Unused and Probably Unusable
http://unusedandunusable.powerblogs.com/
U & PU is a blawg by a Philadelphia lawyer. This is a linguistically-inclined blawg. Expect some politics, some literature, and some nonsense. Some rights reserved. All* comments welcome.
*Not all comments welcome.en-us2008-02-12T11:02+00:00Griffin dour; the Stanford Space meeting will occur regardless
http://unusedandunusable.powerblogs.com/posts/1202815869.shtml
The "Griffin dour" bit is my inability to pass up potential puns, in this case on Gryffindor, the House that Harry Potter belonged to at Hogwarts. I guess past tense is...Eh Nonymous2008-02-12T11:02+00:00
"Experts to discuss the space plan", NYT 2/12/08. Merv, sorry, Peter, oops, Michael Griffin is annoyed that there's talk of coming up with new plans for how space exploration will proceed. He even has a perfectly plausible sounding explanation for some of the dissatisfaction. He said:
issued a response last month arguing that “the questions to be raised at this conference have been asked and answered.” Many voices, he said, were heard in the planning of the program, which Congress finalized in 2005.
In an interview last week, Dr. Griffin said: “We spent three years reassessing the policy and codifying it. Changing it now? I think that’s just stupid.” He has suggested that some of the opposition is a sour-grapes effort by aerospace contractors who wanted a second shot at rich contracts. But, he said last week, “We don’t change space policy in the United States very often — if so, you can’t get anything done.”
Now, I particularly buy his "sour grapes" comment. That's quite likely to be true, in my book.
Partially true. Inadequately true.
Not all the people there are the conceded greedy contractors shut out of a lucrative deal with the profligate government. But then, I'm bothered by that anyway. We often commit ourselves to plans - go to the Moon, reconstruct Iraq, save a city imperilled by a hurricane - and not in each of those cases do we
- pay attention to how much will need to be done
- accurately assess the magnitude of the costs
- consider the available tools at hand, including the contractors, Congress, and bureaucrats who are to perform, oversee, and interfere with the task.
If a contractor is half a billion dollars into a project, say a satellite that's to go up three years hence, in a shuttle (wups, it'll be decommissioned by 2010), how easy is it to discipline it for cost overruns, quality failures, or simple malfeasance? Think sunk cost. Think inertia. My goodness, think about the political cost, not in votes but in campaign contributions, to any politician from the home area of the company that fails to defend its right to be incompetent or worse!
There's a very limited pool of contractors - there almost has to be, based on how Big Science has been done through NASA lo these many years. Faster Cheaper Better is an interesting motto (I always add: pick two), but despite some recent successes it hasn't been NASA's strong suit.
So, Griffin thinks changing policies that he's been involved with deciding, over the last several years, would be changing horses in midstream, or whatever.
Well, clearly he has screwed up. He may have had the best process imaginable, with the most important minds at NASA and maybe outside it. They may have the best plan. But NASA doesn't operate in a vaccuum (ha hahahah I crack me up), NASA has constituencies.
There are the critical public, the hecklers and opponents of space spending. The kind of people who honestly ask why that money isn't being spent here, and it's difficult to show them a pie chart and explain that NASA's budget is less than 10% of the cost of the Iraq war, less than 1% of the total budget. 16.25 billion for 2007, was NASA's budget. We're spending approximately 10 billion a MONTH in Iraq. All sources wikipedia, e.g. here and there.
And what about everyone else? Those who are not anti-space, but weren't consulted? Why wasn't there broader buy-in for NASA's current direction? Heck, why isn't there much buy-in for the idea of NASA? The plan has always been to not market the NASA brand, to cater to the public as dryly and as uninterestingly as possible. Contests? Reality shows? Why get people excited about exploration, risk, adventure, explosions, human drama, voyages, separation, possible death, vast distances and possible enormous treasure troves? None of that is romantic or saleable in the least.
The very first thing that the X Prize and similar things have going for them is that they're not hamstrung by stupid thinking. The whole point is excitement and selling people what they want, selling what will make its own market.
