Can Do

Quoting the entire post below so the text in bold makes sense.

I do not think it is likely that we'll hand the job off to the Navy or the Air Force. I do think the Navy has the history and the background to make a good go of it.

But. How many millions of people are veterns who embody the can-do spirit and live the Seabee motto: "Can do." Most of us, I think. Does this carry over into the work we do for corporate America? I know it does.


Current Chaos Manor mail

Subject: D Day thoughts

Indeed it is well to remember a few things about what these United States Of America accomplished on June 6, 1944:

On D-Day, the Allies landed around 156,000 troops in Normandy. The American forces landed numbered 73,000. Ninety-five per cent of these American soldiers just 912 days earlier, on December 7, 1941, had been civilians with no military training, experience or even any great desire to be soldiers.

11,590 aircraft were available to support the landings. On D-Day, Allied aircraft flew 14,674 sorties. All of these aircraft had been built in less than three years. Ninety per cent of their pilots had never flown IN an airplane, much less piloted one, before December of 1941. Ninety-five per cent of the mechanics and other ground support personnel who maintained their engines and other systems had never set foot on an airfield, much less worked on an aircraft, prior to December of 1941.

Operation Neptune, the naval support operation for the Overlord landings, involved huge naval forces, including 6939 vessels: 1213 naval combat ships, 4126 landing ships and landing craft, 736 ancillary craft and 864 merchant vessels. Some 195,700 personnel were assigned to Operation Neptune: 52,889 US, 112,824 British, and 4988 from other Allied countries. A third of the ships were from the navy of these United States of America. 80% of those ships had been built since December, 1941. Ninety percent of the seamen and eighty per cent of the officers manning those vessels of war had never crewed more than a rowboat prior to December, 1941. A third of them had never seen the ocean before December 7, 1941.

A pipeline was laid under the ocean to carry fuel and lubricants to the allied forces. Two pre-fabricated harbors had been designed, built and towed through one of the most treacherous bodies of water in the world and installed on the Channel coast of France while under enemy fire.

All of this, and more, done in 912 days. All of it done without electronic computers. All of it done without fax machines, without cell phones, without voice mail, all of it done with manual typewriters and mechanical calculators and reams of paper and legions of men and women filing and stamping and checking and rechecking and working as if their lives depended on it. As if!

And today, with all our wealth and technology, our "leadership" tells us we cannot control our own borders, we cannot find Americans willing, at any price, to hew wood, draw water and break stone, that tell us daily that we cannot build a nation fit for heroes and the children of heroes without foreign labor to bake our daily bread.

The American military, despised in the 1920s and 1930s, under funded, officered by men who often came from the despised rural regions of the country. rose to the task and, for better or worse, did the job they were asked to do. Then they laid down their weapons, dismantled their armies and fleets, and returned to their plows, by and large.

When the leader of this great effort in due time rose to the chief magistracy of these united States, his final speech to the nation he had served so honorably was not a summation of military horns and laurels, all his to rest on, and more. No, he used that auspicious moment to warn his nation of the danger of the military if allowed too great an influence in society.

And today again the United States military is often mocked, easily despised, and all too often given tasks as "impossible' D Day in 1944. And it still accomplishes them.

You want industrialization of space? A moon colony? An outpost on Mars? Give the job to the military. While you whine about the militarization of space, they will quickly and efficiently accomplish it, and then hand the keys to your new world to you. And then return to their barracks.

We do not deserve them. We never have. But they are the best we have.

Petronius The Arbiter Of Taste

The Crowd

The Crowd by Richard Seaman



27,000 people dropped what they were doing to watch a space ship break out of the atmosphere for a brief moment in time.

Were you one of them?

What are you doing now?

Sellout

When you think that George Lucas kick-started the movie tie-in and merchandising thing in 1977 the following from a review of THX-1138 seems ironic.

Slice of Scifi - Science Fiction TV Movie News, Interviews more » William Shatner Reviews - THX1138

The overall mood is one of bottled-up rage. While the script’s critique of consumerist culture is heavy-handed, to say the least (“Buy more. Buy, and be happy”),

From critic to sellout, in only a decade. Not that there is anything wrong with making a pile of money from your creation of course.

Book Review

I blogged at Liftport and possibly went a bit over the top.

LiftPort Staff Blog

The really truly interesting thing is that I myself know of around 30 people who expressed interest in reviewing the book via the online PDF or paper copy. Have we seen any of those? Nope.

So - you slackers. Read the damn book and tell us why we suck. Or praise us. Nitpick, heck anything would be welcome at this point.

If you are plowing through, well that’s okay. Obviously it’s not a paying gig, we’d just like to know that we’re still in your hearts and minds. I know DK is busier than a one-armed paper-hanger and Gerrold only said he’d think about a review and if we’ve been waiting for the last 10 years for the next Chtorr book we might be waiting until 2050 for a review from that quarter ….

Gad. Busting on David Gerrold for being tardy to publish the last Chtorr book is like potting fish in a barrel. And unfair, in the cold light of day. He's a busy guy, with a lot of irons in the fire.

Still, I want to know how it turns out.

Faith and Reason

Tiffany quotes Pope John Paul II encyclical letter, Faith and Reason

Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth—in a word, to know himself—so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves (cf. Ex 33:18; Ps 27:8-9; 63:2-3; Jn 14:8; 1 Jn 3:2).

And concludes

Regardless of one's religious origin, living is about living well. Living well means utilizing the gifts of universal conscience and righteousness for a greater purpose.

Amen, Tiffany.

Obvious

HP is cutting back on telecommuting for it's IT people. Bringing them together in the office. No doubt words were tossed around in the conference rooms about synergy so on.

MercuryNews.com | 06/03/2006 | HP cuts back on telecommuting

``It's usually cheaper to have people operating in their own space than in your own. There's obviously something not going right or not to their liking for them to want to regroup or to change,'' said Manny Avramidis, senior vice president for global human resources for the American Management Association.

Well gee, what could going on at HP to cause problems in the workforce? Things are all hunky dorey there, nu? Oh wait ..

The architect of the HP division's change, Randy Mott, is regarded by Wall Street as a mastermind of operational efficiency based on his days as chief information officer at Wal-Mart Stores and Dell.

"Mastermind of operational efficiency" is usually a great thing in the boardroom, less than great in the cube farms. />

Mott said by bringing IT employees together to work as teams in offices, the less-experienced employees who aren't performing well -- which there are ``a lot of'' -- can learn how to work more effectively.

In an office, ``you're able to put teams together that can learn very aggressively and rapidly from each other,'' he said.

So there ARE problems with retention in IT there. No surprise.

Big Love

Best Comment Ever Award (Guy's On The Couch Catagory) on HBO's Big Love

Runner Up

it is a dark and creepy show. my girlfriend chloe sivengy is so unlikeable its bizarre. hopefully we will see her express a few nice sides. but i doubt it. i dont know why im rooting for this dude, hes so bland and undeserving of his two decent wives.

The Winner

harry dean stanton steals every scene. the show should be about him. hes got the band the girls and the money. hes got a wife whos younger than any of bill paxtons wives. and he rides around in a hummer.

Wisdom

Current Chaos Manor mail

Wisdom from Australia:

Subject: Illegal Aliens?

Illegal aliens? Shit! I didn't even know we'd made contact with another planet, let alone know that the USA had made these visits from another planet illegal.

You Yanks never cease to amaze me! You don't know your left wing from your right wing - hence really ignorant statements like "Liberalism is a philosophy of consolation for Western Civilization as it commits suicide." The stunning levels of stupidity contained in that phrase will keep the rest of the world rolling about in a strange mix of laughter and despair for months. Thanks for all the laughs. As long as Americans keep saying things like that we'll all know that you're incapable of running the world - and just as well.

~Dave

By the way, they're illegal immigrants, not aliens... unless of course you just want to vilify them, put them down, shit on them and are doing the good old Nazi right wing trick of dehumanising them so that you can kill them without conscience...

Thank you for sharing that with us. I understand you are too busy to explain your wisdom. I suppose we will have to endure our ignorance.

Define: alien

(snip)
In law, an alien is a person who is not a citizen of the land where he or she is found. If an alien resides in the country, as opposed to being just a visitor, he or she may be called a "resident alien". The term illegal alien describes foreign nationals who have entered the country illegally.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_(law)

Define: immigrant

(snip)
a person who leaves one country to settle permanently in another
collections.ic.gc.ca/peh/teachers/Glossary.html

And still more from Dave in a followup

http://www.tcsdaily.com/Article.aspx?id=050506I on why socialism is not dead."

