Potpourri LIII

I'll be heading off to KSC for Ares I-X work, the STS-127 launch, and the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO)/Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) launch. Busy, but fun! Anyhow, I should have all sorts of fun pics to post, either during the trip or afterward.

My Google Alert feed turned up a few more Ares I-X stories:

• From the Times of the Internet from North Olmsted, Ohio.
• From the Bad Astronomy blog.
• From UPI.

News from Hu: North Korea plans another nuke and missile test (not yet a nuke missile test) if the U.N. decides to clamp down on them with sanctions.

Stuff from Down Under Defense Expert (DUDE):

• Want to win a three-month vacation? Become an expert on New Zealand.
• A summary of European Union election results...go figure. America shifts to the left, and the rest of the world goes conservative, or at least center-right.

And some additional thoughts about the goat blog:

• The Mitsubishi ad link will probably stop working next month when they “run out of Tritons.” Here’s a link that’ll probably survive longer, and the picture is bigger. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6Qs1A07RPo&feature=related
• The “Not much else? You can drink it.” Was in reference to you saying something like “There’s not much else to do with that much milk.” Maybe change it to “Not much else? You can drink the milk.”
• Where I say “Bring the buck in for two weeks every year,” it would be more accurate if I had said “Bring the buck in for a week twice each year…”
• The sentence “An average-size back yard will provide enough forage for a goat but not a cow.” would read better if I had written “An average-size back yard will provide enough forage for a goat but not for a cow.” [Note: the DUDE is a much better semanticist than I am.]
• To be completely grammatically correct you’d want to say “It is not TMI, he said petulantly.” he said petulantly. Or “He quoted himself in his reply: It is not TMI, he said petulantly…
• Don’t forget to credit Monty Python for my non-petulant comment or their attorneys will descend upon you and “…make castanets of your testicles already.”
• “That sort of farmers…” should have read “That sort of farmer…”
• You could put a bit more emphasis on the para-survivalist angle. That’s what got me started on the subject with you. Look at it this way: you only need five or six silver dollars for a healthy, milking doe.
• And how does one become an expert on goats? I’m certainly not one. But my friend's mother taught me some of that, there’s a goat cheese operation just down the hill from me, and Mrs. DUDE's bro keeps a couple of goats.

From Father Dan, a YouTube video of a turboprop model King Air.

A variety of links from Lin:

• http://news.yahoo.com/s/ynews/20090611/pl_ynews/ynews_pl383/print
• http://news.yahoo.com/s/mcclatchy/20090610/pl_mcclatchy/3249623/print
• http://news.yahoo.com/s/uc/20090609/cm_uc_crpbux/op_3310250/print
• http://news.yahoo.com/s/weeklystandard/20090602/cm_weeklystandard/sayitaintsolarry/print

From Fred, a story about a world-record number of people dressing as Smurfs. Yiiiii.

SpaceX has been assembling its Dragon spacecraft.

From Sarah Palin's Twitter account a link to a Heritage Foundation report on why we should drill for oil in that postage-stamp section of the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). Our government is becoming certifiably insane on energy matters. They don't like oil companies drilling in American territory, but insist on energy independence. They complain about higher food prices, but insist on ethanol subsidies and higher energy taxes. They don't want to damage the environment, but they support windmills, which kill birds and bats, and ground-based solar, which is subject to weather and nighttime darkness. Oh yes, and they don't want to hear about space solar power, helium-3 fusion, nuclear power, or any other high-energy alternative. Like I said: insane.

NASA announced the results of their lunar art contest.

The World Health Organization (WHO) is now declaring the H1N1 (swine) flu virus a "pandemic." As I understand it, this does NOT mean the virus has gotten more dangerous. It just means that it's now appearing in more places on the planet.

Arthur Laffer, inventor of the Laffer Curve, warns us about oncoming inflation and increased interest rates. This was predictable, of course, if you were watching Obama's budget balloon.

The Obama administration is looking at reading captured terrorists at Guantanamo Bay their Miranda rights. Look for civil trials and acquittals in the next couple of years.

