Satire

A Postmodern Eulogy

The contemporary elitist capitalistic racist sexist Francophobic narrative is that Jacques Derrida has undergone the ultimate deconstruction.

But if, as he once suggested, we use postcultural structuralist theory to deconstruct hierarchy, then it could be said that the characteristic theme of this pseudo event is in reality the rubicon of neodialectic bioidentity. In fact, consider this in the context of the fact that he actively promoted the use of predialectic narrative to challenge society, thus contextualising the subject into a neodialectic deconstruction that includes reality as a totality. By this reasoning (bearing in mind that reason is not a road to truth), it could be said that death itself is dead.

Just as Foucault’s model of postmaterial patriarchialist theory states that language serves to exploit minorities (and thus serve majorities, such as the dead), so will the inevitability of the ultimate choice, between neodialectic deconstruction and posttextual nihilism.

If one examines predialectic narrative, one is faced with another choice: either accept cultural demodernism or conclude that the significance of the participant, dead or alive, is social comment, given that reality is equal to consciousness, and death is equal to the ultimate unconsciousness. The premise of the capitalist paradigm of discourse suggests that culture is used to entrench outdated, lifeist perceptions of class, including the ultimate oppressed, those no longer even with us, as the current narrative suggests that Derrida is.

Ultimately, that will be his legacy–the destruction of communication, and the decimation of clear thinking in many university English departments.

Here is a memorial website to him and his works.

Political Commentary

Good Line

…from Pete Coors on Meet the Press this morning. Not an exact quote, but something like “Why would we want to bring into the coalition countries that have been working with the enemy?”

By the way, has anyone noted the irony of calling the coalition, which consisted largely of countries that weren’t on the take from Saddam and the UN Oil for Palaces program, the “coalition of the bribed”?

Political Commentary

Something I Would Love To See

…in the debate tonight. Remember the scene in the movie Annie Hall, in which people are arguing in a movie theatre lobby about something that Marshall McLuhan said, and Woody Allen, disgusted, pulls the actual Marshall McLuhan out from behind a counter, who informs them that they don’t seem to understand his work at all?

When (probably not if) Kerry mentions Paul Bremer, or Charles Duelfur, as supporting his position tonight, it would be great if the president could pull them out of the woodwork, and have them tell Kerry, in front of God and the debate audience, that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about?

Space

First, Second And Third Parties

Clark Lindsey explains the issues involved with yesterday’s legislative emergency for passenger spaceflight.

And he points out a very good piece by Richard Foss on the prospects for space tourism and the town of Mojave.

[Update in the afternoon]

Here’s a related piece from Space.com with several good points made by Jeff Greason:

Greason said he is in total agreement that it is necessary for regulators to ensure that potential passengers have adequate information. But he sees a “critical distinction” between the risk faced by the uninvolved public and that faced by those who want to fly into space.

“The uninvolved public has to be held to a very high level of safety,” he said. “There’s no reason they should be exposed to a level of risk that’s different than they see from any other aspect of industrial life.

“The involved passenger, the people who are deliberately putting their lives and treasure at risk to open the space frontier they’ve dreamed of their entire lives, as long as they know what they’re getting into, I think they have to be allowed to take that risk.”

One of the nation’s advantages, he asserted, is that there is still a “culture of risk acceptance as long as it’s only for the participant…”

…Greason said commercial space transportation, for it to succeed, has to chart new ground to improve the level of safety set by government programs such as the space shuttle.

“That means the classic regulatory prescriptive approach of ‘We’ll do it just like all those other successful very safe personal space transportation vehicles’ can’t work,” he said. “It’s a paradoxical, hard to understand thing, but in order to achieve greater safety, we have to allow many approaches to be tried, because only in that way can we find out experimentally those which offer greater safety.”

[Update at 3:45 PM EDT]

Jeff Foust has the latest word from former committee staffer Jim Muncy on the bill status, from this morning’s session of the Space Frontier Conference in Long Beach (which I wish I were attending, and almost certainly would be if I were still in southern California).

Space

Legislative Emergency

I just got an email from Jeff Greason at XCOR Aerospace:

There is a last-minute move by some staffers in the Senate to heavily amend HR 3752. The amendments would completely change the charter
of the office of commercial space transportation (AST), placing the safety of the crew and passengers on equal footing with the safety of the uninvolved public. Since that is well beyond present technology, it would effectively stop development of the industry in the U.S.. It is too late to fix the bill before the session adjourns, but not too late to stop it. If you or people you know have connections to any Senator, please ask them to put a “hold” on HR 3752. That prevents it from passing by unanimous consent. We may have less than 24 hours.

If the bill is “held” there may be opportunity to fix it in a post-election session — but if not, we would still rather the bill die than pass with these poison-pill amendments.

I’m now wondering if the AIAA was aware of this, and if so, whose side they’re on.

[Update at 11 PM EDT]

Alan Boyle at MSNBC has the latest on the issue. Bottom line: the bill is almost certainly dead for this session, and will have to wait for next year. But:

That’s just as well, said Andrew Case, the acting director of the Washington-based SubOrbital Institute and a research associate at the University of Maryland at College Park.

“It leaves us with continuing uncertainty,” Case told MSNBC.com, “but it’s better to have continuing uncertainty than the certainty of bad regulation.”

Perhaps more tomorrow, but thanks to Alan for quickly getting to the bottom of what’s going on in the murky labryrinth of what’s going on inside the Beltway in this matter. That’s why we have professional journalists with the resources and sources to ferret this stuff out. Too bad they don’t all do as good a job.

[And thanks to commenter “gs” for the tip to the MSNBC piece]

[Update on Friday afternoon]

There are some more follow-ups in this more recent post.

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!