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Tuesday, 2. July 2002

mld, July 2, 2002 at 6:24:00 PM CEST

Watching Ellie...

There's an interesting article here about our global effort to track earth crossing asteroids.

The story is presented in a fairly upbeat, even-handed, don't-wanna-cause-panic, way, but it still relates the situation with a fair amount of earnest gravity.

Personally, I think it tends to downplay the danger. Let me relate the bald facts admitted in the article in a less sanguine fashion.

The main points:

One - though we're making good progress, we've only managed to find what we think are about half of the the EarthCrossers large enough to end life on the planet as currently in fashion.

Two - there has been no significant effort to locate asteroids so small (~300m or so) and insignificant that an impact by one, say, in the Gulf of Mexico, would only wipe out life in the coastal region from Key West to the Yucatan. and everything in between.

Three - that the cost of this effort ins truly insignificant. The interviewee, one Mr. Morrison of NASA, says that he would have a difficult time spending a billion dollars a year on the task. This represents less than 5% of what we recently allocated, in just a few short weeks of deliberation, in what was essentially a voice vote, to spend in aid for the WTC attacks.

I'm not even going to calculate what a tiny percentage this is of the recent 190 BILLION dollar farm ~~welfare, err, bribe to the farm states, err, agribusiness handout,~~ subsidy we the faithful taxpayers just got socked with, as I'd have to go jump in the pool to keep my blood from boiling, and guys with my family medical history need to avoid getting angered or stressed.

Fourth - all of our plans on how to deal with a potential planetbuster are simply "thought experiments," with no practical real world experimentation to guide them.

It seems to me that it would be a an excellent idea to mount an expedition, be it manned or unmanned, (though I prefer the former) to a known, harmless, easy-to-reach asteroid, and see exactly what it takes to alter its orbit.

This would not only provide some sorely needed verification of our present assumptions, but give us practical experience in areas of space operations such as long-term life support, zero-gravity manuvering and construction, and other types of the practical knowledge needed for our eventual industrialization and colonization of space.

As such, the relatively trivial costs of this undertaking should be considered as a long-term capital investment, and not a mere short term expense. There can be little doubt that the dollars we spend on this task will generate as rich a return as every dollar we've spent on the space program so far.

This return, moreover, will not just benefit those of us here in the States that spent it, but benefit all mankind. In fact, this task may prove to be the savior for all life, of every description, here on the planet, from the tropical rainforests to the Anarctic, from the blue whales to the blue-green algae.

So, why aren't we doing it? There is not yet the groundswell of public support that is needed to swat our politicians, as always looking at a horizon no farther than the next election, over the head with a clue-by-four, so that they will spend our money for the greater good.

How do we get it? I don't have any glib answers to that. If you do, there's a comment link right there below this line. I'd love to hear your ideas.

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Monday, 1. July 2002

mld, July 1, 2002 at 8:31:00 PM CEST

Note to the Afghan People

While it's a long-standing custom with you folks, it might be a good idea to give up the celebratory firing of weapons into the air, at least when you're in a war zone, and there are US combat aircraft in the area. "BAGRAM, Afghanistan (AP) - U.S. helicopter gunships and jets attacked a house Monday while a wedding was under way, killing and injuring scores, witnesses and hospital officials said. U.S. officials said an AC-130 gunship and a B-52 launched an attack after American forces came under fire.

Reports of the incident were conflicting.

Bismullah, communications chief of Uruzgan province where the attack occurred, said Afghans were firing weapons in the area during the wedding as is common in rural Afghanistan." Repeat - not a Good Idea. Those tracers coming up from the ground look just like you mean business. Have y'all ever heard of the Darwin Awards?

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mld, July 1, 2002 at 6:36:00 AM CEST

The 100 Greatest Novels

I got this email today from a list I'm on, and there's this bookstore pimping their list of the novels every adult should own. (or at least read, one presumes) It's here.

Needless to say, there are a few selections with which I have to disagree.

They got some things right. There are the Classics - The Oedipus Trilogy, the Iliad and the Odyssey, Canterbury Tales, etc. Given my tastes, no problemo. But I don't know that if I had to pick one Shakespeare, that it'd be Lear. And I'm not sure Candide would make my cut.

Moby Dick and Huck Finn, the two novels that vy, in my mind, at least, for the title of Greatest American Novel, along with all the other Greatest Hits, the novels that you learned to hate in high school, Great Expectations, The Scarlet Letter, Pride And Prejudice, yatta-yatta...

But there are some selections there that I don't understand at all. It may be my elitist classical leanings or just plain ignorance of most of the stuff written after WWII, but c'mon...

The Wapshot Chronicle? July's People? If Not Now, When? A Lesson From Aloes? The Moviegoer? The Scarlet Mandala? Their Eyes Were Watching God? Things Fall Apart?

These may be fine works, but are any of them more important than oh, say, The Grapes of Wrath, or 1984?

Seems to me that a work needs to have aged a few decades before it gets to be called one of the best of all time, but again, my tastes are obvious and my ignorance considerable. It looks to me like the list has as a hidden agenda the need to move some slow moving titles out of a warehouse somewhere, or as if the publisher is underwriting this. Some of the selections positively reek of PC affirmative action, but that's a whole 'nother issue.

There are a few glaring holes (no Hemingway?) and a complete lack of any sci-fi or fantasy - not even a Fahrenheit 451 or The Hobbitt to appease fans of the genre.

I know Kipling is out of favor these days for being an imperialist racist pig, but how do you leave out Kim, or the Jungle Books? (unless you are considering the latter to be kid's fiction)

Anyway, the polls are open. Now taking nominees for the 100 Greatest Works of Fiction...

I'm thinking of this as the list I'd hand to my kid and tell her this is what she needs to have read before she leaves home for college. Other than Shakespeare and Sophocles (and the rest of the ancient Greek playwrights), I'm leaving all dramatic works aside, maybe for their own list.

I'll get started by listing some classics that I think will be consensus picks. In no particular order:

Shakespeare - Complete Works (cheating, I know, but this is my poll)
Homer - Iliad & Odyssey
Dante - Divine Comedy
Chaucer - Canterbury Tales
Sophocles - The Oedipus Cycle
Cervantes - Don Quixote
Twain - Huck Finn
Melville - Moby Dick

And my personal selections, again in no real order, and limited to books that I've actually read. There are lots of books that would be consensus entries, as an example, Pride And Prejudice, that I've left off for the latter reason. Another would be that I didn't really like them, which is why I've not put obvious works such as The Great Gatsby (soap opera) and The Catcher In The Rye (I wanted to shoot that whiny twerp Holden Caulfield by the fifth page) on the list. I'm going to let someone else do that - they're not getting my Seal of Approval. :-)