Fan Letters

My very first hate mail. I've never been called names like this in a professional capacity. It's bit startling - like coming to work and finding llamas in the lobby.

Nothing wrong with llamas - just that you don't expect to find them in the lobby.

And the hate mail - hey I've been accused of stomping out freedom of expression and stifling people. Everyone is welcome to read what the fellow wrote. In, you know, the name of free speech and all.

This is going to be a summary - my blog my rules.

I am not proud that I called the guy names - but he irked me.

Profanity ahead if that offends.

The first message was sent to the info@ mailbox. What he was irritated about was that he posted a pseudo 30s era gangster post into the Forum. It was accidentally blown away when we thought it was spam. Mind you we didn't know this at the time.

message: what a bunch of lying dicks.

you say you allow disagreement.

but you pulled my 'organized crime'
forum post.

let me set aside the 1930's chicago
gangster accent.

you are a bunch of lying criminals
mooching off lazy-ass government
welfare programs.  Your stupid-ass
ideas are bullshit, and anybody
with the slightest amount of engineering
brain can see it as such.

Enjoy your $95/hr, but in the end,
you are all scum and losers and ought
to be ashamed of your ugly faces
every time you look in a mirror.

Crooks.  Con men.  I've seen your
kind many a time before.  Just because
the government is in alignment with you,
that only proves it all the more.
The government is crooks, just like you.

Space ribbon my ass.  Dumbfuckers.

- Norm Hill
 Design Engineer
 University of Washington
 BSEE 1985
 near Seattle
 Fuck you criminal con-men
 unprincipled  investigator
 welfare-bum assholes.

I replied back thusly

Norm Hill wrote:

Below is the result of your feedback form. It was submitted by

Norm Hill (analogee@gte.net) on Sunday, October 09, 2005 at 12:50:19

---------------------------------------------------------------------------





message: what a bunch of lying dicks.



you say you allow disagreement.



but you pulled my 'organized crime'

forum post.



let me set aside the 1930's chicago

gangster accent.

Your post was deleted because one of the moderators glanced at it,
thought he recognized a spam attack he'd seen before and did what he is
supposed to do - remove spam from a message board.


Clarification - the spam he (thought) he recognized was a well known
attack using slang to foil the anti-spam measures that recognize buzz words.


We have had in the past needed to delete posts from the Forum. Such has
been needed due to advertising, blatant off-topic posts and so on.


I'm hard put to see this as quashing dissent. It is commonly accepted
that a well-maintained online forum is moderated to prevent abuse, quash
flame wars and to keep a forum on-topic. Removing a single
somewhat-funny post is hardly denying your ability to dissent.

you are a bunch of lying criminals

mooching off lazy-ass government

welfare programs. Your stupid-ass

ideas are bullshit, and anybody

with the slightest amount of engineering

brain can see it as such.

And so on. Do you speak to your mother that way? A vile trend I've
noticed is the tendency to treat the pseudo anonymous communication
afforded by email, IM, chat rooms and so on as an opportunity to be
odious and hurl insults with an abandon that you would not consider in a
physical setting.


Coarse language cheapens the context, causes ill feelings on both ends
of the conversation and, in the end, does nothing to contribute to a
meaningful exchange.


At the last, your privilege of course. But I've always felt that
intelligent people can express themselves without recourse to locker
room language. You may have proven my point.

And a normal dialog started. I sat on a single email (sent on 10/13) for no other reason than, you know, I'm busy and this hit my mailbox;

Gentlemen -

You don't reply. Its offensive.

You haven't responded to even a single question,
which YOU ASKED FOR ME TO SEND. I've numerous
polite follow-ups, and again, no relies.

Your space-rope can be slain (literally) by the simplest
of analysis of any of:

* electric discharge causing severing of the rope

* atomic oxygen erosion

* space debris impacts

* inability to "uncoil" and place the rope, esp when starting up

* invalid ideas about pulse-response if trying to pull the rope
to and fro and avoid space junk

* inability to power the elevator up the rope.

* uselessness for mid-height orbits, such as low earth orbit.

etc etc etc

This is a fantasy. You know it. You are milking for money
exactly as I said.


But what really offends me, is the actual people who post
on your chat board. You've got quite a nasty little shark-tank
of vitriolic followers. The most casual of "chat" or technical
ideas (which I have tried to do, briefly, in the vacuum of technical
discussion from you executives) is responded to with the most
amazing and nasty hostility from your vitriolic followers. They
actually think that anybody new who shows up on your forum
must be 'disposed of' as quickly as possible, lest somebody bring
up either of

* a good new idea

or

* a severe technical roadblock that can't be overcome.

You guys can't even sell me any carbon nanotube rope for my sailboat.
So what's the point.


NASA unrolled a few miles of tether from the space shuttle once.
The thing blew apart due to unexpected electrical discharge. Thats
why NASA eschews anything in space that involves lengths of tether.


the real prize would be if you guys were interested in ANY type of
cheap launch capability. For their DO exist aggressive and world-class
efforts into specific equipment, that WOULD yield a cheap launch and
which the Boeing and Martin Marietta's of this world would never,
of their own accord, pursue due to their greedy desire to keep launching
impractical rockets. BUT ALAS, you aren't interested in cheap launch,
you are interested in 'space elevator'.

So this is just a religious cult, topped off by a frosting-layer of
research-grant greed. I know about research grants. They are more
likely to be awarded to things that can never work. This is like a
nasty little den of Amway soap peddlers, except in this case, selling
the soap is PROFITABLE. So enjoy the bed you have made for yourselves.



But what blows me away, is the rudeness of your vitriolic followers
on your chat board, basically thinking its some type of 'road race'
where they have to push the other driver into the ditch. Its as far
from scientific-method as anybody could possibly get. I put up
something polite and something very nasty comes back in return.



The only thing your vitriolic followers are happy with, is a dead
silence on the chat board. They write in a way as to shut down and
impede any normal flow of discussion as might normally occur
amongst normal and intelligent individuals.


I can't be around that, it raises my blood pressure, and its disgusting
(your Dorian Grey carrying on about 'erections' in response to simple
scientific discussion).


So goodbye. Enjoy your gov't research welfare money.

Also, enjoy your snide silence. And enjoy your fantasy.
I have seen enough, and the odds of a space elevator ever being
constructed, is 0000.0000000000000000000000000%


AND its a crying shame there aren't more scientists and
engineers with enough backbone so state it this as I do.



- Norm Hill

Seatle

And so on. I won't snark on the spelling - but my 8th grade Civics teacher - Mrs. 'Spelling Counts' Robinson - would be disapointed in Mr. Hill. I admit I name called when I replied ..

Norm Hill wrote:

Gentlemen -

You don't reply. Its offensive.


You haven't responded to even a single question, which YOU ASKED FOR ME
TO SEND. I've numerous
polite follow-ups, and again, no relies.

I'm not sure what you expect, really. The replies have been received
and digested. I've marked your emails for a follow-up reply as time
permits. I've written back to you saying so.

What are you on about? In response to a hate filled invective with more
swears and nastiness than I experienced in Marine boot camp you received
at least two polite reasonable letters from people in this company
informing you where you were wrong and so forth.

And now this.

If you can't tolerate the fact that you're not the center of our world,
that some people with far too many assumed roles and an action list
longer than my arm has no time to respond to a nasty git with grandiose
delusions or a bit of give and take on a forum then ... fine be off with
you. The world will be no poorer for your absence.

Which is a shame - you're a bright guy.

AND its a crying shame there aren't more scientists and
engineers with enough backbone so state it this as I do.

Damn them for not showing more backbone! If only they had the wit and
courage to cast the scales from their eyes! Or you could just be a over
educated buffoon. One of those.


You're more than welcome to exercise your right to free speech and ...
you know .. actually do something about that instead of tossing nasty
emails around. But that might ask for of you than you're capable of.

It's one thing to post asinine screeds in a forum and (as you admit)
throw emails around when someone upsets you.

Doing something with more meaning than bleats on the internet requires a
dash of personnel courage which you lack.

Again - a shame. If the world had more people who were like your
assumed persona we'd be better off.

I recieved TWO replies to this

hey brian dunbar,

what is to 'digest' an email. just waht the hell is that.
you never answered the questions.

i have something to say. This is just a vitriolic
"AMWAY" religious cult following. I see the pattern
VERY WELL. The AMWAY types have a very
predictable pattern. Don't say anything to challenge them.
also for your latest round of personal insults towards me.


Remember, YOU are the con-man who wont answer
a technical objection. YOU are the one
who deserves the insults. YOU are accepting money for
a total fucking waste of time. Don't you get ashamed of
not doing anything legitimate for a living? At my most
recent engineering contract, I earned some nasty-ass

"ENRON" type corporation about 6 million dollars for
their bottom line. I did it by paying attention to the engineering,
and succeeding where others would have failed. And by
using common sense!!

Now, it does take the fun out of it, when I know that the only
context of my work, was lining the pockets of grubby-ass
corporate con-men criminals who are too dumb to even understand
that I made them a bunch of money (duhhh, accounting sure is
turning in a fine performance this year, why, the numbers came up
six million higher than projection. Those accountants sure are smart)
BUT I STILL WORKED FOR A LIVING. I worked on
something that is real, that gets built. Too bad if it was only for work
for some nasty ass corporate criminals, but it was WORK.


What you do is just so much lazy-ass armchair freeloading and
egging on a bunch of nasty shark-tank jerks in your little forum
to all agree with each other.