Oh yeah, and the Obama administration has this idea of capping executive salaries throughout the private sector, even in companies that the government does not currently control. That means, if you're an executive and you don't have a government job, President Obama thinks you're probably making too much money and need to have that money taken away from you. You laugh now, and say, "Good! Stick it to the man!" But if the government is willing to pass these kinds of laws on "executives," however defined, it isn't that big a stretch to say that they'd be willing to pass them on every job.

And rather than end on that downer, let's try ending on a high note.

Rebranding Global Warming

Environmentalists are changing their language, much like Barack Obama changed the War on Terror. It's not "global warming," it's "deteriorating atmospheric conditions," or some such thing now. Don't you feel better?

Rereading the Constitution

I'm really not interested in recounting the sins of the previous administration. I can watch CNN or MSNBC for that. The Bush Administration was neither completely wise nor brilliant in its handling of the War on Terror. Fine. Moving on. Obama is President now. What he's doing matters, both in the present and for the future of this nation's efforts to prosecute the GWOT (oh, sorry, the Overseas Contingency Operation) abroad and ensure politcal comity and stability here at home. President Obama needs to reread the Constitution, which is somewhat surprising, since he reputedly taught constitutional law at Harvard Law School.

Let's start with Article I, which states:

No bill of attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.

A bill of attainder, according to TechLawJournal.com, is:

A legislative act that singles out an individual or group for punishment without a trial.

An ex post facto law is a law that subjects individuals to criminal penalties for actions that were legal at the time they were committed.

The Founders had several reasons for including bills of attainder and ex post facto laws in the Constitution. They had read history. They knew that Rome began to shift from a Republic to an Empire with a winner-take-all political system when winners of elections would attempt to prosecute their predecessors after the fact for just such things. It became increasingly important to hold onto power because if you ever lost it or retired, you'd soon find yourself executed under some new law. That is where we're heading now with allowing CIA agents to be prosecuted--here or overseas--for interrogations performed in pursuit of terrorists.

The military and CIA interrogators had strict guidelines on what they were and were not allowed to do during their interrogations of people like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and they got actionable intelligence that saved lives. If we subject them to ex post facto laws, we're violating our own Constitution. And we're also putting past, present, and future CIA employees and other Americans at risk from international prosecution. The war is still going on, after all, and Obama is showing signs of continuing the Bush policies in Iraq and Afghanistan. He certainly hasn't withdrawn our forces. In any case, once the Obama administration comes to an end, as all regimes do eventually, the President is leaving his own people vulnerable to the very thing he's threatening to do to President Bush's people now. This is why we have ex post facto laws and also why the President is empowered to pardon people--to prevent junk like this from happening.

Let me guess: the next thing I'm going to hear is, "Torture is a violation of our Constitution, too." Awhile back I was scolded by a liberal friend for accepting or being indifferent to the use of waterboarding or other non-lethal, non-flesh-damaging, non-bone-breaking, non-permanently-harming interrogation techniques on terrorists caught on the battlefield. I believe the exact phrasing was, "Come on, Bart. You wouldn't accept your mother or sister being subjected to that." To which I'd respond, then as now, "No, I wouldn't. But then my mother or sister wouldn't have been caught on the battlefield in Afghanistan, shooting at our troops and hanging out with people planning to kill Americans."

So, seriously, I have another question for my liberal readers: how do you get information about imminent terrorist activities from very bad people who have no interest in helping you and every reason in the world (to them) to harm you? Let's say, for argument's sake, that I'm wrong, that torture is in fact unreliable as a means of obtaining informaiton. Then what? Rather than take the "you wouldn't let your sister be waterboarded" angle, I would ask the reverse: your sister is being held captive by people known for beheading their prisoners and posting the videos on Al Jazeera. You've captured a guy that you know is high up in a terrorist organization. You know his group plans to strike again, soon, and possibly behead your sister. Now: would you forbid waterboarding if you had the lead bad guy sitting captured before you? Repeat playings of Barry Manilow records? Jimmy Carter "national malaise" speeches? How do you get the information? I don't know, either.

However, Americans who have been in the very rough and serious business of fighting this nation's enemies deserve at least the benefit of the doubt. More than that, they deserve the protections of the Constitution they've been fighting to preserve.

Potpourri X

Lots of thought-provoking stuff out there, so I'll jump right into it:

NASA

• NASA is offering content for people to develop do-it-yourself podcasts.
• The three-year progress report for the Ares Projects is now available as a two-part video on YouTube.
• The Great Moonbuggy Race will be running at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center this weekend.
• The Futures Channel partnered with the Ares outreach team to develop some videos on careers at NASA.

