Rocket Scientist

Piracy

2012-01-18T19:21:00.000-06:00

The down side to going on strike is that one is almost honor bound to cough up a new post after the strike is over or the strike doesn't mean anything.

Unfortunately, the reason I'm not blogging much is sadly still in force and I wasn't sharp enough to come up with a really good topic, but the strike provides one.

I admit it. I've heard the sort of "anti-piracy" legislation's goin' to ruin the internet noise every several years since I first wandered on to the internet. It usually came to nothing for the very good reason that legislating anti-piracy instead of addressing the reasons behind the piracy has yet to work. In the long run, it always fails because the underlying problems aren't better.

When my father first bought a laserdisc player (back in the early 80's), laserdiscs (not to be confused with DVDs) cost $10-30, could be readily copied (but why bother?) when video tapes were running $90-200 a piece for the rental market. Laserdiscs looked cleaner and nicer. Players were expensive, though, and still riddled with bugs. Movie makers were already whining about copyright infringement and copying and piracy at the time. Laserdiscs might have caught on; it was the perfect situation for them to take off until those making laserdiscs thought "Hey, these folks are connoisseurs; they'll pay more not less for movies" and doubled the prices while those making tapes said, "Heck, I bet we could sell these to regular people, not just rental stores, if they weren't so stupidly expensive." Movies started coming out $10-20, laserdiscs went to $20-50 (and then extinct just as DVD's burst on to the scene) and, what do you know, the general public started making video sales as big or bigger than ticket sales.

The lesson seems obvious to me, yet the book vs. ebook industry is doing it again. Just like the music industry did before they started offering mp3s at reasonable prices. You want $0.99/dollar, the consumer will stop buying it because it can be readily found elsewhere at a price that's closer to the value. Crank back the greed and the incentive for something illegal dries up.

Clearly, the industry is not learning quickly.

Still, I was not really getting involved. I didn't think either bill had a high chance of passing (and I feel even more strongly so now), but, I admit, when I saw Wikipedia planning to go dark to protest it, I did more research, enough that I thought it worth my while to put in my two cents.

I'm all for people who own intellectual property making a profit on it. But, offering anyone the opportunity to shut things down without due process strikes me as a dangerous precedent. And it won't change the piracy, but simply turn it in another direction. Until the underlying issues that drive the piracy are corrected, it WILL continue. Meanwhile, turning on watchdogs for the rest of us - well, I like my internet now. I don't want someone screening it beforehand unless I want someone to screen it (and those options exist already). SOPA timeline, participant list, etc can be found here.

And that's the way I see it.

Update: (Wow, that was my 400th post here)!

On Strike

2012-01-18T09:07:00.001-06:00

Today, we are striking against censorship

Join the largest online protest in history: tell Congress to stop this bill now!

Join The Strike!

Bad Blogger

2012-01-14T15:38:00.001-06:00

If you're someone who frequents any one of my three blogs, you've probably noticed that I have not been a good blogger the past few months.

Truth is, I'm still struggling with some things, perhaps more than I should. I tend to have a good head in a crisis and I've been somewhat self-congratulatory that, with the dissolution of the life and future I thought I'd had, I hadn't been more broken up or shut down emotionally. Despite the rather drastic changes, the easy way my soon-to-be ex-husband brushes off our life together, I've been handling the practical aspects and the paperwork because, hey, I'm always responsible for those. For Lee, divorce was instantaneous and painless. Still, I was managing. I thought, "Damn, I'm handling this pretty well."

Well, the practical, handle-the-details coolheadedness I needed to do what needed to be done seems to be wearing off, and the reality of the situation is making me a bit less than practical at the moment. Lee said Friday, "Get over it already," and I realized, I hadn't gotten over it at all, that the past decade of romance I tried so valiantly to believe in was largely in my own mind, as ephemeral as anything I put on paper. And I haven't really let that sink in.

Pathetic. Humiliating. Meaning I'm not, I fear, good company at all.

So, folks, I'm afraid you'll have to bear with me a bit longer until I'm a little bit less basket-case-ish and have come to grips with what my life has become. Hopefully, I'll show up with a good topic, something less pitiful.

Sorry.

It's Been a Demotivational Year

2011-12-31T18:48:00.002-06:00

As I took down the calendar we bought last year, a custom jobbie we bought through Despair.com (makers of many fine demotivational products), it struck me that the different posters for each month (bought for the humor and/or the cool picture that went with it) were frighteningly prescient in hindsight. Especially given my current circumstances:

January - Destiny - You were meant for me. Perhaps as a punishment.

February - Madness - Madness does not always how. Sometimes, it is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, "Hey, is there room in you head for one more?"

March - Pessimism - Every dark cloud has a silver lining but lightning kills hundres of people each year who are trying to find it.

April - Power - Power Corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. But it rocks absolutely, too.

May - Trouble - Lucky can't last a lifetime unless you die young.

June - Sanity - MInds are like parachutes. Just because you've lost yours doesn't mean you can borrow mine.

July - Tranquility - As long as there are children in the world, there will never be any real peace.

August - Regret - It hurts to admit when you make mistakes - but when they're big enough, the pain only lasts a second.

September - Vision - How can the future be so hard to predict when all of my worst fears keep coming true?

October - Worth - Just because you're necessary doesn't mean you're important.

November - Wishes - When you wish upon a falling star, your dreams can come true. Unless it's really a meteorite hurtling to the Earth which will destory all life. Then you're pretty much hosed no matter what you wish for. Unless it's death by meteor.

December - Insight - When the going gets tough, the tough get going. The smart left a long time ago.

So I'm not doing that this year. My New Year's resolution is to restructure a life that had largely been centered on my husband and my kids. Kids are still a priority, but my own life is just a bit unstable at the moment.

Next year, my calendar are all cool pictures of the moon. Hopefully, there's nothing prescient about that. Hope your year was better than mine and your next year is a real winner!

Stephanie Sings Again!

2011-12-21T20:56:00.001-06:00

Stephanie was asked to provide all the vocals for a local music teacher. Different instruments in the background are all his students. The voice, well, it's all Stephanie the Younger.

For your mp3ing pleasure. If you only listen to one, make it "Santa Baby." So beautiful.

Away in the Manger

It Came Upon a Midnight Clear

Feliz Navidad!

White Christmas

Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree

We Three Kings of Orient Are

Hark! The Herald Angels Sing

Santa Baby (really, my favorite)

God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen

They're on my website, too:

Today's Philosophical Question

2011-12-17T21:08:00.001-06:00

If someone falls in love, fully and truly, for the first time, believes in it whole-heartedly (soulmate, epiphany, finding each other through eternity, all that jazz) to find out (a decade later) the other person just wasn't really that involved and never saw it that way and, well, goodbye...

Doesn't that argue the first someone really doesn't know squat about love?

Does this mean she isn't qualified to write about it any more (given that it was an element in all her work to date)?

What do you think?

When He Really Loved Me

2011-11-21T21:38:00.001-06:00

Among the things that are most dispiriting are those moments when you realize that your dream, however much you might have expected it to be impossible, really is coming to an end, and that the other dreams you have were so mixed with it, you might as well toss the lot. You might have intellectually doubted those dreams, worried and fretted indefinitely for months or years, told yourself to expect nothing, but a part of you always believed they were possible. That those dreams could happen. Believing transcends even the most rationale mind, once in a while.

When reality, as it is wont to do, finally puts that (or those) dream(s) to death, no one is ever really prepared for it, however much they might want to have been.

For the past several days, I have been thinking of Anne Boleyn in Anne of the Thousand Days when she says, "The days we bedded. Married. Were Happy. Bore Elizabeth. Hated. Lusted. Bore a dead child... which condemned me... to death. In all one thousand days. Just a thousand. strange. And of those thousand, one when we were both in love, only one, when our loves met and overlapped and were both mine and his. And when I no longer hated him, he began to hate me. Except for that one day."

Of course the details were different, the number of days, the turns of events, but that sentiment, that there were only a handful of days where two people were truly in tune and endless days before and after where paths and goals diverged (seen clearly only in hindsight), remains.

Of course, she wasn't facing divorce but was off to get beheaded.

Some people have all the luck.

Why the Hatred?

2011-11-11T15:11:00.001-06:00

I have never entirely understood hatred. I've studied it because lackluster villains induce comas not excitement. And because it confounds me frequently; the kind of thinking behind the most common types of hatred escapes me, the kind of hatred that is focused on what one is, rather than who.

Let me be clear, when I talk about "what one is," I'm talking about immutable and choice-driven aspects of a person that frequently engender a reaction, a judgement, in people that has nothing to do with actual characteristic. Male. Female. Asian. Black. Latino. Blonde. Short. Jewish. Christian. Athiest. Muslim. Tattooed. Old. Young. Tall. Gay. Straight. Rich. Poor. Tax collector. If you think any of these aspects gives you insight into the personality, the nuances of a person when you know nothing more about them than one of these aspects, you are a fool.

Which brings up the second kind of "what one is" that I prefer to think of as "who one is." Those are those aspects of one's personality as indicated by your behavior, the way you act (when people are and aren't looking) that determine who you really are as a person. Some are qualities, like being kind or tolerant or irascible or short-tempered. Some are "what's" determined by key things someone's done like spree sniper, rapist, serial killer. I'm not saying I know enough about someone just because he's a serial killer, mind you, that I can explain all his nuances, but I know enough to feel comfortable taking whatever steps necessary to keep him off the streets. But it's a different kind of what, one he's earned, unlike the others, because taking the lives of others for your own pleasure makes a pretty strong statement about what kind of person you are. You've demonstrated who you are. Another quick example. Being sexually attracted to children doesn't make you a monster; using children sexually, including contributing to demand for child pornography, does.

I hope that's clear enough for my purposes. Although I'm not a big hater, I can see hating people for what they've done, the who they are. But I have never understood, never embraced, hating anyone for what he or she is.

And that includes people who happen to be gay. Historically, homosexual folks have certainly seen their share of hatred and then some. Even in the Bible, they're treated pretty harshly (presumably one of the reasons Sodom bought it back then, though I've always wondered about Lot, considered a "good man" enough to be saved who offered his two virgin daughters to the slavering crowd of would be buggerers, apparently, hanging about his stoop. He did so to protect his guests, but I have to say, the definition of "good man" is just a bit off my own. But I digress...)

Actually, a huge portion of that antipathy can be traced to Abrahamian religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) as many primitive and cultures with other religions accept or ignore homosexuality without issue or even considered it perfectly natural. And, why not, it happens in nature, too. In cultures where it's prohibited, homosexuals have been ostracized, branded, killed out of hand, exiled, castrated, executed in particularly heinous ways, imprisoned, excommunicated, called sinners and generally considered "scum." The fear and vitriole associated with this particular crime/sin is often extreme and certainly seems so (to me, at least) today when so many other prejudices are looking more and more foolish and outdated.

Why?

I think Shakespeare touched on one reason. People like to look down on people who are different. Studies have been done to see how readily children will ostracize a particular physical trait (eye color, in the case I read) and they responded with little prompting to single "different" people out. History certainly provides plenty of evidence of people mistreating other people based on color or religion or ancestry or geographical location, so I think it would be foolish to dismiss that explanation out of hand.

And it is easy to condemn someone for a trait one will never have oneself. Whites looking down on blacks. Nazis looking down on Jews. Conquistadors looking down on heathens. Etc. The part that's challenging for me on that, though, is that most of those big prejudices were deliberately set up by people wanting to control others with patriotism, hatred and fear. There was a perceived gain by doing so.

Beliefs about the superiority of different skin tone and having a "true" religion allowed people to justify displacing and/or enslaving "heathens." Natives on two continents were exterminated or pushed aside while natives of another continent were forcibly brought in as slaves. Religious and racial superiority were used to justify such actions. Human nature, where one thinks one will feel better about oneself by thinking another is "lesser," played into that nicely and is the crux, I think, for this kind of hatred. Ironically, it doesn't work and, frequently the hatred goes on an ever increasing spiral to find more to hate because hating others does actually make you feel good. Or, at least, I've never actually seen a happy hater.

With all of the ME3 religions (I'm calling them that because I hate typing out Christianity, Judaism and Islam every time and they were all started in the Middle East) condemning sodomy, homosexuality is a convenient thing, especially if you consider sexual orientation strictly voluntary, to hate in someone else especially if you feel yourself completely innocent of that particular failing, with never a possibility of "falling" to it.

But I don't think that's all. Part of the mechanism for instilling hatred against those that are different is instilling fear. Nazis called out that Jews were hoarding money while the regular Germans suffered with war reparations. Others insist letting black people into your neighborhood will contribute to crime and send property values spiraling down. With gays, there are several fears: fears that accepting homosexuality will pressure children into adopting it against their will and the fear, particularly with gay men, that gays are a rape risk for straight men and children.

The first fear seems demonstrably untrue, given that heterosexuals (many of them, not all) have been force-feeding that the only healthy romantic relationship is a heterosexual relationship for generations - and we still have gay people. Some of them might be in heterosexual relationship and subsequently unhappy, but we haven't fundamentally changed them.

As for the latter, I'm sure there have been gay rapists and pedophiles, but being gay makes you one no more than being a priest does. Rapists are about imposing power and domination over someone else which means gender is probably not an issue other than a woman is frequently perceived to be an easier target. If serial killers are any indication, the same goes for pedophiles (When reading about serial killers over the past century, I noticed that those that were picky about gender either went for (a) prostitutes - female or (b) vagrants - male. Those that wanted an easy target and didn't care about gender went for children. Sad but consistent). But reality isn't what we're talking about here; it's perception and that perception of gays being more dangerous to children, to "normal" people feeds the hatred, in my opinion.

In my opinion, it's the fear factor that make people who ordinarily would never treat another person poorly turn a blind eye to much of the discrimination that goes against gays and lesbians now.

But, I speculate that the worst, the most vocal and unyielding in their hatred, the ones who seem driven to share and spread the poisonous litany against homosexuality with a rabid fervor are those who aren't so secure, are the ones who have perhaps struggled against their own inclinations. Such individuals might be so vehement either because they need their hatred to make themselves "feel better" despite their embarrassing urges (since they aren't acting on them) or they scream the loudest in the hopes to makes sure no one ever suspects them of being gay. I don't think it's a coincidence many of the most vehement politicians, when it comes to slamming the doors on gays, often get caught up in homosexual scandals.

Those were the thoughts that crossed my mind when it came to explaining it, but I doubt they're exhaustive. Feel free to contribute your own thoughts including refutations of my own cogitation. The better I understand hate, the better I can fight it, in fiction and in real life.

Ain't Nobody's Business

2011-11-08T18:27:00.000-06:00

On the last post I pointed out one way (of many) that failing to legally recognize same-sex marriage hurts the people in question. I have, to date, never heard anything approaching a compelling argument on the harm caused by recognizing same sex marriage. Feel free to include your compelling reason in a comment if you'd like, but note that I'm apt to rebut and the level of sarcasm is inversely proportional to the intelligence of your reason. If you have a thoughtful well-reasoned reason, my answer, though likely counter, will be similarly thoughtful. (Note that anything religious as a reason is a null answer for legality as far as I'm concerned.)

If it's asinine, expect no gentleness. Consider yourself duly warned. I believe everyone is entitled to express his/her opinion and to live with the consequences of that expression, including ridicule if it's stupid enough. Just because everyone can state an opinion does not make those opinions of equal worth or veracity. I'm sick to death of readily disproved nonsense being trotted forward and given credence no matter how idiotic because we are all afraid of calling nonsense what it is in this world of free speech. I am willing to back my opinions with data and examples and logic. If you can't do the same, you might want to rethink airing it in this forum.

Note also that the subject at hand is "right to marry and legal sanctions against gays." People can find same-sex sex as personally distasteful as they like as long as they don't express said opinions by force or use them to discriminate. As soon as you use your opinion to cause harm, I lose all sympathy with your free speech. I'm sure that snuggling up to a big-breasted woman or a beefy hunk o' man turns the stomach of various members of the gay and lesbian community, but I've never heard of any pushing to make it illegal. Or even trying to convert anyone.

It would certainly be easier on most of them if they were straight; they're not because, well, they're not. And I think most of them consider their state immutable, a part of who they are. They don't want to deny themselves who they are; I don't think they should have to.

Anyway, I've digressed mightily from my original point (stupid soapbox!), which was examining what Shakespeare commented on the last post and my reply to her. There were two aspects. One was that people are born gay/straight. I've read some compelling evidence, genetically, that argues that can be true. I don't know if it's true for everyone who considers themselves gay, if people are always born one way or the other or if some aren't hardwired and can change direction over time. I don't see why it matters. People are individuals and genetics are pretty complicated; maybe there's more than one right answer. I can tell you one thing; far more people have experimented with the notion at one time in their life than will readily admit it. I did, and, though I'm quite firmly in the heterosexual camp, I don't regret it. And that's all I'm going to say on the matter for me personally.

But I think "the cause" is beside the point. Whether you're gay because your physiology gives you little choice or whether you just like it like that, who should care? Some do, I know, because they want to "cure" it, but, since I don't have any interest in doing so, I don't care if you were born to be gay, if you were traumatized by someone of the opposite sex (or even your own) and that triggered your preference, if you happened across your same-sex soulmate and switched, or if you chose your sexual orientation with a drunken bout of darts.

Ain't none of my business, who someone else finds sexually attractive. Ain't none of yours either. Which leads to the second point. Why the hate?

Well, undoubtedly some are as Shakespeare noted, disgusted by the notion, convinced it is sinful or otherwise unnatural. However, the stigma attached to this particular "sin" is given a disproportionate amount of importance and reaction. I mean, Muslims and Jews both eschew pork and have for centuries (and for a far better reason), but when was the last time you heard of a pork farmer dragged behind the truck of irate rabbis?

I'm skeptical that the notion that someone is sinning (in ways that affect no one else in their daily lives, other than their lovers) would really engender this level of hatred and condemnation in most normal people given that few of us have gone through our lives without impinging on some of the commandments or sins of whatever religion we favor ourselves. I mean, shouldn't we be sin-free before we start gathering rocks? I know I'm not (sin-free or rock gathering).

I have my own ideas on why there's so much hatred here, theories, speculation and observations. But I'll save those for next time.

Unequal Treatment

2011-10-26T18:43:00.002-05:00

There are a number of people out there who have a considerable issue with homosexuality, often to the point of rabid ranting and even violence. I won't pretend to understand such vehement hatred, particularly given that whether or not someone loves (or is sexually attracted to) individual(s) of the same gender is unlikely to have the slightest effect on anyone other than the parties in question and, notably, is unlikely to have the tiniest effect on those same rabid haters.

Personally, I think this world never has too much love and don't see any reason why people can't go about finding it however they choose, as long as everyone involved is a responsible party and consenting. But that's just how I see it. I don't care if someone wants to see it differently, but that opinion (no matter how extreme) should not have an effect on the parties in question given that who people love in the gay/lesbian community has pretty much no effect on us.

I think most people think much more moderately than the vocal anti-gay community, whether it personally gives people the willies or not. Most people are not so ungenerous as to wish ill on others, even if they don't understand their sexual preferences. Or, I certainly hope that's the case. However, that laissez faire attitude is currently allowing real and appreciable harm to these same individuals.

In good conscience, I think it's important to be aware that, as long as our federal government refuses to acknowledge gay marriage, a sizable portion of our populace suffers real and appreciable damage, measurable damage, that effectively make them second-class citizens. People, who have done us no ill are suffering unnecessarily and to no benefit for the rest of us. I don't see why this should continue and thought I'd point out some of it, for those of you who might have thought this was a non-issue, one of semantics only.

Even if it were semantics only, of course, I'd be against it. Our government is expressly forbidden from making laws based on religion: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." And there is no legal reason adults couldn't choose any other consenting adult as a lifetime companion to marry. Ironically, it's the same yahoos yelling for smaller government that demand the government dictate who we are and aren't allowed to love (as well as wanting the government to dictate what pregnant women can do to their bodies, but I digress). So I'm against precluding gay marriage on principle.

But, given the real damage it does, the harm and pain it causes, I can't see how people in good conscience can let those restrictions continue. Or how, with our constitution, they could be legal.
Let's start with taxes, since I played with these numbers while I did the other tax problems:

Think marriage doesn't make a difference? Here's a gay couple, with each partner netting:
1/2 income	Joint income	Tax	Married Tax	Difference
8500	17000	2125	1700	425
34500	69000	13375	9500	3875
83600	167200	40433	34885.5	5547.5
174400	348800	100001	92558.5	7442.5
379150	758300	244381.5	235920.5	8461

Any gay couple making professional level salaries can expect to pay thousands more in taxes every year because they aren't "married." They will not get social security survivor benefits. Insurance companies do not have to include them on policies as "family" (though this and some of the other aspects might not be true in states that permit or acknowledge same sex marriage). They may not be permitted to make end-of-life choices (despite written requests) or even visit their loved ones in the hospital as they aren't acknowledged "family."

When people wed, they put their lives in the hands of another. They agree to share their lives with another, their worldly wealth, their trust, their world with the person they love.

Shouldn't every citizen have the right to decide for him/herself who it is they are willing to trust with so much? Don't they have the right to have those choices respected by the rest of us? Right now we respect those rights for knocked-up teenagers and drunken strangers who meet for the first time the morning after in Las Vegas.

Why can't we do it for people who truly choose with their hearts?

Creative Taxing

2011-10-11T20:25:00.002-05:00

Last time, I focused on the math that explained why lower taxes were actually a counter-incentive to hiring more people, all other things being equal. It's not just employment, but low tax rates are an encouragement to pocket money rather than reinvest it into one's own business. Money invested in one's own company, whether in the form of property, assets, employees, what have you, make the money active in the economy in ways that squirreling away (even if not in the Caymen Islands or Switzerland) does not. Employment, obviously, helps the economy, but so do the purchase of goods and services and property.

Money squirreled away in "local" banks is put to use in the form of loans which can be part of building business as well; however, as Relax Max would likely point out, a business largely built on credit is unlikely to be as stable and reliable as a company built on its own profit.

From comments on the last post, why higher taxes is an incentive to invest in one's own company is not clear, so I'll try to explain it again.

For any considerable profit (over and above a comfortable living expense), the tax rate impinges on that profit at a defined rate. If the goal is to command the maximum wealth (as opposed to give it to the government), higher tax rates provide more incentive to reinvest that profit into a company than lower taxes. It's a way of ensuring you keep your net worth, rather than hand it to the government. Again, this isn't an opinion; it's demonstrable fact.

Let me demonstrate: say the profit for a private company is 6 million. Now, at current rates, the maximum amount of tax that could be taken by the government is 35% (it's actually less, since lower levels are taxed at lower levels, but the higher the total, the more that savings is in the noise; also, over a the ½ million mark, it's all the same rate, so it's really only the excess' taxes we're talking about). That means the most one's taxes would be is ~$2.1 million, leaving the individual to go home with $3.9 million in his pocket. 2.1 mill is a chunk of change, but you're left with quite an asset as it is. However, if I reinvested some of the 6 million in my company rather than taking it as straight profit, the government would get less of it and my net worth (in the form of my company) would be greater. Note that doing so (if invested smartly) always leads to more net worth, even if the liquidity is less. I'll show you.

Net worth (owner) = Co(baseline) + 6 mil-2.1 taxes = Company baseline+ 4.1 mil
NW w/$2mil = Co(+2 mil) + 4 mil-1.4 mil = Co(b) +4.6 mil ($2 mil in company value)
NW w/$4mil = Co(+4mil) + 2 mil-.7 mil = Co(b) +5.1 mil ($4 mil in company value)

Now, if the tax rate is 80%, the incentive to invest increases:

Net worth=Co(B) +6 mil-4.8 million= Co(B) +1.2 mil
NW w/2 mil=Co(+2) +4 mil-3.2 mil= Co (B) + 2.8 mil (2 mil in company)
NW w/4 mil=Co(+4) +2 mil-1.6 mil= Co (B) + 4.4 mil (4 mil in company)

At a lower tax rate, I get an improvement in worth of 500 grand for every 2 million I invest in the company in my net worth. However, at a higher tax rate, my net worth improves by 1.6 million with every 2 million I invest in my company and, in fact, will have a better net worth than I would taking the profit at the 35% tax rate by reinvesting 4 million of my profit in my company.

Bottom line: an effective way to keep my wealth under my own control in a high tax environment is to reinvest in my company in assets and employees. Otherwise, it goes to the government.

Relax Max pointed out that, when the tax rate was very very high in the forties and fifties, rich people all knew how to keep their money. He's not wrong; this is one way they did it. That's why many significant people became really wealthy in this time frame: but not by sitting on relatively useless excess liquid (but taxable) wealth but by building assets that contributed to their net worth while still providing jobs and services, full of assets and investments. This is not a bad thing; this is how private industry is induced to provide jobs and help stimulate the economy - by forcing them to spend money to build their companies rather than fork it over to the government.

I hope that clarified things for the confused.

By that same measure, rock bottom tax rates for "capital gains" does the exact opposite of encouraging reinvestment into a company's growth. With capital gains topping out at 15%, getting beaucoup liquid assets through direct investment, the stockholder at a public company has more to gain bleeding a company to death in quick profits than he does in selling assets that have gained in value (due to reinvestment). A investor, in that case, could readily vote for quick profit decisions rather than decisions for the good and growth of the company (and massive layoffs or selling off assets are a quick and time-honored ways to create a tidy quarterly profit).

By keeping more money from interest and dividend than one does from labor, one discourages putting that capital to work except as stock. Nor do I understand that merit in it. Today, if I make $500,000 in "long term" capital gain, I walk away with $438K in hand.. If I "earn" it through labor, I'll only have $348K. Why send that message or make that distinction? What's the benefit? I'm sure RM has the answer to that.

Well, in theory, investing in stock provides investment into the company that would improve the value of the company, but that depends on how that stock is leveraged to drive decisions. If you like to buy and sell stocks, driving a quick profit, pocketing the dividends and then selling the stock at a high level until new buyers realize the company's been gutted can make for a pretty profit if one can just hold on to the stocks for a year to qualify.

There was a time when building a company for prosperity was the goal, when people's fortunes rose and fell with the success of their companies (instead of investors and upper management walking away millionaires from companies that fail spectacularly, leaving salaried and other workers unemployed, without insurance, their retirement funds gutted). If your company succeeded, you succeeded. If it failed, you went to the poorhouse with the rest of the poor slobs. You had an incentive to make it work, to make it a success.