Your fucking elevator will never work, and you
are distracting legitimate people, as well as the gullible
little people, who could be working on something more
legitimate (like mowing their lawn).

You fucking run little electric motors up a piece of
sailboat rope, with varyign amounts of success at
getting paid for the waste of time. FUCKING DUMB.
Worth every swear word and gesture ever seen in
the US Marines Military, yes indeed, if you need
a reply about your concerns of profanity.


Goodbye. I don't like con-men, be they government,
CORPORATE, or research-level "once an honest
academic turned into research crook".


'hey well fookin kill diz guy, well fookin put on da
cement ovashoes and fookin throw him in da bay, yah
all in da name of da space elavata".


- Norm

and

Brian Dunbar wrote:

Which is a shame - you're a bright guy.

and you're too dumb to understand pulse response on
a cable. when I brought up that show-stopper,
you'd have given me a same-day reply about
that if you had the slightest fucking idea what i was talking
about, but instead you are just moving on to the next big scam.

AND its a crying shame there aren't more scientists and
engineers with enough backbone so state it this as I do.

Damn them for not showing more backbone! If only they had the wit and
courage to cast the scales from their eyes! Or you could just be a
over educated buffoon. One of those.

you're a dick.

You're more than welcome to exercise your right to free speech and ...
you know .. actually do something about that instead of tossing nasty
emails around. But that might ask for of you than you're capable of.
It's one thing to post asinine screeds in a forum and (as you admit)
throw emails around when someone upsets you. j

Quit fucking lying to everybody, and I won't be upset.

Doing something with more meaning than bleats on the internet requires
a dash of personnel courage which you lack.

call me and the conversation gets more polite, due to human instincts.
but i'll politely call you the lying con-man that you are, to your face,
to your ears. This has nothign to do with email, it has to do with the fact
that you are criminals and nut-jobs masquerading as scientists.

Fucking research con-men exactly as I stated in the first place.
'fook 'em over, fook 'em over, we haz got ta git da money,
gotta fookin' get da fookin' rasoich dollaz'.

Again - a shame. If the world had more people who were like your
assumed persona we'd be better off.

Quit fucking lying to everbody, asshole, and the world will be a better
place.

You're just a mafia fucker. And I will tune out now,
lest you send over 'Guido' to twist the head off my cat.


- Norm

And so on. Remeber folks for all your snake oil and mafia needs - see me for the best deal in town.

Seriously - it's more than possible I've slanted this to make me look like the good guy. While it's far too late to preserve the email against tampering (hey I could edit the entire thing and make Norm Hill look really bad, right?) I'm willing to send you - on request - the entire series. I reserve the right to retract this offer if my lawer calls me back and tells me this is a really bad idea.

Without a Clue

From Space Politics

Last night the National Air and Space Museum hosted a screening of the upcoming PBS documentary "Race to the Moon" about the Apollo 8 mission. In attendance at the event were the three astronauts from that mission: Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders. During a Q session after the screening, someone asked the three astronauts what they felt about the recent addition of SpaceShipOne to the museum and the role of commercial spaceflight. Borman's response:

Well, I think Spacecraft One [sic] was a nice stunt. You spend twenty-five million dollars to win ten. I'm not taking anything away from it because the people who flew it were very brave and courageous, but I don't think it leads to much, and I think it's inappropriately displayed up there next to Lindbergh's and Yeager's airplanes.

Borman's comments were met with a smattering of applause from the audience that filled the museum's IMAX theater.

Why mention this here? Borman's comments, and the fact that at least some fraction of the audience agreed with him, suggest that proponents of commercial human spaceflight—especially those who want to sell such services to the government—have not convinced everyone yet of the utility of such efforts.

Frank Borman, it should not be forgotten, it the guy who was at the controls when Eastern plowed into the ground - he may not be the first guy to ask when it comes to how to make money - or run a commercial enterprise. Paul Allen is no slouch in those departments after all and thought the X-Prize investment worthwhile

Whatever. Jeff is right - it's not the public we need to convince about the utility of commercial space flight. Gobless 'em they already know. It's the guys who think they know what they're talking about that are dangerous.

More Casey and Andy madness

Which Casey and Andy character am I?

You're Mary, the normal girl who balances out all
the insanity of your home. You also do most of
the work around the house, poor kid. Despite
your unassuming looks, you've had a very
interesting past. You hate one thing above all
else: puns. If a pun threatens to surface at
home, you don the guise of the Pun Police,
ready to shoot on sight.


Test-o-mat! Which character from Casey & Andy are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

Meh. Could be worse.

Blogroll Addition

Added Eric's Grumbles Before The Grave to blogroll. He likes Heinlein and space travel and he's a Desert Storm vet. Semper Fi ..

Bang

Girl, 8, Credited With Year's 1st Bear Kill

Born to the woods, she's 4 1/2 feet tall and 8 years old, with a shock of light brown hair and a steady trigger finger that put two bullets into a black bear's chest cavity Monday, according to her and her father and granduncle, who were hunting with her. State officials backed the claim by Sierra Stiles and credited her with the first kill of Maryland's second bear season since hunting the animals resumed after a half-century ban.

Good job, Sierra Stiles.
Protestors prove they're not dumb by protesting far far away from little girls with rifles ....

Early on, the hunt did not appear very promising: At least one hunter quit because of the weather, and animal rights advocates in bear suits protested in front of the natural resources headquarters in Annapolis.

I admit I'm not sure how the hunt could be considered not promising because of protestors wearing bear suits hundreds of miles away. But this is why I'm not a journalist, I'm sure.

Tom you are an unmentionable so and so.

Casey and Andy

Tom sent me this link. Warning if you like web comics, mad science, hot women and the dorks that love them, and time travel you might like this. It's deeply weird and disturbing - so much so I've been plowing through the archvies at a mad clip.

Is this payback for Little Dee?

Grace Note

Space flight is the grace note to our civilization - an expression of the best we are and what we are capable of.

It is our gift to the future

How to become a millionaire - advice from Trump

How to become a millionaire - by Donald Trump

"Love what you do. Never give up. Don't trust anyone. Be lucky. And fight back."

New York Post Online Edition: news

America, summarized

America, summarized by William Gilis

Someone kicks you in the face. You get up and beat the crap out of them until one of you falls. Whether your tactic of fighting back is pacifistic or violent. You. Fight. Back.

And personally, try as I may, I simply cannot assimilate the concept that there could be folks who don't think this way.

Human Iterations

The Wealth of Generations: Capitalism and the Belief in the Future

From the The 22nd Annual John Bonython Lecture from The Centre for Independant Studies - Johan Norberg

Belief in the future is perhaps the most important value for a free
society. It is what makes so many interested in getting an education,
or investing in a project, or even being nice to their neighbours. If
we think that nothing can improve or if we think that the world is
coming to an end, we don’t work hard for a better and more civilised
future. And we will all be miserable.

The meat of the lecture is worth reading. As is the conclusion

It is worth giving the last word to one of the most insightful
thinkers of all time, the 19 th century liberal historian and
politician Lord Macaulay, whose Whig interpretation of history has been
condemned as a naïve, Panglossian idea that things constantly improve,
but which was actually a recognition of what individuals can create
when free. When Macaulay wrote his history of England, he couldn’t
believe why the English thought that the past was the good old days,
and he warned later generations – us – not to romanticise his own time,
which, despite being better than the past, was no utopia. And he wrote
this:

“The general effect of the evidence which has
been submitted to the reader seems hardly to admit of doubt [that
living standards are improving]. Yet, in spite of evidence, many will
still image to themselves the England of the Stuarts as a more pleasant
country than the England in which we live. It may at first sight seem
strange that society, while constantly moving forward with eager speed,
should be constantly looking backward with tender regret. But these two
propensities, inconsistent as they may appear, can easily be resolved
into the same principle. Both spring from our impatience of the state
in which we actually are. That impatience, while it stimulates us to
surpass preceding generations, disposes us to overrate their happiness.
It is, in some sense, unreasonable and ungrateful in us to be
constantly discontented with a condition which is constantly improving.
But, in truth, there is constant improvement precisely because there is
constant discontent. If we were perfectly satisfied with the present,
we should cease to contrive, to labour, and to save with a view to the
future.”

Flock

Test of Flock

Space Elevator: Explained by and for the geeky layman

Bull Dork explains the idea behind the space elevator, how it would work, and the benefits of having a working system, in a pithy 'by a layman for a layman' way.

The conquest of the universe is leaving the feasibility study phase and entering prototype testing. You can see how this excites nerds. Already, startups are gestating and testing their hauler vehicle designs. People are signing contracts to build nanofiber manufacturing plants. This is happening now. This is the next great bubble. Space is the new black, people.

Here's the problem. Which (if any) of these pie-in-the-sky startups will have the money and technical savvy to complete the most audacious engineering project in human history? Will they also have the political clout and smarts to outwit a US government who will try to seize their patents in the name of national security, to outwit the corrupt regimes along the equator that will exploit their position on the prime elevator-building spots? Will they also be able to maintain security, or will terrorists manage to sever the umbilical cord between Earth and the fledgling lifeboat-less space colonies, while also sending a 60,000 mile long structure plummeting to Earth and basically destroying everything within ten miles of the equator?

And can they turn a profit doing it?

The answer to all of these questions is: bloody unlikely. But the rewards of a functioning elevator are so dizzying- as far beyond the dreams of Bill Gates as $100 billion and control of the Internet would be beyond the dreams of the doges of Venice- that inaction is impossible. The logic of the market demands that the attempt be made. The logic of the media demands that there be hysterical coverage. The logic of your 401(k) plan demands that this will be a very real part of your life soon.

