Challenger

The blogs I troll daily are all posting Challenger posts - where were you, reprints of Reagan's speech and so on.

I was at Camp Pendelton, Infantry Training School (Kickback Charlie Company) learning how to be an 03 bullet - stopper. That morning we were on the LAW range learning how to shoot those cute little disposable anti-tank rockets. One of the training NCOs made a bad joke and the training continued. Life goes on.

Whatever - retrospective means nothing without action. James Lileks said this about another horrible day and it applies to this as well.

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

It's been twenty years and we're still going nowhere fast with manned space. Time to drive that rivet and get with the program. VSE offers a plausible route forward. It's not everything, it's not perfect but it's something and it's better than what has come before.

Private civilian response to the 'meh' CEV video from NASA

Jim Hillhouse sent this to the AmericaSpace mail list a few minutes ago ...

After downloading NASA's CEV movie last Fall, I was disappointed that NASA had not done a better job in trying to sell its vision. Frankly, I've seen better out of a high school film group. I whined and moaned about this for a week or so and then decided to put my money where my mouth was. So, I bought "Final Cut Express HD" (only for Mac, sorry), installed it on my PowerBook G4 15", downloaded allot of NASA media, and made my own version of what I thought NASA should have done. I've tried to put NASA's new program into context with what has gone on in the past.

You can download the film, "Return to the Moon", at: http://www.orbitcode.com

You can't miss it. Enjoy it! It's free. And it's big--the film is over 41 Meg. Just unzip and play. It's a QuickTime/iTunes movie and is formatted for the iPod. I hope all of you like it.

Please send any criticisms and comments to me. But I'm not a film student or in the bidness, so you get what I caveat.

It's pretty good. Worth a few minutes to download and watch. Amazing what an inspired private citizenry can do.

Egregious twaddle by Henry M. Bowles III

Henry M. Bowles III has come out again' the military recruiting on campus. I would argue that if the military ceased recruiting amongst our intellectual betters then our society would suffer but .. hey what do I know?

You would think that a senior would know better than this however

A real tragedy occurs when a young man, susceptible to the military’s appeal and nonetheless intelligent and creative, signs up to become cannon fodder. He’ll probably leave the military alive, but he’ll have been irreversibly molded, less inclined to dissent. Less intelligent people are better equipped for most military positions, and have far less to lose.

Tommy Atkins to the front - you 'ave less to loose than our Mr. Bowles, Private. For 'e is clearly a scholar and a gentleman and we can't afford to lose the likes o' him. 'Es ever so much smarter than you lot - just ask 'im!

Remember that is Henry M. Bowles III of Northwestern.

Sarbanes-Oxley considered harmful

From Reason. You Can Be Too Careful: How the government’s new corporate accounting rules impede efficiency and stifle innovation.

Critics in academia and business journalism—and many from the corporate world itself, most of whom are reluctant to talk on the record and thereby show “bad faith” regarding the law—have many complaints about SarbOx, from its picayune requirements to its overall cost. While all such guesstimates should be taken with a grain of salt, one financial consulting firm, the Johnsson Group, has put the 2004 costs of SarbOx compliance at $15 billion. The critics also argue that the law’s benefits are apt to be small.

SarbOx probably won’t cripple the American economy, any more than the Clean Air Act or the Americans with Disabilities Act did. But it’s bound to create bad incentives and unintended consequences. Far from increasing the efficiency of capital markets, it will discourage some businesses from going public, since most of its provisions do not apply to privately held companies; will encourage some now-public companies to go private; and will keep some foreign companies out of the U.S. stock market.

Think edge effects here. It is not the modest amount of productivity damanged or that the legislation doesn't do what it is intended to do. It is the affect it has on the rest of our culture.

The costs of SarbOx compliance, while not driving anyone out of business, will siphon revenues toward legal and accounting work. That drain may, in the words of Forbes’ Rich Karlgaard, “succeed in stopping the next Enron, but…crib-kill the next Cisco, Microsoft and Starbucks” by leaving them less capital with which to expand.

Bob Merritt: I got so frustrated, it wasn’t worth coming to work. I’d
rather be the guy that holds the pole that the surveyor looks down than be CFO
of a public company.

Stephen Stanton: We actively encourage clients: Don’t change your
system; don’t upgrade anything; don’t change anything for the last three months
of the year.

Karen De Coster: The average accountant or corporate finance individual has
seen the light in regard to the sheer folly of it all, from having endured
microscopic attention to even the most insignificant tasks. The more ridiculous
the compliance procedures get, the more the average worker tends to
blow it off as frivolous.

Charles Wilson: SarbOx is definitely discouraging smaller
companies from going public, and it discourages good opportunities for
investing in little companies. I have friends running private companies who say
going public now would be just impossible.

Like that.

It's about the oil. It always is.

ATB quotes Spangler, who posits that it's all about the oil.

Why did French President Jacques Chirac last week threaten to use non-conventional - that is, nuclear - weapons against terrorist states? And why did Iran announce that it would shift foreign-exchange reserves out of European banks (although it has since retracted this warning)? The answer lies in the nature of Tehran's nuclear ambitions. Iran needs nuclear weapons, I believe, not to attack Israel, but to support imperial expansion by conventional military means.

There is more at the link. Certainly a more rational use than attempting to exterminate heavily armed Israelis. Israel would bite back. What will Azerbaijan do?

Chilling in a vague 'that will be next year's problem' way. It is not that I care that Iran has territorial ambition - like a dog eating it's own feces that is what some states simply do - but the ways and means they'll use to accomplish their desired end.

Thanks to Frank for pointing ATB out. I'm sure it was he - or a link from a poster on his site. He gets the blame at any rate. Those graphics alone are worth it.

Optimisim or Despair is a sin

Optimisim

But if you ask me what is a human being, I'd say that we are the species that seeks to go beyond our limitations and beyond our boundaries. We didn't stay on the ground. We didn't stay on the planet. We didn't stay within the limits of our biology. And I would point out that, if it were up to the Luddites, human life expectancy would still be 37, and we'd still be dying from bacterial infections. Ray Kurzweil

via Music of the Spheres

London Underground

Haw. Ever suffered a mass-transit strike? You will enjoy the song at the link. Not for the easily offended or those lacking a sense of humor.

via Boots and Sabers

Arnold Kling - Folk Beliefs Have Consequences

Folk Locke-ism and Folk Marxism.

The rationale for tax cuts -- "It's your money" -- makes sense to folk-Locke-ism. It drives folk Marxists crazy. Folk Marxists ask What's the Matter with Kansas?. They cannot understand why the oppressed do not see the advantages of higher taxes on their "rich" oppressors.

Folk Marxism can explain why some environmentalists do not like using taxes to control pollution. If you think of polluters as the oppressors and everyone else as the oppressed, then merely taxing pollution is not morally satisfying.

Interesing essay. I like the idea of driving folk Marxists batty.

Update: Now with correctly formatted block quotes and a link.

Galactic Gold Mine

Interesting article at Forbes

Theoretically, mining and collecting solar energy in space for use on Earth hold tremendous potential. Solar energy can, of course, be gathered on Earth, but only about half of the sun's radiation ever makes it to the Earth's surface--the rest is either absorbed by the atmosphere or reflected back by clouds. As for mining, a 1999 study published in Science magazine calculated that the asteroid Eros contains precious metals--aluminum, gold, silver and zinc, among others--worth at least $20 trillion at current market prices.

Calling Gerard O'Neill ..

But given our present technologies, it would take vast changes in our ability to reach for the heavens before either endeavor could possibility yield a profit.

Damned niggly details.

"Where am I supposed to find coelacanths at this time of day" as a catch phrase deserves wider play, I think. See Goats for more comic goodness.

Space Elevator Fiction - a short short story

Implausible but entertaining story of the guy who built the space elevator and destroyed the world.

Building a space elevator, or how I extinguished all life on Earth larger than a shrew.

