Monthly Archive for May, 2007

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The Vulcan Utopia

Published on 5/29/2007 in Politics . Closed

David Brooks reviews “The Assault on Reason”:

But, hey, nobody ever died from contact with pomposity, and Al Gore’s “The Assault on Reason” is well worth reading. It reminds us that whatever the effects of our homogenizing mass culture, it is still possible for exceedingly strange individuals to rise to the top.

…

But Gore’s imperviousness to reality is not the most striking feature of the book. It’s the chilliness and sterility of his worldview. Gore is laying out a comprehensive theory of social development, but it allows almost no role for family, friendship, neighborhood or just face-to-face contact. He sees society the way you might see it from a speaking podium — as a public mass exercise with little allowance for intimacy or private life. He envisions a sort of Vulcan Utopia, in which dispassionate individuals exchange facts and arrive at logical conclusions.

This in turn grows out of a bizarre view of human nature. Gore seems to have come up with a theory that the upper, logical mind sits on top of, and should master, the primitive and more emotional mind below. He thinks this can be done through a technical process that minimizes information flow to the lower brain and maximizes information flow to the higher brain.

Space tourism is really happening

Published on 5/28/2007 in Technology . Closed

“It’s not NASA’s job to send a man to Mars. It’s NASA’s job to make it possible for the National Geographic Society to send a man to Mars.”



Glenn Reynolds continues his space reporting with a roundup on space tourism developments, including this encouraging bit from AP:

Space tourism companies can survive the inevitable disaster if they warn passengers of the risks that a privately operated rocket ship could crash, an executive of one of the leading firms said Friday.

“God forbid it should happen on the first flight. Hopefully it’s many, many years out,” said Alex Tai, chief operating officer for British billionaire Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic space venture.

Glenn has been attending and reporting from the International Space Development Conference [ISDC]. Lots of interesting stuff…

The stories behind Memorial Day.

Published on 5/28/2007 in Military . Closed

Once we knew who and what to honor on Memorial Day: those who had given all their tomorrows, as was said of the men who stormed the beaches of Normandy, for our todays. But in a world saturated with selfhood, where every death is by definition a death in vain, the notion of sacrifice today provokes puzzlement more often than admiration. We support the troops, of course, but we also believe that war, being hell, can easily touch them with an evil no cause for engagement can wash away. And in any case we are more comfortable supporting them as victims than as warriors.

Former football star Pat Tillman and Marine Cpl. Jason Dunham were killed on the same day: April 22, 2004. But as details of his death fitfully emerged from Afghanistan, Tillman has become a metaphor for the current conflict–a victim of fratricide, disillusionment, coverup and possibly conspiracy. By comparison, Dunham, who saved several of his comrades in Iraq by falling on an insurgent’s grenade, is the unknown soldier. The New York Times, which featured Abu Ghraib on its front page for 32 consecutive days, put the story of Dunham’s Medal of Honor on the third page of section B.

Not long ago I was asked to write the biographical sketches for a book featuring formal photographs of all our living Medal of Honor recipients. As I talked with them, I was, of course, chilled by the primal power of their stories. But I also felt pathos: They had become strangers–honored strangers, but strangers nonetheless–in our midst.

…

Read the whole thing, by Peter Collier, co-author of “Medal of Honor: Portraits of Valor Beyond the Call of Duty“.

Netanyahu on Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah and al Qaeda

Published on 5/27/2007 in Counter Terrorism . Closed Tags: , .

“a regime that promotes genocide cannot receive American taxpayers’ savings . . . through European intermediaries”



Benjamin Netanyahu is campaigning in the U.S. for investors to divest from foreign companies that do business in Iran. I agree this would increase the heat on the mullahs. The problem is that divesting typically drops the share price you are selling, which makes fund shareholders grumpy. There are some state and federal legislative developments to exempt managers from lawsuits when they divest in this fashion – but the net asset value of the fund still falls.

Netanyahu sees little light between Hamas and Hezbollah – while al Qaeda differs only in the degree of medievalism to be imposed:

…He sees al Qaeda as existing on a continuum with Tehran’s Shiite fundamentalists: “They’re now competing with each other on the soil of Lebanon to gain paramountcy–al Qaeda in the north and Hezbollah in the south. But both of them practice suicide attacks, both of them have the cult of death, and both of them are absolutely uninhibited in the use of force against their chosen enemies. Now, is there a difference? Yeah, I suppose. I think one wants to send us back to the ninth century and one wants to send us back to the seventh century.” The Shiite extremists, Mr. Netanyahu quips, “give us two centuries extra.”

And certainly, Netanyahu understands the power of economic freedom — which I believe is more important than political freedom.

Because of the militants’ power to intimidate and the weak civic institutions in Arab societies, Mr. Netanyahu is wary of pushing those societies too quickly toward electoral democracy. He thinks it was a mistake to allow Hamas to compete in last year’s Palestinian voting. “But I think that one element that should be expedited as rapidly as possible is the democratization of markets. I think that expanding economic freedom is just as important–in some cases more important–in moderating societies than accelerated moves to political freedoms without the proper democratic institutions.”