Well, I read it, and all I can say is that Lee Harris - like so many Yanks - doesn't know the difference between socialism and communism, and doesn't understand the English language - another Yank failing.

Pot, meet Kettle.  Dr. Pournelle is too nice a guy to publish Dave's email address, which is a shame. Some people deserve to be mocked.

Che: No sense of humor

The things I never knew ..

Allen Ginsberg - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In 1965 Ginsberg was deported from Cuba for publicly protesting against Cuba's anti-marijuana stance and its penchant for throwing homosexuals in jail, but also for an alleged remark referring to revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara as "cute."

Che: Revolutionary with no sense of humor. And possibly a latent homesexual.

Little bit of BLAM!

Huge impact crater discovered in Antarctica. 300 miles wide.

And the gravity measurements that reveal its existence suggest that it could date back about 250 million years -- the time of the Permian-Triassic extinction, when almost all animal life on Earth died out.

Well dang - that's pretty bad. But wait - it's worse. The impact broke up the Gondwana supercontinent, setting in motion geologic events that are still playing out today. Think bell, think rung by the hammer of God. This also paved the way for the dinsosaurs to become the dominant life-form on the planet.

Of course the dinosaurs in turn were done in by their own hammer of God 65 million years ago. What comes around goes around.

My del.icio.us RSS feed

Hey look! I'm one of the cool kids - this is my del.icio.us tag's RSS feed.

Okay, I'm years late to the del.icio.us party but .. what? del.icio.us isn't cutting edge? Dang, late to the party, again.

Eew

A taboo exists for darn good reasons. Violate them only at peril. Such as pedophilia.

Dutch pedophiles to launch political party | Reuters.com

Dutch pedophiles are launching a political party to push for a cut in the legal age for sexual relations to 12 from 16 and the legalization of child pornography and sex with animals.

The party said it wanted to cut the legal age for sexual relations to 12 and eventually scrap the limit altogether.

The party said private possession of child pornography should be allowed although it favors banning the trade of such materials. The broadcast of pornography should be allowed on daytime television, with only violent pornography limited to the late evening, according to the party.

Toddlers should be given sex education and youths aged 16 and up should be allowed to appear in pornographic films and prostitute themselves. Sex with animals should be allowed although abuse of animals should remain illegal, the NVD said.

The party also said everybody should be allowed to go naked in public.

The party's program also includes ideas for other areas of public policy including legalizing all soft and hard drugs and free train travel for all.

Words fail me. If this doesn't make your skin crawl then stay far, far away from me.

FILL IN ALARMIST AND ARMAGEDDONIST FACTOID HERE

Philadelphia Inquirer | 05/29/2006 | Greenpeace's fill-in-the-blank public relations meltdown

Before President Bush touched down in Pennsylvania Wednesday to promote his nuclear energy policy, the environmental group Greenpeace was mobilizing.

"This volatile and dangerous source of energy" is no answer to the country's energy needs, shouted a Greenpeace fact sheet decrying the "threat" posed by the Limerick reactors Bush visited.

But a factoid or two later, the Greenpeace authors were stumped while searching for the ideal menacing metaphor.

We present it here exactly as it was written, capital letters and all: "In the twenty years since the Chernobyl tragedy, the world's worst nuclear accident, there have been nearly [FILL IN ALARMIST AND ARMAGEDDONIST FACTOID HERE]."

No, that's not the best part.

The aghast Greenpeace spokesman who issued the memo, Steve Smith, said a colleague was making a joke by inserting the language in a draft that was then mistakenly released.

"Given the seriousness of the issue at hand, I don't even think it's funny," Smith said.

The best part is (at least as quoted) the Greenpeace spokesman not seeing the humour in the situation.

Our ancestors - idiots

I'm watching this show on Discovery: The Rise of Man

The Rise of Man From Homo Erectus, the first species to demonstrate signs of humanization, to Homo Sapien, follow the path of our direct ancestors as they migrate across the planet. Through socialization and technological advances, the Homo Sapien thrives.

It's an okay show. I'm sure they're grossly simplyfying for idiots like me. Then I see a sequence that offends me.

A small plucky band of Sapiens wanders into Europe. Discovers .. ice - a whole field of it. Then they find out it's cold and it burns their bare tootsies. Much capering about and gibbering. One older fellow plops down and cuts up a fur and binds it around his feet. One dude hops to and fro stabbing with his spear, at the ground. Much excitment and yelping.

Twenty feet from the edge of the ice. No doubt these fellows went on to settle Ireland.

But no, I kid. These guys were no different than you or I - why go to such pains to show us 'what happened' and then blow it all by having the actors demonstrate that 'primitive' equals 'acts like they've got half a brain between them'.

Unless, you know, the producers have a thing againtst the Irish.

Like a sucker

Booster Seat Law Cometh

The new (Wisconsin) booster seat law goes into effect tomorrow. Here’s a handy guide for making sure that you comply with the law.

(Homer Simpson) You mean the State can do my thinking for me? And all this time I've been using my brain, like a sucker.

I don't think my state rep voted for this but if he did he's off my Christmas list.

Zing

From yesterday's White House briefing with Press Secretary Tony Snow:

Helen Thomas: Why did the President pick a man [Karl Zinsmeister] who is so contemptible of the public servants in Washington to be his adviser--saying, "People in Washington are morally repugnant, cheating, shifty human beings"? Why would he pick such a man to be a domestic adviser?

Mr. Snow: You meant contemptuous, as opposed to contemptible, I think.

There is no doubt that some public servants and others in Washington are "morally repugnant, cheating, shifty human beings". Also no doubt that 'domestic' covers more than just the Distict of Columbia.  It can be hard to forget that most of the country could give a flip about what happens in D.C.  Perhaps Ms. Thomas is feeling a bit put upon.

Helen Thomas: If this is his attitude toward public servants --

MR. SNOW: No, I don't think it's his attitude toward public servants -- it may have been toward the press. Just kidding.

Zing!

Via Opinion Journal - Best of the Web Today - May 31, 2006

I told you guys to slow down and take it easy or something like this would happen.

From the Trebuchet entry in  Wikipedia.

Because of the time required to load the sling and to raise the counterweight, a large trebuchet's rate of fire is slow, often not more than a couple of shots an hour. Smaller trebuchets can fire a couple of times a minute. The payload of a trebuchet was usually a large rounded stone, although other projectiles were occasionally used: dead animals, beehives, the severed heads of captured enemies, small stones burned into clay balls which would explode on impact like grapeshot, barrels of burning tar or oil, Greek fire, or even unsuccessful negotiators, prisoners of war, and spies catapulted alive.

Emphasis mine.  I am not sure but I don't think the tone in the above paragraph would make it into Britanica. One of the many reasons to adore Wikipedia.

Working harder with less fuel - hey it works for staff

If you can make your staff work harder for less pay, why can't you push the engine of capitalism the same way?

TCS Daily - Is This What Is Meant By 'Investor Protection'?

Since SOX became law, our economy and capital markets have suffered from higher compliance costs in several ways:

* The number of companies going private (so-called "going dark") has increased dramatically, with many firms citing SOX compliance costs as a principal reason for choosing to do so
* A growing number of firms choosing to rely on retained earnings or private equity rather than raising money by going public via an IPO
* Pre-SOX, 9 out of the ten largest IPOs had a US component; in the last year, 9 out of the 10 largest were entirely foreign
* Fewer acquisitions and ADR offerings by foreign issuers

The bottom line? SOX is costing our economy the proverbial bundle and the SEC's response is little more than whistling past the graveyard.

More good news. Bleh. I'm not going to call for a rope but will only note that if you whip a horse while cutting off it's air don't be surprised when your wagon doesn't get very far.

Maritan Memorial

Martian memorial | Samizdata.net

I ran across a fascinating historical footnote in the May issue of Sky and Telescope I feel should be much more widely known.

The builder of the Rock Abrasion Tool (RAT) on the Spirit and Opportunity rovers was a small Manhattan company named Honeybee Robotics. The company offices are just a few blocks from the World Trade Center site, so it hardly bears saying the engineers were deeply affected by the events of 9/11.

They paid their respects in an unusual and touching way. With assistance of the Mayor's office they acquired bits of mangled aluminium debris from the site. The engineers pounded and formed them into cable shielding parts.

Those bits of the World Trade Center have now been roving Mars for two years.

