Rocket Scientist

Sometimes it amazes me.  Just as something triggers a train of thought in my brain, like the response to yesterday’s blog, the New York Times (or a blog or something else) will spit forth something that goes along with what I’m thinking.  In this case, it was the New York Times again with this article . 

 But what was I thinking, you might ask (unless, of course, you know by now that I’ll tell you whether you ask or not).   I was thinking about people noting that Wikipedia is fallible, that you have to take some of what you read with a grain of salt, that you can’t take everything you read at face value.

Granted.  But, then, shouldn’t we do that all the time? Skipping, for the instant, religion and religious texts (where I find the advice still applicable, but I don’t intend to tell anyone else what to do or believe), what source is so authoritative, so infallible, so incontrovertible that you shouldn’t read it critically?  Seriously.  And, yes, that includes me.

Newton was a genius.  Do you think he never made a mistake?  Or Einstein?  Or Gallileo?  Gallileo struggled, in fact, because the notions and logic of Aristotle (or Archimedes - some Greek with a name that started with A) were considered definitively true and, therefore, couldn’t be challenged.  Even though they were wrong.  It should be noted that being wrong doesn’t mean you’re not bright or brilliant or intelligent.  (Refusing to acknowledge you’re wrong even when data presents itself may be a different matter but that is another blog post.)  Everyone gets stuff wrong.  

However, you’ll get a lot less wrong if you don’t forgo your own thinking.  Give it the sniff test.  Sure, so-and-so is an expert or has been write about X before, but is he right now? And this is where the article came in.  It’s all about exercises in a book called Guesstimation: Solving the World’s Problems on the Back of a Cocktail Napkin where guesstimation exercises (as Enrico Fermi used to impose) are provided to help you learn to guesstimate big things.  They’re more than just an exercises in math, though, they’re exercises in doing quick and dirty calculations that can give you a quick sense of whether something makes sense or not.  Ok, ok, so math isn’t everyone’s bag, but the concept isn’t just about math.

Where I work, I call it the sanity check.  Someone makes an assertion and my first reaction is to double check it in my mind.  In some cases it might be validating an analysis - I do a ballpark estimate and, if they’re pretty close, I know it’s probably fine.  If they’re off by a decimal place, I need to look closer because one of us is likely wrong (and, yes, I’ve caught other people’s errors that way - and many of my own).  But it applies to logic.  If someone asks for funding because their current model is underpredicting risk (as compared to actual damage), but then the new improved model comes out and it says the risk is half what was originally predicted - that should send up flags.  Something doesn’t smell right.  (And, yes, I’ve seen that happen too - and I’m the only one it bothered).

We’ve grown too lazy, willing to put off our thinking to someone else.  Politics is one of the worst.  I’m mostly liberal, but I have some conservative tendencies.  Why?  Because I decide for myself what I believe is best on each individual issue.  No one decided for me.  I did.  I like Obama, but I don’t assume he’s always right or infallible.  No one is.  We agree on some topics, but not on others.  I don’t have a problem with someone else disagreeing with him either, but I do have a problem with someone regurgitating tired arguments (that have been readily disproved) or making unsubstantiated allegations with no basis.  I would feel the same if someone did it to Sarah Palin.  People, in my opinion, are entitled to any opinion they want, but I won’t waste my time arguing with someone who hasn’t bothered putting thought behind it nor will I respect it.

If we thought for ourselves, we would realize that interest only loans and adjustable rate mortgages were too good to be true.  If we think for ourselves, we can understand the difference between our rights and a moral imperative to impose our beliefs on others.  We can listen to an expert or a scientist or a skeptic without ignoring the small voice inside our own heads that says, “that doesn’t sound right.”  If it doesn’t sound right, find out more.  Your view on the world might change or you might realize that a lot of things that sound authoritative really are nonsense dressed up like something meaningful.  

Asking someone to do our thinking for us is a dangerous proposition, for two reasons if no others.  First, because those with the most definitive and authoritative voices often have a vested interest in getting you to think they way they want you to and, secondly, because you will have to live with the end result, whether you trusted someone else’s thinking or your own.

Update:  Speak of the devil, here’s a perfect example.  I don’t object to the joke but I do object to the yahoos who swallow it without thinking.

