…and scientific paradigm shifts, from A Jacksonian.
[Via Joe Katzman]
Half A Decade
Today is the fifth anniversary since President Bush announced his Vision for Space Exploration (has it really been that long?).
I have some thoughts on how it’s been going over at PJM. Bottom line: not so well.
Space Info Toolbar
Here’s a handy new aggregator for those interested in keeping on top of space news.
We’re All Jeff Gannon Now
Some thoughts on a lapdog press corps.
It’s not like we haven’t seen this before. Like the last time a Democrat was in the White House.
The Origin Of Life
An interesting new theory, for those well versed in organic chemistry.
[Update in the afternoon]
This seems related:
Not content with achieving one hallmark of life in the lab, Joyce and Lincoln sought to evolve their molecule by natural selection. They did this by mutating sequences of the RNA building blocks, so that 288 possible ribozymes could be built by mixing and matching different pairs of shorter RNAs.
What came out bore an eerie resemblance to Darwin’s theory of natural selection: a few sequences proved winners, most losers. The victors emerged because they could replicate fastest while surrounded by competition, Joyce says.
“I wouldn’t call these molecules alive,” he cautions. For one, the molecules can evolve only to replicate better. Reproduction may be the strongest – perhaps only – biological urge, yet even simple organisms go about this by more complex means than breakneck division. Bacteria and humans have both evolved the ability to digest lactose, or milk sugar, to ensure their survival, for instance.
Joyce says his team has endowed its molecule with another function, although he will not say what that might be before his findings are published.
More fundamentally, to mimic biology, a molecule must gain new functions on the fly, without laboratory tinkering. Joyce says he has no idea how to clear this hurdle with his team’s RNA molecule. “It doesn’t have open-ended capacity for Darwinian evolution.”
Not yet.
Still Time To Vote
The voting for best Middle-East/Africa blog is pretty much down to Juan Cole and Michael Totten. Please don’t sully the award by allowing Cole to win.
Something I just noticed, which is typical of leftists — false advertising. From the Bolsheviks (no, they weren’t really the majority), to “progressives” and “liberals” and support of “appropriate technology,” they have to steal a base with their misleading (to be polite) names. Not to mention, of course, Democratic. “Informed Comment” is just the latest (and even more presumptuous than usual) in the sham names.
Why I Don’t Call Democrats The “Democratic Party”
Exhibit…well, not A, but it’s up there:
The CRS report describes the dilemma for members of the majority who face such motions, by stating that they “have the effect of creating a diffcult political choice for Members who support both the underlying measure and the amendment contained in the motion to recommit.” It goes on:
If such proponents of the measure vote for the motion to recommit with “non-forthwith” instructions, they are voting to send the measure back to committee, delaying or potentially killing the bill and perhaps breaking with their own party. However, if such Members vote against the motion to recommitthey may be on public record as having voted against a policy that they (and perhaps their constituents) strongly support.
The report then notes that such a vote could later become the subject of a political ad. With the new rules change, Democrats are protecting themselves from the kind of accountability that Republicans faced when they were in the majority, and which majority Democrats also faced prior to their loss of Congressional control in 1994.
“The new rules basically shield them from taking embarrassing votes,” said Rep. Paul Ryan (R., Wisc.), ranking member of the House Budget Committee. “It denies us the ability to have clean votes based on our policy alternatives.” Note how Ryan’s language echoes that used by Fitzgerald 100 years ago.
The hypocrisy astounds, though it shouldn’t. And as noted, they will regret this rule change when (not if) they lose power.
Daisyworld
…meet rainmaking bacteria:
Barbara Nozière of Stockholm University, Sweden, and colleagues suggest that surfactants secreted by many species of bacteria could also influence the weather. While these are normally used to transport nutrients through membranes, the team have shown that they also break down the surface tension of water better than any other substance in nature. This led them to suspect that if the detergent was found in clouds it would stimulate the formation of water droplets.
This is the kind of thing that makes me skeptical about bureaucratic solutions to planetary engineering, natural or otherwise.
On Autopilot
OK, I was going to comment on the space portion of the president’s interview as well:
Q: Over the last eight years, they’ve had to make some decisions on priorities and spending. I was wondering how you assess how well NASA has done during your presidency and what do you think lies ahead for space exploration, and particularly manned space exploration.
