronouncement. The most disturbing and, not coincidentally, most Clintonesque aspect of the story is that Obama’s statement came a week after the New York Times’ landmark editorial calling for a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, genocide notwithstanding. This deference to popular opinion over humanity represents Clintonian moral calculus of a chilling potency.

I continue to believe that a Democrat in the White House next year is by no means a lock, regardless of who the nominee is. People forget that Clinton himself would never have been elected in 1992 without the help of Ross Perot. And he never got a majority of the popular vote.

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Category: Weird

It's That Time Of Year Again

The 2007 Darwin nominees. Found among a lot of other odd links, including the strangest mating habits of animals.

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January 14, 2008
Category: Political Commentary

Scott Ott Is Brilliant

I wish I'd thought of this. He tells Hillary that it took men to give women the vote.

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Category: Popular Culture

Lost Art Found

Some news from late last week that I'd missed--a previously unheard early recording of The Beatles has been discovered.

This 15 track set was recorded at the Star Club in Hamburg, Germany a short while after the Ted Taylor recordings and boast different and perhaps better takes of "A Taste of Honey" and "Hippy Hippy Shake" (using Tony Sheridan as a 5th Beatle). These are the only two songs found on the original Star Club releases with which this recording should not be confused.
This is an historical recording because it was the very first time that Ringo Starr actually played with The Beatles "live" after replacing Pete Best on the drums.

Other tracks make good use of Kingsize Taylor's Band "The Dominoes" who utilize their piano on such Beatles favorites as "Money," "Twist and Shout" and "I Saw Her Standing There" all of which were subsequently used on The Beatles' first studio recordings for E.M.I.

What makes this album truly unique are the eight songs not available on any previously released L.P.s or singles -- which include Paul McCartney singing Hank Williams' "Lovesick Blues" and George Harrison vocalizing Maurice Williams' "Do You Believe." One of the most outstanding tracks on this album must be "Ask Me Why" showing just how John Lennon and Paul McCartney became such a winning combination.

Wonder how long until the download is available?

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Category: Space

Debating Human Spaceflight

I interviewed Steven Weinberg who has replaced James Van Allen as the most prestigious and eloquent direct critic of human spaceflight (unlike Barack Obama who may be the most effective passive-aggressive de-funder of space activities since Nixon).

I faced a fundamental media ethics issue. Weinberg's opinion on the likelihood of nuclear war with Russia in the next twenty years ("more likely than not") puts him in a tiny minority. By publicizing his view on this, it delegitimizes him as a spokesman against human spaceflight without discrediting directly his arguments against human spaceflight on the merits. I chose to carefully transcribe his words on this point, confirm that he stood by them, then released them.

What would you have done?

READ THE REST!...
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Category: Space

Four Years On

Four years ago, President Bush announced a new direction for the nation in space, perhaps the biggest space policy change since the end of Apollo, in that it forthrightly declared that there was now a national goal to send people beyond low earth orbit, where they had been stuck since 1972, a situation that was cemented with the onset of the Shuttle era, because it was our only crewed space vehicle, and it could go nowhere else.

Unfortunately, four years later, the program is bogged down with an unnecessary new launch system that will do little to improve safety and nothing to reduce costs, and for this and other reasons, it seems unlikely to survive the next administration, almost regardless of who wins. My primary hope is that at least the goal remain in place, and perhaps some fresh thought will be given to how it will be best achieved, with a lot more emphasis on the commercial sector and tying it in to national security, as the Aldridge Report advised, and NASA has completely ignored. And no, COTS doesn't count, both because it's inadequately funded, and because it has nothing to do with VSE--it's simply a way to replace Shuttle logistics for ISS.

Jeff Foust has some thoughts over at The Space Review today. Here's what I wrote as I live blogged the speech at the time, from a motel in Lauderdale-By-The-Sea.

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Category: Education

Cranking Out Code Monkeys

I'd been wondering about this. Apparently, computer "science" degrees are no longer teaching computer science. There's no doubt that there isn't as much demand for actual CS types as there is for programmers, but if that's the case, they should shrink the CS departments and start up a different one, perhaps called computer applications, to teach the programmers. As it is now, I'd consider it academic fraud.

This is a generic problem, to me. The word "science" has gotten too watered down, even (especially?) in academia. Of course, it all started when someone came up with the oxymoronic major, political science...

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Category: Science And Society

"Who Says Nothing Exciting Ever Happens In Canada?"

That's Joe Katzman's comment at this interesting post by Donald Sensing on a major asteroid impact in North America thirteen thousand years ago.