Very appropriate for Memorial Day.

Ted Nugent: Off his rocker?

Ted Nugent: Off his rocker?

We take a break. Nugent sits by a small amp and plays tunes by Chuck Berry and Jimmy Reed. Though he's sometimes derided as a circus act, watching him close up it's not hard to understand why people have likened him to Jimi Hendrix, or how John Peel came to call "Cat Scratch Fever" the best rock single of its year. His decision to restrict his berserk talent to heavy rock has undoubtedly masked his virtuosity. Not that this bothers Ted. "GOD SENT ME HERE TO MAKE SURE THESE LICKS CAME OFF OF A GUITAR. THEY ARE PERFECT. THEY ARE FUCKING PHENOMENAL."

He wants to run for the Governer's office in Michigan in 2010.

Awesome. Not for his politics - I find his professed politics a tad extreme. But my, it would be entertaining.

The aritcle is worth reading for the 'oh my gracious' attitude of the reporter. As if P.J. O'Rourke took a hard left and became a Limey.

Nugent is not known for his intuitive connection to his feminine side; he arrives wearing a camouflage cowboy hat, his shorts supported by a belt housing a Glock revolver. I don't, at this stage, notice the .22 which he will discharge in 45 minutes' time.

Beauty

STS-121 Payload Canister on it's way to Launchpad 39B.

Via.

Why we explore the unknown

Why we explore the unknown - from Robert Service's "The Spell of the Yukon"

Sex

From Joe Huffman's quote of the day.

Clitorises are the best thing in the world! No other piece of the human body has the SOLE PURPOSE of bringing pleasure. If that's not the coolest thing ever, I don't know how you expect to find any sort of sexual happiness in your life.

Xenia Huffman-Scott
Celebration of Ovulation
An anthology Moscow Idaho English period 6.
May 5, 2006

No comment needed from this quarter.

Wealth

Reworking the the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers catch-phrase about dope: Wealth will get you through times of climate change better than climate change will get you through times of no wealth.

Climate change, predicted by the UN to change the way most people live over the next 100 years, is the least important of the world's immediate problems, says a group of economists, including three Nobel prize winners, who were asked to priorities how money should be spent on helping the world's poor.

The team of six American and two other economists, brought together by controversial environmentalist Bjorn Lomborg, said it was not worth spending money on climate change because the effects were expected to be far in the future. They recommended that people became rich first and that money should be spent on HIV/Aids, water and free trade.

Which all sounds so reasonable that it should not need explanation. If you're wealthy you can .. you know .. do things like build levies, irrigation projects, force industry to utilize expensive measures to clean up their manufacturing process. A poor society can only suffer floods and gasp for air as sooty factories pollute the environment making cheap krep for the proles.

I must be wrong - clearly I don't understand the real world.

But they were immediately castigated by international development and environment groups, who accused them of "understanding nothing about the real world".

Do .. what?

"This simplistic and rather banal ranking of these problems should not be taken too seriously," said Stephen Tindale, the director of Greenpeace. "It is an example of intellectual illiteracy. All these problems are linked."

"They have come up with bizarre conclusions," said Andrew Simms, the policy director of the New Economics Foundation. "The simple point is that unless you act to prevent runaway climate change, all the other things which they prioritize - which are generally no-brainer good things - will be wrecked by global warming."

Or it could be that in a world of wealth Greenpeace won't be relevant and people won't need NGO experts to tell them how to generate wealth. That would be .. horrid, not to need their well meaning advice and smug self-righteousness.

Sarbanes Oxley - spread the love around

A Sarbanes Oxley for the legislative branch.

The Sarbanes Oxley Act of 2002 requires corporate executives not merely to read but to certify the accuracy of their companies' financial reports. Why are Congressmen (i.e., both Representatives and Senators) held to a lesser standard? Why are they not required under penalty of perjury to certify that they have read and carefully studied each bill that they vote for? Don't the American people have the right to demand that their legislators know what they are doing?

...A first step should be the refusal to enact any new legislation that the members of Congress are unwilling to swear or affirm under oath that they have read and carefully studied. And along with this, as another preliminary step, the promulgation of any new rule by any regulatory agency should be prohibited except upon that rule having been read, studied and voted into effect by a majority of the House and Senate Committees having jurisdiction over that regulatory agency. Thus, for example, before the SEC or EPA could enact any new rule, a majority of the members of the House and Senate Committees having jurisdiction over them would have to approve the new rule. This measure would effectively place members of Congress in charge of the various regulatory agencies.

Sauce for the goose is good for the gander.

Via.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintennance

Speaking of Quality Control . . .

The question why comes back again and again and has become a major reason for wanting to deliver this Chautauqua. Why did they butcher it so? These were not people running away from technology, like John and Sylvia. These were the technologists themselves. They sat down to do a job and they performed it like chimpanzees. Nothing personal in it. There was no obvious reason for it. And I tried to think back into that shop, that nightmare place, to try to remember anything that could have been the cause.

The radio was a clue. You can’t really think hard about what you’re doing and listen to the radio at the same time. Maybe they didn’t see their job as having anything to do with hard thought, just wrench twiddling. If you can twiddle wrenches while listening to the radio that’s more enjoyable.

Their speed was another clue. They were really slopping things around in a hurry and not looking where they slopped them. More money that way...if you don’t stop to think that it usually takes longer or comes out worse.

But the biggest clue seemed to be their expressions. They were hard to explain. Good-natured, friendly, easygoing...and uninvolved. They were like spectators. You had the feeling they had just wandered in there themselves and somebody had handed them a wrench. There was no identification with the job. No saying, "I am a mechanic." At 5 P.M. or whenever their eight hours were in, you knew they would cut it off and not have another thought about their work. They were already trying not to have any thoughts about their work on the job. In their own way they were achieving the same thing John and Sylvia were, living with technology without really having anything to do with it. Or rather, they had something to do with it, but their own selves were outside of it, detached, removed. They were involved in it but not in such a way as to care.

No doubt the late hour and an egregious flaw in a supposedly professional CMS install has something to do with my irritation.

DD-214

Say what you will but a forged DD-214 of this quality is just sad. Spelling counts.

Jesse MacBeth hates ballerinas because they twirl all day and not a single person gets roundhouse kicked in the kneecaps.

Mud

"That's the Lieutenant's tank. No NCO would put his tank in a hole like that."

Tank in Mud.

Pish-tosh

From TCS

America: Well, that sounds reasonable. I'm sure that we can work out some kind of AAAAAARRRRGGGGHHHH! Oh, the mind-bending, excruciating horror! It's like a pair of ravenous earthworms are burrowing tunnels of agony in my lower abdomen! In the name of God, why?

Iran: It was a bizarre, freakish accident.

America: No, it wasn't! The best-selling book in your country is "Protocols of the Elders of Kicking America in the Crotch!" You've given dozens if not hundreds of speeches on the religious necessity of planting your foot in America's gonads! You gave a presentation at the last International Islamic Conference on "Kicking America in the Crotch: Strategic and Economic Considerations!" This was no accident!

Iran: Oh, pish-tosh. Surely you realize that we espouse that kind of rabid pro-crotch-kicking rhetoric to appease the crotch-kicking masses? We may seem like deranged religious fanatics in public, but in private we're humane, civilized men who enjoy fine literature, good music, and the occasional stoning of homosexuals and liberal dissidents. We all want the same things: peace, prosperity, a cessation of hunger and want, total submission of the world to the teachings of Allah...

America: We don't want that!

Iran: Whatever.

Via.

Breeding

What do you get when the mother looks like this



And the father looks like this?



We're not sure either. We'll know more in a week or so. My guess is 'so ugly they're cute'.

Anyone want a puppy?

Photos not of actual dogs. Void where prohibted.

Response to "Space Elevator is Doomed" meme

Tom Nugent published a reply to the this letter in Nature by N. Pugno and the spate of the space elevator won't work and I told you so meme.

There’s been some discussion recently (as well as emails sent directly to us) about the Nature letter which summarizes an article by N. Pugno predicting that the maximum strength possible in bulk CNTs will be roughly 30 GPa (as opposed to the 130 GPa predicted by Edwards 4+ years ago).

I posted about the paper mentioned in Nature to our forums back in January, and some (mostly non-LiftPort) people responded:
http://www.liftport.com/forums/showthread.php?t=356. Here is what I just wrote in an email about the issue:

I’ve discussed the article with a couple of CNT researchers, and they say that they’re not convinced by the paper. My attitude is that we have to wait and see what really happens, because there’s a lot about carbon nanotubes that we don’t know yet.