Right now, I think (as in my opinion) our tax structure discourages making companies that last, investing in employees and assets. It is an opinion, but I base it on the fact that higher tax rates provide a better incentive for reinvestment into companies and that people are demonstrably greedy.

I'm stepping off my soapbox now. I didn't intend to demonstrate how higher tax revenues could address our concerns for our country's deficit as well as providing for more government jobs and the option to rebuild some of the crumbling infrastructure that made so much growth possible last century. But then, surely that's obvious.

Since I've been playing with taxes, next time I'll show conclusively how refusing to allow gays to marry is discriminatory, causing real financial damage, that should be unconstitutional.

Taxes and Employment

2011-10-03T19:30:00.005-05:00

I started the discussion here, in case you missed it. Now, today, I've challenged myself to demonstrate that higher taxes are incentive to hiring employees, at least more of one that lower taxes. Fortunately, a commenter on the last post gave me a great segway:

"In fact, unless that new person makes more money for me than they cost me, I'm not hiring. If the person does make me money, then I'll hire (means more profit).

The fact that my net profit (after paying wages and other expenses) might be taxed greater, or less, has NOTHING to do with whether there is increased/decreased demand for what I'm peddling. "

In private industry, when it comes to hiring, it's all about making a profit. I'm not talking about government jobs, here, or contract labor where every body you hire you can charge (with a premium) to the government (because that's always profit even if they contribute nothing). That's a whole other discussion (though government cuts still impact those employee numbers).

No, in the real world of business, you hire someone when hiring them serves your interests, either allows your business to grow, provides you a skill you need to perform your business, or otherwise allows for more and/or better business. If hiring someone doesn't do that for you, most companies won't do it because that would be stupid. Whatever increased growth or business they expect from your hiring is likely to be more than they're paying you...or you won't be working very long. Companies are in the business of making money. Some are preoccupied with short term profit (which is where many a big layoff comes from) and some are focused on growth, even if short term profit suffers (a philosophy that's put Amazon.com where it is now). The latter type of company is probably your best bet in a reliable job. But even Amazon.com wants every hiree to contribute to their bottom line, the size of the company and the business it generates.

What that means is what an employee costs < what an employee generates at least in the long run (I've already said this but I'm moving toward math so bear with me). Now, for a small business owner, it's relatively simple. Their profit tends to be ~ of an individual or family's income might be - if it's much more, they might be jumping in to hire to expand it. If it's much more, they'll be cutting where they can to make a decent living. If possible. And that could mean employees. But a tax rate (~ a year's salary) are unlikely to be a deciding factor. If I'm making 167,000 in profit, whether I pay 47,000 or 42,500 in taxes is unlikely to be why I choose to do so. If I want to take home less and build my company, I'll do it. If I don't, I'll suck it in and pay the taxes.

But when we're talking lots of money, 500,000, a million, or more, it makes a difference. Let me show you. First, let's take four tax rates: current, 1944, and two other speculative rates that are somewhere in between:

Brackets	Current	1944	Trial 1	Trial 2
8500	10	41	10	8
34500	15	59	15	15
83600	25	81	28	25
174400	28	92	31	35
379150	33	94	40	45
500000	35	94	60	65
1000000	35	94	80	85
10000000	35	94	90	95

Taxes, using these rates are like this:

174400

Tax now

Take home

Tax 1944

Take home

One option

Take home

Option two

Take home

379150

110016.5

269133.5

334597

44553

124618

254532

140772.5

238377.5

500000

152314

347686

448196

51804

197128

302872

219325

280675

1000000

327314

672686

918196

81804

597128

402872

644325

355675

10000000

3477314

6522686

9378196

621804

8697128

1302872

9194325

805675

Total tax

4066959

11079185

9616002

10198748

One important thing to note, taxes aren't a straight percentage: as you'll note, the guy making 10 mill isn't stumbling home, weeping, with a measly half mill, even at a 95% tax rate because each portion of pay up until the higher brackets is taxed at that bracket's rate. Only the excessive amounts (not the base levels) get the higher tax rates. (So, no, you won't make less than the poor shmoes at the 35% tax rate - that's a myth).

But, let's say, you're considering hiring some people. Now, when you hire someone, that income you're paying out (+overhead) is pulled off your profit; therefore, the net cost to hire someone is effectively the actual cost-tax savings. For example, say it's 1944 and you're in the any of the tax brackets above 500,000 (94%), you hire someone for $20,000 (salary + benefits), but, because your tax bracket's so high, it saves you $20k x 94% or $18,800. So, for a net difference in take-home of $1200 you can hire someone worth $20k, build up your company, get that skill, grow the company. You're still short that $20k, but you're paying so much less in taxes it's almost a wash. And someone has a job.

Here's the tax savings for hiring someone ($20k) at:
Today's highest tax rates: $7K - net cost $13k
Speculated middle 60%: $12k - net cost $8k
Speculated high 80%: $16k - net cost $4k
Speculated high 90%: $18k - net cost $2k
Speculated highest 05%: $19k - net cost $1k

So, a company/individual making a profit considering hiring someone can get the same employee costing a net of $13k in quick profit or $1k, but, in both cases, building his business. Which one has the incentive to hire? If you have more than seven brain cells, the answer is obvious.

And if you think it's the guy with the low tax rate, here's your pointy hat and there's your corner.

And here's the other good news: a substantial part of those extra taxes drained away go to jobs, too.

Next time: capital gains tax rates and why they're killing employment rates.

No tea for me, thank you. Here's why, part one. The truth about taxes

2011-09-28T17:11:00.005-05:00

You know, it's been a while since I did anything even vaguely political.

See, for a couple of years now, I've been hearing one of the all time stupidest, most nonsensical political cries ever. For the most part, I've ignored it, not even dignifying it with an argument because, hey, isn't it obviously stupid? And the people screaming it stridently were, far and away, some of the most idiotic people ever seen on camera who weren't headed off to rehab at that precise moment. Today, of course, we'd call them potential candidates.

When stupid people scream something, over and over, on the premise that the VOLUME of your message denotes its veracity, it's a waste of time to argue it. Logical is clearly not part of the equation.

However, recently, I've been seeing more and more of the same idiocy coming from people I normally consider intelligent (if occasionally misguided). And that's not good. If otherwise intelligent people are going to be swayed by the VOLUME=truth legions of dullards, at least on concepts that can be readily disproved with a tax table, a bit of history and a spreadsheet, either (a) they're only pretending to be intelligent or (b) they never really gave it a bit of thought. And this is important and deserves a bit of thought.

So, I'm going to address the ridiculous mantra: "Smaller government! Lower Taxes! Why haven't you fixed the job crisis!"

Here's the quick and dirty answer: because the first two preclude the third. You can either have government taking a hand in reducing unemployment or you can have a small government and lower taxes. Not both.

Why? Because government can only reduce unemployment two ways: by providing jobs directly and indirectly by spending money or by changing the environment in ways conducive to encourage those with money to provide jobs. To deal with the "Great Depression" the government did both, too slowly at first, because it seemed counterintuitive, but they did both and it worked. I'll explain why.

Actually, I don't have to explain the first part. FDR rolled out a huge number of projects, building roads, dams, schools, bridges, you name it, anything to give people a paycheck, a way for self-respecting folks to put food on the table. It hurts a self-respecting person not to be able to earn a living wage and the longer it goes on, the worse it gets. As a side benefit, we got a great system of highways, clean energy sources (dams) a great deal of other wonderful infrastructure that is finally starting to fall in around us. But I digress.

Now, there are those that have argued that federal jobs didn't get us out of the depression, that the fed government couldn't have put enough people to work to change things. Rather than federal jobs, WWII got us out of the depression. Admittedly, that had a huge impact, but before you sit smugly back having pulled one over on the Rocket Scientist, ask yourself one question: all that economic growth from labor shortages with men as soldiers overseas and all the need for tanks and ships and planes - who paid for that? Who bought the ships and planes and tanks? Who paid the men overseas wages to send home? That's right, the federal government. Still a jobs program, just on a whole different scale. The depression was broken with jobs from the federal government so it can be done (without requiring that level of government expenditure indefinitely). 'Cause it has.

But let's say that makes us a little scared. So scared, in fact, of debt that we cut government spending because we don't want more debt. Well, shit, it's no surprise that if you cut government funding, you'll lose jobs. People don't realize that there are teachers at every school because of federal funds, that we have more cops and more firemen and better roads and cleaner water and air because of federal funds and the salaries they pay. A huge portion of those cuts everyone's so eager for are jobs people desperately need, either jobs that won't come to be or jobs we now have that we won't. Might want to give that some thought.

But what can we do? We can't just build up debt impossibly! We've started two wars, and, rather than solve our problems, they've added to our debt but not our employment! What are we doing wrong?

I'm glad you asked. I'll give you a hint (how they did it during WWI and WWII). And, next post, I'll explain why the notion that lowering taxes increases employment is so inherently flawed and demonstrably wrong. With real math!

First fifty years of Federal Income Tax Brackets from Wikipedia who cites their source (in case you're afraid it's all lies).

Year	$10,001	$20,001	$60,001	$100,001	$250,001	$500,001	$1,000,000
1913	1%	2%	3%	5%	6%	7%	7%
1914	1%	2%	3%	5%	6%	7%	7%
1916	2%	3%	5%	7%	10%	12%	13%
1918	16%	21%	41%	64%	72%	76%	77%
1920	12%	17%	37%	60%	68%	72%	73%
1922	10%	16%	36%	56%	58%	58%	58%
1924	7%	11%	27%	43%	44%	46%	46%
1926	6%	10%	21%	25%	25%	25%	25%
1928	6%	10%	21%	25%	25%	25%	25%
1930	6%	10%	21%	25%	25%	25%	25%
1932	10%	16%	36%	56%	58%	61%	63%
1934	11%	19%	37%	56%	58%	61%	63%
1936	11%	19%	39%	62%	68%	79%	79%
1938	11%	19%	39%	62%	68%	79%	79%
1940	14%	28%	51%	62%	68%	79%	79%
1942	38%	55%	75%	85%	88%	88%	88%
1944	41%	59%	81%	92%	94%	94%	94%
1946	38%	56%	78%	89%	91%	91%	91%
1948	38%	56%	78%	89%	91%	91%	91%
1950	38%	56%	78%	89%	91%	91%	91%
1952	42%	62%	80%	90%	92%	92%	92%
1954	38%	56%	78%	89%	91%	91%	91%
1956	26%	38%	62%	75%	89%	91%	91%
1958	26%	38%	62%	75%	89%	91%	91%
1960	26%	38%	62%	75%	89%	91%	91%
1962	26%	38%	62%	75%	89%	91%	91%
1964	23%	34%	56%	66%	76%	77%	77%

I want you to notice what the US used to do when they had wars to fund: yeah, they expected us to help pay for them. Even during (and after) WWII, the lowest brackets were paying higher taxes than our highest brackets today. Which is how they addressed the deficit problem as they put people back to work.

One more thing to notice. Higher tax brackets had a serious drop in percentage early on. Anyone else notice where? That's right, just before the Great Depression. Tomorrow, I'm going to show you why that might not just be a coincidence. Sharpen those pencils!

Enjoy Your Retirement, Space Shuttle

2011-08-17T00:09:00.002-05:00

I know many of you space loving types thought I should have written something on this subject a long time ago. I don't blame you. I'm a rocket scientist, I'm very familiar with the Space Shuttle, and its retirement is a very big deal. So, why haven't I talked about it.?

There are several reasons. One is that the ending of the Shuttle, dictated back in 2004, has become confused and mired in the political infighting that's engulfed NASA. I'm not going to point fingers except to say that wrangling and fighting over a budget for something like NASA and what to do with it is a wonderful way to spend money without accomplishing anything and let irreplaceable technical minds slip away. You can't do space in half measures. But I digress, because the Shuttle's retirement isn't about that, though many people have put them together.

The Shuttle was retired because, with the second catastrophic mission in Shuttle's history (Columbia STS-107), we had to come to grips with just how dangerous it was. By design. And that's a key point. Not that it was designed with the intent of being dangerous, but because the design is inherently dangerous and there's nothing that can be done at this point to change that. It's also aging, not just in technology (computers leapt forward so far in the time it's been active, it's not even humorous), but also in the physical components that are either worn or old and/or so obsolete replacement parts are almost nonexistent. In many cases, the Shuttle program had bought out all the remaining stock in the whole world of some items because no one was going to make them any more.

I was not against the retirement and still am not for the reasons I just described. And those were the reasons the Shuttle was to be retired by 2010.

Having said that, I have to marvel at this remarkable spacecraft and remember that, for all the risks and challenges in the design, the Shuttle is unique to space and does what no one else has ever done. Ever. That is take tons and tons of people and hardware out into space - and bring them back. Despite the many aspects of reusability that were touted as fantastic that, truly, never came to fruition (like simplicity, and easy of rework for next flight and cost), this aspect is the one that makes the Shuttle stand out. And it will continue to stand out until we've found a new way to do the same thing.

Because that's the real trick, isn't it. Anyone can send hardware into space (well, not anyone, but you know what I mean). We have dozens of rocket designs that can take either heavy hardware a good ways or lighthardware out into the cosmos, lots of rockets that are built on the same principles and the same basic designs and do the same jobs. Not just "us" but the Chinese and Japanese and Europeans and, of course, the Russians, not to mention India and now Iran. Flinging it out there is not big deal, relatively speaking and, because it isn't that dangerous once it's launched, redundancy and extreme safety measures aren't required. But, see, the trick that really means something, that says you've beaten space, is bringing someone or something back. That's where the real challenge is.

The Russians and Chinese have brought people back (though not much else). The Japanese and we have brought some dust back, I think. But no one else has ever brought back much more than data on what they're doing. Not experiments or samples or what have you. Pictures and data streams, yes, but it's not the same as bringing back the real samples, testing it on the ground. It's not the same as examining the LDEF for years and studying what the surface pitting and effects really meant.

Admittedly, the Space Shuttle had limitations, most definitively that limitation of being in the low portion of low earth orbit. It was a large craft and the lack of pieces to fall off, like most expendables, meant it couldn't go so far, but the coming back part, that was a unique capability. (Russia's Buran, in theory, could have carried more than the Shuttle there and back, but since it only had one test flight and never actually did so, I'm not giving it credit).

I'm not sorry she's retired. She ran a long time. She did some incomparable stuff, things we won't be able to do again until we come up with something as fantastic as she was when she was shiny and new. The problem with a reusable, though, is those that use her get hidebound. Everything's about keeping her running because you're using the same old hardware, so improvements are few and far between or just impossible. She gets old and you get in the mindset of accepting more and more risk because fixing the problems are too hard, too costly or could turn around and cause more problems just by messing with her.

It would have been great if we had graduated from the Shuttle into a next generation Shuttle, one that could bring things back like she did but go places she couldn't, further or more capable, perhaps to a station where other spacecraft would leap from to reach out further into space. That would have been something and we could have used the lessons we learned the hard way, the things that didn't work as we planned and the amazing things that did the otherwise impossible.

But we didn't. Too often her proposed replacements were underpowered, undersized facsimiles of what we already had, rather than a next generation, despite all the inroads made in computers, software, controllability, material science, etc. We were working backwards, not forwards, and always at tremendous cost. No wonder those programs kept getting cancelled.

We can do it. The Shuttle's proof and kudos have to be provided that she flew so well so often and safely despite her many handicaps, not only to the ship herself but the phalanxes of hard-working people who made it so (many of whom are currently looking for new jobs). We can do the impossible or at least the improbable. I believe that.

I also believe, that until we do what the Shuttle did again, take up tons and bring it back, we will never really be in a position to conquer space. We'll be, at best, dabblers.

Because, in the end, people have to go, or it's just data. We have to bring soil and other samples back or we're just speculating. If we want to take advantage of the unusual aspects of space, create new materials, do meaningful biological research, we're going to have to bring our experiments and our results back down to the ground.

That's why I believe in manned spaceflight. And why I haven't given up. There is knowhow in this world and someday, someone's going to figure out to go the next step beyond the Space Shuttle.

We're just not there yet. But we could be.

Cases in Point

2011-08-11T16:33:00.002-05:00

When I talked about morality, I wasn't necessarily expecting extreme cases to present themselves.

When I tell myself the standards I'd like to meet, people like this fantastic young person (sadly dead now), Rachel Beckwith come to mind. She is proof enough that young people aren't all as self-absorbed as people claim, certainly not as much as the idgets in Washington.

When I say that I can't possibly pretend that I can judge some choices I've never had to face, that I can't imagine how I'd ever live through, cases like this come to mind. I've never been faced with death like this, with choosing which child to save, with having to abandon some children to have a chance to save others. I'm selfish enough I hope I never do. I couldn't judge the choices they make. How could I?

Decrypting My Brain

2011-08-01T22:13:00.006-05:00

If the title scared you a little, it just shows you know me. :)

Since Jeff asked when I wrote the previous post, I'll go into some examples that might help clarify things for Relax Max, given that he thought I was being too politic/cryptic. Perhaps I was. He's written some posts on this subject that are quite complementary and worth reading if it's a subject that interests you, as it is one that interests me. You can find them here, here and here.

First, to explain my moral ambiguity. I'm basically a pacifist, but I'm not a true pacifist like Gandhi or King, who would not kill even to save their lives (if we assume their words reflected their true beliefs). And I know there are other true pacifists out there. No, I would, I think be willing to kill to save myself, certainly to save someone else...but I don't think I would kill just anyone. In other words, I'd kill a direct threat to my life or someone trying to kill someone else "innocent," but I couldn't kill, say, another poor schmoe trapped in the lifeboat with me. In that case, since I'm not afraid of dying, I'd probably ask they kill me kindly in my sleep and eat hearty.

That I would kill at all argues that my morals aren't fixed (though I believe they are); what they really are is complex and depend on circumstances. The thing is, most people, I believe, do the same thing. Most agree killing is wrong, but most also don't look at soldiers as murderers (nor do I, unless they really enjoy it for their own pleasure), even though they go into harm's way with the intent to kill to do what they are ordered to do. (I'm not suggesting soldiers are bad guys or the same as murderers, just pointing out the rationalizations most of us do.)

I know I couldn't personally kill someone for wearing a different uniform (though I could do defend myself - can't do it preemptively because I'm well aware the other side may have no more personal interest than I do). I couldn't drop bombs or accept collatoral damage. I'm not saying soldiers are villains because they can. I understand that, if they weren't willing to, there are worse things that can happen as a result. If everyone felt as I do, Hitler would never have been stopped. That's a pretty compelling argument that I should be grateful others are willin to do the dirty work. Everyone must make peace with their own necessities and find out where the lines are they can't cross. They aren't the same for all of us.

Although I think all of us do this to a certain extent - set out what's right and wrong, but lace it with caveats and circumstances that we implicitly understand mean we can accept breaking the rules in ourselves, that we can accept others for doing things we couldn't do, I'm not sure everyone really thinks about that, realizes that we do that. I think that's why it so easy for many people to judge, see some bit of this or that sensationalized story in the news and make a judgement on it. I rarely do that unless I'm very cognizant of the specifics and, even then, I'm always aware of the limitations of my understanding. Without having lived in those shoes, I'm very wary of presuming I know what their necessities, their morals should have been. There are exceptions. There are actions I can't bring myself to be open-minded about, like rape and sexually abusing children, true slavery. Or, in those cases where the motive was pathetic and utterly selfish, I'm unlikely to be sympathetic. And hypocrisy leaves me cold.

I made several points near the end and I wanted to provide examples as I promised. I told Relax Max, on his blog, that I revel in writing characters that challenge my own beliefs in right and wrong, and likely those of my readers. I like creating societies and circumstances where what was "good and bad" is far different than we're used to. I'm going to list several things my protagonists (or allies that stay allies of my protagonists) do that many would have a problem with. In all cases, I feel I've made a strong case that what they've done, even in those cases where it violated their moral code, were justifiable, even laudable. I'm not particularly fond of antiheroes. You might be surprised at what can be justified.

Kill for hire.
Let your daughter die when you could have prevented it.
Murder with premeditation.
Seduce someone with the intention of killing him.
Torture someone for information.
Kill someone who is not a direct threat.
Create weapons of mass destruction (including a deadly biological weapon).
Abandon slaves you've just freed.
Have sex in public with a stranger.
Pay for sex (I'm not sure I actually have a character doing so, but someone thinks about it.)
Kill people on suspicion of threat.
Mandate someone's death if they found out a secret.
Kill your own brother.
Kill your own children in cold blood.
Beat someone up for the satisfaction of it.
Lie.
Abandon someone you love.
Drink "green bug shit."
Look the other way when others do things you think are evil.

Think it can't be done? I think a surprisingly large list of ostensibly heinous acts can, if not made into laudable actions, be things that could be understood, even sympathized with, under the right circumstances. And, yeah, I like playing around with the notion of doing just that.

The ironic thing is that Relax Max is right in a way. There are lines I won't have a protagonist cross. Nor do I think anyone would have a problem differentiating my "good" guys from my "bad." And, depending on the circumstances and the particular characters, there are some actions that one character can do quite handily and another could never do, even if circumstances were similar. That's what makes playing with characters and dealing with people in real life so very very interesting.

Going Gray

2011-07-27T15:49:00.002-05:00

When if comes to morals, I'm pretty hard to pigeonhole. On the one hand, I'm among the most rigidly moral people I know. Not just rigidly moral in that I have a strong opinion on what is and isn't right or wrong, but I actually live within that sense of right and wrong. If I slip on something minor, I take responsibility and atone (it doesn't happen much). Always. No exceptions. I believe, if I do something inexcusable to my set of moral values, I'd either turn myself into the cops or kill myself. I don't know, for sure. It hasn't come up yet. The right and wrong I'm talking about are moral limits I impose on myself to better myself and to make sure I can live with myself. They are not imposed by anyone other than myself. More on that later.

On the other hand, I do not impose my own set of morals on anyone else (with a very few notable exceptions). I do not expect others to behave like I do or see things as right or wrong the same way I do. Nor do I assume someone is amoral or immoral if his values are far different than mine or flexible. I do not make judgement calls on someone else's moral values under most circumstances. I'm also well aware that there are circumstances where people would do things that they would normally never do without violating their moral values (caveats built in). I have some of those, too.

Note also that my moral values don't map nicely to many people's, even most people's. I don't pretend they do. It's one reason I'm not a member of any organized religion. I don't necessarily see the same rights/wrongs they do and I'm not willing to compromise my own values. Not so much because I allow things they don't, ironically enough. Far more often the other way around.

There are things that are accepted by one society (or all of them) that I consider wrong or immoral. I make an effort not to judge the individuals involved, but I will also be vocal in my opinion that it's wrong (and frequently other things like stupid or short sighted, etc.). And I won't do that particular thing even if "everyone" is.

So, what I'm sayins is that I'm both rigidly moral and morally flexible at one and the same time without conflict because I don't base right and wrong strictly on the act, but also the circumstances and I don't assume morality is absolute from person to person. In fact, I'm pretty sure morality isn't the same from person to person, even people who have the same religion, grew up in the same culture, or siblings in the same family.

I do consider someone immoral if they have moral values they don't apply to themselves (often hoping not to get caught or because they don't recognize the implication of their own action). I also find it sadly ironic that these same individuals are also the people most likely to want to impose their moral values on other people. I also think someone is amoral if there is nothing they wouldn't do to suit themselves.

I also believe there are certain activities society (in the form of laws) must outlaw for the greater good, even if there are circumstances that might make such activities justifiable (which is why I think jury trials are still reasonable). However, I generally only think this should apply people hurting one or more other people (stealing, cheating, beating, raping, killing, etc.) rather than people making decisions for themselves (drug use, suicide, lifestyle choice, etc.).

Why am I even talking about this? A couple of reasons. One, I'm called upon, once in a while, to deliver a judgement value on some current event. Generally, I refrain from doing so, particularly if I'm not acquainted with an unsensationalized version of the factors involved. For instance, dramatic criminal trials are often covered by the media, but usually only the most inflammatory "facts" show up in mass media with any number of mitigating factors left undisclosed. To base a judgement on that set of data would be, in my opinion, premature. I, at least, won't do so. There are a few cases, often involving confession, where I will offer an opinion, such as the Netherlands father who imprisoned his own daughter, raped her repeatedly, and effectively killed their children. Yes, I think he's a monster. I cannot, however, make an effective value judgement regarding his wife. I don't know the circumstances well enough.

Secondly, this is an important thing to understand when it comes to writing characters. Protagonists in any number of books can do a number of things generally considered "wrong" without violating their moral code (or even having readers object). Circumstancial conditions, you see. But readers are far more accepting of this if it's not hypocrisy, so the writer needs to be aware of the moral values of the character and the reasons why the character is violating them (if she is). In my case, I frequently have at least one character who shares my own values. I frequently have one that has the ambiguous values my husband has. It's interesting to contrast them. This understanding also helps me as a reader because things that could be black/white to someone else, I can sympathize with and accept if I understand the circumstances.

Thirdly, well, I have come to the opinion that many people are far too quick to rush to judgement without seeing the whole story or making broad-based assertions that really haven't been thought through. I think it helps with understanding the limitations available in laws (which must address the needs of large communities of people of varying moral values and can't really address gray areas without being utterly diffused) and the enforcement of said laws.

If I feel like it later, I might discuss some examples of what I'm talking about. If anyone expresses interest.

Japan's Quiet Recovery Efforts

2011-07-11T18:06:00.003-05:00

One of the things that's frustrated me is how hard it is to get more information on Japan's current situation. Japan suffered a devastating earthquake/tsunami (for those who forgot) last March. The humanitarian crisis, the real impact on Japan and the efforts for recovery from such a cataclysmic event have all been basically ignored in our own panic (way overblown in my opinion) over the nuclear reactors.

Meanwhile, beyond our panic and jokes about radiation, a nation of people began to clean up literally miles of devastated landscape, identified and buried the dead they could find (more than 7,000 are still missing) and began rebuilding their lives. I wanted to know more about it, find out how they were doing, see their progress.

So, I was pleased to find that progress was being made, quietly and without fanfare.

Google, I heard, is working to help keep track of the progress. I don't know that these pictures come from google, but I was pleased to get some indication that things were moving forward (though my mind boggles at the extent of the work still to be accomplished). Actually, I'm amazed and astounded at the extent of the work already done. More pictures can be found here (which is where I got this one).

Good luck, Japan. I wish you the best in your recovery.

Not My Cheeriest Poem

2011-07-04T01:14:00.002-05:00

It's been a while since I wrote poetry. I think I know why.