I ask if he can point to any positive examples in the Arab world. “How about Dubai? How about the Gulf states? What you see there is quite remarkable. It also tells you that Arabs and Muslims are not inherently or genetically programmed to oppose free markets. That’s just nonsense. With the right system of incentives and economic freedoms, you see this explosive growth that I, frankly, admire. . . . We always said that if we have peace, then we’ll have prosperity. It may be the other way around.”

Google’s spawn?

Published on 5/26/2007 in Technology . Closed

Google is an amazing entrepreneurial petri dish. Yet at the same time, it is doomed to disappoint nearly every entrepreneurial type who works there. This is key: Google is sowing the seeds of its own eventual destruction. It can’t help doing so.



Having spent most of my business career in startups I think Bob Cringely’s scenario is reasonable — as to spawning a stream of new ventures. I think his premise that one or more of these startups will out-compete Google in it’s home markets is unfounded. Anything can happen of course. But keep in mind that Google is rapidly growning by far the largest global server, database and bandwidth utility. If servicing the search and targeted ad markets requires this scale of infrastructure it poses a real barrier to entry for newcomers.

For the audio-inclined I recommend Bob’s podcast — that’s how I heard this scenario.

At least one utility going nuclear

Published on 5/26/2007 in Energy Policy . Closed

NRG intends to build two Generation III reactors:

Two 1358MWe advanced boiling water reactors are planned for the South Texas Project site. The units, to be built by GE and Hitachi would be part of New Jersey-based NRG Energy’s plans to develop some 10,500MWe of new capacity over the next decade with a total investment of $16 billion.

The investment in new nuclear would amount to $5.2 billion and would expectedly bear fruit in 2014-15, when the new units would go online. NRG filed a letter of intent with the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission to build the units on 19 June and an application for a combined operating and construction license for the units is expected in 2007.

…The plans will also reduce the carbon intensity of NRG’s baseload fleet by 20-25%, says the company, which operates in the northeast, west, and central south of the USA. David Crane, NRG’s president and chief executive officer, commented: “Our proposed mix of baseload plants, involving two nuclear units, three gasified coal units, two traditional pulverised coal units with full back-end controls, at least one modern combined cycle plant and at least two wind farms, will substantially reduce the carbon intensity of NRG’s existing baseload fleet.”

NRG has also agreed to field test the Greenfuels algae biofuel process. We have our fingers crossed that this technology proves commercially viable. It would allow a strategy that reduces the amount of CO2 to be sequestered while creating a transport fuel to offset conventional oil use.

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The Lunar Lander Challenge

Published on 5/26/2007 in Technology and X Prize . Closed

Revolution through competition! — X Prize Foundation

Regular readers know we are proponents of science prizes as highly efficient stimulators of R&D [vs. government trying to "pick winners" -- an approach with a horrible track record]. Readers will probably recall the Ansari X Prize, a US$10,000,000 prize for the first non-government organization to launch a reusable manned spacecraft into space twice within two weeks.

The Lunar Lander Challenge is another of the X Prize efforts.

The Competition is divided into two levels. Level 1 requires a rocket to take off from a designated launch area, rocket up to 150 feet (50 meters) altitude, then hover for 90 seconds while landing precisely on a landing pad 100 meters away. The flight must then be repeated in reverse—and both flights, along with all of the necessary preparation for each, must take place within a two and a half hour period.

The more difficult course, Level 2, requires the rocket to hover for twice as long before landing precisely on a simulated lunar surface, packed with craters and boulders to mimic actual lunar terrain. The hover times are calculated so that the Level 2 mission closely simulates the power needed to perform the real lunar mission.

One of the competitors is Armadillo Aerospace. Have some fun with their recent rocket testing video [62MB]. The Wright brothers would feel at home in the Armadillo workshops…

More on the 2006 prize attempt — which didn’t quite work.

Activist DDT Opposition Prolongs African Malaria, Misery, Death

Published on 5/26/2007 in Healthcare . 1 Comment

…I ask myself, why do some people care more about minor, hypothetical risks to people or animals than about human life?

By Fiona Kobusingye, coordinator of Congress of Racial Equality Uganda and the Kill Malarial Mosquitoes Now Brigade:

The 2007 World Health Assembly is wrapping up and people are commemorating the birthday of Silent Spring author Rachel Carson. Meanwhile, millions of Africans are commemorating still more deaths from a disease that the chemical she vilified could help control.

I just got out of the hospital, after another nasty case of malaria. I’ve had it dozens of times. I lost my son, two sisters and three nephews to it. Fifty out of 500 children in our local school for orphans died from malaria in 2005.

Virtually every Ugandan family has buried babies, children, mothers and fathers because of this disease, which kills 100,000 of us every year. Even today, 50 years after it was eradicated in the United States, malaria is the biggest killer of African children, sending 3,000 to their graves every day.

In between convulsions and fever, I thought about the progress we’re making – and about those who would stop that progress. I ask myself, why do some people care more about minor, hypothetical risks to people or animals than about human life?