...the worst consequence of the cataclysm was the mass extinctions of the late Pleistocene that have heretofore been attributed to overhunting by the Clovis peoples of the continent. The extinctions were additionally blamed on the Younger Dryas. The new impact theory, though, says that the comet's multiple explosions (caused by its breakup in the high atmosphere) themselves caused the extinctions: "at least 35 genera of the continent's mammals went extinct – including mammoths, mastodons, camels, ground sloths and horses." That's 35 whole genera, not just species, that died out. Just at the time of the extinction the researchers found a significant band of soot in sediments from widely-separated sites.

Let me be the first to blame George Bush.

Evidence continues to accumulate that this sort of thing happens a lot more often that we used to think (particularly considering that thirty years ago few people thought that it ever happened). We're going to feel very stupid if we get hit by one that we could have diverted had we not been so short sighted about becoming spacefaring for the past half century.

Unfortunately, the short sightedness continues, in the form of ESAS. And actually, for that, I do blame George Bush, though I guess he thought that once he hired a rocket scientist to run NASA, he didn't need to think about space any more.

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Category: Technology and Society

So, What's The Catch?

This seems like a pretty big breakthrough.

Using patented microorganisms and transformative bioreactor designs, Coskata ethanol is produced via a unique three-step conversion process that turns virtually any carbon-based feedstock—including biomass, municipal solid waste, and a variety of agricultural waste—into ethanol, making production a possibility in almost any geography. The technology is ethanol-specific and enzyme independent, requiring no additional chemicals or pre-treatments.
Simply put, the Coskata process can produce ethanol almost anywhere in the world, using practically any renewable source, including feedstock, garbage, old tires and plant waste. And it can do so for less than a dollar per gallon.

I wonder what the equivalent cost per barrel of oil that represents? It seems like it would make sense to convert jet engines at that price, if you can.

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Category: Political Commentary

One More Reason To Not Miss The Bush Administration

Would this have happened in a Thompson administration?

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January 13, 2008
Category: Popular Culture

The Very Model Of A Modern Metrosexual

Thanks to Classical Values, I think that Brooks Brothers has found their man...or their...whatever.

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Category: Political Commentary

Polishing The Libertarian Brand

Is Ron Paul going to have anything to say about this latest incident by his brown shirts?

The assault picked up after lunch. Paul supporters phoning Call claimed to be from the media. Others just yelled, saying she had committed treason, fraud. One person said she should be shot. She received as many as 40 calls that day.
"One person said he was on a nationally syndicated radio station," Call said, "and he has given out my phone number and they need to call the town of Sutton to find out why there's voter fraud."

The voices came from everywhere. California. Ohio. Florida. Michigan. Very few were from New Hampshire.

He can say that he has no control over his supporters all he wants, but as long as he continues fail to to do a Sister Souljah and denounce this kind of thing, we will continue to conclude that money and political support is more important to him than integrity.

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Category: Political Commentary

He Only Just Noticed?

A leading proponent of action against global warming says that many of his "green" "allies" are hurting the cause:

He says: "There is a suspicion, and I have that suspicion myself, that a large number of people who label themselves 'green' are actually keen to take us back to the 18th or even the 17th century."
He characterises their argument as "let's get away from all the technological gizmos and developments of the 20th century".

"People say 'well, we'll just use less energy.' Come on," he says. "And then there's the real world, where everyone is aspiring to the sort of standard of living that we have, which is based on a large energy consumption."

King calls global warming the biggest challenge our civilisation has ever faced, and famously, in a 2004 article in the journal Science, berated the US for its inaction, describing climate change as "more serious even than the threat of terrorism". But his vocal support for nuclear power and genetically modified foods has led to tensions with environmental campaigners.

No kidding.

They're called "watermelons"--green on the outside, red on the inside. Socialism lost its luster with the fall of the Soviet Union, so they're simply latching on to this latest ideological fad to try to keep it going under a different name.

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Category: Education

Pet Peeve

It's not as bad as "lose"/"loose," but I see quite a few people, including people who write for a living, mistakenly hyphenating "no one," as in "No-one believes that." It looks very strange to my eye, and irritates me. Where does that come from?

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January 12, 2008
Category: Space

If It Misses Mars...

Glenn at Instapundit points to a UPI story that says JPL thinks the odds of a 4,000 km flyby for 2007 W(M)D5 or less is 99.7%. If it's not going to hit Mars, that increases the chances that it will slingshot around Mars toward Earth. Odds are likely in the 1 in a million range or less, but what if it did? I wouldn't say "probably", but let's have some transplanetary musings!

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Category: Political Commentary

A Hero For Free Speech

One would have thought that Canada wouldn't have needed such, but apparently it does, in the form of Ezra Levant.

I wouldn't call it a kangaroo court. Given the locale, more like a moose court. Here's his opening statement. Here is the transcript. Read it and weep (for different reasons, depending on whether you are a proponent, or opponent, of freedom of expression).

