Why I Don't Watch the News Much

If you read enough history, ancient, medieval, or modern, you can start to get better sense of patterns in human behavior, good and bad. Being a pessimist, I tend to watch for signs of civilization's decline. Examples from history (the Roman Republic, pre-Revolutionary France, Czarist Russia, or Weimar Germany) will produce the following list:

• Political instability or "resolution" of civil political matters through violence
• Currency instability/devaluation
• Public calls for a single leader and an end to parliamentary process as too inefficient
• "Winner take all" political contests, followed by a "purging" (firing, not Stalinesque) of civil service appointees felt to be too close to the other political party/previous administration
• Concentration of the political spoils system
• Infrastructure failures
• Inability to control the border
• Unwillingness by elites to support basic tenets/values of the majority society (e.g. free speech, private property)
• Increasing "rights" to a broader range of "citizens"
• Mob rule/rule by public passions/rule by plebecite/referendum
• Federally funded bread and circuses
• Outlandish crimes/behavior
• Anarcho-tyranny
• Decline in general manners and civility in political and private behavior
• Loss in actual skills/technological capabilities
• Increase in the numbers of political "crimes" (e.g. suppression of political free speech by subtle or blatant force)
• Concentration of wealth among politically connected individuals/groups
• Politicization of "the legions"

I posited this list of trends to Lin and the Down Under Defense Expert (DUDE). Lin's comments:

I took a course at my alma mater...studying the Roman Republic. Each one of the points that you raised can be related to some degree to them. I’ll offer some (hopefully) insights later. Imagine this worst case(?) scenario. O-buma’s popularity skyrockets and he becomes an FDR...Haven’t we already entered a dark age?

  

The DUDE thought he'd forwarded that list to me (ha! possibly--it's more a sampling of trends from my various reading adventures). His additional comments included:

More apropos are Marx’ Ten Conditions necessary for Communism [Comments in brackets belong to the DUDE]:

1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
5. Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State. [There were no telephones in those days. Communication in this case refers to roads and especially to bridges, tunnels, etc.]
7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan. [Mao and his gang did a great job of putting waste-lands into production. Nothing grew, but it was “in production.”]
8. Equal liability of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.
10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form. [Children’s factory labour in some other form is OK, however.] Combination of education with industrial production, &c, &c. [So, kids get free education in things like how to work in a factory…]

This also follows from a discussion I had with Doc (who's coming at the problem from the left rather than the right), who suggested that great disparities of wealth actually will precipitate a workers' revolt...which might be the Marxist point of view, but which he strongly stated he does not WANT to see happen. In the business/economic world, there are things that can be done at the stockholder level by tying businesses and executives' income to concrete improvements to employee welfare. By treating workers better now--more flexible leave policies, more freedom to work from home, more flexible work hours, better access to health care or child care, more access to educational opportunities, etc.--companies beneft in the long run. Workers that are treated well actually are more productive and loyal, but somehow the work-60-hours-a-week-with-little-reward approach to business seems to prevail. Throw in a crumbling educational system, crushing taxes, and crumbling family structure because both parents are working and you've got a recipe for long-term decline.

So if you accept the premise that our civilization is in decline, how do you fix it? Not a clue. With any luck, though, the internet will at least allow more people access to more tools and information to fix things incrementally.

Potpourri CXIV

Extra-long edition of Potpourri ahead, as I haven't written here in a week, but first up, I've got a hot item from Darlene the Science Cheerleader that she wanted me to respond to ASAP.

She referred me to a blog posting (and the report it was based on, but I'm a little behind at the moment to read it) about the state of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education and the workforce. A new report from Rutgers University--which I'll read eventually, really--finds that the "pipeline" of students receiving STEM-related has remained relatively steady over the past few decades. The problem, as Dar notes in her fun, punchy style, is that not enough of them are getting jobs in the STEM disciplines after graduating.