So, to go back and try to make my point: if you come up with a plan, even the best plan, and people who are crucial to your success in implementing it don't think it's a good plan, you don't have a working plan. Because they will resent you for not meeting their concerns, and they will remove you and unmake your plan and leave you behind, your time and effort wasted.
So, include crucial parties in your planning. Or you'll end up like Griffin, grumpy as the intellectual barbarians meet outside the gates to criticize what has been so painstakingly worked out by professionals....]]>Feb. 7
http://unusedandunusable.powerblogs.com/posts/1202388046.shtml
Today the first eclipse of 2008 will occur, for folks in New Zealand and part of Australia there'll be a partial solar eclipse starting this afternoon, their time. Today is also...Eh Nonymous2008-02-07T12:02+00:00Chinese New Year. (Your mileage may vary.)
This day in 1964, the Beatles were arriving at JFK International Airport.
In 1979, Pluto passed inside the orbit of Neptune for the first time since both were known, and for the last time while they were both known as planets. (Pluto's orbit is eccentric, so that most of its orbit is spent not just outside, but far outside Neptune's orbit. Its eccentricity - deviation from circle-ness - means that is a Trans-Neptunian Object, as well as whatever else it is.) As an aside, Pluto once again "became the ninth most distant planet from the Sun" on 17 Feb 1999... for only a few short years.
Also in 1979, Dr. Joseph Mengele, Nazi war criminal and fugitive from prosecution, drowned in Brazil after suffering a stroke.
A few of the famous dead people born on Feb. 7:
Sir Thomas More (Utopia)
Charles Dickens (Oliver Twist, A Tale of Two Cities, etc.)
Laura Ingalls Wilder (Little House on the Prairie)
Sinclair Lewis (Elmer Gantry, Main Street)
Eubie Blake
Some non-dead persons born today include:
Gay Talese
Pete Postlethwaite
Emo Philips
James Spader
Garth Brooks
Chris Rock
Steve Nash
Today is also the second day of Lent; two days ago was a day of the week of significance, Fat Tuesday or Mardi Gras, the day before Ash Wednesday. The first Thursday of Lent does not have any special name of its own, and feels a bit sorry for itself as a result.
In other news, today, being a Thursday, will not be a Heinlein Friday. Tomorrow... because I don't feel like it right now... won't either. But, I will see about resuming that feature, perhaps not every week, soon.]]>ACLU-beating: a game anyone can play
http://unusedandunusable.powerblogs.com/posts/1179955730.shtml
HB of How Appealing posts the following:...Eh Nonymous2007-05-23T21:05+00:00posts the following:
"The American Liberal Liberties Union: The ACLU is becoming very selective about what it considers 'free' speech." Today in The Wall Street Journal, Wendy Kaminer has an op-ed (free access) in which she writes, "One of the clearest indications of a retreat from defending all speech regardless of content is the ACLU's virtual silence in Harper v. Poway, an important federal case involving a high-school student's right to wear a T-shirt condemning homosexuality."
Posted at 08:47 AM by Howard Bashman
Well, I don't know Wendy Kaminer. I do know the WSJ, and its famous hostility (at least on the Editorial and Op-Ed pages) towards liberties of any sort other than economic or pro-conservative.
Wendy may be right. The ACLU's failure to act in this case may mean... something.
I'm just going to stop thinking there. I am going to bet otherwise.
People... in general... who comment on the ACLU's beliefs, tendencies, trends, or nature because of their SILENCE and INACTIVITY in a given situation are usually blowing smoke.
The ACLU is not a government. The ACLU is not a nanny. The ACLU does not owe you anything, and if you don't support it, then much like a job or a relationship, it will go away.
The ACLU takes on cases - not all cases - in which important considerations of constitutional liberties are at stake, and the case is either winnable, or should be hard fought.
If the ACLU thinks that a case is being adequately managed, it will generally not waste its (finite) resources. If the ACLU for whatever reason thinks a case should not be won, then it will do the same. If the ACLU is just too busy to work on a case, even an important case, because there are more important cases, the same.
If the ACLU fails to act... that says precisely nothing about anything other than the very fact.
In contrast, when the ACLU does act, speak, participate, or litigate, you can draw your own reasonable conclusions from their affirmative behavior.