The linked file is in .doc format. I say implausible because the narrator commits at least two glaring errors building a space elevator. One hopes the real deal would have had such errors excised by sanity check.

Nuclear Powered Posting

Nuclear Power, Climate Change and the Next 10,000 Years

Peter Schwartz and Ralph Cavanagh held a discussion at the Seminar About Long-Term Thinking. What about? Schwartz is a turncoat Green who sees nuclear power as a way to ease the climate change crunch. Cavanagh opposes expansion of nuclear power. No audio, but Brand has written a summary and posted at the Long Now discussion boards. Very informed comments at the link.

Via World Changing.


Sending Plutonium to Pluto

There’s controversy surrounding the launch, because some folks think that putting plutonium on a rocket is too dangerous — a launch accident could spread radioactive material. Well… okay, it IS dangerous. But I’m with the scientists who think that ultimately it’s MORE dangerous to not learn as much as we can about our Solar system. It is, after all, only a matter of time before some wandering rock decides to play “Extinction Event Roulette” with us, and that’s only the beginning of the threats we know about.

Howard Gets It, allrighty.

Best Description Ever of a lawyer's job

From Travis

His job is to wait for me to point to a vendor who has threatened me, then go over, hit the vendor in the head with a brick, and then anally rape the vendor until a scream of “no lo contendre” is heard to echo out.

There are worse ways to earn your daily crust.

The profanity might seem out of place - it seemed so to me, at first. I almost removed it from the quote. Yet .. this seems an apt place to go on for a bit about George Patton. From 'The American Tradition' by John Greenway

He (Patton) rammed a submachine gun into the belly of a soldier collapsed from exhaustion on a North African beach, waking him suddenly to his explanation.

I know you're tired. We're all tired. That makes no difference. The next beach you land on will be defended by Germans. I don't want one of them coming up behind you and hitting you over the head with a sockful of shit.

That "sockful of shit" brought reality home more certainly than any other weapon he could have mentioned.

So too the mention of anally raping people who fail to know their business and sick the laws on people busily creating more wealth and making the world a better place.

What have you done lately?

Good question from the Washington Post


Via NASA Watch

Yes, Jerry Pournelle, I hate you

He said it

Meanwhile, if you go to this page, do not say I did not warn you. I expect you will hate me. http://chir.ag/stuff/sand/

And he was right.

My sole response to the Al Gore MLK speech

Former Vice President of the United Sates, Albert Gore

A president who breaks the law is a threat to the very structure of our government.

Perhaps. Perhaps not . .

After five years of banishment from the legal profession, President Clinton will be eligible this week to reclaim the law license he gave up as a consequence of the inaccurate responses he gave under oath to questions about his relationship with a White House intern.

It's about nuance of course. Clearly lying under oath is okay but whatever it is that Bush is doing (and Gore makes it clear that we don't quite know yet but it e-vil) is not.

Not to start a political row - that's not my point. Gentle snark, s'all I'm into.

The Examined Life - Jeff Harrell

Jeff Harrell's first essay at Wizbang is pretty good. He winds up with . . .

I’m a swarming, teeming mass of political contradictions, and as such I fit in perfectly with no political party.

But I think that’s how American politics is supposed to work. I think American political parties are supposed to be made up of smart, dedicated people who disagree about practically everything but who find enough common ground to work together. I think that American politics is the politics of persuasion, and that people with strong convictions have a responsibility to get out there and start persuading others to see things their way.

And I believe that strong-willed people who disagree with each other can change the world for the better. Because I think that those are the only people who ever have.

Exploding Whale

Everyone has seen this. It's still funny.

There's been a story floating around the net for years about a beached whale that was blown up (exploded, not inflated) for lack of a better way to be rid of it. Many people thought it was an urban legend.

It wasn't.

Whale explodey goodness at the link.

Desktop

Joseph at Monotonous dot net wants to know what my desktop looks like ....

Anyway, I was inspired to think about this a little because of a post on Madlife, where he put up a screenshot of his desktop. I’m doing the same here. I love seeing how other people have their own desktops set up, so consider this a voluntary meme, and (if you want) leave a comment linking to your own desktop shot. You’ve all been tagged.

Why not? Technically the background picture is showing what was a partial failure at our last test - this is what was happening just before everything started to work. I like to think it's a visual representation of an upward trend i.e. the path I'd like to see Liftport on.

Remember the Pioneer anomaly?

Remember the Pioneer anomaly? The anomaly was that spacecraft cruising the outer reaches of the solar system were observed to deviate from their trajectory. I was hoping that the wake from an alien space drive was causing that affect and that possibly we needed to post 'no wake' signs but the universe is more (and less) exciting than that ...

In this work we study the gravitational influence of the material extending from Uranus orbit to the Kuiper belt and beyond on objects moving within these regions. We conclude that a density distribution given by $\rho(r)=\frac{1}{r}$ (for $r\geq 20 UA$) generates a constant acceleration towards the Sun on those objects, which, with the proper amount of mass, accounts for the blue shift detected on the Pioneers space crafts.

Touch The Sky

Good poetry is hard to find. I'm linking the following not just because it's good and deserves wider notice (and it does that) but it's about a subject near and dear my heart.

The following is inspired by the thought of the space elevator that the Liftport Group is trying to build. (Big dreams!).

Touch the Sky

Did you ever think that you would touch the sky?
A vision: Heaven's gate flung open wide.

Ever feel the universe was watching you?
As you soar into a vault of midnight blue.

At twelve hundred K's an hour, where there's no wind in your hair.
Driving straight up to the zenith, on a road that goes nowhere.

We're on a road to nowhere/ d'you want to make something of it?
On a road to nowhere/ that's just what we could do!

On a strand of silk that's stronger far than steel.
Coriolis plucking gently at your wheel.

Ride that strand from mother earth into the void,
to where the pulls of spin and mass are in accord

Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, had a dream to make it so!
and Yuri Artsutanov, saw the way that it should go!

It's the road to nowhere! It's Tsiolkovsky's dreaming.
The road to nowhere, and what a dream to make come true!

- Tony Fisk

An unkind thought about the so-called children of the 60s.

Via TJIC. An unkind thought about the so-called children of the 60s.

WHEN I BECAME president of Lesley University 20 years ago, I was attracted to the college because of its mission and beliefs that individuals can and should make a difference. After all, I am a product of the 1960s, and we believed that we had an opportunity, in fact a responsibility, to make the world a better place.

And since 9/11, dissent of almost any kind has been labeled as unpatriotic, and even reasoned debate on hot button social issues is viewed as dangerously controversial. Thus, while many of my colleagues will state positions on issues clearly affecting their campuses, like financial aid, they are loath to venture an opinion outside of academe. Who can blame them? The system demands more but wants to hear from us less. But I wonder what it would take for more of us to speak out?

All it takes - it would seem - to suppress dissent among Ms. McKenna's crowd is to look sternly in their direction and mutter darkly about patriotism. Blood flows like skim milk in their veins perhaps. Patriots who pledged their lives, fortunes and sacred honor snigger in derision from beyond the grave.

"Oh they're being _mean_" laughs the shade of Nathan Hale "poor babies. Let me tell you how it felt as the noose tightened around my neck ..."

I continue to amaze myself - an attempt to turn this into a Live Journal entry

Delivered the Liftport January Art newsletter - complete with a marked absence of late delivery, typos or anything else wrong - to subscribers. Go me.

One issue with the Gallery software. Seems when our site was moved from that ooky TAK server-thingee to Schnooky server the directory path changed and Gallery works just as spiffy as ever but has major freakout issues trying to change permissions or uplaod files. The horror.

Mood: bouncy
Current US President: Andrew Jackson

Update: I don't think I'll pastiche Live Journal users again. I'm scaring myself.

The Founders' Constitution

An invaluable aid to all those seeking a deeper understanding of one our nation's most important legal documents.

