I got a call from a salesman at Google the other week, trying to get me to run Google ads at my site. Well, until this gets fixed, don’t count on it.
Thrown Off The Ambulance
I’ve had nothing to say about the Terri Schiavo case, because I don’t know that much about it. But all of the major media, including The Corner, seem determined to rectify that situation. Or rather, they seek to inundate me with information about it, if not enlightenment.
I guess it’s understandable why it’s become such a compelling story–it’s a heady mix of themes both political and philosophical. We have the nature of marriage, the fidelity of a spouse to both his marriage and to what he claims are his wife’s desires, the importance of documenting those desires prior to such an event (though one can never truly know what one’s feelings will be when it actually happens), the appropriate role of the states, the federal government, and the judiciary in deciding such personal and heart-wrenching situations, the definition of “persistent vegetative state” and the uncertainties of how to determine whether it truly persists in a particular individual, the absurd hypocrisy of allowing execution without trial by passive (but not active, even though they actually are) acts, the right to live, the right to die, the value of a life bereft of cognition, even (though this is one that few talk about) whether or not such a life can even be considered fully human, and the ultimate prospects for recovery from such a condition.
I’ll ignore the politics and legal issues, which will clear out quite a bit of the underbrush. I’ll also ignore all of the speculation as to the husband’s motives and character, about which I know little, and actually care less, at least for the purpose of this discussion.
I’d like instead to delve more deeply into what I think has been ignored–the philosophical and ethical issues involved.
Stupic Mac Tricks
Well, clever ones, actually. Using the internal motion sensor.
Finally, they have the technology to do what I think would be a really cool piece of software, for those of us with nostalgia for sixties childhoods–a virtual Etch-a-Sketch. If you decide you don’t like the picture you drew, just turn the thing over and shake it to clear the screen.
There actually is one on line, if you want to play with it. Kiss your productivity goodbye today.
Alienating Constituencies
Clark Lindsey has lots of interesting thoughts on NASA’s priorities:
It certainly seems strange that NASA is initiating the VSE by alienating virtually every natural constituency that it has. In addition to this hit on space education, the science community is becoming convinced that the VSE just means big cutbacks in its funding (At NASA, Clouds Are What You Zoom Through to Get to Mars – NY Times – Mar.21.05), the aviation community is now sure that NASA wants to eliminate all aeronautical research (Congress Quizzes NASA On Cuts in Aeronautics Spending – Space News – Mar.21.05), closing a research center or two will certainly reduce its circle of friends (NASA BRAC: a bad idea – The Space Review – Mar.21.05), and cancelling the Hubble repair mission angered every astronomy fan in the country.
It’s not as if NASA has a shortage of waste. It could clearly accomplish much more with its 16 billion dollar budget. Often it appears, however, that particular NASA programs are cut not because they are failing or because they lack cost-effectiveness, but because they are small and don’t have the political clout to fight back. Meanwhile, the huge Shuttle and ISS programs relentlessly suck up all funding in sight.
He also has an updated timeline for private space activities. He’s increasingly optimistic. Me too. But I’d expand on one point that he makes:
In the US, for example, it is quite possible that NASA’s new exploration initiative will fail to produce new systems that significantly lower the cost of access to space.
I would put it more strongly. It will almost certainly fail to do so, particularly since that doesn’t even seem to be a program goal.
Based on the results of the architecture studies so far, NASA seems to find it satisfactory to spend billions to send a handful of NASA astronauts to the moon once or twice a year fifteen years from now. Mike Griffin wants to develop a heavy-lift vehicle for that purpose. The traffic rate doesn’t justify one such a system, let alone the two that would be required to provide resiliency in the architecture.
The utter economic absurdity of our current approach to spaceflight (which seems largely a return to the glory days of Apollo) continues.
[Update a few minutes later]
One other comment on his new timeline:
2009-2010: …NASA cancels the CEV under development by one of the large aerospace consortiums and contracts with the America’s Space Prize winner for its launch needs.
