Hankering for Monarchy?

I found this group on Facebook whilst looking at something else:

Monarchy, in both its absolute and constitutional varieties, is the oldest, and by far the most effective, system of government. Every civilization in the world had once been ruled by a king, queen, emperor, prince, grand duke, sultan or emir – all of whom are latter-day manifestations of ancient tribal chiefs. The forms of government that have supplanted monarchical regimes have consistently demonstrated their inability to live up to the system they purportedly set out to improve. In contrast, time continues to be a testament to the efficacy of kingdoms.These are but a few of the virtues of the monarchical system:

• Monarchs are an enduring symbol of continuity and statehood. Thus, they provide a sense of unity and while crystallizing a national identity.
• A hereditary monarch is likely to be a more competent head-of-state than is an elected president, because the former has been prepared, from childhood, to serve as such.
• Owing to their fortune and status, monarchs have less of an incentive for corruption and accepting bribes.
• A monarchy is, in fact, less costly to maintain than a republic because it spares the state the expense of holding presidential elections, and because the royal family's private fortune may be enough for its own support, as against the public expenditures, in a republic, for the accommodations, pensions and other maintenance of incumbent and former presidents.
• Competition and criticism to which republican presidents typically are exposed, as elected officials and especially during the election campaigns themselves, damages the reputation and dignity of the head of state.
• Because republican presidents are typically members of a political party, while monarchs typically stand outside of politics, a president is less well able to serve as a neutral representative of a country and its people.
• Likewise, presidents are obliged to act in accord with the policies and ideas of their political parties, while monarchs can reign more independently of political considerations.
• Intermarriage between royal families often establishes cooperation and peaceful relations between the nations involved.
• In a republic the continual changes of head-of-state create political uncertainty, which contrasts with the symbolic continuity of having a monarch.
• It can be argued that monarchy actually guarantees political stability. History is replete with examples where the abolition of monarchy has spawned civil wars and the rise of totalitarian systems, such as Jacobinism in France, Nazism in Germany, Communism in Russia and China, and Islamic Fundamentalism in Iran. In contrast, nations that chose to retain their monarchies, such as Thailand & the Arab Gulf states, have remained relatively immune to the constant volatility that has plagued their respective regions.
• Historically, constitutional monarchies have made the smoothest transition to democratic rule (prime examples being the Nordic states). In fact, with the exception of post-war Italy and several former Commonwealth realms, no modern, democratic constitutional monarchy has voted to abolish itself. Instead constitutional monarchy has been overthrown against the will of the people.

With all this considered, it is not surprising that monarchy is the system of government preferred by God Himself. After all, His title is "King of the Universe" not "President of the Universe."

Many of these arguments are easily refuted (and were, back in the 1700s, when the United States was justifying its independence). Yet there are now folks looking longingly for a single ruler, with all the trappings and ceremoniousness attached thereto.

Transforming NASA, Continued

In response to my own question...

Assuming the agency makes this transformation, what should NASA do? This is a question for the agency and its employees, but also the taxpayers and our elected leadership.

First, we must accept the fact that NASA's mission derives from the mission and policies of the United States Government, however constituted. For the sake of discussion, I will borrow a premise from Philip Bobbitt's The Shield of Achilles:

The State will maximize the opportunity of its citizens.

This definition uniquely directs and constrains the direction of government agencies like NASA. From here, I would propose the following mission objectives for the agency:

• Exploration: Send human and robotic explorers to celestial bodies never previously visited.
• Science and Technology Incubation: Provide facilities and test beds for basic science and technology research, with the results being available to all.
• Technology Transfer: Identify direct-application and "spinoff" technologies derived from space hardware to solve problems and improve life on Earth.

This list, however brief, is still general enough to allow for the Constellation Program, building the first Moon base, and developing in-space technologies. If the list appears a little too brief for some, once the Shuttle retires, these will be NASA's primary missions anyway. Still, I've striven to give the list more of a NACA feel to it, which would follow neatly from the notion that government should exist to maximize opportunities for its citizens, not do everything for them. Basic facts about the nature of the universe should be available to all; what people make of those facts is the business of individuals and corporations, with the government protecting innovations and inventions through patents and copyrights.

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Feel free to throw out your own premises. The top-level exercise of describing "what sort of space agency we want" also helps constrain and describe what sorts of transformation need to occur with the agency. Let the contemplation continue.

Transforming NASA

Again, some great comments from my readers: https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=3124283&postID=2398902107051507476. My responses are below.

Madi:

I particularly liked this:

I personally don't take major issue with our hierarchical structure and believe that it's essential in being an effective organization, especially given our size. I believe the question should actually be: "How do you transform the organization, into one where employees can openly contribute, in all facets of organizational operations?"

And this...

As an organization, we have leaders who have a vast amount of experience combined and are in positions to make decisions based on their knowledge and those very experiences

We do indeed have many, many smart people within NASA--our Gray Eminences who built Apollo and Shuttle; the next generation of managers, who are leading the current projects like Constellation, Ares, Orion, LRO, Kepler, etc.; and the new generation, who is gung-ho to bring in the dot-com ethos and a lot of new toys to the table to make things move more quickly. All of these experience bases need to be integrated in an environment of continued budget wariness, economic uncertainty, and increased activity in the private sector, which is understandably trying to recruit the best-and-brightest, wherever they can find them.

I also liked Tim's idea for a "NASA 101" class. Disney had something similar--a couple somethings, actually:

• "Disney Traditions," which is a basic indoctrination into the Disney culture and is, I believe, required of all cast members at Walt Disney World.
• "Disney University," where managers and salaried employees (independent contributors) learn the basics about budgets, HR compliance, marketing, etc. After 16 classes, I got a certificate of some kind that indicated I'd taken the relevant courses.

I also liked this from Tim:

The other important factor is to have managers trained in effectively evaluating advice from less-experienced employees. Clear expectations and a defined process for evaluating (and enacting!) new ideas are critical to empowering the employees. The whole system of training, evaluation, and feedback must be in place to support systemic changes in the organization.

Not sure what that would look like, but if I'm reading it correctly, it's an opportunity for every new employee to act and think like a consultant and for management to exchange ideas.

I did download and read the "Next 20 Years" article Nick recommended. It is useful reading, and nearly worth the $6.95 I paid for it. There are obviously other forces at work on NASA than just generations being born, making their impact, and retiring.

• We have the current recession, which might cause some folks to hold off on retirement
• An ongoing war overseas, which has increased concerns about the security of our cutting-edge technologies and reduced the number of tech-savvy foreign nationals who come here to stay
• A decline in the number of students studying STEM disciplines, which is constraining the "pipeline" for qualified scientists, engineers, etc.

It is, indeed, an exciting time to be in the space business, but that excitement is both positive and negative. There is great promise but also great uncertainty, and the challenges at hand are many-faceted. I've heard concerns that if NASA starts reviewing its overall mission or function, there is the likelihood that programs could be cut. This overlooks the potential that the discussions might improve the public's reception of the space program and might result in an increase the budget to do all the things currently on the agency's plate and more.

So, in addition to Madi's rephrasing of my previous question...

How do you transform the organization, into one where employees can openly contribute, in all facets of organizational operations?

