Space

Step Backwards

Clark Lindsey notes that the FAA-AST web site has been revamped, by folding it into the general FAA web site. While the improvements he notes are worthwhile (though the changing of permalinks definitely is not), I’m unthrilled with the concept of entwining AST even more deeply with the FAA. AST was originally the Office of Commercial Space Transportation, reporting directly to the Secretary of Transportation. The Clinton administration demoted it, and folded it into FAA in the early nineties.

This had two deleterious effects. First, it gave it less clout within the department, since the AA for it now had to report to the SecTran up through the FAA administrator. Second, it placed it in an agency that, after the Valujet crash, had its responsibility declared solely for public safety, with none to promote the aviation industry (one of its charters in the early days).

But the infant space transportation industry needs a different balance between safety and promotion than a mature aviation industry, and there is a potential clash of regulatory cultures as long as AST remains within FAA. Its current bureaucratic abode makes it much easier to justify nannyism that could strangle it in the cradle. I think that there should be a push on by the space activist community to restore it to its original position as a separate administration within DOT, and I’m not happy whenever I see its status as a subset of FAA further entrenched.

War Commentary

Free Speech For Me, But Not For Thee

Judith Weiss has some questions for Brown University, after it rescinded an invitation to a former Muslim speaker that is critical of Islam:

1) Does the Brown Muslim student group have the same compunctions about bringing in a Jewish speaker who criticizes Judaism?

2) If they planned to bring one in and the Jewish students protested, would the Muslim students defer to them?

3) Has a Jew ever been silenced on a college campus for misrepresenting or denigrating Judaism?

4) Is the problem just that Darwish criticizes Islam, or that she compares it unfavorably to Judaism? For example, this appreciation of the self-reflection demanded during the High Holidays, contrasted with the shame/honor imperative of the Islam she grew up with. Is it that Darwish criticizes the Arab Middle East, or that she defends Israel?

5) Is it an acceptable stance at a university supposedly committed to the free flow of ideas for either group to have veto power over the others’ invited speakers? Whatever happened to reasoned disagreement? If Darwish is saying things that aren’t true or are unfair, let the Muslim students attend her speech and respectfully ask her tough questions.

The double standards and hypocrisy here are astounding, considering the kind of enthusiastic audiences that colleges can get for Palestinians and their sympathizers who criticize Israel and Jews.

Space

Maybe We Need To Be Louder

Clark Lindsey isn’t impressed by Scott Horowitz’ ability to ignore “outside noise:”

I guess this is an improvement over the deaf/mute NASA that produced the Space Shuttle, the ISS, X-33, X-34, SLI, OSP, etc. NASA leaders were then completely oblivious to the existence of any outside voices on space hardware development and never felt it necessary to address complaints from know-nothings (i.e. anyone not working at NASA). At least now they go to the window and before closing it they yell at the peons outside to shut up and stop making a racket.

Administrative

Not Again

Or rather, still. I’ve noticed that my Internet connection has had leaky tubes lately. I tracked the problem down to DNS. I did quick search on “DNS problems Bellsouth,” and found that my old post on the subject was number two, but number one was a post at Tony Spencer’s place from over a year ago with several recent comments.

The weird thing is that the problem is primarily on my Windows box. My Fedora machine seems to be fine (it obviously has a different DNS setup, that I’ll have to dig into, to see what it’s doing right, and Windows is doing wrong. When I check my speed at C/Net, it tells me I’ve got a 1.5 Mbit connection, so it’s very frustating to have slow loads of pages because the machine can’t find the IP.

[Update about 7:30 EST]

In rereading my old post, I found this recent comment to it:

…did anyone notice that the DNS problems began about the same time they got to work for the NSA et al. Since I’m writing this in October 2006 and this thread started in December 2004, I assume they’ve had plenty of time and complaints to have long ago solved this issue if they had any intention of doing so.

Just so everyone knows, the DNS problem is still there. I live in southeast GA, and there is a minimum five full second (5.0s) responses to DNS queries. Contrast that with my Comcast DNS response times of (0.05s). So my 256KB/256KB Comcast connection is 100x faster at responding to DNS queries than my 6MB/384KB Bellsouth connection.

This thread is two years old, and this problem persists. Maybe everything is actually working but the NSA has to approve your DNS request first 🙂 There is no valid technical reason for this level of a problem for this length of time. And it doesn’t matter what time of day it is, so the DNS workload defense doesn’t hold up.

PS: Bellsouth did eventually deny participation, but as far as I know for certain, there were only two companies that actually refused the unconstitutional demands and bellsouth wasn’t one of them, but Google was !! Too bad google won’t just give us all free DNS, imagine the statistics they could derive from that. Oh well, PEACE netizens.

I don’t tend to be the paranoid type, but I’m wondering if there is indeed something to this.

[Update about 8:30 PM EST]

OK, Bellsouth DNS is officially fscked. I noted that my Linux machine was hardwired to use 4.2.2.2 as primary DNS, with the Bellsouth servers as secondary. I changed the Windows machines from “get DNS servers from the service” to primary 4.2.2.2 with a Bellsouth backup, and all is well. But I probably should set up my Linux box as a DNS server, to obviate these problems in the future, since I seem to have a good general Internet connection. For that matter, I need to get a better mail server than Bellsouth, which won’t allow me to access the SMTP server when I’m not on their network. Anyone have any suggestions?

Administrative

BLogging, Light And Scattered

I’m busy with a final push to finish the house remodeling for a visit from my brother and his family for Thanksgiving. They came down from Michigan to do the Orlando thing, and will be coming down midweek. Meanwhile, lots of other good blogs, most better than this one, over on the left there.

Back to painting…

Popular Culture

Seems Pretty Clear Cut To Me

If number one beats number two by a field goal on number one’s home field, sounds like they’re ranked about right. We’ll see what the pollsters and computers say this afternoon.

Ohio State definitely looked like the better team, though, at least after the first quarter. Michigan’s first drive was impressive, but after that they seemed to sputter somewhat. I’d say that if these teams played ten games, Ohio State would win six or seven of them.

And I was pulling for a Cal victory last night, but it wasn’t to be. But if Notre Dame knocks off USC, what to do, what to do? It doesn’t make sense to rank the Irish ahead of Michigan, considering the pasting the Wolverines gave them in South Bend. Perhaps, though, just to be safe, USC should beat Notre Dame, and then let UCLA knock off the Trojans. That would leave Florida, I guess.

I know that a lot of people don’t want a rematch, but it looks like there’s a good possibility of that happening. Of course, then, if Michigan wins, people will be demanding another, and the best two out of three. Such is the silliness of trying to assign a national championship to college football teams. There simply aren’t enough games for it to be meaningful.

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!