Despite anyone’s predictions, we won’t know what the material will be like until it’s made. There’s a LOT of other work that needs to be done on SE development regardless of what the material winds up being. And in the “worst” case, you can still build a space elevator on the moon with near-term materials.

One thing to remember is that, even if bulk CNT were limited to 30 GPa, we could still build the space elevator. It would just become limited by finances. That’s because, with a density of 1300kg/m^3 and a strength of 30GPa, the mass of a seed ribbon (using the same assumptions as in my November article - safety factor of 2, and 1,000kg capacity) would be roughly 3,440 tonnes (i.e., 3.44*10^6 kg), or roughly 170 rocket launches (using current medium-lift rockets) to loft it (i.e., ~80 times as massive as in the 2002 NIAC report). The expense and logistics of creating a seed ribbon at that point (assuming you’re launching from Earth) becomes much more daunting, but not impossible.

A week ago we were saying what we've been saying all along - we don't know what we don't know, we're exploring the options, to reach a go no-go point in 2009ish. It is worthwhile to explore the options in light of the potential benefits.

We're still saying that but in light of the 'neener neener we told ya' blog posts we might look like happy optimists instead of dour pessimists. Amazing how you can maintain the same position but appear to have shifted sails.

Poke

Aidan, aged 11: (poke)

Me: Stop i'm trying to work.

Aidan: Work or Liftport?

Me: Liftport . . .

Aidan: (POKE POKE POKE)

Jesse MacBeth Facts

Jesse MacBeth. Genuine Barb, Fake Ranger. Sadly I note that his support is evaporating - an earlier, rougher age might have said he's been purged by his fellow travelers. The appropriate punishment is not jail time or sanction, but endless and eternal mockery.

Jesse MacBeth Facts.

Guns don't kill people. Jesse MacBeth kills People.
There is no theory of evolution. Just a list of animals Jesse MacBeth allows to live.
Jesse MacBeth does not sleep. He waits.
The chief export of Jesse MacBeth is Pain.
There is no chin under Jesse MacBeth' Beard. There is only another fist.
Jesse MacBeth has two speeds. Walk, and Kill.
The leading causes of death in the United States are: 1. Heart Disease 2. Jesse MacBeth 3. Cancer
Jesse MacBeth drives an ice cream truck covered in human skulls.
Jesse MacBeth is my Homeboy.
Jesse MacBeth doesn't go hunting.... Jesse MacBeth GOES KILLING

Because some people deserve to be mocked.

Content shamelessly lifted from Chuck Norris Facts.

Mind by Kenny Goh

Mind

It knew it was special.
Eternity was set in it, yet it was mortal.

Mind civilised and tamed the land.
Mind lorded over the earth. Mind dominated the earth.
Yet the earth was but a mote in a seemingly endless universe.
And on this mote resided the only known awareness in the universe.
Mind.

So Mind looked to the stars.
Without physical conquest, Mind engulfed the universe.
Mind understood the universe.

But there were the unseen things.
These too, Mind brought to light.
Energies were harnessed to its liking.
The mysteries of Time Space opened up.

One by one, the universe gave up its secrets to Mind.
The mental conquest came as a torrent.

It knew it was special, yet the reason was incomprehensible.
Despite intimate understanding of the universe,
Despite a future dictated by Mind,
This last hurdle proved one too high.

The question of Existence remained closed,
And as the stars burn out shall Mind pass without meaning.

Ecc 1:18:
For with much wisdom comes much sorrow;
the more knowledge, the more grief.

Patches

Once in a while you read something that tells you .. the fellow might not know what he is talking about.

From a security perspective, if Microsoft disappeared no one vendor would have a 95 percent market share and worms could not spread as fast. “Heterogeneity is a powerful positive,” says John Pescattore, vice president for Internet security at Gartner.

We would also find out how bad the Linux and Apple vendors are at providing patches, compared to what [customers] got used to from Microsoft,” Pescattore says, adding that Microsoft is much better than Apple and Linux at delivering security patches. “If you keep getting into car accidents, you know how to fix dents.”

I'll let the comment about how "Linux" is worse than Microsoft to release patches stand on it's own.

I have some personel experience with patches from Apple, compared with those from Microsoft. Let us just say that the one is faster and better to release and it ain't the guys from Redmond. My own experience, or do I trust the guy with title from Gartner. Perhaps he was misquoted.

National Guard - Competence

New slogan: Army National Guard: We're Damn Good, and No One Notices.

The National Guard had its headquarters for Katrina, not just a few peacekeeping troops, in what the media portrayed as the pit of Hell. Hell was one of the safest places to be in New Orleans, smelly as it was. The situation was always under control, not surprisingly because the people in control were always there.

From the Dome, the Louisiana Guard's main command ran at least 2,500 troops who rode out the storm inside the city, a dozen emergency shelters, 200-plus boats, dozens of high-water vehicles, 150 helicopters, and a triage and medical center that handled up to 5,000 patients (and delivered 7 babies). The Guard command headquarters also coordinated efforts of the police, firefighters and scores of volunteers after the storm knocked out local radio, as well as other regular military and other state Guard units.

Jack Harrison, a spokesman for the National Guard Bureau in Arlington, Virginia, cited "10,244 sorties flown, 88,181 passengers moved, 18,834 cargo tons hauled, 17,411 saves" by air. Unlike the politicians, they had a working chain of command that commandeered more relief aid from other Guard units outside the state. From day one.

The cavalry wasn't late. It didn't arrive on Thursday smoking a cigar and cussing. It was there all along.

More at the link including that the Guard, at Jackson Barracks, noticing the flooding long before anyone else had a clue (water 20 feet deep around the Barracks might be hard to miss, granted) but then moved their headquarters to the Superdome. Restablishing com in four hours. Which in and of itself speaks volumes for their leadership and the excellence of their troopers.

The question in my mind is why the focus on the erronous reports of mayhem and the exclusion of the superb work done by the Guard and others?

via Jason Coleman

Business

Shubber Ali at Space Cynics has hit upon a method for making business in thte alt.space community.

Space Cynics will gladly review your business plan/case/whatever, and post our findings on our website. We will allow you room for rebuttal, and will respond to any substantive criticisms (but this will not become an open-ended he said/she said - we will stop the dialog if it becomes unresolvable).

The cost? $2500.

Genius.

Fake Ranger, Genuine Barb

Wretchard discusses the interviews of purported Ranger and Iraq vet Jesse Macbeth. Purported because the guy is clearly out of uniform i.e. tabs and rank badges in the wrong place, sleeves rolled 'Marine' style not the way a soldier does and so on. Other commentators note the unit details are wrong and so on.

A fake. All of this is beside the point.

In an earlier post I wrote that the defenses of civilization consisted not merely of arms, but of belief, culture, law and commerce. The hallmark of a functional civilization is that these things are bulwarks against barbarism -- and not portals for it -- by common consent. Belief, culture, law and commerce were once used by civilization as a wall against savagery; not as means of providing their escalade. But as author Philip Bobbitt, pointed out, the replacement of the nation state by the "market state" has loosened many of the ties which formerly bound together the peoples of traditional nations. In the modern multicultural state the cement of culture is no longer what it used to be. In that context, Riehl's question can be interpreted as asking: is there any sanction in Western belief, culture or law which prohibits Socialist Alternatives from trotting out deliberate lies? We already know that many on the Left would be opposed to deliberate lies about Weapons of Mass Destruction. But is there any corresponding prohibition against impersonating an Airborne Ranger in a broadcast? If none, then it's anything goes and barbarism is no longer strictly without, it is also within.

I find it tolerably amusing that the tools and methodology used to make Western Culture the epitome of tolerance and light are the ones being used to tear it apart.

Poppycock!

RLV and Space Transport News the good word on the perils of cosmic rays to travelers in outer space that will trap us on earth forever ...

Poppycock

.Good news.

Three Things You Can't Fake

From Deadprogrammer's Cafe

I am currently reading Douglas Coupland's latest book, "Jpod" and absolutely loving it. My favorite quote so far:

"Here's my theory about meetings and life: the three things you can't fake are erections, competence and creativity. That's why meetings become toxic--they put uncreative people in a situation in which they have to be something they can never be. And the more effort they put into concealing their inabilities, the more toxic the meeting becomes. One of the most common creativity-faking tactics is when somebody put their hands in the prayer position and conceals their mouth while they nod at you and say, "Hmmmmm. Interesting." If pressed, they'll add, "I'll have to get back to you on that." Then they don't say anything else".

