Note from Down Under

If you're interested in helping with relief efforts in New Zealand, the Down Under Defense Expert (DUDE) sent the following email:

There is an urgent requirement for nearly everything in Christchurch right now. I'm e-mailing everyone I can think of to ask them to donate anything they can to a charity that will provide support to the people affected by the earthquake and aftershocks.


These are the charities Mrs. DUDE and I are giving to:

http://www.airrescue.co.nz/

http://www.spca.org.nz/general/home.htm

Rescue helicopters in New Zealand get only 40% of their funding from the government; the remainder comes from donations. The SPCA here, like SPCAs everywhere else, gets 100% of its operating money through donations.

There are of course plenty of better-recognized charities that operate worldwide, such as the Salvation Army, medical providers, and various church foundations. If you can donate, select any charity you favor, making sure you earmark you donation for Christchurch earthquake support. And remember to take your income tax deduction.

Potpourri CXXI

To follow up on my comments re: the NASA budget, I really am sick of talking about this issue. "Burned out" would be putting it mildly, and we're only on Day 6 of the President's budget proposal being on the street. Part of my problem is that I used to do space stuff for fun in my free time, then I got a day job in the space business; so now it's space 24/7, and if things are not going well on that front, it's like a week-long session of watching CNN International--you come out of it thinking that the world is going to heck in a handcart, it's all your fault, and there's nothing that can be done about it. So anyway, here are the most common questions I've gotten and answers I've given:

• "Do you know what's going to happen with the NASA budget?" No.
• "Are you worried about your job/is your job affected?" Yes.
• "When would that take effect?" I don't know.
• "What are you going to do if they kill the Constellation Program?" I'm working on it.

You'll know more when I know more. Thanks for tuning in.

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Back to clearing out the inbox...lots of diverse items, plus I specifically asked for referrals to sites that would help me understand where technology and the web are going...this is to help with the novel, not out of any particular desire to participate. I was perfectly happy being a 19th century man until my career ruled otherwise. :-) Here are some of those sites:

• http://johnohab.com/
• http://singularityhub.com/ (specific articles referred by Jason on Facebook: http://singularityhub.com/2010/02/04/hand-gesture-controls-trying-for-mainstream-in-2010-video/ and http://singularityhub.com/2009/03/04/the-next-generation-in-human-computer-interfaces-awesome-videos/)
• http://www.engadget.com/
• http://lifehacker.com/
• http://www.motherboard.tv/
• http://www.pluggd.in/siri-artificial-intelligence-based-mobile-personal-assistant.-297/
• http://pubs.acs.org/cen/email/html/8806news4.html
• http://www.nasa.gov/topics/technology/features/robonaut.html 

Next up, from Father Dan, a really cool card trick for you mathematicians out there.

This is the only blog I'll add regarding the Constellation Program's problems because I respect Dr. Spudis and because he usually has smart things to say.

From Martin, a site featuring fan art of spacecraft. Pretty cool, but it takes a minute to load...very graphics-intensive.

From Lesly, a request to support her "Polar Plunge." The idea being, Lesly wades into a freezing pond somewhere in Illinois, and you make a charitable contribution to Special Olympics. There's got to be a less painful way of doing things, but I commend her climatic courage. Note that I moved south to get AWAY from the cold, but I'm nutty that way...

From the Down Under Defense Expert (DUDE), a suggestion on where I could emigrate if I can't find productive work here. Great in theory, but New Zealand doesn't have a space program...

From Jerry Pournelle:

• An interesting chart on trends in global temperatures.
• It's not just in America...Canada's students are failing spelling and grammar because of the chaotic nature of writing on Twitter and other 140-character writing environments.
• Ever heard of a "cyber geneticist?" The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is looking for technologists who can think like scientists to develop and use the cyber equivalent of fingerprints or DNA to pinpoint the origins of a cyberattack.

Last item: This week HAL5 had as our guest speaker a recent graduate student, Audra Herriges, who presented her paper on a proposed lunar city. She has also self-published the paper as a book, which I have purchased. Also good research for the novel!

Potpourri LIV

Despite a week away from the home computer, I found little that required my readers' attention. Be grateful: I probably had a few hundred emails to sift through. Still, I thought I would share the following. Enjoy.

News from Hu:

• The Augustine Human Space Flight panel is coming to Huntsville/Decatur to visit Marshall Space Flight Center (the Ares Projects) and the United Launch Alliance (ULA) plant to check out the Delta/Atlas production lines. The visit is making life at MSFC very exciting, to say the least. Fortunately, I missed most of The Swirl (as I call it) because I was on travel.
• The $400M budget cut to Constellation is still in NASA's 2010 budget.

From Lin, who has a new web site:

• The American Thinker opinion site has an article on fusion. I love the notion of fusion power. Unfortunately, like space solar power, it's always been "just 20 years away." And we've been working on fusion for something like 50 years, SSP for 40.
• Another American Thinker editorial on gun control in India.
• A new hydrogen-electric car developed in an "open-source" fashion. Fascinating, but tiny. It'll get you places, and maybe a friend, but don't plan on taking anything with you.
• An obituary for Common Sense. I'd better tell my mom. She'll be all kinds of upset.

From Melissa, a video of a guy with seriously scary acrobatic skills.

From my Google news feed, a couple stories on Ares I-X:

• NASAWatch: Ares Struggles Ahead with Ares 1-X [sic] Launch.
• NASAOrbit: NASA Prepares to Assemble Ares I-X Rocket.

