I’m off to the conference. I may post from there, but if not, I’ll be back Sunday evening.
I’m A “Little Red”
According to this test.
It was more than a little irritating, though, because all (not just a few) of the questions should have had a “No Clue” option.
I generally do well on multiple-guess tests, but I don’t think they’re a useful gauge of knowledge, and I particularly dislike those that don’t have an “I dunno” option.
I’m A “Little Red”
According to this test.
It was more than a little irritating, though, because all (not just a few) of the questions should have had a “No Clue” option.
I generally do well on multiple-guess tests, but I don’t think they’re a useful gauge of knowledge, and I particularly dislike those that don’t have an “I dunno” option.
I’m A “Little Red”
According to this test.
It was more than a little irritating, though, because all (not just a few) of the questions should have had a “No Clue” option.
I generally do well on multiple-guess tests, but I don’t think they’re a useful gauge of knowledge, and I particularly dislike those that don’t have an “I dunno” option.
Centennial Challenge Report
NASA has published a report (PDF) on last month’s Centennial Challenges Workshop (thanks to Neil Halelamien over at sci.space.policy for the pointer).
I haven’t read the whole thing, but I did go look to see what they did with my glove idea.
I regret that I wasn’t there–they made some decisions that I would have argued about. I think that the glove should be 8 psi, not 4.3–a large part of the idea was to eliminate the need for prebreathing and avoid risk of the bends. I like the idea of providing plans for gloveboxes to the contestants, and think that worrying about someone injuring themselves is silly, not because it’s not a danger, but because it’s a danger we have to accept if we want to progress. I still like my task idea of tearing down and rebuilding an auto, or motorcycle engine. I proposed a million, and they came up with a quarter million (though they recognize that the amount may be too low–it’s driven by legal constraints which will hopefully be removed in the future).
Anyway, it looks like a promising start, and Brant Sponberg should be congratulated. Let’s hope he can keep the ball rolling.
Space Prize Hearings
SpaceRef has a summary of the hearing on prizes for space achievements, held on the Hill this morning.
Molly Macauley made an excellent point:
“Even if an offered prize is never awarded because competitors fail all attempts to win, the outcome can shed light on the state of the technology maturation. In particular, an unawarded prize can signal that even the best technological efforts aren’t quite ripe at the proffered level of monetary reward. Such a result is important information for government when pursuing new technology subject to a limited budget,” she said.
The DARPA Challenge is a good example of that, in my opinion.
Of course, we have the usual caviling:
“While establishment of a NASA prize program is certainly worth considering, we should not be lulled into thinking that it is any substitute for providing adequate funding for NASA’s R&D programs,” cautioned Subcommittee Ranking Minority Member Nick Lampson (D-TX).
Rep. Lampson is one of the representatives from JSC.
Overall, while there were some appropriate cautionary notes, there seemed to be a consensus that this was a good idea. Let’s hope that they can get the funding now.
Torture and the ticking bomb
Brad DeLong makes an excellent point about the torture memo:
It seems to me that Yoo misses a great many points. The hypothetical he describes–Osama bin Laden himself, a ticking nuclear bomb, a city that cannot be evacuated, et cetera–is not a situation in which torture should be legal. It is, however, a situation in which torture is pardonable. If you find yourself interrogating Osama bin Laden in such a situation, you do what you must do–and then you ask the president for a pardon. And the president has the power to give you one.
That’s what the procedure is with respect to torture. And I think that’s what the procedure should be.
As a nation we have no compunction about asking our defenders to risk death in order to protect us. Why are we so lilly-livered about asking them to risk legal hassles? Is it really worth sacrificing the legal protections that previous generations fought (and yes, died) for in order to spare someone in a highly unlikely scenario from having to ask for a pardon? I don’t think so. Not only is the indictment vanishingly unlikely to ever be brought in the first place (since it would destroy the career of the attorney general who brought it), but even if a jury could be found that was willing to strictly construe the applicable law, there is still the presidential pardon available as a final stopgap.
