Sometimes, you just have to think that these people’s brains are broken.
Darwin And Hitler
Derb has some thoughts:
As so often with creationist material, I’m not sure what the point is. Darwin’s great contribution to human knowledge, his theory of the origin of species, is either true, or it’s not. Is David saying: “When taken up by evil people, the theory had evil consequences. Therefore the theory must be false”? Is he asserting, in other words, that a true theory about the world could not possibly have evil consequence, no matter who picked it up and played with it, with no matter how little real understanding? Does David think that true facts cannot possibly be used for malign purposes? If that is what David is asserting, it seems to me an awfully hard proposition to defend. It is a true fact that E = mc2, and the Iranians are right at this moment using that true fact to construct nuclear weapons. If they succeed, and use their weapons for horrible purposes, will that invalidate the Special Theory of Relativity?
If David does not think that Darwin’s explanation for the origin of species is correct, let him give us his reasons; or better yet, an alternative explanation that we can test by observation. That a wicked man invoked Darwin’s name as an excuse to do wicked things tells us nothing, nada, zero, zippo, zilch about the truth content of Darwin’s ideas.
I always have to scratch my head at conservatives who are perfectly comfortable with Adam Smith’s invisible hand when it comes to markets, but can’t get their heads around the concept of emergent properties in the development of life. And of course, the opposite is true for liberalsfascists.
[Evening update]
Jonah Goldberg has more defense of Darwin (and Einstein). Bottom line, with which I agree:
Nazism was reactionary in that it sought to repackage tribal values under the guise of modern concepts. So was Communism. So are all the statist and collectivism isms. The only truly new and radical political revolution is the Lockean one. But, hey, I’ve got a book on all this stuff.
He does indeed
My Bags Are Packed
…and I’m ready to move to Paulville. Abortions will be outlawed there, presumably. But it won’t be sending any troops to Iraq.
Busted
It will be interesting to see how how NBC (and Dan Abrams) respond to this:
As a matter of fact, I had other things to occupy my time in the White House in 2002 rather than “structuring” a campaign for an Alabama gubernatorial candidate, calling people to raise money for his race, and going through the arduous task of “putting together a strategy.” And I certainly didn’t meet with anyone at the Justice Department or either of the two U.S. Attorneys in Alabama about investigating or indicting Siegelman. My involvement in the campaign was to approve a request that the President appear at a Riley campaign fundraising event, one of several score fundraising events the President did that election cycle.
It boils down to this: as a journalist, do you feel you have a responsibility to dig into the claims made by your guests, seek out evidence and come to a professional judgment as to the real facts? Or do you feel if a charge is breathtaking enough, thoroughly checking it out isn’t a necessity?
I know you might be concerned that asking these questions could restrict your ability to make sensational charges on the air, but don’t you think you have a responsibility to provide even a shred of supporting evidence before sullying the journalistic reputations of MSNBC and NBC?
People used to believe journalists were searching for the truth. But your cable show increasingly seems to be focused on wishful thinking, hoping something is one way and diminishing the search for facts and evidence in favor of repeating your fondest desires.
So what else is new?
A Modest Proposal
Jules Crittenden says let the left have their draft.
The Fascists Lose In Italy–Again
Jonah Goldberg’s book
The election campaign itself was the most rigorously fought in Italy since its liberation from Fascist rule in 1944. Berlusconi, often portrayed by the media as something of a clown if not a conjurer of tricks, put the case for a market-based capitalist and democratic system in simple but powerful terms.
His rival, former Rome Mayor Walter Veltroni, leader of the new Democratic Party, succeeded in putting forward the case for a social-democratic system, with the state playing the central role as a distributor of wealth and welfare.
Berlusconi spoke of discipline, family values, hard work and individual generosity. Veltroni countered with his talk of solidarity, sharing and collective compassion.
Text coloration mine. All of the red rhetoric could have come right out of Benito Mussolini’s playbook. The green stuff is “right wing.”
With this defeat, and the complete political demise of one of the oldest and most extreme fascist movements–the Communist Party–perhaps the Italians have finally laid the old socialist to rest.
PR Stunt Delayed
If this report is true, it looks like NASA is not going to hit its milestone of the first test flight of the Potemkin RocketAres 1-X vehicle planned for a year from now:
Ares I-X now has little chance of making its April, 2009 launch date target, initially due to the delay of STS-125’s flight to October.
