Transterrestrial Musings

Den Beste has a good piece debunking much of the press hysteria about “dirty bombs“.

Reader Randolph Addison writes:

Peter Jennings is in the Palestine/Israel region right now [on ABC radio] interviewing people and getting their feelings on the violence. Had I not heard this from his own mouth, I would have simply not believed the depths of moral relativity that exists in this man. To quote as closely as possible, he said, “…when I interview Israelis, it’s almost exactly like interviewing the Palestinians…no, wait, not exactly but very close to. They are both mired in distrust for the other side and feel as though they are entrenched in violence and cannot think of [this is the best part] an imaginative solution…” And he said some more about their distrust and similar feelings, etc.

Yes, because Palestinians who celebrate the death of babies are exactly like Israelis who just want to exist and will retaliate against Palestinian soldiers and militia infantry. I figure if I interview a rapist and his victims, I will get exactly the same interview from both sides. The rapist will say, “Gosh darnit, them there people were asking for it by being all damned snippy and haughty towards me after I cleaned their windows, looking all fancy…they’re just trying to rub their wealth in my face by hiring me.”

And the victims will have roughly the same story of, “…I just don’t see why I had to provoke him by acting as though I was better just because I go to work every day and make a good living. I should not have hired him to clean our windows because it just highlights in the financial disparity of our backwards capitalist system.” Yep.

I never liked Peter Jennings for his haughty more-pious-than-thou attitude on everything (even when he is clearly wrong and should know it). This took me over the edge. To draw moral equality between them is just…well, amazing.

One more reason that fewer and fewer watch network news.

It’s been brought to my attention that I (and anyone else who may be running my script) may be making the Blogspot problem worse with all the hits it gets from my status tests.

While there are some things that can be done to the script to mitigate some of the problems, I’m going to take it down for now, and am asking any others who may have done something similar to it to do the same. I’d also like to initiate a discussion about whether a) such a thing is a good thing to have (as several have told me) and b) if so, what the best way is to achieve it without exacerbating it.

[Update at 9:27AM PST]

Carey Gage comments:

Since you started your status check, I’ve been coming here, checking both your content and blogger’s status before going to any blogspot sites. I think your idea was a good one, if only in terms of convenience.

But having ten blogs hitting on blogspot to check its status once every minute will undoubtedly aggravate his traffic problem and is also much more than is needed. One non-Blogspot site, checking once every five or ten minutes would be a convenience and would not add excessively to Blogspot’s traffic.

Which one? You thought of it, you implemented it. I think you should do it to the exclusion of everyone else. If that gets you extra hits, well and good (if you want them). Can you handle the extra traffic generated by being a blogspot “gateway” without incurring the same traffic problems as he does?

Well, getting hits for the sake of hits was not necessarily the goal. I really did it for my own use, and for the use of my regular readers. I suspect that if people are coming just to see Blogspot status, they’re not necessarily hanging around to read anything else. If that’s the case, then it would make more sense to set up a separate page just for that (with a separate link to the blog), to minimize my own bandwidth.

Once every five minutes is twice as much as once every ten. It’s a matter of how much data resolution we want to get. Just going from twice a minute to once would reduce the load by half.

Other thoughts?

Leonard David has an article in today’s Space.com on the rapidly-approaching feasibility of a space elevator. Apparently, rapid advances in the manufacturing of buckey-tube-based materials of unprecedented tensile strength are making this a viable near-term technology, which in turn makes it possible to build a tower to the heavens.

The basic concept is that if you place a satellite in geostationary orbit (where most communications satellites reside) it will, by definition, remain at a single point over the earth’s surface (at the equator). Drop a cable all the way down thousands of miles to that point, and tether it (just as suspension bridges often start as a single cable across a gorge). Now beef up the structure, and put the center of mass of the system beyond geostationary altitude, which puts it into tension.

Build elevators into the structure, and you have a means of getting into space for the costs of the energy alone (plus, of course the amortization and maintenance costs for the elevator). This is just a few dollars per pound, which is orders of magnitudes less than the current methods of using rockets.