When I was young, I bought the tale
I think you know the yarn,
Where the girl who's really special
Is awakened to her charms

And the years she went unnoticed,
Was dismissed, ignored or used,
Were worth the happy ending
With her chrysalis unloosed

I used that through a childhood
Where I always came up short.
I used that through a loveless marriage
'Til I left, a last resort.

I knew most didn't like me. I confused them,
Rubbed them wrong.
I took that as the price I paid
For singing different songs.

But I believed that I was "special"
No matter how I was dismissed.
My faith was like a talisman
To lead me through the mist.

I held it when I found the man
I loved like none before,
And knew, this man would cherish me
Appreciate my core.

But faith can't stand 'gainst data
At least not in my mind,
And decades of the same facts
Have made that dream unwind.

If all perceive me one way,
Nothing special, nothing grand,
Perhaps they see a bitter truth
I chose not to understand.

Perhaps there is no magic,
Not for me at any rate.
Perhaps no happy ending,
No fine deserving fate.

Perhaps they really see me,
Know all that I could be.
Perhaps the dribs and drabs of love
Are all I get to see.

I ask myself what is the truth?
With facts I've gleaned since birth.
Do they not really see me
Or do I have little worth?

My Daughter Is So Talented

2011-05-17T15:12:00.002-05:00

My daughter sings. She can sing 'most anything (more so now that she's admitted to being a soprano), but, as an aggravation, she frequently chooses to sing songs I just don't like for those solos she does for choir.

And yet, time and time again, I hear her sing it on stage and I can't HELP but like it, even though I never liked the song. She's that damn good. Even here with the crappy sound, you can still tell she's terrific.

Oh, yeah. I'm proud.

Making Changes

2011-05-16T19:40:00.003-05:00

To wake up those poor souls who still follow this blog I neglect too much, I have an announcement. My largely neglected (mostly by myself) blog, Ask Me Anything, is getting reworked to address my current fascination with manga/anime which, after more than four nonstop months, is still going strong. As in I'm going to try to learn how to read Japanese which puts me, I think, a step beyond a dabbler. The new title is "The Unlikely Otaku" where otaku is a term to describe an obsessive fan of some form of media or another.

How does it affect this site? Okay, it really doesn't. It's not particularly important, except to me, as I'm excited about making a venue for myself to continue to explore why I find this manga/anime world so fascinating.

The other impact is that, if someone has a question they just have to get addressed (that isn't writing or manga related), they'd best put it here, since Rockets and Dragons will now be fully focused on reading/writing and Unlikely Otaku is focused on manga/anime. This blog I'm leaving to catch everything else, which isn't much at this moment.

Know Your Uncertainty

2011-03-09T20:33:00.005-06:00

Le sigh.

What's the word from the global warming naysayers? There's so much uncertainty. We can't precisely predict the results so why worry?

What they fail to mention is that, the direst and most outlandish predictions mentioned, even in the much hated An Inconvenient Truth (which talked of dire consequences decades down the line), are being overtaken by reality with much more damage, more ice melting, more consequences today than even the most pessimistic scientists predicted back then.

If the trending is all much worse than you ever expected, why in the world would you use that underprediction to justify feeling the end result is less likely? It's like going to your oncologist who tells you, "The tumor is growing faster than we ever expected," and you saying, "Whew. So I shouldn't worry, right? Clearly you have no idea what will happen."

Folks, natural laws have no pity. This planet couldn't care less about our survival. If we screw it up, if we don't take steps now, islands (and the innocent folks who lived there while contributing almost nothing to the problem) will disappear. Glaciers that feed rivers that billions depend on to survive will be no more. It's already happening.

All the pontificating in the world, all the politicians dressed in their birthday suits and extolling their haute couture won't matter a bit. Science is about reality and reality isn't changed with even the most fervent rhetoric, the most impassioned scoffing.

When destruction comes (and it's coming as long as we are idle), we'll have deserved it.

But it's our children that will pay.

Oh, and a fond farewell to one of the most dedicated workhorses in the Shuttle fleet, who came home safely for the last time today. Thank you, Discovery, for all your hard work.
You done good.

On Blog Holiday of Unknown Duration

2011-02-06T09:05:00.002-06:00

So, I have decided not to take down the site or close the door on coming back, in case I find I have something compelling I need to say.As I did the last week.

However, I also won't make a commitment as to when that will be.

I am active on Rockets and Dragons.

RS Classic: Remembering NASA’s tragedies - Columbia Accident

2011-02-01T11:03:00.000-06:00

Yes, I'm still shut down, but this is an important week for NASA, something we all must remember lest it happen again. Today is the anniversary of the Columbia break up during reentry and a post I wrote two years ago.

This is the hardest anniversary for me. Not that the others weren’t just as tragic, just as painful, that those lost weren’t just as brave and their deaths just as untimely. But I wasn’t even born when Apollo 1 burned so horribly. And I was just a kid in college when Challenger was torn to pieces. I wasn’t responsible.

But STS-107 was my flight. I was the EVA Safety Flight Lead for this flight. I knew the crew personally. I knew the team supporting them. I’d watched them practice in the Neutral Buoyancy Lab. I was there as the flight went through delay after delay. I went in the Mission Evaluation Room (one of the back rooms at Mission Control that supports “the Front Room”) and spoke to the folks manning the safety console every day. There were no scheduled EVAs so I wasn’t working shift. In fact, unless a contingency EVA was needed, neither was I. But I checked in physically at least once a day.

And I never saw this coming. I never heard any of the feverish concerns going on in different areas. And, sadly, I wasn’t even watching the landing. After all, nothing had gone wrong.

I was actually sleeping in, that morning of February 1, 2003. My husband of only a few months had (and this never happens) gotten up early that Saturday morning to watch cartoons. I was barely pregnant at the time - I don’t think I even knew it yet - and was feeling lazy. My daughter was at her father’s house that weekend. And Lee called out to me from the living room. “Uh, hon, I think the Shuttle just disintegrated.”

“Don’t even joke about that,” I snapped.

“I’m not joking.”

I may have mispoken when I said I never saw it coming. I had dreamed of it and it was one of those extremely rare dreams of mine that I remembered: a Shuttle coming in and breaking into fiery pieces. Whatever dreams I might have generally, I have no remembrance of them when I wake up. But this one, I remembered.

I had been worried about a potential risk. The program and my management had become comfortable with what they knew. I had not. But I had moved on to a different area and only kept track of what was going on sporadically. And I had dreamed of just such a disaster.

Of course, there is considerable evidence that the culprit that damaged the sensitive RCC panels was foam, rather than what had worried me, but that didn’t make it better. We’d been hit by foam repeatedly over the years and had talked ourselves out of worrying about it. We saw the hit before we landed, and we didn’t do more. All of this is well documented in the CAIB report . We fell into the same trap and the same causes culture-wise were cited in the CAIB report that we had heard in the Rogers Commission report from Challenger.

When Columbia reentered, the plasma began burning through the wing, first tearing off the protective RCC panel, then tearing through the structure, hydraulics and wiring, even the tire, behind it. In minutes, the Orbiter began to break up and rain debris over Texas and Louisiana.

To be honest, I’m not sure that we could have saved this crew if we had recognized the danger before they came down. I know we would have tried, would have pulled out all the stops, killed ourselves to save them if we had known what was to happen. I believe that absolutely. But, and this is the lesson we need to take forward into our future endeavors, the best way to have saved them was to keep this from happening.

We learned a great deal in the years that followed this tragedy, more about the materials we use to protect the Shuttle and the limitations and capabilities we have of bringing the Shuttle down safely if something like this ever happens again. And we know more about the risks that scared me and about the foam and ice on the ET and we have steps to address that, too.

Seven Astronauts paid for that lesson: Rick D. Husband, William C. McCool, Michael P. Anderson, Ilan Ramon, Kalpana Chawla, David M. Brown, and Laurel Clark. I must also note two others who died during recovery efforts: Jules F. Mier Jr. and Charles Krenek

Have we learned enough to preclude a recurrence? I don’t know. I hope so. I hope we tuck the lessons like Apollo, Challenger and Columbia in the corner of our minds whatever else we do and we resolved “Never again!” I don’t want us to grow complacent that such tragedies are inevitable, the price of going where no man has gone before. I want us to kick and fight and claw our way forward, unwilling to give an inch to fate, unwilling to accept defeat and any more deaths.

In the end, time will be the true judge on how well we have learned from these tragedies. Here’s hoping this is truly the last for human spaceflight. According to our previous Space Shuttle Program Manager , we still have work to do.

RS Classic: Remembering NASA’s tragedies - Challenger Accident

2011-01-28T10:59:00.000-06:00

Yes, I'm still shut down, but this is an important week for NASA, something we all must remember lest it happen again. Today is the anniversary of the Challenger accident and a post I wrote two years ago, though for some reason newspapers have been writing like it was the 27th. I have no idea why.

Apollo 1 is not as well-known as some of the other NASA tragedies and, because it happened 42 years ago, many people don’t remember or even know about it. I doubt that’s true of the events that happened on this day, January 28, 1986, 23 years ago today [25 now]. On that day that STS-51L ended 73 seconds after launch, disintegrated, taking all those on board to their deaths.
Smoke coming from the SRB
The Shuttle Challenger’s stack lifted off, but, as soon as the Solid Rocket Boosters (SRBs) ignited, smoke could be seen escaping from the stack as the heat from the flames from burning solid fuel escaped past O-rings in the joint of the SRB that had shrunk and become brittle in that cold January morning. Within only a few seconds, the O-rings had been vaporized by the escaping hot gases but an aluminum oxide layer had acted as a temporary seal. However, as the Shuttle approached Max Q (that point where they reached maximum dynamic pressure), the Shuttle also was hit with the highest wind shear seen to date in the Shuttle program, which disrupted the temporary seal. That’s when the plume first appeared.

Plume during flightThe joint’s plume impinged on the external tank within a second. Less than 4.5 seconds later, the external tank was leaking. This was happening too fast and the visual evidence had not been “noticed” except by cameras for controllers or crew to understand what was happening. Less than 8 seconds after the External Tank began leaking, the leaking SRB started pulling away from its rear strut. The pilot’s last utterance, “Uh oh.” Less than a second after the SRB first started pulling away, after the hydrogen tank blasted into the oxygen tank and the SRB slammed into the external tank structure, the Shuttle, yanked from it’s proper attitude and was torn to pieces by aerodynamic forces.

The crew cabin, though not airtight, survive the initial break up intact. There are indications that the crew survived the immediate g-loading and might have even regained consciousness during the 2.5 minute trip to the ocean surface. The impact with the ocean, however, at roughly 334 km/h (208 mph) was not survivable.

For just over a minute, we had a launch and then, nothing but bits of debris and remains.
Breakup of Challenger
Again, this was a preventable accident. The by-blow and and extrusion were known phenomena as were the characteristics of the O-rings (or at least uncertainty about them). Engineers with the SRB contractor, Morton Thoikol, had had concerns, but they had been dismissed by both contractor and NASA management.

Although the Rogers Commission made many recommendations about safety, management decisions, the real star, in this humble safety person’s opinion, was Richard Feynman, the physicist, who, while the commission was taking their tours and talking to managers, was wandering about unsupervised and talking to the engineers who knew what the problem was, who had spoken up and been dismissed. He wrote an appendix to the commission’s report that should be required reading for anyone working safety in any capacity, including commercial space flight (I hope you’re listening).

This kind of accident was preventable. Our assurance that something couldn’t go wrong because it hadn’t before was faulty (and, sadly, we had to learn this a second time). Seven people paid the price for that short-sightedness: Ellison S. Onizuka, Sharon Christa McAuliffe, Greg Jarvis, Judy Resnik, Michael J. Smith, Dick Scobee, and Ron McNair.

On this, we learned, but I don’t think we learned enough for many of the issues cited in the Challenger report, were repeated in the Columbia report. But then, that’s Sunday’s tale. There is an excellent video on this link . It’s 44 minutes and it’s painful to watch. I never watch it without weeping, but it is beautifully done and very informative.

Learning by attrition is not the way to learn.

RS Classic: Remembering NASA’s tragedies - Apollo 1 Fire

2011-01-27T22:50:00.002-06:00

Yes, I'm still shut down, but this is an important week for NASA, something we all must remember lest it happen again. Today is the anniversary of the Apollo 1 fire and a post I wrote two years ago.

This is a tough week for NASA and for those that care about safety and space. In the space of six days, we have the anniversaries of each of the worst space disasters resulting in loss of life (though we have lost ground support personnel in other accidents): Apollo I, STS-51L (Challenger) and STS-107 (Columbia). It’s a sad time for us, a time to reflect on what we’ve done wrong and on the brave and talented souls that paid the ultimate price for our mistakes.

The sad thing, as I mentioned in a comment for yesterday’s blog, is that all three of these accidents were preventable. Of all the lessons we should be taking home, that is the one we must not lose sight of. There are issues and unexpected bad things that can always hinder us in space, things we can’t necessarily be fully prepared for; we must not add those risks we can correct.

But, as sad as it is to discuss these, they stand as lessons that may have helped us further down the line, that, hopefully taught us things that have saved other lives. If we have learned too late, at least we learned. But those of us who care passionately about the safety of the crew, those of us who are responsible for the lives of others, we must look back on these mistakes periodically, not only to make sure those lessons are still fresh in our minds, but also to remind ourselves why we work so hard to do the right thing. To prevent tragedies like this.

If I’m sometimes critical of our human space program, I have to say that a huge portion of what everyone does is to protect human life. These accidents remind us why that effort is worth it.

Charred crew module interior after the fire, NASA image42 years ago today, on January 27, 1967, the crew of AS-204, which they called Apollo 1, climbed into the crew module for the new Apollo missions, the first involving three crewmembers for a plugs-out test, which was not expected to be hazardous. The module was pressurized to 16 psia, higher than ambient, and was 100% oxygen, which the contractor recommended against. The crew module had a number of known but uncorrected flaws and the crew had expressed concern about fire hazards. The astronauts had also lobbied successfully for an outward opening door, but that design change was not incorporated here. Still, flawed or not, the hope was to successfully pass the test today and launch it three weeks later in February.

At 6:31:07, *before the test had even started*, the first cry of fire came from the cabin. For about 10 seconds, one could hear frantic movements followed by Chafee yelling, “We’ve got a bad fire! Let’s get out! We’re burning up! We’re on fire! Get us out of here!” Then, a scream of pain and the end of the transmission, seventeen seconds after the first report of fire. The crew module ruptured from the pressure and toxic black smoke poured from the module.

It took another eight minutes before they could open the hatch, by which time the fire had gone out. It took 7.5 hours to remove the crews remains, as they were fused in place by the melted nylon of their suits. It was not a fun way to die.

In the end, a number of key factors were called out as potential causes and contributors. The high pressure oxygen environment was very dangerous from a flammability standpoint (”in which a bar of aluminum can burn like wood” according to Wikipedia). There was a wealth of off-gassing flammable nonmetallics like nylon and velcro. Wiring and plumbing was substandard (note that 1407 wiring *design* problems were corrected after Apollo 1) with a stripped and abraded wire near a leaky coolant line (a potential exothermic explosion) but just the static electricity from their suits were found sufficient to have started a fire in that atmosphere. We were not short of smoking guns and no single cause was ever determined as *the* cause.

We were feckless, we were sloppy and we thought that the success with Mercury and Gemini at 100% oxygen made us bulletproof. Astronauts Edward H. White II, Virgil I. Grissom, and Roger B. Chaffee paid the price.

You’ll be pleased to know that nonmetallics are given careful consideration before flight, requiring both toxicity and flammability off-gassing tests (if not a previously flown material). Even the simplest ground tests are done with emergency personnel on site, with procedures for rescuing test subjects practiced and in hand (and that have saved lives since, but that’s another story), a thorough safety review before proceeding. We fly with an air mixture (except in the suits) and wiring and materials are held to very high standards. Materials used, particular “on” the crewmembers must be self-extinguishing (and materials developed for space use are also in use by firefighters all over the world).

But, as we move forward, we must remember these lessons and not get complacent. It’s been a long time since such a thing happened and, especially as we move to commercial human spaceflight, these lessons should be revisited. I hope everyone with the intention of shuttling people into space has read and understood the lessons in this one tragic not-quite-test.

May we never forget.

Shutting Her Down

2011-01-03T21:27:00.000-06:00

So, here's the thing. Blogging has become a chore, generally. No longer something I want to do, but something I feel obligated to do. I feel I owe it to people instead of doing it for joy. I took off for my vacation, making a point of taking time to do things I wanted to do . . . and blogging didn't really come up.

Well, truth is, I have enough obligations between my children and my husband and my full time job and my somewhat demanding avocations. I'm not willing to continue pursuing a voluntarily activity that isn't voluntary, or at least, not to the level I has been. Three blogs is just too much for someone who isn't into it. Between Rocket Scientist and Ask Me Anything, I've written 677 posts, many of which I'm quite proud of. But I feel like I've said what I'd wanted to say with them.

So, I'm retiring them. I'll leave them up a bit longer, perhaps indefinitely. And I'll keep up Rockets and Dragons which will be primarily focused on writing fiction, since that particular avocation still calls me and compels me. If you want to find me, say hi, ask a question, you can find me there. I'll migrate my favorite blogs from these lists over there and I'll still try to come round, though it might not be as often as it once was. Only so many hours in the day and I have to fit sex--er--sleep in there somewhere.

It has been a great deal of fun. I've learned a lot and made a few exceptional blog buddies.

Thank you for coming by so often. And a good road to you.

Spirit Daughter

2010-12-20T21:38:00.004-06:00

My grandmother died on Saturday. To say she was a remarkable person is such an understatement, it's almost criminal. Half Native American, but without access to that part of her culture, she was adopted and then put in and out of orphanages. After a childhood harder than I can imagine, she found her soul's own mate and raised twelve children with him (ten of their own and two more they adopted when her body gave out). She has lived for years in physical pain and increasing immobility, lovingly cared for by her daughter, Sue, and other close family. Her outlook was always bright, her disposition, happy. She loved her children, her grandchildren, her great grandchildren. She loved to hear us sing to her.

I don't worry about her. I know she's no longer in pain, that she is with those who love her, and with us. Still, I will miss her.

I haven't written poetry in a long time, but I wrote this for my grandmother, Jeanne.

Spirit Daughter

Spirit daughter, tiny feet,
Treads the path alone
Dancing to a special beat
Off to find a home.
Spirit daughter, we are with you
Where'er you may roam
Spirit daughter, hear our singing
You are not alone.

Spirit daughter, heart so brave,
Though the world is cold
Hungry, shunned, unwanted slave
Though she's but years old.
Spirit daughter, we are with you
In your cage of stone.
Spirit daughter, hear our singing
You are not alone.

Spirit daughter, smile so sweet,
Laughing through the pain,
Warming others with her heat,
Healing them like rain.
Spirit daughter, we are with you
As you make hell home.
Spirit daughter, hear our singing
You are not alone.

Spirit daughter, gleaming soul,
Finds her hearts own mate
Finds a love that asks no toll
And offers a clean slate.
Spirit daughter, we are with you
As your heart has flown.
Spirit daughter, hear our singing
You are not alone.

Spirit daughter, mother's love,
Children at your breast.
They're the magic you dreamed of
Through your fearsome tests
Spirit daughter, we are with you
Love you'd never known.
Spirit daughter, hear our singing
You are not alone.

Spirit daughter, spirit's strong,
Children find their way.
Leaning on the right and wrong
You'd tried to teach each day.
Spirit daughter, we are with you
Ah, the seeds you've sown.
Spirit daughter, hear our singing
You are not alone.

Spirit daughter, body's pain,
And a late life's loss.
Sons and husband gone again
Your body is your cross.
Spirit daughter, we are with you
Even when you moan.
Spirit daughter, hear our singing
You are not alone.

Spirit daughter, life's release,
To tread another way
Spirits wait you, offer peace
And a painless day.
Spirit daughter, we are with you
Let us bring you home.
Spirit daughter, hear our singing
You are not alone.

This was also one of my grandmother's favorite songs:

Shoot Me, Please

2010-12-08T20:52:00.002-06:00

I get headaches.

Headaches, in fact, is such a benign word for what I get, it's almost misleading. It used to be worse, screaming hideous vascular headaches that lead to nagging tension headaches bad enough to bring the screaming hideous vascular headaches back day after day. I can usually break the cycle now so this tag-team nightmare no longer last months.

But the screaming hideous vascular headaches remain.

I woke up with one at 2 am this morning. And it says something when a headache is bad enough to wake you up, especially when you sleep as soundly as I do. It's the kind of headache where your first reaction is to reach for the ice pick that must be sticking out of your skull. How else explain the pain?

After another couple of minutes, you wish you had an ice pick to stick in your skull and just stop the pain. I have decided the real reason why life expectancy was so short two hundred years ago was that they had no aspirin. If you were a headache sufferer with no pain reliever, you didn't want to live any longer.

As I'm waiting for medicine to kick in enough I can try to sleep, I wonder that there's no words out there beyond agonizing and excruciating. Perhaps there are no sounds in the English language sufficient to express this level of pain.

I know I'm far from alone in the headache suffering world. I'm probably not even remarkable. So, for everyone who has had a headache bad enough where you can completely understand those old human skulls unearthed with holes drilled in them or has ever begged a spouse to put them out of their misery, I say, I hear you. I hope it passes.

Though, with my brain, I'm forced to ask how practical drilling a hole in the skull would be. I mean, the skull has holes, nose and eyes. Just stick something through there and be done. . . It worked for Egyptians removing the brain of corpses.

Maybe I should take some more medicine.

P.S. Gumby, you asked about the arsenic/NASA/biology brouhaha going on. First let me say, I'm not really following it. I don't do much with exobiology, but, as a science fiction fan most of my life, I would never have discounted the possibility. Secondly, NASA bumbling over PR is hardly news; scientists, who are prohibited from lying and slanting, rarely look good in the news, which is all about sensationalism. There's a good representative subset of debate available here.

P.P.S. I wrote this this morning. My head is much better now. Almost normal.

Writing Frenzy Hiatus

2010-11-25T20:16:00.003-06:00

I am an odd writer. There are tons of people out there who need to write so many words a day, push themselves to put something on paper no matter what. I'm not saying anything against that, not by a long shot. I think there is no right or wrong methods for a writer.

But I know it doesn't work for me. My inner me, the subconscious me, the one that does all the good thinking, decides what I write and when. What that means is that, if I don't have something to be writing, it won't come, it won't be forced. Or, if I do force it, it won't be worth saving. Note that's just how it is for me. I can't write on command unless I want to just produce garbage.

But, there is an up side. When it comes, when I do have something to write, it flows out effortlessly and I love writing it, love reading what I've written. I seem to be finding my rhythm. Last year, about this time, I had no intention of joining into NaNoWriMo, but ended up writing one of my favorite novels, Tarot Queen, over the course of about 45 days (90+K words) over October and November. I loved writing it and it remains the cleanest first draft I've ever written.

I wrote a sequel to another novel earlier this year. It wasn't quite as fast, but it also moved swiftly. In between, very little was written, but what I wrote when I wrote really worked for me.

Well, I'm in the throes of another novel. I'd picked up several projects, but none of them got my creative juices flowing. None of them put me in the zone. Then I started this little character study inspired by a number of my favorite types of characters, one that spoke to me. At first, I thought it would be just for my own pleasure, that there was no novel actually associated with it.

Well, over the past nine days (while working full time), I have cranked out more than 25,000 words and I'm still going strong. It means I do have a novel here, one I'm loving. Which means I am having a wonderful time (and talking to me is likely to get me gushing about my novel, so you might want to refrain). That also means that on-line activities will be at a minimum until the magic recedes.

I hope you don't mind. If it makes you feel better, I am having the time of my life.

Here's Something for Fun

2010-11-13T14:32:00.002-06:00

Every once in a while, someone sends me an email making the rounds that I find quite appealing. So, I'm passing it along without cluttering up your in-boxes. I don't know who wrote it, by the way.

A paraprosdokian (from the Greek meaning 'beyond expectation') is a figure of speech in which the latter part of a sentence or phrase is unexpected in a way that causes the reader or listener to reframe or reinterpret the first part.

* I asked God for a bike, but I know God doesn't work that way. So I stole a bike and asked for forgiveness.
* Do not argue with an idiot. He will drag you down to his level and beat you with experience.
* The last thing I want to do is hurt you. But it's still on my list.
* Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.
* If I agreed with you, we'd both be wrong.
* We never really grow up, we only learn how to act in public.
* War does not determine who is right - only who is left.
* Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.
* Evening news is where they begin with 'Good Evening,' and then proceed to tell you why it isn't.
* To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism. To steal from many is research.
* A bus station is where a bus stops. A train station is where a train stops. On my desk, I have a work station.
* I thought I wanted a career. Turns out I just wanted paychecks.
* Whenever I fill out an application, in the part that says, 'In case of emergency, notify:' I put 'DOCTOR.'
* I didn't say it was your fault, I said I was blaming you.
* Women will never be equal to men until they can walk down the street with a bald head and a beer gut, and still think they are sexy.
* Behind every successful man is his woman. Behind the fall of a successful man is usually another woman.
* A clear conscience is the sign of a fuzzy memory.
* You do not need a parachute to skydive. You only need a parachute to skydive twice.
* Money can't buy happiness, but it sure makes misery easier to live with.
* There's a fine line between cuddling and holding someone down so they can't get away.
* I used to be indecisive. Now I'm not so sure.
* You're never too old to learn something stupid.
* To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first and call whatever you hit the target.
* Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
* Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine.
* Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.
* A diplomat is someone who tells you to go to hell in such a way that you look forward to the trip.
* Hospitality is making your guests feel at home even when you wish they were.
* I always take life with a grain of salt. Plus a slice of lemon, and a shot of tequila.
* When tempted to fight fire with fire, remember that the Fire Department usually uses water.
* If we are supposed to learn from our mistakes, why do some people have more than one child?

Sometimes Just One Quote is Enough

2010-11-06T17:03:00.002-05:00

And now, for the discerning reader, who is either steeped in the English prose, at least using it on a daily basis or trying to make head or tails of it, I offer this timeless gem courtesy of the wit of Mark Twain:

A Plan for the Improvement of English Spelling
by Mark Twain

For example, in Year 1 that useless letter "c" would be dropped to be replased either by "k" or "s", and likewise "x" would no longer be part of the alphabet. The only kase in which "c" would be retained would be the "ch" formation, which will be dealt with later. Year 2 might reform "w" spelling, so that "which" and "one" would take the same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish "y" replasing it with "i" and Iear 4 might fiks the "g/j" anomali wonse and for all.