In this unique anthology, Philip B. Kurland and Ralph Lerner draw on the writings of a wide array of people engaged in the problem of making popular government safe, steady, and accountable. The documents included range from the early seventeenth century to the 1830s, from the reflections of philosophers to popular pamphlets, from public debates in ratifying conventions to the private correspondence of the leading political actors of the day.

I linked to this not just beause it has a ton of nifty documetns but because my daughter was issued a new Civics book today. Brand new! And it contained (I paraphrase) not only really cool stuff like 'The Bill of Rights' and 'The Mayflower Compact' but also they lyrics to 'Swing Low, Sweet Chariot'.

Sweet bleeding thorny-headed Jesus. They're shoving gospel lyrics into textbooks now. I am not astounded because of church - state seperation issues but ... song lyrics. In a civics text. The mind reels.

Greenpeace - menace to navigation or hapless victims

Travis mocks Greenpeace for letting their nimble ship get rammed by a lumbering whaler here.

One question: who started this?

Did the whalers pilot their ship up onto dry land, and approach the greenpeace headquarter’s building in order to do this?

Or did, you know, the greenpeacers track down the whaling boat, and then vandalize it, and only *THEN* get harpoons pointed at them?

Oh, those poor poor greenpeacers.

I viewed the video that Lisa suggested in the comments section. I concluded from the video that the 'Nisshin Maru' was in the wrong but it's probable that the master of the 'Arctic Sunrise' intentionally placed his vessel in harm's way.

And right after that I read this which points you to a site with startling different video footage. Same event, different POV.

Who is right? Durned if I know. But the beauty of the internet is that you can find the source material and decide for yourself without having to rely on clumsy propaganda.

Senator Kennedy embarrasses himself

Hey Massachusetts - isn't it time to elect someone who won't make a fool out of himself in public?

KENNEDY: And I want to do that at an appropriate time. I’d move that the committee go into executive session for the purpose of voting on the issuancing of -- the sole purpose for issuing the subpoena of those records.
SPECTER: Well, we’ll consider that, Senator Kennedy. There are many, many requests which are coming to me and many quarters. And, quite candidly, I view the request -- if it’s really a matter of importance, you and I see each other all the time and you have never mentioned it to me.
And I do not ascribe a great deal of weight -- we actually didn’t get a letter, but...
KENNEDY: You did get a letter. Are you saying...
SPECTER: Well, now wait a minute; you don’t know what I got. I’m about to...
KENNEDY: Yes I do, Senator, since I sent it.
SPECTER: Well, the sender does not necessarily know what the recipient gets, Senator Kennedy. You are not in a position to say what I receive.
If you’ll bear with me for one minute.
KENNEDY: But I am in a position to say what I sent to you on December 22.
SPECTER: You’re in a position to tell me what you sent.
KENNEDY: I renew my request, Senator. And if I’m going to be denied, then I’d appeal the decision of the chair.
I think we are entitled to this information. It deals with the fundamental issues of equality and discrimination.
This nominee has indicated he has no objection to seeing us these issues. We’ve gone over the questions and we are entitled to get that kind of information. And if you’re going to rule it out of order, I want to have a vote on that here on our committee.
SPECTER: Well, don’t be premature, Senator Kennedy. I’m not about to make a ruling on this state of the record.
I hope you won’t mind if I consider it, and I hope you won’t mind if I give you the specifics that there was no letter which I received.
I take umbrage at your telling me what I received. I don’t mind your telling me what you mailed. But there’s a big difference between what’s mailed and what’s received. And you know that.
We’re going to move on now.
Senator Grassley...
KENNEDY: Mr. Chairman, I’d appeal the ruling of the chair on this.
SPECTER: There has been no ruling of the chair, Senator Kennedy.
KENNEDY: Well what is the -- my request is that we go into the executive session for the sole purpose of voting on a subpoena for these records that are held over at the Library of Congress -- that purpose and that purpose only.
And if I’m going to be denied that, I’d want to give notice to the chair that you’re going to hear it again and again and again and we’re going to have votes of this committee again and again and again until we have a resolution.
I think it’s...
SPECTER: Well, Senator Kennedy, I’m not concerned about your threats to have votes again, again and again. And I’m the chairman of this committee and I have heard your request and I will consider it.
And I’m not going to have you run this committee and decide when we’re going to go into executive session.
We are in the middle of a round of hearings. This is the first time you have personally called it to my attention, and this is the first time that I have focused on it. And I will consider in due course.
Now we’ll move to Senator Grassley for 20 minutes.

Note that if a distinguished Republican had made an ass out of himself I'd be mocking him too. Space4Commerce is an equal opportunity mocker.

Since he asked so nicely

Paul Kedrosky made a gentle suggestion that makes sense:

A gentle request: I would like more people to put their names in their feed titles.

There done. Putting my name up there so .. blatantly feels wrong but I'll get used to it.

The post where Manuel devolves into a poet

Manuel Cuba - one of Liftport's people in South America - is turning into some kind of poet.

Suddenly, I noticed that everyone was looking up. For the sky was as clear as it can be, and the whole branch of the Milky Way extended itself across the horizon. As I walked around in a slowtime bubble I saw couples smiling, friends explaining the constellations and drunks simply staring at the infinity of space.

It only lasted 10 or 15 minuntes, but I can say from that experience that people do like space. The problem is that they don’t see it on their day by day.

We have to bring it down to Earth.

Yes we do.

One of those nights

In which your humble blogger makes at least two goofs publishing a simple newsletter to over 1700 subscribers. No one is perfect, of course, but I seem determined to be an outlier case.

You can't see this - but I'm rolling my eyes

Comment from the space passenger NPRM

first of all, there should be NO commercial space
flights since the pollution from commercial space
flights negatively impacts every single u.s. citizen.
one flight alone can kill thousands of people. i
think this should be solely a govt. endeavor.

secondly, it is clear that the most rigorous standard
must be used for any person who is permitted to do
this by our govt. it is clear this should not just be
a jaunt in the sky for a celebrity or rich man, as
seems to be going on these days.

the pollution from these flights is substantial. it is
time to put a damper on the endless pollution being
allowed by those who profit from it, with no regard
for those negatively impacted by the pollution from it
(their health, their breathing dirty air, etc.

what does the rest of the american public gain from
these kinds of extravaganzas? nothing.

Ah, the democratic process. One thing to be said for open comments - you can see the good and nutty opinions. B. Sachau of Florham Park, New Jersey - I respect your right to voice your opinion but it is your duty to read up on the subject.

Want to comment? Click here and type in docket number 23449. Do yourself a favor and read the PDF on that page first. It's only 123 pages - you can scan that in an hour.

Via Transterrestrial Musings.

Macc answers the eternal question - Why don't you do something more useful?

Courtesy of TJIC I read Paul Graham's fine essay 'How to Make Wealth'. And it's a good 'un. Friend and coworker (whom I've never met in person, gobless the internet) Manuel Antonio Cuba answers a related question "Why don't you do something more useful?"

One of the most common question I have been asked about the SE is “Why don’t you make something good here on Earth, like the cure for cancer. Space is so distant and far away.”

I hated to be placed in that position, specially when asked by people who weren’t doing anything good for Earth. What kind of right did they had to question the project in which I worked, they are were slackers themselves? It pissed me off.

Time has passed and as I gained experience I found the answer which I know and feel is right. I say “Well, we are a private company. Our goal is to make a profit and our debt with society is to generate wealth. We are in it for the money.”

To me, it is the best way to increase humanity’s standard of living.

I think the two tie in together nicely.

Wealth Generation Machine (Beta)

Making gravy

Excellent Screed - hits the high notes, just the right amount of keruffle.