We might also ask:

Assuming the agency makes this transformation, what should NASA do? This is a question for the agency and its employees, but also the taxpayers and our elected leadership.

Lots to do: where to start?

Some Other Space Items

Hat tip to Martin for finding this Washington Post survey on the usefulness of spending on NASA: http://www.dailytech.com/Survey+9+Out+of+10+Americans+Think+Space+Exploration+Still+Important/article14413.htm

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I got into an interesting discussion with Tom Olson, an expert on space entrepreneurship and one of the contributors to Space Cynics. First, you can read his original post: http://spacecynic.wordpress.com/2009/02/23/i-am-a-lost-cause/

Not able to leave this alone, I felt that I must respond:

You’ve got excellent reasons for being a “lost cause” on all of the topics you mentioned. However, since you’re not a Kool-Aid drinker for SBSP, low-cost launch, He-3, etc., what does interest you in space still? What do you think will work, given all the aborted or downright silly ideas?
I’ve seen a few posts like this, here and on N’Watch, bashing this or that dumb idea, but often find few positive recommendations. Are those found on a different blog?
/b

To which Mr. Olson responded:

I’m interested in all of space, Bart. Have been since I was a kid. I want to see people live and thrive everywhere from the moon and Mars to the asteroids and beyond. I want to see tourism and orbiting hotels. I want to see the private commercial space sector one day dwarf the government sector, as is the case with all other areas of our economy. (Well, up until recently. --BL)
My problem is the nutty ways that people propose to achieve that goal - ways that are impractical, full of “unobtainium”, have 8 or 9-figure upfront costs, or ways that hide their true costs (this is also known as being untruthful).
So the real question becomes, “How do we get from here to there?” I have a few ideas - I’ve even shared them for those who’ve cared to listen (that would include ISDC last year, Bart, and I didn’t see you in the audience - pity, that…). (He's right. My bad. I was elsewhere when his talk was going on because I got rerouted to another room.)
I think in the short run, strategic investments in “enabling” technologies will get us much farther in the long run than trying to throw down everything into grabbing the entire brass ring in one swoop. For example, I believe that lower-cost launch is possible - but not using the materials we presently use to make rockets - but getting that material requires new methods, hence my focus on certain nanotech startups. But that means to get there we may have to wait awhile, and that is unacceptable to those with limited patience who think they can get it all now, if only they can convince someone with a really deep pocket to fund them.
To be fair, I’m very supportive of SpaceX, because they’re doing it all with private money, and had to raise all their own capital before getting a single NASA check. But Elon himself admitted that the only “efficiencies” would be “at the margins”. In other words, no huge reduction in launch cost was coming anytime soon. That’s the world that exists today. But if you could “grow” the bulk of your rocket components in a vat from nano-assembled diamond, the rocket equation changes because the empty lift mass is a lot lower, but still as strong. That means more payload.
I’m looking at “smart materials” that may one day find themselves in better spacesuits. I’m looking at something called an “axial-flux” electric motor that claims 80% efficiency, available for transportation, regenerative braking, and wind generation, something I also see on a Mars rover.
There’s a ton of ideas being developed, and tons of potential money to be made, right now, on materials, products, and services that may seem unrelated at first, but will all one day become key components of a thriving space-commerce infrastructure.
But it’ll take patience, a long term plan, and a solid grounding in reality.

I like the cynics. They make me think. I reacted to one of their more provocative discussions soon after ISDC, which took on "The Church of the Trillion-Dollar Asteroid," "The Church of Cheap Access to Space," "The Church of Space Solar Power," and "The Church of Spaceports." The point of picking on all these groups was to bring a little financial realism to the wild dreams of space advocates. Of course the problem with all this thinking is that I've found myself wondering, as a non-engineer, non-scientist English major, who is right? What path will really get us to space?

Anyone who wants to become a space advocate, as I obviously do, must set themselves on a quest for lifelong learning. And I've got to state here that I don't want to do all the math. I'm an advocacy writer, I'm not paid to do rocket science; but I want to have a layman's understanding of the various technologies. I want to know that I'm supporting the right things for the right reasons. Never mind. I've got more reading to do.

Gen Y and NASA, Continued.

I've gotten many more good comments in the last couple days, and a huge spike in my hits thanks to NASAWatch. Who'da thunk it? Anyhow, many of the comments were variations on a theme. I wrote some of this in response to a response from my buddy Doc, but I'll repost here and elaborate a bit.

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Some folks are uncomfortable with the idea of labels, generational or otherwise. However, this discussion has been going on for a long, long time. You can probably find the ancient Greeks bemoaning the degradation of the youths of their day. Others dislike the premise of "paying one's dues." I honestly don't know how long is a reasonable amount of time to "learn a system." However, for the sake of argument, let's say someone should be able to talk as though they belonged there after they've been on the job a year.

Some people manage to graduate and go right into some high-paying job. Some drop out of high school and start their own companies. Some get all the way through a doctorate and still have no idea what they're going to be when they grow up. The points here are that individuals all develop differently, but large organizations are all pretty much the same. If you are interested in establishing a career in a large, bureaucratic organization, then you're going to have to play by that organization's rules. And that sort of organization is going to have more and more gray hairs and seniority the higher up the food chain you go. If you're not interested in working in a large, bureaucratic organization, you go find a job somewhere else or you go start your own business.

The fact is that NASA IS a large, bureaucratic organization when others would like it to be something different. If Nick, Doc, and the rest of Gen Y (or, God help us, some members of Gen X) want to change NASA into something other than it is now, well...that'll require another blog. Keep those thoughts coming. I'd also like to thank Dave for his link to the Gen X Files.

And in the meantime, I'll open it this up for discussion here: how do you transform a traditional, seniority-based organization into one where younger folks with bright ideas to contribute can move up the food chain without having to wait 10-20 years for "their turn" or to "pay their dues?"

/b

Following Up On Gen Y and NASA

Yesterday's posting on the latest "Gen Y presentation" produced some great, thought-provoking comments. Nick's response deserves to be quoted and responded to, so I'll do that below and try to comment where I think appropriate.

Re: “bigger challenges

”If you have any insight into what those “bigger challenges” are, I’d love to hear them. We’re actually going through a process of sorts right now to identify them and I’d really like to get you involved in those discussions.

Another reader comment from "1963" actually anticipated some of my thoughts:

Perhaps I'm just another grumpy old man, but sometimes these Gen-Y inputs sound like folks who demand to be respected before they have paid any dues that can be respected. While it takes smarts to come up with a good idea, it takes wisdom to know how to get it implemented in a large, political bureaucracy. And while we can complain and wish that NASA wasn't a large, political bureaucracy - the reality is what it is, and the odds of it changing are low. But does that mean we give up? Or does that mean we use our smarts to work the politics in our favor?

Here's what work comes down to for me: performance, process, politics, and people.