I am here at this government interrogation under protest. It is my position that the government has no legal or moral authority to interrogate me or anyone else for publishing these words and pictures. That is a violation of my ancient and inalienable freedoms: freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and in this case, religious freedom and the separation of mosque and state. It is especially perverted that a bureaucracy calling itself the Alberta human rights commission would be the government agency violating my human rights. So I will now call those bureaucrats “the commission” or “the hrc”, since to call the commission a “human rights commission” is to destroy the meaning of those words.
I believe that this commission has no proper authority over me. The commission was meant as a low-level, quasi-judicial body to arbitrate squabbles about housing, employment and other matters, where a complainant felt that their race or sex was the reason they were discriminated against. The commission was meant to deal with deeds, not words or ideas. Now the commission, which is funded by a secular government, from the pockets of taxpayers of all backgrounds, is taking it upon itself to be an enforcer of the views of radical Islam. So much for the separation of mosque and state.

Could this be the beginning of the end for the Canadian Human ~~Rights~~Wrongs Commission? Let us hope so.

Mark Steyn has further thoughts, more eloquent (as usual) than mine:

Shirlene McGovern quizzes him on his intent in publishing the cartoons, and another in which she raises the fear that his publishing them could lead to violence against Muslims “particularly in today’s world post-9/ 11 that has made a number of Muslims more vulnerable to hatred and contempt.” Ezra's answer speaks for itself, but Ms McGovern's question reminds me of a passage from Melanie Phillips' book Londonistan:
Minority-rights doctrine has produced a moral inversion, in which those doing wrong are excused if they belong to a 'victim' group, while those at the receiving end of their behaviour are blamed simply because they belong to the 'oppressive' majority.

Ms McGovern, a blandly unexceptional bureaucrat, is a classic example of the syndrome. No "vulnerable" Canadian Muslim has been attacked over the cartoons, but the cartoonists had to go into hiding, and a gang of Muslim youths turned up at their children's grade schools, and Muslim rioters around the world threatened death to anyone who published them, and even managed to kill a few folks who had nothing to do with them. Nonetheless, upon receiving a complaint from a Saudi imam trained at an explicitly infidelophobic academy and who's publicly called for the introduction of sharia in Canada, Shirlene McGovern decides that the purely hypothetical backlash to Muslims takes precedence over any actual backlash against anybody else.

Indeed. More discussion over at Samizdata.

[Update a few minutes later]

I smiled at this: "I hope this goes all the way because the good guys need some high profile wins right now. A little bit of marching in the street wouldn't hurt either, but I don't know if Canadians can overcome their empassioned apathy."

Followed up by, "It is important to note that no one person ever actually "tried" by these "courts" has ever been found innocent.

Canadians...why do you tolerate this?"

C'mon, you hosers. Stand up for freedom, eh?

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Category: Political Commentary

Fredipedia

For those who can't get enough of Fred Thompson, here's the blog for you.

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Category: Popular Culture

A White Playoff Season

Man, teams must hate playing the Packers in the playoffs at home. I just turned on the game, and it looks like half an inch of snow on the field just before the half, and still coming down.

[Going to check Wisconsin radar and weather]

Yup, thirty degrees, and it looks like it's going to keep coming down all game.

I've always thought that it was kind of cool that football doesn't call games for weather. It always made baseball look kind of wimpy when they quit playing in the rain, while the pigskinners will play in a blizzard. But still, you'd think that folks in Green Bay would get tired of it, with almost everyone else indoors now (though I think that Soldier Field is still open, right?). I know that I was happy when the Lions moved into the Superdome in Pontiac.

[Update in the second half]

Wow, the flakes really look more detailed in HD. You can almost tell them apart.

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Category: Media Criticism

To Non-Americans Who Think They Understand America

I had never noticed this quote on the masthead of USS Neverdock before:

"America is often portrayed as an ignorant, unsophisticated sort of place, full of bible bashers and ruled to a dangerous extent by trashy television, superstition and religious bigotry, a place lacking in respect for evidence based knowledge. I know that is how it is portrayed because I have done my bit to paint that picture..." BBC's Washington correspondent Justin Webb

From an interview with the Grauniad. This explains why some commenters here are both clueless and arrogantly certain in their (lack of) knowledge. I won't name names, but if the shoe fits, they might consider a little more humility.

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Category: Popular Culture

Good Lord

What kind of nancy boys does Brooks Brothers think we are? Looks like just the thing for that all-male boarding school, complete with spankings.

Is that price the amount that they'd pay us to wear these abominations? If so, it's nowhere near enough.

[Afternoon update]

And check out this cashmere down vest with the short pants. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. In what kind of weather would one wear that ensemble?