Failure to get involved in a case pitting important 1st Amendment considerations against the rights of schools? I mean, they've done that case. Their position is known. Other people can argue that case. Would an amicus from the ACLU clarify something that wasn't known before? Should they be telling people that this involves free speech?
People who criticize the ACLU often have valid reasons. I always wonder, though, when the reasons they state, are not valid ones. What is it about liberty, free speech, or constitutional protections that these critics hate? Or is it just that they aren't paying attention, or being disingenuous, trying to win political points despite knowing better?
This is another way of asking, "Fool or knave?" Again, this isn't about Ms. Kaminer. For all I know, she's put her finger right on the big problem with the ACLU, and I'm not going to waste my own time reading anything in a WSJ op-ed criticizing the ACLU. Wake me up when it's a story in a reputable source ("having some integrity") about the same thing.
And with that, I'm done wasting my time about that post on HA, period.]]>Giuliani and terrorism
http://unusedandunusable.powerblogs.com/posts/1178244207.shtml
Rudolph William Louis Giuliani III, coddler to corrupt cronies and all-around self-promoter, repeated his slur against Democrats tonight during the Republican presidential debate....Eh Nonymous2007-05-04T02:05+00:00Rudolph William Louis Giuliani III, coddler to corrupt cronies and all-around self-promoter, repeated his slur against Democrats tonight during the Republican presidential debate.
Keith Olbermann's already handled this one. I don't have to rehash Mr. Giuliani's pathetic record of preparedness before 9/11. I don't have to point out that RG, America's beloved mayor, championed a man, Bernie Kerrik, who wound up being a prime example of Republican promotion of friends rather than accomplishing the job. This is part of the Alberto Gonzales scandal, not just part of RG's own disastrous record for the time leading up to and following upon the attacks on us - on the American way of life. A way of life RG perhaps thinks he represents, being a mayor of America's greatest city.
Anyway, back to RG's ridiculous quote. "Back on defense" against terrorism?
Giuliani, and other anti-Christs (lit: those whose actions are in direct opposition to the words and deeds of Jesus, even while superficially extolling or acting in his name), get things a bit backwards. Perhaps naturally so.
Giuliani thinks that Bush is playing offense against terrorists. Is Rudy too dumb to know the names, nationilities, and sympathies of those who were aboard the planes on September 11, 2001? Does he think perhaps these were Iraqis?
Democrats have ideas about not being reactive. Not doing what the terrorists want, for a start. Not hitting back blindly at the wrong Muslims. Not giving the impression that we are at war with Islam, or indeed any country that poses no threat to us. Not alienating the world. Not sacrificing our civil liberties on the altar of - what? Patriotism? Jingoism? A stupid willingness to cut our own throats, lest someone else do it first? Let's stop doing what the terrorists would dearly love us to do first, and then start talking about who's being defensive.
Bush was not being proactive when he went to war against the wrong threat. Bush was being reactive. Bush was playing defense - badly. Bush has made us less safe. Bush is endangering our lives - continues to endanger our lives, because of his blunders.
Putting in office a Republican who supports Bush's presidency and Bush's decisions would mean that we are beyond playing "defense" with terrorism. It would mean we have lost.
That's right, I said it.
Vote Republican, and the terrorists have won. Because there is no Republican agenda to speak of beyond fear. Democrats stand for a social safety net, stand for social justice in greater measure than we have now. Democrats stand for an end to unnecessary and mishandled wars. Democrats stand for a check against rampant inequality leading to suffering for the poor, the different, the disenfranchised. Democrats stand for Christ's values. Don't take my word for it. Check in a Book.
Republicans stand for: lower taxes on the affluent and the superrich. Lower taxes on estates, because lord knows we don't want to discourage (economics: to tax is to disincentivize) people dying. No stem cell research. No right to an abortion - indeed, to integrity and control over one's own body. No hate crime laws. No laws limiting private ownership of assault weapons by felons - and no laws allowing felons to vote once their time has been served. No equality for blacks, women, gays, foreigners, or the disabled.
Republicans as a party stand against all that is good, all that is just, all that is right. All they have in their favor is that what they push for is what feels good (to some), what is easy (to deny others), and what has traditionally been the case.