Last year, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) reversed 30 years of bad policy and reauthorized DDT to help combat malaria in Africa, by spraying it on the walls of houses to keep mosquitoes out. The World Health Organization (WHO) also came out strongly in support of DDT.

Both reviewed decades of scientific studies and concluded that using DDT this way is perfectly safe for people and the environment. So did Uganda’s Ministry of Health and National Environmental Management Authority (NEMA). European Commission President Barroso said Europe supports the right of countries to use DDT, in accord with Stockholm Convention and WHO guidelines.

DDT has worked in South Africa and Swaziland. USAID is now using it in Ethiopia, Mozambique and Zambia. Uganda and other African countries are preparing to add DDT to indoor-spraying programs.

We don’t see DDT as a “magic bullet” that can eradicate malaria by itself. We don’t advocate outdoor spraying with it. But we strongly support spraying tiny amounts on houses – as part of comprehensive strategies that also include other insecticides, larvacides and better sanitation to control mosquito populations, Artemisninin-based combination drugs to treat patients, and bednets, education, better hospitals and sound management practices.

No other chemical, at any price, does what DDT does. It keeps mosquitoes from entering homes, irritates the few that do enter, so they don’t bite, kills those that land, and reduces malaria rates by 75% – all with a single inexpensive spraying once or twice a year.

…

Why do some people want to prevent its use? Pesticide Action Network exists solely to battle life-saving insecticides. The environmental movement became a powerful political force, by embracing Rachel Carson’s erroneous claims. But what about other opponents? What is wrong with them?

The NGO Pesticide Action Network is just one of many waving the Carson flag, ignoring the every day tragedy of malaria. I don’t understand what is going on at WHO — last year WHO finally came out of the closet to support DDT habitat spraying. Now we see Maria Neira saying the opposite:

WHO Public Health and Environment Director Maria Neira wants to stop all use of DDT. The Uganda Network on Toxic-Free Control plans to sue NEMA, if it doesn’t stop the DDT spraying program. Both worry about its hypothetical health effects.

We wish they would worry more about malaria, and focus on DDT’s health benefits – on the diseases it can prevent, the lives it can save.

Instead, they claim every imaginable health problem and deformity is due to DDT. To support their exaggerations and fables, they list articles that say there is a “link” between these problems and DDT. But as Professor Donald Roberts emphasizes, there are many more studies that show no such connection.

“After decades of research, costing hundreds of millions of dollars, there is no proof at all that DDT directly harms human health,” say Dr. Roberts. “There is extensive evidence, though, that DDT reduces disease and saves lives.”

DDT opponents want to return to strategies that were a devastating failure for 30 years. Hundreds of millions of Africans got malaria. Tens of millions died. Entire countries were kept impoverished.

Definitely RTWT.

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Mars as art

Published on 5/26/2007 in Technology . Closed

This is fun – a NASA collection of special images — available at fairly high resolution. CWCID

When you say redeploy, you mean withdraw

Published on 5/26/2007 in Foreign Policy . Closed

Andy McCarthy on the Obama obfuscation “that continues to make me nuts”:

…Senator Obama says: ” It is time to end this war so that we can redeploy our forces to focus on the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11 and all those who plan to do us harm.”

Senator Obama, are you proposing that we move U.S. troops from Iraq to Afghanistan, where you guys keep saying the “real” War on Terror is?

There is also a very good chance that bin Laden and some al Qaeda hierarchy are in Pakistan. When you say “redeploy,” are you suggesting that we invade Pakistan?

Folks, let’s not let these guys get away with this. By “redeploy,” they don’t really mean move the troops to where they say al Qaeda is. They don’t want to fight al Qaeda. If they wanted to fight al Qaeda, al Qaeda is in Iraq — that is indisputable. Bin Laden has said repeatedly that Iraq is the central battle. You can argue about whether al Qaeda has been in Iraq all along or whether they are there only because we’ve drawn them there. Reasonable minds differ on that. But however they got there, they’re there.

If you really want to fight al Qaeda, you stay in Iraq.

If you really believe al Qaeda is not in Iraq — that the real al Qaeda is only in Afghanistan and its environs — then you’re on drugs. But, sure, fine, “redeploy” our troops … to Afghanistan. But can we please have five seconds of honesty? You guys don’t have the slightest intention of doing that. You don’t want to go to Afghanistan. You want to go home.

When you say redeploy, you mean withdraw. You don’t actually want to “focus on the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11.” You are content to bring the troops home and leave “the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11″ to build a safe-haven in Iraq even as they continue to make mayhem in Afghanistan.

You think Bush is incompetent and “his” war in Iraq is a terrible mistake? Fine. You think the price of that is that we should pull everyone out of Iraq even though we all know that will be a monumental victory for al Qaeda — geometrically abetting its future fundraising and recruiting for future terrorist attacks on America? Fine.

But have the good grace to say so. Don’t give us this BS that you want to redeploy to fight al Qaeda, when the truth is that you want to “redeploy” to NOT fight al Qaeda.

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