That would make a space vacation possible for almost anyone who can now afford a trip to Hawaii. It would also make space a much more practical location for the storage of nuclear waste and the construction of solar power satellites that might eventually render nuclear plants unnecessary.

Unfortunately, as was brought home most dramatically last September 11, it would also make the most visible and monumental target possible for a terrorist.

The potential energy in such a structure would be unimaginable (though not incalculable). If it were somehow released from its equatorial mooring (in addition to the tremendous loss of capability and loss of life of whoever was on it), it might whipsaw around the local landscape like a python on meth, potentially causing tremendous damage on the ground before finally drifting out into space (where it would become a major navigational hazard for orbiting satellites, facilities, and even tourist hotels). It’s possible (though unlikely) that it could even ultimately strike the Moon. It would make the events of last September look like a Sunday-school picnic.

This is, of course, not an argument against doing it. But it does add some additional requirements for its construction that might not have been considered prior to the WTC attack. For instance, the structure near the base should probably be capable of withstanding a small nuclear detonation, if possible. It should certainly be capable of withstanding a collision with any existing aircraft (including supersonic). Security in the area should be strict (at least as far as explosive devices go), with a large keep-out zone on the ground and in the air.

I might be using this as the basis for the Fox News column tomorrow, so I’d appreciate any other thoughts that people have on the subject.

[Update at 5PM]

OK, having given it a little more thought, it seems to me that the problem with the article was that it didn’t mention any of the problems. It was gung ho about how the technology to do this is almost here, which means to me that we now have to give some serious thought to the real showstoppers.

I see two serious issues, either or both of which are likely to keep this from happening for a long time, and perhaps forever.

First, if a structure is towering from the equator to a third of the way to the Moon, no objects can safely orbit the earth at any altitude below that. No GPS, no remote sensing satellites, no space stations, nada. The only satellites that can safely orbit are the geostationary comsats. The reason for this is that all other orbits will eventually intersect the structure, resulting in a spectacular collision, unless they are managed carefully, and they can’t be managed that carefully–such an accident is inevitable.

The second problem is the one that I mentioned above, and it’s potentially much worse. If it breaks off in space, while the part above the break will go flying off into an elliptical orbit, or perhaps out into the solar system, the part below will come crashing down to earth. Much of it won’t burn up, because it won’t have much velocity.

So, as technically neat as skyhooks are, I have trouble seeing any political conditions under which such a risky project, requiring the total obsolescence of our existing orbital infrastructure, to fly. We are going to have to continue to work at creating new markets that can drive down cost of the launch rocket-based space transports, because I think we’ll be stuck with them for a long time.

Thanks to a suggestion by Jeff Goldstein, I’ve decided to make my blogspot watch script available.

All I ask is that you give me credit, and provide a link to my page if you decide to try to implement it. I make no guarantees…

A Munich man was investigated for murder after his neighbors reported seeing him carrying a corpse into his apartment.

When the police entered the place, he showed them (not clear whether it was with any degree of pride) his collection of inflatable bedtime companions.

Instantman points out an amusing post by Happy Fun Pundit (who I really have to permalink one of these days, albeit with an asterisk, as he’s a blogspottie) about Hollywood egos and the Academy Awards, and the fact that they aren’t all that popular in the “Red” states that voted for Bush.

I’ve never understood the cult of celebrity. It’s always been fairly obvious to me that rising to the top of Hollywood is mostly a matter of luck. Looks and acting ability are certainly necessary, but there are many more people with those qualities than jobs in the industry or room on movie and television screens. If all of Hollywood came down with some kind of plague, replacements would appear within a year. Certainly brains are not a requirement, judging by some of the asinine things that some of these people do and say.

Anyway, I was amused at all of the egotistical concerns about security for the event, as though it would be bin Laden’s highest-priority target. I suspect that if terrorists were actually stupid enough to attack this parade of (fortunate) pompous blowhards, at least half the country would cheer.

Krauthammer has a piece in (be still, my heart) the WaPo about the notion that the spate of suicide bombings in Israel over the past decade are not the fault of that nation, but (gasp!) Yasser Arafat.