I agree that any one particular person or company is unlikely to make a profit at this game; but someone is going to, no doubt.

Waiting for the lights to go out - fisked

The guys at The Speculist team up to respond to a lengthy dystopian screed in the Times Online, Waiting for the Lights to Go Out. Let the fisking begin!

We've taken the past 200 years of prosperity for granted.

So we deserve to be punished!

Humanity's progress is stalling, we are facing a new era of decay,

Really? Says who?

and nobody is clever enough to fix it.

Wow. So, should we give up now or...

Is the future really that black, asks Bryan Appleyard

Oh, so he's just asking. Whew. We were afraid Bryan might have an ax to grind. Okay, so let's get into his balanced investigation:

Fisking at The Speculist, article at Waiting for the lights to go out.


My own humble contribution

Either it's just not worth pursuing certain innovations since they won't pay off — one reason why space exploration has all but ground to a halt

Space exploration has all but ground to a halt. Let that phrase roll around inside your mouth for a bit.

One site - JPL - lists twenty-two missions involving space craft. A few more involving ground facilities. I won't bother listing ESA, Japanese, Russia efforts; you get the point.

Gloomy pessimisim is one thing. Willful ignorance is just sad.

Welcome Back

Remember this guy?

Once Marine Gunnery Sgt. Michael Burghardt realized he could wiggle his toes and fingers, he had one message for the insurgents who wounded him - defiance.

He's back.

A month ago today, Dunlap had driven to Burghardt's aid after the Marine explosives expert wasn't able to disarm the last of three improvised explosive devices.

Two things amazed those who were there that day:

• Burghardt survived the explosion and would return to duty in less than a month.

• A World-Herald photograph showing Burghardt standing on his own two feet, pants cut off, legs bandaged and directing a single-digit salute of defiance at his attackers, has transformed him into one of the most famous Marines of the Iraq war.

The photo appeared on numerous Marine-related Internet weblogs. Burghardt received more than 100 e-mails within days of the picture's publication. It has become a screensaver on soldiers' and Marines' computers across Iraq.

"I don't know how my anger turned into a motivational picture," Burghardt said.

Can't keep a good man down.

The Edifice Complex: Liftport is in good shape

From Slate - The Edifice Complex

…The truth is that individuals and institutions usually turn to architecture at moments of decline. This curious fact was pointed out years ago by Cyril Northcote Parkinson in his 1968 best seller, Parkinson’s Law. This book is full of pithy observations on the foibles of business administration, the best-known of which is: “Work expands to fill the time available for its completion.” Less well-remembered is the author’s observation on architecture. Parkinson considered buildings as an important barometer of corporate health, but as a negative barometer. “During a period of exciting discovery or progress there is no time to plan the perfect headquarters,” he wrote. “The time for that comes later, when all the important work has been done. Perfection, we know, is finality; and finality is death.”…

Liftport offices in a building in the unfashionable part of Bremerton. The Millville site is functional - the exterior resembles my barn in Texas. IT is a hosted server, wherever Seth happens to be, Tom's living room and my kitchen table.

We're cool according to the Slate article.

Tip to TJIC.

Kitty

Sandhill Trek reports that this cat results in really high hit counts for whoever steals the image.



This cat brings into play the WTF factor.



Now that I have your attention. Would you pretty please with sugar on top go here and sign up for Liftport's announcement list? We send you an email once a month and it's worth your time.

Yes, okay you've signed up. Now go convince five of your friends, associates or siblings to do the same. You'll whiten your teeth and enhance your sex life.

Would a guy posting cute fuzzy cat pictures fib to you?

Earthling Property Right

Final frontier for lawyers -- property rights in space.

Bizarre though it sounds, the case of Nemitz vs. United States is just one of the odder sideshows in an emerging circus known as "space law." Space is new legal terrain, just as the air was in the early days of aviation and as the seas were in the dawn of ocean voyaging.

For space buffs, the stickiest legal issue is property rights in space, the question of whether a private person can lay claim to property where there is no constituted government. And it involves not only land, but also the airless void of space.

Entrepreneurship is the driving force.

Of course there is a poll. Early returns are not looking so good.

Q: Do earthlings have a right to claim property rights in outer space?
Yes, we should be allowed to claim anything that is not owned. 13%
No, space should remain the province of all beings. 58%
Only if we can send all the lawyers there. 28%
Total votes: 537

If we rephrase it to "Do San Franciscans have a right to claim property in Marin County" would a majority then vote 'yes'?

Vote early, vote often.

'D' is for ...

Ms. Grotenhuis was showing Cian (5) objects that start with 'D'. A dog, donuts.

Ms. G: What else starts with 'D'?
C: Diesel!

Gotta love that kid.

Fred Plans to Devolve

Fred Reed on evolution in modern education;

Now, what grave consequences are thought to await if children hear briefly in school an argument that they have heard a dozen times in the course of ordinary life? Will the foundations of civilization crack? The birds of the air plunge, appalled, to earth? The planets shudder in their orbits and fall inward in dismay? Surely everyone short of the anencephalic knows of Creationism.

Or is it thought that kids attracted to the sciences will abruptly change their course through life and enter the clergy? That applications to graduate school in biochemistry will cease? Children learn (or did) of the Greek gods and goddesses, and that ancient people believed that the earth rode on the back of a giant turtle. I have not heard that they now sacrifice oxen to Athena.

One plausible explanation for this rigid evolutionary monotheism, though I think an incorrect one, is a fear that the children might come to believe in Creationism. Unlikely, but again, so what? A belief in Creationism does not prevent one from working in the sciences. A goodly number of scientists, to include biochemists, are in fact Christian and, some of them, Creationists. Others presumably are Buddhists or Hindus. The only thing for which acceptance of Creationism renders one unsuitable is…Evolutionism.

A more likely explanation is a fear that children might realize that a great deal of Evolution, not having been established, must be accepted on faith, and that a fair amount of it doesn’t make a lot of sense. While Creationism is unlikely to convert children into snake-handlers, it does suggest that orthodox Evolution can be examined critically. Bad juju, that.

and

I once posed these questions in a column on Fredoneverything.net and, in another place, to a group of committed evangelicals of Evolution. A tremendous influx of email resulted. Much of it was predictable. Many Christians congratulated me on having disproved Evolution, which I had not done. The intelligent and independent-minded wrote thoughtfully. Of the Knights Templar of Evolution, none—not one—answered the foregoing yes-or-no questions. They ducked. They dodged. They waxed wroth. They called names.

This is the behavior not of scientists but of true believers.

There is more - Fred is always worth reading.

Have you noticed that a number of interesting and opinionated people are former Marines? Yes, Fred was am Amtrac driver in Vietnam. Are interesting opinionated people made by the Marines or attracted to the Marines?

September 1967 - AmTrac crew atop vehicle B-26
Photo by: Hugh Connelly - 1st AmTrac Battalion

Keith interviews Brad Edwards

KeithCu interviews Dr. Brad Edwards.

Interesting interview.

The Ties That Do Not Bind: The Decline of Marriage and Loyalty

There is a great deal to agree with in The Ties That Do Not Bind: The Decline of Marriage and Loyalty

Man is a social animal – utterly dependent on forming and maintaining relationships with other people. A person who has always been truly alone is one who will be emotionally dead. Of all of the relationships into which people enter, the family is the most important. We are raised by parents, confronted with siblings, and introduced to peers through our familial roots. Indeed, human character arises out of the very commitments people make to others in their family or outside of it. Marriage, of course, is the supreme form of that commitment. When we make marriage less important, character suffers.

There is a great deal here - some I agree with and some not. It is hard to argue with the premise; character matters and family is important.

Highland County Boy - Lyrics

Scott Miller's 'Highland County Boy' was playing on Boot Liquor Radio the other day. Love that song - like any bleak poetry it brings a manly tear to my eye.

I couldn't find the lyrics on Google. Yes, Google failed. I did find it on Miller's board. As a rebuke to Google then ...

HIGHLAND COUNTY BOY

I am a Highland County boy and William is my name
I farm those rocky hills before the Jackson is the James
Well my brothers they all joined 'the cause'
But I was left behind
Too old to hold in Mama's arms
And much too frail to fight
But I remember the day they marched away
They sang down Richmond Road
"Ol' Lincoln's bound like ol' John Brown
for the long end of a rope"

Well one died at Manasass, sir, and one at Malvern Hill
And after making it through that, Archer he took ill
Charlie's lost but not confirmed
When they fought at Cross Keys
The last sight that they had of him
Was crawling through the weeds
A letter said a shower of lead
Had hit the men down low
And they danced around like ol' John Brown
On the long end of a rope

The spark of plow to rock is now the only fight I've known
And the songs of victory that they sang don't help the seeds I've sown
'Tis wickedness and self conceit that is the bane of man
So the farmer and the land compete
As God's first reprimand
There'll be a day when the Blue and Grey
Will hear the trumpets blow
And they'll danced around like ol' John Brown
On the long end of a rope

October 15, 2006 Update. This post gets a fair bit of traffic - at least a few per week. Anyone who has come by looking for lyrics to "Highland County Boy" feel free to say something in the comments.

Shameless Monkey Blog

I shamelessly used monkeys in my latest Liftport Blog post. And the cover of a beloved children's book. I feel so very very low and small.

At the last I can feel good; I did not use the llama.

