…What a brilliant point he
Monthly Archives: March 2004
Arrivederci
After too brief a tenure, I’ve decided to set aside blogging for the foreseeable future. In part this is due to additional pressures from work, and in part it’s due to reevaluating my priorities, which had skewed rather too far away from family and friends. I’ve enjoyed my stay here, though I wish I’d had more time to post. Fortunately it looks like Rand is back to full speed and in fine form.
Ad Astra,
Andrew
Aldridge Thoughts
Michael Mealing attended last week’s hearings in Atlanta, and has a useful summary. In particular, he has thoughts and concerns about the inputs from organized labor, which I share. I was going to write something about this last week, but hadn’t seen any of the testimony:
It was my determination that this group is one of the main problems with how space is done these days. They are organized and seem to hold a very large amount of political capital because of that. Apparently their members have been a large determining factor behind ISS and Shuttle. They view these programs as purely ways of creating what they view as “high tech jobs”. At one point Paul Spudis threw out a strawman (transcripts aren’t available yet so I can’t quote directly) that asked that, if the goal of our space program was to “keep our technological sharpness” then should all of it belong as part of DoD as simply a national strategic priority? They answered yes! Not only did they agree with the premise but with its conclusion as well.
One of them even went so far as to suggest that the reason the US is loosing [sic] jobs overseas is due to the cultural decay caused by television and the lack of good morality plays like they had during the old radio days! If this is what Big Labor has to offer these days no wonder we’re loosing [sic] jobs overseas…
…Daniel is saying something that Tom Peters is saying in Re-imagine. That the future of America is in its core value: that this land, this system that we’ve developed, is about radical opportunity. Simply ‘earning a living’ isn’t enough. Simply ‘manufacturing’ isn’t enough. Simply doing what we did last century isn’t enough. Every moment has be to worked at the tip of innovation; at the sharp edge of creative distruction. And these labor guys find that to be the worst evil that could be visited on man because it means there is no such thing as job security. It means no such thing as jobs. Period. Every American’s new responsibility is to be his/her own CEO of Me, Inc.
It means things like re-thinking the relationship between ‘labor’ and the processes it supports. It means having a worker in a factory actively spending his/her own time to figure out ways to not just increase his/her production, but to obsolete his own current job. It means things like figuring out how to build dark factories so that where one ‘factory worker’ ran one stop along an assembly line, that same ‘worker’ is the owner of an entire factory that runs itself. It means thinking of space as an opportunity and a market segment and not as a source for government ensured job security.
These are the people who have killed America’s greatness in space. I lay Columbia and Challenger at their door.
This point cannot be emphasized enough. The commission needs to have someone talk to it about wealth creation, instead of job creation, or we’ll remain mired in the failed policy of the past four decades.
Killer Asteroid Detection Breakthrough
It’s a mathematical one. Discovered by a couple high school students.
[via Paul Hsieh]
A Useful Tool
Some folks at Berkeley have put together a web site on teaching evolution as a resource for science teachers under creationist assault in the classroom.
Atlas Shrugging
Herbert Meyer says that one of the reasons that we don’t have as many jobs is that we punish entrepreneurs.
How Does This Account For Paris Hilton?
A German researcher says that s3x makes you smart.
He added that the added injection of endorphins and serotonin that resulted from an org@sm strengthened self-confidence – giving the body a mental as well as physical work out.
What Would You Do?
Dennis Powell talks about the unpleasant choices potentially facing a president, given our disastrous space policy for the past few decades, that has resulted in our relative impotence as a space-faring nation.
Pictures Of The X-43A Flight
Can be seen at the Langley website.
A Wonderful Weekend
Not.
It was one of those household projects where one thing turns into another.
I’m getting the California house ready to rent, and finally getting around to fixing up all the little things that I haven’t gotten around to for years that make it a little more aesthetic and livable. One of these was replacing the faucet and handles on the downstairs bathtub which, due to the hardness of our water, had become so encrusted with various minerals that they were starting to resemble some of the more active parts of Yellowstone Park.
Of course, that meant that they were also difficult to remove. When I tried to pull the handle off the cold-water faucet, it decided to break off the end of the valve stem, rather than sliding off the spline as designed. This occurred, of course, after I’d already been to Home Depot. In addition, the new spout that I’d purchased turned out to be for a half inch pipe, while removing the old one revealed a three-quarter inch outlet.
What had been merely an upgrade in looks had just turned into semi-serious plumbing. I turned off the water, and tried to remove the valve stem. Unfortunately, whoever had tiled the tub had embedded it in grout and mortar, so I spent a not inconsiderable part of the afternoon cold chiseling around it enough to get a socket on it, while being careful not to damage any visible parts of the tile. I eventually unscrewed it until it was turning freely, but it was still bound by too small a hole, so I had to chisel some more, and finally remove it like a recalcitrant tooth.
Back to Home Depot to exchange the spout, and buy a new valve stem. It’s installed now, and I’ve got water back on, so now it’s time to steam an artichoke for dinner. All this by way of explanation of light blogging. I am also working on a piece for Tech Central Station on hypersonics.