Hard on the heels of the New York Times article I referred to yesterday, I found yet another article that made me think.  This time, it was talking about Wikipedia .  I’m not going to quote the article (I try to avoid that - better you should read it directly), but it was mostly pointing out that, despite the criticisms, it was mostly quite accurate for the same reasons it is sometimes, particularly on the more obscure entries, misleading.  The more people that read it, the more likely it is that something wrong will be caught, will be flagged, will be noted for its lacks.  And, with all these people, working together, looking over each other’s shoulder for one purpose–to share knowledge with anyone who asks–it’s a marvel of surprising caliber.

I couldn’t agree more.

Man, I love Wikipedia.  Give me a computer and a week with no one wanting anything and I could spend all day wandering through Wikipedia (OK, I have spent all day(s) wandering through Wikipedia). Ever wanted to know about Japanese history ?  Hey, it’s in there.  Lady Jane Grey ?  It’s in there.  String Theory ?  You betcha.  Nuthatches ?  It’s there.  Space accidents ?  They got it.  African American astronauts ?  Yep.  The Hope Diamond?  Fruits Basket ?  Dracula (pick one)? They have it, all cross-linked so you can start with Alfred the Great and follow it all the way to Elizabeth II (I’ve stopped linking ’cause, hey, it’s fun to search).  The article I mentioned in the NYT times noted that too.  Man, you can look up Nellie Bly and just wander around following links for hours.  Again, this is the voice of experience. 

But what about accuracy?  After all, can’t anyone just edit it?  Yes they can and anyone else can fix it if it’s broken.  Citations run rampant through Wikipedia (I wish most encyclopedias cited their sources so definitively and completely), often with links so you can check them out.  Related wikipedia articles are usually listed as well as outside sites that are applicable.  And, I have to tell you, I’ve read a LOT of articles on Wikipedia.  I have found errors, but, for the most part, I’ve been blown away by the completeness and accuracy of the information.  Esoteric science articles, detailed animal descriptions, obscure but pivotal historical figures.  Want to know where to find diamonds or how to smelt iron?  It’s there.  Want to know what the actual tenets of hindism are?  We got that too.  It’s a smorgasbord of everything you ever wanted to know, laid out and cross-referenced intuitively so you can find it. Even if I don’t end up citing Wikipedia, I can still use it as a resource for finding source documents for any number of subjects.  I want to look something up for work, for myself, Wikipedia is my first stop, though usually not my last.

That’s not all though.  Wikipedia, built and maintained by experts and laymen alike, is amazingingly readable and accessible.  Not just finding the topics you want, but reading about complex topics in approachable language that makes it understandable.  Many’s the time I’ve been stymied by some theoretical physics question that’s outside my expertise, only to find a very usable and helpful description in Wikipedia.

And all the other resources associated with it:  wikisource (public domain literature and art), wikiquote (great resource for the quote happy), wikibooks (free textbooks), and much much more.   All this, with no advertising, no apparent agenda other than knowledge is power and we should share it.

Damn, I love Wikipedia.

Once again, the editorial pages of the New York Times have provided me food for thought.  And, when I get to thinking, I try to put it on my blog so you all can share it.  In this case, it was it was Kristoff’s column on the experts who were apparently caught flat-footed by what, in hindsight, was the inevitable economic meltdown we’re all dealing with right now (some more severely than others).   It actually wasn’t really the column that caught my eye so much as the Dr. Fox effect and the findings of a Philip Tetlock of the University of California Berkeley who studied 82,000 predictions by some 284 experts (and described it in his book:  Expert Political Judgement ).

The Dr. Fox effect was the way of describing an experiment where an actor was paid to present himself as an expert (Dr. Fox) and give a completely pointless and nonsensical presentation to a group of professional educators.  The presentation was presented well (with jokes and likely excellent power point slides, perhaps animation) and left the educators by and large impressed, which either meant that they were too intimidated to admit they didn’t understand or were too amused to protest that it was garbage.  Believe me, I’ve seen the Dr. Fox effect in action.

But I found the results of Mr. Tetlock’s study even more fascinating.  Apparently, if one examines the predictions of “experts” and compares them to reality, he discovered that their predictions vs. actuality were accurate only slightly better than random.  Think about that, not slightly better than, say, the general public, slightly better than “chimps throwing darts at a dartboard.”  This was true regardless of the area of expertise, education or years of experience.