Support your local police

What is a police department for? Protect, serve, all that jazz? Nope.

In what was described as an initially hostile stop, Roane politely asked the New Jersey officers to turn off their lights and slow down. The Passaic officers claimed that returning from helping with Hurricane Katrina rescue duties gave them the right to speed.

"We just had guys down there for the last 14 days... helping our brothers in blue," Passaic County Sheriff Jerry Speziale said in a recorded telephone call to Roane after the incident. "You know what? You need to get off of that highway, pal, and wake up and learn what law enforcement is all about -- supporting each other."

"It's a disgrace," Speziale said of Roane's conduct. "If you think that that's not a disgrace, you should take the badge off your shirt and throw it in the garbage."

Which reflects poorly on law enforcement in general, I know. Still - this is the attitude publicly aired by the top cop in Passaic County, New Jersey. Wonder what his troops say to each other on patrol?

Hat tip to The View from North Central Idaho.

Update: I was wrong. Sherrif Speziale was quoted in a recorded call to Deputy Roane. Transcript here.

Update the Second: more at The View From ... 9/11 calls from motorists.

“I had my cruiser going 70 [mph], and they just blew right past us,” Graham said. “It was just a whole snake of them. It looked like a NASCAR race where they draft each other” bumper to bumper.

and

Said one caller: “There are four New York police cars running side-by-side with flashers on. … They are not letting traffic go by, going approximately 50 to 55 mph.”

and

“The four New York police vehicles … just cut me off,” the driver said. “They have the right lane blocked and won’t let anyone around them.”

The dispatcher taking this called listed the caller as “very upset.”

Which sounds bad. Unless you're a New Jersey lawman. Then it's all problems with 'airing dirty laundry in public' and the villain in this sorry affair is

the Trooper with the Virginia State Police who pulled the tape of the conversation between Sheriff Speziale and the VSP, contacted the media, and turned it over to them so it could be printed everywhere.

Great job you spineless piece of garbage. Great job in handing the media more reason to keep this story going and attack your profession.

Whatever. I used to think Marines were a clanish insular bunch. Ah - Marines. I turned this around - what would I think if (say) a convoy of Marines from my unit was caught jacking around and playing the fool in a convoy.

Get upset that another Marine (allegedly) slipped a transcript to the press? Nope - I'd be ashamed of my brother Marines for being dipsh*ts and disprespecting their uniform. I'd put the blame where it belongs in other words.

Great job, guys.

David Brooks - NYT. Worth reading.

David Brooks wrote this in the NYT. Excerpts from Mark.

Worth reading, based on the bits excerted below. But won't be, sadly, by many because it's hiding behind their subscription wall.

I believe in the lost tradition of American politics, the tradition of Hamilton, Lincoln and the Bull Moose. In other words, I believe that social mobility is the core of the American experience. I believe that society should be structured so that as many boys and girls as possible can work, and rise the way young Hamilton and Lincoln did.

If something is going to make American society more fluid and dynamic, then I am for that thing. That's why I love globalization, even while I am aware of its costs. I love the fact that American businesses are going to be improved via competition with Chinese and Indian rivals. I love the fact that to compete we are going to have to reform our lobbyist-written tax code into something flatter and fairer. I love the fact we'll have to make health insurance competitive and portable, so workers can move and companies can thrive.

I can't believe people want to shield America behind the walls of "fair trade agreements." I can't believe some people think we're going to be overrun by those hustling Asians. Americans are the hardest-working people on earth and the most mobile. American manufacturing output is twice China's and it's growing at 4 percent a year.

China isn't going to bury us. It's going to make us better and richer; it's going to open more opportunities than it closes.

Like Alexander Hamilton, I love the dynamism of capitalism. And like Alexander Hamilton, that doesn't mean I hate government. I love government when it lifts people up to compete. I hate government only when it stifles competition and coddles. I hated the old welfare system, which pushed its victims away from work. I love welfare reform, which encourages work. I hate government that directs ever more money to the affluent elderly, but I would love a government that gave poor children savings accounts at birth, which would encourage them to think about the future and understand that their destiny is in their own hands.

NYT - tear down that wall!

Windows 2000 vs. FreeBSD 4.x

I have a Thinkpad. I had installed FreeBSD on early in 2004 for a project at work. Installation was unremarkable, bar fiddly problems with the display drivers and power management. The former was fixed by hacking the X config file, the latter by recomiling the kernal with the APM specific mods. Both fixes were (if memory serves) found with a few minutes of searching on Google. And it didn't keep me from using the thing.

Time passes. Now the Thinkpad needs to be a Windows machine again. I put in Windows 2000 Pro, install and ... the video is messed up. Fine, I can download the drivers from IBM. No, I can't. The ethernet drivers don't install, and appropriate drivers are not on the installation disk.

Yes, I know, use the restoration disk that came with the laptop. I'll have to find it of course.

Two Operating Systems, both install from a single disk. One simply works after install, the other requires a ton of effort going to the vendor for driver and so on. And the majority of users are running Windows machines .. why?

Iraq and Terror

Fred asks an interesting question at A VC.

It really begs the following question:

Are we safer or in more danger because of our war in Iraq?

I've replied in his thread, but wanted to post this here; it doesn't matter, and the question is, on reflection, foolish. Sorry Fred.

We can't know the answer. We can't go back to the last save point and try it again. We are where we are. A better way to phrase that question is Now What Do We Do?

I submit that, all said and done, winning is better than loosing. We're better off with a regime friendly to our interests than the regime ante bellum. We can win the current campaign in Iraq; the Army and Marines have learned their lessons from past defeats (and victories) and they're not dumb at the art of warfighting.

It will cost and the butcher's bill, while small in the grand scheme of things, will be tragic and a loss for all concerned.

That it may not be the wisest course of action is open to debate - but we can win this campaign.

There, done. I'm going to stay well away from politics from here on in. Unless it relates to really important things like the space access industry.

This will not persuade Greenpeace

It may, however, cheer the rest of us up, a bit.

Good News. A new study, to be published in Environmental Science and Technology in November, has concluded that the manufacturing of specified nanomaterials such as buckyballs and quantum dots is safer than oil refining or making wine. This was based upon an actuarial model that Zurich based XL insurance have developed to assess risks in existing manufacturing processes. Using the model allowed an assessment of the 'environmental footprint' of potential nanomaterial manufacturing.

Not that I have any reason to cheer the prospect of safe nano manufacturing on. Well, possibly more reason than some, but nano holds out the hope of being as important to the 21s century as wrought iron was to the 18th.

Busload of Faith

You can depend on cruelty
Crudity of thought and sound
You can depend on the worst always happening
You need a busload of faith to get by, ha

Lou Reed - 'Busload of Faith'

What? Oh, no reason. (cough)helpdesk(cough).

Hey, Tom Hanks!

Want to walk on the moon? NASA says you'll be too old, and that you're too tall to go. Which is really uncool on their part, considering all the great PR you've done for them over the years.

But you know what? You're wealthy, you know people. I'll bet you could talk to some people and get something done about that. I even know of a proposed launch system that will subject people to minimum stress on liftoff. We'll get your aged bones up there in comfort and style.

And Jack? You want to be a part of the next moon mission? Good luck with that. What I said above applies to you, as well.

Blogroll Addition

Everyone - both of you - welcome Event Horizon to the blogroll.

Semper Fi, Gunny

Injured Marine defies attackers.

Once Marine Gunnery Sgt. Michael Burghardt realized he could wiggle his toes and fingers, he had one message for the insurgents who wounded him - defiance.

Marine Gunnery Sgt. Michael Burghardt signals defiance at his Iraqi attackers after being injured by an improvised explosive device near Ramadi. Attending to the Marine were Nebraska 167th Cavalry members Spc. John Adams (far left, in front) of Hastings, Neb., and Pfc. Darin Nelson of Fremont, Neb.

Full text at The Smallest Minority.

Great big ones, Gunny Burghardt. Semper fi.

Want to see a cool picture?

From the tease for Seattle Business Monthly's 25 Top Entrepreneurs and Innovators

Photoshopped of course - but a very cool picture.

You know you live in Wisconsin when . . .

Wife: It's trash night tonight.
Me: Sure, after the Game.
Son, aged five: It's not just football, it's the Green Bay Packers, Mom!

Impearls: The Industrial Revolution and the origin of the Modern Age

Impearls has a fascinating post on (among other things) free enterprise, the industrial revolution and some other topics. Nothing seems to lend itself to excerpts - doing so drains the context.

Worth a few minutes of your time to read.

Little Dee and the next Ice Age

Because little girls who can't talk and smarty-pants vultures are funny. And the topic is near to my heart. Doesn't hurt that Baldwin is an insightful smart artist.

Little Dee - because it's smart, funny and girls dig guys who dig talking vultures and smart bears, yo.

A Common Sense Way To Get A Manned Space Station

Someone tell me why this won't work?

"Whereas Congress has determined that a US owned manned space station is in the national interest, be it resolved that the Treasurer of the United States is directed to pay, and payment is hereby authorized, to the first American owned firm to place 14 Americans in orbit about the Earth and maintain them there continuously for a period of not less than 18 months, the sum of Seven Billion dollars, this payment to be free of taxes."

Which is foolish - I know why it won't work. Same reason we had troops in Somalia, same reason people starve in the middle of the richest farming counntry in Asia. Politics.

Hat tip to J.E. Pournelle.

Blogroll

Dropped Bruce Gagnon from the blog roll. He killed his comments, which were the only reason to actually read his blog. I can get his opinionage anywhere - I don't have to read badly written posts to know (ahem) which way the wind is blowing.