I know, I know: I am a hopeless reactionary. I believe in judging a culture on the liberties and prosperity it affords to its people. I believe that the West is an anomaly in human history, and that it is a rare thing to have what we have: information without boundaries, freedom unimagined by those who have gone before, women’s equality instead of the black Hefty-trash-bag dress, respect for gays instead of death-by-stone-walls, and all the other remarkable accomplishments like space probes and plumbing and overnight delivery of Omaha Steaks (track the UPS code in your browser, if you wish.) But it didn’t just happen. As Felix Under said to Oscar Madison: you have to make gravy. It doesn’t just come.

Gravy, yes. Must remember that. Gotta keep piling on those stones and someday you've built a set of stairs - or a career or a space elevator - 'so big'.

Best blonde joke ever

Best. Blonde. Joke. Ever.

My wife is going to be famous.

Or at least will achieve that wonderful state that every business wants called 'profitable'.

Opened in September, Rammro is a new venture for Dunbar, whose previous retail experience was selling antiques and collectables to pay her way through college. A teacher by training, she was ready for a new career when she moved here with her husband from Texas three years ago.

This article ran on the first page of the 'Local News' section of the Appleton Post-Crescent on January 4.

Rammro Asian Imports in Menasha is co-owned by Donna Dunbar (from left), Tina Gunseor and Dunbar's daughter Sarah Gordon. Post-Crescent photo by Peter Adams. Donna hates having her picture taken - can you tell?

Lost Dog in Neenah

Let the power of the blog-o-sphere work it's magic. We'll be putting these up tomorrow around the neighborhood.

LOST
PLEASE RETURN



NAME: PIXIE
BREED: TOY FOX TERRIER
COLOR: BLACK AND WHITE WITH A
SMALL BIT OF BROWN
CALL (920) 722-0620
Lost in Neenah evening of 1/2/06, Peckham Street

Should I add the dog belongs to a six year old boy? Or would that be just a bit too pathetic?

1/3/2005 8:30 Update: She's back. Stepped out the door this morning to go to work and there she was. Mind - she wasn't there at 05:30, 06:00, 07:00 or even fifteen minutes before I found her.

University of Michigan hates the working man

University of Michigan hates the working man.

Well, no. They just don't think about things like the local economy and 'thinking globally act locally'. But really - yes.

Michigan is throwing a collective tizzy over allegations that Coke treats some workers badly, in Columbia, and has environmental issues in India. Granted the allegations are serious (I am not a complete Neandertal) and it's far more nuanced than the NYT article admits - yet it's not nearly as end-of-the-worldian as the Dump Coke site alleges.

Yet none of the kids at UM seem at all concerned with things like the local economy or the jobs lost. The Michigan contracts rang up $1.4 million in fiscal 2005 for Coke, which is chump change for the guys in Atlanta. But I have no doubt the Coke contract was a major part of the local distributer's business in Ann Arbor, Dearborn and Flint.

Whatever - the local Coke distributor has a rocky quarter or two - the business will probably be okay. A few jobs lost, some lives thrown into turmoil .. but hey it's cool - you're Doing The Right Thing.

Via NYT.

1/6/05 Update: I'm wrong, it seems. This happens. UM Student and activist Ryan Bates responded thusly;

We certainly did consider the effect on the local economy closely. Many of us consider ourselves labor solidarity activists in general, and it would be rather problematic for us to harm the local workers movement while attempting to aid another struggle.

The conclusion many of us came to was that U of M switching to a different soda pop supplier would have no net impact on jobs. Rather, those contracts would switch to different local bottlers and suppliers and they would benefit from the 1.4 million dollars. most of the local jobs affected are actually held by distributors who are more than happy to sell the university Coke, Pepsi, Faygo (our local cola), Pabst Blue Ribbon, or anything else.

Thanks for the support,

Ryan Bates

Chris Baldwin is back from hiatus

Good to see his self-imposed hiatus has been good for him. Slew of new projects are up at his homepage.



Nice to see that for all the change some things remain. As it should be with mute little girls and vultures.

The New Space Race - 1/1/2006

'60 Minutes' - The New Space Race, Sunday, January 1, 2006.

The private sector’s race to space is being led by maverick aeronautical engineer Burt Rutan, who foresees thousands of people enjoying the view from space in the very near future. Ed Bradley reports. Harry Radliffe is the producer.

Excellent - I know what is on at my house tonight. Via Space Pragmatism.

Glenn Reynolds - 2005: A Space Odyssey

All I know is - it sure feels like the time is right to railroad.

Space enthusiasts, God knows, have seen plenty of disappointment in the past few decades, as the brief false dawn of Apollo led to years of failed promises and no visible momentum. But we're now seeing signs of new technologies -- and, just as important, new systems of organization -- that make a takeoff into sustained growth much more likely for the space sector. Prizes to develop technology, space tourism to develop markets and help us move up the learning curve, and people with the money and vision to provide the seed capital for both: The essentials now look to be in place. It's about time.

Even a stopped clock

is right twice a day.

When you allow others to control your destiny, because you think nothing can be done to stop them, you are essentially signing the death warrant for democracy. You are basically voting by your own inaction for the worst case scenario to become a reality. Everyone wants someone else to come and rescue them from totalitarianism - but that is not how it works.

Wow. First he calls for exploring the solar system, now he's encouraging people to participate.

Be careful of what you wish for - you'll get it in spades.

Economic Bits

Secrets of Irish Success

. . . in 1985 Ireland made a u-turn. It drastically lowered the tax burden. All wasteful government spending was eliminated. In three years time public spending was reduced by no less then 20%. The result was that Ireland entered a period of explosive GNP growth, averaging 5.6% from 1985 to 2002. This is rough­ly three times the Belgian growth rate. The boom went hand in hand with the creation of new jobs, which was far in excess of that in Belgium.

Because of its awe-inspiring rise in prosperity Ireland has now more resources available for all sorts of social, cultural and environmental initiatives than Belgium does.

I am not ideological. If something works - if it's proven to work - then you use that tool and ideology be damned. Tax breaks, reducing government spending et. al seem to work, massive government programs and spending do not.

Even SF cartoonists get it ...

Petey: Restore your system to greatness. Nurure, Heal and Defend, per the Sacred Charter.
New Principal: How? The economy is a twisted mess!
Petey: Are you asking for advice?
NP: Yeah
Petey: Rebuild your orbital defenses. Offer tax breaks to private industry for orbital projects, and don't be afraid to let them profit by growing their space-based industries on the side. Re-tool your welfare programs around training for service industries. Those willl boom in short order. In ten years you'll be hailed as the greatest Principal your world has ever seen.

Mind - Petey is a hyper-intelligent AI so he can be expected to be smarter than your average psycho koala bear alien.

Time to move

Submitted without comment.

Markos Moulitsas Zúniga the man that runs the most successful political blog in America can't afford the Blue state of California:

So I'm getting a little frustrated with the Bay Area real estate market, and for the first time in years I'm casting about the rest of the nation to see if there's anywhere else where I could possibly live.

How ironic,a guy who supports a party that promotes Fannie Mae,Freddie Mac,land-use restrictions,zoning,open space laws,and unions is unable to buy a house in the very Blue area of Northern California.All this from a guy who's got a law degree.What is it about Blue America that hates people that aren't rich??? Attention Markos Moulitsas Zúniga :did it ever occur to many in Blue state America that Houston(that doesn't have zoning) is a lot more affordable than let's say Berkeley,California.Also,Houston residents don't have a state income tax that they are paying.It appears Kos can't afford the very values he promotes,which is regulation of markets which leads to artificially high real estate prices.

BOOM

An Explosion on the Moon

NASA scientists have observed an explosion on the moon. The blast, equal in energy to about 70 kg of TNT, occurred near the edge of Mare Imbrium (the Sea of Rains) on Nov. 7, 2005, when a 12-centimeter-wide meteoroid slammed into the ground traveling 27 km/s.