I would take one exception to a suggestion Dar had that STEM-based companies just need to pay more. The amateur economist in me doesn't believe the economy works that way. There are two sides to the issue: supply and demand. If the findings of the Rutgers study are accurate (I've seen some OECD stats at work that might say something different), then the problem is not with supply, but with demand. Compared to the number of STEM grads produced by China and India, regardless of the quality of the educational institutions that produced them, the U.S. is woefully behind countries three or four times our size in population. The common refrain at U.S. tech gatherings is that "India has more honors students than we have students." That statement in itself can probably be scrutinized, but let's assume it's true, and that the U.S. is going to need a lot more STEM student, honors or otherwise. That means the education pipeline/student supply is either fine or below optimum for our needs, so there is still some work to do. The problem must lie on the demand side of the equation.

The demand for STEM students is driven by the U.S. private sector and the technologies they produce. Prior to World War II, most scientific research in the U.S. was funded by private organizations like the Guggenheim Foundation, which funded Robert Goddard's early experiments in liquid-fuel rockets. It was only when the nation found itself in a two-front fight for its life against nations that were directly funding science and engineering research and development (R&D) that the U.S. Government became THE player in funding basic science research, where it remains today, according to a National Science Foundation report my coworker Tracy found.

There are a couple of ways you can increase the money available to STEM careers: you can allow the federal government to spend more (which, on basic science, still isn't a bad idea) or you can provide incentives to the private sector to fund more applied R&D. Or you can do both at once by, say, increasing overall expenditures and research incentives on a space program that does really challenging things, like develop single-stage-to-orbit launch vehicles, space-based solar power satellites, and/or more exotic exploration missions and technologies. Kids will jump at the chance to do something cool, and companies won't mind doing the cool things, since they tend to increase their bottom lines and allow them to recruit high-caliber talent. And yes, there are doubtless other industries you can do this with, like Earth-based energy or biotechnology, but this nation has had serious arguments about both. NASA, on the contrary, enjoys wide appeal and support. Connect that ambitious go-where-no-one-has-gone-before stuff with serious career opportunities, and even the skeptics might agree that science and engineering, not high finance, is the way to personal and financial success in this country. And wouldn't that be great to see!?

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On to other things, and I've got a lot of 'em...

Actually, I've got a bunch of stuff from Dar. She was participating in the Science Online 2010 conference this week, so she picked up all sorts of useful stuff/sites. I need to go to this next year--it sounds like a hoot!

• The first bit is a blog on how to "take your blog to the next level." If that means I go from 15 to 150 readers, I'll be happy. :-)
• She also provided a link to a blog that discusses the impact of social media (Twitter, Facebook, etc.) on reporting in Haiti and its potential for assisting science reporting.
• Another link is a directory of every type of collaborative tool available to the general public and various government entities. That doesn't mean that all of these tools will be linked; but at least now people would know, in theory, who's doing what with whom. Progress of a sort.
• Here's an interesting engineering competition for kids: design something using bubble wrap!
• Here's an article that blames mean gym teachers on childhood obesity and later adult resistance to exercise. Gotta confess, while I was on the scrawny side during childhood, it has taken the care of a good woman to make me give a darn about exercise. I sure didn't get motivated to exercise based on my joyful experiences with high school physical education.
• And lastly, Dar has a new video introducing some of the Philadelphia Eagles cheerleaders who are studying or working in STEM fields. The video is cute, and Dar asks some off-the-wall questions, but trust me, she's playing dumb. Crazy like a fox.

Here's something Tim Bailey from the Florida Space Coast Chapter posted in Facebook: a space "unconference" where, according to the site, "participants decide the topics, schedule, and structure of the event. Well, that might save some folks a lot of work (can I do that for ISDC?).

Saw this on Facebook, but can't remember who posted it...the Patterson School of Diplomacy provides workshops/simulations for students to brainstorm how various organizations would cope with various disasters--the day after Independence Day, an invasion of zombies, or an attack by vampires (this year's hot pop culture phenomenon).