And yes, there is a bit of glass house rock throwing here. Note I don't make my living by my words and Bruce is a published author. "Come Together Right Now: Organizing Stories from a Fading Empire" is a catchy title but if he wrote THAT with the same fact checking care and icky prose he blogs with . . . yuck.

Added Protected Static. Nice fella, writes well and he's from Seattle. Plus, you know, he likes the idea of a space elevator so he must be a good guy.

Slashdot and Huffington Post diff

The diff between Slashdot and Huffington Post?

/. trolls are funnier.

UPDATE: I confess some amazement at the moderators at Huffington Post. These are posted

This will work only after they repeal the law of gravity.

Posted by: wndrwrthg on September 25, 2005 at 05:34am

and this

Nano-ware strikes again! Nano tubes are as plausible as the flea circus hoax used to bilk thousands in Jurrasic Park. Nano-ware is no more than pathetic wishful thinking and fantasy. It is hilarioius to think that people buy this unfounded hokum.

Posted by: Jeff Wierbloom on September 25, 2005 at 09:18am

and

So, are they all on shrooms or acid? I say acid.

Posted by: BB on September 25, 2005 at 12:42pm

and this

You mother fucking lowlife libs need to give it a rest. W won and he has 3 more years to consolidate the Bush revolution. We'll get these 2 and maybe 1 or 2 more supremes and they'll all be conservative. No more Souters, we're talking CONSERVATIVE!

It's like the weather---if it's going to rain anyway, you might as well sit back and enjoy it.

Posted by: BJ Clinton on September 25, 2005 at 06:08pm

But not this

I confess I thought I'd never see the Huffington Post link to an article on space elevators. Glad to see I was wrong.

We have a copy of Dr. Edward's NIAC study on our website at http://www.liftport.com/files/521Edwards.pdf (PDF format). It's a good summary of how, what, when and where. The lay public can easily understand the concept.

We also have a Forum where you can discuss the concept at http://www.liftport.com/forums/ and a FAQ at http://www.liftport.com/faq.php

Read the material, think and decide for yourselves. Knee jerk reactions (science fiction! can't happen! nano-ware, pah) are all very well but a careful reader will be surprised.

Submitted by bdunbar @ mm:dd:yyyy

I work with funny people

Tom writes in A Hidden Sense of Humor

I’ve been editing the video from the 1,000-foot robot test. Since I’ve been busy lately with grant writing etc., I wasn’t involved in activities like making the ribbon. So it wasn’t until I was watching the video that I noticed the sentence written in block letters on the 2-inch wide ribbon (which alternates color in 50-foot strips of bright yellow and fluorescent orange) near the top:

ATTENTION PILOT: IF YOU CAN READ THIS, YOU’RE TOTALLY SCREWED.

Our sense of humor (or at least Nyein’s) may not (or it may) be visible from far away, but it’s there.

NASA PR - Remixed for your viewing pleasure

From The Shape of Days - Jeff edited this NASA PR and made it so much better.

Always with free time on my hands — freelancing is a harsh mistress, yo — I decided to help NASA out. I took the movie they released, mixed a soundtrack for it, and edited it into something just slightly more snappy, just slightly more fun to watch. I hope.

Either that, or it sucks. Damned if I know which it is.

Anyway, here you go.

I think it's good - go watch.

Slashdot Rule of Thumb

When someone says something like

Maybe i am a bit out of touch (although i doubt it, being physicist and seeing people who actively work in the nanoparticle research and astrophysics department everyday), but i think this is all such a bullshit.

You can generally bet the rest of what he will say is wrong, foolish, incorrect or just plain dumb.

Space Access Society is not thrilled

Space Access Society is not thrilled with NASA's new Exploration Systems Architecture.

To be blunt, we have big problems with this plan. It's the same basic
approach as Apollo, disposable (mostly) spacecraft, on big NASA-proprietary boosters, flown a few times a year, by a standing army of NASA and contractor employees. This is Apollo 2.0, with somewhat more delivered exploration, at moderately higher cost, on a significantly slower schedule.

There is more. It's all fair criticism. I'm for the idea in principle. We can afford it, and there is no reason not to spend 1% of the national budget on exploration and the far frontier - that is what the State is for.

Stuck on stupid

Male reporter: General, a little bit more about why that's happening this time, though, and did not have that last time...

Honore: You are stuck on stupid. I'm not going to answer that question. We are going to deal with Rita. This is public information that people are depending on the government to put out. This is the way we've got to do it. So please. I apologize to you, but let's talk about the future. Rita is happening. And right now, we need to get good, clean information out to the people that they can use. And we can have a conversation on the side about the past, in a couple of months.

Transcript and .mp3 at radioblogger.

A new catch phrase is born. Thank you General "Stuck on stupid" Honore.

3 Space Quickies

Jeff is mainstream, and he understands

And yeah, frankly I think humanity needs to colonize the solar system. We need to have not just an outpost on the moon, but full-fledged cities. Why? Because we can! Because as unlikely as it may be, one good asteroid could wipe out life on this planet, and the human race is too precious to entrust to just one world.

Phi knows how to make it happen.

If we competed against China by announcing (hefty) prizes for private orbiters and moon shots and so on, I think that'd give us an added PR victory as a defeat of centrally planned economic activity, as well. And it seems to me both cheaper and more likely to succeed.

Glenn Reynolds questions the current NASA Plan

I'm all for Moon colonies, and I realize that the better can be the enemy of the good. But I'm not at all sure that this plan puts the money in the right place.

Blogroll Addition

I don't typically announce that I've added to my Blogroll - it seems presumtious; who the heck am I? I could not resist posting that I added Human Iterations, becuase of this line in his FAQ . . .

I admit I have a soft spot for America, Russia and Brazil. Tormented histories spattered with heroics are the best. Something about Ireland calls to me in my bones. Otherwise

Fuck Nationalism.

I’m an American. We’re better than that.

Surly Bonds

William Gillis at Human Iterations writes up a storm. I can give no higher praise than to say I don't agree with all of his opinions but I find him very entertaining, smart and an easy read.

Of course the mark of an intelligent man is when he agrees with you;

We've had our photo op; now comes the infrastructure. Now comes the backbreaking work that won't finish until space elevators stretch from Malaysia to Guyana. Till we lift the construction material to build wetdocks at L5. Till the gleaming bulkheads of lighthuggers are sealed far above this jewel of a planet.

Testing proto space elevator tech won't get anyone's flag-waving picture on the cover of Time.

But it'll get humanity that much closer to the stars and the untapped liberty and self-sufficiency they represent. That, my friends, is a path of which the merest step down may outweigh all the pretty pictures in the world.

More geek funny

Most of you will not know why this is funny. The few that do ... yes hysterical.
Hat tip to Dean Esmay

HURRICANES - by Kelly Zen-Yie Tsai

Count on it - long after the politics are forgotten, the art remains.

HURRICANES
by Kelly Zen-Yie Tsai

you keep blowin' me down
you keep bloooowin' me down
you keep blowin' me
blowin' me
blowin' me
blowin' me
down

what do you say
to houses
flooded to the rafters
with water

what do you say
to the levee
that didn't
have to break

what do you say
to 10,000 bodies
huddled in a cracking
Astrodome

what do you say
to someone
who has lost everything

what do you say
to people on the
brink on the edge

what do you say
to your four
days of negligence

what do you say
to hands breaking glass
to shake the last
from the stores

what do you say
to missing mothers,
missing grandfathers,
missing fiances, missing
kids locked up

what do you say
to the operators
who saw the cracks
in the wall
or the meteorologists
who tracked the hurricane
on her path

what do you say
to this
the richest country
in the world

and the bowl
of new orleans
which is now
nearly
a distant memory
of the past

what do you say
to soldiers with
shoot to kill
orders

or how was
your vacation
Condoleeza

and no, Bush
we didn't see
you fumble
your fingers
over that phone

what would you say
if this were
D.C.
or Martha's Vineyard
Camp David
or Palm Springs

what if it were
these people
who learned
what it is
to taste a flood

what if this were
the gates of Parliament
a G8 meeting or another
summit for the WTO

there's always enough
money

to prepare the
soldiers in riot
gear

to bash protestors
and lace them in plastic
handcuffs, keep them
overnight, so many
stuffed to a cell

to make them lick blood
welling on their tongues

there's always enough
money

for the cops in
South Central
Englewood
North Lawndale
Bed-Stuy
or Dorchester

oh yes, that's right
Mr. Goverment

i forget

it is always
we the people
who continue
to kill ourselves

i wanna see how you
will try to blame this
on us

what dirt you will dig
what information you will smother
what resisters you will drive into the
soil

we, the country
the most rich
the most free

a natural disaster
floundering
in our miseries

what will you do
for the bodies
over their heads
in water

gasping for breath

as you count our dollars
planning to sacrifice
our sons and daughters
for oil

you keep blowin' me down

you keep bloooowin' me down

you keep blowin' me
blowin' me
blowin' me
blowin' me
down

Update: Ms. Tsai's website is Yellowgurl.com

For Tom

Tom, read this and thought of you. The rest of you enjoy the geek humor of it all. Visit The PC Weenies for your geek humor needs.

Placeopedia - Space Elevator

Space Elevator.

No, when built, the first one won't be in Bremerton. But I could not resist. Shame on me, I know.

Oh, what is Placeopeda? Placeopedia is "a simple site where you can connect Wikipedia articles with places, and then make use of our database either to browse, or syndicate the whole lot."