It's weak tea for me, but then I'm more of a reform-minded person, at this stage in my life, than a fan of the past, the good times that never were, the glorious olden days. Let's let the past celebrate itself. We have a more just, a more (equitably) prosperous, and a slightly less evil future to build.
And that should be all I'll have to say about Ruddy Rudy until he's out of this race for good. Goodbye, bad man, and don't come around anymore. I'm glad you're pro-gay, but it would help if you had any integrity, any shame, and any fitness for the job you're running for.]]>On Iraq, and what to do about it: get involved
http://unusedandunusable.powerblogs.com/posts/1177757740.shtml
I haven't commented directly on the War Against Iraq on this blawg before. I've touched on it, lots. It reflects on the judgment of the administration. It kills our best and...Eh Nonymous2007-04-28T10:04+00:00
Consider this statement of faith by Roger Cohen of the Int'l Herald Tribune in the NYT:
Because I believe the net impact of American power, mistakes notwithstanding, over the past century has been a freer, more open, more accountable and more rewarding world, I am inclined to heed Petraeus rather than the Democrats in the House.
Big words. Hard to fault him for his faith. Fine. But I will not willy-nilly go along with Cohen's unwillingness to change horses when he's halfway - can he even say halfway? - into an ocean.
Because I believe the net impact of American military power, successes notwithstanding, over the past 5 years has been a more terrified, more dangerous, more anti-American, and generally closer-to-killing me world, I am inclined to cut Bush no slack whatsoever until he shows some tendency to have a better idea than the Democrats.
His contra-timetable argument is brilliant rhetoric. It's nonsense, of course, because a deadline could be hopeful, for our troops and allies and for all Iraqis (except the ones who will die when we leave...) as easily as it could be an aid to insurgents - or, if you prefer, terrorists.
Bush has been reactive. He reacted to 9/11 by unleashing Cheney's pet plan to invade an unrelated but irksome country. He reacted to Abu Ghraib by condemning the effect on our troops. He reacted to troop deaths, caused by his actions and his commanders' decisions, defensively. He reacted to criticism as poorly as any President in my memory. I had no faith in hm before 9/11. I put faith in him that week because I had to, but I did not feel good about his hawkish instincts.
The same immoral, un-Christian, wrongheaded, perverse, murderous, vicious, foolish, ugly, evil instincts and behaviors that led him to be one of the most depraved Governors of the country - how many death sentences did he set aside? How many did he even pause over? How many caused him anguish, doubt, regret? His deliberate, callous inaction when given ultimate and unfettered power to grant mercy speaks volumes about his indifference or his ambition, I'm not sure which.
- that same pattern of being an essentially bad person when it counted, on the moral ledger of life, led him to disaster in Iraq.
It's not bad luck.
It's not coincidence.
A President without the ability to accept humility before it is politically expedient is virtually guaranteed to get himself into that political mess. Yes-men. Loyal party members rather than competent professionals. Ideals over results. Faith over fact. Death rather than life. War rather than peace. Power rather than process. Arrogance rather than cooperation.
Bush has not been a perfectly imperfect President. If one were to take him, for example, and systematically turn all his right actions into wrong ones, then we might call him the perfectly bad President.
As it is, he's merely the worst that there's been in years and years and years.
Let his legacy be low taxes on the rich, ballooning inequality, failure to identify broken processes that led to 9/11 and Katrina, failure to cope with those disasters once they occurred, failure to appoint and assign competent personnel, a failed attempt to destroy a wildly popular social safety net, and death. Lots and lots of death. It's on the heads of those who incited him, who encouraged him, who voted for him and who aided him, but it's on the hands of all of America.
And what now?
Well, now we take hope and take courage going forward. American citizens have an opportunity. Look into citizen diplomacy ("the right, if not the obligation of the individual citizen to be personally engaged in international relations") - don't leave it up to the experts in government. They can't do it alone, and shouldn't be allowed to even if they could. If there's a local International Visitors Council (IVC) near you, join it. Meet someone from Iraq, from Saudi Arabia, from China, from India, from France. Shake their hands, introduce yourself. Listen to what they say. Make a difference. Non-American citizens can also do their part, in the U.S. and abroad, by challenging beliefs, helping bridge gaps and educate those who don't know, and participating in exchange of all kinds. IVC also has need of you.