• Performance boils down to the content: do you know your stuff? Are you conversant enough with the actual work being performed? Depending on the complexity of your job, mastery of it could take anywhere from one hour to one month to one year to a lifetime. I look at this shakedown part of a job as ending when I know enough to understand the tasks and boundaries expected of the content. No one respects "the new guy" until s/he has been around long enough to know the business and make positive contributions. In some jobs, the new-guy perspective is wanted/valued/respected up front (consultants come to mind), while in others a "new guy" might be anyone with less than 10 years of experience. I've heard of such organizations, and the only way to win them over is to get down enough of the language to let the others know you can speak it.
• Processes are the things one must do to function in the organization: do you know where to get office supplies? Do you know how to get information from one group or another? Do you know which forms must be used to accomplish tasks?
• Politics are pretty straightforward as well: what are the organizational and power relationships within a particular work group? Woe to the newbie who starts talking about their politics or telling jokes in the first week without a complete understanding of the local norms. Office politics also define the boundaries of how you advance your own agenda (once you understand the content and the processes).
• People are who you have to work with, day in and day out. Do you understand what drives your coworkers? Do you know who knows what you need to know? Knowledge of individual motivations can be different from political knowledge. You might find someone who plays a very smooth political game, but once you get to know them one on one, you might find that they hate the game but play it out of sheer self-defense. This doesn't mean being best-buddies with everyone in the office, but it does mean having more than a vague realization of the other personalities in the room.

The point of all these basic definitions is that you need a knowledge of all of them to be truly effective in any workplace. And, as I was a pain-in-the-neck twentysomething 15-odd years ago, I can tell you that I learned most of these lessons the hard way by trying to do or fix things MY way first without bothering to learn the way things worked around me. I get the whole youthful enthusiasm thing and the desire to change the world and fix things that are obviously broken right now. However (again, after butting heads with more than a few managers in the hospitality and defense industries), I eventually had to learn to slow down, find out why things operated the way they did, and then figure out the most effective way to use the system as it is to move things in a more positive direction.

Admittedly, this is my personal approach, and might not work with everyone. However, I sometimes sense that youthful impatience in the presentations OpenNASA produces, and I've talked to enough people (like 1963) to know that Gen Y's desire to come in and fix/change things without "learning the system" or "paying their dues" can grate. Obviously, the world is changing and Gen X and the Boomers aren't getting any younger. But the Xers and the Boomers have been with the organization a bit longer, and so have a better handle on what's going on, how to get things done, and what to expect of this or that decision/idea. And there's also seniority to consider. Some people are not eager to be shown the door to make room for someone half their age, especially in the middle of a recession. I'm not saying that's what you're saying, but that's how some people perceive the presentations.

One thing I've noted especially among the young is a distinct impatience with "war stories," those long rambles that can come out of the mouth of older folks (you know--anyone over 30) about some event way back in the Dark Ages (like, the 1990s). Eyes roll, sighs blow forth, and the youth crosses their arms, hoping the lecture or story will end soon. But those stories are a great deal of how human beings and institutions carry on institutional knowledge. I've heard folks talk until they're blue in the face about "knowledge management systems" and "collecting lessons learned," but the fact remains that if someone's got a question about a particular type of problem, they're more likely to march down the hall, collar an old-timer ("graybeard" being the un-PC term) and ask, "Hey, how did you solve X on Shuttle/Apollo?"

I don't think the impatience problem is a particularly Gen Y problem. Like I said, I had it myself. It's just something to think about. It's not all about the new toys/technologies. Sometimes it's about the stories and the relationships you build. One thing I'd like to see NASA try is a pairing-up of graybeard mentors with rookie engineers/scientists as a living means of knowledge transfer.

Re: “brain heavy”

That’s an interesting point. I made this presentation in particular with the Digital Astronaut (DA) project in mind – which, is brain heavy. Academics, scientists, doctors, and all that stuff. I’ll give some more thought to your observation but one thought I have on this subject is even the folks “bending metal, installing wiring, turning wrenches, and welding structures” have ideas they’d love to share. In fact, those ideas are some of the most valuable ones you can get because they are the ones who are “doing it.”

Good point. My "four P's" above would apply to this group as well.

I think there’s a pretty big misconception behind the “Gen Y” label and how it’s been spun that’s its all about the technology and fancy web 2.0 gadgets. That’s not how I see it for sure, and as a project manager, my goal with DA is going to be able to figure out how to utilize the functionality of collaborative technology without creating barriers for people to contribute. It’s a starting point, not an ending point, and something I know will take quite a bit of continuous iteration to get right. That will probably mean not using all the bells and whistles on whatever website we put up. It will also mean augmenting whatever we do with other ways of interaction. I definitely get that and it’s a big part of our plan. I’ll try to do a better job of spelling that out next time – heck, maybe that’s a whole other presentation in itself. Hmm….

Okay, that makes sense. But, again, some people might not be comfortable with your new digital environment. I experienced one of my first neo-Luddite moments this week when I learned that I've got to transition from Office 2003 to 2007, which has a completely different interface for Microsoft Word. Okay, go ahead and laugh, but I've been using the same interface professionally, with moderate changes over the years, since 1996. That's 13 years of using the same program, but by golly, I know the system I've got, and can play it like a Stradivarius. Now I've got to readjust all of my usual keyboard and mouse rhythms. My productivity will drop for a few weeks (or months) as I spend time deciphering the new menus, taking classes to learn a whole new set of shortcuts, and in general grousing about the evils of Bill Gates and his merry band of outlaw programmers. All I'd ask is that you consider the user habits of other (older) audiences.

Re: Contributions

You talked about how these tools will enable people to make fundamentally better contributions than they might make f2f. That’s something that I flush out more verbally in the talk itself, and hopefully I’ll find some time to write those notes up into a post on opennasa.com sometime soon, but essentially… yes. Again, I’ll go back to the DA project. Even the team I work with is spread out across the country. I wish we werent’ because we all much prefer F2F meetings. Part of what we are building will be built out of necessity for us to collaborate on our own project! I think that’s great and will really
help drive out the requirements, which will help us clearly articulate exactly what contributions we are looking for. We hope to have this flushed out when we launch a few months from now. But one of the major goals of the DA is to gather input from scientists, coders, doctors, students, academics, and people from all over the place. The contributions themselves can be in a few different buckets, including improving the actual code structure of the model, adding to the knowledge base behind the model, and building on the “hypothesis” of the model to run experiments and simulations and ultimately help us develop countermeasures and buy down the risk of sending humans on long duration space flights. Our eventual website will have the audiences clearly defined as well as what contributions we’re looking for. It will no doubt be a big challenge, but also one that would be immensely valuable if we can accomplish it because it won’t be just NASA funded scientists and engineers looking at the problem any more, but others as well. I’m convinced that broadening our scope of input will
help provide better solutions in the end.

Re: Global Marketplace

I think DA is a good example of what this can look like for NASA. Not everything can be out their for external collaboration for the reasons you highlighted. But there is a portion of what we do that can. If we open up the items in our work portfolio that can be collaborated on publicly, it would help us leverage our already overworked internal resources. The DA is about human physiology and science. There’s a huge reliance on knowledge from the medical profession, which is an opportune thing to open up to an outside community of collaborators.