Andy Taylor - One Mean Drunk

Andy Griffith hasn't always, it seems, been Matlock or the Sherrif Andy Taylor, good old boy and swell guy. He played, in 1957's "“A Face in the Crowd" a fella found in a drunk tank and catapulted to fame and cynical fortune. As the estimable James Lileks said;

What we have here is a guy who took all the good will and familiarity he’d built up thus far and dynamites it for the sake of making a damn good movie, and that’s rather brave: picture Bob Newhart playing a psycho sex killer in a ’66 crime drama – then picture Bob Newhart returning to his previous button-down persona without missing a beat, and going on to decades of success. That’s what Griffith did.

I need to rent that. Heck, based on Lilek's review that's one I will buy.

What kind of Christian is George Bush?

Grant McCracken at This Blog Sits at the: posts that question.

I discovered today that George W. Bush is a better leader or a better Christian than I knew.

Here he is facing a barrage of Katrina criticism, some of it almost surely coming from the people who helped create the Katrina crisis, and what does he do?

He reaches out and thanks these people for their criticism. After his meeting with Bush, the mayor of New Orleans, Mr. C. Ray Nagin, said, "If anything, he told me he kind of appreciated my frankness and my bluntness."

This might be the triumph of a Christian generosity, a turning of the cheek. It's hard not to notice that no one takes Bush's Christianity seriously, unless, in my opinion, they take it too seriously. No one seems ever to read Bush's behavior as if he were being animated by Christian beliefs or practices. Instead, people treat his Christianity as if it were somehow "part of the act," an opportunistic play for sun belt, heart land, anti-coastal voters. No one seems to believe that George W. Bush is ever actually listening when in church. He's there as part of the theatre of his presidency, to show that he stands with certain conservative verities and against the godless Dems.

I know it's not fashionable to talk this way about George W. Bush, but that should give us pause. Actually, the problem goes deeper than that. It is indeed barely intelligible to talk about George Bush this way. To refer to the kind or effect of his religious feeling, do we ever do this? To refer to the selflessness of his presidency, this too trembles on the verge of incoherence. In sum, we have read certain interpretive possibilities out of analysis before analysis has begun. And we all did it. Intellectuals all did it. Intellectuals all did it. (It always astonishes me to see that the intellectual is first and foremost a pack animal.)

George W. Bush, maybe for all of his take-charge, Texan, just-folk transparency, there are complexities we have not discovered. Discovering complexities, I thought this was what the chattering classes were for.

Which is something that some of us - who have known men of good Christian charity up close and personel - have long known. He's a stand up guy, he believes what he says, and his artiface is at a minimum. Grant says a fair bit, and writes far better than I - it's worth a few minutes.

Jerry Pournelle article on Katrina

Jerry Pournelle on Katrina . The most reasoned thing I've seen about this mess.

9/11

Remember.
But move forward, too. Light a candle, yes. But also drive a rivet.

James Lileks

Elevator Going Up!

I like the idea of space elevators - and not just because I (sorta kinda) work for a - or the - company that is going to build one. When other people notice it's keen.

An Earth-to-orbit elevator (sometimes called a "Beanstalk," a "space bridge," or an "orbital tether") is one of those ideas that, at first blush, sounds almost too ludicrous to be real. After all, we're accustomed to thinking of rockets as our only way into space, mixing danger and adventure; taking an elevator into space sounds almost boring. It turns out, however, that a space elevator is not only plausible, it's potentially revolutionary. Perhaps more importantly, given all that has happened in recent days and weeks, the notion of a space elevator can provide a bit of almost giggly optimism about the future.

The present might look grim, but within 20-30 years, we'll be taking an elevator to orbit!

Very good images are linked in that WorldChanging article.

Disasters big and small

Alert reader Mike Juergens writes in Jerry Pournelle's Current Chaos Manor Mail

It was clear to everyone who looked at the situation that if no provision were made, the poor of New Orleans would suffer grievously in a major hurricane. This was said repeatedly, for years. Nothing was done. I think this inaction is symptomatic of a larger pattern.

America is a nation that has largely stopped really believing its myths. The "Great Society" to be created by winning a "War on Poverty," the vision of another generation of leaders, now seems an incomprehensible failure. One can argue methods, by my point is that now we can hardly imagine anyone even thinking they could actually realize such a ‘big idea.’ The now-pervasive cynicism and complacency mean that problems that could and should be solved are ignored. The result is obvious with Katrina, but there are thousands of individual-scale disasters in the U.S. every day, disasters of crime, poverty, domestic violence, economic decline, dysfunctional schools, and breakdowns of medical and other systems. These disasters are hidden and ignored, the same way the vulnerability of New Orleans' poor to flooding was ignored.

America cannot be sustained, as America, by the achievements of a relatively small stratum of technical/managerial elites, while ever-larger swaths of the population become ever-more marginalized and underserved. We need a vision of rebuilding the nation for all our citizens. Perhaps we can find it in the way we rebuild the region destroyed by a hurricane.

Nationalize the Petroleum Industry

“There are going to be questions about what major oil companies are doing with all the resources they’re accumulating…they can’t escape that.”—U.S. Senator Pete Domenici, WSJ

Nationalization of the Oil Industry

NATIONALIZE THE OIL CORPORATIONS


Economic arguments aside. If what you _want_ is to perpetuate the petroleum industry and never-ever-never move to alternate fuels, then yes enshrine a beaucracy in the Federal government.

When was the last time a government organization worked itself out of a job?

Goats

Submitted without comment.

Visit Goats for a daily does of comic merriment.

Posts via email

Added an email feed for posts from FeedBlitz. Form is on right, near the bottom.

There is no purer emotion than the anger of a Boomer who doesn’t know what he’s talking about

From TJIC

Doonesbury rewritten the to show Trudeau’s inner monologue, with out the obfuscation he applies for a wider market:

http://davemunger.blogspot.com/2005/07/blog-post.html

“There is no purer emotion than the anger of a Boomer who doesn’t know what he’s talking about!!!!”.

Ha!

To which I can only add a .. heh.

Liftport Bleg

Posted the Third Art Newsletter to the Liftport announcement list. It contains the following request, which I will pass on here.

Finally, one new thing we are starting with this issue is to ask for your help.

This is a large project and we think we've made a lot of progress over the past three years. To continue moving forward, each week we are going to ask one "Little Thing" from our newsletter subscribers. This "Little Thing" will not involve money. This newsletter is not, and never will be, a "marketing and sales" tool for the company.

The first reason we send these letters out is to inform and educate the growing community interested in our project. The second reason is to expand our global network. Our thinking on this is simple - the more people involved with the Space Elevator, the easier and more likely it is to succeed

We'd like you to get actively involved.

Each "Little Thing" that we ask will have a cumulative effect. The end result will be an elevator into the sky.

The first thing we are asking you to do is tell two people about what we are doing, and ask them to sign up for our newsletter (www.liftport.com/lists.php), or to send an email to info@liftport.com.

Today, we have 1,183 people on our list. Our goal is to have 10,000 by the end of the year. With your help, we can build that list. With that list, we can build the Space Elevator.

Full text is available at the Liftport Forum.
If you're interested in space access, or space elevators, consider signing up.

Space Elevator: Stuck Between Floors

Liftport firmly believes that the most serious challenge to building a space elevator system is not the technical but legal and political problems. It's good to see articles like Glenn Reynold's Space Elevator: Stuck Between Floors.

TCS isn't a mainstream site but Professor Reynolds has a huge readership for the medium.

Where is the Louisiana National Guard?

Let this stand for a meme I've seen in several places today.

Bush cut the budget for the army corps of engineers (needed to reinforce and expand the levees) by 40%...and now says give to the red cross, expecting private agencies to deal with it...while the Louisiana National Guard watch helplessly from Iraq.

Which would be a reasonable thing to say if the Guard really was 100% fully deployed to Iraq. Except that they are not. From the IP mail list today

From: Brock Meeks
Date: August 31, 2005 10:47:45 AM EDT
To: dave@farber.net
Subject: RE: [IP] isn't the Louisiana National Guard is needed at HOME?!


I did a story on this, Dave. The Guard troop strength in LA alone is at
65 percent of all guard members; 35 percent of them are in Iraq and are,
in fact, due home next month.

There are a total of 124,000 guard troops across 17 states either
activated or ready to be if needed.

Even with the heavy rotation into Iraq and Afghanistan, no state has
less than 50 percent of its total available guard enlistment available
at any one time. This was an agreement made with the Department of
Defense. And in fact, most states have 75 percent of their guard at
home.

All this according to official deployment and enlistment figures
released by the Pentagon and in interviews with the National Guard.

In addition, regular military are now being mobilized (some 22,000 at
last count) to come and help with the effort.

Okay yes it bites to be deployed while things happen at home - I know this from experience. Guard members are volunteers, they are all adults, and they signed a contract. This is life and sometimes life is not fair.

Just doing my part to dispell fear, uncertainty and doubt.

Not Maximizing Shareholder Value

“Instead of being managed “in the best balanced interests of stakeholders,” corporations [in the 1980’s were] managed exclusively to “maximize shareholder’s value”… Managing a business exclusively for these shareholders alienates the very people on whose motivation and dedication the modern business depends: the knowledge workers. An engineer will not be motivated to work to make a speculator rich.”

– Peter Drucker, 1993
Post-Capitalist Society

I have worked organziations such as Drucker described. I second that emotion.

