Clark Lindsey says that NASA’s R&D priorities are exactly reversed.

I’ll bet you’re wondering how I’m going to pull this one off. And I’m not sure what the category should be.

But I was reading a piece from a few days ago by Michael Rubin on Iraq, and the connection dinged in my mind:

Iraq is a complex country, difficult to crystallize in a simple poll. But this is exactly what too many news organizations seek to do. On October 24, 2005, for example, the Guardian reported a new poll finding that 82 percent of Iraqis were “strongly opposed” to the presence of foreign troops in their country. Critics of the war seized on the poll to demand immediate withdrawal.

True: Polls do not lie. Iraqis dislike occupation. They resent stopping on busy highways for slow-moving military convoys. They juxtapose the Green Zone’s generators with their own worsening electricity supply. They fail to understand why U.S. diplomats who seldom leave their quarters must block off the center of their city rather than build their cantonment on its outskirts. They are annoyed by helicopters hovering over their villages. But such annoyance with occupation does not translate into demands for immediate withdrawal.

Polls in mature democracies like the United States are difficult enough to conduct and get right. The task is far more formidable in post-autocratic societies. When pollsters instead ask Iraqis to prioritize their top-20 concerns, withdrawal of Coalition troops usually ranks near the bottom of the list. Restoring electricity, combating corruption, and maintaining security are consistently at the top priorities.

There’s reason here for those who advocate big government space programs to be concerned. Yes, in the abstract, people like the space program. But when it comes down to actually setting priorities, NASA is always way down the list, and there’s little in the president’s vision, and even less in NASA’s proposed implementation of it, to change that. Dr. Griffin is riding for a fall.

Mark Whittington once again demonstrates his inability to understand the arguments against his wacky “Chinese-taking-over-the-Moon” hysteria:

Of course I am assured that the Chinese would not even think of behaving badly in space. That would be “stupid.”

No, Mark. What is stupid is thinking that anyone has ever made such an argument. Or at least anyone at this web site. Perhaps you’re arguing with someone at some fantasy web site in your own mind.

Just more evidence of Mark’s continuing flight from reality, and another demonstration of why it’s so difficult to take him seriously.

I’m about a week late on this, but Michael Belfiore is feasting on crow.

Michael, there’s an old saying on Usenet, which is that the best way to learn something about a subject you’re interested in is to post something blatantly (almost trollishly) wrong about it in a relevant newsgroup.

With the blogosphere, the whole web is Usenet now.