In fact, the only differentiation was fame and not how you might expect.  The more famous the “expert” the less likely they were to be accurate.   The reason Mr. Tetlock decided, was that the media prefers folks that give a definitive answer without codicils or signs conditionals.  But I think it’s possible that people feel pressured to give definitive answers when in front of the camera as well.

However, this just reinforces one of my own litmus tests when it comes to scientists (or really an expert):  the less open they are to question or adamant that their view is the only view, the less likely they are to really know what they’re talking about.  In other words, no real scientist refuses questions or belittles people who disagree.  A real scientist understands the limitations of his own knowledge and welcomes anyone who wants to understand.  A “bad” scientist thinks that his expertise should quiet all dissent.  That’s someone who cares more about appearing right than the truth - which is the antithesis of a real scientist in my opinion.  I guess that applies to more than science.

Well, it’s always nice to get data to back my opinion.

I didn’t want to pursue a theme today.  Couldn’t settle on one, so I thought I’d just scroll randomly through my long list of quotes and nab a few for this Saturday.  Enjoy the eclectic weirdness of the kinds of quotes I collect.

One of the difficulties of politics is that politicians are shocked by those who are really prepared to let their thinking reach any conclusion. Political thinking consists in deciding upon the conclusion first and then finding good arguments for it. An open mind is considered irresponsible– and perhaps it really is.
                           – Richard Crossman

One of the functions of intelligence is to take account of the dangers that come from trusting solely to the intelligence.
                        – Lewis Mumford

On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!], ‘Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?’ I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.
                            – Charles Babbage

Perhaps it is impossible for a person who does no good to do no harm.
                                 – Harriet Beecher Stowe

Pride is concerned with who is right. Humility is concerned with what is right.
                           – Ezra Taft Benson

Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance.
                          – Confucius

Remember the five-step response of all experts when first confronted with a new development in their field: IGNORE, RIDICULE, ATTACK, COPY, STEAL.
                          – Arthur Jones

Both optimists and pessimists contribute to society. The optimist invents the airplane, the pessimist invents the parachute.

                   -George Bernard Shaw

We lived like that “Happy Family” you sometimes see in traveling zoos: a lion caged with a lamb. It is a startling exhibit but the lamb has to be replaced frequently.
                  -Robert Heinlein

The idea that Bill Gates has appeared like a knight in shining armour to lead all customers out of a mire of technological chaos neatly ignores the fact that it was he who, by peddling second-rate technology, led them into it in the first place.

                        -Douglas Adams

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.

    -Dwight David Eisenhower, 1953, a speech to the American Society of Newspaper Editors

I try to take one day at a time, but sometimes several days attack me at once.

–Ashleigh Brilliant    

Life is a tragedy for those who feel, and a comedy for those who think.
–Jean De La Bruyre

A good plan, violently executed now, is better than a perfect plan next week.
–George Patton

The Americans will always do the right thing… After they’ve exhausted all the alternatives.

–Winston Churchill

I don’t know with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.

–Albert Einstein

Softmindedness often invades religion. … Softminded persons have revised the Beautitudes to read “Blessed are the pure in ignorance: for they shall see God.” This has led to a widespread belief that there is a conflict between science and religion. But this is not true. There may be a conflict between softminded religionists and toughminded scientists, but not between science and religion. … Science investigates; religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge which is power; religion gives man wisdom which is control. Science deals mainly with facts; religion deals mainly with values. The two are not rivals. They are complementary.

                        -Martin Luther King, Jr.

Biologically speaking, if something bites you, it is more likely to be female.
- Desmond Morris

America had often been discovered before Columbus, but it had always been hushed up.
- Oscar Wilde

Windows NT crashed.
I am the Blue Screen of Death.
No one hears your screams.
– Peter Rothman

Today, it’s time to take care of some housekeeping.

First, those of you who are Today.com bloggers already know that entrecard is now taboo.  For the rest of you, I’ll be leaving entrecard soon and thought I’d give you a heads up in case that’s how you find me.  I’ve got ads in place until April 2, so I’ll leave my widget up until they run out, but it will be taken down some time next week.  I have mixed feelings about that.  On the one hand, I think entrecard got me noticed by some who would never have found me otherwise (and my readers are the best!).  I also know I stumbled upon some blogs I absolutely treasure through EC, so I’m a little sad.  Naturally, I expect a dip in hits, but I wasn’t here for the traffic, though I’m sure Today feels differently about it. On the other hand, my favorite hits are those that come back to read my blog and perhaps comment, rather than find a quick way to run up 300.  I’m expecting the traffic that remains to be of the quality I like best, so that’s a good thing.