Hat tip to Nivi

Rebuilding New Orleans

Jeff at The Shape of Days asks should we rebuild New Orleans?

I’m sure that we have the technology to repair the levees and drain New Orleans and rebuild the city, but … should we? I mean, at some point doesn’t it make more sense to just write the whole thing off?

I say rebuild.

* We can afford to do this.

* Doing so will allow us, as a culture, to amass a large body of skill and practical knowledge in this area. This may come in handy in the future; it may not. But the lessons learned from rebuilding won't be lost, and knowledge is always useful.

Mosse Lecture Series

More people should know about this, I think.

Mosse Lecture Series
The following list includes lectures given by George L. Mosse in the Fall of 1982. The topic of these lectures is European Cultural History 1660-1870. They were recorded for the WHA -Radio Series, "University of the Air."

Thanks to Seth for reminding me about this.

The lawn mower had to die

Because .. you know .. who hasn't wanted to shoot a lawn mower with a really big rifle?

Warning - my 10 year old laughed like a fiend. You have been warned.

Hat tip to Kim Dutoit

T.R. Fahrenbach: When a soldier dies in battle, there is no tragedy

T.R. Farenbach is now a columnist for the San Antonio 'Express' and is author of two of my favorite books 'Lone Star' (a history of Texas) and 'This Kind of War' - the book to read on the Korean War. I'll post the entire column below the excerpt - the Express content goes away after a few weeks. In When a soldier dies in battle, there is no tragedy he writes;

But if my mother had condemned my service and my dying, I would have felt that she dishonored me. I was not a child, her little boy. I did what men do, though women may weep. The way it's always been, and probably always will be, world with or without end.

When men or women make honest choices, families should respect those choices and honor them, whether the girl I married or the peril I accepted, as due course.

I was in a war with great popular support (we're right behind you) and one with little of it. To the real soldier, it does not make all that much difference. When you take the shilling, pledge to serve your country right or wrong, your home becomes the service and war, any war, your profession.

I wish I could write that well. I wish others could read this free of preconceptions.


T.R. Fahrenbach: When a soldier dies in battle, there is no tragedy
Web Posted: 08/28/2005 12:00 AM CDT
San Antonio Express-News

In 1969, my grandmother and a cousin died.

I remember saying to someone that there was no tragedy in either death. My grandmother was 89, long past normal life expectancy, and her last years were not good. In fact, she was kept alive on medications, which in consultation with family and doctor, we stopped. Shortly after, she passed peacefully away. She had lived a long and splendid life.

My cousin was young, a recent graduate of the Air Force Academy. He was killed at a fire base in Vietnam. He was an only son, and this was a bitter blow to family.

Unfortunate, painful, but hardly tragic. He had taken the shilling, a regular officer, and he was doing what men do when he died. He did what he wanted, a short but also a splendid life.

I think we dwell too often, when soldiers die, upon the living rather than the dead.

And in doing this, we dishonor our honored dead.

Every soldier has a mother. I had one, of course. She was not happy when, at age 18, I went to war. However, then every mother's son was going, in the great fatherland patriotic war, sometimes called World War II.

There were some 300,000 Gold Star mothers before it ended. A Gold Star in a window signified a child killed in action, and it was both proudly and sadly displayed.

But that kind of war was different. Everybody was involved; cosmic consequences were at stake. We have not fought that kind of war again.

Mothers react in different ways. My closest friend in school, again an only son, died in combat in the Ardennes. His mother never forgave me for living while her boy was killed. When I met with her after the war, she had nothing to say, and I did not call again.

Which made me wonder about my own mother, when I took the shilling and voluntarily went to a new war. She didn't like it, nor did my grandparents. Which I understood. But it was my decision; I was of age, and men untie the apron strings. We do it when we marry and when we go to war.

Had I been killed, I would have expected my mother to grieve. She grieved when one of her cats died. In fact, if no one grieved at my passing, my life would not have been worthwhile.

But if my mother had condemned my service and my dying, I would have felt that she dishonored me. I was not a child, her little boy. I did what men do, though women may weep. The way it's always been, and probably always will be, world with or without end.

When men or women make honest choices, families should respect those choices and honor them, whether the girl I married or the peril I accepted, as due course.

I was in a war with great popular support (we're right behind you) and one with little of it. To the real soldier, it does not make all that much difference. When you take the shilling, pledge to serve your country right or wrong, your home becomes the service and war, any war, your profession.

If you argue this is wrong, I point out that we have never been free of armies since before the flood. We have soldiers because the human race has always had to have them. We are not a peaceful species, and some tribes always permit the others no peace. So Thucydides wrote, and nothing's changed since his day.

Spartan mothers, it is said, told sons to return with their shields or upon them. In other words, death before dishonor.

Our culture does not allow us to say such things today. But the ethos still lives. Which is why we honor the valiant dead.

I cannot speak for others, but I would hope my mother would have done so had I not returned.

Cindy Sheehan and Families of the Fallen

NPR: Cindy Sheehan and Families of the Fallen.

I make no editorial comment save that ... if my mother went around talking like this I'd reach out from the grave in a huge ectoplasmic spasm and yell "Shut up you are embarrassing me."

The best part is when she cuts the host off mid-question and says "I have to go now .. thank you" and breaks the connection.

Michael Yon - Added to the blogroll

I've added Michael Yon to the blogroll. Yon is performing a service for all of us, getting his boots dirty on the ground reporting in Iraq. It's dangerous work (see his latest entry 'Gates of Fire') and seemingly work that isn't being done by most other journalists in Iraq.

Howstuffworks - How Space Elevators Will Work

HowStuffWorks has updated their entry on space elevators;

When the Space Shuttle Columbia lifted off on April 12, 1981, from Kennedy Space Center, Fla., to begin the first space shuttle mission, the dream of a reusable spacecraft was realized. Since then, NASA has launched more than 100 missions, but the price tag of space missions has changed little. Whether it is the space shuttle or the non-reusable Russian spacecraft, the cost of a launch is approximately $10,000 per pound ($22,000 per kg).

While the space shuttle is reusable, missions are still very infrequent and expensive, with each launch costing an estimated half a billion dollars. A new space transportation system being developed could make travel to Geostationary Earth Orbit (GEO) a daily event and transform the global economy.

A space elevator made of a carbon nanotubes composite ribbon anchored to an offshore sea platform would stretch to a small counterweight approximately 62,000 miles (100,000 km) into space. Mechanical lifters attached to the ribbon would then climb the ribbon, carrying cargo and humans into space, at a price of only about $100 to $400 per pound ($220 to $880 per kg).

In this article, we'll take a look at how the idea of a space elevator is moving out of science fiction and into reality.

Cool.

Eating right. Or at least 'healthy'.

Cian has consumed the following for dinner;

A hamburger patty, no bun.
One slice of wheat bread with honey.
One bowl of Rice Kispies, no milk.
Small serving of raspberry cobbler.

He's at that funny age where he has some very strong dislikes and likes for food, obviously.

I would never do this to my kids

Who am I fooling? Of course I would - in a heartbeat.

Bad Parents

Thanks, Dave - you're truly a bad influence, God love ya.

Jerry Pournelle - NASA

Jerry Pournelle, on NASA

The NASA discussion may turn out to be useful. It probably won't. We are fighting entrenched interests with a lot of money, and although they are incompetent at rocket science, they are more than competent at extracting money from the public purse and delivering nothing but paper and time slips in return. They do not work; they expend effort. And the worst is that I expect most of them do not even understand the difference. "We work hard!" No. You expend effort.
From Current View - 8/20/05

ideas are just a multiplier of execution

To me, ideas are worth nothing unless executed. They are just a multiplier. Execution is worth millions.

Explanation:

AWFUL IDEA = -1
WEAK IDEA = 1
SO-SO IDEA = 5
GOOD IDEA = 10
GREAT IDEA = 15
BRILLIANT IDEA = 20

NO EXECUTION = $1
WEAK EXECUTION = $1000
SO-SO- EXECUTION = $10,000
GOOD EXECUTION = $100,000
GREAT EXECUTION = $1,000,000
BRILLIANT EXECUTION = $10,000,000

To make a business, you need to multiply the two.

The most brilliant idea, with no execution, is worth $20.
The most brilliant idea takes great execution to be worth $20,000,000

Tip to Infectious Greed

Manners and a dying culture

Panic ensues in rush for cheap laptops.

People threw themselves forward, screaming and pushing each other. A little girl's stroller was crushed in the stampede. Witnesses said an elderly man was thrown to the pavement, and someone in a car tried to drive his way through the crowd.

Jesse Sandler said he was one of the people pushing forward, using a folding chair he had brought with him to beat back people who tried to cut in front of him.

"I took my chair here and I threw it over my shoulder and I went, 'Bam,"' the 20-year-old said nonchalantly, his eyes glued to the screen of his new iBook, as he tapped away on the keyboard at a testing station.

"They were getting in front of me and I was there a lot earlier than them, so I thought that it was just," he said.

Well it's just a riot - things get out of hand. I'm sure that is all that it is, nothing to see here . . .

"Sick cultures show a complex of symptoms . . . but a dying culture invariably exhibits personal rudeness. Bad manners. Lack of consideration for others in minor matters. A loss of politeness, of gentle manners, is more significant than is a riot . . . . This symptom is especially serious in that an individual displaying it never thinks of it as a sign of ill health but as proof of his/her strength."
R.A. Heinlein 'Friday'

GAAAAHH!!! KIDS!!!