The speculation and swirl around the Constellation Program continue. The speculations might or might not be true. All I know is that from my day job point of view, we've got our heads down with orders to "keep coloring" until we get new direction.

First it was sex (Lisa Nowak), now we've got reports of drugs at NASA. If we can find a way to get Steven Tyler out of rehab and Aerosmith back together for a reunion concert, say, by the Vehicle Assembly Building, we could have rock 'n' roll, too. Then the public would take NASA seriously as a pop culture phenomenon. I kid. Slightly.

New from Hu:

• A 2D trailer for the new 3D movie about the Hubble Space Telescope. That should be fun!
• A Navy Times article about the U.S. relief mission to Haiti, led in part by the U.S.S. Carl Vinson, one of our aircraft carriers.
• An article speculating on the existence of liquid diamond oceans on Uranus and Neptune. This is similar to Arthur C. Clarke's depiction of Jupiter having a diamond core in 2010: Odyssey Two.
• Ah! And speaking of 2010, Hu also forwarded an article lamenting the fact that the world wasn't yet up to the advances Clarke predicted in his novel.

The final competition for the Huntsville edition of the "Future City" competition is this weekend. Alas, I will be out of town, but these kids really come up with some ingenious stuff.

From Father Dan, the Newseum's Flash site for seeing the front pages of newspapers from across the U.S. and around the world.

From D2, a site created by Konica providing, among other things, exquisitve visuals of the Venus de Milo, which I had the privilege of seeing in Paris...and not photographing nearly as well. Also from D2, an article about an iPhone app that senses pressure on your bed and will wake you up at the proper time in your sleep cycle to prevent any jarring wakeups. Sounds great!

From Jason Clark on Facebook, a very long YouTube video (51 minutes) on human computation. Sounds interesting, but I haven't had 51 minutes to spare to watch it yet.

You really need to read Mike Boyd's columns on the Aviation Planning site if you're interested in an alternative perspective on the "whole body scanner" craze now sweeping the federal government after the underpants bomber nearly took out a plane on Christmas Day. If you think TSA is helping make things safer, Boyd will provide you with some good arguments why you should reconsider that perspective. Boyd's page is also a regular link posted on this site as a handy reference. (Warning to my liberal readers: Boyd does not agree with you. Warning to my conservative readers: he isn't too kind to Bush administration appointees, either.)

Speaking of space and education (at least I did in my opening essay), the Space Florida group is worth checking out. They provide resources to teachers--mostly in the Kennedy Space Center area--to get their students engaged in STEM educational subjects.

Miscellaneous links that have piled up in my inbox:

• Oy…Pat Robertson is about as helpful to conservatism as all the racist email “humor” I get re: Obama. Really, the real problems of the world are bad enough—this is not helping. At all.
• Are you rich? Not sure what to do with your bonus this year? CNN Money offers some suggestions.
• “Green” wine?
• Satellite imagery of Haiti earthquake devastation.
• Light from faraway planet detected
• From Martin: an article title "Reagan Was Wrong," attempting to explain how Ronald Reagan's brand of populist conservatism held within it the seeds of its own destruction. Interesting point of view, and I'm not even sure I disagree. However, the author makes a few mistakes about Reagan's philosophy, such as his "mistrust" in the inherent religious character of the American people--nothing could be farther from the truth. What infuriates many on both sides of the aisle today is that Reagan brought serious churchgoers into the Republican "big tent."
• From Twila...this isn't quite a palindrome, which must be spelled the same way coming and going, but it is a piece of writing that can be read forward and backward.
• A poetry recommendation from the ever-delightful Dr. OZMG.
• From the wise gnomes at NeedCoffee.com, an interview with the Wells Fargo VP responsible for the first ATM in Antarctica.
• From Father Dan, an article suggesting that an airport in Jacksonville, FL, could be the next spaceport for horizontally-launched suborbital tourism.
• In-flight wi-fi, etc.
• NASA looking at multiple spacesuit designs
• Russia sets aside money to build a rocket with a nuclear engine (about time someone did!)
• China announces that it has successfully conducted a missile interception test…anti-missile defense advocates take note.
• How did the first man in space die?
• You never know where Moon rocks will turn up…
• From Bruce, some links to Ares I-X images:
  --Ares I-X Development Test: Flight Day Launch Journal (photo gallery) - collectSPACE: Messages
  --Ares I-X: Launch preparations and updates (photo gallery) - collectSPACE: Messages

