War Commentary

“The Great Gulf War”

A frightening, and unfortunately plausible (given the inevitable insouciance of Europe, and much of the American electorate itself), future history:

The ideological cocktail that produced ‘Islamism’ was as potent as either of the extreme ideologies the West had produced in the previous century, communism and fascism. Islamism was anti-Western, anti-capitalist and anti-Semitic. A seminal moment was the Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s intemperate attack on Israel in December 2005, when he called the Holocaust a ‘myth’. The state of Israel was a ‘disgraceful blot’, he had previously declared, to be wiped ‘off the map’.

Prior to 2007, the Islamists had seen no alternative but to wage war against their enemies by means of terrorism. From the Gaza to Manhattan, the hero of 2001 was the suicide bomber. Yet Ahmadinejad, a veteran of the Iran-Iraq War, craved a more serious weapon than strapped-on explosives. His decision to accelerate Iran’s nuclear weapons programme was intended to give Iran the kind of power North Korea already wielded in East Asia: the power to defy the United States; the power to obliterate America’s closest regional ally.

No, nothing like Munich at all.

As Dennis Miller once quipped (though it wasn’t really funny), “To believe the left, Bush is Hitler, Cheney is Hitler, Ashcroft is Hitler, Rumsfeld is Hitler, but the guy with the mustache who gasses people and hates Jews and wants to conquer the world isn’t Hitler. Go figure.”

Media Criticism

Turnabout’s Fair Play?

Not really. Cathy Young says that the American Thinker piece that I linked the other day gave the New York Times treatment to the New York Times:

It’s true that liberals who accuse Bush of ushering in a police state forget that it was the Clinton administration that first pushed for a rather dramatic expansion of surveillance and other government powers in order to combat the threat of terrorism. (Conservatives are prone to forget it as well.) But that’s a far cry from the blatant double standard Tate claims to have detected. So the bloggers might want to hold off on the gloating about hypocrisy and media bias; all that’s exposed here is a very shoddy attempt at an expos

Media Criticism

Turnabout’s Fair Play?

Not really. Cathy Young says that the American Thinker piece that I linked the other day gave the New York Times treatment to the New York Times:

It’s true that liberals who accuse Bush of ushering in a police state forget that it was the Clinton administration that first pushed for a rather dramatic expansion of surveillance and other government powers in order to combat the threat of terrorism. (Conservatives are prone to forget it as well.) But that’s a far cry from the blatant double standard Tate claims to have detected. So the bloggers might want to hold off on the gloating about hypocrisy and media bias; all that’s exposed here is a very shoddy attempt at an expos

Media Criticism

Turnabout’s Fair Play?

Not really. Cathy Young says that the American Thinker piece that I linked the other day gave the New York Times treatment to the New York Times:

It’s true that liberals who accuse Bush of ushering in a police state forget that it was the Clinton administration that first pushed for a rather dramatic expansion of surveillance and other government powers in order to combat the threat of terrorism. (Conservatives are prone to forget it as well.) But that’s a far cry from the blatant double standard Tate claims to have detected. So the bloggers might want to hold off on the gloating about hypocrisy and media bias; all that’s exposed here is a very shoddy attempt at an expos

Space

Keeping Methane Propulsion Alive

1 Comment

Mark Whittington has an idea to solve the methane problem (no, not that methane problem–that one we’ll solve by burning down the rain forests):

If NASA feels that building a methane/LOX engine is too risky for the ESAS, there is a solution. Make such an engine one of the Centennial Challenges. Critics of the Vision for Space Exploration will be less unhappy because that would be another piece of technology developed by non traditional means. NASA will benefit because it gets the engine for the CEV and Mars Lander relatively cheaply.

Well, maybe. The problem is, I guess I don’t see LOX/methane engines as particularly risky, at least no more so than any other generic propulsion development. It’s not a technology risk (in the sense that there may be some unknowns out there that prevent it from being possible) so much as a programmatic risk, in terms of schedule delays or cost overruns. NASA has a lot of experience with these in propulsion programs, so they’re wary of new engine developments (though I suspect that XCOR has broken a lot of the conventional industry cost/schedule estimating models for propulsion system development). Our lack of methane propulsion isn’t because it’s a Hard Problem, but because no one has had sufficient requirement to date to fund it.

If we have unlimited money for prizes, I guess that a prize would be a good way to fund this, but prizes are better employed in those cases for which innovation is required to solve a really difficult problem that many have attempted and no one yet solved, not for a straightforward development program. Rather than offer a prize, I’ll bet that someone like XCOR (or the other companies working on the problem) would be happy to take a fixed-price contract to develop engines to NASA’s specs (they could use the technology contract they have from Marshall to develop a reusable cryo tank as a model), and it would be a lot cheaper than funding a cost-plus contract to Aerojet or Pratt. There are lots of other ways to do innovative procurement than offering prizes.

General Science

Alfred Hitchcock, Call Your Office

Apparently our ancestors had more to worry about than bears, snakes and sabre tooths:

…small human ancestors known as hominids had to survive being hunted not only by large predators on the ground but by fearsome raptors that swooped from the sky, said Lee Berger, a senior paleoanthropologist at Johannesburg’s University of the Witwatersrand.

Apparently the Taung Baby was snatched and killed by an eagle.

I hate when that happens.

Political Commentary

Liberation For The Great White North?

Polls indicate that the Conservatives have a chance of getting a majority in the Canadian parliament. At the least, they may be able to get a governing coalition by peeling off just a few members, rather than having to do a grand deal with the Block Quebecois. As is the case down here with the Democrats, I’m less thrilled with seeing the Tories win than I am in seeing the Liberals lose big. Sic semper tyrannis corruptis.

I’ll bet Belinda Stronach is having a big-league case of buyers’ remorse now, for her thirty pieces of silver. What a difference a few months makes. Maybe she and fellow turncoat Jim Jeffords can start a club.

On the other hand, if it’s that close, she’ll no doubt be one of the MPs that they peel off to form their majority. She knows she doesn’t have much future with the current Liberals, and we already know what she is–it will just be a matter of haggling over the price. Simply letting her keep her current cabinet position would probably suffice, considering the alternative.

Science And Society

Stop Global Warming

Cut down the rain forests:

Keppler and his colleagues discovered that living plants emit 10 to 100 times more methane than dead plants.

Scientists had previously thought that plants could only emit methane in the absence of oxygen.

David Lowe, of the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research in New Zealand, said the findings are startling and controversial.

“Keppler and colleagues’ finding helps to account for observations from space of incredibly large plumes of methane above tropical forests,” he said in a commentary on the research.

But the study also poses questions, such as how such a potentially large source of methane could have been overlooked…

Hey, I can answer that one–maybe because we haven’t come up with a way to blame it on the rapacious, capitalist, resource-scarfing western world.

Seriously, it really is amazing, given that living animals definitely emit a lot more methane than dead ones (particularly after a Mexican meal).

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!