THE PRESIDENT: I was very concerned about the dwindling enthusiasm for NASA when I first got here. And the reason why — and so we did a whole study of NASA and its future, and it became apparent to me that the space shuttle was losing its glamour and, frankly, people weren’t convinced of its necessity. And the space station was important, but it just didn’t have — the mission itself didn’t capture a lot of folks — the imagination of a lot of folks in Congress.
And so we changed the mission, as you know, of NASA. We said we’re going to stop flying the shuttle in 2010 and develop a Orion rocket or Orion launching vehicle to go to the moon, to get back to lunar exploration. And the purpose there is to eventually settle in and develop enough facility in the Moon to then be able to go beyond.
And so my first purpose on the NASA issue was to develop a mission that would excite the scientists, the employees, and the Congress. That has been accomplished. I know there is a gap that concerns people, and that would be the gap between the last shuttle and the beginning of the new Orion rocket program. Nevertheless, I do think it’s — the mission has to be very relevant. And so I’ve been a believer in NASA and space exploration since I’ve been the President, and I’m excited about the new mission.
I’d say first that he didn’t seem to think it necessary to excite the American people — just the “scientists” (whatever he means by that), the “employees” (of NASA? of the contractors? all of the above?) and the Congress. Perhaps, though, that was an oversight. I do think, though, that it reveals a conventional mindset — that space is about “science.” It also reveals that he is a) familiar with the broad outlines of the plan that he announced exactly five years ago (was it really that long?) on Wednesday and that b) he is familiar with only the broad outlines. He knows that the capsule has been since named Orion, and either doesn’t know, or has forgotten the name of the launcher (Ares).
I don’t think that this is a reflection on his intelligence so much as his focus. There have been arguments over at Space Politics over how much culpability the administration has in the developing disaster of ESAS/Constellation/whatever, since the new policy was announced half a decade ago. It is certainly not in keeping with either the Aldridge Commission recommendations (as I remind my readers on probably more than a weekly basis), nor with the goals stated by John Marburger (the White House science adviser) to bring the solar system within the economic sphere of humanity.
I agree that ultimately the buck stops in the Oval Office, and that the Bush administration is responsible for letting NASA drop the ball by not supervising them sufficiently. But I disagree with those who say that it has engaged in a crime of commission (i.e., it actually actively directed and approved the current direction), rather than omission (just not paying much attention). I believe that it was the latter, and I think that the president’s statement is evidence for that. They were forced to divert themselves from more pressing issues in 2003 to focus on space policy as a result of the loss of Columbia (now almost six years ago at the beginning of next month). They came up with new policy, and then, a little over a year later, hired a new administrator to implement it.
He came highly credentialed and recommended. They thought that once he was in place, they could go refocus on more pressing issues They expected him to do it right, and didn’t want or expect to have to look over his shoulder to make sure that he did, particularly when he was supposed to be the expert rocket scientist. As a result, Mike Griffin had free reign to drive the program into the ditch, with little attention or interference from the White House.
And once again, we see that civil space is unimportant. I’d like to Hope that this will Change in the new administration. Well, I do hope so. But I don’t expect it.
Nuts
We’ve lost another of the so-called Greatest Generation — General Harry Kinnard has died:
he was perhaps best remembered for what happened in December 1944 at the Belgian town of Bastogne, where the 101st Airborne Division, short on clothing and boots in a snowstorm and bitter cold, was surrounded by German troops.
Bastogne, at the intersection of important roads, was a crucial objective for the Germans in their surprise attack in the Ardennes region of Belgium, an offensive that had created a “bulge” in Allied lines.
On Dec. 22, two German officers approached the American lines in Bastogne carrying a demand that the American commander surrender his troops within two hours or face annihilation from an artillery barrage.
The message was passed on to Brig. Gen. Anthony C. McAuliffe, acting as division commander while Maj. Gen. Maxwell D. Taylor was in Washington.
Kinnard, a lieutenant colonel at the time and the division’s operations officer, would recall that McAuliffe “laughed and said: ‘Us surrender? Aw, nuts.'”
As Kinnard related it long afterward in an interview with Patrick O’Donnell, a military historian: “He pondered for a few minutes and then told the staff, ‘Well, I don’t know what to tell them.’ He then asked the staff what they thought, and I spoke up, saying, ‘That first remark of yours would be hard to beat.’
Though I’ve also heard that this is the bowdlerized version for the press, and the actual response to von Lüttwitz’s was…errrrr…an invitation to have sexual relations forced upon him.
Also, I hadn’t realized that he had commanded the First Cav in the Battle of the Ia Drang Valley.
In any event, resquiescat in pacem to a warrior for freedom.