And believe it or not, that is NOT everything that was in the inbox. However, the stuff I did post is the "freshest" and most interesting. No need to bore you unnecessarily. Salud.

Latest from the United States of the Offended

So apparently someone has gotten it into their heads to try to remove "In God We Trust" from the U.S. dollar. Enough already! God has already been removed from our schools, public squares, and public events. Here's the full story from MSNBC. It's worth quoting in full because of the sheer brazenness of it all:

Atheist challenges ‘In God We Trust’

SAN FRANCISCO - An atheist who has spent four years trying to ban the Pledge of Allegiance from being recited in public schools is now challenging the motto printed on U.S. currency because it refers to God.

Michael Newdow seeks to remove “In God We Trust” from U.S. coins and dollar bills, claiming in a federal lawsuit filed Thursday that the motto is an unconstitutional endorsement of religion.
Newdow, a Sacramento doctor and lawyer, used a similar argument when he challenged the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools because it contains the words “under God.”

He took his pledge fight to the U.S. Supreme Court, which in 2004 said he lacked standing to bring the case because he did not have custody of the daughter he sued on behalf of.

An identical lawsuit later brought by Newdow on behalf of parents with children in three Sacramento-area school districts is pending with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, after a Sacramento federal judge sided with Newdow in September. The judge stayed enforcement of the decision pending appeal, which is expected to reach the Supreme Court.

Congress first authorized a reference to God on a two-cent piece in 1864. The action followed a request by the director of the U.S. Mint, who wrote there should be a “distinct and unequivocal national recognition of the divine sovereignty” on the nation’s coins.

In 1955, the year after Congress inserted the words “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance, Congress required all currency to carry the motto “In God We Trust.”

It is interesting that the guy making the complaint has made similar complaints before, and been rejected summarily by the Supreme Court.

Let's start with something basic here, like the actual Constitution, not the court-ruling-based interpretations of it:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Now, does adding "In God we trust" to our currency establish a state church? No. Despite the 5-10% of the population that is actually atheist or the larger percentage of people who just act that way, this is still a nation that believes in God. In God We Trust is more or less a statement of fact. For example, the statement was added to the Pledge of Allegiance in 1955, at the height of the Cold War, to distinguish this nation from the freedom-suppressing, communist Soviet Union, which did have a state religion, with that religion being worship of the state. Worship of God and public expressions thereof were suppressed, often violently.

This bears thinking about: if you don't believe in God, who or what is the strongest "power" left on Earth? It's ungoverned human beings with guns, knives, and fists. A nation that acknowledges no higher power eventually is ruled by those with the greatest will to power. A nation acknowledging a higher power than Man understands that it, too, must eventually answer for whatever crimes it commits in the hereafter, and limits its ambitions accordingly.

Now I've occasionally gotten into arguments with people who tell me that fundamentalist Christians want to turn this country into a theocracy, and therefore all Christians are suspect. First of all, this is not the actual state of things, though a few preachers here and there might think of it. They mostly protest, as I do, the diminishment of God and faith in the public square and desire a stronger role of faith among elected officials.

Second, the use of Church-imposed discipline on the state is part of a Calvinist inheritance in the Baptist movement that was not embraced by all forms of Protestant religion. John Calvin, the French Protestant reformer, set up a humorless and harsh theocracy in the city of Geneva in the 1500s. A similar arrangement existed among the New England Puritans. Both systems eventually died out, but the notion of using human (secular) law to impose Christian discipline (sectarian law) is not a doctrine supported by other mainstream Protestant denominations today, such as Lutheranism, Methodism, or Anglicanism (or, I believe, Catholicism).