Shamelessly stolen from Dave at Garfield Ridge

The Other Army

Daniel Bergner writes an interesting article in the New York Times - The Other Army. Twenty five thousand armed men working for a variety of private companies in Iraq. Mercenaries, private security companies, whatever. He frets that the scope of this activity is going to cause us to loose .. something in our society.

There may be a danger that something else could erode eventually, if there is a drift toward using more private gunmen -- in yet more military ways -- to compensate for the inevitable reduction of troops in Iraq or to wage other wars. There may be the loss of a particular understanding, a sense of ourselves as a society, that we hold almost sacred. Soldiering for profit was taken for granted for thousands of years, but the United States has thrived in an age when soldiering for the state -- serving your country -- has taken on an exalted status.

Maybe. There have been times when soldiers were authorized to wear civilian attire off base because their uniform marked them as little better than trash, unfit to hold an honest job.

We often question the reasons for making war, but we tend to revere the soldiers who are sent off to fight. We honor their sacrifice, we raise it up and in it we see the value of our society reflected back to us. In it we feel our special worth. We may not know what to think of ourselves if service and sacrifice are increasingly mixed with the wish for profit. We may know less and less how to feel about a state that is no longer defended by men and women we can perceive as pure.

Times change. The very excellent British Army traces it's heritage - if not her regiments - to The New Model Army. To quote Cromwell "I had rather have a plain, russet-coated captain that knows what he fights for, and loves what he knows, than that which you call a gentleman and is nothing else." That Army smashed the Crown and put such a hurt on the Irish that the insult is still remembered, and exaggerated, centuries later.

Times change and life is not static. Statistical blip or a harbinger of sea change?

The Five Questions — And An Answer is an excellent poem by Alma Hromic, published in Swans on September 22, 2003. 'Why do we want the far horizon' is an old question.

The quoted bit shows us the way back when the path becomes muddled.

The dream is a seed; it needs good earth,
And clean water, and the sun's light to grow it.
If the dream has been lost in interoffice memoranda
And budget amendments
And a wild fear of the price we must pay —
NASA, you need to do more than to prevaricate and to pray.
You need to rekindle the awe.

Little Red Books by Kelly Tsai

I don't remember where I read this - but I know why I saved it.

My friend signs off all of his e-mails:
“Siempre luchando, paz y revolucion”
As if the two were possible: peace and revolution
As if bloodless wars didn’t still tear psyches apart
Change hurts
Living it is hard
We’ve got to be ready if we decide to…
Zan qi lai

Stand up

Update: I googled and discovered that the title of the poem is 'Little Red Books' not 'Mao'. Complete prose is here. Very moving stuff.
Update the second: Ms. Tsai's website is YellowGurl.

The Belmont Club: Unintended Consequences

The Belmont Club is worth reading. Here is Wretchard on what Pournelle called The Strategy of Technology

Islamic terrorism, by threatening ruthless destruction, has provoked 21st century technological civilization into responding without limit; every scientific advance, every mathematical discovery, every material, method or craft will be brought to bear at a geometric rate on the Jihadi problem until it is solved.

This may overstate the case, but only just.

Grokspace and Institute for Space Law & Policy

Because you can't do business without a legal framwork to protect your interests.

Institute for Space Law & Policy
The mission of the Institute for Space Law & Policy is to aid in creating the legal regime of free markets and property rights that will allow private enterprise, supported by sound public policy, to open the space frontier to all mankind.


Grokspace
In the model of Groklaw, the leading legal blog for the open source community, this dynamic Institute project will offer:

* A high-quality blog on space law and policy issues
* A public forum for the discussion of such issues among members of space-interested legal profession, the traditional aerospace industry, the entrepreneurial space community, the frontier movement and the general public
* A virtual library that not only brings together the wealth of existing but scattered resources on such issues, but also allows users both to add new content and to add value to content through comment & discussion

We encourage participation in Grokspace to help define the needs we seek to meet.

A milestone from Return to the Moon VI.

Liftport on NPR's Weekend America

Good news from the office

NPRs Weekend America had a good segment about LiftPort and the space elevator. You can find their blurb about the segment in the broadcast summary (scroll down about halfway through hour 2). And you can download the podcast MP3 file here (26MB) - the space elevator/LiftPort segment is about halfway through.

What Business Can Learn from Open Source

Paul Graham is one smart cookie. From What Business Can Learn from Open Source

I think the most important of the new principles business has to learn is that people work a lot harder on stuff they like. Well, that's news to no one. So how can I claim business has to learn it? When I say business doesn't know this, I mean the structure of business doesn't reflect it.

Business still reflects an older model, exemplified by the French word for working: travailler. It has an English cousin, travail, and what it means is torture. [2]

This turns out not to be the last word on work, however. As societies get richer, they learn something about work that's a lot like what they learn about diet. We know now that the healthiest diet is the one our peasant ancestors were forced to eat because they were poor. Like rich food, idleness only seems desirable when you don't get enough of it. I think we were designed to work, just as we were designed to eat a certain amount of fiber, and we feel bad if we don't.

You should read the whole thing. He makes three points;

People work a lot harder on stuff they like.
The average office is a miserable place to get work done.
Ideas can bubble up from the bottom, instead of flowing down from the top.

None of which is news. But it is true that many companies produce mediocre crap while open source efforts make stuff that just works. Over time the points outlined above will produce better companies - not because the existing orgs will change but because new orgs will come along, embody these principles and stomp them into the ground.

Why economics should matter to the alt.space community

From Larry Niven's "How to save civilization and make a little money"

A. E. Van Vogt never worried about what a spacecraft cost. I don't think Isaac Asimov did either.

Nobody ever did until, in the 1950s, Robert Heinlein published "The Man Who Sold the Moon". And nobody did again for a long time. Imitating Heinlein used to be normal, but the science fiction writers of the day couldn't imitate this. None of us had trained for it. The excitement of travel to other worlds is in our nerves and bones, but where is the excitement in economics?

Then we watched mankind set twelve human beings on the moon for a few days at a time, come home, and stop.

We saw our space station built in Houston, orbiting too low and too slow, at ten times the cost.

Thirtieth anniversary of the first man on the moon, celebrated by grumbling.

My tee shirt bears an obsolete picture of Freedom space station and the legend, "Nine years, nine billion dollars, and all we got was this lousy shirt," and it's years old and wearing out.

Now is economics interesting?

Working in IT

I have

Worked in a fast food store at the mall.
Worked in a bakery.
Carried a rifle for my country.

And working in IT beats them all. Just saying.

HP Tech Support

Me: My server is broken, here are the symptoms: X, Y and Z.
HP Guy One: Any lights on the mother board?
Me: Just solid green ones
HP Guy One: Take out the 2nd processor - let's simplfy the problem set
Me: Done. Hey look X, Y and Z don't happen! You're a genius
HP Guy One: I've dispatched a tech with a new processor he'll show up in the a.m.

Me: Great (hang up) now to reboot the server one last time ...

Me: My server is broken here are the symptoms: X, Y and Z. You'll note you've dispatched a tech to fix the processor but the processor can't be the problem - it's on the bench. And look - we've had four servers with this same model number, same symptoms and it's been the motherboard.
HP Guy Two: How old is your BIOS?
Me: Unhhhhhh hey look it's two years old but ...
HP Guy Two: That's it. Update your BIOS. That will fix your problem. Call us back if it doesn't
Me: But, but ..
HP Guy Two: Bye now!

Me: Just for the fun of it I apply the BIOS. Why not? It's after working hours (or nearly so) - the folks who use this application aren't using it much at this point in the day. I've given up on my evening.

Me: My server is broken here are the symptoms: X, Y and Z. You'll note you've dispatched a tech to fix the processor but the processor can't be the problem - it's on the bench. And look - we've had four servers with this same model number, same symptoms and it's been the motherboard. Please contact the guy coming out here or have him call me so he doesn't waste a trip ... and my time ... and our user's time ... hauling the wrong part from Chicago.

HP Guy Three: Can do .. okay .. he's been notified to call you.
Me: Wow.

Later;
I'm on hold with Ariba about their authentication service which was sitting on the server that needs a new motherboard. No authentication, no user access. This service is poorly understood and supported at the best of times. Sounds like I got an intern on her first day in the shop. This is going to be a long night.

Bound for Hacker's Heaven

Filk, for your entertainment. Chords at the link. Leslie Fish probably does this justice but I'd really like to hear this with an alt-country twang.

When you're building complex systems there are two ways to proceed;
Take the safe and sane and cautious road, or go flat out for speed
If we leave it to the bureaucrats we'll never get to space;
But turn some crazy hackers loose and see who wins the race.

Let the laser launch you skyward with a hypersonic yell
And you're blasting into Heaven on a billion watts of Hell
Let committees squawk of safety, let the politicians lie;
We're bound for Hackers' Heaven in the sky.

Ten-G cargo launchers never were designed to lift a man,
But when you're in a hurry you'll grab any ride you can.
Use a waterbed for padding, throw some algae in for air;
It may not look like a spaceship, but just ask me if I care.

And when we reach high orbit, we'll hack around the clock
With shuttle tanks and baling wire and melted lunar rock.
It would take too long to balance, so to spin it we'll not try:
Besides who wants to walk when we've already dared to fly?

So pack up all your memories, your programs and displays
Leave the losers down on Earth to go their meek and cautious ways
Let their politicians tell them to stay safely in their beds
We'll be hacking out our dreams here in the sky above their heads.

Hacker's Heaven © 1988 Stephen Savitzky