Woman in Field - Alfred Stieglitz

Waste

From TJIC.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet_Worksho…

…The [ shuttle’s external fuel tank, brought into orbit, and converted into a space station ] would provide a huge working space, and one major problem with various wet workshop designs is what to do with all the space. The oxygen tank, the smaller of the two tanks inside the ET, is itself much larger than the entire Space Station Freedom in its fully expanded form. Additionally, getting access to the interior is possible though “manholes” used for inspection during construction, but it is not clear if realistic amounts of building materials could be inserted into the tank after reaching orbit. Nevertheless the problem has been studied repeatedly, a number of such studies are collected in the links section below…

Leave it to NASA to see a completely empty space station, vastly larger than the Freedom, launched in a single mission, for free (as part of the throw-away materials) as a “problem”.

Yes, the SE is a work in progress, all designs are preliminary and subject to revision. Still, after our first ribbon is deployed the plan is to have several hundred expended lifters parked nose-tail at the bitter end of the ribbon. A modest amount of onboard computational ability, solar panels, drive train, framework. Just waiting for someone to come along and reuse them.

Not thousands of cubic feet of living space, but it is something.

Corsairs over Korea

Lawyers

'tdr' who blogs at 'Tales of the Heliosphere' has this comment on ISDC

At the ISDC Szoka ran the legal track of discussions. The legal track included great topics that were unfortunately sparsely attended. The talk by adventure sports lawyer Tracey Knutson should be required listening for anybody who hopes to launch people into space and avoid liability when something eventually goes wrong. (Here.) But few attended.

There's probably a reason for the sparse attendance. One, there are the really cool view graphs of spaceships and hardware at the other talks. At the legal talks, what viewgraphs there are typically have words, lots and lots of words. And not just regular English words or even whizbang rocketry words. No, we're talking legalese. Who wants that?

The more likely reason is that many spacers don't like government, but arguably they dislike lawyers even more. Maybe if they ignore them, the lawyers and government will just go away. In fact, Pete Worden got some appreciative laughs with a few lawyer jokes during his luncheon talk on Sunday. One joke suggested that even one lawyer in space was too many.

Yet during his talk Worden said an important requirement for opening the Moon to economic development is the right to own private property on the moon. He acknowledged not being a lawyer but said his understanding was that the Outer Space Treaty didn't bar private property ownership on the Moon.

If Worden or the audience had attended Szoka's comprehensive and insightful talk on private property rights in space under the OST, he and his audience might have learned that owning real property on the Moon is not going to be as easy as he and they think. However, mining its resources, possessing enough territory to mine those resources, and selling the resources are all legally possible even under the OST.

So let the lawyer jokes continue. Lawyer jokes are the price lawyers pay to run the world. Just remember, if you're not satisfied with one world, do you think lawyers are? And who do you think you're going to have to call when you're finally ready to stake a legal claim to a platinum group metal asteroid or helium 3 on the Moon?

Which is a good, important point. Engineers and hackers are essential to any project. More, a really good engineer (and you don't want any other kind) might do well at lawyering but he's not going to be happy doing it. To engineer and hack you need an interface between you and the cold world. Business guys (Hi Michael) and lawyers are that interface. Ignore the need at your peril.

Smith [the company commander] did not have to order his Marines straight into the direction of the fire; it was a collective impulse - a phenomenon I would see again and again over the coming days. The idea that Marines are trained to break down doors, to seize beachheads and other territory, was an abstraction until I was there to experience it. Running into fire rather than seeking cover from it goes counter to every human survival instinct - trust me ... In one flash, as we charged across [the street] amid whistling incoming shots, I realized that they were not like me; they were Marines.

In the Line of Fire
Robert D. Kaplan

Attitude

The Vision for Space Exploration: New Opportunities - A Speech by NASA ARC Director Simon P. Worden

I am never sure how much import to attach to speechs by administration officials. Easy to dismiss when you don't agree with them, easier yet to proclaim a new heaven on earth when the tone of the speech agrees with your own thoughts.

Still. Whatever the Director of NASA Ames Research Center has to say should not be lightly dismissed. Full text of the speech at ISDC on 5/7/2006 is here.

Now these are the key questions then: How do we sustain the vision for space exploration to lead us to settlement? How do we afford it? How do we nurture it? My answer - and I think a lot of yours' - is the private sector.

But I've got to point out that history teaches us new frontiers were not opened up by tourists. English visitors and colonists in the 17th century had few if any wealthy tourists among their numbers. So I believe we must look elsewhere for the interests and funds to sustain the type of space exploration - and settlement - that we all seek.

Let me provide you a few thoughts how we might approach this problem. First I will assert (which may be changed by my leadership) that the government should focus its efforts on two areas. The first is infrastructure.

Infrastructure - man I do love the way that word rolls off the tongue. Not much glory in building a railroad, perhaps, but it can be fun and profitable.

10 Things I Hate About Commandments

Hah. A comedy 3,000 years in the making ...

10 Things I Hate About Commandments

Via

Space Cynic

Space Cynic. Because, God bless their hearts, everyone needs to be grounded in reality. Shame there aren't more people talking on their site. Thus far it's .. just the editors.

The Democrats' Dictionary

The Democrats' Dictionary. I think Ambrose Bierce* would approve.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

Samples

FREE: 1. Anything you have to pay for whether you want it or not, as in "free public education". 2. Anything that the government allows you to do as long it is in the best interest of The People, as in "free speech".

NPR: National Public Radio. Organization that is able, through a non-market funding system, to provide listeners with programming that they do not want to listen to badly enough for commercial radio stations to bother running them, even at four in the morning.

PEOPLE, THE: The rhetorically useful imaginary American peasant class. The very young and the very old are easily convinced that they are a part of The People.

PBS: Public Broadcasting System. Television network that is guaranteed to produce objective programming in a manner that is responsive to it's viewers by the fact that it receives federal funds (which by their very nature never come with political strings attached). This frees them from the necessity of pandering to the mere consumers of their product.

RICH: Anyone who has anything that some of our constituents want to take from them.

via 'The Hand of Munger'

* I didn't reallly need to link to the Wikipedia entry did I?

Union

The sentiment expressed by Alex, made me chuckle quietly.

Unions. Turning well oiled capitalist engines of profit and simplicity into complicated, pre-detonating, oil fouled, nightmares of technology since 1915.

America - An Ode To Immigrants

America
An ode to immigrants.

BY RAY BRADBURY

We are the dream that other people dream.
The land where other people land
When late at night
They think on flight
And, flying, here arrive
Where we fools dumbly thrive ourselves.

Refuse to see
We be what all the world would like to be.
Because we hive within this scheme
The obvious dream is blind to us.
We do not mind the miracle we are,
So stop our mouths with curses.
While all the world rehearses
Coming here to stay.
We busily make plans to go away.

How dumb! newcomers cry, arrived from Chad.
You're mad! Iraqis shout,
We'd sell our souls if we could be you.
How come you cannot see the way we see you?
You tread a freedom forest as you please.
But, damn! you miss the forest for the trees.
Ten thousand wanderers a week
Engulf your shore,
You wonder what their shouting's for,
And why so glad?

Run warm those souls: America is bad?
Sit down, stare in their faces, see!
You be the hoped-for thing a hopeless world would be.
In tides of immigrants that this year flow
You still remain the beckoning hearth they'd know.
In midnight beds with blueprint, plan and scheme
You are the dream that other people dream.

via

Open Source Train

Open Source Train

I think that people are realizing that the Open Source train has left the station. Some people missed the train. Some people are in the middle of the bridge and are (rightfully) horrified. Others don't even hear the whistle. Their company will die without ever knowing what hit it.

Grampa

This

While working on the Chinese portions of the sites, several small implement-looking objects were uncovered by a number of dig teams in different locations. They were often made of jade or ivory, but some had been found that were wooden and some that were metal. They roughly resembled cocaine spoons.

Eventually the hypotheses boiled down to an undetermined ceremonial use. Some time later, my friend was in SF's Chinatown and wandered into a soft-goods shop where she found one of the tiny, slender, long-stemmed spoons for about two bucks. She couldn't believe her eyes.

Joan grabbed the spoon, went to the counter, and bought the spoon. After paying for it, she asked if there was any special use for it. The lady behind the counter looked at her like she was a crazy seven-year-old and gestured with her hand to her ear: "It for wax."