Re: moving forward

If you’ve been following the discussion as Bart and I have, you hear a lot of feedback given that we need concrete examples of what this looks like at NASA (versus just talking about it). Although I do think there is a lot of education and awareness that also needs to be done (hence the presentations), I couldn’t agree more. Unfortunately, its not as easy as just being able to implement some of this stuff for the average joe at NASA for a host of reasons. Luckily, I’m in a place now that I really have an opportunity (and authority) to share a knowledge asset (the computational model that is DA) with the world and work with others on further developing the body of knowledge and digital
analogue for all to use. My hope is that not only will NASA benefit, but that people around the world will benefit by using DA as an “innovation incubator” of sorts. I see the government’s role as one of an integrator of knowledge and a facilitator of collaboration – ultimately providing the right ingredients to enable innovation and keep pushing science and exploration forward. The idea of a lone genius, sitting in his office cubicle, coming up with “the great idea” is mysterious and romantic, but maybe a bit unrealistic. True innovation happens when you have knowledge brokers taking even old tried ideas, and applying them in new ways. I’m hoping the DA helps make that happen.

When it comes to making better contributions, the primary arguments I've read--on NASAWatch and elsewhere--focus on "Showing me the money." We need high-power, high-efficiency, high-capability, low-weight spacecraft and launch vehicles. How will DA or other collaborative enviroments bring about those results? Back up those answers with data, and your agenda will move forward swiftly.

I look forward to viewing DA in more detail. Again, I would like to throw in a recommendation or two from a technical writer's point of view.

• Who is your audience? I'm guessing web-minded people, yes? Well, that will probably mean a younger audience, meaning you might lose an older audience. You need to consider alternate delivery methods for those of us addicted to hard copies. Booklets, handouts, white papers, and other more traditional media, while passé in some quarters, are still traditional and acceptable media for conveying messages within NASA.
• Also, what do you want your audience to do or how do you want them to react after using the information on DA? This means designing your application, interface, and outputs with particular needs in mind.
• How much data does your audience need to accomplish what they will want from the product?

Anyway, this was a really long response, but as you can probably tell, one that I’m passionate about. I’d love to talk to anyone who has any thoughts, in particular about how to create an online, open-source, computational model of human physiology (digital astronaut).

My response was pretty long, too. If you made it this far, congratulations. Thanks for continuing to prompt and provoke debate, Nick. There are things to be done on all sides of the debate, including mine.

Missing Pieces: What NASA’s Gen Y Keeps Missing

I invite you to visit this web site, and read where Nick Skytland, a Gen-Y civil servant at Johnson Space Center (JSC), posted a presentation from the PM Challenge conference entitled “Participatory Exploration: The Role of the User Contribution System.” Go ahead, I’ll wait.

Okay, now that you’ve read that, I’ll make some obligatory grumpy comments. These are being written in the spirit of constructive criticism, not "Siddown, kid, and wait your turn!" I'm looking at specifics in the presentations and so am asking/commenting about specifics.

I’ve met Nick once or twice at space-related events, and he’s a friend in Facebook. I'm not sure he reads this blog, but I might direct him to it just to provide him with food for thought for his next presentation. Nick is one of many under-30 contributors at the agency who’s trying to get NASA to think more like a dot-com (e.g. Google) and less like a command-and-control military organization. I wish him and his compadres well. Gosh knows all government agencies could think more quickly on their feet. However, being a Gen-Xer who’s spent most of my career in large, command-and-control organizations, I suspect that Nick has bigger challenges ahead than he realizes.

One of the gripes I’ve had about these types of presentations is that they are very brain-heavy. Here’s what I mean: despite the fact that, until the recent recession, America has continued to break records in the amount of manufactured stuff we export, media pundits and younger folks focused remain captivated by the "service economy" and the “information age."

Now admittedly a lot of our mass-produced products can be assembled, packaged, or shipped robotically, and that trend will no doubt continue. However, one of the largest contributors to America’s exports has been The Boeing Company, which depends on a large, skilled workforce capable of bending metal, installing wiring, turning wrenches, welding structures, and all the rest. All of this is still too complex for robots and likely will be for some time to come. These activities involve people doing physical labor, not just sitting in front of a laptop at Starbucks, sipping lattés. I don’t know what the specific percentages are, but I think I’m safe in assuming that not all of the people producing or building stuff—from farm goods to airplanes and spacecraft—went to college. Skytland is “privileging” (a favorite phrase of one of my grad school profs) intellect and symbol manipulation over physical labor. This is a mistake because not everyone can contribute this way, nor do they necessarily want to. Any future educational system—and any future space program—must find ways for individuals with mental and physical skill sets to contribute, because we will need both educated minds and skilled hands if we want to get to the Moon, Mars, and beyond.

Another issue I have with these Gen Y presentations—and I apologize now if Nick covered this, all I have to go by are the PPT slides—is how they emphasize collaborative technological tools but do not specify how these tools will enable people to make fundamentally better contributions than they might make through, say, face-to-face meetings, phone calls, or memos. I would also be interested to see what specific engineering or scientific contributions have been made in the aerospace industry using Skytland’s proposed new work environment. One example I can think of off the top of my head is the "virtual collaboration" Boeing has been doing to design and build the 787 Dreamliner at multiple locations around the globe. However, that plane is now likely to start deliveries more than a year late. Was that the result of--or despite--worldwide, international collaboration? That question should be answered.

Next on my nitpicking list: the global marketplace. It is one thing to have global “participation” in a robotic exploration mission (the standard example I’ve heard is allowing people to vote on “where to plant the flag”). It is another to have people from other countries reviewing and building the rockets--see the 787 example above. Since the dawn of the space age, rockets have been a critical national and strategic technology because of their ability to carry weapons. As noted above, if America has had one distinctive competitive advantage over the past 50 years, it has been in aerospace technology. This includes everything from materials to aerodynamic shapes or computer codes for analyzing flight paths to the guidance systems that allow a rocket to travel 25,000 miles per hour and reach a target millions of miles away with a margin of error measured in inches. These are all technologies that require United States citizens to produce them—at least if the United States wants to remain a spacefaring nation. There are some jobs that NASA and its primary contractors simply will not and cannot outsource to other countries because it’s the law.

We have a truly unique and challenging future ahead of us. I look forward to future contributions by Nick and others like him. I’d just like a little more organizational, cultural, and operational realism brought into the discussion.

Must-See Things to Do/See in Europe

I'm starting to narrow down my list of the things I need to do to get ready for Europe. My theory on overplanning and overthinking on the front end is that I'll have that much less to worry about when I get there. Obviously the tour is going to have its own theories on what I will or won't do, but I gathered from my reading the Rick Steves offers at least some time away from "the herd." So: what do I expect to get out of this trip? What do I want to see? What do I want do? I've already nailed down the questions I want to ask myself for my journal:

• What did you see?
• What did you hear?
• What did you smell?
• What did you taste?
• What did you touch?
• What did you do?
• What did you think?
• What did you feel?
• Who did you meet?

Perhaps it's best for me to break things down by destination:

Netherlands/Amsterdam

• Anne Frank House (part of tour)
• Ride in canal boat

Germany/Rhineland

• Ride on river cruise (part of tour)
• Visit at least one Lutheran church/place of historical interest
• Visit a castle (part of tour)
• Buy Hummels for Mom, Col, and Ellie
• Visit World War I / World War II battlefield

Austria

• Hike among the mountains

Venice

• Doge's Palace (part of tour)
• Boat tour (motor, not gondola)
• Seafood
• Go looking for James Bond (kidding)

Florence

• David (yeah, yeah, he's tall and nekkid; can we find some wine now?)
• Walk where Dante Alighieri walked
• Giardino di Boboli
• Find some Tuscan wines and just chill out

Rome

• Roman Forum (part of tour)
• Catacombs
• Vatican City (part of tour)

Cinque Terre

• Hike along the cliffs above the ocean
• Do some serious chilling out
• Find the local wine
• Write
• Don't do a d@mn thing

Switzerland

• More hiking in the mountains
• Find a decent cheese/chocolate, devise plausible excuse to ship several tons to U.S.
• See the Large Hadron Collider?