I have endeavored to be a spot worth coming to, for whatever reason draws you and I’m not closing shop.  I still plan on writing quality blogs and encourage you to make a link or a bookmark so you can get your daily dose of Rocket Scientist (and/or Ask Me Anything , which I’ll be touching on a bit later, too).  By the time I remove the EC widget, I’m hoping I’ll have an RSS feed to replace it.  However, you’re always welcome to bookmark it or put a blog link somewhere so I don’t miss out on you and you don’t miss out on me. 

I’ve loved the interaction here.  I do get much more discussion than my traffic would justify and I think that’s super cool.  Quality, you know, rather than quantity.

Also, as a reminder, I do have that second blog.  As it has had less of a chance to build a following, the EC change will hit it much harder.  Also, without comments or questions to feed Ask Me Anything , there’s nothing to post on it.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m perfectly capable of asking myself questions I find thought-provoking and will do so if necessary, but I really wrote it so people could ask me, well, anything.

Sure, I can ask myself questions, but, hey, I already know the answers.

Alright, today I really did it.  Usually, my Thursday thievery involves stealing my own comments from someone else’s blog.  But, today, I really stealing someone else’s brilliance to populate my blog, though I had her permission.  What am I stealing?  Well, the beauty of one daughter and the talent of another.  See, as some of you know, the photography gene, like the plant growing gene, has thoroughly passed me by.  I take a picture of my baby and she’s either a blurr turning the other way or just enough out of focus to make my pictures unusable.  I quick look at my photo gallery on my website , you’ll see that most of them are due to my uber-photographically talented Aunt Sue.  My father was also a gifted photographer.

 Me, I stink.

But my daughter doesn’t.  She’d asked for a camera for Christmas and repays me in beautiful pictures of Roxy I can’t seem to take myself.  I thought I’d post a few for you so you can see how blessed I really am in daughters.

And how about a round of applause for our beautiful model.  And, to prove that Alex is no less photogenic:  

For those of you thinking this would be another Moon posting, hey, it’s Wednesday and so it’s time for a writing exercise, which, eventually, someone will do. 

 So, what can you do with a few words?  Well, you’d be surprised.  When I hung out on Gather a great deal, there were a couple of groups that specialized in assigning prompts for short stories.  Among the shortest was the group that calls for 50 word stories.  

FIFTY WORDS!  Yes, that was my reaction, too.  What can you say in 50 words.  Half my sentences are longer than that.  But, you know what, it was easier than I ever expected.  And fun.  I’m not expecting a full up story story, mind you, but you should be able to show me why someone is crying - without coming out and saying it.

Since short stories are all about keepin’ it short, I thought we could try this.  Normally the rules are 50 words, no more no less.  I’m willing to let you go +/-5 words on the limit.

So, in 45-55 words, tell me why ___________ is weeping.

Here’s an example:

 The clatter jarred her from her stirring.  She spun and gasped, as her toddler lay in a crumpled heap at the foot of the stairs.  “Tommy!”  Instantly, she was on her knees, afraid to touch him, to know if–.  Tommy stirred and began to cry. Only then did she weep.

Or

 With an exhausted sigh, she collapsed on the couch.  Home at last.  Without thinking, she reached to the nearby cushion, then stopped, tears starting to her eyes.  Her sister wanted her to get a kitten, but a kitten could never replace Romeo.  Without him, it just wasn’t home any more.

Now, you try.

Also, since you all are so patient, here’s a photo of the moon, courtesy of morguefile.

For those of you that jumped the gun with my last post to jump from exploring the moon into making a colony: .  Smarties!  And I bet you’ll have no problem guessing whether I’m all for it or not.  That’s right, I am.

Hava noted that making a colony on the moon, a real long-term self-sustaining facility, is no easy matter, despite what we’ve read in books or seen in movies.  She ain’t lying.  Making a self-sustaining colony on the moon is a complete pain in the whatsit.  Everything we need (air, water, food) will either have to be brought from here and 100% recycled or made from unpromising natural ingredients.  Power will need to be generated but, more than that, propulsion will have to be devised in order to make coming and going viable for the long run.  (Some of you might note that these same technologies and capabilities could be damn useful right hear on the planet, too.)