Reminded me strongly of something family legand holds that my paternal grandfather would do, or did at least once do.

He travelled for business. From central Oregon to the coast and back. Going to the coast he would take (or did once take) 'desert' rocks to the coast, and would bring 'beach' rocks back to the desert. And then drop them off. To confound future students who would have to ponder how beach rocks got to the desert and visa-versa.

The new phone books are here!

The Jerk

"Page 73, Johnson, Navin, R.! I'm somebody now! Millions of people look at this book every day! This is the kind of spontaneous publicity, your name in print, that makes people. I'm in print! Things are going to start happening to me now."

What? Oh, nothing. My copy of 'Liftport: Opening Space To Everyone' arrived last night, that's all. Nifty book - you should hie thee to the link, do the clicky thing and order a copy.

Lee Harvey was no friend of mine

Excellent essay on the death of Liberalism.

It is one of the ironies of the era that many young people who in 1963 reacted with profound grief to Kennedy’s death would, just a few years later, come to champion a version of the left-wing doctrines that had motivated his assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald. But why should this have been so? What was it about mid-century liberalism that allowed it to be knocked so badly off balance by a single blow?

Good - excellent - read.

Texas Lightning

Kick-ass video.



Eurovision 2006: Germany - Texas Lightning (Music Video)

Dang those Germans do both kinds of music - country and western - right.

Via Frau Budgie at Red Hot Cuppa Politics. And look - they have a website.

Despair

Despair is a sin.

Jerry Pournelle - Reflections on Immigration

I'm optimistic - I am. Reading Jerry's thoughts on immigration, however, gives me the mopes.

Under currently proposed legislation, we will import up to 100 million -- that's 10^8 people -- legally and legalized illegals -- in twenty years or so. I do not believe that the Melting Pot can deal with that dilution to the American character.

In fact I do not believe that we can assimilate the number of illegal immigrants we already have. The legal immigration program already admits too many people at the bottom end of society if you count families: elders imported to be on Social Security because the Old Country doesn't have decent pensions. And so forth. Add to that the illegal immigrants and the very character of the American Experiment in Self Government is at stake.

Democracy is a dangerous form of government. There never was a democracy that did not commit suicide. The Framers opted for a federal republic, a Nation of States, an experiment in ordered liberty with variants. That has endured for a long time. It was transformed into a more unitary state by the Civil War, but even that did not destroy the fundamental character of these United States. I know there are those who argue that the Civil War ended the American experiment; I remind them that despair is a sin, and that in fact as late as 1938 Washington, DC was a small town in Maryland, "Don't make a Federal Case of this" was a meaningful expression, the FBI office in a major city might have half a dozen Agents and as many clerical staff, and so forth.

Since the Civil War the US went from Federal Republic to National Democracy, but it did so slowly, and until Earl Warren and his Imperial Judiciary it ran up against limits. Now we are going further down that axis toward a French-style Centralized Bureaucratic Rule. We are becoming a national democracy.

There never was a democracy that did not commit suicide.

But even those who have long advocated democracy have always known that a democracy is not a form of government compatible with cultural and linguistic diversity. The Swiss Exception is instructive: Switzerland is a democracy, and it is diverse in both language and confession -- and it is not unitary. Few Swiss can name their President although most can tell you the name of the Canton and Commune officials relevant to their lives. A national democracy cannot endure as a culturally diverse society with cultural, linguistic, and religious diversities. It cannot. Ours will not.

The American Melting Pot model of assimilation to a single language, and a wide-based Judao-Christian ethical and religious culture, might be able to endure nationalization. Might. That would be an interesting experiment. But it is 100% certain that the Melting Pot cannot handle great dilution, and that it takes time for it to work. Adding tens of millions of illegals plus larger numbers of legal immigrants will destroy the model and force our national democracy into the typical defects of a large national democracy, and thus to extinction. This is about as certain as anything we know about history.

Apparently no one in Washington understands this.

If they did, they would close the borders NOW, not in 2008.

As to how, it's simple: call it 2000 miles of border. At $1 million per mile that is $2 billion/year, a drop in the Budget. Hand that money on a per/mile basis to each border county sheriff, with provision that it must be spent on border control -- apprehension and confinement. Now hand every border city $20 million a year for the same purposes. Hand each Border State $50 million a year, again solely for border enforcement. The whole program will cost less than the illegals cost us now.

And yes, there are details to be worked out, including rewards for performance and penalties for non-performance, and I took the numbers out of the top of my head; but it would work a lot better than sending 6,000 Guardsmen down to the border for TWO WEEK SHIFTS. The present plan will do nothing. It won't even LOOK as if it is doing something, which is its only purpose anyway.

Close the border now. Deport all illegals who come to the attention of the police courts. Insist that any legalization program includes instruction in English, Civics, American History, and such, and have a zero tolerance policy regarding crime including DUI, speeding tickets, driving without a license, drunk and disorderly... IN other words, deport those who volunteer for deportation. And hope that we can assimilate the rest. And do that NOW.

Apparently no one in Washington understands what is at stake.

Daily we sow the wind.

Not because I think he's wrong. Because I fear he is right.

What do you do when your culture seems determined to shoot itself in the foot?

Presidential Material

President Newt Gingrich? About as likely as a former B-list movie actor getting to the Oval Office.

Right. At any road Gregory Anderson interviewed Newt in 'The Space Review'

I am for a dramatic increase in our efforts to reach out into space, but I am for doing virtually all of it outside of NASA through prizes and tax incentives. NASA is an aging, unimaginative, bureaucracy committed to over-engineering and risk-avoidance which is actually diverting resources from the achievements we need and stifling the entrepreneurial and risk-taking spirit necessary to lead in space exploration.

There ought to be tax credits for manufacturing in space and tax credits for developing commercial flights into near space for space tourism so we build a very robust launch program in the private sector. We need a lot of competitive players, not simply one or two cumbersome large bureaucratic government contractors.

We should simply interpret the (1967 Outer Space)Treaty very broadly and state that in the absence of an international regime, people can pursue legitimate investment and development within national law.

For those who see manned space as having no role they would have thought the Wright Brothers were irrelevant in 1903. The human race has a destiny to spread across the solar system and then across the stars. I prefer that destiny be led by free people.

President Gingrich has a ring doesn't it? And the best part? Having a fellow named 'Newt' in the White House would drive the our supposed betters bonkers.

Answer

Because it's my blog and I'll drag out the way-back machine if I want to. But mostly because I ran across part of this quote in my .sig file and I feel like posting the Lileks wrapping around it. Lileks is good. He may not be remembered by the ages but he's a good workman like writer.

The Strib’s editorial page had some anti-space program cartoons on Sunday. You could predict the lame japery – looking for WMDs on Mars, Gitmos on the Moon, etc. This one by Toles summed up the whole stay-on-earth-until-the-sun-novas idea. It shows a little girl in a wheelchair reading the news, saying “They’re prepared to spend how much so a man can walk on Mars?” The scribbled dingbat in the corner – you know, Toles’ own commentary on his own commentary – says “some things just inspire us.”

Yes, we could make that little fictional girl walk if only we spent the money. But curing spinal cord injuries wouldn’t inspire us. Maybe it’s a stem-cell funding research reference – a valid jibe, I suppose, if this was an either-or thing, and people had deeply-held moral objections to a Mars mission. It just strikes me as the same old provincial jibe I dimly recall from the Apollo era: why are we going to the Moon when there are so many problems here?

Because there’s an entirely different set of problems up there.

And the answers might come in handy.

Some are steamed because the Hubble’s been tanked ahead of schedule, and I’m not pleased about that either. But you could say that every dollar spent on the Hubble thus far could have gone towards Toles’ crudely drawn paralyzed girl. Would the artist insist we had never sent the observatory in the first place, then? For that matter: there were paralyzed children in the 60s. Would Toles have preferred that the government shut down the Apollo program and throw all the millions into spinal-cord regeneration research? Will I never stop asking loaded rhetorical questions?

No. Some more:

France isn’t going to the moon. What stops them from curing spinal-cord injuries? Germany isn’t going to the moon. What stops them from curing spinal-cord injuries? Britain isn’t going to the moon. What stops them from curing spinal-cord injuries? And so forth. It’s not a zero-sum game; America is not the world. But America is best suited to leave this world for another. If that idea leaves you cold, fine.

But I can’t shake the suspicion that we were put here to leave.