France

• Tour a vineyard (part of tour)
• Sample whatever wine, food, and wine is available
• Find a vineyard that will ship cases to the U.S.
• Wander Paris (part of tour)
• Musee Rodin
• Versailles (time permitting)
• Chill out somewhere Hemingway chilled out
• At least try the coffee

Other things will come to me. Given a semi-structured tour and that tours are likely to get me to most of this anyway, what things should I do/try/see in my limited free time? Ideas welcome.

More Random Reading

Obama vows to cut the budget deficit by two-thirds by raising taxes. Good lawd, man! Stop the spending! But then there's this CNN story, stating that Obama wants to cut taxes to 95% of Americans. Oh, right. This is the $13 tax credit per week people are supposed to get.

1. Let's start with the first fallacy: 48% of Americans don't pay income taxes. They get a full refund of all those taxes.
2. Next fallacy: only the rich benefit from tax cuts. This actually isn't a fallacy, but something that Obama just leaves out of his speeches. The top 25% of wage earners pay 86% of the income taxes. Obama is engaging in pure class warfare on this issue. One might complain about "tax cuts for the rich," but how disingenuous is that complaint when the rich pay the majority of the taxes? Also, income taxes are on wages, not trust funds and other things that keep folks like the Kennedy kids fed, so the folks who are born lucky enough to inherit a ton of money don't get socked by many of the taxes that are out there.
3. Fallacy #3: a tax credit to people who do not normally pay income taxes is not a tax cut, that's a giveaway from someone who does pay taxes.

A Swiss political party wants to retaliate against a U.S. government probe into Americans who sent their money to Switzerland to protect that money from intrusive U.S. banking laws. I wonder how much trouble I'd get into if I opened a Swiss bank account. Never mind, I don't have enough money to be worth confiscating anyway.

Chicago's Mayor Daley wants a surveillance camera on every street corner. With very strong gun control laws, the Windy City has ensured that only the criminals and the government has guns. So now you're an ordinary, law-abiding, non-gun-carrying citizen. How safe do you really feel?

Mahmoud Ahmadenijad and following the 12th Imam.

Benjamin Netanyahu, a conservative (Likud Party), again Prime Minister of Israel. There are also conservative-leaning governments in France, Germany, and New Zealand...just around the time America has gone liberal. Interesting world.

Random Reading

Here are a variety of things that have crossed my path in the last week or so. Commentary will come to me eventually.

New article by Steve Cook (Manager of the Ares Projects) on Ares management practices: http://appel.nasa.gov/ask/issues/33/33s_owning_product_and_process.php

Also, some very cool pictures of the Constellation Program ("Yes, America, we DO have a space program..."): http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/02/progress_on_nasas_constellatio.html

What is the G-20? http://www.g20.org/about_what_is_g20.aspx

Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity, by David Allen

How to Handle Difficult People, with Sue Hansen

The Space Renaissance Forum

Singularity Sky by Charles Stross

Bank CEO rips on the TARP program: http://www.twincities.com/ci_11722986?source=most_viewed

Online source for hard science fiction: http://www.mikebrotherton.com/diamonds/?index

Escape from Hell, the sequel to Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's Inferno, is available for sale.

More Thoughts on the Singularity

I have a great interest in the political and ethical impacts of technology. Therefore, the Singularity, which promises everything from super-smart computers to an end to want via nanotechnology to immortality through biotechnolgy, is of keen interest to me. As a reader and amateur writer of science fiction, I have no problem with the probability of the Singularity, but I do wonder and worry about what it might bring about. The thoughts below are the result of two days' worth of journal entries. A bit long and convoluted, perhaps, but necessary to English majors like me, who think in prose, not equations.

*

"I don't want my pain taken away. I need my pain!"
--Captain James T. Kirk, Star Trek V: The Final Frontier

"That is the exploration that awaits you: not mapping stars or studying nebula, but charting the unknown possbilities of existence."
--Q, Star Trek: The Next Generation, "All Good Things..."

Picard: "It's our mortality that defines us, Soren. It's part of the truth of our existence."
Soren: "What if I told you that I found a new truth?"
--Star Trek: Generations

"I belonged to a new underclass, no longer determined by social status or the color of your skin. No, we now have discrimination down to a science."
--Vincent, GATTACA

And again George Hadley was filled with admiration for the mechanical genius who had conceived this room. A miracle of efficiency selling for an absurdly low price. Every home should have one. Oh, occasionally they frightened you with their clinical accuracy, they startled you, gave you a twinge, but most of the time what fun for everyone, not only your own son and daughter, but for yourself when you felt like a quick jaunt to a foreign land, a quick change of scenery. Well, here it was!
--Ray Bradbury, "The Veldt"

For the last 200 years, strength (political power) has been determined by the ability to incraese material wealth. This is a radical change from previous eras, when leaders derived their powers strictly by agricultural abundance--or scarcity, military power, "divine right of kings," or clerical sanction. The power of money created a new dynamic, as it relied primarily on intellect and fair trade of value rather than sheer violence (or threat thereof).

One inevitable side-effect of this transition is that power shifted from those with weapons to those with money. Marxists criticized the "bourgeois" ethics of hard work and simple material comfort. Nevertheless, capitalism changed many assumptions that had stood for centuries by combining industrial machinery, scientific insight, mass production, and individual liberty. Slavery ended, and standards of living in industrialized countries rose. For the first time in human history, the goods of civilization could be made abundant and cheap enough for the majority of humanity to afford them--if available. Consider, even today, the difference between poverty in America, where individuals still have access to television, cellular telephones, computers, and a social infrastructure that ensures survival or recovery in the event of national disasters; and poverty in the developing world, where mass starvation, disease, and unsanitary conditions are common.

Another of the unsung triumphs of Western Civilization in the last 25 years has been information technology, which has progressed and expanded the extend of human knowledge exponentially every two years. Advanced computers are also allowing for exponential increases in knowledge about human genetics, cognitive psychology, and nanotechnology.

Biotechnology is giving humanity unprecedented insight into the processes of life itself. We are learning now to modify the forms and shapes of life, and even extend it.

Insight into our own psychology could enable us to overcome mental illness and the hostile madness that provokes us to war. We might eventually be able to translate the structure of thought itself from brain impulses to data sets capable of traveling through computer systems like "ghosts in the machine."

Nanotechnology will allow for mass transmutation of the elements, enabling individuals to overcome not just starvation, but powerlessness as well.

And computer technology itself, becoming ever more sophisticated and powerful, could eventually exceed the processing and intellectual ability of the humans that gave it birth. They will be able to generate artificial environments for humans that are indistinguishable from reality.

All these changes, technologists like Ray Kurzweil predict, will culminate in an event called the Singularity, where humanity (or its machines, or a combination thereof) might transcend mortality, scarcity, and ignorance.