What Lutherans believe is that saving souls is a job for the Church, not the state, and that faith should be achieved through persuasion and free, independent choice, not the sword. That would be a sin. Salvation should be the goal of the individual, not the enforced conversion of the masses to one denomination or the other through state power. So if anyone preaches a separation between church and state, it's the Christian Church, not the Constitution. It is a painful lesson Christians had to learn over the course of 500 years of European history, but most of us did learn it. But this does not mean we seek to end the role of religion or God in the workings of the United States of America. It does mean changing how we as individuals think about our relationship to God and the state...and not a moment too soon.

Redistribution and Taxation in America

The Tax Foundation recently summarized a report by the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The report points out that the U.S. has the most "progressive" tax systems in the economically developed world. Progressive taxation is simply defined as the more you make, the more you pay. The left in this country often admires the social welfare states of Europe as models for America.

Why, then, is the left not satisfied if America taxes its rich people more than Europe? Is it because our unemployment rate is lower than France? Germany? the EU overall? Is it because, despite our government having the largest budget of any nation on Earth, one that exceeds the record profits ExxonMobil made by more than 200 times, it still isn't big enough? Is it because we are not as politically correct, or that our electorate is center-right instead of center-left or far left? Is it because our government's level of social and economic control isn't enough? One can only wonder.

I happen to like capitalism--not unfettered, not utterly unregulated, but not owned or controlled by the government. Governments exist to spread resources more or less equally to soothe a restless populace. Capitalism exists to allow individuals to compete and produce new goods and services at the lowest costs and highest profits possible. Simple supply and demand determine what those costs and profits will be. In the realm of government, costs and profits can be and are regulated, not according to supply and demand, but according a nebulous definition of fairness, with that definition changing constantly, depending on the political priorities of the ruling party. When government gets too involved in capitalism, you end up with crony capitalism, as happened at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Once government starts trying to pick winners and losers, either through political favors or "fairness," it inevitably becomes less "fair," more expensive, and much more intrusive.

What bothers me about the two presidential candidates (Obama more directly than McCain, but McCain is just as willing to interfere with the market) is that neither of them has my full confidence that they will restore some sense of rationality, independence, or competition to the market. Everything is becoming "too big to be allowed to fail," from banks to insurance companies to car makers and airlines, so government "must" step in to "save" these businesses. This salvation comes in the form of a government bailout, which must be paid for somehow out of the public treasury, which in turn must come from the taxpayers.

If businesses fail due to bad management and the government partially bails them out, their employees become unemployed, and they might or might not find jobs. The unemployed who remain unemployed do not pay taxes and collect unemployment insurance from the government, becoming a double "cost" to the government. So then one must ask: where is all the money supposed to come from to save future businesses and all the other stuff the two candidates want to do?

It has been suggested to me that we could cut the military. Swell. As long as we go bipartisan on this issue and start cutting Social Security and Medicare benefits. Or maybe cut the Department of Education, which spends more and more for worse and worse results. Or we could be seriously suicidal with our nation's future and cut federal infrastructure spending--roads, basic science research, and space.

Another suggestion I've heard is to cut the capital gains and corporate tax rates--America has some of the highest tax rates in those two categories, too. Might as well try it at this point; if the Fed lowers the interest rate any more, they're going to start reaching negative numbers. And I love it when I hear that "tax cuts for the rich" line. Having already established that we tax the rich more than anybody and (in a previous posting) that 50% or more of the American public invests in the stock market, why should the American people be offended by efforts to help businesses? Where do they think the value of their pension funds or 401(k)s was coming from? If the health of businesses improves due to tax cuts, and millions of Americans' retirement accounts immediately increase in value, that's not just "trickle down" economics--that's a direct benefit to 50% of the American public!

