Media Criticism, Political Commentary, War Commentary

Man Bites Dog

2 Comments

“Gaza is Hamas’ fault.” Not an unusual sentiment (though not usual enough), but scrape your jaw off the floor when you hear that it was said by an EU official. The usual suspects aren’t pleased, of course:

A Hamas official, Mushir al-Masri, was quoted by Reuters as saying his group was “shocked” at Michel’s comments. He lambasted the official for “giving cover to massacres and terrorism committed by the Zionist enemy against the Palestinian people… Palestinian resistance is as legitimate as the resistance of European countries that fought against foreign occupiers.”

Well, I have to admit that I share their shock. But not their dismay. I guess their mendacious game isn’t working as well as it used to.

[Evening update]

As long as they’re having a fit of sanity, the EU might want to consider the fungibility of money, and whether or not they’re fueling violence with foreign aid to the so-called Palestinians.

Administrative, History

Old And New

3 Comments

Here’s a picture from the balcony of my room overlooking the Savannah River, of a South Korean container ship heading downriver toward the ocean (to the right in this image — the view is toward the northeast), with an old barquentine in the foreground. Well, actually, not so old. It was actually built a couple decades ago, based on concepts from the eighteenth century.

Note that it’s still overcast. Since leaving the Sunshine State a couple days ago, I haven’t seen the sun. I’m not complaining, though. Florida sun has the same depressing effect on me that rain in Seattle has on others. It would be nice to get some nice light for a few shots of the town before we leave, though.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Survey The Upcoming Disaster

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The proposed “Stimulus” Package is on line now.

As Glenn Reynolds says, it’s basically a massive transfer of wealth to the politically connected from the politically unconnected.

[Update a few minutes later]

Robert Samuelson has some gloomy thoughts:

in practice, the stimulus could disappoint. Parts of the House package look like a giant political slush fund, with money sprinkled to dozens of programs. There’s $50 million for the National Endowment for the Arts, $200 million for the Teacher Incentive Fund and $15.6 billion for increased Pell Grants to college students. Some of these proposals, whatever their other merits, won’t produce many new jobs.

Another problem: Construction spending — for schools, clinics, roads — may start so slowly that there will be little immediate economic boost. The Congressional Budget Office examined $356 billion in spending proposals and concluded that only 7 percent would be spent in 2009 and 31 percent in 2010.

Assume, however, that the stimulus is a smashing success. It cushions the recession. Unemployment (now: 7.2 percent) stops rising at, say, 8 percent instead of 10 percent. Still, a temporary stimulus can’t fuel a permanent recovery. That requires a strong financial system to supply an expanding economy’s credit needs. How we get that isn’t clear.

I hope it doesn’t take another war to get us out of this.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space, Space History

Restructuring The Dream

3 Comments

I was going to write about this latest attempt to resurrect the mythical “Apollo spirit” by former CNN science reporter Miles O’Brien. But fortunately, Paul Spudis gives him the history lesson so I don’t have to. Well, not just so I don’t have to — that’s just a nice side effect for me, because I’m busy.

As Paul notes, Mike Griffin and (to a lesser degree, even before Griffin) NASA’s biggest mistake is in assuming that we can just pick up where we left off with the unsustainable and unaffordable Apollo program and somehow sustain and afford it. NASA has to get much more innovative, think about how to use existing infrastructure that has other uses (which is why it should, at least initially, be EELV rather than Shuttle derived), encourage and involve the private sector to a much greater degree, and think marginal cost rather than development cost, or they’ll end up with another Shuttle, and station, regardless of what the mold lines of the vehicles look like.

[Update a few minutes later]

Unsurprisingly, Mark Whittington (who really ought to fix his permalinks so they don’t double the tag) is still guzzling the koolaid by the pitcher.

[Another update a couple minutes later]

Over at The Space Review (which now seems to be allowing comments, though there are none yet at this article), Stokes McMillan hopes that Kennedy’s first 100 days will be repeated by Obama.

Don’t count on it. In fact, don’t even hope for it, if it’s a repeat of Apollo. Apollo was a unique set of circumstances, and unlikely to repeat. In order for history to repeat, using the JFK model, would be for him to have some humiliating foreign policy event comparable to the Bay of Pigs (unfortunately, that one’s not at all unlikely…) and then another exogenous event that spurs us into another space race. The only thing that I could think of that would be comparable to the double blow of first being beaten into space four years later, and then beaten into a man in space in the first hundred days, would be a surprise manned Mars landing by (say) the Chinese. And even then, I wouldn’t bet on a revitalized American space program as a response.