It all sounds so grand, so impressive and utopian--what could possibly go wrong? We don't need to think too hard about it to come up with answers. Human nature is what it is: good and evil, truthful and deceitful, conscientious and wasteful, peaceful and violent, cooperative and competitive. All of these traits will be reflected in our technologies.

Take away scarcity, and what new things will human beings find to fight about? What will become of our cultures when everyone can be as rich as middle-class Americans today? Populations are likely to drop, and new problems of overindulgence and sheer materialism are likely. Eliminate sickness and death, and what need will there be for doctors, funeral directors, or priests?

Yet what more could humans beings ask of a utopia? An end to illness, want, ignorance, the sources of war, suffering, and death. But what of the consolations of philosophy? What will become of politics when decisions are made not just by the powerful few, but where every individual and every computer has a voice? Much of human technological and artistic progress has been driven by a desire to overcome limitations. Will that drive exist if we truly achieve an end to striving here on Earth? Why bother exploring other worlds if computers can create alien landscapes as realistic as the most vivid dreams? We need to think seriously about the outcomes of pursuing such a future. Again, for most of our history, the quest to seek beyond our limitations has ruled our lives. What will it mean to be "human" if all of the basic drives and limitations that defined the lives of our ancestors become irrelevant?

*

Since the late 1930s, we have had a literature that addresses the implications of our technological dreams: science fiction. Star Trek is merely the most popular flavor. You might not like everything you read in SF, but you might be less surprised by the future you find yourself facing.

Various Things Going on in the World

Some good, some bad, some that will make you wonder about the state of our world.

Hugo Chavez won a referendum to eliminate term limits, allowing him to become "President for Life." Such a thing, of course, could never happen here...

North Korea claims that it is planning another rocket/missile launch.

The launch of Space Shuttle Discovery has been delayed again, this time to no earlier than February 27.

The signing of the oh-so-urgent stimulus bill will have to wait until Obama gets back from a three-day weekend. This is actually a really dumb idea. The longer the bill remains unsigned, the more the public will have a chance to read it (but then, why should they bother? The Senate voted for it, and most of them didn't read it, either). And one must ask: if retail sales are making a comeback without the stimulus bill, is the bill really necessary??? I ask that question at work a lot, and I usually get in trouble for it. So it goes.

Speaking of Obama, it looks like he might be dumping the "car czar" idea, allowing senior members of his staff to make decisions on how to run private-sector companies instead. And I must ask: once a private-sector company accepts partial government ownership, is it truly a "private sector" company anymore? Businesses should find other ways to ride out the recovery, because as soon as they accept government money, the public, the media, and (most importantly) the government will have an expectation that Washington will dictate what the company will do. A gentle reminder on the definition of socialism:

[A] social and economic doctrine that calls for public rather than private ownership or control of property and natural resources. According to the socialist view, individuals do not live or work in isolation but live in cooperation with one another. Furthermore, everything that people produce is in some sense a social product, and everyone who contributes to the production of a good is entitled to a share in it. Society as a whole, therefore, should own or at least control property for the benefit of all its members. [Emphasis mine.]

And I am still thinking long and hard about the social, political, economic, and cultural impacts of Ray Kurzweil's "Singularity." Again, I'm not doubting that such a thing is possible (though it interests me that my friends who have more scientific and technical training do doubt it). Rather, I question the desirability of the Singularity. Nevertheless, I look forward to the answers Dr. Kurzweil provides to the questions that I, Darlene the Science Cheerleader, and our readers pose to him this week. I will post his responses (or a link to them) when Darlene and I receive them.

Sayonara for this evening. Let's be careful out there.

We Are What We Consume

In the freewheeling '80s, the Moral Majority started taking the matter of sex and violence in TV shows and the movies more seriously. There was a lot of sarcasm on the left, with people comparing the denunciations of American culture by Christian Coalition types with the mullahs in Iran (the assumption being, if the Iranians criticize America and they're nuts, the Christians must be similarly off their rockers). "Change the channel!" was a popular retort. Others believe that individuals are inherently violent or not violent, and so the content of what's on TV wouldn't affect them one way or another--the violent were going to end up evil anyway.

As in my previous entry, I can't help but marvel at the selective outrage, as Hollyweird is willing to self-censor on issues like smoking. Bad guys are now seen as smoking, not good guys. Smoking is no longer sophisticated or cool, but bad for you, and so must be portrayed as evil (Arthur C. Clarke even suggested that film editors could make a great deal of money digitizing out scenes of smoking from old movies).

So imagine my lack of surprise when I see that the dirtbag who shot five people at my alma mater was tossed from the Army, in part because of his obsessive fandom of movie murderers. Imagine my further lack of surprise when I hear that former President Clinton suggested reinstituting the "Fairness Doctrine." So apparently, only SOME things in the media can influence children and must be removed--and those things would be anything that conservatives think or do.

Problems With the People at the Top

One of the advantages of staying out of management for years and years (not just accidentally but by active pursuit) is that I've been able to criticize it with a clear conscience. Because once you're in charge, you can't complain, right? (Reason enough to punish Keith Cowing by making him the NASA Administrator.)

Anyhow, I've been hearing for months now how evil and disgusting it is that corporations have been giving bonuses to CEOs and other high officers in the midst of bad economic times or for making bad economic decisions in good times. I don't know, quite frankly. As a stockholder of several companies, I do write letters, usually when it comes time to fill out my stockholder's ballot. I vote for throwing out the entire board, when it suits me, not that it makes a whole lot of difference. Why do companies reward someone for acting against the company's best interests? I have no clue. That outrages me, too, thank you very much. (But, I hasten to add, I'm an owner. That's my business. If the companies in which I'm a stockholder do not take federal bailout money, it's not the government's or the media's business, either.)

But then where is this same outrage when elected officials try to ram legislation through Congress that is directly against the best interests of the United States? What about amnesty for illegal immigrants? What about spending nearly $800 billion on a spending bill that more Americans do not want? Where is the outrage against the arrogance of power now? Never mind, I forgot. It's Obama, and he can do no wrong.

Book Review: Accelerando

In response to my reading of The Singularity is Near and the opportunity with Darlene the Science Cheerleader to interview Ray Kurzweil, I thought I'd take a look at some Singularity-related science fiction. Charles Stross, a British SF writer, has written several books on this theme, among them Accelerando. This is a wild book, very serious and far-reaching in its implications despite its often-humorous or raucous character interactions. It is also much, much easier to read than Kurzweil's book and provides a dramatic representation of Kurzweil's ideas in everyday lives.

Starting around 2015, we begin with Manfred Macx, a roving hacker and business idea creator, who creates new money-making concepts for others, taking only favors as payment. Manfred is a neo-Marxist who distrusts capitalism and believes that the Singularity is going to create a society of plenty so great that money no longer matters. He follows the credo of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Cory Doctorow, who believe that information should be free. Stross realistically describes the financial difficulties that would arise if our worldwide economic system shifted from an assumption of scarcity and limited resources (which we mediate by using money) to an economy where nanotechnology-based "replicators" make all resources and products free by transmuting elements at the atomic level on an industrial scale. However, I didn't buy Manfred's belief that only a turn to full Marxism could cope with this change in resources.