The best IVC, in my unhumble opinion, is the one I belong to, the IVC of Philadelphia, www.ivc.org. There are lots of them, but our program is terrific, our results are terrific, our people are terrific.
I have personally attended events and met people from every continent, and greeted them in their native languages. It makes a difference. Say hi to someone from Venezuela, from Cameroon, from Syria and Oman and Yemen and Bahrain and Kazakhstan and Canada and Spain and more. It affects you, sure. But much, much, much more importantly for the U.S. and everyone who lives here, it affects them.
Join us. Welcome them. Make a difference. As Abraham Lincoln is quoted on the front page of Philly's IVC page, "I destroy my enemies by making them my friends."
Don't let Bush be our face to the world. Be a non-ugly American. Help us atone for what he has done in our name, and for what we allowed him to do.]]>"Worst day of violence on a college campus in American history"
http://unusedandunusable.powerblogs.com/posts/1176907623.shtml
President Bush speaking about the event that Wikipedia seems to have settled on calling the "Virginia Tech Massacre" (as opposed to "Virginia Tech Shootings", see the Talk page for...Eh Nonymous2007-04-18T14:04+00:00Virginia Tech Massacre" (as opposed to "Virginia Tech Shootings", see the Talk page for the discussions), called it the worst day of violence on a college campus in American history, a horrible but accurate description.
I am already ready to be done with the conversation about gun control (great idea? or greatest idea? [apologies to S. Colbert]) vs. happy gun ownership (this could have all been prevented, if students were prepared to return fire while in English class. And wouldn't that make the professors more calm, to have lots of armed and surly freshmen in their must-pass class...).
This was not a case of gun control gone bad. This was also not an illegal alien committing a crime; not an act of terrorism in the political sense; not something we should be fearful of at any moment.
This was an act of... wait for it... premeditated murder by a disturbed, isolated individual who may have been looking for an ex-girlfriend, as he walked from room to room.
I have already determined that I will not bother learning the name of the individual to blame. He was a young adult. He was a permanent resident. He had an ethnic origin, like every other American. He had a family, a roommate, occupied a physical space in the world. Now he has marked many others, indelibly, and escaped the consequences forever. Let his name be forgotten, not repeated and repeated.
So the origin of this mayhem and suffering may have been (we'll know more once we watch the movie of the week!) a victim (see his "rambling" suicide notes, and the play he wrote about "Richard McBeefy") turned abuser, unable to cope with feelings other than by acting them out.
Should we be having a conversation, this society, not about bang-bang but about relationships and violence? Or about society or schools making an effort to reach out to the disaffected, the disturbed, the distanced and the deranged?
Meanwhile, I'm done reading the speculations of amateurs, self-promoters, and blameless experts roped in by a scoop-thirsty media. Notify me when the stories of heroism, sacrifice, and giving -- that is, the best of human nature, not the worst -- have finished being vetted, debunked, and verified by witnesses. After, not before, there is some time for them, and us, to heal.
Our thoughts and prayers go out to those affected by this tragedy.]]>Heisenberg, Congress, and War
http://unusedandunusable.powerblogs.com/posts/1175601242.shtml
I'm pretty sure that the pervasive criticisms of those members of Congress who suggest that things in Iraq are going quite well, based on their own observations, are actually about...Eh Nonymous2007-04-03T11:04+00:00pervasive criticisms of those members of Congress who suggest that things in Iraq are going quite well, based on their own observations, are actually about nuclear physics.
Even though the Senator from Arizona and the Representative from Indiana, and their aides (who all happen to be Republican, and in favor of the war, politically speaking) saw things with their own eyes, they seem to have come to a conclusion opposite that of the commanders and troops on the ground, most of the reporters who have spent substantial time in Iraq, and virtually everyone who lives there.
How could such disagreement occur?
Well, consider the following:
Delta(x) times Delta(p) is greater than or equal to h divided by 4 times Pi.