You know, the Brits have a word for people who would wear this stuff. Though I guess we had one of our own, back in the day, the most prominent of whom was called Yankee Doodle.

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January 11, 2008
Category: Political Commentary

Same Old Corn

...different flakes. I'm assuming that the exclusion of Fred Thompson (who just got an endorsement from Human Events this morning) was deliberate.

I wonder how much the endorsement will help? I'm sure that it won't hurt, but (though I'm not a regular reader) I suspect that most people who read Human Events in South Carolina were probably going to vote for him anyway.

[Update late morning]

Here's an interesting analysis of why Thompson focused on Huckabee last night, and didn't go after McCain. Hint: it's not because he's trying to help McCain win the nomination.

Meanwhile, Matt Welch, incoming editor of Reason, is making up for lost time in dissecting Dr. No's past.

[Update mid afternoon]

It just occurs to me that we'll know whether or not Krumm's Thompson/McCain theory is valid after the Michigan primary. If he starts to go after McCain in addition to Huckabee after the primary, and before South Carolina, then it will all make sense.

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Category: Political Commentary

A Depressing Screed

...with which I wholeheartedly agree, from Lileks:

On the Hewitt show tonight I was talking about the end result of the administration’s overall rhetorical failure, its inability to assert and explain ideas near and/or dear to many who elected him. I think people gave up expecting high fine oratorical flourishes about matters other than the war and the ancillary issues long ago, but it does gall; like the squandered Congressional majority, it was a sign that the thick institutional inertia had filled the vacant crevasses in the domestic agenda. So we get campaign finance “reform,” and we get an energy bill that will require everyone to switch to bulbs that cost ten times more and require an EPA HAZMAT team to ninja their way through your skylights if you drop a bulb. (Yes, I know, it mandates efficiencies, and if old-style bulbs meet the standards, they’ll pass, but given the higher cost of fluorescents and the general planet-friendly rep they have, I expect that a combination of foot-dragging, ad campaigns, somewhat lower prices and improved quality will move people away from incandescents.) I don’t think the administration is in the pocket of Big Flourescent; I just think they don’t care.
Either they figured the logic of their case was self-evident, or saw no short-term gain to making arguments that polled low.

The Middle East? Don’t get me started. At the end of the Bush term Syria will run Lebanon, Israel will pressured to concede, Iran will unsanctioned and unbowed. Iraq will work in the end if we care and try and stay, and that’s no small thing; that’s the big thing, in the end. History won’t give a fig about the fluorescent-bulb bill. You could say that second terms always end like this. Clinton, however, would probably have gotten a third term. You could say he was an anomaly, since his appeal was more personal than ideological, and you could say that he didn’t spend his time making speeches in his second term defining liberalism for the 21st century. But he didn’t have to explain his ideas; they were part of the free-floating cloud of Unexamined Good Things instinctively accepted by the overclass, so he wasn’t exactly fighting an uphill battle. Bush had an opportunity to redefine certain ideas as progressive, not retrograde. Really: if the public school paradigm is the status quo, then attempts to upend the Etch-A-Sketch and find new solutions are progressive – unless you’re one of those blunt-headed types who believe that “conservatives” (a meaningless term, here) want to destroy unions and punish inner-city schools and funnel public bucks to nuns who prowl the aisles with a ruler, whapping knuckles when anyone mentions Darwin. Rethinking Social Security is progressive, especially if it means giving young people more control over how their forced contributions are invested. Nuclear power is progressive; the status quo, in place for twenty years, still thinks “The China Syndrome” is a documentary. I know it’s a different definition of progressive, but heck: redefining “progressive” is progressive.

As is redefining "liberal."

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January 10, 2008
Category: Political Commentary

Hillary Finished

Talk about optimal ad placement.

The ad may have changed by the time you view the AP story (hmmm...checking after posting this...yup, it has), but that was what was there when I grabbed the screen shot. I did not photoshop it, I swear.

And RIP, Sir Edmund. I'm sure that there will be more tears from Hill over the person for whom she was named.

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Category: Political Commentary

Random Debate Thought

Whatever else you think of Ron Paul, it is entertaining to hear the phrase "Austrian theory of the business cycle" in a Republican debate (though it almost sounded like he said "Australian"--"tie me von Mises down, boys..."?)

[Update at 9:26]

Fred takes off the gloves and finally goes after Huckabee for his NEA endorsement and opposition to vouchers. "That's not the position of the Reagan coalition. That's the position of the Democratic Party."

Huckabee's response (paraphrased) boils down to, "well, people reelected me."

Pretty weak tea to make your credentials as a conservative. Lots of Democrats, even very "liberal" ones, get reelected. Fred's job is to draw a distinction between himself and the Huckster as the only true conservative in South Carolina, and so far, I think he's doing well. We'll see if he hits him again.