The first Ares related test flight requires the freeing of High Bay 3 inside the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) and Pad 39B – which will first host STS-125’s Launch On Need (LON) rescue shuttle (Endeavour/LON-400) – being vacated for modifications ahead of Ares I-X.
However, a new problem has now come to light with the MLP (Mobile Launch Platform) that will be handed over from Shuttle to Constellation for the test flight. This problem relates to the stability of Ares I-X during rollout to the Pad.
The modifications to the MLP initially called for Ares I-X to be placed on one set of the existing Shuttle’s Solid Rocket Booster (SRB) hold down posts, with a tower to be erected on the other set of hold down posts – with support for the vehicle between the tower and the interstage level.
When NASA changed contractors for the MLP work associated with Ares I-X, the design changed, omitting the adjacent tower, instead relying on three steel cables – 120 degrees apart – to help hold the vehicle steady during rollout.
Given the projected weight of the vehicle at rollout – with a heavy dummy upper stage – additional stability is now being called for, leading to a redesign of the MLP support structure.
In combination with the projected delay to handing over Shuttle resources post STS-125, internal scheduling is showing 60 to 90 days worth of delay to Ares I-X’s projected launch date.
Gee, it’s always something. Guess that’s what happens when you come up with a new vehicle concept with a ridiculously high aspect ratio, that makes a whip antenna look positively zaftig. Has anyone ever had to use guy wires on a rocket before, or is this another proud first for our nation’s space agency?
Anyway, as it goes on to point out, this probably will waterfall down through the whole schedule, further increasing the dreaded “gap.” Not that it will matter that much, once the budget gets whacked in the next administration, regardless of who is president. But then, maybe if they’d come up with an implementation that actually appeared to have some relevance to peoples’ lives, instead of redoing people’s grandfather’s space program, they’d get more public support, instead of ever less.
It’s hard to see how this ends well, at least for fans of Apollo on Steroids. But it’s mostly irrelevant to those of us who want to see large-scale human expansion into space. That will have to await the private sector.
The Missing Word
With a computer mouse, you can precisely position the cursor wherever you want. The motion of the cursor exactly mimics the motion of the mouse in your hand. It is a positional controller.
But in many computer games, you have no direct control over position. The joystick controller only controls the rate of motion. You have to provide a direction, and speed, and hope that it will get to the desired location at the desired time. As anyone who has played such games knows, position control using a rate controller is much less precise, and often not even accurate if you’re not a good judge of such things.
In last night’s political debate (as in almost all discussions of this topic), there was a lot of talk about “cutting taxes,” and “raising taxes.” Not to pick on him in particular, but as an example, here’s the reporting by Jim Geraghty:
Hillary laughs heartily at McCain’s comment about “they’re going to raise your taxes, and they have the aud-ic-i-ty, the audacity, to hope you don’t mind!”
With her laugh, she triggered a thousand primal screams on liberal blogs.
Steph asks if she’ll make a pledge to never raise taxes for those making under $200,000 per year. She says she’s “absolutely committed to not raising taxes on those making less than $200,000.”
Obama echoes the pledge, and says he’ll cut taxes for those folks.
I don’t trust either, but I’m rather surprised that they both were willing to be pinned down in the equivalent of “read my lips, no new taxes.”
Wow. Charlie Gibson notes that when the capital gains taxes were cut under both Clinton and Bush, revenues went up.
These are the GREATEST DEBATE QUESTIONS EVER.
Wow. Hillary: “I would not raise the capital gains tax above 20 percent, if I would raise it at all… I don’t want to raise taxes on everyone.” She rips Obama’s plan to raise payroll taxes.
Emphasis mine, in all cases. Every one of these statements is absurd. No one, not the mighty Hillary, not the saintly Obama, has the power to raise or cut taxes. They don’t have a tax revenue controller. All they can do is increase or decrease tax rates. And they can’t predict with certainty whether or not this will increase, or decrease “taxes” (that is, tax revenues). The absurdity of leaving out this key word is demonstrated starkly in Charlie Gibson’s statement: “when the capital gains taxes were cut, revenues went up.” How can that be? If taxes are cut, by definition, revenues have to go down. But if he had said that when capital gains tax rates are cut, revenues go up, this is perfectly sensible (though counterintuitive to people who don’t understand that tax rates modify behavior).