I don’t know if they’ll cancel the CEV per se, because they still need an entry vehicle capable of returning astronauts from the moon, unless the plan changes to have them deorbit propulsively. This requires much more heat shielding than a simple entry vehicle from orbit, because the specific energy to be dissipated is twice as much.
What NASA will really have to do (and should be thinking about now) is how to design the CEV with the flexibility to “unbundle” its functions. Private access to orbit means that they don’t have to develop the CEVLV (which probably consists anyway of simply “human rating” an EELV like Delta 4 or Atlas V, whatever that quoted phrase turns out to mean), and they don’t have to deliver crew to orbit in the CEV command module. Cheap access to orbit, for both people and propellant, will require a radical rethinking of the requirements for a CEV from the current ones, including propellant depots at LEO (probably low inclination, not ISS orbit), as well as at L1 and on the lunar surface. With sufficient propellant available from the moon, propulsive circularization in LEO (perhaps with an aerobrake assist) from the lunar vicinity becomes a more reasonable proposition, and we can design systems that are more specialized for their environment, rather than one that, like Apollo, has to go all (or most) of the way to the moon from the earth’s surface, and return, which is the current CEV concept.
And part of that rethinking also has to be the possibility of private interest in developing regular commerce to and from the moon…
A Bucket Of Cold Water?
Amidst evidence that even the French people are revolting against the EU “constitution,” they are also recognizing that their naive attempt to repeal the laws of economics has utterly failed.
Reforming The Reformers
There’s an interesting article by John Fund in Opinion Journal today, about how the “grass-roots” cry for campaign finance reform was really astroturf bought and paid for by Pew:
Mr. Treglia admits that campaign-finance supporters had to try to hoodwink Congress because “they had lost legitimacy inside Washington because they didn’t have a constituency that would punish Congress if they didn’t vote for reform.”
If that constituency didn’t exist then, I’ll bet it’s even smaller now, with more people reading blogs. I hope that someone on the Hill reading this decides to introduce a bill that not only repeals McCain-Feingold, but also eliminates all of this donation-limit nonsense, and replaces it with a bill requiring nothing but full disclosure of any cash contributions from all sources, in whatever amount.
Schedule Problems
Reading them, that is.
This reporter Down Under seems to think that the CEV contractors will be selected on May 2nd. In fact, that’s the time that proposals are due (the RFP was released on March 1, with a two-month response time). There’s no way in the world that the source selection could occur that quickly. If you look at the program schedule from the Industry Day briefing a week and a half ago, you can see that the award will actually occur in August.
Defending Free Speech
Thanks to site designer Bill Simon, I’ve got a new graphic up, over on the left, for anyone who wants to use it to link to the Online Coalition.
But What If The Men Chew It?
Leave it to the Japanese, the most inventive people on the planet. They’ve come up with a chewing gum that enlarges women’s breasts. I wonder if they’re working on chewing tobacco for “male enhancement”? Not that I need it, of course…
I expect to start getting spam hawking it to me any day now.
What’s Wrong With This Picture?
I was looking up info about Lebanon, and I came across this interesting page. But there seems to be something missing:
Lebanon finally gained its independence in 1946, but was unfortunately ravaged by a 16-year civil war that ended in 1992
At the war’s conclusion, the Lebanese government and people finally established a more equitable political system, and began to rebuild the damaged infrastructure. Some cultural and religious conflicts (rather common in the Middle East) do remain, and the country still struggles with reforms.
No mention whatsoever of the country just to the east.
Contrast it with this page, from the same site, in which there’s no apparent hesitation to use the “O” word:
Today the Gaza Strip and West Bank (shown on the map above) are partially Israeli occupied, and the ever-changing boundaries and status of same are subject to on-going Israeli-Palestinian agreements and negotiations.
And note this map of some imaginary country called “Palestine.” And it uses that “O” word as well, with regard to the Golan Heights.
I guess that there are occupations, and then there are “occupations.”