Today's Hypothetical

Let's say you're an avid lover of trees. You hate to see them cut down unnecessarily, you've got a paperless office, and you spend your days advocating for protecting forests and getting other people to do the same. You are, proudly, reverently, a "tree hugger." Great! Good for you.

Now let's say the government mandates that every non-profit organization in your category [501(c)(3)] must print out their tax forms on new (not recycled) paper from old-growth forests and that they must pay Would you fight it? Would you find this regulation intrusive? for said forms out of their own pockets. What are your likely reactions? Would you find this mandate offensive, even immoral? Just throwin' it out there.

Potpourri CXLVII

Hoo boy. I got way behind. Expect a heapin' helpin' of links today.

Culture

Let's start with something fun. A new "flash mob" activity: singing La Traviata in the Reading, PA, train station. I still like the group that danced to a song from The Sound of Music in the Antwerp train station. Occasionally the internet can do fun things.

However, social media are like people: not always good, and occasionally subject to abuse. Take, for example, the effort made by two Venezuelan citizens for stating that the financial system in that country was unstable. Venezuela's dictator, Hugo Chavez, promptly had them arrested. Now the Tweet might or might not be true, but it says something very telling about a socialist government when even a <140-character>

Found by Dennis: Speaking of Twitter, some university researchers depicted the "mood" of Tweets across the lower 48 States graphically. I'm still not sure how this works, but it's an interesting visual.

From Doc: "Some Friday 'splode." I'd like to thank Doc and Widge for introducing me to the concept of 'splode, which is short of "kick'splode," which itself is shorthand for an all-encompassing type of movie that usualy includes violence (kicks) or property damage via explosions ('splode). What they call kick'splode, I usually call "big, dumb action movies." Anyhow, RED looks fun. However, the ultimate kick'splode movie of the summer might be The Expendables, which stars almost every single action hero from the '80s and '90s, including Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis, and Dolph(?) Lundgren. To quote Widge, "Hijinks will ensue."

This has to be a joke or an industry-inspired made-up holiday, but apparently today is National Tequila Day. Don't American beverages need some support, too?

If you like space art, you might want to check out Pat Rawlings' site. He does work for SAIC, I believe, and was gracious enough to serve as one of the judges for the 2009 NSS Space Settlement Calendar.

Now this is useful! A light saber bottle opener.

A guy robbed a bank dressed as Darth Vader. I’ll say this: it’s creative.



Disney is taking another shot at making a Haunted Mansion movie. I’d forgotten about the Eddie Murphy version. Anyhow, my curiosity persists: what needs are films based on theme park attractions or old TV shows fulfilling?



Be careful which outdoor activity you practice this summer: http://gizmodo.com/5594567/reminder-dont-practice-one-of-these-summer-activities

From Kate Down Under: a reminder that the U.S. has buried another Medal of Honor recipient. The summary of what he did to earn it, as always, is astounding:

In 1944, 2nd Lt. Baker was sent to Italy with a full platoon of 54 men. On April 5, he and his soldiers found themselves behind enemy lines near Viareggio, Italy. When concentrated enemy fire from several machine gun emplacements stopped his company's advance, Baker crawled to one and destroyed it, killing three Germans. Continuing forward, he attacked an enemy observation post and killed two occupants.


With the aid of one of his men, Baker attacked two more machine gun nests, killing or wounding the four enemy soldiers occupying these positions. Then he covered the evacuation of his wounded soldiers by occupying an exposed position and drawing the enemy's fire.

On the following night, Baker voluntarily led a battalion advance through enemy mine fields and heavy fire.

In all, Baker and his platoon killed 26 Germans and destroyed six machine gun nests, two observer posts and four dugouts.

Baker's MOH was delayed because he was black. Well earned, and long overdue, sir.

From Father Dan: a restaurant at Downtown Disney now has a meatball bar. As in the food on the menu includes different kinds of meatballs. As to whether there are meatballs sitting at the bar, well, you pays your money and you takes your chances.
Women are fighting abuse in rural India





Wood floors made from wine barrels. Cool! And here’s another bit: a coffee table filled with old computer parts. BoingBoing finds some weird stuff.