I expect Democrats (and journalists, who are generally Democrats) to play such word games, but I’m always disappointed when Republicans and so-called conservatives go along with it. People who want lower tax rates (and a more vibrant economy) have to demand them, and stop talking about lower taxes. Yes, it would be nice to cut off funding to the federal government (at least if we could get spending under control), but that’s a separate issue. By conflating tax revenues with tax rates, we grant far too much power to the big government types, when we should instead be pointing out their powerlessness. There are many unintended consequences of government action, and it is always useful to point out that this is just one more–that the federal government cannot directly control how much it taxes people (that is, how much money it actually confiscates)–it can only control the the rate at which it does so.
This is just one more example of how we small-government types have to start taking back the language.
Remembering Slim Chipley
Most of my readers will find this of no interest at all, but I just ran across a new blog dedicated to remembering the good old days in Flint, Michigan. Nostalgic memories abound.
The population trend in the sidebar is depressing. When I was a kid it had a population of almost two hundred thousand, and there was an ongoing feud with Grand Rapids over whether it or Flint was the second largest city in the state (after Detroit, of course, which had its own hemorrhage of people). Now it’s down to just a little over half that.
[Update in the evening]
OK, again, unless you’re from southeast Michigan, this will be meaningless, but via the blog above, I found a coney blog. That actually understands the difference between Flint and Detroit style.
And there are those who say that it’s a lost art. For many, Angelo’s defined the Flint coney island, and once he died (my father was in the hospital with him at the same time, as they both had heart attacks in the late sixties), it became franchised, and lost the magic. But my mother used to tell me (and we even went there when I was young) that the original Flint Coney Island, on Saginaw, north of downtown, was the best. But it went under decades ago.
Anyway, I’m glad to hear that it’s a hit in Phoenix. Maybe we can keep the brand alive.
My darling Patricia doesn’t understand the appeal. But then, she’s not a fan of raw onions. Nor is she a fan of me after I ingest them. But once in a while, I have to indulge, consequences be damned…
OK, What Am I Missing Here?
NASA apparently plans its first Ares flight test a year from today.
The April 2009 flight will be the first of four test fights for the rocket’s first stage, derived from the current space shuttle’s solid-rocket boosters. In particular, NASA hopes the flight will validate measures it is now undertaking to quell an anticipated vibration issue in the booster system, which could pose problems down the line for the survivability of later variants of the rocket.
The flight will also demonstrate the abilities of the first-stage flight control systems to keep the “single stick” rocket on course, without the benefit of control fin surfaces.
For the first test flight, NASA will use a four-segment booster, topped with an empty fifth segment. Replicas of an Ares 1 second stage, Orion space capsule and launch abort system rocket will ride up top. The dummy segments will feature correct exterior detailing for aerodynamics testing, and will weigh about the same as their real-life counterparts.
“It’s made to look a lot like the Ares 1 vehicle, but it’s a very different animal,” said NASA lead ground operations engineer Tassos Abadiotakis. “We’re also going to get some aerodynamics data, some thermal data — just the basic rocketry laws to make sure what we’re proposing to go fly for Ares 1 actually is going to perform as advertised.”
OK, so, if it’s “a very different animal,” how is it going to validate the real animal? I thought that the concern with the vibration was the fact that they’ve never flown a five-segment booster, and don’t know what its resonant modes will be. I don’t see how flying an four-segment booster with an empty casing on top resolves those concerns in any way. Why can’t they fly a five-segment booster? Presumably because it won’t be far enough along in development to allow a test flight a year from now.
And will the upper stage be just a dummy mass, or will it be active? I thought that the Ares was supposed to get roll control from the upper stage, since it has no way of doing it with the booster (as the article points out, it has no fins, and even if it did, they’d be useless once it left the atmosphere). The first stage can control pitch and yaw through gimbaling, but absent some kind of control jets on the circumference, there’s no way for it to control roll on its own.
So, just what is it that this test is supposed to accomplish? Other, of course, than getting something on the pad and flying it to maintain program momentum at a time that a new administration is coming in and considering what to do with it?
[Update on Thursday morning]
I’ve gotten more than one private email from program insiders that this is a political stunt, not a useful engineering test.