There are no simple answers.
Category Archives: Social Commentary
Is Our Teachers Learning?
I am completely unshocked to hear that schools of education do a terrible job of teaching teachers:
“We don’t know how to prepare teachers,” said Arthur Levine, former president of Teachers College at Columbia University and author of a scathing critique of teacher preparation. “We can’t decide whether it’s a craft or a profession. Do you need a lot of education as you would in a profession, or do you need a little bit and then learn on the job, like a craft? I don’t know of any other profession that’s so uncertain about how to educate their professionals.”
You don’t say.
The SNAP Challenge
Democrats shopping badly.
The country’s in the very best of hands.
The President’s Auto Insurance
One of the most amusingly stupid categories of spam I get is emails about how “Congress passed a bill” or “The president signed a law” resulting in lower auto insurance or (as they often idiotically say) “driving” rates. They sometimes try to tie it into current events. Here are two nutty subject lines today:
“President’s G8 Summit Meeting Yields Lower Auto Ins. For All,”
and
“Following meet with Putin, President announces lower auto ins. for all.”
Sadly, there are enough idiots out there that this probably does work. Until we come up with some cost for emailing, spam will persist.
Hollywood
Is it going out of business?
As late as 1981, Hollywood could still muster up enough energy to care what the audience thinks and want to please it. Today, the American moviegoer is anathema, particularly now that he’s no longer buying sufficient quantities of DVDs to support the lavish lifestyle of Hollywood elites, despite following the advice of Hollywood elites who told him to stop buying DVDs.
It certainly deserves to.
One Ring To Rule Them All
Regardless of what one thinks about the legality of the NSA surveillance, it has gotten peoples’ attention in a way that none of the other abuses of power have.
The Bozo Leviathan
If you had the misfortune to be blown up by the Tsarnaev brothers, and are now facing a future with one leg and suddenly circumscribed goals, like those brave Americans featured on the cover of the current People magazine under the headline “Boston Tough,” you might wish Boston had been a little tougher on Tamerlan and spent less time chasing the phantoms of “Free America Citizens.” But, in fact, it would have been extremely difficult to track the Tsarnaevs at, say, the mosque they attended. Your Granny’s phone calls, your teenager’s Flickr stream, and your Telecharge tickets for two on the aisle at Mamma Mia! for your wife’s birthday, and the MasterCard bill for dinner with your mistress three days later are all fair game, but since October 2011 mosques have been off-limits to the security state. If the FBI guy who got the tip-off from Moscow about young Tamerlan had been sufficiently intrigued to want to visit the Boston mosque where he is said to have made pro-terrorism statements during worship, the agent would have been unable to do so without seeking approval from something called the Sensitive Operations Review Committee high up in Eric Holder’s Department of Justice. The Sensitive Operations Review Committee is so sensitive nobody knows who’s on it. You might get approved, or you might get sentenced to extra sensitivity training for the next three months. Even after the bombing, the cops forbore to set foot in the lads’ mosque for four days. Three hundred million Americans are standing naked in the NSA digital scanner, but the all-seeing security state has agreed that not just their womenfolk but Islam itself can be fully veiled from head to toe.
We have a government that’s doing all sorts of things that it shouldn’t be doing, and is utterly incompetent at both them, and the things it should be doing.
Doubling Lifespan
Maybe not.
Space Safety Regulation
Too much or too little? Clark Lindsey has a post linking to the two extremes. I’d say that Carolynne Campbell-Knight’s piece isn’t just overwraught, but hysterical:
Make no mistake, if a few very wealthy people get killed, the waivers they signed won’t mean a thing if they didn’t know the risks. It may make no difference whether they knew the risks or not. There will be a massive outcry, huge negative publicity and a demand for regulation and accountability. That would be the end of passenger space travel for decades and the damage to the industry would be immense. A wise industry would regulate itself, set published standards, and be open about the risks involved. It would do this before the disaster happens.
When the West was wild, it was a different era. A Wild West in space won’t be acceptable in the day of 24 hour news and the litigious society.
Right now, the risks are not being properly declared. The impression is being given that riding rockets can be as safe as a ride in a light aircraft. That simply isn’t true. Rockets are dangerous and even the most careful engineering can only make them ‘as safe as possible’. They can’t make them ‘safe’.
I’m unaware of anyone “giving the impression” that these vehicles will be as safe as light aircraft. I think that she’s just unjustifiably inferring that. Here’s what I wrote in the book:
Some will argue that part of promoting the industry is to ensure that it doesn’t kill its customers, but the industry already has ample incentive to not do that, and the FAA isn’t any smarter on that subject than the individual companies within it — everyone is still learning.
There is a popular view in the space community that the first time someone dies in private spaceflight it will somehow doom the industry. Bluntly, I believe that is nonsense, because it is based on absolutely no evidence. In fact, there is an abundance of counterevidence with examples being the early aviation industry, various extreme sports including free diving and mountaineering, and even the recent cruise-ship disaster of the Costa Concordia, in which at least thirty passengers died.
In fact, it may take just such a death, a sanguineous christening, to normalize this business, and end the mystical thinking about it.
She herself isn’t consistent on the issue:
While there are some treaties covering satellites and debris, there are no laws. There is no regulator. It’s the wild west in space. Who is going to license and oversee the new commercial ventures? Those involved in this commerce think regulation is a bad thing and that it will preclude innovation. That’s what the early railroads thought. But then the bodies started piling up. When is an aircraft a spaceship? What’s the difference? Regulators such as the FAA have no experience in spacecraft. Once you’re above the atmosphere there are no rules, certainly no laws. If the history of transportation teaches us anything, it teaches us that there will be a dangerous mess until a regulatory regime is established.
If FAA has no experience in spacecraft (actually, they do have some), then how can they, or anyone else, be expected to establish a regulatory regime, until we get some experience actually flying? Not to mention that we do in fact have definitions for aircraft and spaceships, in the Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act.
And as Clark notes:
The same regulations that help keep a vehicle from crashing onto third parties also help protect the second parties in the vehicle. The companies are highly motivated to provide safe space travel. While the industry will go on from an accident, it will be very difficult for the company involved to do so. There will be a long grounding and many customers will no doubt demand refunds. Some states have now limited liability exposure for space tourism operators and manufacturers, but there is no limit when gross negligence is found. An accident will also mean the end of the “learning period” in which the FAA is restricted from applying new regulations on personal spaceflight.
I’ve really got to get the book out.
Astronaut Wives
It wasn’t necessarily what they signed up for.