An interview with a technical writer and science fiction that is worth reading. An important caution here, but the entire interview bears attention:


Dr. Who themes from 1963 to 2010. You know: because everyone wants to know.

I can't recommend technical writing as a day job for fiction writers, because it's going to be hard to write all day and then come home and write fiction. Nowadays I work as a freelance writer, so I usually do contract technical writing part of the year and then I take time off and do fiction writing the rest of the year. It's too difficult for me to do technical writing at the same time as fiction writing - they draw on the same parts of my brain. So I can't say it's a good day job in that sense, but it's a way to make money.

My buddy Karl would like this…a little applied psychology, though I’m not sure I like the implications: 101 ways to influence others’ behavior.



Not sure what to make of this cartoon, but it’s got a space theme.


Looking to get arrested? Someone is selling stickers that make it look like you’re carrying a lot of drugs in your suitcase. Here's your sign...

This pug "singing" the old Batman TV show theme has been making the rounds on the internet. Oy. Please, make him stop! 

A young girl’s rocket-making video. Kinda reminds me of my niece. Wouldn't my sister love that!?

A Millennium Falcon guitar: now we're talkin'!

U.S. Politics

From Dale: Some folks are suggesting a moratorium on new business regulations for a year to help economic growth. Why do this? For an instructive tutorial on why adding more and more regulations can screw up the economy, I highly recommend Amity Shlaes' The Forgotten Man, a history of The Great Depression. However, the short version is simply this: governments might think they're "doing something for the people" by creating a lot of new regulations and laws to rein in "big business," but what really happens is that businesses big and small will refrain from investing or hiring new employees because they're afraid they might not be able to afford what government is going to do next. So when businesses stop investing and hiring, whom does that help? Exactly.

Sen. John Kerry, an old friend of forcing higher taxes on the rest of us, is docking his yacht(!) in Rhode Island to avoid paying higher docking taxes in his home state of Massachusetts (also known by some as “Taxachusetts”). Here’s a wild idea, Senator: try reducing taxes for everybody, not just when it suits your convenience. Or, if you truly believe that higher taxes are good for America, you should dock your boat in Massachusetts and gladly pay your “fair share.” Just sayin’.

Science, Technology, and Space

Some folks in India have announced the development of a $35 computer. Yeah, you read that right: $35, about $1,500 Rupees. The goal of the low-cost computers is to connect more schools and universities. Interestingly, the machines are run on Linux. Microsoft and Apple, please take note.

More on the internet...someone's figured out that we're running out of internet addresses. Expect more uneducated Y2K-type media frenzy as the problem becomes more well known (but not necessarily better understood).

NASA has released "the most accurate map of Mars ever."

Frank Morring at Aviation Week has a good assessment of the state of Constellation.

From Hu: BigThink.com has a brief history of laser weapons online.

From a friend at work: if the astronaut corps is about to be downsized, what will inspire kids to get into science and other technical disciplines? Good question.

A rapid-response team for oil spills—about bloody time.



Again, if you’ve not read his stuff before, my friend (and much more dedicated fellow space blogger) Jeff Foust has been providing excellent coverage of what’s happening with the NASA budget. The state of things right now is that both Houses of Congress have an authorization bill—a “vision,” if you will—stating what they want NASA to do, and those bills do not agree with each other. The Administration seems to agree with the Senate bill, but this ain’t over. Makes for an interesting working environment, I’ll say that.



Someone set up a Russian tank ballet. No, really.



Nanomaterial anti-bacterial surface. Cool!


A cloaking device? Not quite yet.




Foreign Affairs


The North Koreans are threatening “physical action” in response to U.S.-South Korean naval exercises. Yes, that ratchets up tensions in East Asia, but the Norks are known for raising heck to achieve just that result without any action to back it up. People take the Glorious Leader (Kim Jong Il) more seriously because he now has nuclear weapons. Imagine how much fun the news will be when Iran finally gets the nukes they want.

