“A Study In Appeasement”

David Warren’s take on the ISG report:

I was rewriting history, while walking along some cold lakeshore the other day. My thought was: if Churchill had only come to power in 1937, Chamberlain would have been installed to replace him in 1940.

Had Churchill been in power, and refused to sign Munich, he would have been blamed for the outbreak of war.

I can just hear the prattle in an English pub, circa 1950. “He pushed Hitler to it! Had it not been for Churchill, Hitler would have been satisfied with the Sudetenland, and England would never have had to surrender. Everything was Churchill’s fault!”

Today, everything is Bush’s fault.

Read the whole thing.

Weeping For Darfur

Our Anonymous Moron troll whines that I don’t talk about Darfur.

Well, here’s an editorial by Ralph Peters about Darfur with which I agree, though I doubt if Anonymous Moron does:

Europe wrings its hands – as Europe always does – but declines an invitation to the dance. After all, “responsible” governments can’t play fast and loose with another state’s sovereignty. No dictator or president-for-life would be able to get a decent night’s sleep.

So Sudan’s Islamo-fascists continue to kill with impunity.

Our own left mourns theatrically for Darfur’s dead – but no one has formed a new Lincoln Brigade to take on Sudan’s Muslims fanatics. And the uncomfortable fact that Arab Muslims are slaughtering black Muslims goes ignored. It doesn’t fit the left’s comfortable worldview.

Oh, yes: Those on the left demanding that we “bring the troops home” from Iraq would be delighted to send American troops to rescue Khartoum’s victims. But our military is occupied with other cases of fanaticism and genocide in the Muslim world this holiday season.

Isn’t it curious that, when it comes to liberation, Iraq didn’t count? For the endlessly hypocritical left, there’s one magic difference between the half-million dead of Darfur and the 1.5 million people killed by Saddam in his internal massacres and neighborhood wars: Bush.

To be fair, I think that there’s another one. In the minds of many deranged leftists, Arabs can do no wrong, because they’re fighting against the evil West, capitalists and Amerikkka. And they only want us to liberate people when we have no national interest in doing so. And even then, of course, they’re not truly liberated unless they’re yoked to socialism.

Faster Non-Volatility

Phase-change memory:

Scientists from IBM, Macronix and Qimonda said they developed a material that made “phase-change” memory 500 to 1,000 times faster than the commonly-used “flash” memory, while using half as much power.

“You can do a lot of things with this phase-change memory that you can’t do with flash,” IBM senior manager of nanoscale science Spike Narayan told AFP.

“You can replace disks, do instant-on computers, or carry your own fancy computer application in your hand. It would complement smaller technology if manufacturers wanted to conjure things up.”

The day’s not far off that you’ll be able to carry an unimaginable amount of knowledge around in your pocket.

Fundamental Requirements

Jeff Foust discusses the problems that NASA is having in communicating a purpose for its lunar activities. Understanding the “why” isn’t just important in terms of maintaining public support. It also drives requirements.

There are implicit assumptions about why we’re going back to the moon intrinsic in NASA’s chosen mission architecture, though they’ve never been stated explicitly. I lay out several potential reasons for a lunar base in this post, in which I point out that NASA’s architecture is actually ideally suited to a “touch and go” approach (i.e., the only reason we’re going to the moon is because the president said so, so we’ll build a system that’s really designed for Mars instead, and just happen to use it for some lunar missions if the political establishment decides it still wants to do that in a decade or so).

If the purpose was really to enable settlement, rather than just setting up a tiny and trivial government base, we’d be spending a lot more money on systems that drive down the marginal cost of trips to the moon. Instead, NASA has chosen an approach that maximizes it.

The Age Of Nations Isn’t Over

Jeff Brooks has an intriguing, but I think fundamentally flawed idea: to set up an international organization to manage Martian land sales.

I’m all in favor of granting title rights off planet, and agree that it could provide a useful mechanism to raise private funds for planetary exploration, but I’m afraid that a transnationalist approach is doomed to failure. Better to simply amend the OST (or withdraw, failing that) and allow sovereignty claims (in fact the treaty could come up with a way to equitably distribute the claims). But I wouldn’t trust an international organization to safeguard my civil or property rights, given the nature of the international community.

The Age Of Nations Isn’t Over

Jeff Brooks has an intriguing, but I think fundamentally flawed idea: to set up an international organization to manage Martian land sales.

I’m all in favor of granting title rights off planet, and agree that it could provide a useful mechanism to raise private funds for planetary exploration, but I’m afraid that a transnationalist approach is doomed to failure. Better to simply amend the OST (or withdraw, failing that) and allow sovereignty claims (in fact the treaty could come up with a way to equitably distribute the claims). But I wouldn’t trust an international organization to safeguard my civil or property rights, given the nature of the international community.

The Age Of Nations Isn’t Over

Jeff Brooks has an intriguing, but I think fundamentally flawed idea: to set up an international organization to manage Martian land sales.

I’m all in favor of granting title rights off planet, and agree that it could provide a useful mechanism to raise private funds for planetary exploration, but I’m afraid that a transnationalist approach is doomed to failure. Better to simply amend the OST (or withdraw, failing that) and allow sovereignty claims (in fact the treaty could come up with a way to equitably distribute the claims). But I wouldn’t trust an international organization to safeguard my civil or property rights, given the nature of the international community.

Don’t Settle

In fact, US Air should not only not settle, they should countersue against these people for (probably deliberately, based on most accounts) terrorizing the passengers and disrupting service. I’d be happy to even contribute to a legal fund for it. In fact, it would be a good idea to set up a fund and get all the airlines to contribute to it, because US Air is waging this battle for the whole industry.

Don’t Settle

In fact, US Air should not only not settle, they should countersue against these people for (probably deliberately, based on most accounts) terrorizing the passengers and disrupting service. I’d be happy to even contribute to a legal fund for it. In fact, it would be a good idea to set up a fund and get all the airlines to contribute to it, because US Air is waging this battle for the whole industry.

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!