It is precisely in the context of the most accommodating, most conciliatory, most dovish Israeli policy in history that the suicide bombings took hold.

Where, then, did they come from? During the past eight years–the years of the Oslo “peace process”–Yasser Arafat had complete control of all the organs of Palestinian education and propaganda. It takes an unspeakable hatred for people to send their children to commit Columbine-like murder-suicide. Arafat taught it. His television, his newspapers, his clerics have inculcated an anti-Semitism unmatched in virulence since Nazi Germany.

OK, as a public service to Blogdom, I’ve set up my Blogspot traffic signal. It’s a script that runs in background on my server, and attempts an http access of blogspot.com once a minute. If it’s successful, it gives the green signal. If not, you’ll get the red traffic signal. (Note: I only run it on the main index page, so if you came here via a link to the specific post, you won’t see it).

Next, I’m going to put the Mark of Blogspot on the blogspotties, so you’ll know which links to not bother with when it’s down.

Let me know if it works. It seems to be doing OK, so far. Blogspot’s been down for while, and it just came back up, and the script seemed to pick it up.

The Chronicle continues to live up to its reputation as the worst newpaper in the world, as evidenced by this latest bit of stupidity from Chris Matthews. Poor Chris–he’s adrift in a sea of confusion. Can someone please toss him a clue? Make it a really big one, with lots of handles, and the words “CLUE” emblazoned on every side in big, loud red letters, with a klaxon horn.

It will take 200,000 U.S. troops to invade Saddam Hussein’s capital and effect the “regime change” demanded by neo-conservative policy wonks and backed by oil-patchers George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.

Cite? Logic? Analysis?

We don’t need no stinkin’ justification for these numbers we pull out of our nether regions–we’re a big-time newspaper columnist.

The question America needs to answer now, while there’s still time to stop this road trip, is whether a war justified by ideology and energy economics is truly in this country’s interests.

Ummm…Chris? That would be known as a complex question. You know, like the one about whether or not you’ve quit beating your wife? Or when you’re going to stop writing columns in which you’ve tarted up some ill-founded and ignorant opinions to masquerade as informed fact?

Here’s a fact, Chris–the war is driven by national self defense, a concept with which former Kennedy liberals like yourself used to be familiar, but with which you have somehow become disengaged since the era of, oh, Vietnam or so.

A U.S.-Iraqi war has advanced well beyond the “contingency” phase. The last barrier of restraint, Secretary of State Colin Powell, has been broken by the will of a Bush administration partnership of ideology and oil that is now set on war.

Poor Colin.

He first put up brave resistance against the evil ideologists and oil men, but Cheney called up the goons. He was taken to a room deep in Dick’s locationally-undisclosed cave, where he was liberally lubed with central Texas Sweet, and trussed up like a Thanksgiving turkey. They alternated between rubber hose beatings, bright lights, Iraqi dripping-oil torture, and readings from Rice and Wolfowitz.

After weeks of this unending gruesome anguish, disoriented (unlike Chris), he could barely tell the difference between a terrorist and a freedom fighter like Yasser Arafat or Saddam Hussein.

Now, a shattered man, by day he attends the cabinet meetings, but only in a perfunctory manner, for appearances. At night, he lies curled up there on the Bottom called Foggy, his will broken, whimpering. He was the Only Man Who Could Save The World, and he has failed.

[most of hysterical screed against neo-conservatives snipped]

The neo-cons casually compare Iraq to the Third Reich, Israel to forsaken Czechoslovakia and skeptics to Neville Chamberlain, but their evidence for attacking Iraq doesn’t hold up. The anthrax letters came from a source far nearer to our shores than Baghdad. And CIA chief George Tenet testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee last week that the “jury’s still out” on whether Hussein had anything to do with Sept. 11.

Well, here you make the same error as your like-”minded” friends over on the other side of The Pond. There is an unstated, and false assumption implicit in this statement. You believe, and expect everyone else to agree, that only states that participated in the events of last summer can justifiably be attacked.