Do I see it likely within my lifetime?  Honestly, no.  Bits and pieces of what you’d need for a long term commitment, maybe, but not all of it.  But we don’t have to succeed soon to make pursuing  the goal of a self-sustaining colony worthwhile today.

Why?

Because I do believe that human exploration is more important that climbing Mount Everest because it’s there.  I don’t know what’s in our future, on this planet, and I know that getting to where we have other options if something cataclysmic would happen is going to be a long and painful road.  I don’t know if we’ll ever need it, but I’d much rather have the option and not need it than find out we need it in thirty years, but the path to escape is fifty years long.  But it’s more than that.

I believe that, if we are ever to do real exploring outside our solar system, we’d better know our way around space, we’d better know how to live on little or nothing and how to make the most of whatever natural resources we can find because we aren’t going to just stumble (conveniently) across dilithium crystals nor can we count on friendly (or touchy) natives to supply our wants.  And I think that should be our goal.  Our planet is precious and beautiful and wonderfully nurturing; I love the Earth.  But I dream of exploring elsewhere, finding more places, more people, more systems than I can imagine today.  I want that, if not for my children, for my children’s children.

The moon, as it was as an exploration test bed, is a perfect place to learn how to survive on very inhospitable land, how to use the resources we have to the fullest, how to grow food and create a living ecosystem out of very very little.  All within easy reach of earth, in case of setbacks, but under some of the harshest terms.  There is no welcome on the moon.  To stake a permanent claim, we’re going to have to be brilliant and creative and resourceful, just as we’re going to need to do to travel beyond our sun’s influence.  And, if we can beat her, we will not only have perfected any number of necessary steps that will set the foundation for future exploration, we’ll have proved that it’s possible, that man need not be fettered to this planet for all eternity.

Every day we wait or refuse to set our feet upon that path, success retreats at least one more day away.

Not that I’m opinionated or nothin’.

This comes up a lot when people talk about space exploration - why go back to the moon?  (For those that don’t think manned spaceflight is a worthwhile endeavor - as I do - you can see my reasoning here and here )  Why not skip the moon and go straight to Mars?  What’s the value? 

I’m here to tell you, I think it’s very valuable, very worthwhile, even essential.  The moon is like a specially made test bed we can get our feet wet with, test our theories and our hardware, learn our lessons (even the hard way) before the really tough stuff happens.  It has no atmosphere, no life.  If we want to live on the moon, we’re going to have to make our own habitat, find our own opportunities, make the most of the forbidding landscape.  If we want to conquer the moon, we’re going to have to deal with dust and temperature extremes and low gravity (which isn’t always a good thing) and meteors and radiation and everything else that is part and parcel of moving outside our magetosphere, going outside of earth’s orbit.  We’re going to have to learn to recycle like never before and get blood (or something useful) from stone.

If we can beat the moon, we can beat Mars or any other planet or moon even marginally friendly.

And we’re lucky because we have the opportunity to do so within relatively easy reach of earth.

We can test engines on a smaller scale for a lander on the moon than we’ll need on Mars.  We can address dust mitigation techniques on the Moon where resupply and rework is a relatively easy thing.  We can figure out what upmass is REALLY required to make even a temporary home on another planetary surface before we commit to 3 year trip where there will be no rest stops along the way, no chance to recover if something we really needed, but didn’t know we needed, is safely on earth instead of with our Mars explorers.

Truth is, space exploration in orbit is a risky business, but we can get up there quickly if we need to.  We can escape quickly if we need to.  Someone gets a hot appendix on the Moon, we can get him back on earth before it’s too late.  That beautiful sphere that lights the night sky has a thousand lessons on her we don’t have to learn on Mars where there’s no chance for rescue or resupply.

Should we go to the Moon?  We’d be damn fools if we don’t.  Believe me, in our lifetime, someone will walk her dusty hills again.

I love the Moon .  I love the crescent moon, slicing a bit of silver through the diamond-studded night.  I love the full glow of the moon when it’s heavy and round in the sky, sometimes silver, sometimes gold, sometimes copper, depending on the vagaries of orbital mechanics and our own atmosphere.  I love it when it’s growing or shrinking, shining on us.