[Update at 9:42]

Ron Paul is really coming off as the crazy uncle at the holiday dinner, ranting about things that aren't even relevant to the question. Brit Hume: "Congressman, all your fellow candidates agreed with the passive response to the Iranian provocation. Who or what are you responding to?"

[Update afterward]

A memorable phrase from the consensus winner tonight, Fred Thompson, on immigration: "High fences and wide gates."

If anyone is inspired by his performance to send him some money in the wake of his performance, he's looking for it.

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Category: Weird

Don't You Just Hate It?

...when you run into your wife at the local brothel?

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Category: Political Commentary

Crunch Time

Rick Moran is organizing a blogburst for Fred Thompson, who is putting all his chips on the South Carolina table. He makes a pretty good case as to why his chances may be good for a win there, but he needs money.

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Category: Political Commentary

The Loony Left

You've got to love these latest attacks on Jonah's book:

Ezra...credits David Neiwert whose review is exactly the sort of shallow, cliche-ridden, attack-the-messenger stuff that I would expect Ezra to find so persuasive. More on that in a moment. But I find it hilarious that the part Ezra thought sufficiently profound to highlight was, in part, the bit where Neiwert insists that the fascist threat remains on the right and in particular that there's a threat of "totalitarianism" from "dogmatic individualists."

Apparently, to these people, words don't mean things at all.

[Early evening update]

Jonah corrects the record, via an email by Niewert (and per a comment by Duncan Young in comments). Those were Ezra's words, not his. The point remains.

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Category: Political Commentary

This Is What John McCain Has Wrought

A panel of judges of rules that it's against campaign finance laws to advertise a film:

Attorney James Bopp argued that they should be considered "issue- oriented" speech because viewers aren't urged to vote for or against the Democrat.
"What's the issue?" asked Judge A. Raymond Randolph, a federal appeals judge sitting on a mixed panel to review the case.

"That Hillary Clinton is a European Socialist,' aren't you saying vote against her?"

Bopp disagreed because the movie did not use the word "vote."

"Oh, that's ridic...," Lamberth said, trailing off and ending the line of questioning.

Hey, some people (too darned many, in my opinion) like European socialists. Maybe it was a pro-Hillary ad.
It gets better (or worse, depending on your point of view).

The movie is scheduled for two screenings in theaters, once each in California and Washington. It is also being sold on DVD. Neither of those methods are regulated under campaign laws. The advertisements, however, are scheduled to run during the peak presidential primary season and would be regulated.
Bopp, who successfully led a challenge to one aspect of the campaign finance system last year, compared the film to television news programs "Frontline," "Nova," and "60 Minutes." That prompted Lamberth to laugh out loud from the bench.

"You can't compare this to '60 Minutes,'" the judge said. "Did you read this transcript?"

Apparently, the judge missed the "Sixty Minutes" episode in which Dan Rather used fake documents to do a hit job on George Bush six weeks before an election.

The Supreme Court should have thrown the law out in toto. But it looks to me, at a minimum, like they're going to have to at least interpret this (un)Constitutional abomination.

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Category: Political Commentary

Hillary's Detumescence

Emmett Tyrrell has some thoughts:

The reason for the dramatic decline in Hillary's front-runner status is that Democratic voters increasingly are alarmed about a large hairy monster that has been roaming through their consciences for years, probably since they first heard of Gennifer Flowers and of Bill Clinton's diplomatic negotiations with his draft board. The monster is the Clintons' record of lawlessness and scandal. Already in this campaign cycle, Democratic voters have reminders of the Clintons' unsavory practices, felons among their contributors, even shadowy Asians bundling checks, as in 1996, and, of course, the politics of personal destruction practiced against their opponents.
My guess is that a sizable number of Democrats have had enough of it. Obama represents a clean break with a troubled and mediocre past. As Hillary leaves New Hampshire, she challenges Obama on the question of experience. The junior senator from Illinois should take up her challenge. Hillary can chide him for his lack of experience, and he can remind us all of Hillary's unique experiences, beginning with the Clintons' "holiday from history," and Travelgate, Filegate, missing billing records, lying under oath, her cattle-futures bonanza, the Riady family, Johnny Chung, John Huang, Charlie Trie -- and suddenly, you see it, too, the large hairy monster that is the Clinton legacy.

Also, long-time cartoonist nemesis of Bill and Hill, Sean Delonas, is in high form in the wake of New Hampshire. (Note to visitors from the future, not a permalink. Select January 10th, 2008 in the pulldown boxes).