NASA's Hubble Discovers New Rings and Moons Around Uranus

To the surprise of astronomers, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has photographed a pair of new rings around the distant planet Uranus. The largest is twice the diameter of the planet's previously known rings. The new rings are so far away that they are being called Uranus's "second ring system."

The universe continues to surprise. Wonder what we'll find when we actually get out there in a big way. Stay tuned ...

A Lileks Christmas

Lileks rarely makes me chuckle aloud. He's good, just not that kind of a writer. Today being the exception.

Let’s recap: I ran into the garage door; the toilet overflowed during Child™’s Christmas party; I screwed up the cards, my wife’s lovely job of light-stringing ended up with the plug at the top of the towering outdoor evergreen, the kid found one of her presents, the tree died, a mail-order gift didn’t show, the party didn’t come off, and something else. Can’t remember. The dog found a skeleton in the backyard dressed in Santa clothes, maybe. That’s just Santa’s Halloween Helper, hon! Hide your eyes. No, that wasn’t it. Well, something else went horribly wrong. And my mood?

Happy. I’d be a fool to feel otherwise.

TJIC: Getting ready for the belt

Travis is thinking ahead . .

We need a few things before we move out to the Belt:

• space elevators to get us out of the gravity well
  
• good hydroponic mini-farms
  
• efficient airlocks
  
• a replacement for government title registries

The linked article is good - very infomration dense. I would add that things will really take off when fabricators are perfected enabling settlements to sever supply lines and live off the land.

'Tis the season

I blogged Dr. Pournelle's learned take on the 'war on Christmas'. Foamy has his own opinion as well ...

Leave the Christmas folks alone. 'Tis the season to STFU and stop being a whiny bitch.

Foolish Consistency

Speaking of exploring space . . .

Please do what you can to help us build pressure against the launch of New Horizons. Cancel the mission. The planets have been out there a long time and aren't going anywhere. Explore space sure, but don't risk the lives of people here on Earth. Develop alternative technologies for space exploration. No nuclear launches!

Hunh. This is the same guy who last year wrote;

Generally I think our membership would first support building a real mass transit system here on planet Earth before we go rushing off intospace. It is our belief that until we get our shit together here on this planet we ought to slow down the rush to move our bad seed of war, greed, and environmental degredation into the heavens.....

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds as that foolish little man said. Glad to see Bruce - and by extention his network of fellow travellers at GNAW is on board with the program. Next year the moon.

Attention ET: We taste terrible

This is the first thing an ET will hear as he / she / it approaches Earth. Good if they get the joke. Better if they have no sense of humor and conclude that treating homo sap gently and with respect is the prudent course of action.

Via Transterrestrial Musings

Just squint and mentally add a rusty red hue

Hey look .. the future . . .

Concordia Station is one of the most isolated -- and most important -- permanent scientific outposts on Antarctica. A joint project of French and Italian national research programs, with the involvement of the European Space Agency, Concordia has just completed its first "overwinter" mission and is now home to its second
crew. Antarctic research, while interesting, isn't inherently worldchanging, but Concordia is special: its location, Dome C, is rapidly becoming the best spot for a variety of scientific missions on Antarctica; and this year's overwinter crew at Concordia has the assignment of prepping for a mission to Mars.

Home Sweet Home

Haliburtonish Subway Empire and Marching Society

GET THE F*** OUT.

Pardon the profanity. But .. really .. do you guys expect the great big Haliburtonish Subway Empire and Marching Society (HSE&MS) to listen? Or ... really ... to care? You've elevated the discourse past 'loud' to 'crude'; if I wouldn't listen to you - indeed after being told to get the f*** out I'd do all in my power to get the f*** in just to annoy you and watch you turn purple in hapless fury - why should the HSE&MS?

*Motto: Coming soon to dominate your hometown and make you eat six-inch BLT on wheat.

From Interdependence to Independence: A Path Forward

From Event Horizon;

For instance how many people dare not speak their minds on important matters – not for fear that they will be arrested by some secret police – but merely from fear that they will lose their jobs? What I'm trying to say is that as society becomes increasingly interdependent the individual must necessarily lose independence and become subject to the will of the whole in order to just subsist. It was for this very reason that Theodore Kaczynski (AKA the unibomber) came to believe that all technology must be destroyed. So the question remains: How can ever increasing interdependence be squared with human freedom? The answer is that it cannot be.

So should we just throw in the towel and all become Luddites? Certainly not. The advance of technology could not be stopped even if it were desirable. The solution to this problem is technology it self.

I foresee a radical new state of affairs arising in which every individual is self-sustaining and independent and yet continues to enter into states of cooperation willingly and not because it is necessary. Let's take a look at what kind of technologies will make this possible and then I will flesh out the concept.

More at the link. These are important things to think about. It is certain that the advances of the past several hundred years - from muscle power to space flight in just a few generations - are down to rule of law and the rights of the individual. How do we keep that engine going?

Pournelle - The War on Christmas

Pournelle on the War on Christmas. Of course he dives into the heart of the matter;

Our system is designed to appeal from Peter drunk with emotional appeals to Peter sober and rational, and it has generally worked; but I urge all of you to think on what happens when the majority finds its will frustrated over what it perceives to be trivial matters: trivial to those who object, but not at all trivial to the majority itself.
...
So my concern in this War on Christmas is that those who seek to manipulate the system to remove from it all traces of support for the religious principles that generated the nation may find they have done a better job than they intended; and that if enough people begin seriously to ask why they should put up with people not like them, and whom they do not like, they may come to conclusions most of those here would abhor.

In Which Jane Fonda Irks Me

Jane Fonda has never bothered me. Hanoi Jane was a long time ago - I found her actions there irksome but that was another war; I was five.

But this is really damned irritating.

One doctor, she insists, told her U.S. troops had been deliberately trained to be "killing machines."

True enough actually. See neo-neocon for a nuaned discussion of that point.

"This began," Fonda maintained, "because the military discovered that in World War II and Korea, [U.S.] soldiers weren't killing enough."

Again, true. See the above link.

"So they changed training procedures" to teach troops how to commit atrocities.

Hunh. Somehow at Infantry Training School (now called SOI) I missed the training blocks devoted to rape, abuse, mass murder and etc.

Damned foolish woman; what is irritating is that people will latch onto this as gospel. Not the least of them our enemies.

Thinking long term

Why Democrats should support space exploration

The fact that it has fallen to a Republican president to issue the Vision for Space Exploration should not keep Democrats from supporting it. Divided as Americans are on so many other issues, the expansion of humanity throughout the solar system is a cause worthy of a Grand Alliance.

Well yah, good luck with that. My own (modest and, I admit, politically naive) judgment is that if a Democrat wins the Presidency VSE is dead in the water. Not for it's flaws, but because it was Chimpy McBushitler's plan, and for that reason alone it's got to go. You spend (not you, nor you but those other guys) spend eight years equating someone with a mad dictator and a primate ... obviously nothing much good can come from it, nu?

Sow the wind and weep; killing VSE might well spell the end of any manned exploration for yet another generation, all things considered.

In twenty or a hundred years our clever robot probes that we'll throw across the system in our stead (we're saving money! for more return on our investment!) can be picked apart for salvage by explorers and colonists from a more vigorous culture.

-----

This is 'why' space4commerce, this is why I work gratis for Liftport. Because the species needs space and the options it will give us. More, we'll benefit by having a liberal Western culture growing ascross the system. It is not improbable that a more vigirous culture, with values anithetical to Western values, could take up the challenge and win the high ground.

Weep, should that happen.

Dear iTerm

Dear iTerm.

It's just not working out. You're flashy, you're hip and cool - you bring things to a terminal session that Terminal just doesn't have.

But sweatheart - you've got problems. The "won't save default settings" issue I can overlook. Heck it's fun editing preference files to save a default setting, when that option clearly does not work in your menu. Once.

But worse, you crash. With frequent abandon. This just is not cool in a terminal session, and it's your worst sin of all. I'm sorry, but it's .. over.