As I have noted from time to time, I’m a Lutheran Deist. By some peculiar coincidence my concept of God flatters my own conceptions of the universe; imagine that. If I were king of the forest, and I set this blue-green ball up to follow my dictates, I would have made the night sky inky black - if you want the bald apes below to follow your lead, don't give them stars; they;ll only make up stupid stories. But the night is alive; there are a billion blazing stars above. A challenge? A warning? A promise? We don’t know, but they are so very tempting. And we are notoriously bad at turning temptation away. Haven't you ever looked up at the great dark beyond and felt you were being drawn from where you stood, carried into something greater? Every night the sky is an invitation. Who can look up and see nothing but a roof?

To put it all in Rumsfeld lingo: it’s the known unknown. Space is to humans what Beethoven is to dogs. I don’t think we have the slightest idea what we don’t yet understand.

Just thought of something: What holds the paraplegic in their chairs? What keeps them from shooting around the room, stopping their progress with a finger, floating from desk to desk?

Gravity.

And gravity isn’t a big issue . . . where?

Monkey

Boy: Where is Mom?
Me: She's running away to Mexico. Do you want to go with her or stay with me?
Boy: I want to stay here. I don't want to go to Mexico.
Me: They have monkeys in Mexico . . .
Boy: Oooh Monkeys! I want to go to Mexico!

Thrown over for monkeys. The horror.

The Economist: Rocket renaissance

From The Economist

First, the money. So far, more than $1 billion is known to have been committed to building private spaceships and the infrastructure to support them. For example, Mr Rutan's follow-up vehicle, SpaceShipTwo, is expected to cost its backers, Virgin Galactic, $240m for a fleet of five. The spaceport in New Mexico from which these are intended to fly will account for another $225m, although New Mexico's government is planning to raise this money itself.

These are not small sums, of course. On the other hand, Virgin Galactic has already banked $14m of deposits towards the $200,000 fare from people who want to travel on SpaceShipTwo, even though it has yet to be built, let alone flown.

All this suggests that spaceflight, if not exactly entering the age of the common man, is at least entering the age of the moderately prosperous enthusiast.

Of course we'll know when space access has truly arrived when it moves from the Science and Technology section to Business.

Alligator

I don't know if I agree with Fred's conclusions vis-a-vis the trend termed multiculturism. It does make for interesting reading.

From the Washington Post: “Nearly half of the nation's children under 5 are racial or ethnic minorities, and the percentage is increasing mainly because the Hispanic population is growing so rapidly, according to a census
report released today.”

Now in newspaper parlance, “minorities” means “permanently underperforming and inassimilable minorities,” which is to say blacks, Latinos and, when anybody remembers, American Indians. It very seldom means successful minorities, such as Chinese, Greeks, white men, Jews, or Anglo-Saxons.

As we look forward to a massive slewing away from the dominance of European whites in America, what may we expect? What will these huge minority populations do? It is instructive to look at what they have done so far.

He goes on at entertaining if gloomy length describing various problems and ills, some of which he's seen first-hand. Nothing like first-hand experience to trump a slew of well-meaning intent. Then we get to what is - I feel - the nut of the piece

Another crucial question is this: If half the children today are of minorities, then in no more than eighteen years half the kids of college age will be. Unless they show a sudden scholarly afflatus which has not heretofore been in evidence, this means that soon the US will have to compete with China with the brains of only half the nation. This is not to mention secondary effects, such as enstupidating all schools to hide the failures of the minorities. Do you suppose that the Chinese are doing that?

Good question, Fred.

Conclusion: the United States as a viable country is doomed. I don't know if I agree but a) Fred doesn't have a dog in this fight, having absculated to Mexico and b) he's a sharp guy with a great deal of experience in places polite society fears to tread.

I'm still living here - I do have a dog in this fight. I've not lived as long as Fred, not kicked around the more dismal corners of the world. Which is to say I may be biased in ways the Fred is not, and unable to see forest for the trees. And too, I'm optimistic by nature.

I confess I'm not so very after reading that article.

Secrets of the Economists

Russ Nelson reveals

These facts are well-kept secrets of economists. The first rule of economics is: don't reveal the secrets. I'm going to take a big risk and reveal these secrets. Don't tell anyone else!

* for a business, capitalists are a cost,
* "excess" profits go to the entrepreneurs who created the business,
* competition eliminates these entrepreneurial profits over time, and
* the primary beneficiary of capital investment are workers.

Historically, capitalists have only gotten about a 5% yearly return on their money.

Damn greedy running-dog capitalists.

Immunity

This is enough to make me stop using anti-bacterial soap

Chemicals use in anti bacterial soap are persistant in the environment, and the presence is therefore accumulating. Municipal water treatment plants don't handle the chemical, so it transfers to the "treated" sludge, where it is spread on fields routinely. Some scientists are worried that this gradual buildup could lead to "superbugs" being developed out int he wild, negating any so called advantage of using the anti bacterial soaps in the first place eventually.

Ew.

Mating

From Mempunks

DNA tests have recently confirmed that a bear killed by a hunter is half grizzly and half polar bear. Avid hunter Jim Martell was on a $45k guided polar bear hunt on Banks Island when they encountered the strange animal. The hunts Iniut guide, Roger Kuptana, was the first to note that the bear wasn't normal. It had an indented face, a humped back, long claws, and eyes ringed in black. The outfitters hosting the hunt sent the carcass out for DNA testing to save Martell a potential thousand dollar fine and year in jail for killing the wrong kind of animal. As it turned out, the creature had a polar bear mother and grizzly bear father.

The event that produced the hybrid would have been clinically interesting to watch .. from a distance.

Smackdown

Kedrosky puts the smackdown on a former management consultant

. . . we are told repeatedly that he founded a major consulting firm, but not which one -- only to find out that his firm was a failed bubble creation at which he had only worked for four years:

By a strange twist of fate, I owe the longevity of my consulting career [ed. Elsewhere he says seven years] to this circumstance. When I first announced my intention to withdraw from the firm in order to pursue my vocation as an unpublishable philosopher at large, my partners let me know that they would gladly regard my investment in the firm as a selfless contribution to their financial well-being. By the time I managed to extricate myself from their loving embrace, nearly three years later [ed., 7 - 3 = 4], the partnership had for other reasons descended into the kind of Hobbesian war of all against all from which only the lawyers emerge smiling. The firm was temporarily rescued by a dot-com company, but with a year both the savior and the saved collapsed in a richly deserved bankruptcy.

To summarize in English: Stewart started an unnamed firm, and tried to exit mid-bubble four years later; his partners didn't want to buy his equity, so he sued them. By the time he got his shares bought three years later the firm had imploded. I may have some of the precise details wrong, but that's seemingly the essence. Not to be unnecessarily harsh, but who the hell cares what someone like this has to say about management theory, especially if the article is disjointed, dull, obvious, smug, poorly written, and full of falsely-elevated faux philosophy chatter.

If only the literate beating could be administered to consultants as a group. Ah one can dream.

Sea Angel

In May, 1991 I was assigned to 3D FSSG, Camp Kinser Okinawa. Specifically I was assigned to the programming section of the Information Management Services Office (ISMO) producing iffy programs in Clipper.

Sunday evening the MSGT X knocked on my door. This is entirely unexpected; I'm just another junior NCO in the ISMO, he's the boss.

"How would you like to get out of the inspection tommorrow?"
"Sure."
"0700 tomorrow report to the dispensary, get a full specturm of shots. 0800 report to supply, draw gear. 1000 you'll be on a plane at Kadena. You're going to Bangladesh. They need the best NCO programmer I've got. As it happens you're the only NCO programmer who can deploy so off you go."

I was on my way to Joint Task Force Sea Angel. My contribution in the final analysis wasn't great; they didn't need a programmer they needed someone who could read a book and create a flat-file database. As it happened since no one at the ISMO knew what they meant by the orders for 'the best NCO programmer you have" I ended up with a footlocker full of LAN and WAN gear, a good toolkit, massive amounts of software on floppy, and manuals.

Among the manuals was the one needed for the flat-file database application they had. I spent a few hours reading, a day coding and learning and hey presto my job was done. I spent another two days cleaning malware from the machines (anti virus software, whazzat?), then spent the rest of my time (nearly a month) as the message center's messenger.

Still .. helping people - no matter how small my contribution - felt good. It felt right being there, helping a country recover from disaster.

Why blog about this now? As near as I can recall two days from now is the fifteenth anniversary of MSGT X telling me I was going to Bangladesh. I didn't want to the let the occasion pass by with out remark.