I love it veiled in clouds, sometimes just a misty glow behind the dense cover, sometimes just slightly out of focus behind the diaphanous fingers of cirrus.

I love that having that gorgeous chunk of  celestial beauty is within reach, is hanging so close that it affects the tides, that it’s so in sync with us that it always shows us the same face.

It awes me that we walked there, set foot on another celestial body (and, yes, we were there).  It awes me that it’s taken so much damage and looks on us with it’s scarred visage, undaunted and undone.

So, yes, I’ve been painting a copy of the moon on my hallway wall.  And I can’t do justice to it with my own pictures (sorry), although I recommend anyone interested in beautiful and interesting pictures of the moon to check out Black Holes and Astrostuff - Bob takes and shows superlative images, often taken in the (literally) breath-taking cold.

As I keep painting, I’ll probably talk about the moon a bit more.  And, when I start on other planets, I’ll do more.  Do check out the moon link above.  It will take you to The Nine Planets , a great source for finding out more about our solar system.

Don’t ask me why, but this seems the right topic today.

Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.

                              –John Adams

The general root of superstition is that men observe when things hit, and not when they miss, and commit to memory the one, and pass over the other.

                              –Sir Francis Bacon

If you board the wrong train, it is no use running along the corridor in the opposite direction.

                          –Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Why do they lock gas station bathrooms? Are they afraid someone will clean them?

                          –George Carlin

CLAIRVOYANT, n. A person, commonly a woman, who has the power of seeing that which is invisible to her patron — namely, that he is a blockhead.
                              –Ambrose Bierce

The word good has many meanings. For example, if a man were to shoot his grandmother at a range of five hundred yards, I should call him a good shot, but not necessarily a good man.
                              –G.K. Chesterton

A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.
                                –Winston Churchill

Tact is the act of making a point without making an enemy.

                               –Clarence Darrow

A man of honour should never forget what he is because he sees what others are.
                           –Baltasar Gracián

Once we assuage our conscience by calling something a “necessary evil,” it begins to look more and more necessary and less and less evil.
                            –Sydney J. Harris

Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
                          –Robert Heinlein

Many a man’s reputation would not know his character if they met on the street.
                                   –Elbert Hubbard

Lots of folks confuse bad management with destiny.

                           –Kin Hubbard

Maybe this world is another planet’s hell.
                                   –Aldous Huxley

I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have.

                            –Thomas Jefferson

Washington is a city of Southern efficiency and Northern charm.

                      –John F. Kennedy

If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs, it’s just possible you haven’t grasped the situation.

                                                                        –Jean Kerr

That’s right, I am.  It’s my turn to speak my mind on the discussion of the bonuses for employees of the companies that have accepted billions of taxpayer dollars.  The general public is outraged.  So am I.  Some reporters have noted that this is just a blip, a distraction from the big picture.  The public has not agreed.  Neither do I.  It’s a matter of principle.

When I read stories in the New York Times about business leaders complaining that taxing or retracting  those bonuses, making wild (and utterly unconvincing) predictions of losing masses of “brainiacs” and “talent” (and doom predictions that their knowledge would be destructive when they were “snapped up” by someone else), that companies will have nothing to do with government run businesses, that they have no choice legally but to provide those bonuses, I have to call BS.  Then, when that was ineffective, they started in on how those employees, facing the loss of million dollar bonuses, came into their bosses office “in tears”.  Boo hoo.  To face the loss of their unearned gain at the taxpayer’s expense when millions of people have faced job loss as a result of their incompetent/greedy/dishonest behavior?  Let me tell you how sad I am for them.  The individual with a $25 million bonus (Merrill Lynch) has already spent his bonus on a $37 million dollar apartment.  Boo hoo.  Just like hundreds of thousands of people in this country who face the loss of their homes, and have done less to deserve it.

Yeah, I’m with the outraged public.  I always thought a bonus was all about a reward for going above and beyond the expected, the normal.  It bothers me already that we give restaurants leave to short their wait staff on salaries because it’s expected we’ll happily cough up an additional 10-25% tax  so they don’t have to pay them even minimum wage.  Instead of being an indication of gratitude for extraordinary service, it’s an obligation or an opportunity to indulge in a little malice at the waiter’s expense.  Likewise, bonuses have been come obligations instead of what I believe they were originally intended to be:  a reward for exceptional service, over and above the original job one was hired to do.  For a company to go tens or hundreds of billions of dollars into the hole over a year and then think that millions (or, like Merrill Lynch, billions) of dollars of bonuses are justified just demonstrates how far from realities these “brainiacs” really are.