And I think I'm going to let it rest here for the time being. Lots of interesting stuff out there, but there's a limit, ya know?

Peace out,

/bRobotic scientists are now analyzing data and forming hypotheses. Perhaps we need to reevaluate the Turing Test?

The FTC to Clamp Down On Bloggers

So it begins: the Federal Trade Commission will now regulate bloggers to the extent that bloggers will soon be required to state whether they are on the payroll of any product they review. I wonder if the same rules will apply to "grassroots" political supporters--e.g., when you start blathering about the evils of Limbaugh or Obama, will you have to admit that you're also working for some political organization? The slope is slippery indeed, depending on how civil courts and regulators decide to interpret this rule.

Letter to My Senators on the Energy Bill

I just submitted the following letter to Senators Sessions and Shelby (R-AL). My reasons are my own, but I encourage you to find your own words to stop the energy bill from going any further.

Senator Shelby:

I am appalled, but alas, not surprised that the House has passed the cap-and-trade bill. I sincerely encourage you to fight this bill and not allow it to be passed into law. The reasons for doing so are many, and all worthy of repeating:

--It is an unprecedented and unnecessary intrusion of government into the private sector.
--It raises the cost of energy, which will increase the cost of EVERYTHING ELSE in our economy, from transportation to manufacturing to farming. This is the worst possible thing government could do in an already-ailing economy.
--There are NO “green” technologies currently available that provide the amount of energy this nation needs to maintain a high level of technology or standard of living. Therefore, the only result will be a direct curtailing of future prosperity for all Americans.
--Global warming is still a subject very much in dispute, given a leveling off or cooling of temperatures in the last eight years.
--A “consensus” by activist scientists does not constitute scientific proof. Theories are proven by data and verifiable experiment, not incomplete computer models.

I strongly encourage you, Senator Sessions, and the other Republicans in the Senate to stop this legislation. There are things that can and should be done to meet the nation’s growing energy needs, including drilling for more oil on American lands, like off the coasts and in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge; investing in basic energy research, including space solar power and helium-3 derived fusion; and reducing regulations on new nuclear power plants.

Senator, stopping this bill does not represent “fear of the future,” as President Obama asserts. It is a principled stand against making the future more fearful. I look forward to supporting you in this vital battle for our nation’s future.

Sincerely,

Bart Leahy

Potpourri XXXVII

Let's see, what's out there? Oh, yeah! Got to start with this: the Obama administration knew that the Supreme Court's ruling that the EPA could regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant even though they did NOT like the decision! Someone, of course, is in big trouble. There were all sorts of "green" laws that were going to happen under Obama. The whole article from The Hill deserves to be quoted in full:

OMB memo raises doubts about EPA findings
@ 4:17 pm by Eric Zimmermann
An EPA finding last month that greenhouse gases are a danger to public health rests on dubious assumptions and could have negative economic impacts, a memo from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) warned.
The memo has no listed author but is marked "Deliberative–Attorney Client Privilege." A spokesman for OMB told Dow Jones Newswires that the brief is a "conglomeration of counsel we've received from various agencies" about the EPA finding, the conclusions of which would trigger regulation of greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act.
The author(s) of the memo suggest the EPA did not thoroughly examine the relationship between greenhouse gases and human health.
"In the absence of a strong statement of the standards being applied in this decision, there is concern that EPA is making a finding based on…'harm' from substances that have no demonstrated direct health effects," the memo says, adding that the "scientific data that purports to conclusively establish" that link was from outside EPA.
Additionally, the new regulations triggered by the finding would likely harm the economy, the brief warns.
"Making the decision to regulate CO2…is likely to have serious economic consequences for regulated entities throughout the U.S. economy, including small businesses and small communities," the memo reads.
Finally, in language sure to anger climate change activists, the memo questions whether climate change might bring benefits that would mitigate the costs.
"To the extent that climate change alters out environment, it will create incentives for innovation and adaption that mitigate the damages," the memo reads. "The [EPA finding] should note this possibility[.]"
The memo goes so far as to suggest that global warming might be a net positive for certain regions of the United States.
"It might be reasonable to conclude that Alaska will benefit from warmer winters for both health and economic reasons," the authors note.
At a Senate hearing today, Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) grilled EPA administrator Lisa Jackson about the memo.
"This is a smoking gun," Barrasso said, accusing the EPA of making the finding for political reasons.
Jackson responded that the finding was based on science and was in no way politicized.
"That analysis had been done really before I took the oath of office," Jackson said.
She acknowledged that curbing climate change might have economic impact, and added that the costs could be minimized through the administration's favored cap-and-trade system.
"We do understand that there are costs to the economy of addressing global warming emissions, and that the best way to address them is a gradual move to a market-based program like cap-and trade," Jackson said.