Going on a bear hunt

In New Jersey. They've bagged (as of today) 216 black bears including a six-hundred pounder. This might sound like a slaughter except they estimate the (pre hunt) population of black bears tops out at 3,000. New Jersey, for the love of sweet-thorny-headed Christ.

In which I display my lack of tolerence for bums

Freeganism. Everything you fear it is, and more. So much more.* I'm getting old and grumpy. In my day we'd call these guys 'bums'.

*phrase borrowed with glee from Dave at Garfield Ridge.

A modest proposal: American / Australian Union

He's kidding of course.

Modest Proposal Number 317: America becomes part of Australia.

Yet .. weather and the women aside the idea does have it's merits.

Columbus or Erikson?

Columbus or Erikson?

Human history has favored both the spatial and cultural expansion. Fresh prospects yield new perspectives. Life springing from the sea to land was similarly favored. We now stand on a beach, our world, timidly dipping a toe into the sea of space.

We stare into this ocean of light and imagine we are the Columbus generation. I fear we may be the Lief Eriksons.

Via Music of the Spheres.

The merry sound of children

screaming in terror. Inside a snow globe. Don't look at me like that .. it's funny.

Via.

We need a space frontier

This on Jerry Pournelle's Chaos Manor Mail 390;

I agree with you in today's view, but, I also believe that holding back automation is a cure whose results are worse than the disease. Keeping skilled jobs that could otherwise be replaced with machines is just another way of saying those workers are not smart enough for the real work.

What we need is a space frontier. Our society in this country has no place for the young to aspire to. The frontiers are gone. The current model of rock star and mega rich is simply too shallow and of course pointless. And it is only going to get worse. A space frontier would provide an environment where the left of the bell curve as well as the right would find great opportunity. Hard work and guts would be just as valuable as advanced skills and in many jobs more important.

Phil Tharp

The sign of a truly intelligent man is when he agrees with you ...

Hunh. The English middle class tired of the Laud's gaudy Episcopapacy and fled to the New World. Some of my ancestors sought the frontier, bypassing the settled Atlantic colonies for the West. When the solid American middle-class tires of seeing their world eaten into from beneath, and tires of seeing their close held values mocked by the rich and Progressive elements .. where will they go?

In a hundred years will we see a revitalized, Anglosphere presence in the heavens? And will they ... you know .. care as little for the new Old world as the Americans of Jackson's and Houston's era cared for Great Britan?

This is what I get for re-reading history books at night.

Linkage

The Dunbar Number as a limit to group sizes. Because group dynamics are important for a small organization.

"In short, alternate energy eliminates many of the problems which turn natural disasters and economic problems into crises." See Alternate energy is civil defense.

Ramsey Clark is a tool. Sorry, he's a past AG and a good guy but there it is. Via TJIC.

Michael Mealing has some interesting things to say about infrastructure.

Space Station Sims.

Bruce Gagnon is going all Thoreau and babbling about snow.

Pandora's Box

Pandora. They're evil, no doubt, because they make you register, demanding a modest amount of information and they display ads. But they've got a neat trick in the area of music streaming. Pick a singer or song and they'll stream music similar to you choice. Similar to last.fm, granted, but it's not a clone of that service but a country cousin.

And they've gone better than last.fm in at least one respect; they know about Robert Earl Keen and Jerry Jeff Walker - artists that last.fm never could manage to find. Ya gotta love an online service that is either so cool or so dorky they've got Robert Earl Keen and Jerrry Jeff Walker in their database. It's like listening to Bruce Kidder and Brett Dillon at KHYI whenver I want.

Via Infectious Greed.

12/4/05 Update: Pandora is hiring - and oh-good-golly it sounds like a little slice o' geek heaven. You can always tell a lot about an organization by what they look for when they hire people.

Core Technologies: Linux, bash/sh, tcp/ip, nfs, x86 hardware, and dns/named, Linux, Java, Python/Jython, Apache, distributed systems, embedded systems

Secondary Technologies: Cisco/Foundry, ipchains/iptables, ipsec, Debian/GNU, apt, rpm, Postfix, VNC, evms, Raid, Postgres, python, C, PostgreSQL, XML-RPC, Jetty, Lisp, Oracle, PL/SQL, streaming media.

Drool.

Comic Goodness

Dunno if they'll be in it for the long run (Hi Schlock Mercenary) but La Casa Comics is entertaining.

This one about Washington's weather is funny.

Via Dean's World.

The High Road

Or .. can't we all just get along?

The world is awash in capital. We have trillions of dollars of houses, cars, and businesses. The world’s productive capacity is growing all the time. We are figuring out how to build old things better so quickly, we have to find an ever-increasing pace of new items to produce. Ever more of our productive economy is being devoted to entertainment, beauty, recreation, vacationing, art, luxury food, leisure, and lifestyle medications. And it is doing so with less energy per dollar of GDP . It is only a matter of time before early adopters follow the style of Paul Allen, Elon Musk, Richard Branson, and Jeff Bezos, and start their own space programs—or at least go for a ride.All the existing aerospace related firms and many others can prosper if demand and capitalization grow for space enterprise. All of the following companies and more can succeed: ATK Thiokol, Bigelow Aerospace, Boeing, Energia, Imaginova, Incredible Adventures, Lockheed Martin, Liftport, Masten Space Systems, Northrup Grumman, Pratt & Whitney, Rocketplane, Space Adventures, The Spaceship Company, SpaceShot, SpaceX, TGV Rockets, t/Space, United Space Alliance, Virgin Galactic, Virgin Skill, and XCOR Aerospace.


While there are long-term lean scenarios, there are also extended boom scenarios. If there is an elevator that is put up, we will need more rockets, not fewer. We will spark a vast new era of development, colonization, and exploration with lots of rockets and spaceships flying off of a space elevator.

As Monte Davis recently said on “The Space Show”, we have to set aside our petty differences. Shut up about Moon vs. Mars, hybrid vs. liquid, SSTO vs. TSTO, alt vs. biz, tourism vs. military, private vs. public, orbital vs. suborbital, robots vs. people, and asteroids vs. space invaders. Start subordinating our unimportant grousing about other’s companies and products to common goals. Start smoothing over our differences, agree to disagree, and push forward a positive message about our own and all competing products. Start teaching each other how to promote in a positive way and teach the media how to cover us in a positive way.

Mark Twain's quip comes to mind; the reason that school board elections are so vicious is that the stakes are so small. The opposite is true here - time to realize that, yes, the stakes might be high, but the payoff is huge for all concerned.

Taking bets on the first kilogram to orbit by space elevator

Travis is taking bets on the first kilogram and the first man to orbit via space elevator.

On the dog walk today I asked Nick when he thought we’d have a space elevator that could lift 1kg from the surface to orbit.

I was thinking 35 years.

Nick said “With 75% confidence…10 years”.

OK, what are everyone else’s bets?? Feel free to divide into “1kg to orbit” and “1 man to orbit”.

My bets are 35 and 40 years respectively.

I think Nick is being foolishly optimistic, but Travis is guilty of not anticipating a massive uptick in enabling technology. Something like what happened in England in the first decade after Watt perfected thesteam engine, but with more acceleration. If the steam engine was a light shining a dark era the coming decade is going to be a laser beam.

I am of course optimistic.

'space elevator' slipping into casual usage

I don't know who CrackBass is. That is beside the point.

maybe not even a god, but The God. we dont deserve him. there is no way he is from this planet. Perhaps he arrived here via a space elevator. Maybe he is from the future, and has traveled back to now so that he can just completely kick everyone's a$$ on drums. whatever. doesn't matter. what matters is - he is here, and deserves your worship.

He's talking about Jeff Ballard, a drumer. I don't know who he is either. The point is the casual usage of the phrase 'space elevator'.

* If it's slipped into common usage .. great. Better than that if you want to build one.

