Category Archives: Political Commentary

Business, Political Commentary, Popular Culture, Space, Space History, Technology and Society

NASA’s Bureaucracy

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This comment over at NASA Watch is a pretty good description of the problem, on the 57th anniversary of the agency transforming from the NACA (which it needs to return to) to NASA:

In another current post on NW, Wayne Hale laments that the lengthy list of specifications is going to kill the commercial crew effort. Why this lengthy list of specs? Maybe because the NASA people who wrote the program requirements had no actual experience in developing any space hardware, and they did not know which specs to select, so they just included them all?

I should also note that it is not because more experienced and more qualified people were not available in these instances of program management, vehicle design, or spec writing. There were people with experience in Shuttle, Spacehab (commercial), Mir systems development, and with DOD programs, but the NASA management went with people they “knew” despite their lack of experience. You can look all the way to the top of the program, the AA for manned spaceflight, and he has little more experience, and so how can he provide the guidance for others to “learn the trade”. In fact he appears to have been responsible for naming a large number of his contemporaries, all from his old organization, payload operations, to leading positions. I don’t think they’ve worked out too well.

The mission ops directorate has the right idea-they require people to be certified and as they get certified their careers progress and they move from document writer to flight controller to flight director. The other technical/engineering disciplines do not have this and so we wound up in a situation where virtually anyone with a degree can be selected for almost any position.

Now, especially after 3 decades of ISS, you have the big bureaucracy in which the main experience base is in meeting attendance. And the people without the experience in the top positions are fearful of the people who actually have any education and experience. This is a corrupt bureaucracy.

That Wayne Hale post, from five years ago, is sadly prophetic.

History, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

Why Fiorina Outrages The Left

31 Comments

She has “exposed another socialist bone heap.” They don’t take well to having their mass murder exposed.

And the comparison with Solzhenitsyn is quite apt.

[Wednesday-morning update]

Remember that time the Left said that Fiorina lied about the video? I know you’ll find this shocking, but they lied.

[Bumped]

[Update mid-afternoon]

Thoughts on Planned Parenthood: Our summer of Omelas:

In 1973, award-winning science fiction author Ursula Le Guin published a very short story-essay titled “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas.” It described a dreamlike summer festival in Omelas, a beautiful city that embodies everyone’s utopia, a magical place where everyone was joyful, a place where sorrow never touched the citizens or guests. But beneath that city lay a secret: all its joy and pleasure depended on the suffering and misery of a single lonely, abused child living in a filthy basement. If that child were saved, all of Omelas would fall, its beauty and perfection lost.

The citizens of Omelas, when they reached a certain age, were taken below to view the child so that they might understand their civilization. Most rationalized the suffering, as was encouraged: the child was mentally defective anyway, it could never be happy now if taken out, it was incapable of appreciating the beauty of the world like others. Only a few could not bear the truth, but instead of removing the child and Omelas be damned, they walked away, leaving for parts unknown.

America has had a summer of Omelas.

[Update a few minutes later[

Democrats: The party of abortion, not the party of women.

That link via Elizabeth Price Foley, who adds:

Moreover, never mind that Republicans are spearheading the effort to make birth control pills more widely available by classifying them as over-the-counter–something the Democrats and Planned Parenthood vehemently oppose. And never mind that Republicans wish to expand access to all kinds of women’s medical care–not just abortion and contraception–by expanding funding for community health centers. None of that fits with the Democrats’ “war on women” label, so it can’t be too widely discussed.

If the Republicans in Congress were smart (a big if, I know), they would start talking about the Democrats’ “war on birth control” and “war on women’s health.”

Don’t hold your breath. They’re stupid.

Political Commentary, Popular Culture, Science And Society, Space

Martian Brine

4 Comments

I haven’t had much to say about Monday’s “big” announcement, but Joel Achenbach has the straight scoop. In light of renewed concerns about planetary protection, from Emily Lakdawalla and others, I’m thinking about writing an op-ed on why we’re going to Mars, or sending humans into space at all.

[Update a couple minutes later]

I don’t know if I have the time or energy to properly fisk this right now, but Alana Massey says that sending humans to Mars is a terrible idea.

Culinary, Health, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society

More Junk Nutrition Science

5 Comments

This is appalling:

While eliminating saturated fats can improve heart health, a new study shows that it makes a difference which foods are used in their place. A study shows that replacing saturated fats with unsaturated fats and high-quality carbohydrates has the most impact on reducing the risk of heart disease. When saturated fats were replaced with highly processed foods, there was no benefit.