Jenerally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear with Iear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and Iears 6-12 or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeining voist and unvoist konsonants. Bai Iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi ridandant letez "c", "y" and "x" -- bai now jast a memori in the maindz ov ould doderez -- tu riplais "ch", "sh", and "th" rispektivli.

Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.

Sometimes Twain was perfect.

Struggling Through the Week

2010-11-04T19:43:00.002-05:00

I have not been on my game this week.

Between my daughter's recovery (remote from me since she's been with her dad), and fighting a horrible horrible cold. Steph went to school but it was too much and ended leaving her somewhat traumatized. She won't be back until Monday at the earliest. Or here either since she's with her dad again.

I realize one of the serious issues with divorce - only one parent can really be with their child in a situation like this. Someone's going to have to be separate taking what news they can get and hoping for the best. Necessary, reality, but it stinks for one of us. This time, it's me.

Between some level of stress and being sick as a dog, it's been a hell of a week.

Bear with me.

Happy Anniversary

2010-10-31T12:50:00.005-05:00

Yes, Halloween is our anniversary and we like it that way. Still, we got a bit more of a scare than we like this anniversary as I spent Friday night in the hospital with my ex-husband and daughter. My daughter was in a car wreck. Although she was seriously injured, she'll be alright and has been released from the hospital.

Still, not an anniversary tradition I want to continue.

To my nowhere near as irritating current husband, I love you dearly. To me, our marriage is a real thriller.

(No this isn't mine. It's from youtube and isn't it clever?)

I love you, Lee. And Stephanie. And Alex and Roxy. Happy Halloween.

RS Classic: Saturday Quote-a-Thon - Learning a Little Somethin’

2010-10-23T20:11:00.004-05:00

Once again, reusing quotes because, hey, I'm lazy.

With all the education talk this week and elder sibling stuff goin’ on, seemed like learning might be a good subject for quotes. Let’s just dig into the Big Bag O’ Quotes and see what we find.

He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils.
–Sir Francis Bacon

Advice is seldom welcome, and those who need it the most, like it the least.
–Philip Dormer Stanhope, Lord Chesterfield

Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.
–Winston Churchill

Even if you do learn to speak correct English, whom are you going to speak it to?
–Clarence Darrow

The most glorious moments in your life are not the so-called days of success, but rather those days when out of dejection and despair you feel rise in you a challenge to life, and the promise of future accomplishments.
–Gustave Flaubert

The most valuable of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it has to be done, whether you like it or not.
–Aldous Huxley

Colleges are places where pebbles are polished and diamonds are dimmed.
–Robert Green Ingersol

Experience, the most brutal of teachers; but you learn, my God do you learn.
–C. S. Lewis

The pupil who is never required to do what he cannot do, never does what he can do.
–John Stuart Mill

I respect faith, but doubt is what gives you an education.
–Wilson Mizner

If history teaches anything, it teaches that self-delusion in the face of unpleasant facts is folly.
–Ronald Reagan [Ed: might we remind the GOP of that now?]

What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the wish to find out, which is the exact opposite.
–Bertrand Russell

One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It is simply too painful to acknowledge — even to ourselves — that we’ve been so credulous. (So the old bamboozles tend to persist as the new bamboozles rise.)
–Carl Sagan

Who Is Megi?

2010-10-21T20:35:00.004-05:00

I have a pet peeve. Oh, well, actually, I have a number of pet peeves, but this is the one I'm going to talk about today. Here, in the US, we are completely self-absorbed. Although I'm sure it's not just an American thing, I live here, so here's where I notice it.

I don't mind it as a general rule, but it's become a real problem when it comes to keeping track of things that matter to me world-wide. Non-US stories fall by the wayside (except for the Chilean miners, for some reason. I wonder if we're fascinated because so many of our recent mining accidents have ended in tragedy, but I digress.)

I keep track of natural disasters, for some reason. I'm sympathetic's part of it. It's a reminder how lucky I am not to have had my family swept away, my child wrenched from my arms, by a the Boxing Day tsunami, or to have my family and everyone I've ever known buried under a dozen meters of mud in a mudslide thanks to Hurricane Mitch, or to have my only child (as so many Chinese children have to be) crushed in a substandard school during an earthquake. I remind myself how lucky I am and that I'm not really entitled to self-pity. If I have pity to spare, there are many who deserve it more. They're people and I grieve that they suffer.

It's also a lesson for me in resilience. So often, these tragedies happen in parts of the world where no one has much of anything, where, if whole towns disappear, there will be no one coming by with trailers and checks to take care of it. But they pick themselves up and, somehow, next time it happens, they're better prepared. Japan, though not a third world nation, is pretty much pounded by every kind of natural disaster imaginable: volcanoes, tsunamis, earthquakes, land/mudslides, typhoons that make Katrina look like a squall. But the weather them all. They were hit by a Katrina sized typhoon within ten days of Katrina, dead on Tokyo (which is also under sea level) and they lost three lives, one from a heart attack and hardly broke stride.

Burma (now Myanmar) was absolutely devastated by a cyclone (the word for a typhoon/hurricane in the Indian ocean) in 1970 that took an estimated 300,000 lives. They've been hit again since, but each time fewer lives have been lost, by orders of magnitude. And they're poor like no one's poor here. That kind of resilience and progress impresses the hell out of me (even if Myanmar's government doesn't).

So, if you haven't heard of Megi, that's too bad. She's beautiful and deadly and, although she was a strong Catagory 5 when she hit the Philippines, she only killed nineteen people. Some of the wind has been taken out of her sails but she's headed for mainland China and she's still pretty strong. So more for to come with this monster storm. Too bad our media doesn't cover it.

And the Phillipines, though low in casualties, has a long hard road ahead what with rice crops destroyed, tens of thousands homeless and infrastructure destroyed.

I wonder why we never hear stories like that here.
Gorgeous, wasn't she?

What You See . . .

2010-10-07T19:58:00.003-05:00

I read a blog post the other day that got me thinking. It was a memory someone was repeating where she was going to a new school, was welcomed into a group of other teenagers who were of a very different background. Unwilling to give up what she saw as her sense of self to fit in, she left. The story she was telling was all about being true to yourself.

But I got something else out of it as well. Now, don't get me wrong. I'm all for being true to yourself. I've always been true to myself and had the popularity to show for it. And I don't want to point fingers. This is a memory someone else had and the pieces that meant something to them.

But, what struck me the most was that, despite the fact these kids (prompted, admittedly, by a teacher) were open and welcoming, she decided they could never be her friends presumably because of what they were. They just were "the wrong" kind of kids, based on just a few minutes' acquaintance. Popular (apparently), jocks, cheerleader types. They weren't familiar with the sort of things she was interested in.

What surprised me was how automatic her assessment of the others were, how quickly she assumed they would try to change her, or how quickly she decided they wouldn't or couldn't accept her for what she was. Except all I kept thinking was, what about them? I mean, who's to say being popular or being a jock or being a cheerleader meant you couldn't have diverse interests, or wouldn't try out something new? Or accept someone who happened to be different?

I am a person who had few friends, largely because it takes an exceptional person to like me, the real me. But, you know, some of those few friends were the most popular people in school and some were the least. Many of them had completely different interests, some of which I learned to share, some of which I didn't. I didn't expect them to be anyone else either. I tried D&D because of them and cutthroat Uno. I was exposed to new musical groups in college and new types of books. They expanded my horizons and, perhaps, I expanded there's. Not because I couldn't be myself, but because we were comfortable enough with ourselves not to need to conform, open enough to try something we hadn't tried before.

I'm glad people are comfortable enough with themselves to be who they want to be. Still, I'd hate to think, for myself, that I'd gone through life turning my back on people who might have been great friends if I had seen past what they are and just seen who.

Not attack on the blog poster, just a commentary on where the story took me.

Not Been in a Blogging Mood

2010-09-30T22:19:00.002-05:00

I wish I had a wonderful excuse why I haven't been writing blog posts or more assiduously following everyone else. I've tried to keep up with all of you, but I haven't seemed to have anything of import to say myself. I don't have a great excuse. I haven't been swamped or overcome or hit by a bus. I just haven't been driven to write a post.

Maybe I've said all I have to say.

Or maybe the mood will hit me again.

Between my three blogs, I've written over 750 posts (not counting those I haven't yet reused from the now-defunct today. com). Since I've made a point of saying something of meaning in the vast majority of those posts, that's a great deal.

Politics, science, writing, history, philosophy, quotes. I'm a dabbler and I've enjoyed it. But I don't want to write a post to check a box or meet a quota. I want, if I'm writing, to do it because it calls to me. For some reason, the passion I once had to write blogs seems to be on the wane.

Still, it's here. And, who knows, I might get the drive again. Or regurgitate other "greatest hits." Just wanted you all to know I haven't forgotten you; nor am I ungrateful for the readership and fascinating comments I've often received. But if I want my blog to mean something, I should write it when I'm impelled to write it.

And, at the moment, I'm not (as this rambler can demonstrate).

I hope you'll stop by now and again in case I find some untapped well of inspiration that currently eludes me.

Your patience is appreciated.

Random Soapbox: Apparently I'm Anti-Anti

2010-09-14T18:14:00.004-05:00

/Steps on soapbox

I know it's midweek and I've mostly given up rantings. Every once in a while, though, something just gets my goat. The irony is that what I'm hating is the overwhelming need many seem to have to hate on things that do them (and everyone else) no harm.

Now, before you toss the hypocrisy card, hear me out. I'm fine with hating things you can't fix: DMV lines, corrupt politicians (of any flavor), colonoscopies, and bad drivers. Rant away until it's fixed. Keep talking. I won't stop you (even if I disagree).

Be as angry and vocal repeatedly on issues that hurt you or others, like global warming, female circumcision, white (or any other kind of slavery), intolerance, forgoing vaccines, war, terrorism, unemployment, what-have-you. Nothing wrong with standing up for anything while people are suffering. There are certainly plenty of issues like that to keep us busy.

But there's another class of things that people rant about. that they jump in on over and over again. Opinions. Now don't get me wrong. Everyone's entitled to an opinion, about a particular celebrity or person or book or movie or song or process or set of beliefs. By all means have them. Tell your friends, answer with the truth when asked, put it on your blog. Defend your opinion if challenged if you want to.

But then, for mercy's sake, let it go if it's not hurting anyone, especially you. I was reading a bulletin on an upcoming Twilight movie (beint split into two, rather than one - which, as I've read the book, makes perfect sense), and every single comment was bemoaning the fact there'd be two and screaming out against the torture, etc. Folks, what possible impact do the number of Twilight movies remaining have on people who don't like them? Don't like it. Don't go.

I'm not saying you can't hate it. My husband hates them and doesn't pretend otherwise. But he isn't obsessed with it. He doesn't follow announcements and blast fans. He doesn't burn the books when I'm not looking. If he doesn't like the book, he doesn't read it. He doesn't like the movie, he doesn't watch it.

There are people who hate certain celebrities with a passion verging on mania. Not because they committed a crime or strangled kittens in their spare time but because they're dating/married to the wrong person or are too fat/successful/ugly/who knows what. OJ doesn't get the hate mail these celebrities get. So much vitriol.

I didn't get into Harry Potter. I'm not a fan of the Star Wars franchise (in general). I couldn't care less about horror movies like Saw and whatever. I can't stand watching Adam Sandler or Will Ferrell in a movie. There are a number of very successful authors whose books leave me cold.

So. I don't go to the movies I know I won't like. I don't read books by authors I don't care for.

As far as I'm concerns, those authors can write as many books as they can sell. It does me no harm. There are plenty of other books being published. If there aren't any good movies out one weekend, I have a DVD player. If people go see a movie I disliked a dozen times, what harm does that do me? Why should I be upset over this? Why lose my mind over something that has no real effect on me?

What is wrong with people? Why do they get rabid over stuff they don't like? Why are people spun up about what religion people are, who they go home with, what party they're with, what celebrities they admire?

I have to ask why anyone's life is so empty they have to go out of their way, track down people getting enjoyment from something harmless and try to take it away from them.

Please, folks, if you want to promote the things you like, watch it/read it/buy it. Extol it's virtues. Sing it's praises. Enjoy it over and over. And remember, if someone's enjoying something you don't like, why sweat it?

Maybe, if we stopped worrying about what other people were enjoying (that we didn't like), maybe we'd find our own lives tasted a little better than we thought.

/Steps off soapbox

Just my opinion

Feeding the Right Wolf

2010-09-10T14:39:00.003-05:00

Originally, I was going to write a whole post on my frustration and disappointment with regards to my teenage daughter's overwhelming sense of entitlement - or at least note that it no way jibes with mine. But I'm not going to. Here's why.

I saw a version of this on Amy Oops and it really appealed to me. I traced down a version to a Cherokee Prophecy:

An old Cherokee was teaching his grandson about life. "A fight is going on inside each one of us," he said to the boy. "It is a fight to the death, and it is between two wolves.

"One is darkness -- he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.

"The other is enlighted -- he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith.

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, "Which wolf will win?"

The old Cherokee simply replied, "The one you feed."

That story spoke to me, not only how people get seduced by the dark side: anger, fear, envy, bigotry, intolerance, but also how people can get overwhelmed with emotions that hurt themselves: self pity, depression, guilt, sense of ill-usage, jealousy, dissatisfaction.

All the energy poured into that dark "wolf," all the credence, time and thought I spend dwelling on slights and feeling under-appreciated, on what I wanted but didn't have, on failings and failures I perceive in myself, that energy is more than wasted. It is an investment in my own unhappiness.

But, if I pour that energy into tolerance and forgiveness, patience and understanding, into a celebration of those aspects of my life that contribute to my happiness, those are an investment in my well-being and, to a lesser effect, the well-being of people around me.

That doesn't mean I can't feel disappointment or can't stand up for myself. The emotions are there whether I feed them or not. But I can choose not to dwell on those aspects that won't go away. The choices those around me make, the things I can't fix. I don't have to hold on to them and let them feed on each other by spending my energies on them.

It seems obvious, even simple. I don't think it's easy.

I suspect, though, it becomes easier with practice.

You Can't Teach English via Scantron

2010-09-08T16:19:00.003-05:00

Let me apologize for the apparent hiatus (which I failed to warn y'all about) over the last week and a half, both in new posts and in reading/responding to other blogs. I was working under a day-job push that resulted in overtime, a hurry-up revision of a draft novel and considerable forward work on an unfinished manuscript (that went quite well: 20K words over the last four days). So the neglect was not in vain. Thanks for the patience.

Now, moving on. Here, I have a couple of posts in a row inspired by dealing with my teenaged daughter. One of them is touching on something I've noted before: my brain doesn't work like other people's brains. In general. Apparently, my daughter has a similar (if not the same) problem as manifested in just the first week of English class.

Now, in general, my daughter kicks literary butt in English. She likes reading. She writes very well. She interacts in class and finds the topics appealing. However, summer reading was evaluated via scantron test the first week and her grades were, well, abysmal, despite the fact she read all but one. Part of it stemmed from the fact that she read them at the beginning of the summer and some of the questions were nitpicky details on page X questions (or so she told me). But, part of it was that her interpretation of the book, the characters and what it all means often falls outside the multiple choice answers provided. So, what to pick?

Man, that took me back. Although I've always seriously ruled in English class, my scores in English matched my math score on SAT (which surprised the snot out of me) and brought my cumulative score down on my ACT (which didn't mean it was bad, just not as stellar as science and math). Why? Same damn reason.

"Read this selection and choose the answer that best describes the main idea." Except my understanding in no way matched with any of the choices. I could defend my opinion, but there is generally no comment section on a scantron sheet.

Now, don't get me wrong. There are areas where multiple choice is appropriate. Math and science tend toward black/white answers*, repeatable and verifiable in real life. And the answer should be the same even if the problem is attacked in different ways. Similarly, historic facts can be addressed via multiple choice. However, once you moved to interpretation of those historic facts, once you start looking for perspective and evaluation of things that are subjective, this one-size-fits-all thinking falls apart. True/false history tests were the bane of my existence. "True/false: X often happened in the Y era." How frequently before it counts as often? Twice if they were notable? A hundred obscure times? Aaaaaaaah!

It's particularly ironic that many teachers and/or educational institutions push for black/white answers when artists and writers, particularly the great ones studied in schools, were great because they challenged black and white thinking. I think part of this is driven by students (and, to some extent, teachers for the convenience of grading). When I was growing up, nothing got the class to groaning like the prospect of an "essay" test. An essay test answer shows you really understand things, that you thought about it, felt it, accepted it. If you don't understand it, don't get it, you'll fail. Unless your teacher was none to bright, you couldn't fake it.

But that's real learning. Many students don't want to learn by the time they get to high school. They just want to get through school. Just tell them what they need to know for the test so they can move on without it changing their lives. Thinking and feeling is too personal and, as my daughter found out, no guarantee you'll do well on the test.

This reminds me of a lesson I learned in college. Doing poorly in my electrical engineering class, I was disheartened and my English major roommate suggested going with her to her English class as a cure. Now, I'd tested out of all my required English, so I didn't have any of the standard classes. I protested that going to a class I didn't have to go to was unlikely to make me feel better. Well, my roommate was right, as she frequently was.

They were discussing a Wordsworth poem I had not read before. I read it during the class and the discussion came to what was meant by a particular passage. Different students from the actual class were raising their hands and giving answers. Truth was, I could see how they thought so in that section, but the teacher was adamant those answers were "wrong." Despite the fact I had no business being there anyway, I raised my hand and answered - "the" answer the teacher wanted. By the end of the class, that I did feel better about my intelligence. But I also learned that many (not all) people teaching subjective subjects can be seduced into thinking there's only one answer to complex questions and passing that thinking on to their students.

I am convinced that Wordsworth himself, if he had been teaching that class, would not have the right to tell a reader their interpretation was "wrong." I'm proud to say that my sister, the English professor, does not teach English that way, as attested by the endless hours she spends grading essays, exercises and essay tests.

As schools are squeezed for funding, more and more, the schools are going to be stressing what can be objectively measured, leaving many of us non-standard thinkers behind. Which is a very very sad thing given that almost every improvement, advance, invention and artistic success ever has been direct result of thinking outside the norm.

*I mentioned that math and science is black and white and I stand by that in the realm of public education. There we are teaching laws and science, math skills and formulas that have been demonstrated countless times. However, in the real world where, for every problem, there might be any number of solutions, none of them optimum, that isn't true. Not only can you get there many different ways, but the answers aren't identical. And, in fact, my non-standard thinking and unusual perspective when looking at different solutions is one of the reasons I'm so good at my job.

RS Classic: Saturday Quote-a-Thon With a Twist

2010-08-21T17:15:00.003-05:00

I like quotes in general. but I also like quotes that look like they’re going to say one thing and then kind of twist it into something else. Naturally, I have bunches of these and I’m going to include some today.

Things are more like they are now than they ever were before.
–Dwight D. Eisenhower

The louder he talked of his honour, the faster we counted our spoons.
–Ralph Waldo Emerson

Informed decision-making comes from a long tradition of guessing and then blaming others for inadequate results.
–Scott Adams

We easily forget that smog is the price of freedom of our streets from manure, and from the flies and diseases it brought.
–Daniel Boorstin

By doing just a little every day, I can gradually let the task completely overwhelm me.
–Ashleigh Brilliant

Successful organizations are programmed to eat their own brains: it’s called bureaucracy and it’s the evil offspring of Operations and Accounting. It’s the silent killer of organizations; they become enfeebled before noticing that something’s gone wrong.
–Dale Dauten

I used to be indecisive, now I’m not so sure.
–W.C. Fields

Ability will never catch up to the demand for it.
–Malcolm Forbes

Accident: Always “regrettable” or “unlucky” — as if a mishap might sometimes be a cause for rejoicing.
–Gustave Flaubert

I think it would be an excellent idea. (When asked what he thought of Western civilization)
–Mohandas Gandhi

My grandfather once told me that there are two kinds of people: those who do the work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the first group. There was much less competition there.
— Indira Gandhi

Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.
— Edward Abbey

Adventure is the result of poor planning.
— Col. Blatchford Snell

Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn’t.
— Erica Jong

A fine is a tax for doing wrong. A tax is a fine for doing well.
— Wes Izzard

A friend of mine told me to shoot first and ask questions later. I was going to ask him why, but I had to shoot him.
— John Wayne

A grain of wisdom is worth an ounce of knowledge, which is worth a ton of data.
— Neil Larson

A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.
— Saul Bellow

A high-school teacher, after all, is a person deputized by the rest of us to explain to the young what sort of world they are living in, and to defend, if possible, the part their elders are playing in it.
— Emile Capouya

A hole is nothing at all, but you can break your neck in it.
— Austin O’Malley

Alcohol is a good preservative for everything but brains.
— Mary Pettibone Poole

All bad precedents began as justifiable measures.
— Julius Caesar

All men make mistakes, but married men find out about them sooner.
— Red Skelton

All my life I wanted to be someone; I guess I should have been more specific.
— Jane Wagner

All things are possible until proved impossible — and even the impossible may only be so as of now.
— Pearl S. Buck

A man can fail many times but he isn’t a failure until he begins to blame someone else.
— Waite Phillips

Americans are people who laugh at African witch doctors and spend 100 million dollars on fake reducing systems.
— L.L. Levinson

An error doesn’t become a mistake until you refuse to correct it.
— Orlando A. Battista

Nature's Wonders

2010-08-20T17:28:00.004-05:00

I don't take pictures. I should, but I don't. There's a number of reasons for this, not the least of which is that it would take too much effort for me to be good enough to really like my photography.

And, what I really like are spectacular weather photos. I guess I like the sky. Misty moons and layered clouds, sunsets and storms, rainbows and lightning. It's all good, but not always accessible.

So, last year, when I stumbled on this on snopes, I was awed. As usual, they linked to the original source and I'm doing that with these pictures as well. I took none of them and they are actual pictures of a lightning storm over the erupting volcano Chaiten in Chile. They were taken by Carlos Garcia.
Of course, there are down sides to living near something so awesomely beautiful as this AP photo demonstrates:
More pictures of the aftermath can be found here.

RS Classic: Why Star Wars Doesn't Impress Me

2010-08-16T21:58:00.002-05:00

Not ready for anything serious and I've been busy with work and rewriting the novel I'm writing right now, so keeping it light and reusing. I'd noted before that I'm a character person, but also a pick-a-parter. Here's an example of my pick-a-parting talent.

I was surprised at my reaction when I saw a discussion where Star Wars was described as “pure science fiction.” Hard science fiction is fiction that is firmly grounded in science, where the science is as much a part of the story as the characters. Despite my science background, I don’t write hard science fiction because I’m much more into characters than science.

However, Star Wars does not count as pure or hard science fiction. Why do you say that? Haven’t you seen the “Science of Star Wars” type shows? Yep. Not impressed. In reality, what did they do in Star Wars that made scientific sense?

They shot out of open portholes and landed crafts in bays open to space. They wander about on asteroids wearing only gas masks as opposed to full pressure suits. The ships are cool-looking, but impractical. Center of gravity on most are so out of whack as to make them challenging to fly realistically with or without atmosphere.

Actually, I guess I’m not a huge Star Wars fan. The story, of course, is old and proven, the kind of feel good story that’s been used over and over because it’s successful. Some of the characters are appealing (more so after the “first” one when someone besides Lucas did the dialog). Above, all, though, it had tons of glitz in a movie industry that had never seen anything like it.

But, even without the science, did the stories and details make sense? The weapons are highly impractical (explain, for instance, the advantage to being able to destroy a planet into dust - what have you really accomplished? Space dust is somewhat less than useful.). Hand to hand skills under such circumstances are, uh, superfluous. Why the stress on that? Exactly how many droids wander the deserts of Tatooine for the Jawas to be able to make a living off stealing them? And how come it took 13 minutes to fly at “full throttle” down the trench on the Death Star, but the whole Death Star is kilometers in the background seconds later.

What does the Empire achieve by “taking over” that they didn’t have working behind the Republic? Given the success of the robot fighters, what was the benefit of the clones? It’s not like they were encouraged to think independently since disobedience was punished by death. Why clone a bounty hunter for a flood of soldiers? Why would a space port, like that on Tatooine, not take off-world money or have a way of converting it? Why have a port then? Why in the world would anyone of conscience buy the freedom of a boy and leave the mother he adored?

Star Wars is an excellent example what happens when I’m not in love with the characters enough: everything that doesn’t make much sense leaps out and grabs me by the throat (including why Luke could be all but unaffected by the brutal and probably torturous death of the people that raised him, but devastated for three movies about the death of a man he’d known three days or so). I like Hans Solo and Leia else I might have a list for The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, but I guess you get the idea.

RS Classic: And Now for some Levity . . .

2010-08-12T19:42:00.007-05:00

Wow, things seem to have become awfully gloomy lately. Maybe I should liven things up with the "church signs" that inspired my religious ruminations.

I keep meaning to get to that post on SI units, but, in a tense and troubled world, sometimes you need a little laughter. Well, checking on what’s new (as usual) on Snopes as usual, I got some. A lot. Think screaming with laughter.

So, here’s what absolutely killed me. I know it wasn’t real, but it sure was funny.

As you might note, there’s a link to a church sign generator. You know I had to play…

I started with some stand alone signs

Then, since I enjoyed the ones on snopes so well, I thought I’d have a sign playing off another…
It’s a great deal of fun and, right now, I think we could all use a laugh. If you like it, try the Church Sign Generator.

RS Classic: The Face of God

2010-08-10T10:57:00.001-05:00

And, finally, the one that talks about what Aron was asking several posts before. Yes, I'm an odd one, as is my concept of God. Read at your own risk.

So, I’ve discussed Heaven or Hell , or my belief in either.

It seems the next logical thing to discuss is my belief in “God”. Since I’m not shy, I shall. However, I remind you that, just because I discuss my own beliefs does not mean I reject or sneer at other beliefs. These are just mine.

In my mind, what God is is not as important as what He isn’t. I believe in a deity that is tolerant, understanding, forgiving, who loves all humans equally, a God who is not disturbed except by people hurting each other unnecessarily. And that’s it.

I don’t know (or care) if God is a he or she or if there are series of them, a conglomerate, even an entity that created “us” (or shaped the natural forces of creation - either way) and left us to our own devices. I don’t know if he’s associated with any of the famous prophets that have lived and initiated religions: Buddha, Mohamed, Jesus Christ, Abraham, but I would not be surprised if they all touched on some of the truth. How much, well…

What I seriously don’t think God is is petty, tyrannical, egocentric, vindictive, intolerant. I don’t think he (she/they) care what belief system someone has (or if) nor do they condone horrific behavior in someone who professes to a particular religion. I don’t think he answers every prayer. I don’t think, actually, that he interferes with us, at least not anymore, like a parent that has done what he could to prepare his children and then left them to fend for themselves. If he does get involved, it is only once in a while, when it serves the greater good.