* You guys who want to rename it 'cosmic funicular' or something else? You're about five years too late. Space elevator it is, and always will be. Sloppy and imprecise but there it is.

* Better than Keith Moon? You'll have to convince me.

Hacking Google - deserved mocking

Google 'failure'. The first hit is the White House biography of George Bush. The second is michaelmoore.com. Nothing like rooting for the underdog . . .

Failure. Failure. Failure. Failure. Failure.

Me, I think a google hack aimed at Bruce Gagnon would be more amusing, but since failure is taken ...

Goofball. Goofball. Goofball. Goofball. Goofball.

Thanksgiving coda

The Dunbar family had a nice Thanksgiving. Snow, but just enough to dust the ground. Family and friends over for the day. Leftover enough to tide the family over for a week of turkey sandwiches, turkey ommlettes and so on.

That is - we had enough leftover turkey for the week. We now have a few ounces of turkey and a very full German Shepherd.

A likeness of the guilty party - in happier times.

Nuclear Power makes you go AAAGH!

From Leyden's Jar.

Free Market Management Style

http://www.ajc.com/business/content/business/1105/20koch.html

one fateful day in 1962, Charles, also an MIT engineer, plucked a book from his father's library on the free-market principles of the so-called Austrian school of economics. "The experience changed my life," Koch wrote in a 1998 article for Chief Executive magazine. After Koch took over the company when his father died in the late 1960s, he spent the next three decades knocking down the "command-and-control" tenets of traditional corporate structure and replacing it with more of an "intellectual framework."

You've probably never heard of Charles Koch or Koch Industries. So what do they have to offer?

30,000 employees in 50 countries. Growth of 1,600-fold since 1961. Koch just bought Georgia-Pacific, taking it private. Might be worth paying attention to.

Via TJIC.

Dil Bahadur Shrestha

Dil Bahadur Shrestha. Goes by both 'Dil' and 'Bahadur'. From Kathmandu, Nepal. Has had recent business dealings in Germany and Wisconsin. I will not publish defaming information in public but if you are doing business with him you really should get in touch with me for our side of the story. Use the contact email address for this web site.

This has nothing to do with Liftport - I'm doing this as a favor for a close friend who (may) have been burned by the guy; using the power of the lazyweb for good not ill.

WKRP In Cincinnati - end theme lyrics

WKRP was, I think, the best sitcom ever filmed. The cast had chemistry, the jokes were good and 'twas funny without smut. Plus Jan Smithers. And that closing theme. For years and years I thought there weren't really any lyrics - just a guy belting out nonsense - but rocking good nonsense.

Turns out if you listen long enough .. there is something there.

Said to the bartender "Best night I ever had"
Sang to the bar
Had a microphone in(to) her heart

I said -
Goodbye madam
I'd had a bird in hand

I said - I'm doing good
And put love in her heart

Makes more sense than some of translations from 'Cowboy Bebop'. Poor quality wav at the link - but a rocking GOOD poor quality wav it is.

Update: I forgot about the Cloth Monkey 'homage' page to Jan Smithers. This might be where I picked up a 'thing' for girls wearing glasses.

US Army Military History Institute - online documents

Via Jerry Pournelle - the US Army Military History Institute has a number of interesting soruce documents online. Index at http://www.carlisle.army.mil/usamhi/DL/chron.htm

An Epidemiology of Representations

Via Event Horizon, An Epidemiology of Representations - A Talk with Dan Sperber;

This is where I part company not just from your standard semiologists or social scientists who take communication to be a coding-decoding system, a transmission system, biased only by social interests, by power, by intentional or unconscious distortions, but that otherwise could deliver a kind of smooth flow of undistorted information. I also part company from Richard Dawkins who sees cultural transmission as based on a process of replication, and who assume that imitation and communication provide a robust replication system.

More at the link.

Evolutions of thoughts, transmission of culture. Ever since T.R. Fehrenbach introduced me to the idea that not just the cowboy but the entire Plains horse culture was transmitted entire from the Spanish on the lower Rio Grande to Anglo-Celts filtering out of the wooded Southeast, I've been interested in how ideas .. culture .. migrates to a new people.

Semper Gumby, Micah.

Is this blog an "Anglosphere Blog"?

From Albion's Seedlings;

The Anglosphere is the growing world network of English-speaking nations and people increasingly connected by electronic media, fast cheap air travel, and other modern developments. In that sense, it is a subset of globalization, but a globalization that is not happening smoothly, evenly, or at the same pace or degree in all directions at once. There are vectors, and the evidence continues to accumulate that participation in the cultural complex that includes speaking, writing and reading English, and sharing in the institutions, culture and history of the English-speaking world is an important one of those vectors.

Anglospherists differe from universalists by saying "we can't really come up with a quick formula that fits Mozambique and Iceland equally and usefully." We can say that stronger civil societies are freer and more prosperous, and we can even say "reducing public goods reduces the corruption of public processes", but we can't instantly come up with a formula that would tell how to rewrite a constitution to implement these insights

Maybe. There is worse company to be in.

Space elevator takes romance out of the void

Space elevator takes romance out of the void

The fact is, no matter how many carbon bells and nano-whistles you put on it, an elevator is still an elevator -- the most boring and awkward conveyance ever concocted. And all its annoying traditions would be sure to seep into any space-age upgrade as well.

LEO on the Cheap

LEO on the Cheap
Methods for Achieving Drastic Reductions
In Space Launch Costs
Air University Research Report AU-ARI-93-8
Lt. Col. John R. London III

Published in 1994, "LEO on the cheap" is easily accessible for the lay public. Colonel London explored why existing space launch is expensive and presented recommendations to drastically reduce the the cost of space transportation.

The conclusions are hard to argue with

The United States needs a means of space access that costs much less than the current launch systems. Foreign competition continues to chip away at the US commercial launch industry. A dramatic expansion in military, civil, and commercial space initiatives could help fuel a technology-based economic revitalization in the United States, but this expansion will not come about unless drastic reductions in space launch costs are achieved.

He then goes on the argue for development of a minimum cost design booster - minimum cost because (supported by arguments in the preceding chapters) boosters do not need to be complex or expensive - good enough is sufficient and cheap.

An ultra-low-cost launch system cannot be developed using traditional government acquisition practices. A large number of personnel, heavy documentation requirements, complicated and time-consuming procedural compliance, and an almost inevitable complexity in design are all associated with typical acquisition of an aerospace system. These traditional acquisition characteristics will drive the cost of the launch system well above what anyone would consider low. Therefore the program for developing a low-cost launch system must be accomplished in a highly streamlined manner.

In other words - it can't be done the way we've always done it. However, the cynic in me is convinced that an organization laden with 'crats and procedures is unable to reform itself absent external competition. There isn't any at this point in time. Space X is, yes, busy building the Falcon and Virgin Galactic may loft tourists but these guys alone are not going to force the US government and Boeing/Lockmart to change their ways.

Colonel London goes on to list forty recomendations in procedure, policy and so on.

All in all, a good read for the lay public, invaluable if you're in the industry, or simply want to be informed. Available online in PDF format at http://www.dunnspace.com/leo_on_the_cheap.htm.

Thinking Cleary About Space

Monte Davis' 'Thinking Clearly' series is worth a seperate blog entry.

Thinking Clearly About Space Part I: Hustling the Future

For more than a century, space enthusiasts have been hurrying the future: projecting how the world will be changed by technologies and capabilities humanity does not yet have.

Thinking Clearly About Space Part II: Everybody Wants Space

Who can resist the poetry of Humanity’s Timeless Outward Urge? Space is the endless frontier, we say—it’s in our genes. It’s the next inevitable step in evolution. It’s our species-level insurance against global disasters. It’s the spread of life and intelligence from a pale blue dot to the 99.9…% of the cosmos that isn’t Earth. Throw the bone, cue the music, match dissolve to orbit: thank you, Mr. Kubrick.