Sorry, but compared to other administration perceived concerns (global warming, lack of health care, the economy, etc.) space simply isn’t important. And it hasn’t been for over forty years.

[Update a while later]

Don’t look to the Europeans to scare us into another space race. Space isn’t important there, either:

Sources close to the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV)/Advanced Reentry Vehicle (ARV) team are telling Hyperbola that the November 2008 ESA ministerial meeting outcome was seen as catastrophic for the agency’s hopes for ARV operating before the International Space Station (ISS) is de-orbited, even with a 2020 end of life target, and a follow-on manned version of ARV.

But there will be plenty of jobs, so it’s OK.

General, Humor

The Rogue Cotter Pin

Adventures in garage-door repair, with James Lileks:

I pushed it back into place, ran the door down, and discovered something: the end of a cotter pin that’s been there for nine years had managed to turn itself around 90 degrees so it plucked the edge of the sensor bracket as it travelled up. For a moment I felt like a prison warden discovering a six-mile tunnel dug with spoons and thimbles – you have to admire the effort, the ingenuity, the sheer determination. The pin was trying to escape. Day after day, year after year, it had been trying to pull itself out – but like escapees who run into a brick foundation from an old building razed decades before (why didn’t you tell us, Pops? I didn’t know! There was never anything there, not even when I came here in ’21!) it hadn’t counted on the sensor bracket giving the game away.

How could it have?

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Space, Space Science, Technology and Society

Missing The Point At The Economist

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I just want to pull my hair, of which I have little to spare, when I read editorials like this:

Luckily, technology means that man can explore both the moon and Mars more fully without going there himself. Robots are better and cheaper than they have ever been. They can work tirelessly for years, beaming back data and images, and returning samples to Earth. They can also be made sterile, which germ-infested humans, who risk spreading disease around the solar system, cannot.

Here we go again. Humans versus robots, it’s all about science and exploration. It is not all about science and/or exploration. The space program is about much more than that, but the popular mythology continues.

Humanity, some will argue, is driven by a yearning to boldly go to places far beyond its crowded corner of the universe. If so, private efforts will surely carry people into space (though whether they should be allowed to, given the risk of contaminating distant ecosystems, is worth considering). In the meantime, Mr Obama’s promise in his inauguration speech to “restore science to its rightful place” sounds like good news for the sort of curiosity-driven research that will allow us to find out whether those plumes of gas are signs of life.

Hey, anyone who reads this site know that I’m all for private efforts carrying people into space. They also know that I don’t think that anyone has a right to not “allow them to do so,” and that I place a higher value on humanity and expanding earthly life into the universe than on unknown “distant ecosystems.” What have “distant ecosystems” ever done for the solar system?

I also question the notion that Obama’s gratuitous digs at the Bush science policy had anything whatsoever to do with space policy. And of course, to imagine that they did, is part of the confused policy trap of thinking that space is synonymous with science.

Administrative, History

It’s Alive

Yes, we drove up to Savannah on Saturday, and spent yesterday poking around. The weather’s been ugly (literally — overcast) so I haven’t bothered to take pics, though I may have some later if it clears up. It’s actually a more interesting place than I expected (not that I had low expectations). A lot of interesting history here. I had been unaware that it was where the Georgia colony was established. I was also unaware that it was the major port of departure, and home of the global exchange, for cotton for decades. There are ships moving up and down the river outside my hotel room window as I type, but I’m seeing a lot more containers than cotton bails.

Administrative

Georgia On Our Mind

Other than lots of layovers at Hartsfield, I’ve never spent any time in the state of Georgia. Patricia has some business in Savannah next week, though, so we’re driving up there this weekend to check the place out. It should be interesting to see the antebellum architecture there. Savannah is sort of like Prague — it managed to avoid the ravages of a war that destroyed much else in the region (they surrendered to Sherman as he ended his march to the sea).

I’ll have Internet, in theory, but I also have work (and I’ll be heading off to LA the week after) so blogging may be light.

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!