The reason the administration wants to have the rubber hose option legally available has nothing to do with the ticking bomb scenario. The ticking bomb is such an unambiguous case that even a blatant violation of the law is not going to be punished. The scenarios in which the legal loopholes are needed are the ambiguous ones, the ones where finding an AG willing to indict, a jury willing to convict, and a president unwilling to pardon are a real possibility. It is precisely those scenarios where torture should not be used.
The alternative is a legal regime in which torture can slip through the cracks, growing in application to more and more crimes and suspected crimes. Once our expectations are renormalized to allow torture on people suspected of terrorism, it’s only a matter of time before major drug crimes are included under the theory that drug money funds terrorism. From there we slouch on to lesser drug crimes, cybercrime, and so on. Perhaps you trust the current administration not to slip down this slope. But do you trust all possible future administrations?
What we give up by not legalizing torture is a small measure of safety. What we lose by legalizing it is not just the moral high ground, but also our own future safety from abuses by our own government.
The instinct to legalize torture comes from the same misguided mode of thinking that wastes time and effort figuring out all possible scenarios in which it’s legitimate to violate traffic laws. Nobody is under the impression that it’s wrong to blow a stop sign if you’ve got a guy in the back seat with arterial bleeding and you’re headed for the hospital. There is no need for a legal exception, and if a cop stops you he’ll more than likely give you an escort. Ditto the ticking bomb – if Alan Dershowitz is around, he’ll help you clip the electrodes to the guy’s nuts.
More Post-Intelligencer Thoughts
Andrew, that piece really is worse than you say.
The trouble is that the space program’s purposes are inseparable from its Cold War-era context.
No, the trouble is not that they are inseparable–it’s that we’ve never made a serious policy attempt to achieve such a separation.
He gets the NASA budget wrong (it’s closer to twenty billion than fifteen). That doesn’t change his point (in fact it strengthens it, to the degree that it’s valid), but it’s sloppy. It’s also not clear that the plan will require a significant increase. That was one of the selling points of it–that by putting down the Shuttle program, we can shift funds to the new activities.
Along the way, the space commission he appointed has offered up a smorgasbord of absurd side benefits, such as possible improvements in our (so far non-existent) ability to deflect threatening incoming asteroids, of the sort that may have severely disrupted life on Earth as recently as 35 million years ago.
I guess his point is that it doesn’t happen very often, so it’s not a benefit. He’s probably unaware that if the Tonguska event had occurred on the eastern seaboard of the US, instead of in Siberia, we could have lost millions of lives only a century ago.
It really is a typical “why pour all that money into space when we have so many problems on earth?” rant. Nothing new here.
[Update in the afternoon]
Jeez, I’m almost starting to feel sorry for the schmuck. Dwayne Day really goes after a gnat with a howitzer in the comments section.
I’d say that he’s been pretty thoroughly discredited. Unfortunately, most of the PI’s readers probably don’t read this blog.
The latest Crypto-Gram
Crypto-Gram is a monthly newsletter on security issues put out by Bruce Schneier of Counterpane Internet Security. I’ve mentioned it before, but it bears repeating. the link above is to the latest issue, which includes a well argued piece on handling terrorist suspects without skirting the Constitution. Schneier argues that it’s not necessary to work around established due process rules in order to deal effectively with terrorism. There are a couple of other really good items in this issue, notably the item on economic motivations for security theater (insurance companies will give you breaks on premiums if you install X-ray machines, even if you don’t use them effectively), and the item on ICS, a company selling an encryption scheme which they claim – get this – uses no math. Brilliant.
Anyway, if you’re at all interested in security issues and the tradeoffs between security and liberty, go on over and take a look.
Why Not NOAA?
Can someone explain to me why Aura is a NASA mission, and not a NOAA mission? It seems to me that if one wants to focus NASA better, this is the kind of thing that would be better done by a different agency.