[Update a couple minutes later]

Dr. Sanity has some additional thoughts on the Democrats denial and anger:

Just as Hillary had a neurotic and "forgetful" moment regarding the antics of her husband; what we are witnessing is a supremely neurotic moment on the part of the left, who willy-nilly have jumped the Clinton ship and climbed aboard the Obama "vessel of hope". They are astounded that the antics of the Clintons (which for years they have rationalized and excused) are being used against them. Their idealization of the Clintons had worn thin and, just in the nick of time, along comes a younger, prettier face that can help them shore up those tired, old "progressive" ideas, and delude them into believing they actually are supporting something fresh and innovative.
I hate to tell them, but Obama is just another socialist hack. For sure, he's fresh and young and articulate. But his ideas are no fresher than Hillary's and quite a bit more rigid and uncompromising. Hillary and Bill never believed in anything but themselves. Obama comes across as selfless as Mother Theresa, promising to lead us to his utopian wonderland.

What we are witnessing is the neurosis and fickleness of the political left, who just a short time ago adored the Clintons and could bear nothing bad be said about their legacy in the White House.

I still see a lot of potential for a very ugly August in Denver.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Oh, man. I didn't pop the corn soon enough. I didn't expect this until March, at least. They're eating their own:

Obama's national campaign co-chairman, Jesse Jackson Jr., slammed Clinton's now-famous misty-eyed moment by wondering aloud why she didn't shed public tears for victims of Hurricane Katrina, for example.
"They have to be looked at very, very carefully in light of Katrina, in light of other things that Mrs. Clinton did not cry for," Jackson told MSNBC.

And they think that Huckabee is going to split the Republicans? This could be the crackup that finally drives the blacks off the Democrats' liberal plantation. The slave revolt may be finally beginning. The big tent may be falling down around their ears. And the destruction of that coalition that the Clintons started back in the nineties may be finally coming to completion. If so, let's just hope that some new, and better parties arise from the ashes.

[Update a while later]

Dennis Wingo in comments links to Camille psychoanalyzing Hillary today. This may not be just a night, but a year of the long knives.

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Category: Space

Upcoming Space Meetings

Jesse Londin has a roundup. I'd like to go to the one in Arcachon, France.

She also has a year-end space linkfest that I'd missed.

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Category: Political Commentary

It's Happening Already

Chris Matthews says that Obama lost New Hampshire because they're racists up there in the Granite State.

I expected this, but not quite so soon.

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.

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Category: Weird

Only From Cracked

The five genetic experiments most likely to destroy the world. Not sure whether to categorize this as "Technology and Society," or "Humor." So, I'll just go with "Weird."

[Via Cosmic Log]

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January 09, 2008
Category: Political Commentary

Faux Conservatism

Cynical Christian has a post about Huckappeal. But he misses (or at least doesn't elaborate upon) a key point:

What grabbed me were some of Carter's defenses of Mike Huckabee as the real full-spectrum conservative in the race.
A prime example of how "economic conservatives" are out of touch with the Reagan conservatives is the issue of executive compensation for poorly managed companies. On CNBC Governor Mike Huckabee expressed his disgust for corporate boards that award CEOs with $200 million bonuses while the workers are taking 40% pay cuts. As the Governor made clear he didn’t think the federal government should take action. His only point was merely that as a conservative he would use the bully pulpit to speak out against such outrageous behavior.

I think that one thing you have to assume about political candidates is that if that say something is disgusting, they're liable to do something about it. If you're not going to judge what a president will do based on what he says, then stop making me listen to those flippin' state of the union addresses every year. And if a politician tries--or threatens--to mess with how people get paid in the private sector, you can no longer call that politician conservative.

While I agree that that is not a conservative position, it's also misleading. There is a slippery implication here that is extremely non-conservative (or libertarian).

If there really were a corporate governance problem that was resulting in CEOs regularly being overpaid for poor performance, then it might in fact be worthwhile to look into it and see if the government was interfering somehow with the market to allow this to happen (that is, after all, the usual reason for apparent "market failures"). But this isn't even obviously a market failure. Note the insidious assumption: to Huckabee (and Carter), the problem is "corporate boards that award CEOs with $200 million bonuses while the workers are taking 40% pay cuts."

The implication here is that if a company is giving workers 40% pay cuts, it is failing at its job. But it could be that the workers had been overpaid for years, and that the only way to make the company successful at its real purpose (returning value to the shareholders), is to reduce their pay. The assumption is that the purpose of a corporation is not to reward its owners (a base foundation of capitalism), but to provide well-paid jobs for employees. Now one can argue (though not convincingly, at least to me) that that should be the purpose of a corporation, but to do so is one of the farthest things from economic conservatism. It's a ludicrous quote to defend the notion that Huckabee is a conservative. That is classical "liberal" (i.e., non-liberal "progressive") dogma. Democrats say those sorts of things, not Republicans trying to pass as conservative.

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Category: Political Commentary

Bad Reviews Get Results!