From Yohon: a service called eScrip, that allows you to automatically donate 5% of your total restaurant bill to a community group.

And while I've been out of the loop on the news, it's been hard to ignore the massive protests going on in Iran. The Obama administration has wisely kept their nose out of it, for the most part. Maybe someday the U.S. will relearn the value of John Adams' dictum that "We are friends of liberty everywhere, but guardians only of our own." I wish the lovers of freedom well, but hope, if they succeed in unseating the tyranny in their country, that they will back off the virulent anti-Semitism and anti-Israel stances that have characterized Mahmoud Ahmadenijad.

That's it for now.

Can't Stop the Serenity

Joss Whedon has signed onto a global charity benefit where people pay to see his movie Serenity and donate to Equality Now, which promotes women's rights everywhere. And when you look at the condition of women's rights in some places of the world, it becomes clear how good things are in the West.

New Links of Interest

I decided to include some links for organizations and causes that are important to me. The space exploration stuff is a given, but other causes have come my way through the work I do or the people I meet or, alas, the experiences I've had.

• Alzheimer's Association
• Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation Intl.
• Leukemia & Lymphoma Society
• Make a Wish Foundation
• Susan G. Komen for the Cure
• United Service Organizations (USO)

Far be it for me to force a cause on somebody (I'm not a very good activist, even for the space cause), but I would ask that if you can afford to surf the internet and read this site, you consider giving money to a cause that does good for the world, however you define the good. Every donation does count, and helps you take some sort of direct action that you might not otherwise be able to do. Not being a doctor, for instance, it's quite beyond my bounds to help with my various medical causes; but I can at least send my financial support.

And on a purely political note, I believe more gets done more effectively and virtuously if compassionate individuals are allowed to select where their personal treasure is given than if the government does it. Doing things on an individual basis gives you more "ownership" of a cause and ensures that your personal choices are better reflected in what things are done. In 2006, despite massive welfare and other government programs that were paid directly by our taxes, individuals still gave $295 billion in charitable donations. Imagine how much more could be given to specific causes if we had more say about where our money went!

Potpourri III

All sorts of interesting emails and recommendations lately...my apologies if I don't comment on all of them. Long week, and my brain is cabbage at the moment.

A New Era of Responsibility: Renewing America's Promise. As far as I can tell, this is a preview of the President's new budget. If you have money, or want to have money in the future, this document will be of particular interest to you. Mr. Obama wants to put a salary cap on the American dream. Don't know what that is yet, but I'm sure if I ever hit it, my taxes will soon reflect it. It's not about economic growth, it's about "fairness," as Obama and his team define it. In my book, fairness means everyone plays by the same rules. I'm guessing his definition doesn't match mine.

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Book recommendation from reader Rolando: Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything. It's on the reading list, anyway.

Other links from Rolando...one comparing the U.S. national debt to gross domestic product. However, I prefer more official statistics. Try this one from the Bureau of the Public Debt. Not great, but not nearly the "120%" the other site was claiming. And, when you get right down to it, still not good for the country.

And there's this one on "social business." Here's how Wikipedia puts it:

Social Businesses seek to profit from acts that generate social improvements and serve a broader human development purpose. A key attribute of social businesses is that an increase in revenue corresponds to an incremental social enhancement. The social mission will permeate the culture and structure of the organization and the dual bottom lines - social and economic will be in equal standing with the firm pursuing long term maximization of both.

Here's my problem with this scheme: businesses exist to make a profit. When they exist to do other things, they will eventually cease to make a profit because the "social improvements" will eat into everything. Am I saying these things shouldn't be tried? No, I'm just saying I believe them to be impractical because social goods are moving targets, never satisfied ("the poor will always be with you"), and success is often difficult or impossible to quantify. If you make your business about anything other than providing goods or services to make a profit, it will eventually cease to be a business. What you or your shareholders do with that profit is your business.

For instance, [Paul] Newman's Own has donated 100% of its profits to charitable organizations. That's great. Terrific, in fact. I admired Mr. Newman for putting his money where his mouth is. But he created a for-profit business, not a non-profit institution. He provides quality food & beverage and other products which the public wants and enjoys, and which pays the company's employees and expenses. The profit is at the end of the day, after the taxes are counted and the bills are paid.

Now you think I'm probably splitting hairs on this. What's the big deal? The big deal is that Newman's Own's business is making products and making a profit. Their direct business is not about making the world a better place or addressing "health, education, poverty, environment or climate urgency." They're running a business and then turning their money over to those activities. It really is a matter of mindset and incentives. I'd prefer to do good while doing well rather than just doing good (a guy's got to earn a living, after all). For example, Google and Virgin both have strong corporate initiatives surrounding philanthropy and humanitarian causes, but the funding sources for these initiatives are profits, which are made possible through powerful brands and high-quality products and services that people want.

From my reading chair, starting a business with the goal of "ending poverty" only works indirectly (e.g., by creating low-cost/high-quality goods or services or jobs that contribute to the betterment of individual lives--or by making profits that can be used toward charitable activities). Otherwise, you might as well start a non-profit organization. The goals of profit-making and directly improving the general or specific public welfare are nearly incompatible; there has to be something in it for the company, or there's no return on investment besides good feelings.

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Hat tip to Joe for the links below. They will probably appeal more to Gen Y readers, as I started reading and arguing with the writer almost immediately. Her priorities are obviously very different from mine, but then most people's are, so I guess I shouldn't be terribly shocked.

• http://www.brazencareerist.com/
• http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/