That's Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. It says that if you start cranking the Delta (x), which is on the left side of the equation, downwards, then something will have to give. You can't drive it to zero, because then the Delta(p) would have to be infinitely large in order for the principle to remain true.
The smaller the uncertainty in where a quantum particle is, the larger must be the uncertainty in its momentum. Or conversely, if the momentum (and therefore mass and energy) of a quantum particle is known with great exactness, its position becomes as greatly uncertain. There is a lower limit, in the universe, to how certain you can be of both at the same time. By measuring position (precisely), you lose - in fact, destroy - information about its momentum. In taking a reading of momentum you lose all detail about position. It's not because of faulty equipment. It's because of the nature of the teensy little things being studied. Infinitely tiny microscopes (or rather, collision detectors or the like) would not help. The position of the particle IS IN FACT highly uncertain, being a superposition of many states, as a result of its momentum being known.
In the world of politics and war, there's a similar problem. In order for Sen. McCain and Rep. Pence to view that market in Baghdad, they needed to observe it. In observing it, they changed its state.
They were not, as scientists used to pretend in their philosophical constructs, disembodied eyes, observing without being observed or otherwise interfering.
They brought with them, according to the NY Times article today,
more than 100 soldiers in armored Humvees — the equivalent of an entire company — and attack helicopters
as well as having traffic diverted, access restricted, and sharpshooters placed.
Isn't it possible that the Iraq that the honorable gentlemen observed is not in fact the same Iraq that, say, an unarmed civilian without escort might observe? Might not the circumstances of their (heavily armed and closely protected) observation impact what results they saw?
In Iraq, you can be heavily protected and safe, or you can observe reality as it exists in the absence of a company of soldiers with Humvees, plus helicopters and marksmen above. But you can't do both.]]>Heinlein unFriday: Gender and Change, coming soon
http://unusedandunusable.powerblogs.com/posts/1175001380.shtml
To quote another legal epistolary writer (Aaron Streett; the extra T at the end is probably for Terrific), "Greetings, sportsfans!" See here, for the first March issue of his periodic...Eh Nonymous2007-03-27T13:03+00:00See here, for the first March issue of his periodic chatty Supreme Court opinion, order and grant roundup. I highly recommend it to all SCOTUS groupies. Prawfsblawg reprints them, but you can get them delivered straight to your inbox by mailing him at the link at the end of that post. Streett, an associate in Baker Botts' Houston office, provides all the inside baseball commentary one could want, in a breezy and entertaining tone. Oh look, there's links to all of them at Baker Botts.
Anyway. Hello to those who enjoy watching athletic events. How's your NCAA tournament treating you? Thought so.
I had an intention to write about Gender and Change in Heinlein's writing. So that'll be my next topic, because I think it's got more juice for me right now than the grim-seeming discussion of war crimes that I had planned. I'd planned to unroll that one in mid-August 2006, and then the topic so disheartened me that I went and did things I felt like doing more instead.
So: forthcoming, a discussion of gender-bending, gender roles, stereotypes, cross-dressing, a bit about sexuality (although that's not the focus), and gender as a mutable characteristic in the works of R. A. Heinlein. Because after all, if I can't write what I feel like, what am I doing out here in the blawgoverse, anyway?
Other posts I'm brewing up: a quick perusal of the controversial No Child Left Behind act, which has been heavily criticized as elevating testing, and particularly apparent improvement in testing, over real education, as well as skewing priorities in educating students - like, how much to test-prep vs. other skills, how much to the bottom quintile vs. the next vs. the next. My favorite example of unhappiness was the NY Times article about an excellent school that had been deemed a failure under NCLB. I might do a more searching review of what's being said about it. Wikipedia now notes in the No Child Left Behind Act article that "a new Congress has already started considering major revisions, as one group of 50 Republican senators and representatives introduced legislation in March 2007 that would provide states much greater freedom from NCLB's controls and punishments." - but as always, trust Wikipedia only so far. How do we KNOW that they introduced such proposed legislation unless we go looking through THOMAS ourselves?
Also, a possible HF post on addiction, and another on wealth and power.
Until next time, that's today's unused & unusable inside baseball! (Again, a tip of the imaginary hat to this guy.)]]>