You don’t say.

In other words, you’re replacing good stuff with bad stuff, but when you replace the good stuff with less-terrible stuff, your results aren’t as bad. Pro tip to cardiologists: There is zero scientific evidence that eliminating saturated fat improves heart health.

And here’s a chef who’s an idiot.

Yes, restaurants are making you fat, but not because they’re serving you fat.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Popular Culture, Science And Society, Social Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

Filthy Meatbag Bodies On Mars

21 Comments

As Keith Cowing points out, the Planetary Society is in no hurry to put anyone on the surface of the Red Planet. They want to do Apollo to Mars, but take almost three and a half decades before the first boots on Mars, and almost four decades before long-term habitation. Though Firouz Naderi claims that keeping it under the cost limit makes it more likely, I’d say that it is doomed to failure. Something that takes that long, accomplishes so little, for so much money, is unsustainable in a democratic Republic. This is why Apollo to Mars is doomed in general. I’m discussing this in the Kickstarter project. We need to have a different approach, starting with an end to the phrase “space exploration” as the reason we send humans into space.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Here’s the link to the report. I’m reading it now, hoping it will have some useful cost data from Aerospace.

JPL Mars Mission Schedule

[Update a while later]

Even Chris Carberry recognizes that we won’t ever get another “Kennedy moment.” I’m not sure, though, how one “stays the course” to Mars, when there is no course.

[Late-morning update]

Over at Sarah Hoyt’s place NASA employee Les Johnson proposes (wait for it) Apollo to Mars.

It is not going to happen, and it should not happen.

Culinary, Health, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Technology and Society

Ending The War On Dietary Fat

More and more people are figuring out that the low-fat diet recommendations have been making things worse:

Now when we hold our annual sixteen-week Greater Fall River Fitness Challenge, the longest-running event of its kind in the country that draws over hundreds of people each year, we tell participants that they won’t see any significant weight loss unless they also make substantial changes in what they eat. A low-carb information and support group follows each weekly hour-long work-out, and our cooking demonstrations show people how they can switch to a low-carb lifestyle and lose weight without going hungry as they used to with low-fat, calorie-restricted diets.

Diabetic and overweight patients in a local hospital are already getting terrific results following a low-carb, high-fat approach. While it’s too soon to see measurable changes in overall obesity rates in our city with our new approach, we think we are now on the right track in advising our residents to stay away from low-fat products and diets and to incorporate healthy fats while limiting sugars and refined grains. For those who are already following this advice, we are seeing terrific results.

Interesting that they’re also backing off on the recommendation to exercise, at least with regard to weight loss.

Anyway, someone should tell Michelle Obama, on the slight hope that she’ll end her nationwide industrial-grade low-fat child abuse in the schools.

[Update late morning]

CSPI strikes back. Stupidly (as usual).

In a just world, CSPI would be sued for all of the premature deaths it has helped cause through its long-time promotion of junk science.

Law, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

What Did Hillary Do Wrong?

38 Comments

A summary from Sharyl Atkisson.

I think the commenter over there may be right. Obama wants this to hurt Hillary enough to keep her from becoming president, but he doesn’t want the emails related to Benghazi to be exposed to daylight.

[Update a few minutes later]

It’s not just about Hillary’s crimes and boobery, but the incredible ineptitude of the State Department:

The departing manager of the average pizza restaurant is handled more carefully than departing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was. The Obama Administration was so utterly contemptuous of the public’s need to know, and the prerogatives of Congressional oversight committees, that it simply never gave any thought to securing emails the SecState wrote on behalf of the United States of America, until Congress and federal judges forced them to pay attention to the matter.

And I’m sure they’re very angry about it.

[Friday-afternoon update]

Two of Hillary’s scandals merge into one.

The email scandal is politically dangerous for Clinton because it supports the preconception of her as clannish, paranoid, and privileged. The Clinton Foundation scandal is toxic because it fosters the impression that, under Clinton, American diplomatic influence was a commodity available to the highest bidder, regardless of U.S. national interest. The convergence of those two scandals would doom the careers of Clinton and those who surrounded her all those Halcion years.

I wish. But she’s been getting away with lies, felonies and corruption for decades.

And the campaign is having trouble keeping its lies straight.

That’s always the problem with lying.

[Update a few minutes later]

Oopsie. More work emails from her “private” account. With David Petraeus.

[Bumped]

[Update a few minutes later]

Democrats starting to figure out what a terrible liar Hillary is.

They’d have no problem at all, as long as she was good at it, like Bill.