I can’t imagine any reasonable deity that would allow “righteous” people to hurt/kill others but would turn his (her/their) back on people that do good but don’t follow a particular religion or have a characteristic that isn't "acceptable."

That doesn’t mean that I tell anyone what to believe. Many have tried to convince me to that I’m wrong, that I risk “hell” if I don’t change the way I view things. Too bad. I would go to hell rather than give a petty tyrant God the satisfaction of my worship.

Good thing for me, I don’t believe it’s going to be an issue.

RS Classic: My Thoughts on the Afterlife

2010-08-09T10:38:00.001-05:00

As I mentioned, here's series of wayback articles describing my personal view on Heaven, Hell and God. No one has to agree. No one has to see it the way I see it. It's just the way I see it and my opinion. You are welcome to hold on to your own. If it encourages you to think about it a little more, even better.

Yesterday, I included an email forward in my post so that I could talk about what heaven couldn’t be to me: exclusionary. Nor could I wrap my mind about the concept that a good person could be thrilled at the notion of spending eternity in heaven when everyone who saw life differently, had a different religion, or, in fact, failed to meet the “appropriate” level of sinning was existing in unending torment.

I mentioned at the time that I didn’t believe in Heaven or Hell and I meant it. But, since I think it makes an interesting topic for discussion, I will tell you what I do believe. Before I do, mind you, note that I have no intention of “converting” anyone to my way of thinking. I’m perfectly happy with a belief system of one. If you want to believe in little green men from Alpha Centauri, go right ahead. Ditto if Jesus, Buddha, or Osiris is your God. I’m cool with it.

So, why don’t I believe in Heaven or Hell? Because they don’t make sense to me. I mean, what’s the point? A vacation-land for all eternity - eternity’s a hell of a long time to kick back and do nothing and what a waste. What would be the point of sending us here to learn, to prove ourselves only to spend the rest of eternity retired?

And hell is even stupider. Tormenting people who failed for eternity. To what purpose? It’s not like you can work your way back from Hell. And Satan snatching up souls to beat out God. What for? He get a discount coupon at Starbucks if he gets so many souls? WTF?

Look at the world around you, and the glorious and logical world of nature. Everything has a purpose and is part of the system. Everything performs a function. Nothing is wasted. Now, am I the only one that sees the disconnect?

I guess my view on it is sort of Buddhist/Hindi crossed with a video game. Nature loves to recycle. You live this life, hopefully learning something, hopefully becoming the best you can be. If you die before figuring it out, you start “the level” over again. You’re supposed to grow, to become what whatever deity there is sees as your potential before moving on (and I’ll leave my view of the deity for another time). Once you pull it off, find your enlightenment and live in a way that makes the world a better place, hurting no one unnecessarily - your soul moves on to whatever level comes next.

So I’m not expecting a vacation when I’m through here, but a new struggle, a different test, perhaps a different lesson, a new proving ground. It may not be this life or the next, but I do believe I’m learning. I will beat this level and move on to the next.

And, when we’ve beaten every level and grown up to a mature soul, Heaven then? Pshaw! Why would you help craft something incredible to put it on the shelf? And why would you go through so many lives, learning so much, to not put it to use? I don’t know what my future holds for me, but I sure as heck intend to be useful.

Next time: My view on “God” - which is just as different. Probably.

RS Classic: Apparently I'm Waxing Philosophical

2010-08-08T09:24:00.001-05:00

Since I started talking all this in the here and now, I thought I'd recycle some of my thinking along these lines from before, including what I think of the viewpoint of Christian thinking. As you can see, my opinions haven't changed much.

Something I rarely do is post an email forward. It’s almost impossible to trace them down and give credit and this is not an exception. But, I have a reason for putting up this up, and I’ll explain afterwards.

A man and his dog were walking along a road. The man was enjoying the scenery, when it suddenly occurred to him that he was dead. He remembered dying, and that the dog walking beside him had been dead for years. He wondered where the road was leading them.

After a while, they came to a high, white stone wall along one side of the road. It looked like fine marble. At the top of a long hill, it was broken by a tall arch that glowed in the sunlight.
When he was standing before it he saw a magnificent gate in the arch that looked like mother-of-pearl, and the street that led to the gate looked like pure gold. He and the dog walked toward the gate, and as he got closer, he saw a man at a desk to one side.

When he was close enough, he called out, ‘Excuse me, where are we?’
‘This is Heaven, sir,’ the man answered.
‘Wow! Would you happen to have some water?’ the man asked.
‘Of course, sir. Come right in, and I’ll have some ice water brought right up.’
The man gestured, and the gate began to open.
‘Can my friend,’ gesturing toward his dog, ‘come in, too?’ the traveler asked.
‘I’m sorry, sir, but we don’t accept pets.’
The man thought a moment and then turned back toward the road and continued the way he had been going with his dog.
After another long walk, and at the top of another long hill, he came to a dirt road leading through a farm gate that looked as if it had never been closed. There was no fence.
As he approached the gate, he saw a man inside, leaning against a tree and reading a book..
‘Excuse me!’ he called to the man. ‘Do you have any water?’
‘Yeah, sure, there’s a pump over there, come on in.’
‘How about my friend here?’ the traveler gestured to the dog.
‘There should be a bowl by the pump.’
They went through the gate, and sure enough, there was an old-fashioned hand pump with a bowl beside it.
The traveler filled the water bowl and took a long drink himself, then he gave some to the dog.
When they were full, he and the dog walked back toward the man who was standing by the tree.
‘What do you call this place?’ the traveler asked.
‘This is Heaven,’ he answered.

‘Well, that’s confusing,’ the traveler said. ‘The man down the road said that was Heaven, too.’
‘Oh, you mean the place with the gold street and pearly gates? Nope. That’s hell.’
‘Doesn’t it make you mad for them to use your name like that?’
‘No, we’re just happy that they screen out the folks who would leave their best friends behind.’

Now, why did I do that? I have to be honest, I don’t believe in Heaven or Hell. Seriously.

But, it got me to thinking and that’s the kind of thing I like to spread around. Let us postulate, for entertainment value, that Heaven and Hell did exist. I personally think this sort of set up is perfect. Not just because many animals have souls (duh!), but because this could be the perfect way to differentiate between someone worthy to go to Heaven or Hell.

Think about it.

You walk up to the “Pearly Gates” and meet St. Peter (as far as you know). If, after the description of Heaven (streets of gold, no worries or stress ever, wonderful and perfect in every way, etc) you still wanted to go in (and I find that hard to believe, but we’ll say that sounds good to ya). So, St. Peter starts going to through a screening list. You a Muslim? You a Pagan? You a homosexual? You ever have an abortion? Would you have supported your teenage daughter if she wanted one? Etc. etc. You say no (presumably) to it all, and Peter says, “Well, I can see you’re a righteous person. Come on in.”

Would you go in? Before asking “What if I’d said yes to any of that?” If you’d gone in, no questions asked, I think you’d deserve the Hell you got (and, by the way, the boredom of that just as it described would be Hell to me, too).

Why in hell would heaven be exclusionary? And, if it was, is it where you’d want to be? I think this is one of the aspects of organized religions, particularly the Middle Eastern originating ones (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) that I have the hardest time understanding.

What kind of butthead thinks that sounds like Heaven?

It's kind of between the lines, but I was shooting for the notion that most of us (if not all of us) know someone who wouldn't make the cut as fundamentalists see it. What kind of person waltzes into Heaven blissful with the understanding that these people they know will live in everlasting torment? Aside from what I think that says about "God," I think it says something about the people who believe there is a long list of exclusionary criteria for Heaven. I have to admit, most of the Christians I know don't really think that way or so I truly believe.

RS Classic: What Kind of World Do I Want to Live In?

2010-08-07T22:27:00.003-05:00

Before I delve into the discussions of God and what I think is rational or not, I thought I'd take a trip in the wayback machine to a post I wrote on this same topic (Prop 8) back in November 2008. What do you know, my opinion is the same. You may be seeing that quite frequently. Just goes to show the more things change...

Our new President-elect and the different statewide referendums against gay marriage got me to thinking. Actually, it doesn’t take much; I like thinking. See, I’m like completely colorblind (race-wise) and have been since childhood, in fact, ever as far as I know. Couple reasons for this, not the least of which is the logical way my mind processes things (like why I never smoked. High school friends ask, “Hey, want a smoke?” I respond, with perfect sincerity. “Inhale smoke. On purpose?” - my lack of popularity is probably pretty easy to explain by now.). Why treat any human being different based on something as unimportant as race?

But it occurs to me that there might be some other factors. One of them could be my interest as a youth in science fiction. Think about it. Growing up on Star Trek (the real one) and Heinlein and other science fiction tales, where races of sentient beings extend beyond human, where marriage can be considerably more complex than the standard here, why would someone being dark or tall or oddly hued or mixed race or anything else throw one. Remember, Kirk made it with a green girl. Everything we see in reality is relatively tame by comparison.

It should probably not surprise you, kind reader, that I favor any human being having the right to choose their own life partner. I feel very strongly about a separation of church and state and I’m at a loss as to why people think they have the right to vote away the rights of others. When I’ve discussed this on gather, where I often discuss many of the things I rarely discuss here, I was challenged if we allowed this, what was to stop incest or polygamy?

What indeed? My line is and has always been: consenting adults choosing a lifetime companion hurts no one. Incest has two problems, the genetic one and the fact that, in general, incest involves an adult and a child. I sure as heck don’t condone that, but there are cases where everyone involved is an adult. As for the inbreeding and reinforcement of bad alleles, but steps can be taken to preclude harm. Why, then, must it be precluded automatically if we meet those criteria?

Polygamy/polyandry has a similar problem. The examples we currently see can involve underage girls, pushed by parents, oppressed by men, or situations where one spouse secretly has more than one household. But does it have to be that way? If a group of consenting adults are so close they consider themselves a family, where everyone is cognizant and agreeable to the situation, where’s the harm? The key for me is consenting and adults.

I do read a lot of older and/or classic novels. There’s a tendency to think they’re all clean and filled with regular marriages. Well, not so much. It wasn’t that long ago when first cousins often married and infidelity was considered standard operating procedure.

Then there is science fiction and fantasy. I think back to The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein with its polyandries and line and clan marriages. Heinlein was nothing if not unconventional and many books included “marriage contracts” of a limited duration and creative marriages. It didn’t faze me. Star Trek, as mentioned, has half-breeds and all kinds of race interactions, none of which cause me the slightest hiccup. One of my favorite series of books of all time are those in the Liaden series by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller (which I highly recommend) where matters of race and the mixing of said race are repeatedly a topic, where marriages are nominally contracts and “life-mate” means something special. Other books I’ve read and movies I’ve seen blur the lines frequently. J.D. Robb (aka Nora Roberts) mixes heterosexual and homosexual relationships almost indiscriminately and includes people of all shapes, sizes and proclivities. Actually, the kinds of books I read frequently challenge what’s “normal.” I presume some people like that sense of difference, but, for me, I feel at home. Apparently my “normal” is a little different than many.

Now that I’ve thought about it, it occurs to me, I’m not sure if I’m open-minded because of the books I read or if I read the books I do because I’m open-minded. But I do believe, absolutely, that the world would be a better place if we would stop getting worked up on things that other people do that don’t hurt anyone and could be tolerant of people that might be just a little bit different.

"Normal" People

2010-08-06T19:19:00.003-05:00

Proposition 8 in California was overturned as unconstitutional. It's not news, but it's started an interesting discussion over on Janet Reid's excellent blog. I call it interesting, not because I feel this issue has any fuzz on it - someone else deciding who marries who? - but because I'm frequently amazed at the reasoning people come up with for whatever notions they have. Even if they make no damn sense.

Take this quote:

For many years and for many people *marriage* has always been a sacred covenant between two people and their deity. Not just the Christian god either. Gay *marriage* is an deep and personal affront to that covenant.

I don't know if anyone else noted the inherent contradiction between the first two sentences and the third, but I did. Well, heck, for centuries, marriage was a way to possess women, their wombs and sometimes fortunes. I'm sure there are people who would like to go back to that "sacred" way, too. Nor is homosexual marriage unprecedented. Sometimes history is left behind for a very good reason.

Thing is, someone is entitled to think of marriage however they want. You see it as a sacred right between a man and a woman, by all means marry someone of the opposite gender. The question isn't about changing your personal belief. It's about the concept that you can inflict your belief on someone who feels differently, can keep them from doing something so personal, so life-altering, with a person of their choosing just because you don't think they should be able to. It's the concept that some people think they have the right to take this basic right - the right to choose your own spouse - from others because they're not "normal" and the marriage they want isn't "normal."

Even assuming the majority represents "normal," I have to ask - so what? This country was founded on folks who refused to be normal, who bucked the powers that be that told them who they were, what they should believe, what they could expect from themselves. And that reverence for those that weren't "normal," who were different or odd, for those that thought outside the box or refused to be pigeonholed into one way of thinking is a key element in much of what Americans have accomplished, one reason why ingenuity and originality has been such a part of our history.

Not that we haven't had backward moments or that we didn't restrict many portions of the populace from the same respect and reverence (different races and women, for example). But it's our individual freedoms, our individuality that have, in my opinion, done the most for this country.

These "normal" folks obsessed with those that aren't "normal" (and I personally think there are any number of what I consider normal people who are perfectly comfortable with individuality) are the ones that stand against every advance, every change for the better, every improvement we've ever had, mostly because they want everyone else to become what they see as "normal." I've never been sure why there is this compulsion to make everyone the same, though I don't discount the possibility that insecurity, the need to feel accepted, is part of it. People (many of them normal) I know that are comfortable with who they are don't feel the urge to force others to be as they are. No pro-choice people I know have ever advocated forcing abortions on the unwilling. No homosexual couples I have known have ever worked heterosexuals having relationships.

"Non-normal" people just want to live their lives to suit their own purposes, decide their own futures, be left to live their non-normal lives in peace with the same rights and responsibilities as all the "normal" people. A few decades back, may I remind you, the "non-normal" people were blacks and women.

A few centuries ago, they were the original settlers here.

Just sayin'.

Letting Bad Things Happen

2010-08-03T18:04:00.003-05:00

Some things completely flabbergast me, and this is one of them. Six teens drowned in a river while their friends and families were picnicking close at hand.

Look, I recognize that people do things that are, in hindsight, not too bright. Like sending your kids into a river you think you know well when neither you nor they know how to swim or, apparently, have any effective flotation devices. Not to say that such doesn't sound like a really bad, if not abysmally stupid, idea, but I know there are many things people do that strike me the same way, like shooting guns in the air on New Years or handing one's ten year old an automatic weapon. Like sending your grade school kids off to the unlife-guarded apartment pool alone or letting them wade, waist-deep, in flood waters while lightning strikes in the distance. But those have all happened, too.

Sometimes, people have a poor understanding basic dangers (just as some people inflate those dangers to a degree that similarly defies logic, but that's a different blog post). Hindsight can be painfully humiliating as well as tragic.

But there is one aspect I completely don't understand.

There was a large group of adults handy, apparently, "family and friends". A family friend that was there said, "None of us could swim. They were yelling, 'Help me, help me. Somebody please help me." It was nothing I could do but watch them drown one by one." That's what I just don't understand.

What I don't understand, just can't understand, is how adults of nearly any flavor could knowingly stand on the shore while children drowned, called out for help, called out to be saved. Understanding, of course, that the adults also didn't know how to swim, I still don't get it.

Can't make a line holding hands? Can't tread water? Didn't have anything that could be used as a flotation or reach or grabbable device? A fishing pole? A towel? Something?

How do you live the rest of your life with that? A few years back, I was at a talk by a fireman on safety day who explained, if you're outside a burning house and your kid is inside, you need to stay where you are and not go after them. I understood why he said it, understood his reasoning, understood that I was desperately unqualified to run into a building and save a trapped child, but I told him honestly that, if I was outside a burning building and my child - or any child - was inside, the only way people could keep me out would be with a dog pile. I'd rather be dead than wonder the rest of my life if I could have done something.

Apparently, one person (described as a bystander) jumped in and managed to rescue one teenager so six died instead of seven (and others might have tried), but I'm at a loss to understand how six children (teenagers) could have died that way with no more involvement from the adults there than described. I'm confused and heartbroken and astounded because I know that could never happen around most of the people I know, that they, like me, would rather end up in the bottom of the river themselves than not dive in after them, swimming talent or not.

It's a tragedy and I don't want to dump any more grief on anyone. I feel actually for them, for the people who felt helpless on the side of the river. I feel sorrier for them than I do for the children whose lives were cut short. After all, for the children, their suffering is over.

RS Classic: What's Right About Our Manned Space Program

2010-07-28T22:57:00.003-05:00

I wrote this in 2008 and, although some of the financial data might have changed, my amazement at the achievements has not.

I said I have some opinions about what’s wrong with today’s human space program.

I do, but I need to preface them with saying they are just my opinions. I’m not speaking for my company and I’m not speaking for NASA.

But, before I do that, here’s a little lesson in what amazing things have been done by this country for manned space exploration (and I will probably take some time to do the same for Russia since they have many sizable achievements as well, but today, let’s focus on the US). There are a plethora of wonderful unmanned achievements as well, but, for today, let’s focus on the manned stuff.

The NACA/NASA (and other US agencies) have done some amazing things, some things that we’re trying to duplicate right now and are just about stumped to do, that’s how amazing they were. Let me give you a brief timeline (or you can look it up on Wikipedia if you prefer). And it starts before NASA.

1955: The decision is made to have the Naval Research Laboratory design the first rocket to put a satellite up. Von Braun (with the Army) is told to stop work on his plan using a modified Redstone rocket (his design) and work on mid-range ballistic missiles. He does work on missiles but does so by designing the Jupiter C which, coincidentally, is capable of launching a satellite into orbit.

1957 (October): Russia beats us to the punch by launching Sputnik (and launches a second satellite in November, that same year)

1957 (December): The NRL program tries and fails (spectacularly) to launch the first US satellite. (They were successful in putting up the second US satellite, Vanguard 1, in orbit in March 1958 - and it’s still out there now, though it stopped working and is now debris)

1958 (January): The US launches Explorer 1 on a modified Jupiter C rocket - note that this involved modifying a Jupiter C rocket and building a satellite in 84 days. JPL was impressive even then.

1958 (June): NASA created. Von Braun is working on Saturn rocket concepts.

1960 (July): Von Braun transferred to NASA (on the condition he can still work on the Saturn rockets).

1961: Alan Shepherd is the first US man in space with a suborbital hop on a Redstone rocket.

1962: John Glenn is the first US man to orbit the earth, this time atop an Atlas rocket.

1965: First Gemini mission (2 astronauts)

1967: Apollo 1 Fire.

1968: Orbit the Moon with Apollo 8.

1969: Apollo 11 lands on moon and we walk on it. Apollo 11 is followed by Apollo 12 (1969), Apollo 14 (1971), Apollo 15 (1971), Apollo 16 (1972) and Apollo 17 (1972). Apollo 13 was flown as well but did not land.

1973-1974: Skylab was our first “station” using a Saturn second stage. Russia, by the way, has had several space stations of various sizes and complexity.

1975: Apollo-Soyuz rendezvoused with a Soyuz craft (using Apollo craft).

1981: First Space Shuttle flown. The Space Shuttle was originally conceived in 1968 and planned in 1970.

1998: International Space Station assembly begun.

By the way:

Mercury Program cost $384 million ($2.7 billion in 2007 dollars)
Gemini Program cost $5.4 billion ($ 30+ billion in 2007 dollars)
Apollo Program cost $25.4 billion ($135 billion in 2007 dollars)

Our entire 50 year space program has costs us $810.459 billion. The last 7 years of Iraqi and Afghanistan warfare have cost us $604 billion (per NASA Budget on Wikipedia) [Remember, this was 2008. I suspect they're closer to neck and neck by now.]

You decide which one leaves the kind of legacy we can be proud of.

Just sayin’.

RS Classic: Manned vs. Unmanned

2010-07-25T19:52:00.003-05:00

Since I was asked about why manned spaceflight is so expensive, I thought I'd replay this post that told why I think it's worth it.

Reading the ScienceDebate2008.com responses to the responses, I was struck by something that scared me a little. Somehow, between Apollo and today, many scientists decided that manned space isn’t necessary. I mean, I knew that many regular folks, using their cellphones and watching the hurricane photographs on cable TV, were under the impression that space was of no interest, but I didn’t realize that scientists, perhaps the bulk of them, feel that way. Frightening.

That tells me two things: NASA’s PR stinks and we (I mean scientists, too) bought into a bunch of myths on what’s important. All of us. If scientists aren’t going to fight for space exploration, who’s going to do it?

Few (or at least few in science and engineering) were naysaying that when Apollo was at it’s peak. You want to know what we did on the moon? Let me tell you, we did plenty, plenty like our little robots are working away to do on Mars and plenty those robots will never be able to do. You can read about it on the Apollo Lunar Surface Journals (and I recommend it for any space nuts). This is the real deal and I think we owe it to those pioneers to read those again and remind ourselves why it was we sent people to the surface of the Moon in the first place.

I know the arguments against human spaceflight on the taxpayer’s dollar. I just don’t agree with them.

What has human spaceflight ever done for us? (Usually followed by a list of important issues more deserving of money) A great deal. Space requirements drove solar power, recycling methodologies and waste management systems, remote medical operating systems (used all the time), nonflammable materials, pressure vessels, fuel cells, etc. We found out more about our planet by bringing soil home from the Moon than we ever would have found out otherwise. We’ve learned more about physiology, more about acceleration and low gravity on people. And manned spaceflight inspired us to do so much more in space than we ever would have, including communication for all those fun every day devices that people depend on and think come from who knows where.

Let private industry do it. Folks, I’ve been working in manned spaceflight for nearly 20 years. It isn’t easy. Space is unforgiving and we’ve learned a lot of really really hard lessons along the way. NASA was largely successful, not because they were willing to accept death and failure along the way but because they weren’t. This cavalier attitude by those trying to do it in the private sector, describing rockets that blow up seconds after launch or put equipment in the wrong orbit as “successes,” talking about acceptable losses among paying customers, just demonstrate they really don’t get it. SpaceShip One went up and barely kissed space for a tiny instant, and came down, oscillating wildly. Twice (only one time on the oscillating, I think). That is hell and gone from letting someone spend an appreciable amount of time in the uncompromising and harsh conditions of space, and it didn’t require nearly the same systems that a true spaceship will need. Let me put it a different way. I’ll believe it when I see it. [Editor's note, I've become somewhat more impressed with some commercial work since then. I hope they succeed, truly.]

Part of the problem here is that scientists see manned spaceflight as competing with unmanned scientific space flight endeavors. They see that because that’s exactly what has happened. Space and space endeavors are badly underfunded, with goals that change with the politicians in office, plans that sounded great on paper that are ungainly, expensive and impractical to the point of impossibility in the light of day, contractors get paid whether they work or not and a wealth of technological and scientific decisions are made by political “necessity.” You rob Peter to pay Paul all day, every day, it’s not mystery what you’ll accomplish: not a damn thing. That kind of thinking leads to foreclosure and a cardboard box under the underpass for regular people. In gov’t, it means you spend a lot of money to walk away with very little.

When manned programs, which are expensive, need more than they’re alloted, unmanned programs get crunched. But that isn’t manned spaceflight’s fault - it’s bad management (which is at least a whole blog of its own that I’ll do later) by the government. If you spent all your money on your electricity bill so that you can’t pay the water bill, does that mean you shouldn’t have electric lights? Or that you just haven’t managed your money correctly.

Unmanned space exploration is an excellent investment for any industrialized nation. There are things you can learn about the sun and radiation and astronomy and the weather that human spaceflight will never teach us. And vice versa, especially if we start actually exploring with people again. It isn’t that one can give us everything and one can’t. Neither can get us everything, but they complement each other wonderfully. It is foolish and unnecessary that they’re competing.

We spend hundreds of billions on the military every year, 10x more than any other nation and more than the rest of the world combined. Hundreds of billions. We spend 20-25 billion on space. In my opinion, it isn’t that we should have to choose between them, it’s that we need to find a smart way to do both.

The Love of Learning

2010-07-20T20:42:00.002-05:00

First an announcement: For the next two months, I'm forgoing tarot questions on Ask Me Anything. Up until recently, I was getting a steady supply of those and, truthfully, they're generally not very interesting for anyone but the questioner. On October 1, I'll open it back up to tarot questions, but I'm going to limit the number to two per month so people can still come here to learn more general stuff.

Now, here's why. For a while there, all I was getting were tarot questions. Now, I offered to do tarot readings and I'm not begrudging what I did. What I discovered, however, with post after post that wasn't really pertinent to anyone but the questioner was that readers were losing interest. I don't have a lot of them, but the ones I've had, consistently, weren't bothering to check it any more.

That made me sad.

Worse, I was losing interest myself. One reason I wanted to do Ask Me Anything is because I don't know everything so, in almost every case when someone asked me a question, I learned something. It is only the past week when I had a handful of thought-provoking, research-requiring questions that I realize how much I had missed questions like that, digging into the meat of it, having to explain why I thought the way I did.

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

I'd missed it. Terribly. So, in the interest of enjoying my Ask Me Anything blog and learning a little something something whenever I can, I'm closing it off to tarot questions until October (which is a good month to start 'em back up) and I'm limiting the number to two a month.

RS Classic: Uber Cool Nerd God

2010-07-18T06:33:00.005-05:00

In 2009 I discovered something that will surprise probably none of you. . .

NerdTests.com says I'm an Uber Cool Nerd God. Click here to take the Nerd Test, get nerdy images and jokes, and write on the nerd forum! So, it’s official. I’m an “Uber Cool Nerd God” according to the “Nerd Test .” For those of you saying, “Well, duh, you’re a nerd,” hey, I’m not saying it’s a surprise. Though it is gratifying to be a nerd GOD. Anything worth doing is worth over doing.

Now, as we know, it’s Thieving Thursday [well, it was] and that’s cool because I saw this test on Kirsten’s Soccer Mom Files blog . I wasn’t among the elite few invited to take the test but I figured this was one that was right up my alley. And it was.