But it’s more than just the bankers.  I’d like to see this carried forward into government contracts in general.  It is disheartening for someone who loves and believes in the space program to see contracts written in such a way as to reward failure.  To get the contract, a company often drastically underpredicts how long a task will take, what they can deliver and what it will cost - and they can do so confident that if things run somewhat over or somewhat long or not what was asked, the government usually responds by pulling out its checkbook.  I’ve seen a major contractor deliver hardware that notably didn’t meet well established requirements, only to be provided beaucoup more money to fix the deficiencies.  I’ve seen sole source contracts awarded to companies because “only” they have the expertise to do a particular job in a particular timeframe, only to see them complain after the award how they can’t deliver what was asked and demanding requirement changes (and let’s not forget delivering it late and over budget).  I’ve seen companies with abysmal ratings from the government who still walked away with 90% of the “award” fee, effectively a bonus over and above the contract itself.

In the “real” world, accountants who mismanage your money are liable, perhaps criminally.  In the “real” world, people who contract to perform a service will go out of business if they don’t deliver what they promise, not only not getting paid, but not getting future business. 

As a taxpayer, I don’t mind paying for a space program or to assure our economy doesn’t take a nosedive, for the good of all, but I still deserve to get value for my investment.  My interest in space or the economy (or defense or any other program for the good of all) should not be used as a windfall with nothing in return. 

I’m hoping the government takes on the role of a discerning customer and begins to demand value.  I know we can deliver if only we are held to it.  I look at our history and I see how we’ve accomplished so much when so much has been demanded of us.  Here’s another opportunity if we only take it.

Sometimes I never see where these blog postings are going until I get there.

So, I was struggling to identify a comment I made that was worth stealing.  Sadly, I really didn’t.  I didn’t, however, let that stop me.  So, I noted my failure and decided to write about that.  Here’s an example from this week (taken from JD’s excellent blog “I Crush Children’s Dreams So You Don’t Have To “):

Motto: If you’ll listen to lizards for car insurance, why not a frog for lawn care. After all, we’re GREEN.

Whoops. that was so bad, by brain just left in disgust. Damn, I hope it comes back.

To put something like that on a clever and brilliant blog like JD’s should be some sort of crime.  She doesn’t take it out on me, of course, because (a) she’s a sweet person and (b) everyone has brain aberrations.

I just have more than my fair share of them.  Cleverness comes and goes and when it’s gone, I can’t write a clever comment to save my life.  Fortunately, some things come back and I’m hot.  But when it’s gone, it’s really really gone.

But, I think more frustrating than when my brain is dialed to “dull,” is when I’m being all smart and clever or informative or clever and my fingers and mind are not in sync.  That’s when I leave letters off words so I look like I can’t spell.  Or I leave words out entirely (my favorite is “not” - so that what I write is - surprise! the opposite of my intent).  Or I mix up the order of the words so that the sentence, which is filled with intelligent and perceptive words, doesn’t make sense.

So, I said we all had brain aberrations.  Was I lying?  Or is it just me?

We are still on short stories.  One of the interesting things about short stories is that much of what I’ll talk about is true for novels as well as short stories.  However, the tactics for how you do things in a short story vs. how you work them in a novel aren’t the same.  In a short story, as I mentioned last week, you need to set a scene briefly, but, in my opinion, more sharply than you do with a novel.  A short story needs to have a sense of immediacy, yanking the reader in at once instead of easing them in as you can in a novel.

This is true of dialogue as well.  As a character person, I’m really fond of dialogue.  Perhaps too much.  It is almost always the most effective way to get to know a character, listening to what they say and how they say it.  But, as with setting, you need to get the most bang for the words you use.  Each statement, each comment, should add to the story or the character.  What’s more, you need to make how they say things reinforce the character every time they speak, much like the sound can reinforce the meaning of words in poetry.

If what they say and how they say are at cross-purposes, the reader will be confused or, worse, knocked out of the story and it’s hard to pull them back in when you only have a few thousand words to work with.  Losing the reader in a short story is often unrecoverable.