All the one-stars at Amazon by people who haven't read Jonah's book are not only being pulled down, but they're creating sales.

Plus the ~~oft~~never-told story of Teddy Roosevelt and Big Meat. You never heard this when you had to read The Jungle in school.

[Update Thursday night]

Since Glenn keeps bumping this link up to the top of Instapundit, some of the newcomers might want to look around at the rest of the blog. Lots of others fun stuff posted over the last couple days.

READ THE REST!...
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Category: Technology and Society

DIY Triodes

As the comments indicate, this video really is amazing. I don't have the patience for this sort of thing, but I'm always in awe at craftsmen like this. And making vacuum tubes is becoming a lost art. I know that starting in the nineties, some of the more obscure types were available only from Russia. Fortunately, Sylvania and GE continued to make the most common ones.

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Category: Philosophy

Cheating At Jigsaw

Just when you think you have plumbed the darkest depths of the nation's moral decline, someone comes up with something like this. I weep for my country.

Well, I'm not sure that it's really unethical to not break up the pieces, but it certainly seems to miss the point, unless your only goal is simply to complete the puzzle as quickly as possible. And I've never seen a puzzle that was really worth the end result. With a jigsaw puzzle, isn't the journey the destination?

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Category: War Commentary

"The Ring On Zarqawi's Finger"

Michael Totten has an interesting discussion with some Iraqis:

According to the conventional narrative, Al Qaeda was rejected by Iraqis because they murdered Iraqis. They were far more vicious and hateful than the Americans they vowed to expel. The narrative is correct, as far as it goes, but Al Qaeda is detested for more than mere thuggery. Other armed groups have been able to maintain at least some popularity even though they also murder Iraqis. None of the others, though, violent though they may be, are so thoroughly totalitarian, so alien to the traditions of Iraqi culture, and so hostile to its centuries-old social fabric. Al Qaeda in Iraq tears at Iraq’s traditional culture as viciously as Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge did in Cambodia.
If you want to understand Al Qaeda in Iraq – its methods, its rise, and its fall – you’ll find their story has more in common with the Shining Path’s guerrilla and terrorist war in Peru than with the Islamic religion as practiced in the mosques of Fallujah.

“Nowadays we can analyze what is going on,” Ahmed said. “In the Sunni area, in the Western area, we have people being killed by Al Qaeda. The tribes and locals civilians here are standing up to fight the Al Qaeda organization because of that. We have been moving one step forward and two steps backward. We are now only semi-literate people. We need some more education.”

“Were all the insurgents here Al Qaeda, or were there other organizations also?” I said.

“The Al Qaeda organization is the major one,” said Omar. “They made some smaller sub-organizations for themselves to assist them by another name. But, in fact, they are all Al Qaeda.”

According to the conventional wisdom, Al Qaeda makes up only a very small part of Iraq’s insurgency. Maybe that’s true, overall. But I have not been able to find a single person on the ground in Western Iraq – not American, and not Iraqi – who says anyone other than Al Qaeda has played a significant role in the insurgency.

The conventional "wisdom" is often unwise. Particularly when it's tainted by hatred of George Bush.

[Afternoon update]

This strikes me as particularly timely, given that Harry Reid continues to demand that the US surrender to Al Qaeda (even if he's too stupid to realize that's what he's doing), just as we finally have them on the ropes.

...over the past year nearly 900 brave Americans have been killed while trying to provide Iraq’s leaders with the opportunity to unite their country. In that time American taxpayers have spent more than $120 billion to finance another nation’s civil war and back an Iraqi government that shows little interest in progress. And as President Bush continues to cling stubbornly to his flawed strategy, Al Qaeda only grows stronger.

As Michael Totten reports, this was never much of a civil war, and to the degree that it was, it was being instigated by Al Qaeda, and if Al Qaeda is growing stronger, it certainly isn't in Iraq. But the Senate Majority (non)Leader remains stuck in the 2006 narrative, and out of touch with reality.

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Category: Political Commentary

Doomed To Repeat It

Virginia Postrel, on Michael Barone, and "change":

I was born in 1960 but remember well the "economic disasters and foreign policy reverses of the 1970s." On my pessimistic days, it worries me that not only voters in general but the young pundit class don't understand how much worse things can be. On my optimistic days, I think the lessons of that period have been largely internalized. After all, you don't hear people proposing wage and price controls. Except on doctors and medicine.

Unfortunately, while I'm generally an optimist about the future, I am a pessimist on the ability of the electorate to be aware of, let alone remember, history. And just as in the nineties, the Obamagasms would indicate that they are clamoring for another vacation from it. Unfortunately, the world often has other plans.

