Popular Culture

The Fire Has Gone Out

I was never much of a Norman Mailer fan. I read The Naked and the Dead as a teenager (my parents’ copy), and didn’t find it that impressive. Roger Kimball obviously never heard the phrase “de mortuis nil nisi bonum”–he has many not-so-good things to say of the author/cultural icon/literary thug, who died today (he had been ill for some time).

Interestingly, of all the works that Kimball mentions in his long anti-eulogy, he doesn’t talk about “Of A Fire On The Moon,” his book about Apollo XI.

The reviews here of it are interesting–many of the reviewers who disliked Mailer’s other work liked this one, and vice versa–his traditional fans had little use for it. I’ve never read it myself, and based on the reviews (including one by Roger Launius), I don’t know if I’ll bother now. Anyway, rest in peace. He certainly didn’t live that way.

Space

An Idle Thought

When I hear about NASA adding a fifth segment to the SRB, somehow it reminds me of this:

Over the summer of 1930, the R101 lay in the Number 1 shed at Cardington undergoing extensive modifications, which were needed following on from her 1929 and early 1930 trial flights. It was already known that both the R100 and R101 were lacking in the disposable lift originally planned at the outset of the Imperial Airship Scheme in 1925. Those involved in the scheme had already learnt that the R100 and R101 would not be viable for full commercial operations to Canada and India, and these intentions were later to be passed on to the new ship, the R102 class. To achieve the additional lift, R101 had a new central bay and gas bag installed.

It was expected that the new gas bag would give her another nine tons of disposable lift bringing her up to some 50 tons. The alterations were completed by Friday the 26th September and the R101 was gassed up and floated in the shed. The “new” ship, R101c, had disposable lift calculated at 49.36 tons, an improvement of 14.5 tons over the original configuration. Pressure was on for the ship to leave for Karachi on 26th September to carry the Air Minister, Lord Thompson of Cardington. Although the target date was on course to be met, wind was to keep the modified R101 in the shed until the morning of 1st October.

Not sure why, though.

Actually, I think that “Sliderule” should be required reading for every NASA employee.

War Commentary

“How We Won”

Greyhawk boldly writes that, though the media hasn’t noticed, we’ve won the war (or at least the battle of Iraq), despite the attempts earlier this year by the Congressional Democrats to seize defeat from the jaws of victory:

…few people are paying attention to what those of us who are here fighting this war might have to say. Everyone is focused on the death metrics, and everyone is wrong. Call it “hearts and minds” or people fighting for their lives and futures who do not fear turning to us for help and helping us in return without fear of retribution from an enemy falling fast – these are the numbers that tell the tale. These are the numbers that indicate something worthwhile. These are the numbers that will drive the death metrics further down and keep them there.

He has a lot of links to support his thesis.

And as I’ve noted before, it’s all about the evolutionary pressures favoring cooperation over chaos.

To use combat (or even civilian) casualties as a metric for progress in a war is puerile, but it serves well the purpose of those opposed to this war, and war in general (and particularly wars waged by the BusHitler). Had we done so in the second World War, one would have thought that we were losing all through late 1944 and early 1945 in Europe, and in the summer of ’45 in the Pacific–after all, casualties were soaring as we took territory, and the Japanese were unrelenting in their brutality against the population in the territories they still occupied. Fortunately, the press was smarter then, and knew how to measure progress–by territory increasingly controlled by the victors, island after island, sea after sea.

Similarly, we’ve been seizing territory from Al Qaeda in Iraq, town by town, district by district, to the point at which they’ve been completely routed, and the Iraqis now seem ready to forge a new nation. (And for those of limited patience, it’s always useful to recall that it took our own nation eight years from Cornwallis’ surrender until we had a constitution in place).

This doesn’t, of course, indicate that we can immediately pull the troops out, any more than we could have done so in Europe or Japan after the surrenders there. Now, as then, the war is merely transitioning from the major battle that we just won in Iraq, to the larger upcoming ones on its borders, and until its neighbors (all of them, really, other than Turkey, Jordan and Kuwait) stop fomenting sectarianism and hatred, Iraq will remain at risk of slipping back into the abyss, despite the hard-fought victory of Americans and Iraqis. The question for the administration at this point must be, what next?

Tomorrow is the 89th anniversary of the end of the war that was to end all wars. One can hope that there will, in time, be the last war, but that one wasn’t it, nor was the one against the Axis, or the one against the Soviets. Each of these wars, in fact, contained the seeds and provided fertile ground for the next, just as the end of the Cold War resulted in a resurgence of violent Islam. We are now deep in the middle of another world war–a fourth one, both cold and hot.

Will it be the last one? Let us hope.