Of course, by your logic, we couldn’t have gone in and done a regime change in Afghanistan prior to September 11, even if we had found evidence of exactly what bin Laden planned to do.

Here’s the deal, Chris. See, we’re defending ourselves. And often the best defense is a good offense.

Before September 11, when folks in funny hats said they wanted to kill us, we thought that was just so cute. We patted them on the head, said “nice little terrorist,” and sent them off to play.

After September 11, we believe them. We’re trying to prevent them from doing it again. Sometimes that means hitting them before they can hit you.

Oil is a much more powerful motive for an Iraq attack.

Says you.

Iraq is the Mideast’s No. 2 supplier of oil, behind Saudi Arabia. The United States, swallowing a quarter of the world’s production, is the world’s No. 1 consumer. This country is led by a pair of oil-patch veterans who share a sense of entitlement about the world’s oil reserves regardless of what flag flies above them. Bush and Cheney see Hussein’s chief weapon of mass destruction as his threatened grip on the Persian Gulf oil tap.

What’s your point? Do you understand the difference between correlation and causation? The fact that Iraq has oil, and we need oil to run our economy, does not lead to the ineluctable conclusion that we will make war on the Iraqi regime because we want the oil (though that may very well be a beneficial side effect).

After all, the Saudis are number one, Chris. We’re not beating the war drum to do a regime change in Riyadh (though we probably should be).

Basically, what you’re doing here is libeling Bush and Cheney–accusing them of being disingenuous liars.

This confluence of interest between ideology and oil has put us on the road to Baghdad. It’s time for us to realize that American principles have precious little to do with this costly prospective military campaign.

“Ideology”? I suppose, if you think that being opposed to our own destruction by amoral, cold-blooded psychopaths is a blindly ideological position.

Here’s a massive, glow-in-the-dark clue for you from Victor Davis Hanson, Chris:

After 30 years of listening to nauseating chanting from Teheran to Islamabad to Nablus, hearing the childish rants about “The Mother of All Battles” and “The Great Satan,” and witnessing presidents from Carter to Bush burned in effigy, the ritual torching of the American flag, the misspelled banners of hatred, the thousands of paint-by-the-numbers posters of psychopaths from Khomeini to bin Laden, televised threats that sound as hideous as they are empty, Nazi- inspired anti-Semitism, embassy takeovers, oil-boycotts, hijacked planes, cars, and ships, lectures from unelected obese sheiks with long names and gold chains, peacekeepers incinerated in their sleep, murders at the Olympics, bodies dumped on the tarmac of airports, shredded diplomats, madmen in sunglasses in Iraq, Syria, and Libya, demented mullahs and whip-bearing imams in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Iran, continual televised murders of Americans abroad, our towers toppled, our citizens butchered, our planes blown up, hooded Klansmen in Hamas and Hezbollah, killers of al-this and Islamic-that, suicide bombers, shrill turbaned nuts spouting hatred on C-SPAN broadcasts, one day the salvation of Kuwait, the next sanctions against the swallower of Kuwait, the third day fury against the sanctions against the swallower of Kuwait, the fourth day some grievance from 1953, the fifth another from A.D. 752; and all the time sanctimonious fingerpointing from Middle Eastern academics and journalists who are as bold abroad in insulting us as they are timid and obsequious under dictators at home in keeping silent, I’ve about had it. No mas. The problem is you, not us ? you, you, you…

The truth is that there is a great storm on the horizon, one that will pass ? or bring upon us a hard rain the likes of which we have not seen in 60 years. Either we shall say “no more,” deal with Iraq, and prepare for a long and hard war against murderers and terrorists ? or we will have more and more of what happened on 9/11. History teaches us that certain nations, certain peoples, and certain religions at peculiar periods in their history take a momentary, but deadly leave of their senses ? Napoleon’s France for most of a decade, the southern states in 1861, Japan in 1931, Germany in 1939, and Russia after World War II. And when they do, they cannot be bribed, apologized to, or sweet-talked ? only defeated.

If you want to write a newspaper column, learn from the master. That’s why we’re going into Iraq.