The surprise, though, was that I was also “Uber Cool.” Now, I was always of the impression that nerd and cool were mutually exclusive. Did something change when I wasn’t looking? Something happen since I was in high school and was so far from cool that I was effectively Mt. Vesuvius? It should be noted that, though a beautiful girl (though I didn’t know it at the time), I was also a boy/man repellent of surpassing talent. Usually, it only took 30 seconds.

Him: So what’s your major?
Me: Engineering Physics
Him: Well, gotta go.

Anyway, now that my beautiful girl days are long behind me and I know longer hang with any people that actually see my face, I went and got Uber Cool. Talk about a waste. Still, I’m oddly gratified.

For the record, my husband (who can’t walk through a mall without being followed by wistful young girls and has many fawning minions on his chat server) was a “Dorky High Nerd” while my daughter, who is gorgeous and young and hangs with the angsty crowd was actually a “Highly Dorky Nerd Queen.” I don’t think being dorky bothered my husband nearly as much as not being as nerdy as he wanted to be.

I went and found the “original Nerd Test ,” too, but I’m still up there in nerdiness. It’s *gasp* not a fluke!

I am nerdier than 94% of all people. Are you a nerd? Click here to take the Nerd Test, get geeky images and jokes, and write on the nerd forum!

The next blog , Kirsten challenged me to take the “Sanity Test .” You’ll be unsurprised to note that I’m apparently “Kinda Insane.” [Note that the linking was lost some time between then and now. Links to the tests are in the text.]

Yeah, I thought so.

So, you willing to take the challenge?

RS Classic: Saturday Quote-a-Thon - Technology-ish

2010-07-17T18:27:00.003-05:00

In keeping with the Uber Cool Nerd God Theme [I'll explain tomorrow], I went searching through my long list of quotes for technology related quotes. This is the first batch. I hope you enjoy them.

The big corporations are suddenly taking notice of the web, and their reactions have been slow. Even the computer industry failed to see the importance of the Internet, but that’s not saying much. Let’s face it, the computer industry failed to see that the century would end.
–Douglas Adams

“But eventually you’ll solve my problem, right?”
“Sure, if your problem is too much optimism.”
From Dogbert’s Tech Support
–Scott Adams

I found some numbers that support your strategic plan. I had to take the square root of a negative number to do it. The timeline is on this mobius strip.
–Scott Adams

If you have any trouble sounding condescending, find a UNIX user to show you how it’s done.
–Scott Adams

Generations of presenters have adopted the K.I.S.S principle — Keep It Simple Stupid. This is the K.I.S.S. of D.E.A.T.H. for audience concentration, however. The speaker, sensing inattention, simplifies still more. This downward spiral ends in the Lucidity Paradox: the speaker’s points eventually become so clear they disappear.
–Dale Dauten

For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.
–Richard Feynman

An education isn’t how much you have committed to memory, or even how much you know. It’s being able to differentiate between what you do know and what you don’t.
–Anatole France

If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
–John Kenneth Galbraith

The difference between science and the fuzzy subjects is that science requires reasoning, while those other subjects merely require scholarship.
–Robert Heinlein

Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped.
–Elbert Hubbard

Genius, in truth, means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way.
–William James

Accomplishing the impossible means only that the boss will add it to your regular duties.
–Doug Larsen

For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
–H.L. Mencken

A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing.
–Emo Phillips

Don’t push the on-button if you don’t know where the off-button is.
–Solomon Short

RS Classic: Single Point Failures

2010-07-16T21:21:00.003-05:00

Written in 2008.

On NASAWatch, they noted loss of a single component brought down the entire NASA email system (this just after they were down for nearly a week because the server goes through JSC only, so the hurricane [Ike] affected all NASA mail). There are few things, technologically, more irksome, more certain to fail, and more embarrassing when they do so, than single point failures.

Failure tolerance is a good thing. It’s the best defense there is against Murphy’s law. At one time, NASA strived to meet the principle of Fail Operational, Fail Safe. That meant that any single failure did not affect function (or at least not critical function). A second failure might leave the hardware nonfunctional, but it would leave it safe - if the function is critical, of course, nonfunctional is not safe. Even more, it ensured that there were at least three failures required before reaching an unsafe condition.

Now, of course, that isn’t always possible. A nuclear reactor containment vessel is unlikely to be redundant. Extra wings on a plane in case one shears off is likely less than useful. Sometimes adding redundancy and additions paths adds so much complexity, weight, etc. that the design becomes ridiculously unwieldy.

But, in general, it’s a good thing. If 12 bolts can bear all the stress necessary, adding one or two other bolts allows for failure without compromising the overall capability. (This is especially important in space endeavors where a stripped or broken bolt may not be recoverable). If one can accommodate redundancy, especially with unreliable equipment, it’s smart engineering practice to do so. This is more true when hazards can result from failure.

So, if a complex or key system fails because of a single component or a readily foreseeable circumstance, that argues poor engineering. Bad in real life…

But it’s damn useful in science fiction. You want to make an interesting story, twist the plot, add hardship, shake things up a bit? Have a critical component fail. You want to add tension, pressure, up the excitement? Make your critical item one of a kind, no spares, hard to come by, made of something scarce and/or requiring interaction with someone hostile to recover it? Do so, and suddenly things are hot and exciting.

Just remember not to use this little trick too often because, if you do, your engineers will look like total morons or it will become cliché. Not that it isn’t a little cliché already thanks to Star Trek and the like. But it’s still good for excitement if you can exercise a little restraint.

Having said that, I'm not a personal fan of changing the two fault tolerance (fail operational/fail safe) philosophy to a more amorphous fault tolerance highly dependent on probabilistic risk assessment (PRA(and design to minimum risk (which can not be applied to all hardware). NPR 8705.2B, the standard for human rating required by NASA, used to dictate 2 fault tolerance for catastrophic failures. By requiring that, vendors and designers were required to provide redundancy or justify each instance where it was not provided [paragraph 3.1.1 in Rev A, 3.2.2 in Rev B]. In the version released in May 2008, this was undone. Rev B is the current version.

Old version: "Space systems shall be designed so that no two failures result in crew or passenger fatality or permanent disability." [Note that there were caveats in the next requirement for exceptions, but the exceptions had to be brought to management]

New version: "The space system shall provide failure tolerance to catastrophic events (minimum of one failure tolerant), with the specific level of failure tolerance (one, two or more) and implementation (similar or dissimilar redundancy) derived from an integrated design and safety analysis (per the requirement in paragraph 2.3.7.1)(Requirement). Failure of primary structure, structural failure of pressure vessel walls, and failure of pressurized lines are excepted from the failure tolerance requirement provided the potentially catastrophic failures are controlled through a defined process in which approved standards and margins are implemented that account for the absence of failure tolerance. Other potentially catastrophic hazards that cannot be controlled using failure tolerance are excepted from the failure tolerance requirements with concurrence from the Technical Authorities provided the hazards are controlled through a defined process in which approved standards and margins are implemented that account for the absence of failure tolerance. "

I'm not objecting because PRA isn't usefuluseful (it is) but because I've seen a great deal of misuse of good models with bad assumptions or limited understanding of the uncertainties and caveats. Not necessarily by the analysts but by those feeding them data and those wanting "an answer" without taking the trouble to understand what that answer really means. And, I have to say, changing a straight-forward requirement into a morass of legalese, well it just gives this old safety engineer the willies. Requirements should be clear and verifiable.

RS: The Solar Sail That Never Was

2010-07-12T20:09:00.003-05:00

Given the success in work of Japan's IKAROS, currently eleven million miles away and accelerating using the power of photons, I thought this was a good time to resurrect this classic. For those interested, I'm more than willing to expand on the subject. After all, once in a while, we even talk about rocket science. For now, though, enjoy.

Bob Johnson of Black Holes and Astrostuff asked me a question about solar sails on my “Ask the Rocket Scientist” post . As I answered him, it kind of pushed me to reminisce about the solar sail that never was. I thought some of you (or at least one of you) might be interested in the one I helped design.

See, back a billion years ago when I was going to college (1989), I took several high level aeronautics courses for my required high level engineering courses. Since most Engineering Physics student go the Electrical Engineering Emphasis route (which I detested), it turns out I missed some prerequisite courses no one ever brought to my attention, until, of course, it was too late. Therefore, as they classes were advanced design, I was at a serious disadvantage. At the end of my senior year, we had the choice of designing a fighter aircraft or designing a solar sail for an AIAA contest. I went with solar sail for two reasons. First, my lack of aircraft designing experience wasn’t a factor; we were all starting from scratch. Secondly, I thought this was way cooler.

It was a design team and there were five of us. Since some of us were graduating before the deadline (Summer 1989), one of those who were not volunteered to be leader. We separated into five responsibilities: I would do research on solar sails, design the general overall design and do materials (I can’t remember if I was assigned the second part or if it just worked out that way), someone would do navigation, someone would design the payload, someone would design the control scheme and someone (the leader) would put it all together.

Finding out about solar sails was great fun. I loved the research, and, as soon as I’d read that the circular ones were the most efficient (but no one had figured out how to deploy them), I became convinced we needed a circular one. But how to deploy? Now, in the world of solar sails, you either spin it (circular or heliogyro) or you build a frame. So, what I thought would be best is to fold it up like an umbrella - not wrapped around a pole, but flat along radians. Then, the flat side is rolled around a kick motor (required to bump it up beyond low earth orbit and the residual atmosphere) before unfurling. But the unfurling was my brainstorm: put a rim of flexible material around the surface and inflate it.
But control of a spinning sail is not without its headaches and you need a way of controlling attitude (heliogyro ones change the pitch of the particular blades–JPL’s proposed rendezvous craft was planned as a bladed solar sail). So, since I was in charge of materials, I found a polymer that would harden when exposed to radiation (already being used for space applications). The advantage to using this was that, if the inflating gas leaked away after inflation, it wouldn’t matter after six hours. Additionally, since this provided a lightweight frame as well as a way of deploying the sail, we didn’t have to spin it. The control guy took off with that and we used the payload on four guy wires attached to the rim to control it by changing the center of gravity. I designed the sail out of 2 mil (50.8 micrometer) thick mylar with a 0.2 mil (5.08 micrometer) layer of aluminum. Kevlar cable (their thinnest filament) was used as ripstop along with the glue applied concentrically and along the radial seams. Rip-stopping was vital because Mylar tears like nothing when punctured and micrometeoroids (and, though I didn’t know it at the time, orbital debris) was a serious concern.

Our payload guy was going to wrap the payload in gold foil and we were going to call the beauty “The Heart of Gold” which was both fun and cool (and if you don’t know why, you need to read Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy). Another of the graduating team members (and, interestingly enough, the only other female) did the navigation and she and I completed extensive write ups before we graduated (out of necessity). I provided our leader with some 34 pages of tightly written text, well within the confines of the requirements and our navigator wrote in detail, very clearly with excellent graphics. And we didn’t see it again until after it had been submitted.

We didn’t win.

We shouldn’t have.

I don’t know if we had the best concept, but, if we had, we still didn’t deserve the prize. After our graduation, our “leader” changed the name to “The Golden Hind” for reasons I never understood or agreed with. Most of my text had been axed and what was left no longer made sense. He had “simplified” much of it so that it was not only unclear but, in many places, um, wrong. The navigation graphics were replaced with a cartoon that, literally, showed the Earth at the center of the solar system. *Sigh*

To this day, there are few things I hate professionally more than leaving a project (still with my name on it) halfway. It happens, but I hate it. But it’s never been as bad as that in all the years since, so at least that’s something.

Cool stuff. Gotta love space.

RS Classics: Saturday Quote-a-thon - Words of Wisdom I

2010-07-10T18:11:00.002-05:00

So, since we were dealing with an angsty teen, I decided to provide the kind of words of wisdom the young are so unlikely to heed until it’s too late. Or maybe I’m doing them a disservice. These are among my favorites, though I should add that I have many more. It’s just the tip of the iceberg and all for you to enjoy.

We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.
–Albert Einstein

A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.
–Dwight D. Eisenhower

Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow.
–Ralph Waldo Emerson

Don’t bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself.
–William Faulkner

Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.
–Douglas Adams

The blackest billingsgate, the most ungentlemanly insolence, the most yahooist brutality, is patently endured, countenanced, propagated, and applauded. But touch a solemn truth in collision with the dogma of a sect, though capable of the clearest proof, and you will soon find you have disturbed a nest, and the hornets will swarm about your eyes and hand, and fly into your face and eyes.
–John Adams

It is ridiculous to lay the blame of our wrong actions upon external causes, rather than on the facility with which we ourselves are caught by such causes.
-Aristotle

When law and morality contradict each other, the citizen has the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense or losing his respect for the law.
–Frederic Bastiat

As scarce as truth is, the supply has always been in excess of the demand.
–Josh Billings

I have observed that the world has suffered far less from ignorance than from pretensions to knowledge. It is not skeptics or explorers but fanatics and ideologues who menace decency and progress. No agnostic ever burned anyone at the stake or tortured a pagan, a heretic, or an unbeliever.
–Daniel Boorstin

Appeasers believe that if you keep on throwing steaks to a tiger, the tiger will become a vegetarian.
–Heywood Broun

Aim at perfection in everything, though in most things it is unattainable. However, they who aim at it, and persevere, will come much nearer to it than those whose laziness and despondency make them give it up as unattainable.
–Philip Dormer Stanhope, Lord Chesterfield

You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.
–Winston Churchill

Power will intoxicate the best hearts, as wine the strongest heads. No man is wise enough, nor good enough to be trusted with unlimited power.
–Charles Caleb Colton

Common experience shows how much rarer is moral courage than physical bravery. A thousand men will march to the mouth of the cannon where one man will dare espouse an unpopular cause.
–Clarence Darrow

Why are CEO’s who slash jobs so proud of themselves? Instead of bragging about “cutting fat,” they ought to be getting up before their employees and saying, “We did such a lousy job of planning and hiring that we have more people than work. And we are so broke and so dim-witted that we can’t come up with any way to get more work. So our only solution is to send a lot of good people home. I am ashamed and I am sorry.”
–Dale Dauten

Let no man turn aside, ever so slightly, from the broad path of honor, on the plausible pretence that he is justified by the goodness of his end. All good ends can be worked out by good means.
–Charles Dickens

Man has such a predilection for systems and abstract deductions that he is ready to distort the truth intentionally, he is ready to deny the evidence of his senses only to justify his logic.
–Fyodor Doestoyvsky

By themselves, character and integrity do not accomplish anything. But their absence faults everything else.
–Peter Drucker

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.
–Thomas Edison

Baby With the Bath Water

2010-07-08T16:16:00.004-05:00

I love my readers. Both The Mother and Rocketscienist (not me, a different one) gave me the perfect opportunity to expand my last post in the direction I wanted. The Mother by providing an example of what can go wrong by overreacting to a poorly thought out regulation and Rocketscienist by noting that we don't live in a binary world, even if we treat it like it is.

See, this was all triggered by a frustrating discussion I had with some tin whisker experts who began bemoaning the repercussions of RoHS ("Why won't they listen to the scientists?") and then turn and say all environmentalists are stupid and short-sighted, all regulation is wrong and then segway into the fact that global warming is "disproved." Global warming, you know, that environmental issue brought forward by scientists.

/slaps head

First off, there's nothing that makes an expert look stupid like bemoaning the fact he's not given credence and then dismissing other experts as hacks based on the same popular media they were just condemning. As I expostulated here. Hypocrisy only makes the hypocrite look bad (well, and gives all scientists, including themselves, a bad name. Sigh.)

But secondly, there's a logical fallacy in the attitude if there's one "bad" regulation, they must all be bad. Not that the notion that "all bad things" can be eliminated with legislation is more logical. Too often, people respond to something wrong as a condemnation of everything similar.

For instance, the regulation The Mother mentioned is a case in point. The CFC regulations have been working. Although the ozone will be affected for a long time, the CFC concentrations that led to the anomaly have been noticeably reduced. That's a good thing for the world as a whole and a significant population of people. Not excluding inhalers from this regulation (inhalers likely had minimal impact on the overall CFC release) was short-sighted. I have to mention, though, that there IS an exception made for medical inhalers and some other uses and even a stock of CFCs for that particular purpose. I'll also add that that was likely an afterthought.

The problem isn't that something should have been done (or not). The key is doing the job smartly (and I can't disagree that politics often drives regulations far more than data or anything resembling sense). But that doesn't mean regulation is a bad thing - that's implementation, not the concept.

What's more, the right thing to do on one topic doesn't dictate the right thing to do on another topic. I'm of the opinion that a ban on lead for all electrical components is, indeed, a bad idea. However, there are likely components where lead removal would have little or no consequences. And, if I did think the whole thing was whacked, it doesn't follow that ALL environmental regulation is garbage.

I'm not objective. My father died of asbestosis. My father worked for EPA, whose efforts have gone a long way to improving water quality, reducing pollution, and, yes, reducing the likelihood that the next generation will have to worry about dying of asbestosis. Ironically, he also died from environmental causes after wading, hip-deep, through every toxic muck from one end of this country to another trying to figure out how to clean it up. So I get irked when someone tells me all environmental regulation is nonsense. They died to help the rest of us. I know an awful lot about how bad it used to be that we, who haven't lived with rivers that can be lit on fire, can't appreciate.

I also know that anything can be taken too far (like, say, some of the folks at PETA).

The answer isn't one extreme or the other. It's not all in the middle or slanting to one side. There isn't one answer or one solution. It's not no government or too much government. It's not all or nothing. It's not yes or no. There is no one answer for all our problems.

There are, however, potential solutions for each problem (or linked problems collectively). It's making the right rules, not just blanket rules. It's listening to the experts, doing one's homework and doing one's best to do the right thing - even if you have to change gears or backtrack later as, as rocketscienist pointed out, you discover what you did had unforeseen repercussions.

But, as long as people are willing to make kneejerk judgments based on what political party they are or what they're told they should think, as long as they characterize any group of people with extreme names instead of addressing the specific issues (eco-terrorist, for example, or hmm, I can't think of a conservative one - maybe someone can help me out) instead of looking at the data and working toward a smart solution, the pendulum will keep swinging back and forth.

And crashing into us coming and going.

Not that I'm opinionated or anything. :)

RoHS and Regulating Smartly

2010-07-06T18:01:00.003-05:00

I am all for doing the smart thing when it comes to our environment. I understand (quite well) that asbestosis and many other environmental lung disorders will be a thing of the past largely because of regulation. I know that the EPA has had a significant impact on the environment, and most of it was good. I know that California's tight air quality regulations have drastically reduced the air pollution in cities that used to be lost under smog. I've heard of creeks/rivers so polluted they could catch on fire and I'm grateful that, except off the Gulf Coast (thanks to the oil spill), that's also a rarity in this country.

And I know regulations involving lead in paint, gasoline and children's toys are a huge factor in why the lead level in this generation's children is much lower than it was in the generations that came before. But that doesn't mean that every ban is the right thing to do, even for something as dangerous as lead.

The Restriction of Hazardous Substances Directive, is a directive of the European Union intended to reduce dangerous heavy metals and two flame retardant materials in industrial wastes. Great idea, largely. There can be as much as 2 kg of lead in a cathode ray tube (which are going the way of the dinosaur) and more lead in many other components. To date, I've heard little to no complaining about those aspects of the regulation. In fact, in my technical part of the world, all I hear complaining about is lead-free solder and pure tin (i.e. lead-free) plating.

Now, before I go further on this, let me mention two things. First, I'd take this (RoHS) a lot more seriously if batteries (both those with cadmium and those with lead acid) were part of this directive - they're not. There is a battery directive that limits cadmium, but not lead, although it promotes more battery recycling. But, at this point, 90% of the lead put in products today is used in batteries. I have to say, dealing with the rest of the lead while leaving the lead battery issue largely untouched is much like closing the gate once the horse has left.

Secondly, though I have concerns about the lead-free solder, there are some uses where lead-free solder might be the right choice, for various reasons. But not always.

Now there's a whole list of issues with lead-free solder. but what I want to focus on here are those that result from the use of pure-tin plating: tin whiskers. Because reducing a tiny fraction of the lead in the environment (there must be natural sources of lead in the environment, too, right? That's where we get it... Sorry, distracted) is only the right thing to do if the cost for doing so (i.e the good of the consumer) isn't higher.

In this case, I don't think it is. Sure, in most cases of consumer electronics, the power source is small (like a battery, not covered by the RoHS) enough that metal vapor arcing is unlikely. Which means that, worst case, you get a short that shorts it out - and it's broken - and, best case, it's just an intermittent irritation. But some plugged in electronics have the power, and to spare, to create metal vapor arcing, which can not only destroy the electronics, but everything around it, readily causing a fire. High price for a few grams of lead. And, given the ubiquitous nature of electronics, a design that allows the arc once can allow it over and over again. A number of metal vapor arc failures happened in designs that included circuit protection I might add.

After all, RoHS just applies to consumer products. Which is great. Unless, say, your consumer product happens to be a car, which has a fairly high power electric system with more than enough power to induce metal vapor arcing. But, even if it doesn't burst on fire while you're driving, imagine what an intermittent power or data short can do to an electronically controlled car like most of us drive.

But, let's assume that consumer electronics are "perfectly safe" with minimal impact. Unfortunately, with the vast bulk of consumer electronics requiring lead-free electronics, parts with plating containing sufficient lead to preclude whiskering will become either impossible to find or prohibitively expensive for those applications where high reliability parts are essential.

Like medical equipment like apnea monitors and pacemakers, which are specifically exempt from the RoHS requirements (at this time), but that have had to be recalled because of tin whisker failures.

Or commercial satellite failures, which, while no one was hurt, were very very expensive. Or military equipment like planes and missiles. Or the Space Shuttle. The military, NASA and the FDA have specific prohibitions against pure tin plating, yet they've all been struck with tin whiskers from parts that got through the system.

Or there was this, the tripping of a nuclear reactor by the lowly tin whisker (and there are multiple other examples of nuclear scrams and pre-trips of nuclear reactors from the same cause). And there are more failures no one's willing to admit to except as an anecdote.

(For those who have become fascinated, check out the interesting stuff on silver whiskers and zinc whiskers, the latter having taken out whole highly redundant computer centers).

The lesson I want to impart here is that we need to be careful and cautious about what we do to the environment and ourselves, but we need to understand the implications of trying to make everything "perfect." Regulations (if they're smart) can do tremendous good, preventing such catastrophes as we see off in the Gulf right now (an abject lesson in lax regulation). But a regulation that does not take sufficient account of the consequences, can be just as destructive and short sighted.

We need to be smart about regulation instead of one extreme or the other.

RS Classic: What Do You Know About Tin Whiskers?

2010-07-02T17:31:00.003-05:00

I have a specific reason for redoing this one right now. I'll repost this because it's (I think) a good intro into the subject and carry forward over the next days as I see fit.

On today’s menu is another real something that has tremendous potential in the plot of a book (particularly science fiction, though any contemporary book could use it): tin whiskers.

Never heard of them, you say? Well, get some popcorn and sit back. Tin whiskers are cool, they’re scary, and we might be hearing much more about these before you know it. See, two years ago, I had never heard of them either. Last year [2007], I wrote a paper on them (You can also find the presentation). The subject is fascinating.

See, certain metals and alloys, particularly when used as a plating, will start to grow slim little hairs of metal. One of them is tin. Most never get more than a few mm long, but others have grown cm long under the right circumstances. Here’s a great picture of some we found in avionics boxes used to control reaction jets and aerosurfaces on the Orbiter (see page 5 of the presentation linked). If they bridge a gap with some power, but not too much, they just fuse and evaporate. If it’s a data connection, they can change a control, turn something on that shouldn’t be, for instance. But, if it has power and the conditions are right, you can get something call metal vapor arcing that will make a big unholy mess. I have some pictures in my linked presentation and paper, but there are other examples at the source for all things metal whiskery: Goddard’s Tin Whisker Website (where you can find the paper and presentation I wrote here and here). For the science minded, this is a treasure trove of data, stories, pictures, videos, pointers, etc. of all kinds of metal whiskers, well worth wandering through. All photos here link to the Goddard website.

Tin whiskers are not a new phenomena. We discovered them the hard way in the 50’s. However, it was discovered early that adding as little as 3% lead to the mix mitigated the whisker problem. But, tin plating is quick, simple, cheap, environmentally friendly and there’s no lead waste to worry over, so tin plated components began working their way into critical circuits. Tin whiskers have been blamed for losing several satellites and the redundant string for others, tripping a nuclear reactor, issues and a major recall on pacemakers, and several ugly accidents with metal vapor arcing. Really, check out those anecdotes.

Tin isn’t the only metal. Zinc and cadmium are also prone to whiskering. Zinc whiskering is becoming a serious concern in computer server facilities. Zinc whisker grows from the galvanized metal shielding on the underside of floor tiles in these facilities. When they go to upgrade or do work below, the floor tiles are lifted up and often shoved over the other floor tiles, shearing the unseen whiskers off and letting them drop into the crawlspace below. When they restart the system, the ventilation, which often flows underneath the floor, picks these whiskers up and sends them right into the computers. Huge, highly redundant server systems have been disabled this way. Really, read about it here or you can just stumble over many resources at the Goddard Tin Whisker Website. They’ve even found lead whiskers, gold whiskers and silver whiskers (though the latter is a different mechanism that grows silver whiskers like mad in a suphur rich environment. See this).

No one’s entirely sure what causes metal whiskers or what factors slow or speed the process. Whiskers may not grow for years and then grow very fast. Others might grow quickly from the beginning.

OK, so this is all cool in a geeky kind of way. So, how is this useful for fiction? Well, whiskers are an effective way to screw up all kinds of redundancy, which is frequently used to mitigate risk for space craft, with one mechanism. It’s one reason why NASA has severe restrictions on the use of pure tin plating. But, it’s not necessarily on the minds of regular people either, so this may not even be on the radar for commercial electronics. That makes it a potential factor in electric cars or planes or, in fact, anything that has critical functions that is governed by electronics. And remember, though we may come up with some way of beating them this time, a generation from now, we might forget about them all over again and have to learn it all over.

Penny Wise, Pound Foolish

2010-06-30T23:09:00.003-05:00

Dell's woes are in the news, how they had potentially millions of business/education computers with faulty motherboards.

There's quite a story there. Apparently, there was a family of electrolytic aluminum capacitors manufactured in Taiwan that became very popular even though they were only a fraction less expensive than the Japanese parts. Millions were used only to find that they were counterfeit, using an flawed formula that caused failure, often within six months.