War Commentary

“How We Won”

Greyhawk boldly writes that, though the media hasn’t noticed, we’ve won the war (or at least the battle of Iraq), despite the attempts earlier this year by the Congressional Democrats to seize defeat from the jaws of victory:

…few people are paying attention to what those of us who are here fighting this war might have to say. Everyone is focused on the death metrics, and everyone is wrong. Call it “hearts and minds” or people fighting for their lives and futures who do not fear turning to us for help and helping us in return without fear of retribution from an enemy falling fast – these are the numbers that tell the tale. These are the numbers that indicate something worthwhile. These are the numbers that will drive the death metrics further down and keep them there.

He has a lot of links to support his thesis.

And as I’ve noted before, it’s all about the evolutionary pressures favoring cooperation over chaos.

To use combat (or even civilian) casualties as a metric for progress in a war is puerile, but it serves well the purpose of those opposed to this war, and war in general (and particularly wars waged by the BusHitler). Had we done so in the second World War, one would have thought that we were losing all through late 1944 and early 1945 in Europe, and in the summer of ’45 in the Pacific–after all, casualties were soaring as we took territory, and the Japanese were unrelenting in their brutality against the population in the territories they still occupied. Fortunately, the press was smarter then, and knew how to measure progress–by territory increasingly controlled by the victors, island after island, sea after sea.

Similarly, we’ve been seizing territory from Al Qaeda in Iraq, town by town, district by district, to the point at which they’ve been completely routed, and the Iraqis now seem ready to forge a new nation. (And for those of limited patience, it’s always useful to recall that it took our own nation eight years from Cornwallis’ surrender until we had a constitution in place).

This doesn’t, of course, indicate that we can immediately pull the troops out, any more than we could have done so in Europe or Japan after the surrenders there. Now, as then, the war is merely transitioning from the major battle that we just won in Iraq, to the larger upcoming ones on its borders, and until its neighbors (all of them, really, other than Turkey, Jordan and Kuwait) stop fomenting sectarianism and hatred, Iraq will remain at risk of slipping back into the abyss, despite the hard-fought victory of Americans and Iraqis. The question for the administration at this point must be, what next?

Tomorrow is the 89th anniversary of the end of the war that was to end all wars. One can hope that there will, in time, be the last war, but that one wasn’t it, nor was the one against the Axis, or the one against the Soviets. Each of these wars, in fact, contained the seeds and provided fertile ground for the next, just as the end of the Cold War resulted in a resurgence of violent Islam. We are now deep in the middle of another world war–a fourth one, both cold and hot.

Will it be the last one? Let us hope.

War Commentary

“How We Won”

Greyhawk boldly writes that, though the media hasn’t noticed, we’ve won the war (or at least the battle of Iraq), despite the attempts earlier this year by the Congressional Democrats to seize defeat from the jaws of victory:

…few people are paying attention to what those of us who are here fighting this war might have to say. Everyone is focused on the death metrics, and everyone is wrong. Call it “hearts and minds” or people fighting for their lives and futures who do not fear turning to us for help and helping us in return without fear of retribution from an enemy falling fast – these are the numbers that tell the tale. These are the numbers that indicate something worthwhile. These are the numbers that will drive the death metrics further down and keep them there.

He has a lot of links to support his thesis.

And as I’ve noted before, it’s all about the evolutionary pressures favoring cooperation over chaos.

To use combat (or even civilian) casualties as a metric for progress in a war is puerile, but it serves well the purpose of those opposed to this war, and war in general (and particularly wars waged by the BusHitler). Had we done so in the second World War, one would have thought that we were losing all through late 1944 and early 1945 in Europe, and in the summer of ’45 in the Pacific–after all, casualties were soaring as we took territory, and the Japanese were unrelenting in their brutality against the population in the territories they still occupied. Fortunately, the press was smarter then, and knew how to measure progress–by territory increasingly controlled by the victors, island after island, sea after sea.

Similarly, we’ve been seizing territory from Al Qaeda in Iraq, town by town, district by district, to the point at which they’ve been completely routed, and the Iraqis now seem ready to forge a new nation. (And for those of limited patience, it’s always useful to recall that it took our own nation eight years from Cornwallis’ surrender until we had a constitution in place).

This doesn’t, of course, indicate that we can immediately pull the troops out, any more than we could have done so in Europe or Japan after the surrenders there. Now, as then, the war is merely transitioning from the major battle that we just won in Iraq, to the larger upcoming ones on its borders, and until its neighbors (all of them, really, other than Turkey, Jordan and Kuwait) stop fomenting sectarianism and hatred, Iraq will remain at risk of slipping back into the abyss, despite the hard-fought victory of Americans and Iraqis. The question for the administration at this point must be, what next?

Tomorrow is the 89th anniversary of the end of the war that was to end all wars. One can hope that there will, in time, be the last war, but that one wasn’t it, nor was the one against the Axis, or the one against the Soviets. Each of these wars, in fact, contained the seeds and provided fertile ground for the next, just as the end of the Cold War resulted in a resurgence of violent Islam. We are now deep in the middle of another world war–a fourth one, both cold and hot.

Will it be the last one? Let us hope.

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!