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All sorts of interesting links out there, space-wise and otherwise, so let's roll...

October 4-11 is World Space Week. Back in 2003, I ran the NSS campaign to get letters about WSW in the top 100 newspaper markets in the U.S. WSW is a worldwide, U.N.-sponsored event to get students to learn about and celebrate benefits gained from space exploration.

Interesting blog on organizational culture at NASA and what reactions people can get when they ask questions in a meeting where senior officials ask if there are any questions. If you find yourself getting fired or just "in trouble" because you take management at their word about asking questions, then you should pull the ripcord and bail out.

A few items from the Down Under Defense Expert (DUDE):

• Interested in calculating "great circle" routes for airliners? Give this site a shot.
• YouTube video on "God-fearing" (general) vs. "non-God-fearing" (military) aviation.
• What a 737 looks like when its engine interacts with a flock of starlings (the Flock of Seagulls was on tour).
• Want to buy silver? Try this site.

Did you know that we were all doomed? Since the "Y2K" fracas didn't materialize, the latest doomsday year is 2012, when the Mayan calendar supposedly ends or heralds the end of the world. A trailer for a movie along this theme is now in theaters. Fortunately, even reviewers can see how over-the-top and nuts this is. I plan on having a party on January 1, 2013. The sane are welcome to attend.

From Jeff Foust: The Augustine Panel is due to have another public meeting, this one by telecon. The fact that they're having this meeting is a sign, sayeth Foust, that the final Augustine report will be delayed further.

From Lin: An article from FoxNews on how Obama's new "pay czar" is looking to curb or cut executive pay. My feeling is still this: it's none of government's business. This is a corporate governance issue. If you're an employee of a large multinational and you don't like how much money your CEO is making, buy one share of stock. This gives you the right to speak at a stockholder's meeting and speak your piece. Or, if you're not an employee, buy stock anyway. Make your voice heard. Build coalitions of other stockholders. Raise polite, legal, and rational heck. Show how corporate compensation practices are draining profitability and irrationally rewarding poor performance. Get the guidelines rewritten--with an eye to remembering that good compensation attracts the best and brightest, stupid compensation will result in a government takeover. There are ways to fix things that do not require Barack the Merciful to enter the fray and buy your company.

From my AIAA news feed, a couple of articles/editorials reflecting on the five-year anniversary of SpaceShipOne winning the X Prize Cup, one doubting, one more optimistic.

Oh yeah: I've got a short piece on ScienceCheerleader.com re: NASA's internet outreach efforts. Just enough to whet the whistle, more or less.

Also, I haven't done an update on my little e-niece Morgan lately. Her mom, Ame, is now reporting that she's working on home-schooling Morgan. I recommended that Ame take a look at a post on my site re: science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) resources for home schoolers. Morgan, bless her heart (sheesh! I've been in the South too long), has been going through a lot of medical madness, and those long periods of downtime keep her out of step with her peers and their learning. I commend Ame for doing what Morgan needs help doing. She's welcome to ping me anytime if she has questions. If I don't know, I'm willing to put in the time and research it.

Government Watching Continues

After I signed off the other night, it occurred to me that the first time I heard "czar" in connection with a U.S. government official was when Ronald Reagan appointed his "Drug Czar." That's when I started getting a lesson from more libertarian family members on Prohibition and the amount of money wasted on criminalizing drugs and alcohol.

Over the years, other czars have appeared on the scene: a copyright czar, an energy czar, and so forth. The Secretary of the Treasury is, for all practical purposes, an "economic czar," and was given extraordinary powers to spend federal money to bail out businesses he perceived to be in distress. We could get a "car czar" to address our failing auto industry.

What the heck are all these "czars" for, anyway? Do they do any good? Just so there's no mistake here: a "czar" is the title that used to be worn by Russian monarchs (and might be again, at the rate they're going). It's a Slavic rendering of "Caesar," ruler of the old Roman and Byzantine Empires. It means, in contemporary parlance, "the person in charge"; I can only guess that "czar" was applied as a cute term to convey that status.

As near as I can determine, these "czars" are put in place by Presidents to make things happen that federal agencies in their present form cannot address or to address problems that cut across multiple agencies' jurisdiction (the War on Drugs certainly qualifies in that respect). These czars are supposed to be "rainmakers" who can make things happen that others within existing agencies cannot. Again, rather than appoint yet another official and complicate the bureaucracy further, my simplistic mind would ask, "Why can't you just change the person in charge of the agency or agencies in question or fix how they operate to make them work better? Why not reform instead of complication?"

These positions remind me of the "Chancellor of the Exchequer," the man appointed by the King of England to guard the nation's treasury, which at the time was kept in a checkered bag, or the special titles bestowed in medieval European or Chinese courts as rewards for services to the king. There's a certain monarchical feeling to the whole thing. And, quite frankly, does anyone else have a problem with little Caesars being included in the apparatus of our nation's government?? Nixon instituted the practice, just around the time complaints arose about the "imperial presidency" (a term that arose in the 1960s, when Lyndon Johnson was in charge). As the power of the U.S. continues to increase, so too does the power of the president, and this "most powerful man in the free world" has only increased in power since the end of the Cold War.

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And why should "czars" bother me so much? Maybe because of the great speed with which President Obama wishes to push through one of the largest spending bills I've ever seen. Recessions are not unprecedented. In my nearly 40-year lifetime, there have been five, including the present situation. None of them resulted in government takeovers of HUGE chunks of the economy or actual businesses. Much of this stimulus bill goes, as I noted yesterday, into government projects, not on infrastructure or activities necessarily relevant to government policy ($75M for smoking prevention? I thought he wanted to tax cigarettes so they could use the money to fund nationalized healthcare). Some of the money won't even be SPENT until 2010, so what's the big frickin' emergency?

If Obama is determined to have the most ethical administration since the Clinton Administration, shouldn't he give the Congress and the American people time to read the bill carefully to make sure there's nothing in it that's awry or counterproductive? And, again, if he intends to spend some of the money in 2010, why pass it as part of this year's budget?

For most of the 2000s, I heard how George W. Bush was using the war on terror as an excuse to give the Chief Executive unprecedented--nay, dictatorial--powers. I might have even half-believed some of it. On the flip side, I would say that President Obama is trying to use a recession--NOT a depression--as an excuse to give the federal government unprecedented economic power.

Immanuel Kant had a concept he called the "categorical imperative," which I will quote here:

"Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law."

This is, essentially, the Golden Rule with teeth: not just "do unto others as you would have them do unto you." Rather, "Act toward others as you would expect to be treated in every single case." While I'm not a huge fan of Kant, I do believe that more than half of our laws would not get passed if lawmakers thought this way: "Would I want this law to be passed if I knew my political opponents would use it against me when I'm out of power?" One might ask the same question of waterboarding or pay cuts or estate taxes or warrantless wiretaps or unemployment insurance. "Would you want this law passed if it applied to YOU?"

I have more reading to do. Let's be careful out there.