Never mind. I can just wait for Obama to allow the Bush tax cuts to expire, sink the economy further, and watch the government take over even more of the private sector so I can wearily say, "I told you so." But don't think I'll do it with any sort of pleasure. It's my country, too.

The New Era of Space Continues

The Indian space agency has launched its first probe toward the Moon, Chandrayaan-1: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7679818.stm. Good for them!

Chandrayaan-1 was developed, in part, with assistance from the U.S., as one of its onboard instruments was built by NASA. Data from this orbiter will most likely help Constellation pick future landing spots for our astronauts (though, of course, any discoveries made will be confirmed by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter).

Between the cooperation in space and the recent deal on nuclear power, the U.S. and India are fundamentally shifting the shape of politics in South Asia, as the two largest democratically elected governments on Earth are now seen as cooperating, if not actual allies. This is a huge change after the Cold War, when socialist India was much closer to the Soviet Union. Having finally embraced capitalism, India is now moving closer to the U.S. This is to our advantage, especially given the potential threat of China--on Earth or in space. We could do a lot worse, and this country could use all the allies it can get!

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In the course of my job today, I got to listen to the following speech by NASA Administrator Mike Griffin: http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=29544. It was an interesting topic--integrity--for a man who many pundits seem to assume will not have a job come the next administration.

Obviously Dr. Griffin has felt wounded and insulted by the criticism the Constellation Program has endured for the last four years. However, the speech also served as a reminder to the NASA internal audience: the proper functioning of a government bureaucracy requires behaving with integrity.

That said, Griffin remained "on message." He stated that the current Constellation architecture will continue. Is it perfect? No, but it is the best architecture given the constraints the agency had to operate under and the requirements the Constellation mission had to use.

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Griffin's speech was given at the American Astronautical Society's Wernher von Braun Memorial Symposium here in Huntsville. The first panel of the morning--the one that most concerned my day job--was the Ares panel. After that was Griffin's luncheon speech and then a panel on the other parts of the Constellation Program, including the Ares V cargo launch vehicle, the Altair lunar lander, and Orion crew exploration vehicle. Wayne Hale, former Space Shuttle Program Manager, had a great and sometimes hilarious presentation on exploration and science.

The best speech I heard all day came from John Horack, Manager of the Science & Mission Systems department at Marshall Space Flight Center. I've heard Horack speak before, but he hit a sensitive spot for me today, as he discussed the "why" of human exploration. I have some notes, but they don't begin to capture the man's delivery or message. I'm hoping to get a copy tomorrow to pull some actual quotations, but I'll try to give some of my impressions now.

He spoke about the fact that space exploration is one of the few things this nation does that exists to create a better future. This is important when so many governmental actions exist to prevent negative consequences. He spoke of the need to build a better future, and how NASA exemplified that need. He spoke of how Abraham Lincoln, in the midst of the Civil War, still decided to fund the Transcontinental Railroad, and how that investment "made the future that much better." He spoke about the need for a better future, and challenged the audience to explain to their children, if we cut the space program completely, why we believed America would no longer exist or that the future would no longer be better for them. It was fundamental stuff, things we probably don't hear often enough, and things I obviously needed to hear. I promise to post some better quotations from Horack's speech as soon as I can obtain them.

And it bears noting how Horack introduced himself: "Hi, I'm John Horack, and I'm a scientist." There's this bizarre competition between science and engineering within NASA, but you hear none of that from Horack, even when I'm sure some of his programs have taken budget hits to pay for Shuttle or Constellation. He believes in exploration and what it can do for science, and that goes a long way toward helping others see the potential for cooperation and synergy. Now the cynic in me should probably qualify this, and say, "He says he believes in exploration," but jeez, why go to all the trouble? Why put one's best thoughts and words toward ideas one doesn't believe? Anyhow, I liked his speech a great deal, and given some of the negativity I've heard and expressed lately, I probably needed it.