It’s all profoundly moving. It may even turn out to be true. But it’s an obstacle to progress, if talk of Humanity persuades us that most actual human beings share our enthusiasm.

Thinking Clearly About Space Part III: Hardware and Hand-Waving

One of the clichés of space enthusiasm is author Robert Heinlein’s "Once you’re in orbit, you’re halfway to anywhere." It’s a vivid expression of the physics of launching a spacecraft and escaping earth’s gravity well. The velocity change required to attain low earth orbit, just 200 miles up, is more than twice that needed to go on from Low Earth Orbit (LEO) to the Moon. It’s comparable to that needed for reasonable travel times from LEO to other planets, thousands of times farther away.

We usually repeat the cliché in the service of our hopes. After all, we put a satellite in orbit in 1957, and human beings in 1961. We were halfway to anywhere two generations ago—let’s get on with it!

But the cliché misleads as much as it enlightens.

Thinking Clearly About Space Part IV: The Virtuous Cycle

The temptation to slip from hurrying the future to hustling it is always present. You can see the latest variation at every space conference, on every space forum and weblog:

* “What will make us a space-faring civilization is people making money on space tourism and orbital hotels; on solar-power satellites or on helium-3 from the moon or asteroid mining.”

* “NASA and the big aerospace vendors and the politicians are all in the same bureaucratic swamp, maintaining their turf and their constituencies. Look at Spaceship One! Only private enterprise is lean and innovative enough to get us out.”

* “Sure, rockets have always been expensive, but that’s only because we make so few of them and fly them so rarely. With high flight rates and the streamlined operations that will bring, costs will drop to a fraction of what they are today.”

The common thread is that we don’t need more federal spending or new technology to speed our progress into space. All we need is the proven power of market economics to transform what is new, rare and expensive (electricity 1850, automobiles 1900, computers or jet aircraft 1950) into the routine and affordable.

Monte Davis on Livingston's Space Show

Monte Davis, historian, science writer and all-around good guy writes;
I'll be on David Livingston's Space Show tomorrow, starting at noon Pacific time. We'd be happy to hear from you during the show; details for calling or IM/ICQ'ing in during the show are here.

The main topic is "mythbusting" about where we currently are (and aren't) in space -- the real technological, economic, and political constraints, and what seem to me the shortcomings of most space advocacy.

But I expect we'll also get around to possible alternatives to chemical rocketry: nuclear, laser launch, and... you guessed it.

For a preview of the angle I'm coming from, go to here and see the four-part "Thinking Clearly About Space" series under the "more top stories/recent headlines" tabs.
Beats the snot out of listening to A Prairie Home Companion.

Ready to break out of the post-Apollo doldrums

Good name for this era - post-Apollo doldrums.

UI and other students are likely to have a lot more such opportunities in the future, said Gregg Maryniak, former executive director of the X PRIZE Foundation, which sponsored the $10 million prize for the first privately funded manned space flight, won last fall by SpaceShipOne.
"For the first time in many, many years I feel a real resurgence in hope for the future ... right in your careers," Maryniak, now director of the J.S. McDonnell Planetarium in St. Louis, told the students.
But Maryniak said the Bush administration's push to return to the moon and eventually travel to Mars is only part of the reason he thinks the nation has a chance to break out of what he characterized as its post-Apollo doldrums.
He said NASA's $15 billion annual budget – about what Americans spend on lipstick or pizza every year – is unlikely to ever do much more than double, if that.
"It's not enough money to make space happen on a strong and perpetual basis," he said.
But government programs can overcome initial hurdles – like proving the feasibility of bases on the moon, which might become resource harvesting and manufacturing outposts later – that need to be cleared to attract private investment, Maryniak said.

Oh yes - Tom Nugent is at SEDS, doing nifty things with robots and space elevator proto tech.

Veterans Day

I wrote this on Steve Barnes website in response to his review of "Jarhead". Let it stand as a comment on Veterans Day. It is not that I think my words are epic or worthy of wider notice - but they are mine.

There is indeed something about service in hard places with like minded men that calls to the heart of a man.

I spent eight years in the Corps. I had some good times, some bad times, overall I was not the best Marine I could have been but .. ah gawd when it was good, it was grand indeed!

I've yet to find - after thirteen years - anything to compare to that feeling.

I've found a substitute with my wife and family - and it's a good life and relationship we have, and I'll not trade it for the world. She is my rock and my heart and my life.

But it's not the at all the same, not by half.

Happy 230th, Marines

Happy Birthday to my brothers and sisters in the Corps. Hoist a glass, toast the oldest and youngest present and keep the faith.

Semper Fi.

Nick at Brutally Honest says it much better than I.

60 Minutes: Being The First Man On The Moon

Some choice bits from the '60 Minutes' interview with Neil Armstrong on 11/6/05.

After the almost-fatal ordeal (with an experimental LEM simulator), Armstrong went back to his office to do some paperwork. “I did. There was work to be done,” says Armstrong, matter-of-factly.

“Wait a minute. You were just almost killed,” Bradley says.

“Well, but I wasn't,” says Armstrong.

and

Armstrong clearly remembers the lunar surface. “It's a brilliant surface in that sunlight. The horizon seems quite close to you because the curvature is so much more pronounced than here on earth. It's an interesting place to be. I recommend it.”

and

Armstrong knew the Apollo program had a limited life but expected it to last longer. “I fully expected that, by the end of the century, we would have achieved substantially more than we actually did.”

“And why do you think we didn't continue?” Bradley says.

“When we lost the competition, we lost the public will to continue,” Armstrong replies.

and

“You said you would like to see us go back to the moon, and then go on to Mars. Something you want to do at this point in your life?” Bradley asks.

“I don't think I'm going to get the chance. But I don't want to say I'm not available,” Armstrong says, laughing.

If you're looking for a hero - however you define the word - you could do worse.

TOPFIVE.COM'S LITTLE FIVERS -- SCIENCE FICTION
http://www.topfive.com/fivers.shtml

October 28, 2005
NOTE FROM DAVE:

We're all familiar with the more common names for FTL (faster than light) drives in the SF universe. Warp drives, hyper drives and so on. Here are some of our suggestions. The Top 9 Other Names for FTL Drives

9. The "No we're not there yet, now shut up before I turn around and smack you" drive.
8. Science Fiction Nerd "Lack of Sex" Drive.
7. Einstein's Blowjob.
6. FTMFF (Fleeter Than Michael Flatley's Feet) Drive.
5. TTE ("Take That, Einstein!") Drive.
4. FTL: Fatter than Light. A new drive system based on the Atkins Diet.
3 . Deus Ex Machina Drive.
2. Who cares, as long as I can save money on my car insurance!

and the Number 1 Other Name for an FTL Drive...

1. Bubba's Interstellar Drive-O-Matic.

Liftport week at Bull Dork's place

It's Liftport Week at Bull Dork's blog. I promised the man I'd make it Bull Dork week on the Liftport blog (or something like that) but some things have conspired against my doing that.

* An appraiser is due next week to look at the house for a refinance inspection. All those fiddly chores I've put off for the past year? It's all come due. I've been up till the wee hours of the morning moving stuff around, sanding, painting and so on. The good news is we'll have a set of really nice rooms sans smelly old carpeting and with newly painted hardwood floors.

* I spent the past few days fighting with Automator and learning it's a better man than I. Automator really wants you to use mail.app and not Thunderbird and is very very picky about the whole 'using OpenOffice to create PDF files thing'. All of this to produce a PDF with a potential investor's name and to mail it back to them.

You've not seen the last of ME Automator.

* I approached the central committe about the 'make the Liftport blog into a celebration of Bull Dork's life and times' deal and they looked at me as if I'd sprouted an extra head. I'm on thin ice after the Commodore Decker thing.

Anyhoo. Hie thee to the Dork's site and comment.

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