Dell, of course, was not the only victim of these counterfeit parts. Many were duped (estimated cost of this specific set of faulty capacitors was estimated at $100 million (though I'm not sure that tally's done). Many no doubt had to replace equipment as a result. Dell's reaction stands out because of the denial of problems and replacing defective parts with more defective parts. You know, sharing the pain.

But the part that gets me is that the thinking that allows a counterfeit part to get into critical equipment, the thinking that saving a penny today without understanding the repercussions is fine. It's behind the BP fiasco. It's behind many so many companies being taken in by counterfeiters, too. They don't take the trouble - after all, many times, the consumer will be the one to suffer if the parts fail earlier than intended with minimal repercussions on their own.

But, as BP and Dell both know now, that thinking can backfire, rather dramatically.

We need to be thinking of this kind of thing as we make decisions today. I understand how tempting it can be to save a penny here and there today and figure that will do. But, in the long run, doing it right the first time always costs less than redoing it, particularly after it's been put into use, put into space, put in a critical component.

Often much much more.

Venus

2010-06-29T17:50:00.003-05:00

Have I ever mentioned that Venus was my favorite planet? I mean, aside from the one I live on? Pretty. Jewel-like, in many ways, our earth's twin. Venus.

Venus is beautiful, only a fraction smaller than our planet and the closest one to us, a just a step nearer the sun. There are volcanoes on Venus but no moon (though one was repeatedly observed early on - read about it here) and it can generally be seen with the naked eye (often called "The Evening Star"). It is, in fact, the brightest object in the night besides the sun and moon.

But it's isn't friendly. The temperature is over 450 degrees C and the pressure is 90 times our own. Carbon dioxide predominates in that atmosphere leading to a runaway greenhouse effect that makes the surface, hidden shyly beneath thick sulfurous clouds, an inferno.

Unlike our planet, cloaked with a strong magnetic field second only to Jupiter's, Venus has no magnetic field. It also rotates backwards and very very slowly. It takes 243 days for it to rotate once about its axis. In fact, it rotates so slowly, the day is more than 18 days longer than a Venusian year. (The orbit, itself, is not retrograde, though it is the most circular of all the planets' orbits.) Venus approaches closer than any other planet to Earth and, for reasons we're not entirely sure of, always shows us the same face.

The real question, I think, for many of us science, space and science fiction geeks is, was it always like that? Did it once have water, perhaps life before either its position, its atmosphere or some cataclysm changed the dynamic?

I don't know when, if ever, we'll know about life or if it changed for some specific reason, but we're figuring out the answer to if it ever had water today, thanks to ESA's Venus Express (and here), we are gathering data that tells us that Venus did once have considerably more water than it has now.

Fascinating stuff, Venus. By the way, in 2012 we'll have another transit of Venus, where Venus travels right between the Earth and the Sun. Although it happened in 2004, it's a rare occurance, once we won't see again until 2117. Check it out!

RS Classic: Saturday Quote-a-Thon - Movie Quotes

2010-06-26T15:57:00.001-05:00

Gotta love the movies.

Still, since we’re in movie quote mode, I might as well show some quotes I keep on my quote list mostly ’cause they make me laugh. Some I gathered from Wikiquote at one point or another or from IMDB in the past. Some are from memory, so no promises I didn’t flub a couple, but you get the gist.

Ms. Perky: People perceive you as somewhat…
Kat: Tempestuous?
Ms. Perky: “Heinous bitch” is the term used most often. You might want to work on that.
-From 10 Things I Hate About You

Father: Hello, Kat, made anyone cry today?
Kat: Sadly, no, but it’s only 4:30.
-From 10 Things I Hate About You

Ms. Perky: You’ll be pleased to know his testicle retrieval operation was successful.
Kat: I still maintain he kicked himself in the balls.
-From 10 Things I Hate About You

Dionne Davenport: Hello! There was a stop sign.
Cher Horowitz: I totally paused.
-From Clueless

Josh Lucas: If I ever saw you do anything that wasn’t 90% selfish I’d die of shock.
Cher Horowitz: Oh, that’d be reason enough for me.
-From Clueless

Mel: Anything happens to my daughter, I got a .45 and a shovel, I doubt you would be missed.
-From Clueless

Morticia: Margaret, about the séance tonight, I wish you’d come. It’s Gomez. I’m terribly worried about him. He won’t eat, he can’t sleep, he keeps coughing up blood.
Margaret: He coughs up blood?
Morticia: Well, not like he used to.
-From The Addams Family

Insanity runs in my family. It practically gallops.
-Mortimer Brewster in Arsenic and Old Lace

[on telephone] Hello… Operator? Can you hear my voice? You can? Are you sure? [Hangs up] Well, then I must not be dreaming.
-Mortimer Brewster in Arsenic and Old Lace

I love it when mothers get so mad they can’t remember your name. “Come here, Roy, er, Rupert, er, Rutabaga… what is your name, boy? And don’t lie to me, because you live here, and I’ll find out who you are.
-From Bill Cosby: Himself

Vance: [after telling Hitch that he only wants a girl so he can sleep with her] No, I was told that you help guys get in there.
Alex Hitch Hitchens: Right, but see, here’s the thing - my clients actually like women. “Hit it and quit it” is not my thing.
Vance: Let me make one thing clear to you, rabbi, I need professional help.
Alex Hitch Hitchens: Well, that is for damn certain
-From Hitch

Vance: [grabs Hitch by the wrist] You see what I’m doing? This is what I’m about - power suit, power tie, power steering. People can wince, cry, beg, but eventually they do what I want.
Alex Hitch Hitchens: Oh! So that’s, like, a metaphor?
Vance: Oh, yeah.
Alex Hitch Hitchens: Right. Well, see, I’m more of a literal kind of guy. So when I do this… [he reverses the grip, twists Vance’s arm back and slams him on the table]
Alex Hitch Hitchens: This is more like me saying that I will literally break your shit off if you ever touch me again. Okay, pumpkin?
-From Hitch

Moses - “The lord Jehovah has given you these fifteen… [drops stone tablet] Oi. Ten! Ten commandments for all to obey!”
-From History of the Word, Part I

Memo to me, memo to me: maim you after my meeting.
-From Hercules

This is one time where television really fails to capture the true excitement of a large squirrel predicting the weather.
-From Groundhog Day

What if there is no tomorrow? There wasn’t one today.
-From Groundhog Day

Mr. Newberry: So, what have you been doing with your life?
Martin: Um… professional killer.
Mr. Newberry: Ah, good for you! It’s a growth industry
-From Gross Pointe Blank

Dr. Peter Venkman: Hey Egon, you know, this reminds me of the time that you tried to drill a hole through your head.
Dr. Egon Spengler: That would have worked if you hadn’t stopped me.
-From Ghostbusters

Chief Karlin: What’s your name?
Fletch: Fletch.
Chief Karlin: What’s your full name?
Fletch: Fletch F. Fletch.
Chief Karlin: What do you do for a living, Mr. Fletch?
Fletch: I’m a shepherd.
-From Fletch

Fletch: Can’t keep me here, chief.
Chief Karlin: Maybe I’m not going to keep you here. Maybe I’m going to blow your brains out.
Fletch: Well, now, I’m no lawyer, but… I do believe that’s a violation of my rights.
-From Fletch

Cameron: Ferris, my father loves this car more than life itself.
Ferris: A man with priorities so far out of whack doesn’t deserve such a fine automobile.
-From Ferris Bueller’s Day Off

Willie Wang: Why do I do all the dirty work, Pop?
Sidney Wang: Because your mother not here to do it.
-From Murder by Death

Willie Wang: Pop?
Sidney Wang: Yeah?
Willie Wang: Who do you think is the murderer?
Sidney Wang: Must sleep on it. Will know in morning when wake up.
Willie Wang: What if you don’t wake up?
Sidney Wang: Then you did it.
-From Murder by Death

Vinny: Ms. Vito, you’re supposed to be some kinda expert in automobiles, is that correct?… Is that correct?
Judge Haller: Would you please answer the counselor’s question?
Lisa: No, I hate him.
Vinny: Your Honor, may I treat this witness as hostile?
Mona Lisa: You think I’m hostile now? Wait ’til tonight.
Judge Haller: Do you two know each other?
Vinny: Yeah, she’s my fiancée.
Judge Haller: Well, that would certainly explain the hostility
-From My Cousin Vinny

You know, these clothes do not fancy you at all. It should be a dress or nothing. I happen to have no dress in my cabin.
-Jack Sparrow from Pirates of the Carribean: Dead Man’s Chest

I’m listening. [Elizabeth holds a gun to his face] I’m listening intently.
-Lord Becket from Pirates of the Carribean: Dead Man’s Chest

Elizabeth: There will come a moment when you have a chance to do the right thing.
Jack: I love those moments. I like to wave at them as they pass by.
-From Pirates of the Carribean: Dead Man’s Chest

Me, I’m dishonest. And a dishonest man you can always trust to be dishonest. Honestly. It’s the honest ones you want to watch out for. Because you can never predict when they’re going to do something incredibly… stupid.
-Jack Sparrow from Pirates of the Carribean: Curse of the Black Pearl

I am disinclined to acquiesce to your request. Means no.
-Barbossa from Pirates of the Carribean: Curse of the Black Pearl

Self-realization. I was thinking of the immortal words of Socrates, when he said, “I drank what?”
-Chris Knight from Real Genius

Chris Knight: I’m sorry, but have you ever seen a body like this before in your life?
David Decker: She happens to be my daughter.
Chris Knight: Oh. Then I guess you have.
-From Real Genius

Karen: So what’s this big news, then?
Daisy: [excited] We’ve been given our parts in the nativity play. And I’m the lobster.
Karen: The lobster?
Daisy: Yeah!
Karen: In the nativity play?
Daisy: [beaming] Yeah, first lobster.
Karen: There was more than one lobster present at the birth of Jesus?
Daisy: Duh.
-From Love Actually

[talking about her ex-boyfriend]
Natalie: He says no one’s gonna fancy a girl with thighs the size of big tree trunks. Not a nice guy, actually, in the end.
Prime Minister: Ah! You know, um, being Prime Minister, I could just have him murdered.
Natalie: Thank you, sir. I’ll think about it.
Prime Minister: Do. The SAS are absolutely charming. Ruthless trained killers are just a phone call away.
-From Love Actually

Prime Minister: I’m not sure that politics and dating really go together.
The President: Really? I never found that.
Prime Minister: Yeah, well, the difference is you’re still sickeningly handsome, whereas I look increasingly like my Aunt Mildred.
-From Love Actually

Colin: [after insulting the food] And what do you do Nancy?
Nancy the caterer: I’m a cook.
Colin: Ever do weddings?
Nancy the caterer: Yes I do.
Colin: They should have asked you to do this one.
Nancy the caterer: They did.
Colin: God I wish you hadn’t turned it down.
Nancy the caterer: I didn’t.
-From Love Actually

More on Anosognosic

2010-06-24T22:09:00.004-05:00

I am really liking this series on anosognosia (which is, apparently, the inability to acknowledge one has a disability) in the New York Times. There was the one I mentioned Monday (talking about people too incompetent to recognize their incompetence). Then, on Tuesday, there was one that dabbled with hysteria and women (historically speaking - I bet the Mother knows all about this), which was a little less my type of thing. It's irritating enough when "learned" men go on and on about what's wrong with women. When women play into it (whether deliberately or otherwise, well, I hate it). That goes for me with women who "play dumb" today, and there out there. I have yet to understand why a woman would be interested in impressing or pleasing a man who would prefer she be not so smart. But I digress.

However, Wednesday, there was an installment talking about how this phenomena might have influenced our involvement (or lack thereof) in the League of Nations and World War II. Heck, I'd never known that about Woodrow Wilson, that he had had a stroke at such a critical time or that his wife and aides worked so hard to ensure he didn't lose Presidential power as he recovered (somewhat).

Then, this morning, I read about how belief is not a monolithic thing and some speculation about how part of one's brain is dedicated to maintaining the status quo, furthering one's beliefs, and another part (the right brain) is devoted to questioning that status quo and challenging one's perceptions. Wow, that was a cool idea. Speculation isn't fact, but wouldn't that be an interesting premise to pursue, that one's critical thinking skills are tied one's right brain. Or maybe we already knew that. Anyway, cool reading.

Anyway, he finishes up talking about self-deception. Seriously, I enjoyed reading the whole thing.

What you Don't Know You Don't Know

2010-06-21T17:12:00.003-05:00

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Read an interesting article today in the NYT (which I like reading, so there) which was discussing people ignorant of their ignorance.

Now before you start scratching your head wondering what I'm talking about, let me explain. Everyone has areas of expertise and incompetence, things they know well and things they don't know. Nothing wrong with that.

For instance, someone might not know all six wives of Henry VIII or why the fact he divorced his first was important. They don't know, but most might know they didn't know. However, there are others who won't have any idea who Henry VIII is or that he had several wives or that his need to throw his first wife over is a big factor in why that so many in North America are protestant. Unless you ask him, he doesn't realize he doesn't know nor likely care why you might think it's important.

There's nothing wrong with that. I know I don't know the proper formula for brick mortar. I also know that, if I decided to build a house by myself, I would have to learn a great deal I don't know (known unknowns) but there are likely dozens of other things I wouldn't even know I didn't know that could ruin what I was trying to do (unknown unknowns) and that I'd be foolish to attempt it without expert help.

The article was focused on these people who don't realize that there's so much they don't know. In the article, they were focused on incompetence/ignorance, people who were clueless about their cluelessness. And we all know folks like that. These are Darwin award winners and crooks too stupid to be believed. And talk show commentators. And, apparently, senators, or at least some of them.

But I don't want to talk about them. There are tons of posts and stories and articles about the chronically clueless. What I want to talk about is the fact that all of us - all of us - have some of these aspects, too, those areas where were are not only ignorant, but that we can't even objectively quantify our ignorance or the implications of our ignorance.

That's one of the things that drives me crazy in the space industry. Too many people think we've figured out all the unknowns, so we can cut our conservatism and safety margins to the bone. I say "nay nay," because I know those margins, those excesses, those versatilities are what kept Apollo 13 from being a tragedy and has saved our spacebuns many a time. Because there are accidents and failings you never even thought of, environments you never considered, aspects you just didn't see coming. (Though it's even more frustrating when people refuse to even address the problems you can readily see - but that's another story).

But it's not just true of space exploration. It's true of engineering and science, of course, but it's true of every day aspects of life. Unexpected illnesses or accidents happen. Jobs are lost. Things you didn't know you didn't know can bite you in the butt.

If we're smart, we not only acknowledge what we don't know, we look for experts where we can and prepare for the worst when there's no one that knows.

Father's Day

2010-06-20T19:34:00.002-05:00

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I am frequently grateful to my husband for husband-type things like listening, supporting and supremely mindbendingly good sex. I don't know if that last is really a husband-type thing, but he does it anyway.

Too infrequently, I acknowledge something else he goes the extra mile with: fatherhood. Whereas many mothers feel under-appreciated, especially when they spend the bulk of the time with the children, my husband is a stay-at-home dad.

That means, that, overall, he is spending far more time with the children than I am. It also means that he's setting the tone, setting up the routines, entertaining the small people and cleaning up their destruction each and every day. Having spent some time as a single mother, I know how much work that really is.

He doesn't do it entirely without complaint. But he does it, even though it limits his options career-wise until they get a bit bigger. His understanding of his children means that having two children that effectively don't speak hasn't kept us from communicating effectively with both of them.

So, here's to him and all the other dad's out there going above and beyond for the sake of their children, who understand that being a father means more than providing a few chromosomes and putting food on the table. It means handling crises and diapers and baths. It means playing and listening and feeding children. It means being part of their lives rather than props.

My husband understands that and that makes him a super dad.

Happy Father's Day!

RS Classics: Saturday Quote-a-thon! Magic and Dragons

2010-06-19T18:55:00.003-05:00

Ah, yes, that's me all over, moving from hardcore science to magic and dragons. We do like to mix things up.

OK, folks, finding good dragon quotes is not so easy. So, I expanded it a bit to cover both magic and dragons and this is what I came up with. Sadly, I had to go searching for some. I didn’t have them already in my collection.

I believe in fairies, the myths, dragons. It all exists, even if it’s in your mind. Who’s to say that dreams and nightmares aren’t as real as the here and now?
-John Lennon

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
-Arthur C. Clarke

Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men’s blood and probably will themselves not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will not die.
-Daniel Burnham

First rule of magic: Don’t let anyone know your real name. Names have power.
-Neil Gaiman

No magic can change something into something that it is not; the imaginative transformation at the heart magic is recognition, not creation.
-Susan Palwick

Love and magic have a great deal in common. They enrich the soul, delight the heart. And they both take practice.
-Nora Roberts, as quoted in Rainbow Bridge Farm (2003) by Lynn Roberson, p. 127

If we are to have magical bodies, we must have magical minds.
-Dr Wayne Dyer

Poetry is a kind of magic that very few can create and even fewer can truly understand and appreciate in all its glory.
-Dennis Gabor

A well-composed book is a magic carpet on which we are wafted to a world that we cannot enter in any other way.
-Caroline Gordon

Think of the magic of that foot, comparatively small, upon which your whole weight rests. It’s a miracle, and the dance is a celebration of that miracle.
-Martha Graham

One man’s “magic” is another man’s engineering. “Supernatural” is a null word.
-Robert A. Heinlein

When you start writing the magic comes when the characters seem to take on a life of their own and write the words for themselves.
-Alice Hoffman

Books are a uniquely portable magic.
-Stephen King

The great leaders are like the best conductors - they reach beyond the notes to reach the magic in the players.
-Blaine Lee

That’s the thing with magic. You’ve got to know it’s still here, all around us, or it just stays invisible for you.
-Charles de Lint

I suppose that writers should, in a way, feel flattered by the censorship laws. They show a primitive fear and dread at the fearful magic of print.
-John Mortimer

A great attitude does much more than turn on the lights in our worlds; it seems to magically connect us to all sorts of serendipitous opportunities that were somehow absent before the change.
-Earl Nightingale

The metaphor is perhaps one of man’s most fruitful potentialities. Its efficacy verges on magic, and it seems a tool for creation which God forgot inside one of His creatures when He made him.
-José Ortega y Gasset

There is real magic in enthusiasm. It spells the difference between mediocrity and accomplishment
-Norman Vincent Peale

It’s only in innocence you find any kind of magic, any kind of courage.
-Sean Penn

The first fall of snow is not only an event, it is a magical event. You go to bed in one kind of a world and wake up in another quite different, and if this is not enchantment then where is it to be found?
-J. B. Priestley

There’s a bit of magic in everything, and some loss to even things out.
-Lou Reed

Disbelief in magic can force a poor soul into believing in government and business.
-Tom Robbins

Here we have a game that combines the charm of a Pentagon briefing with the excitement of double-entry bookkeeping.
– Cecil Adams (On Dungeons & Dragons)

Then, because I’m easily amused, I included some bumper sticker/T-shirt dragon slogans.

If you can’t stand the heat, don’t tickle the dragon.

Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup.

When you find yourself in the company of a halfling and a Dragon, remember, you do not have to outrun the Dragon, you just have to outrun the halfling.

If you have any others you think I should add to the collection, don’t hesitate to share. I always like to add to my collection. And don’t forget to vote for next week. Vote well and vote often! Cheating encouraged!

(One commentor added two pertinent quotes so I'll include them here)

“For fantasy is true, of course. It isn’t factual, but it is true. Children know that. Adults know it too, and that is precisely why many of them are afraid of fantasy. They know that its truth challenges, even threatens, all that is false, all that is phony, unnecessary, and even trivial in the life they have let themselves be forced into living. They are afraid of dragons, because they are afraid of freedom.”
–Ursula K. Le Guin, “Why Are Americans Afraid of Dragons?”

“Make these stories dragons. Dragons can’t fly with unnecessary scales crusting them down, or with a hundred yards of tail dragging behind them. Make them strong instead, sleek, fast, aggressive, and filled with enough fire to toast the reader’s ass.”
–Limyaael, “Keeping Those Dragons Alive”

RS Classic: Dissing Science

2010-06-18T20:56:00.003-05:00

Another blast from the past.

Truth often suffers more by the heat of its defenders than from the arguments of its opposers.
–William Penn

Recently, I found myself hot under the collar. Now, don’t get me wrong, I have a temper. But this was all about science and I work very hard to keep my cool and professionalism when it comes to science – passion and science = bad science.

But I was beginning to understand why so many scientists and naysayers are getting into arguments just short of fistfights. It’s hard for even the best scientist to keep his or her temper down when they are being accused of lying and laziness.

This discussion is not going to be about religion. I truly believe in freedom of religion including anyone’s belief in Thor or the monster that hides under the bed. I have not been granted omniscience (aside from believing in fairies myself) and have no right to tell you what to believe in as long as (a) you don’t try to force it down my throat and (b) don’t try to pretend it’s science.

Science is a fascinating beastie. It’s all about finding out what and how reality is and, if possible, figuring out how to manipulate it for the betterment of mankind. Fortunately and unfortunately, reality is pretty slippery. It provides some facts pretty easily, some with a lot of work and some, well, it still hasn’t provided a clear answer. Fortunately, it’s what we don’t know that makes it fun. Unfortunately, what we don’t know (or, worse, think we know) can be very dangerous. For instance, long ago they tried blood transfusions under the correct assumption that blood can help when blood’s been lost. Unfortunately, their lack of knowledge about blood factors meant that some transfusions didn’t go too well so that it was an act of desperation until blood typing was discovered early in the 20th century.

It is because of this, the thrill and excitement (and the risk) of what we know and don’t know that scientists voluntarily subject themselves to strict rules and processes of rigor. Rules include repeatability (preferably independently), adequate controls, and theories that can be disabled with a single immutable fact (which is not the same as a single data point). All the data must be accounted for or explained; one cannot pick and choose the data. And, to be really recognized, it needs to withstand something called peer review.

Peer review? You expect them to police themselves? Yes, for two reasons. First, one cannot evaluate the science of a proposal, conclusion or bit of research without an in depth understanding of science and scientific processes. Generally, this effectively limits you to scientists or “former” scientists (if such things exist). Secondly, scientists want to be right. Being wrong, spectacularly, is not how any scientist wants to be remembered.

Yeah, but don’t we look after our own? Actually, not so much and there’s good reason. There is no benefit for a scientist to give a free pass on the work of another scientist. If the work is bogus or sloppy, the reviewers would be impugned (rightly) along with the researcher by their failure to look at it critically. Wherein politicians (and some other, but not all, professions) can generally make mistake after mistake and survive, in the scientific world, a single instance of dishonesty and/or sloppy work can ruin a career.

If someone does research and writes conclusions, a reviewer is obligated to try to shoot holes in it, find the problems, look for errors, whether the reviewer agrees with it or not, or we do a disservice not only to the rest of the world, but to the researcher. If it’s wrong, we don’t want to hang our hats on it (and we save the researcher some embarrassment). If it’s right, we want it to be as bulletproof as possible.

And people in the same field do not all agree (HAHAHAHAHA!) - far from it. It is, in fact, the hemming and hawing on details that have let so many less familiar with the process think that so many scientists disagree on global warming, when what they are really doing is trying to understand not IF there will be changes, but how much, how fast and what we can do to minimize it. On that, I feel comfortable saying consensus has not been reached. But it doesn’t mean the science is invalid.

Don’t get me wrong. Scientists get excited by findings, breakthroughs, new possibilities, verifications, etc. If we didn’t, we wouldn’t be here. And, yeah, anyone who does work they’re proud of likes recognition. That’s why we peer review and take our time accepting new ideas. If an idea can take being tested independently and repeatedly, if it can stand the test of time and many different people trying to poke holes in it, it stands a much better chance of being valid that if it came from one excited individual.

That’s one reason I get so hot under the collar at being accused of laxity or dishonesty. I’m part of those very checks and balances. Does nothing get by us? Sadly, yes, mistakes are made here and there. But they usually get caught eventually and the numbers (percentage-wise), I feel, are low. Truth told, I don’t know of any other profession that examines itself so critically, puts in so many impediments and challenges to ensure that integrity, that objectivity that makes science what it is. Because people do use that information in a life and death way, we have to be responsible with what we say.

Your doctor doesn’t have the same review process when he gives a prescription (though the basis for the treatments he'll suggest should have gone through the same rigorous process). Your mechanic doesn't even have that. Your lawyer can do all kinds of stupid things (at hundreds of dollars an hour). And there’s not much you can do to preclude mistakes being made by those you trust.

In most cases, there is little you can do except fire someone (after the fact, mostly likely) or in cases of egregious error, sue. In most cases, you just have to live with it. Think of how much better government might be if positions and arguments in government were vetted with the same rigor as science. (I find it ironic that people are more likely to be believe others who have a vested interest in persuading you to a point of view - bankers, big business, politicians – than those that have none.)

Believe me, folks, we don’t want to tell you bad news. There’s no glory or riches in telling people what they don’t want to hear. If we tell you, it’s because that’s what the evidence is telling us and we don’t want our unwillingness to put it on the line to cause anyone to be hurt unnecessarily. At the least, we have no interest in looking stupid.

In science, we really try to weed out the mistakes before you ever see our results. We’re human, but we want the truth out there more than we want our name on it. We’re not perfect, but we’re trying to do the right thing.

Cut us a little slack, k?

You know, some things never change.

Outrage We Should Have Had

2010-06-17T21:40:00.002-05:00

Right now, there's a good bit of vitriole out there over the ecological catastrophe currently in work due to oil company negligence and lax regulation. But, I read a story today that boiled my blood, not because it means the spill in the Gulf is any less tragic and horrific, but because this is going on elsewhere in the world and we're either don't know or don't care.

According to this article in the New York Times, oil machinery, pipelines and wells (run largely by Shell) in Nigeria have been the cause of as much as 546 million barrels of oils spilled over the past fifty years in the delta region of Nigeria, which once served as the source of food for most of the country. That's ~50 Exxon Valdez spills, effectively one a year for the last five decades.

Water is contaminated. Fish and shellfish, crops and wildlife which supplied much of the country, are gone, far far out to sea or potentially contaminated. Corroded pipes, defunct wells, sabotage, oil thieves, vandals, all have contributed and it appears that everyone's pointing fingers at everyone else as responsible. But the oil, which supplies 80% of Nigeria's revenue, is not helping the natives that live with the fallout. They have some of the lowest life expectancies in the nation.