Manfred's story begins when a group of dissident lobsters contacts him via an electronic package seeking asylum. Lobsters, you say? Right: lobsters. One aspect that is often hyped as part of the Singularity is the ability of computers to "upload" the contents of minds. Theoretically, one could start by uploading simpler minds first, then use what is learned from those uploads to increase computer capabilities, and moving up to faster computational systems. While finding an escape route for the lobsters, Manfred also tries to fight for the civil rights of computerized entities like the lobsters and dodge the IRS, his ex-wife (who works for the IRS), the mafia (who have taken over the music business), and someone who is mailing him dead cats. This is a lot of weirdness, and this is just the first part of the book.

Part two deals with Manfred's daughter Amber, who was born from his ex-wife, who became pregnant after capturing Manfred in a bizarre bondage episode in part one (this book is definitely rated R). Amber is an indentured slave aboard a ship orbiting Jupiter space after running away from her mother. The ship is out in space to use nanotechnology miners to build bases in that part of space. She gradually transforms herself into a queen in Jupiter space, and uses her considerable political powers to send a laser-sail-driven starship to a brown dwarf three light years away. This starship is not occupied by a typical flesh-and-blood crew, but a group of holodeck characters who incorporate uploaded personalities--including Amber and her electronic cat, another recurring character, like the lobsters. These electronic characters reach the brown dwarf, where they find an alien-built router. The remainder of part two deals with these "holodeck" adventures and their eventual return to the solar system.

While all this mostly human-based activity is going on, the computerized world has been busy, too. The super-intelligent computers, using nanotechnology in their own way, are dismantling planets and moons to turn "dumb" matter into matter that can be used for molecular computing. The electronic minds are trading in content and ideas forming "Economy 2.0" and eventually "Economy 3.0." All of this can quickly get over the merely human occupants of the solar system, but that's almost beside the point, as the electronic minds of the inner solar system also become hostile to human life. If there's a dystopian side to the Singularity, this would be it. And all of this takes place within the space of a century, more or less. This is a much different view of progress than some Golden Age SF writers created. Rather than massive changes in humanity and technology taking place over the course of ages, these changes occur in the space of decades or mere years.

To help the reader keep up on what's going on, Stross uses rather amusing omniscient summaries of activities in the humand and computerizeds world on Earth. It combines a little Heinleinesque snark, a little cyberpunk randomness, and a lot of Singularity- or IT-based technobabble. A short sample will suffice:

New Japan is one of the newer human polities in this system, a bunch of nodes physically collocated in the humaniformed spaces of the colony cylinders. Its designers evidently only knew about old Nippon from recordings made back before Earth was dismantled, and worked from a combination of nostalgia-trip videos, Miyazaki movies, and anime culture. Nevertheless, it's the home of numerous human beings--even if they are about as similar to their historical antecedents as New Japan is to its long-gone namesake.

Humanity?

Their grandparents would recognize them, mostly. The ones who are truly beyond the ken of twentieth-century survivors stayed back home in the red-hot clouds of nanocomputers that have replaced the planets that once orbited Earth's sun in stately Copernican harmony. The fast-thinking Matrioshka brains are as incomprehensible to their merely posthuman ancestors as an ICBM to an amoeba--and about as inhabitable.

Part three's human-viewpoint character is Sirhan, the son of Amber and Sadeq, a Shi'ite Muslim cleric who accompanied her on the starship. Sirhan was born while the virtual incarnation of Amber was in transit to the alien router. Amber and Sadeq never married on the starship, while their left-behind selves pushed Sirhan's personality through a series of holodeck-type environments to try to get his childhood "right." As a result of all this, Sirhan has a rather confused and tense relationship with his returned mother.

By part three, the inner solar system has become akin to a Dyson sphere made of "computronium," essentially "dumb" matter that has all been translated into computer surfaces to increase the ability of the computer minds near the Sun to expand their powers. Again there is tension between humans and computers, keeping the conflict moving along.

What I like and respect about Stross's work is his more realistic depiction of the problems of smarter-than-human computers. Ray Kurzweil, the lead prophet of Singularitarianism, is much too optimistic, in my view. But then if everything was an "upside" in the Singularity, there'd be no drama and no story. Stross also manages to strike a nice balance between the human character interactions and the bigger human-computer conflicts, though the human relationships become more and more difficult to sort out and understand as the technology that defines "humanity" changes the very nature of the species. I found the book well worth reading, and look forward to Stross's Singularity Sky.

What Would You Ask Ray Kurzweil?

For those of you who already know who Kurzweil is and what this is about, Darlene the Science Cheerleader and I have the opportunity to do an email interview with him and write an article on ScienceCheerleader.com. As you might imagine, I have a whole boatload of questions in my mind, but in reality, R.K. will probably answer, at most, a dozen. If you have a question you're dying to ask about The Singularity, forward it my way, and Darlene and I will include it in the list for consideration. I'll keep this open until Friday night (whenever I crash--usually around 10:30-11 p.m. Central Time).

For those of you who have no idea who Ray Kurzweil is or what this is about, you may continue reading below. RK's most famous book, "The Singularity is Near," talks about a fundamental transformation that is occurring in the world's technology--not just computers, but also nanotechnology (manufacturing things at the atomic level) and biotechnology (changing the human genome to overcome illness, disease, or defects).

RK proceeds from the idea that computers have been making massive improvements in processing speed and capability every couple years. The basic theory governing this advance is Moore's Law, which states that the number of transistors on an integrated circuit has been increasing by an order of magnitude once every two years. This is how you get computers with ten times the speed for the same amount of money. RK says that this ability to compute is allowing us to also better understand everything faster, from the human genome to climate modeling to the human bloodstream. Eventually, around 2045 or so, the world's computers will achieve a point where they become not only superfast, but superintelligent--faster than us and smarter. This condition, called the Singularity, will enable us to do anything from extending life more or less indefinitely to accurately predict the weather a year out, to "uploading" the contents of our minds into the internet--allowing our souls to more or less become "ghosts in the machine."

Kurzweil has even partnered with NASA and Peter Diamandis of the X Prize Foundation to create a "Singularity University" to help technical, business, and political leaders understand and cope with the changes the Singularity will bring. There are more links below. I'm sure all sorts of questions can come to mind. I've got mine, what are yours?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore's_law
http://singularity.com/
http://singularityu.org/
http://bartacus.blogspot.com/2007/11/review-of-singularity-is-near-review-is.html
http://www.nss.org/resources/books/non_fiction/NF_038_singularityisnear.html http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?m=1
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PWXrnsSrf0&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSSYyFqpS3U&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYIj3VxSdzI&feature=related
http://mindstalk.net/vinge/vinge-sing.html

Darwin or Lincoln?‏

Darlene the Science Cheerleader posed an interesting question to me, based on a Newsweek article: who was more important, Abraham Lincoln or Charles Darwin? I decided to write this before reading the Newsweek piece so as not to prejudice myself--all I knew was that they chose Lincoln.

By “important,” I presume they mean influential: who made a difference in more people’s lives? Who improved more people’s lives? Who made more people’s lives worse? Some of these questions I leave as exercises for the reader.