And speaking of remembering history, she also has some thoughts on Ron Paul:

The disclosures are not news to me, nor is the Paul campaign's dismissive reaction a surprise. When you give your political heart to a guy who spends so much time worrying about international bankers, you're not going to get a tolerant cosmopolitan.

Nope.

[Wednesday evening follow up]

Virginia does something rare (if not previously unheard of). She says that her former magazine fell down on the job:

...I was never particularly interested in the Paul campaign, which I considered a fringe effort in both its chances (nil) and much of its rhetoric (too many conspiracies). Rightly or wrongly, I didn't consider Paul "one of the biggest mainstream representatives of libertarian thought." I'm not sure whether I would have written about him if I had. Life is short, I don't make my living as a professional libertarian any more, and I don't feel responsible for commenting on every libertarian-related development that comes along. These days, I am more interested in understanding culture and economics than focusing on policy, much less policing the libertarian movement. Plus, as the Paulites will be quick to note, I disagree with Paul on his sexiest issue, the Iraq war (and on his second sexiest issue, opposition to immigration).
I do fault my friends at Reason, who are much cooler than I'll ever be and who, scornful of the earnestness that takes politics seriously, apparently didn't do their homework before embracing Paul as the latest indicator of libertarian cachet. For starters, they might have asked Bob Poole about Ron Paul; I remember a board member complaining about Paul's newsletters back in the early '90s. Besides, people as cosmopolitan as Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch should be able to detect something awry in Paul's populist appeals.

I agree on the differences that she has with the doctor (in addition to his weird hangers on, which include not just racists and anti-semites, but with his opposition to the war, radical leftists, all the way out to International ANSWER). I just happened to get my dead-tree issue of the magazine a couple days ago, and Ron Paul was the cover story, by Brian Doherty (who, for the record, I generally like both personally and as a writer). I didn't read the whole thing (which I have a tendency to do lately with Reason--I'd prefer more, shorter articles, rather than fewer, in-more-turgid-depth-than-necessary ones--maybe that's something that will change in the incoming Welch era), but I skimmed it, and it did seem to me to gloss over many of the serious issues with him. It also seemed timed to try to boost him in the primaries. I'm assuming that, given the lead time, this was Nick Gillespie's issue, perhaps his last for dead tree before taking over the Reason multi-media gig.

While I complain about living in south Florida a lot, one of the (few, to me) benefits is that Bob Poole and his wife moved out here from LA about the same time we did, and live about half an hour away, so we have the occasional pleasure of an opportunity to get together for dinner. I recall a conversation we had a year or so ago, in which we noted that the war really seems to have split the libertarians (though not necessarily the Libertarians). You could see this in 2004, when there was a roundup of libertarian(ish) viewpoints on who they were going to vote for, and Bob went on record as favoring Bush, contrary to many of his Reason colleagues. Bob, Glenn Reynolds, Virginia (and lowly me) seem to have come down on one side of the divide, and many of our friends (and they really are, as Virginia says) at Reason on the other. But I agree with her that they should have been warning off the younger libertarians who aren't familiar with the history, rather than encouraging them.

It is going to be very interesting to see how this unfolds, and what Ron Paul will do when (despite the fanatical fervor of his supporters) he realizes that he's not going to get the nomination. Will he run as a Libertarian again (as he did in 1988, when I voted for him)? This is problematic, because I think that there are several states that wouldn't allow him to do so after having run as a Republican. And no other party really offers him the prospect of being on a large number of state ballots. Will there be a write-in campaign? Heck, as bizarre as the coalition he's gathered is, he could even run as a member of the Green Party at this point. The thing is, such is the nature of the broad (albeit extreme and eclectic) range of his appeal now that I think he'd likely take more votes from the Dems (particularly if Hillary is the nominee) than the Republicans (depending on who their nominee is, but not that much).

I just think that this is more proof of Jonah's thesis that the simplistic and conventional wisdom of left versus right is crazy. Unfortunately, there are many ways to split the ideologies. I prefer Virginia's dichotomy of stasists versus dynamists. And I certainly don't see Ron Paul as one of the latter.

[Update in the late evening]

Tim Cavanaugh, former Reasonite (and the editor for my dust up with Homer Hickam in October), has some thoughts over at the LA Times. And of course, I should have checked out Hit'n'Run, Reason's group blog, to see what they've been saying about it. Matt Welch, incoming editor of the magazine (and erstwhile LA blogger buddy when I lived there) has a lot of linkage.

[Update a few minutes later]

Following links from Cavanaugh's piece, I found this one to Matt, with more links to a lot more commentary from yesterday, including some of mine (though not this post).

[Update once more]

Nick Gillespie professes shock.

And I don't mean to imply that he's not sincere--I'm sure he is. Virginia's point (and mine) is that if he'd asked some of the older hands around, they probably could have warned him about this, months (or even years) ago.

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