Education, Media Criticism

Why I Like Reading Blogs

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I hadn’t thought about it before until I saw this post by Kate Woodbury, but it’s because blog posts contain a lot of the words “I” and “me.”

Since “no first-person” inevitably results in bad writing (an overabundance of passive voice; the use of “one” or “student” instead of “I”), I always tell my students, “You may use first-person in my class. In other classes, check with the instructor.”

I never thought much about WHY teachers were telling students this. I vaguely remember someone telling me not to use first-person, and I vaguely remember ignoring that someone; other than that, it didn’t seem like an important issue.

However, I recently discovered at least one reason teachers ban first-person: prevented from using first-person, students will set aside me-centered thinking and use credible evidence; that is, rather than saying, “I think this, thus it is true,” students will write, “According to expert X . . .”

I don’t buy this argument; in fact, I think banning first-person usage ends up doing more damage than good. If the problem is the lack of expert/credible sources in students’ writing, not using first-person doesn’t solve the problem; it just covers it up. After all, a first-person’s account could be more credible than an “expert’s” account. I’d much rather read a student’s personal/eyewitness account of 9/11 than a thousand third-person conspiracy theories.

The key is in the first sentence. Being forced to write in third person often results in stilted, boring prose. Unfortunately, the modern journalistic ethos, probably hammered into them in J-School, is that “objective” news stories must be written third person. This is why good bloggers (even taking away the bias) write far better and more readable pieces, than most conventional journalists. They don’t have to do it with one “I” tied behind their back.

[Via her post on liberal fascism and Calvinism]

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Sixty-Four Years On

5 Comments

Some thoughts on D-Day, from Jennifer Rubin.

One of the reasons that I do my WW II reporting parodies is to show that, over half a century after the achievements of the “greatest generation,” modern Americans and modern journalists have no concept of the losses and sacrifice of a real war, as demonstrated by all the whining about Iraq.

[Update mid afternoon]

Roger Kimball has received an early report of the progress on the beaches:

June 6, 1944. -NORMANDY- Three hundred French civilians were killed and thousands more wounded today in the first hours of America’s invasion of continental Europe. Casualties were heaviest among women and children.

Most of the French casualties were the result of the artillery fire from American ships attempting to knock out German fortifications prior to the landing of hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops. Reports from a makeshift hospital in the French town of St. Mere Eglise said the carnage was far worse than the French had anticipated and reaction against the American invasion was running high. “We are dying for no reason,” said a Frenchman speaking on condition of anonymity. “Americans can’t even shoot straight. I never thought I’d say this, but life was better under Adolph Hitler.”

The invasion also caused severe environmental damage. American troops, tanks, trucks and machinery destroyed miles of pristine shoreline and thousands of acres of ecologically sensitive wetlands. It was believed that the habitat of the spineless French crab was completely wiped out, threatening the species with extinction.

Of course, they bungled the occupation, too.

Economics, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Technology and Society

Geoengineering

9 Comments

A brief survey of potential global warming solutions. What is more interesting to me than the engineering is the politics and ethics of all this. Asteroid diversion falls in the same category. But at least some of these things could drive a need for low-cost space access in an unprecedented manner.

But this is one that doesn’t really seem to be in this category, unless it were mandated. It’s more of a “think globally, act locally” approach:

On the opposite end of the spectrum is the ultra-low-tech approach of painting rooftops white to reflect sunlight.

We’ve been thinking about doing that anyway, just to reduce our air conditioning bill. With a gray cement tile roof, that soaks up a lot of sun, it’s hotter than Hades’s kitchen in the attic this time of year, and that could really cool things down.

Political Commentary

A Political Chameleon

2 Comments

Victor Davis Hanson:

Obama has required a vocabulary of needed ostracism, as he insidiously sheds most of his prior life and environment of the last twenty years. Wright, Moss, Pfleger, Ayers, Rezo, etc. are all figures that have to be “disavowed” or, better, Trostkyized in some fashion. The method apparently is to suggest that they, not Obama, have suddenly changed (when, in truth, they, not Obama, have remained entirely consistent) and are now out to hurt or embarrass Obama (when, again, they are surprised that their longtime predictable behavior is suddenly producing different results).

Like many of his prior positions on the Middle East, Iran, guns, abortion, taxes, the war, etc. Obama must metamorphosize from a hard-core Chicago racial leftwing activist, into a liberal idealist who transcends politics.

Will it work? Two things are in his favor. One, his message is messianic (“this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal”), and the devoted not only don’t want to know of their prophet’s mortal lapses, but like all devotees will turn in anger on those who remind them of such mortality. Second, many of these bombs have been exploded in the primaries, months before the election. Even in Chicago, there are only so many Rezkos and Wrights.

Change you can believe in?

Not me.

Popular Culture, Space, Space History

Setting The Record Straight

The commentary continues over at Clark Lindsey’s place about how long it will/should take to get low-cost access into space. I probably should respond to this one comment, though, since it seems to be advancing a lot of mythology about me and weightless flights.

Rand Simberg is a right wing nutjob, but, he is a true believer in space. He went with Weaver Aerospace to sell Zero-Grav flights to Ron Howard for the Apollo 13 movie. He had the proposal, he had the aircraft, he had a credible charter operator.
NASA dove in and gave the flights away for free. Sadly, Simberg then went and did the same deal for “From the Earth to the Moon” and NASA did it to him again.

Well, to start off, of course (and nothing to do with space), but I’m neither “right wing” or a “nutjob.” As far as I know.