The genie is out of the bottle. Let the merriment and chaos begin.

Your Humble Narrator is famous, from an academic point of view. I’ve got a textbook here called “Societal Impacts of Spaceflight,” which was printed by NASA and based on a bunch of papers presented by historians, sociologists, and those sorts of folk at a symposium a couple years back. One of these writers actually cited one of my articles. Page 493, reference 43, links to my "Save Our Planet: Space Advocates See the Bigger Picture" article on Space.com. Wacky!

Tip o' the fedora to Michael Mealling for finding this article by George Will on the upside-down economy. Will references an article in Foreign Affairs that might be worth reading, if you're a subscriber.

Speaking of Mr. Mealling, a Masten Space Systems guy, Masten has performed a successful test of one of their rockets. Martin and I, of course, got into a lot of back-and-forth about the relative merits of government- vs. private-funded space travel. Martin's position is basically that "Physics is a beyotch" and that if there were a better way to get into space, someone would've come up with it by now. I beg to differ. And while I won't divulge any confidences or comments Martin made, I'm not shy about mine:

I agree that X-projects are the way to go. Unfortunately, we don’t do those anymore. If the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. To wit: if you have a large organization with lots of money (NASA, as opposed to a startup), then you are only going to think in terms of a multi-constituency, large-organization solution. The U.S. was working its way toward space using airplane-based thinking, with X-20 Dyna-Soar as the next step after X-15, but the Russians got there first using a ballistic missile, and the airplane-based approach was dropped. Airplane designers have a different approach to problems than rocket builders. We’ll never know how the U.S. space program would have turned out if we’d stuck with the airplane-based approach because we get sidetracked by the artillery shell approach. We’ll also never know what would’ve happened if we’d stuck with the company-based model of production instead of the government-based approach because we had Apollo. Can we go back to that? I don’t know. Maybe someone could try to build Dyna-Soar and find out the hard way.

Is business-based rocket travel “imminent?” Perhaps not. I’ve gotten my hopes up too many times to be that much of an optimist anymore. However, the big-government, big-rocket approach is also fundamentally flawed and needs to be rethought. The entrepreneurs should be encouraged and funded, even if it means doing things that are considered tacky, hucksterish, stunts, or Not Worthy of the Grandeur of Space, as NASA would have it.

Martin did have an interesting link to a Jeff Bell article on spaceplanes, which I will share.

New from Hu:

• The Mars Spirit rover is having road troubles.
• Boeing is moving its missile defense division from Arlington, VA, to Huntsville. Gosh knows we could use the business. Here's hoping Obama doesn't cut the missile defense budget.
• Vladimir Putin's price for signing the next Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START) is for Obama to scrap our missile defenses. Reagan's answer at Rekjavik to such a gambit was historic and world-changing. One can only guess or hope with the current president
• Google is mating with a spreadsheet...and producing products that should help web searchers better organize their data. Sounds useful, but I'd like to see the final output.

Burgers and Government Property

I had to renew my training on protecting and properly using government property this week. One of the statements they make perfectly clear in that training is that "stopping at a fast-food restaurant in a government vehicle is NOT an appropriate use of government property." So what am I to make of this rule when the President and Vice President are covered ON THE NEWS going to a hamburger joint.