Now, I admit I have a pet peeve, the one where people get all caught up about a "local" (i.e. US) tragedy but shrug off horrors that happen to other people. I got hot under the collar when Hurricane Mitch was hardly noted in passing, even though it was the deadliest Atlantic hurricane in nearly a hundred years (and far deadlier than Hurricane Katrina, which doesn't even make the top 25). And it torques me that people who talk about the worst storms ever don't even note some of the horrific deadly typhoons that have devastated the Far East and Asia. The Bhola Cyclone that hit in 1970 killed between 300,000 and 500,000 people.

So, I don't think it's less tragic that Americans are facing ruin and the ecosystem is being ruined in the gulf than it is that people with little/nothing have less because of oil spills largely ignored in Nigeria. But I don't think it's more either. Clearly, holding our oil companies responsible for the damage they cause is long overdue, and not just off our own coast.

This shouldn't just outrage me.

RS Classic: Science faux pas (and my movie pet peeves)

2010-06-16T21:05:00.004-05:00

Given that I had my trash-Armageddon earlier, it seemed reasonable to replay this one from the same theme.

I can be irritating to watch movies with. I admit it. Unless I’m blown away by characters and/or dialog, little errors will bother me. And I’m vocal about it. I’m a history buff so trashing history will irk me, ditto with characters that make no damn sense. But many people are irritated by that. One thing that really gets me are “science fiction” movies where science was clearly not well thought out. Yesterday’s Armageddon blog demonstrated that a single movie can pretty much throw science in the toilet. But even the better movies can do things that defy science.

Here are some pet peeves.

Momentum - Few things take a pounding in science films like Newtonian physics. Star Trek (movies and television shows) - we’re zipping along at Warp 8 and the engines go down. And we stop. Now, when it comes to warp speed, we really don’t know much about how it would work (if it even would), so I don’t have a problem with popping out of warp into normal space. However, in normal space, shutting off the propulsion will just mean you’ll keep going. In fact, you’re likely to be in more trouble than standing still. Standing still, you know, means you aren’t going to run into something.

Side note - There’s a very good short story called “Cold Equations” by Tom Godwin which is touted, and rightly, as an excellent example how physics (and science) doesn’t care about whether someone lives or dies. Unfortunately, the science is off. In the story, the transports are fueled with no contingency fuel, just enough for the planned cargo and crew. They’re on their way, when the pilot discovers a stowaway going to see her brother. Because there’s no contingency (which is, in my opinion, a dumb way to do business), she has to be spaced, despite her tears and her brother’s anguish. Tragic. (He gives her an extra hour by changing the trajectory, but that’s silly, too - her weight only matters while speeding up or slowing down or changing direction) Except, since they’d launched with her weight on board, they were already short on fuel. Physics, whew, a tough taskmaster.

Angular momentum - Star Wars - Hey remember those cool shots of the Millenium Falcon zipping through the cloud of Empiric ships, flipping U-turns and dodging like mad? Uh, I kept waiting for people’s bodies to punch right through the hull. Anyone with experience in a fighter plane will tell you angular acceleration will eat your lunch, and your plane, if you pull too many g’s. As fast as they were going, the poor folks inside (not wearing seat belts, of course) would be pounded to mush against any hard surface. Don’t go talkin’ about gravity generators or dampers, ’cause I’m not going to buy it. If they really had those, why are they always being jarred out of seats and stuff? Speaking of the latter, why do shows like Star Trek and Star Wars forgo seat belts? The old (and much loved by me) original Star Trek had people tumbling around engineering and the bridge like dice. Why would any ship that moved at sublight and light speeds have standing engineering positions? Or seats without restraints? You can get tickets for that in cars that never bust 70 mph (113 kph).

Ignoring vacuum - Star Wars - Ah, shooting laser canons through open portholes, shuttles landing in bays open to space, Death Star under construction - just like you could do that open to space, with folks walking about without masks. In vacuum. Red Planet - Our refugee has made a habitat on the surface of Mars out of cloth with open bottoms that allowed air in and out. Mars, at its atmospheres densest point, is 0.011 atm (that’s 0.165 psia). I don’t think so. Not even if you breath really shallow.

Orbital Mechanics - Red Planet - There’s an impressive leap from the disabled rescue ship to an unmanned satellite ~1 km away in spacesuits. Ignoring, for the moment, the likelihood that the satellite would have life support or could facilitate their arrival on the surface, going across a km of open space between two vessels in almost undoubtedly different orbits going several km/second? Not bloody likely. This also applies to any movie where an orbiting but suddenly disabled ship will decay “within hours”. Space junk, even released in low orbit, usually takes weeks or months; any ship that decays within hours was flying stupidly low.

Holodecks - Star Trek (and others) - Building whole sets, with tactile interaction, using holograms? I can buy visual, smell and audio, but we don’t have light we can see or “eat” or “drink” or “sleep on” or “sit on”. It’s not a matter of speculation; photons don’t make solids. Nice try, though. (Note, that in a sophisticated VR suit with tactile sensor and or something that could interact with brains to simulate the experiences as “dreams” or “visions”, I would not have the same problem).

Are there are others? Sure. And, before I get blasted for being too hard on speculative fiction, let me tell you some things that don’t bother me: transporters (Star Trek), faster than speed of light travel, point to point travel/tesseract/wormholes (Stargate/Star Trek/others), replicators (Star Trek), simulated gravity, almost any biological anomaly or weirdness, hovercraft, cyborgs, artificial intelligence, complex robotics . . . the list goes on.

I also am pretty damn forgiving with such things as superheroes and other fantastic stories, including shapeshifting, amazing strength and imperviousness (yes, I like Wolverine), vampires, magic etc. There are plenty of things out there I can’t begin to explain. Except flying and that dumb thing where someone like Wonder Woman hold back a jet by digging in her heels.

But, hey, sometimes you gotta let go.

Scientists Make Rotten Salesmen

2010-06-13T16:16:00.003-05:00

I was explaining to my husband how I just can't sell squat to anyone, even when I believe in the product. We were discussing good books and what people wanted to buy, and musing that epic type fantasy and science fiction were considered less than hot commodities despite clear examples of their popularity at the movie theater, how it seemed that what was hot just now, the trappings, seemed more important that the caliber of the story. When, in my opinion, movies/stories like Avatar and the Ring Series were great stories with the setting/genre almost immaterial.

Now, that's plenty of fodder for the peanut gallery, so feel free to have at, but we moved on because my husband understood exactly what I meant. His reaction: "Marketing is about selling crap, no offense to anyone. The product might be good or not, but it makes no difference to marketing."

Now, Lee could sell anything to anyone, up close and personal. Me, I never could sell anything, even though I never tried to sell anything that I didn't believe in 100%.

Then it hit me. And I said it. "Scientists make lousy salesmen." See, things are black and white for scientists. Things aren't this or that. They're likely this and data indicates that. We use words like theoretically to describe our best explanation of things. A doctor knows even the best treatments have side effects or don't work on everyone. A scientists knows that long term effects may not be clearly indicated by any single data point (in fact, quite the opposite). A good scientist is ready and willing (or should be) to throw away his most precious pet theories if the data comes in to say something different.

But conviction requires ignorance. To say something is absolutely right or absolutely wrong requires, well, either a lack of understanding on subtleties or a lack of morals. Possibly both. Unfortunately, the public wants conviction; they take it as a sign of honesty (and if they didn't televangelists would be out of business in seconds). They figure the guy who's most convincing must be the one that's right.

But is it true? The oil companies have told us that anything that distracts us from drilling no matter how dangerous or expensive that drilling might be (or who owns the land) hurts us all. The big bankers told us to trust that they knew what they were doing. After all, they were the brightest of the bright and we just wouldn't understand what they doing. It's complicated and takes experts. Surely, the clear recent examples of all the slick talkers that took investors for millions (and their stockholders and their employees) should be reason enough not to equate conviction with actual sincerity.

*Sigh* But we don't.

I love the stuff I write. I do. I believe in it and think it's good stuff. But I can't tell someone it's like X's book, because it isn't. I can't tell anyone that it's a given best seller. Who knows? I can't even say it's the "best" novel ever written. I don't even think so, but, if I did, I know there are too many different definitions of "best" for me to be able to speak for everyone else. Heck, I have more than one myself.

I believe in the book, but I'm not ignorant enough to be a good salesman.

Stinks, don't it?

RS Classic: Sometimes I Don't Understand Stuff

2010-06-12T19:56:00.004-05:00

Another recycle and one I really liked writing. I wrote more on this topic at a later date.

I have never understood why some of the best stuff gets overlooked and other things, that make no sense or are clearly horse manure, are embraced (no, I will not be talking politics - ever, I hope).

My sister, shakespeare, reminded me of this by mentioning two movies that came out at nearly the same time and based on the same concept: Deep Impact and Armageddon. My sister thought the reason Deep Impact was overlooked was in the title, or at least in part. Me, I think the title Deep Impact is just fine. I think the real problem was that it was actually realistic.

The biggest thing that irked me was that NASA (which really should have known better) let the Armageddon crew film in NASA facilities and slap the NASA meatball on every visible surface. Normally, they are reluctant to do so (and I don’t think it was used in Deep Impact, or, at least, it was less prevalent.) So, here is this apparently NASA endorsed movie released at the same time of another movie. You’d think it was more “true” and believable. Well, you would be wrong.

Let’s figure out why (from my memory, so don’t expect perfection - especially since I’ve been trying to scrub Armageddon from my mind for some time).

Deep Impact - Detected impactor years ahead of time and focused on a single plan (from scratch) to get it done. Even with the best will in the world, this would have been a challenge. The fact that we have, in the past done the incredible (Apollo/Gemini/Mercury) in the short term with focus and the right minds, says it is not implausible.

Armageddon - We find out weeks/months ahead of time. Believe me, we’re completely boned. No way, not even the Russians or using military resources - even if we had rockets handy that could send something that big that far, we couldn’t do it. We have nothing to put people in that could take that.

Deep Impact - Select astronauts have been training for this difficult and challenging task for years. Duh! The unknowns alone mean that we need talented and capable people who have extensive experience and can adapt to ugly new challenges.

Armageddon - Ignore your talented astronaut corps and drag in some oil drillers from an off-shore oil platform, letting them call the shots and saying you can train them effectively in low/no gravity in suits in a matter of weeks to use a hand operated drill on a new surface. Brilliant! After all, we all know the offshore drilling is done via hand operated drill and I know, if I was going to drill on a far distant asteroid with only one chance, I’d be much more comfortable stressing the drilling experience. Because, after all, drilling expertise is almost unknown whereas familiarity and training with space gear and suits is a common skill. (I’ve worked with many astronauts, know how dedicated these people are. They are capable and confident people who also know how to keep their egos in check for the good of the mission. This movie offended me on their behalf.)
Armageddon - they launched a handily available titanium Shuttle and “refuel” it at the Mir Space Station (which they accidentally blow up) that has apparently grown large cryogenic fuel tanks somehow. Then, they store up enough “hydrogen/oxygen fuel” in their shuttle and zip off through meteoroid laden space, dodging meteoroids, then land on the asteroid. After landing, they are “trapped” in the payload bay and “shoot their way out” of the titanium Shuttle bay with a convenient machine gun on the “rover.” Alright, folks, do I have to explain how idiotic this is? The Mir didn’t have tanks or any way of “filling up” a Shuttle (and space born cryogenic tanks are not an easy thing to whip together, even for the innovative Russians). Shuttle engines can’t be started in space (which is why they aren’t being used for Ares). The Shuttle has no tanks (none) and no place to put them since the payload bay is filled with drilling equipment. Since meteoroids come screaming through here at 20-70 km/s (that’s 40x-140X the speed of a bullet), even Han Solo couldn’t dodge ‘em. As for the machine gun? Oy! Even my ex, redneck that he was and complaining about my complaints, looked up at that and said, “Alright, that’s stupid.”

Deep Impact - None of that kind of stupidity, so I couldn’t compare it, but they did show people planet side making some hard decisions that you would not like to see free people having to make. I personally think that the fact they did this is what made this movie less than successful - people didn’t want to believe that necessity might mean hard choices. I also think it’s what made this movie realistic. People think nature is gentle. Think of Hurricane Katrina. Think of the recent earthquake in China and all only children lost. Think of Hurricane Mitch. Think back to the tsunami that devastated the rim of the Indian ocean two years ago. Nature is not forgiving and physics has no pity.

Deep Impact - for all their planning, things went amiss and the crew had to sacrifice themselves to make a second opportunity that was partially successful. This is exactly the sort of thing I could expect an astronaut crew to do. No muss, no fuss, just do what they could to save humanity. And, to me, perfectly plausible. Although complete destruction was avoided, a pretty horrible prospect remained that will kill millions.
Armageddon - Our drilling crew (after screwing up repeatedly in the Neutral Buoyancy Lab), *gasp* screws up and our oil drilling hero decides to stick around to save humanity although people try to talk him into leaving. At the last minute, it blows up but the rest of our heroes can go home to an untouched planet. Uh, yeah. I’m so buying that.

It occurs to me that it’s dreck like Armageddon that makes it so hard to accomplish things for NASA. NASA knows life is like Deep Impact, full of tough choices and real physics. Politicians and the populace think that it can all be taken care of with bailing wire and guts (which are relatively cheaper). Problem is, it can’t and they can’t forgive NASA for not living up to expectations that are unrealistic, while NASA gets sent down one blind stupid alley after another to suit the vagaries of the people they answer to and end up - nowhere. What a waste!

I think this is pertinent on many levels today. People want things "cleaned up", someone to wave a magic wand and have it all go away. Reality bites.

RS Classic: The Truth About Decompression

2010-06-09T21:13:00.003-05:00

Another science related blog thanks to my odd associative logic. I hope you enjoy it.

Part of what I want to do here, and I haven’t really pursued this yet, is talk about fiction, things I write and things I like to read. Oddly enough, this current stream of science related blogs is much like how I do a novel, with one things making me think of something else. Truly, I’m almost a study in associative thinking.

So, in that vein, here’s another topic that the last topic made me think of: the effects of vacuum on people.

Now, most people think depressurization (exposure to vacuum) is like the movies. Spontaneous eyeballs popping out of one’s head, perhaps a messy explosion. Bad news for those that like that kind of gore (but good news for the rest of us): uh, no. Truth is, though it’s not the way I’d want to go out, an explosion is unlikely unless you try to hold your breath (psst, that won’t help you). Skin is more than capable of taking the 1 atm pressure differential.

So, what is it like? Well, for those that have experienced it and lived (and there are some), it wasn’t fun. Saliva boiling away in your mouth is one of the things generally remembered without joy. Flesh does swell from this ebulism and unconsciousness comes quickly, usually within seconds. It’s happened in vacuum test chambers (and kudos to the folks that run those facilities by the way, they can repress chambers from a hard vacuum to 10.2 psia (703 mbar) in a matter of seconds, where a lock observer can get in and help rescue the victim. Within 30 seconds, everything’s back to normal). People exposed to hard vacuum, if they can be repressed quickly, may get the bends and have other short term discomforts or conditions but usually recover completely if exposure is less than 90 seconds. This might not be true if the decompression is rapid, as alveoli in the lungs can rupture as can sinuses and ear drums. In fact, even small pressure drops can be fatal if they are very rapid.

An interesting study of vacuum without actually going out into space were the very high altitude jumps performed as several series. In the Excelsior jumps, Joe Kittinger made a number of altitude record parachute jumps in a pressure suit culminating in the highest at 102,800 where his glove sprang a leak and that hand swelled and was very painful, but three hours later, it was back to normal.

But, if one goes slowly and has sufficient oxygen to provide the appropriate partial pressure of oxygen, though, one can survive. In fact, those who go out in the suits go out in suits with a total pressure of about 4.3 psia (296 mbar), though they have to go in 100% oxygen to do it. Why, you might ask? Because every bit of extra pressure used in the suit, they have to work against it to move. What I mean is, good luck finding an EVA astronaut who isn’t in excellent shape: EVA is hard work. But I digress.

Now, have we had ugly Hollywood type decompressions? Sadly, yes, though it wasn’t with 1 atmosphere, but actually involved diving pressures. Wikipedia has a good article on the Byford Dolphin calamity but I warn you, it’s not for the weak-stomached. No pictures, but the description is horrific. In that case, the explosive decompression was a differential pressure of ~60 atmospheres. In that scenario, the effects on people were pretty brutal.

Now, interested in some little known information you won’t hear every day on vacuums? In my first job, I worked in a facility that had a number of vacuum and environmental chambers. Apparently, early in the space program, they had “played with” a number of different creepy crawlies in the vacuum jars. Arachniphobiacs will be pleased to note that spiders pumped down to vacuum will explode. Take that, you brown recluse you.

Cockroaches, however, will just lie still and, even if you leave them at vacuum for several days, when you pump it back to ambient, they’ll start to move again like nothing happened.

*Shudders*

Commercial Human Spaceflight

2010-06-04T20:22:00.002-05:00

The Falcon 9 test flight, just launched successfully, is unmanned (as all the best test flights are), but it's a very important test flight. At this time SpaceX is an outlier on the notion that commercial ventures can make effective heavy lift rockets and, potentially, send people into space.

This is thrilling for many. It's probably a bit scary for several still entangled in the Constellation Program, especially given its uncertain future. Some (many of whom were all warm and fuzzy about commercial human spaceflight until it became competition) are probably a bit worried or frustrated.

I'm not. I'm thrilled it was a success (though I don't know yet how successful it was).

This is a great thing. Not just for SpaceX. Not just for commercial spaceflight (human or otherwise). Not just for America or any other country. Why?

Because every time space becomes more accessible, every time we find a new way to get there (especially given the dearth of truly new rockets the past few decades), every new option we open up, makes the possibility of really exploring the universe, really making a home in space, really colonizing the moon or orbit . . . just a little less impossible.

Will Constellation, in some slimmed down form, survive? I have no idea. But having another possibility, another option out there not only forces NASA to compete and excel, but it does the same for Space X. Best case, when we need to get astronauts back to the ISS or, perhaps, even send out a vehicle to do more, we may have another option than we did before.

Now, I feel strongly that the NASA standards out there for safety, redundancy and reliability, for operability and control of manned space vehicles is still pertinent even to commercial ventures, especially if we're putting astronauts out there.

But it's a key step. In the end, for space travel to mean something, it's going to have to belong to all of us, not just a handful of specially trained highly educated specialists or pilots. And this, this is a step along that path.

Congrats.

RS Classics: What About the Hubble Space Telescope?

2010-06-02T20:56:00.003-05:00

Yep, it's another classic, this one written before the last (and wonderfully successful) Hubble Servicing Mission. Since I know my way around Hubble, EVA-wise, I'm adding it to the list.

Kathleen asked how we were going to service the Hubble and the ISS. It’s a fine question with an easy answer, but I think a lot of people will be dismayed to realize that Hubble is going to be out of reach for future servicing. After all, the gorgeous photographs coming from Hubble are one of the ways NASA touches regular folks. For those that are worried, don’t be.

For Hubble, the upcoming servicing mission (4, sort of) later this year, it’s unlikely we’ll ever service Hubble again. There were only planned to be four servicing mission (this will actually be the fifth). Of course, we had to make repairs and adjustments we never planned, like the corrective optics installed on Servicing Mission 1. Servicing Mission 3 also became servicing missions 3A and 3B because of the need to replace ailing gyros sooner rather than later (SM 3A). Unfortunately, the time in safe mode affected the electronics, so additional fixes were required for SM 3B, in addition to planned upgrades. As the EVA Safety lead for the last two missions, SM 3A and SM 3B, I can tell you they’re tough. Usually at least EVAs back to back, that are long, arduous, complicated and challenging. Fortunately, the Hubble folks are very responsive at finding ways to fix what was never planned to be fixed and we usually have exceptional EVA astronauts doing the work. It was a pleasure to work with all of them.

Hubble is the only one of the Great Observatories that had a low enough orbit to service or required it. The other great observatories: The Gamma Ray Observatory, The Chandra Observatory, and the Spitzer Space Telescope. Those were all in orbits out of reach of the Shuttle or, in fact, any manned craft today. All but the Gamma Ray Observatory is still in service.

But never fear, Hubble lovers, work is underway building the James Webb telescope (in fact, one of my colleagues is working that now) that will do more than Hubble. They’re planning to launch that in 2013 and hopefully Hubble will survive until then.

Now, ISS is a real problem. The hope is that we will have another crew vehicle within a few years of the Shuttle’s retirement and people are working to achieve it. But the Crew Escape Vehicle (CEV) is a multipurpose craft that must also support Lunar missions. Multitaskers are not only challenging to build, but also tend not to be optimized.

In addition, the Russians can still send up Soyuz and Progress crafts, and the European Space Agency has already launched one Automated Transfer Vehicle (no crew) and JAXA, Japan’s Space Agency, is planning to launch their transfer vehicle, H-II Transfer Vehicle next year.

Having said that, none are a true replacement for Shuttle. She brings up more and brings down more: experiments, samples, crew, logistics, and even modules for assemblies. When the Shuttle retires, assembly will be effectively complete. We’ll be stuck with what we have unless it can be brought up in an automated fashion. And that will make a difference.

The Shuttle was definitely filling a niche and we just don’t have anything to replace her. Not now, probably never…

Unless the Commercial Human Spaceflight folks figure out something we haven’t. But, then, that’s an entirely different blog.

RS Classic: Space Shuttle Primer

2010-05-31T20:52:00.002-05:00

As I recover from my son's near death and try to kick start my creative brain, I'm more and more tempted to post some other classics here. So, I will unless I find I have something new and at least remotely clever to say. Though, if I do, it would probably be best if I put it in the novel currently lying fallow.

Baron Rochester asked me about Shuttle reusability. I gave him a quick answer, but, really, I think his question deserves a more complete answer because the Shuttle is a rather unique vehicle.

As the Apollo program came to an end (and you don’t want to ask me how I feel about that), much of the space focus turned to the highly lucrative but very expensive world of satellites. Up until then (and in fact, continuing on today), most space craft were launched into space using staged expendable rockets. From the beginning, an orbiting space station built with help from the Shuttle was part of the vision, but the US was also very interested in finding a more cost effective method for getting satellites into space and even bringing them back down. Additionally, they hoped to use the Shuttle as an orbiting laboratory for larger scale experiments than ever possible before. It cannot be stressed enough that, with the possible exception of being “cost effective,” the Space Shuttle system has achieved all of these far reaching goals.

The Space Shuttle is a complex system. It includes the reusable Orbiter, the refurbishable Solid Rocket Motors, and the expendable External Tank which supplies the fuel (cryogenic oxygen and hydrogen) for the Orbiter’s main engines. The Orbiter’s main engines are among the most efficient chemical engines ever.

There were a total of seven Orbiters built. The first one, Enterprise, was used for testing but never flew in space (sorry, Roddenberry).The other five were put into use as they were completed: Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis and, after Challenger was lost, Endeavour. We are down to three now, Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavour.

Of course, I could talk more about the Orbiter, about their lightweight, but delicate thermal tiles and surfaces, some capable of withstanding nearly 3000 deg F (1650 Deg C), which are engineering marvels all their own, despite their vulnerabilities. But Kathleen asked a good question and I have to get to that.

Even so, I have to mention the two Orbiters we lost, with their full complements. The first, on January 28, 1986, was the Challenger accident when the Shuttle broke up 73 seconds into the launch due to a leak/burnthrough of the Solid Rocket Motor. We lost seven astronauts on that flight: Michael J. Smith, Dick Scobee, Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka, Christa McAuliffe (a teacher), Gregory Jarvis, Judith Resnik. I wasn’t here for that. I was a freshman in college and it’s still hard to believe that it happened more than 20 years ago.

Then, there was the loss of STS-107, Columbia, the oldest of our Orbiters during reentry. I was here for that one. In fact, it was my flight (EVA Safety Lead). Columbia was destroyed when damage to her wing leading edge lead to burnthrough and eventual destruction of Columbia on her way in. I knew this crew personally and I still can’t think of it without tears coming to my eyes. Those lost were David Brown, Laurel Clark, Michael Anderson, Ilan Ramon, Rick Husband, Kalpana Chawla, William McCool, another seven.

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Why the Hatred?

Ain't Nobody's Business

Unequal Treatment

Creative Taxing

Taxes and Employment

No tea for me, thank you. Here's why, part one. The truth about taxes

Enjoy Your Retirement, Space Shuttle

Cases in Point

Decrypting My Brain

Going Gray

Japan's Quiet Recovery Efforts

Not My Cheeriest Poem

More Videos of the Superlative Stephanie The Younger

My Daughter Is So Talented

Making Changes

Know Your Uncertainty

On Blog Holiday of Unknown Duration

RS Classic: Remembering NASA’s tragedies - Columbia Accident

RS Classic: Remembering NASA’s tragedies - Challenger Accident

RS Classic: Remembering NASA’s tragedies - Apollo 1 Fire

Shutting Her Down

Spirit Daughter

Shoot Me, Please

Writing Frenzy Hiatus

Here's Something for Fun

Sometimes Just One Quote is Enough

Struggling Through the Week

Happy Anniversary

RS Classic: Saturday Quote-a-Thon - Learning a Little Somethin’

Who Is Megi?

What You See . . .

Not Been in a Blogging Mood

Random Soapbox: Apparently I'm Anti-Anti

Feeding the Right Wolf

You Can't Teach English via Scantron

RS Classic: Saturday Quote-a-Thon With a Twist

Nature's Wonders

RS Classic: Why Star Wars Doesn't Impress Me

RS Classic: And Now for some Levity . . .

RS Classic: The Face of God

RS Classic: My Thoughts on the Afterlife

RS Classic: Apparently I'm Waxing Philosophical

RS Classic: What Kind of World Do I Want to Live In?

"Normal" People

Letting Bad Things Happen

RS Classic: What's Right About Our Manned Space Program

RS Classic: Manned vs. Unmanned

The Love of Learning

RS Classic: Uber Cool Nerd God

RS Classic: Saturday Quote-a-Thon - Technology-ish

RS Classic: Single Point Failures

RS: The Solar Sail That Never Was

RS Classics: Saturday Quote-a-thon - Words of Wisdom I

Baby With the Bath Water

RoHS and Regulating Smartly

RS Classic: What Do You Know About Tin Whiskers?

Penny Wise, Pound Foolish

Venus

RS Classic: Saturday Quote-a-Thon - Movie Quotes

More on Anosognosic

What you Don't Know You Don't Know

Father's Day

RS Classics: Saturday Quote-a-thon! Magic and Dragons

RS Classic: Dissing Science

Outrage We Should Have Had

RS Classic: Science faux pas (and my movie pet peeves)

Scientists Make Rotten Salesmen

RS Classic: Sometimes I Don't Understand Stuff

RS Classic: The Truth About Decompression

Commercial Human Spaceflight