Next to George Washington, Lincoln is one of the two most revered American presidents today. His story is known to all (some better than most—I grew up in Illinois, the “Land of Lincoln,” as it declares boldly on our license plates). He is the president who managed to preserve the Union through force of arms and at a terrible cost in lives and property. The Civil War, also called “The War of Northern Aggression” by some of my compadres south of the Mason-Dixon Line, remains the most disastrous conflict ever fought on the American continent.

The political and economic outcomes were long-lasting and world changing. The war ended slavery and the slave trade in North America, legally brought Black Americans the voting franchise, and changed the shape of the Constitution. It brought an end to the Southern plantation system's aristocracy and its domination of American politics until Woodrow Wilson became president in 1913. It established the Western practices of both trench and indirect assault warfare. It preserved the territorial integrity of the United States and ensured that the States remained United, in form if not always in attitude. (And if you doubt the importance of all this history, I call to your attention the alternate histories of Harry Turtledove, who imagined a counterfactual history in which the U.S.A. and C.S.A. remained separate and how the world suffered from the dreadful consequences of that separation.) All of this was the work of Lincoln. But it is the man’s words that we remember better than others:

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation,
under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Lincoln's rhetoric and nearly Biblical cadences have ensured that, almost certainly, his words will long outlive the man and the nation he led. It is one thing to lead a nation through a time a great tribulation and ensure its survival. It is another thing to be a firm, passionate, and articulate defender of a set of beliefs. It is something else altogether to be able to do both. If Lincoln had been defeated in the War Between the States, America would not exist today, and much that this nation achieved in the time since then would not have occurred, from the victories of freedom in World Wars I and II, the Marshall Plan, and the Cold War, all the way up to the election of our current president. This is why Lincoln is still revered over 140 years after his death; Lincoln still matters because America still matters.

Darwin established a whole paradigm in science, one of the prime-moving forces in Western culture. He managed to write, in reasonably clear and non-confrontational prose (unlike some of his inheritors), a scientific theory of why there are so many different types of creatures on this Earth. However, unlike Lincoln, Darwin was not an “indispensible man.” That is, if he hadn’t written The Origin of Species, someone else would have, with more or less the same impact. Darwin just happened to get there first. The prevailing trends in natural philosophy of the 19th century were leading scientists toward increasingly naturalistic theories and explanations for life on Earth. It was simply a matter of time before someone put it all together and said, “You know, given the similarities between X, Y, and Z creatures, their behaviors, and their physical (and later DNA) structures, it’s entirely possible that if you go back far enough, they might have had a common ancestor.” And from there it's not such a great leap, if you make such assumptions about plants and animals, to discuss the possible origins of human beings.

The philosophical “spinoffs” of evolution have been profound and continue to be played out—much like Lincoln’s America. It laid the groundwork for genetics and comparative biology; it has hardened the line between science and religion, to the detriment of the whole culture; and it also has provided “scientific” social justifications for capitalism, aristocracy, communism, imperialism, racism, and atheism.

Lincoln ensured a second birth of the American dream, and that nation now has the dubious honor of being the most powerful nation on Earth, still imperfectly pursuing the ideals Lincoln articulated 150 years ago. One would like to think that future freedom-loving societies will continue to preserve his words down through the ages. Darwin articulated a theory that was an inevitable outcome of the scientific theory and practice of his time. Darwin was a spokesman for the practice of science, which has a longer-term impact than Darwin himself. Therefore, as an individual, as a man, I would argue that Lincoln was the more important of the two. Given science, Darwin was inevitable; given America's history, Lincoln was not.

"Promise You'll Visit Me in the Re-Education Camp?"

Hearings are likely to begin on reinstating the "Fairness Doctrine," a law that keeps controversial (i.e. conservative) topics off the radio by requiring radio stations to give equal time for opposing views. This is flatly absurd. Left-leaning attitudes overwhelm the magazine racks, the major television networks, the movies, books, newspapers, and a good chunk of the Internet. Conservatism dominates in one segment of the communications world--radio--and THAT'S the place where liberal politicians want to ensure "fairness." The quotation above was said to me by a fellow conservative. Heck, I might be next to him inside the fence.

What's really amazing is how I have been told that I'm closed-minded for not wanting to watch or read all this liberal stuff, but it's okay to impose a fairness doctrine on Limbaugh. Apparently 95% control of the media is not enough.

*

Another thing's got me in a twist lately: specifically, the notion that business is inherently less moral than government, and that therefore it is government's job to "rein in" the private sector. Those who dislike what the private sector does often cite the "excessive" salaries of this or that individual, or the amount of power businesses have to control lives.

The fundamental difference between "power" in the business sense and power in the governmental sense is that government writes and enforces the laws, with weapons if necessary. Yes, financial concerns can prevent particular ideas from spreading, but only through pressure ("If you run this ad, we'll pull our advertising"), not life-endangering threats ("Run this ad, and we'll close down your business, arrest you, seize your assets, and put you in jail"). I'm not saying either side is more moral. What I am saying is that human beings operate both types of agencies--public and private--and thus are equally susceptible to corruption or power-seeking. The difference is in methodology: businesses cannot force you to buy their products, and if they did, government would often come in and break up their monopoly.

And if I were to seek assistance in fixing the current economic crisis, I'd ask business leaders, not government leaders because business leaders understand the give and take of the marketplace. Government is used to being obeyed. In the Western system of law, only governments have a legal monopoly on the use of force. If you would rather work with people on a voluntary basis, you work with business. If you want people ordered about, you go through the government.

One reason conservatives favor limited government is that they prefer voluntary exchanges. You cannot engage in a purely voluntary partnership with the government when they control the laws. The advantages are all on the government's side. Businesses can offer incentives to elected officials (voting, lobbying, campaign contributions), but they cannot FORCE the government to do anything. Power relationships matter, and the less power government has, the better. My $.02 this fine Sunday morning.

Stuff for Europe

I decided to go wild today and get some stuff that's been on "the list" for going to Europe. Nothing major, but a start, nonetheless:

• Charger for iPod
• U.S./Europe voltage converter
• Band-aids (or the nearest convenient brand), multiple sizes
• Hand wipes

A lot left to go. I'm left to wonder if I'll actually have room for more basic stuff, like clothing. I also tried to find a travel journal, but Barnes & Noble didn't have quite what I wanted. They had travel-themed journals, but nothing that would help the writer ask the right questions and notice the right things while on holiday. So I've got more shopping to do--this time, via Rick Steves. (Update 2/8: Bought the journal.)

The biggest problem I foresee is washing clothes on the road...that'll mean using the room sink, or some nearby equivalent. I got some Basic H from Mom for cleaning purposes, so that's a start. I also need to look seriously at what I plan to wear and what I still need to buy. The big item I know I need is a soft (flannel?) lined rain jacket, most likely from Land's End. I also need to look at one of those microfiber towels Scott recommended. Jos. A. Bank is also supposed to have a decent line of moisture-resistant clothing. I probably also need a pair of boat shoes or something that doesn't scream "American!" when I got to dinner. Gym shoes, apparently, are a dead giveaway.

My busy intellectual life (book reading, blogging, keeping up on the world) is interfering with my ability to study my languages. I'm on the verge of surrendering on that front and just bringing along the phrase books. Still, today's outing made me feel better about making progress. I'm now less than seven months out from E-Day. The excitement continues.