All posts by Rand Simberg

Space

Debate

Ken Murphy critiques recent pieces by both Bob Zubrin and Gregg Easterbrook. I may take a shot at the Easterbrook thing myself a little later, if I get time.

I still await the opportunity for an on-line debate on space with Gregg, but he doesn’t seem interested in doing that with anyone who knows what they’re talking about.

[Update at 1 PM EST]

Clark Lindsey has further thoughts:

Seems like he could call a scientist like Paul Spudis or Larry Taylor and listen to their reasons for advocating a return to the Moon. But I guess contrary facts would mess up the flow of his essay.

Space

Much Ado About Not Much

This is silly. There’s nothing either new, or illegal, about NASA administrators endorsing political candidates (though some, thinking NASA some kind of “special” agency, above the fray, may find it distasteful). The Hatch Act was meant to prevent civil servants from being pressured to engage in political activity by political appointees, not to prevent political appointees from committing acts of politics.

[Update a few minutes later]

The problem here is not that the administrator is doing anything wrong in such an endorsement, but that, as Keith Cowing points out, he can’t keep his story straight as to whether he is or isn’t, or whether he can or can’t.

And this email to Dr. Griffin from a “tax payer” is also silly:

When you say that “every effort should be made to re-elect him to office” that sounds to me like a civil servant making an endorsement of a political candidate and a violation of the Hatch Act. I am a huge fan and supporter of the space program. It is hard for me to imagine why it is helpful to tie a corrupt politician to NASA, which needs more federal support, not less, especially when you just had to cut your science budget to shreds.

I am a tax payer and pay your salary and you do not speak for me when you publicly encourage people to re-elect someone who has become less effective since he has been indicted on felony charges. If another NASA employee had made this same speech, would he or she have been fired?

a) As already noted, this is not a violation of the Hatch Act.

b) Whether or not Tom Delay is a “corrupt politician” is a matter of opinion, not fact (and in fact will remain so even if he were to be convicted, though the case for it would obviously be stronger).

c) Whether or not such an endorsement increases, decreases, or has no effect whatsoever on public support for NASA is purely speculative (my opinion is the latter).

d) The notion that just because someone is a taxpayer, all public officials are “speaking for them” is ludicrous and illogical. Even ignoring the fact that he puts forth no reason why anyone would conclude that a taxpayer’s views are somehow being represented by public officials’ statements, consider the inherent contradiction, since many public officials say many things, often at odds with each other. How could anyone think that they all speak for our confused emailer without their head exploding?

e) Finally, yes, some other NASA employees could potentially get in trouble for making such a speech, because they would be covered by the Hatch Act. Not all NASA employees are equal, despite the egalitarian ideals of some NASA idealists.

Science And Society

They Have To Be Carefully Untaught

Here’s a study that says that children are natural scientists:

Apparently it takes a concerted effort on the part of many so-called science teachers in the public schools to slowly beat it out of them, over the course of several years.

But I wonder if anyone pondered the implications of this?

Schulz said she believes this is the first study that looks at how probabilistic evidence affects children’s reasoning about unobserved causes. The researchers found that children are conservative about unobserved causes (they don’t always think mysterious things are happening) but would rather accept unobserved causes than accept that things happen at random.

This probably explains the appeal of ID (partly because evolution isn’t properly explained). If one believes that evolution is “random” (which is how it’s too often explained), then there will be a natural tendency to look for the man behind the curtain.

But of course, it’s not. What’s random is the mutations themselves, not how they’re selected. One sees many fallacies related to this in critiques of evolution, in which people figure out the probability of a monkey typing a sonnet, by assuming that each monkey starts anew with each try, and showing that it’s astronomically improbable. With that assumption, of course, the creation of the sonnet is quite unlikely.

But if a monkey gets the first word right, and that’s the starting point for the next monkey, then the result will out, and in a surprisingly short time, because the process isn’t random. It’s directed by an evolutionary force (in this particular case, the desire to have something that looks like a sonnet).

In the natural case, of course, it’s driven by the fact that things that don’t look like sonnets (that is, that have traits that cause their phenotypes to die before reproducing) don’t go on to the next generation.

Technology and Society

Ummmmm…Soylent

OK, my question is, will vegetarians be willing to eat this?

“I don’t find it hard to believe that in vitro meat can be produced that tastes like hamburger or chicken nuggets,” said Jason Matheny, one of the founders of Vive Research, a U.S. form working on growing meat for the global market. Most of the flavour in burgers and nuggets now sold in grocery stores or restaurants comes from seasoning or filler, he said.

Researchers have succeeded in growing bits of meat, the type that could be used in burgers or spaghetti sauce.

I mean vegetarians who are for ethical reasons, not because they don’t like the taste of meat.

And speaking of ethics, here’s a conundrum:

One group, which he would not name, did offer him money, but they wanted him to grow meat from human cells, so they could grow pieces of themselves to eat.

“I don’t want to participate in high-tech human cannibalism,” he said he told them.

Theoretically, he said, it would be possible. Researchers have harvested human myoblasts, cells that can grow into muscle fibre.

OK, so what would be wrong with that (ignoring the “yuck” factor)?

It kind of depends on why you think that cannibalism is wrong. In fact, it’s akin to the dilemma of child p0rn that is produced without harming (or even utilizing) children. Is it wrong because someone else is hurt in the production of it, or is there something intrinsically wrong with it? In the case of the latter, the Supreme Court has ruled (at least it’s my understanding) that the purpose of child-p0rn laws is to protect children from being molested in the production of the product, not (just) because the existence of child p0rn is perceived to be opposed to the best interests of society.

This seems similar to me. People will argue (as they do with synthetic p0rn) that having ready access to long pork may cause some people to want to experience the more gourmet version–the real thing, perhaps with a side of fava beans and a nice chianti, and should thus be made illegal, even though no persons are harmed in the manufacture of it.

I don’t necessarily agree with that, but it’s an interesting debate.

Political Commentary

Supersized Idiot

I heard an interview with Morgan Spurlock on NPR when his crdocumentary on McDonald’s came out, and thought him a fool as a result. The basis of the movie (as I understand it, based on the interview–I haven’t actually seen it) was that fast food was bad for you. He apparently, and admittedly demonstrated this by ordering the worst possible things from the McDonalds menu for weeks on end, and foregoing exercise. I leave the illogic of his thesis, and means of proving it, to the reader.

Now we find out that he’s been giving insulting and obscene speeches to high-school students, including making fun of the special ed students. His “apology” is pathetic, as many of his commenters note.

[Via Joanne Jacobs, whose important new book on education you should purchase this week, to help make her birthday on Friday a happier one]