Science And Society

Another Shocker

Having org@sms relieves stress in women.

Who woulda thought? Where is Obvious Man when you really need him?

I’ll bet there are millions of men sending this link to their wives and girlfriends as I type.

And yes, I am in fact trying to establish a reputation for this blog as all womens’ org@sms, all the time. I mean, it can’t be all space and dog rape.

[Update a few minutes later]

Here’s an entertaining Free Republic thread about the article.

War Commentary

The Cowboy War

Armed Liberal has a good post on the fantasy world of perfectionist war critics:

…in the reality-based America where I live, we do bad things all the time. The good news is that we tend to do a far better job of self-correcting (note that the Abu Ghraib folks were already or about to be indicted when the story broke – the military justice folks had received the info, acted, and were busting the perps – one of whose lawyers released the imagery as a negotiating tactic) than, for example, the Greenpeace-killing French DSGE do…

…All actions and systems involve mistakes, are imperfect, have undesirable unforeseen consequences. We’re human, and fallible. We have imperfect information, we often act out of fear or prejudice or laziness or greed. This has been a part of the human condition as long as there has been a human condition to have. It is the root of tragedy, the most human of art forms…

In an imaginary world in which we were omnipotent, yes, none of this would happen. We could identify our opponents with perfect accuracy, and disarm and restrain them without harming anyone. Once restrained, our procedures would be firm, gentle, and correct in every degree.

It’s funny, but I pretty much think that’s what we’re doing now, with a massively narrow span of error.

Space

A Heart Breaker

It looks like the private solar sail mission may have gone in the drink.

This just points up how ridiculous our space transportation situation is. There is no other field in which we would accept the horrifically low reliability of vehicles, and the only reason for it is that we’ve historically simply come to accept it, and won’t demand better.

[Update on Wednesday morning]

Good news. Or at least better news. They seem to have found it. It’s not in the right orbit, but it’s in an orbit. Let’s hope it’s in an orbit that will last long enough to get it on its sunshiny way.

[Another update at 9:20 AM]

Emily Lakdawalla is blogging the progress.

[Update at 1:20 PM EDT]

Looks like the mission is history.

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!