Other Space Stuff

• Also, April 4 is Yuri's Night, an annual celebration of the first human in space, Yuri Gagarin. The actual day is April 12, but Easter falls on April 12 this year, so the organizers moved it. Huntsville's Yuri's Night event will be at LeeAnn's downtown.
• The Coalition for Space Exploration has announced its Board of Advisors for 2009-2010.
• The Space Access Conference is happening soon.
• The National Space Society's International Space Development Conference is also coming soon!

The Economy

• President Obama says the U.S. Government will now cover any warranty-based maintenance for owners of GM cars. But I'm told on Facebook that I need to "calm down" because "capitalism is fine." Riiiiight.
• Congressman Barney Frank is proposing a bill that would set caps on all employee salaries at AIG, not just the CEO. "Calm down, Bart. Capitalism is just fine." Riiiiiight.

Technology

• Honda is developing thought-controlled machines. Wild.
• The Chi-coms are working on a "kill weapon" for targeting aircraft carriers. Oh, goody.

Politics & Culture

• One of my favorite Law & Order actresses, Angie Harmon, is sick of being called a "racist" because she disagrees with President Obama's policies. Welcome to the club, Angie. I got this accusation shortly after Election Day, and still find it offensive.
• Venezuela-born Miss Universe had a great time at Guantanamo Bay.
• Some advice for Gen Yers entering the workforce in Washington.
• Hat tip to D2 for this item on evaluating "employee engagement" in the workplace.
• Darlene the Science Cheerleader has been in contact with a congressman interested in reviving the Office of Technology Assessment.
• On the lighter side of things, a man in Ohio was arrested for driving drunk on a motorized bar stool.
• An interesting question from one of my acquaintances on LinkedIn.com:

"Is the concept of "Tough Love" at the root of society's problems or is it their answer?"

Some argue "spare the rod, spoil the child" and it seems to me that the underlying philosophy in this also lies in some of the advice on how best to deal with the current economic crisis. But is the deterministic righteousness of tough love the root problem in many and diverse areas of our societies, or is it rather the belief in the "Noble Savage" and laissez-faire indulgence? Or are both just perversions of love, part self-loathing part narcissism?

• An interesting video on the mayor of Missassauga, Ontario. We should all be so good at 88!
• I got hip-deep into a long conversation about capitalism, Obama, etc. on Facebook last night ("Calm down, Bart..."), so I decided to change my status as a way of getting free of the argument. I changed my status to "Bart is moving on to another topic." Some FB friends offered the following alternatives:
  --"I've got a topic...Socialism"
  --"How about the right to privacy issues?"
  --"Eminent domain?"
  --"The topic is me. All about me! ME, ME, ME!!!!"
  
  The last answer was offered by my buddy Gwen. I opted for her answer, as I was too tired at that point to offer alternatives. I promised I'd address some of these in the blog. I will, just not right now. More to come...

A War By Any Other Name

So now the Pentagon has gone PC...or something. It's no longer the Global War on Terror (GWOT), which was descriptive, if slightly inaccurate (you fight people, not a method). It's now called the Overseas Contingency Operation, which will no doubt soon be acronymized into OCO.

Robert A. Heinlein said it well in Glory Road: "You're just as dead from a police action as you are from a full-scale war." So why mince words? Well, the GWOT itself was a mincing of words. They could have called it the "War on Fundamentalist Islamism" or the "Black September War," or the "War on al-Qaeda," but that would create political trouble, presumably. Instead of Operation Enduring Freedom, they might've chosen "Operation Terrible Resolve," but no one asked me. And a "War on al-Qaeda" would not explain the war in Iraq--at least not as originally cast. Maybe the "War on People Who Attack Us or Threaten to Do So?" Or the "War to Change the Middle East?"

I've got to admit, I'm stumped. The Bush Doctrine of preemptive strikes, denying/destroying terrorist bases, and regime change is part punitive, part transformative, part instructive.

"When will you stop invading us?"
"When you learn to choose better leaders!"

--Exchange between a leader of the Dominican Republic and Woodrow Wilson