See also this for the perspective from Bangladesh. Remembering April 29: The deadly sea and the sea angels.

Turbine

I'm biased - I work there. But I think this is pretty damned cool. From Liftport's May Technical Newsletter

Interested in clean, green, renewable wind power to reduce energy costs? Do you know that meteorological data is critical to siting wind turbines? Liftport is seeking opportunities to utilize its ballooned meteorological HALE platforms to help site wind turbines. We are seeking farms or vineyards who will allow us to fly a meteorological HALE platform at low altitude on their property. This can be a much simpler and more cost effective method to help site wind turbines than current standard data collection methods.

Liftport is currently particularly interested in property in New England, Washington and in the vicinity of Southern New Jersey. If you know someone who would be interested in installing a Liftport HALE platform on their farm or vineyard please send the location's full mailing address, point of contact, telephone number, email address and the current electricity provider to andrew.becker@liftport.com.

I have no idea about the details - see Andrew. It's just all so cool and groovy playing even a minor role in a group of people that organize around the space elevator idea.

Carl the Second

More fun from Carl.This goes back in time to the now far off and distant days during the Heroic Age of the dot com bubble.

1998.03.08


Episode 6: The Problem With Dilbert

"What's this?" Dave asked.

I looked at where Dave was pointing. "That's Ratbert. He's the one that looks like a rat."

"No, it's a Dilbert cartoon," Dave said. "Have you ever noticed how everyone expresses their so-called individuality by taping a Dilbert cartoon to their computer monitor?"

I frowned. "Dilbert is an integral part of the geekosphere."

"Dilbert disempowers the working class by making light of the historical conflict between capital and labor," Dave told me, with a straight face.

and

Internship of Fools, Luke Seeman:
It's like a Dilbert cartoon gone terribly, terribly wrong. In the last month 14 people here have quit in frustration. The people in the trenches are obviously hollow shells of what they once were and management is clueless.

Fray. Now that takes me back. No reason for posting this. Just Because if you must know. And because plastic.com seems to be MIA and I really wished Carl had made a go of that venture.

Not that I know Carl well enough to first name him.

Think of the children

Why a Space Elevator? From alert enthusiast Ed Greisch comes the news that

The number of potentially viable human lifetimes lost per a century of postponing of the onset of galactic colonization is 5 with 46 zeros afterit! We loose 5X10**46 "great grandchildren" for each century we postpone colonizing the galaxy!!!!!!!

Will no one think of the children? See 'Cosmological Forecast and Its Practical Significance' in Journal of Evolution and Technology Vol. 12 - September 2002.

Thingamy

Thingamy is written in LISP.

Thingamy is now entirely done in Common Lisp, after having basked in a few other development environments in it's early days :)

Given the nature of the system and the way we go forward - "no way we can plan for all, better build so we can face anything" - then, well, CL has so far been the best of friends.

Given that Paul Graham (as noted by Ric in the comments) believes LISP is an edge that few competitors will want to match .. I'm feeling better about the Thingamy and how it could fit into Liftport's environment.

Cousins

Lileks doesn't just write a good piece, he does modestly entertaining audio.

When you grow up and all you know of Britain is the television shows and the Kipling stories it's an amazing, fascinating place.

It had two identities. It had it's past identity as the planets most civilized bad-asses. The could project power across the world, conquer anything. And what did they do when they conquered? They put in place laws and schools and courts and the rest of it. Walked around in stiff red uniforms, sweating, miserably hot and nevertheless do it for King and country.

And then you have the contemporary version of Britain. Suave and sophisticated spy-like David NIven / James Bond with gadgets and martinis and a wry eye tilted toward the ladies simultaneously with swinging carnally mod London with it's indescribably perfect pop music which would later give way to a different form of rock and roll entirely.

Between those two things it's past and it's dual identity in the present Britain was an amazing country. Britain is a cousin country just hanging out there and someday you figure you'll visit.

Carl

Wisdom from Carl.

I believe in projects. Projects should never be too big. Big ideas and big dreams lead to big problems.

It should be noted that Liftport is not, in the grand scheme of things, a big project. Ambitious, but not with airy grand schemes.

Irritation

Profanity Ahead.

Attention Microsoft Outlook Developers.

I'm composing a mail message in Outlook. I've not used it in a while but we're deploying it at the day job so I'm taking one for the team.

File - New - Mail Message
Click To:
Hmm. I know 'Joe' but what is his last name?
Click Advanced, select Find
Display Name: 'Asshat' Click 'ok'
"No Entries were found" "OK"
And you're dumped witout ceremony back in the 'Select Names' dialog.

Jesus McFuck people. Who is the developmentaly delayed project manager who decided that the default for a failed search in the address book is to close the search function? As if my default behaivor is to say 'meh' and just .. give up. Did it occur to you that, maybe, I don't want to give up my search and I just might need to change the spelling of a search term?

Respectfully Submitted,

An Irritated User

The Revolution will not be Blogged

The Revolution will not be Blogged
by Pharoah Ashseti of Newark @ myspace


You will not be able to read it at home, brother.
You will not be able to log on, log in and syndicate your feed.
You will not be able to lose hours in MetaFilter and Kuro5hin,
Click on text ads for naked punk girls with online diaries,
Because the revolution will not be blogged.

The revolution will not be blogged.
The revolution will not be hosted on Blogspot or Pitas.
It will certainly not be hosted on Salon or Backwash.
The revolution will not show you digicam pics of people
You've never met before in pubs or bars looking like they've
Just stepped out of Nerd Central Station and
Eaten a few too many Ring Dings.
The revolution will not be blogged.

The revolution will not win a goddamn Web award
From the Bloggies or Webmonkey or be linked to by A-list
Bloggers like Meg Pickard or Wil "Crazy Hair" Wheaton.
The revolution will not be turned into a comedy novel.
The revolution will not comply with HTML 4.01.
The revolution will not be updated regularly in easily
Digestible chunks, because the revolution will not be blogged, brother.

There will be no half-baked diatribe about the plans
You and your lover have for the weekend or that thing
You saw on television the other day but missed half of because Nancy rang.
The Guardian will not run a special on you
Or be able to spell your name.
The revolution will not be blogged.

There will not be any little graphics from "alternative" websites
Declaring you to be Syphilis or Charlie Manson.
There will not be any little graphics from "alternative" websites
Declaring you to be a Native American Chief made of butter.
There will be no custom scripts allowing you and your friends
To talk banalities in the sidebar of your site.
There will be no webcam pics of you posing just like Madonna
So that the rich nerd perverts who visit your page can buy you things
From your Amazon wishlist.

Memepool, Daypop, Blogdex, B3ta and Fark
Will no longer be so goddamn relevant or funny, and
Women will not give a shit if Brad and Jennifer are having
A happy marriage or if Tom Cruise is a homosexual because
The good people of the world will be in the street looking for peace.
The revolution will not be blogged.

There will be nobody having nervous breakdowns while
Putting together Web applications for updating your page
Or links to pages with many hamsters dancing in unison.
The revolution will not be an all-pervasive medium for
The transmission of ideas in a timely manner on a global scale.
The revolution will not display correctly in Mozilla.

The revolution will not have banners or popups or popunders
Or those irritating graphics that take over your whole screen.
You will not have to worry about having the latest Macromedia
Flash, Macromedia Shockwave or Macromedia Goddamn plugin.
The revolution will not work at all in Opera.
The revolution will not secretly hope for a deal with Microsoft.
The revolution will not be skinnable.

The revolution will not be blogged, will not be blogged,
Will not be blogged, will not be blogged.
The revolution will be no Web diary, brothers;
The revolution will be televised.

via

Age

Harlan Ellison was named the Damon Knight Memorial Grandmaster in Tempe, Arizona on May 6.

Robin Wayne Bailey, Harlan Ellison, and Connie Willis
Photo courtesy of SFWA

I'm sure he's still feisty. I'm sure he's still the guy who never learned it's not polite to ask 'who farted?'. But holy crap he looks old and unwell. Just a bit of a shock - in my mind Harlan is a young punk of about thirty.

Schwing

Watching a TV movie last night. Heroine picks up a bat to fend off the Bad Guy. Boy (who is six) pipes up from the couch "Schwing-batta-batta-schwing!"

SBAAF

Q: Does Strongbadia have a space program?

A: Who doesn't have a space program these days? I mean, don't, like, the Italians have a space program?

http://homestarrunner.com/sbemail138.html