But to deal with the more substantive statements, this is mostly wrong. I did put in a proposal to Ron Howard’s production company for Apollo XIII, and I did have a charterable 727 lined up. Our plan was to palletize the movie set, and use the freight doors to load and unload between shoots, so the airplane could continue to be used for other things. We weren’t going to get a special type certificate for it, as Zero-G did (at a cost of millions of dollars and many years), because it was going to be flown on an experimental certificate out of Vegas or Mojave. This was all greased with the local FAA FSDO, with whom we had worked to do T-39 flights for R&D, using Al Hansen’s plane in Mojave (he’s Burt’s next-door neighbor).

But NASA didn’t “dive in and and give the flights away for free.” NASA originally sent Howard’s people to me, and I had a meeting with them in Century City, when they asked me for a proposal. I submitted the proposal, and was told by the executive producer that they were looking it over, but before they were going to make a commitment, they wanted to try if in the K-bird first, to see if filming was practical in that environment. I was suspicious, but there wasn’t much I could do. At the same time, they were telling NASA that we couldn’t do the job, and that they had fulfilled their obligation to try to find a commercial provider, so now they had to use the KC-135. So they basically lied to both me and JSC. I don’t think they got free flights–I believe that JSC was reimbursed some (probably arbitrary, since NASA never knew what the Comet really cost) amount per hour.

Somewhere I actually documented the history for NASA, and sent it to June Edwards (I don’t know if she’s still with the agency) at Code L (legal office) at HQ, when she had to do some fact finding at the behest of Dana Rohrabacher’s office. Unfortunately, I lost it in a hard disk failure a few years ago.

Anyway, NASA was not the villain. We were both lied to by people in Hollywood (I’ll give you a minute to express your shock at the very thought of such a thing).

Oh, and as for “From the Earth to the Moon,” I never had any involvement in it whatsoever. It was basically a lot of the same people, given that it was a Tom Hanks production, and they just went back to NASA. I saw no point in wasting my time trying to put together another proposal that would be sure to be rejected.

And of course, when Lee Weaver was killed in an auto accident, a couple weeks before 911, that was pretty much the end of any interest I had in getting a weightless flight business going, after almost a decade of struggle, and a lot of debt, with which I’m still burdened.

Peter had money lined up for Zero-G, and I didn’t see any way to break in, when it was uncertain how large the market would be. Also, if I’d known what he had to go through to get the special type certificate for the airplane from the FAA, I’d have probably not even attempted it. He might even feel the same way, for all I know, but he’s through the tunnel now.

History, Space, Technology and Society

Mormons And Infrastructure

8 Comments

Jon Goff has a truly excellent post on what will be required for space settlements, with useful historical analogies. I’ve always considered the LDS analogy quite apt, both in terms of types of technologies and infrastructure needed for the emigration, and the motivations. As he notes, unfortunately, the space community often uses unuseful historical analogies and/or fails to recognize where they break down.

But what he describes would be a true “Interstate Highway System” for space, as opposed to what Mike Griffin considers one (Ares/Orion).

Economics, Political Commentary

Short Oil Futures

2 Comments

An interesting point:

…once most of the former big fuel subsidizers have removed much or all of their subsidies, world demand for oil is likely to level off, or possibly even plunge. And if the latter scenario prevails, then the petroleum futures speculators will be running for the hills, in the midst of a bursting oil bubble, much like real estate speculators fled upon the bursting of our recent housing bubble in the States. All bubbles are self-correcting, one way or another.

Yes. Few people appreciate how much demand has been artificially spurred by subsidized fuel in many large countries. When their governments can no longer afford to continue to do so (as they can’t for long at current prices), watch crude plunge.

Philosophy, Social Commentary, Weird

Pressing (Non)Human Rights Issue Du Jour

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Do vampires have rights?

Jonah wants to know if an atheist would think that vampires have rights.

I guess that they probably have some rights. I mean, I’m willing to grant them the right to be a vampire. That is, if they want to live forever, turn into a bat occasionally, not show up in mirrors, and avoid sunlight and garlic and crosses, and so on, it’s no skin off my nose (or blood out of my neck). But (like some conservatives’ view of homosexuals), I’m not willing to grant them a right to indulge in their (un)natural desire to drink blood. Particularly mine. I think that the Christian formulation would be hate the blood sucking, but love the vampire. But of course, this was about what atheists think.

Though if the blood sucking is consensual, it might be all right. But can it really be consensual? I mean, the consent can’t be very informed. You can describe what it’s like to be a vampire until the cows (and vampires) come home, but is that enough to allow someone to enter into such an arrangement*? It seems like the argument against whether or not someone should have the freedom to sell themselves into slavery. Is it society’s business to be regulating consensual blood-sucking activity, given that it has irreversible consequences (other than in the movies)? Perhaps.

The blood sucking aside, though, I don’t see (given the limited thought I’ve given to the proposition) why vampires should have any fewer rights than the rest of us. It certainly seems discriminatory, and a hate crime of the first rank, to think that one has license to stick wooden stakes through their hearts, simply because they’re vampires. But if they’ve been engaged in non-consensual insanguination and vampire recruitment, then it seems as though it would be a preemptive act of self defense, albeit taking the law into one’s own hands.

Sorry, fascinating topic, but I think I’m starting to ramble. If I gave it more thought, I might come up with a more coherent treatise.

* Come to think of it, this has some parallels to some conservatives’ argument that gays have to “recruit” young boys, because they’re unable to procreate. This is a notion that I always thought nonsensical–no one can be “recruited” to be gay unless they’re already at least bisexual. I have never been unsure about my sexuality–was approached once when I was fourteen or so, and I wasn’t recruited–I was disgusted at the thought.

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!