So, how do you do that?  Actions, words, attitude should all be in concert.  From my short story, “Cauchemar “

“You had best move on, old man,” a fierce voice hissed from the tiny figure swathed in black. “You would do well to sleep further on this night.”

“But the road is open to all, child,” Marin said placidly in her rasping contralto, shuffling forward slowly to see better. “And the sun is setting.”

A bitter laugh escaped from the black-draped stranger. “None would know better than I when the sun sets, old man. All the more reason for you to make haste in leaving this place. You are not safe here.” 

Marin’s seamed face broke into a smile. “Brave soldier,” Marin clucked reprovingly, resting her slight weight on a staff of rowan wood. “To stab an old man as he sleeps. In truth, there are few who would harm one of my clan, child.”

The figure in black pulled herself up to stand more straightly. “I waste no love on men,” she spat. “Even old men would do well to flee.”

The tone, words, syntax are distinctly different.  Ideally, one can tell the difference between one character and the other by what they say, rather than the names we apply.  An old fashioned way of talking can be reminiscent of old lore or tradition (useful in fantasy like I write).  Youthful speakers are likely to use slang and unlikely to speak with good grammar or in complete sentences.  In fact, most people don’t.  However, having someone who does and speaks articulately, again, can emphasize characteristics and give a reader a good feel for someone right away.  It’s an opportunity that should not be discarded.

Contrast:

“Where are you going?” she asked, eyes slit with suspicion.

“I am not going to tell you,” he replied hotly.

“I would like you to tell me.  If you will not tell me, I will feel compelled to either cause you pain or report your behavior.  You have not completed the chores assigned you.”  Her voice was menacing and he had no doubt she meant it.

“What have you done to merit that information from me?” he asked more meekly.

With:

 ”Where do you thing you’re going?” she asked, eyes slit with suspicion.

“None o’ your business!” he replied hotly.

“You’ll tell me, boyo, or I’ll beat you blue or tell ma you left without finishin’ your chores.”  Her voice was menacing and he had no doubt she meant it.

“Why can’t you let nothin’ be?” he asked more meekly.

By changing only the words spoken, without changing the meanings, I have completely changed the tone of the conversation.  Originally the dialogue was stilted and unrealistic and there was nothing really to indicate anything about that characters.  It was so unauthentic, the characters were not even characters.  In the second rendition, however, they are clearly young, likely siblings, and there’s a rivalry and a secret.  It’s not perfect, of course, but clearly better than what was done before.

Now, your assignment is to take this following exchange and rewrite it so that the individuals are made individuals, without changing the gist of the conversation or anything outside of quotes.  Extra credit for trying it more than once and instilling genuine voices.

“What are you saying?”she challenged him, her eyes holding his own intently.

“I have deep feelings for you,” he said, dropping his eyes.  “I’ve never cared about anyone like I care about you.  I love you.  I expect you’ll laugh at me or scoff, but I’m telling you, I love you very very much.”

Her hand was gentle on his cheek, but he didn’t look up.  “I appreciate your honesty.  You and I both know why it can never be.”

Talking about the orbital debris situation usually brings us back around to talking about environmental issues.  Unfortunately, while some environmental issues are well accepted, others which threaten the status quo (and the lucretive energy market) are still hounded by whispers of doubt and accusations of the impossibility of change.

That makes no damn sense, though.  Whenever I’m told that, I remember the same song when we talked about cleaning air in Los Angeles or rivers in many parts of the nation, but air quality in Los Angeles has improved drastically and many many places that were a wasteland 30 years ago are coming back into their own.

I think a salutory lesson resides in the discussion of ozone depletion .  

Thirty years ago, CFCs were “perfect”.  Nonreactive, rarely toxic, wonderful thermal qualities.  A Dr. Lovelack (the biologist) did a self-funded study to measure CFCs in the atmosphere in the early 1970’s.  But it took the thinking of Frank Sherman and Mario Merino (1974)  to hypothesize that the nonreactive nature of CFCs could allow it to stay intact up to the stratosphere where, when it rose high enough, it could be disassociated by UV radiation and leaving a free chlorine ion.  A chlorine ion is murder on ozone because it works as a catalyst in turning ozone back into molecular oxygen, while remaining unchanged itself, free to convert again.

To say that this hypothesis was treated with skepticism would be putting it mildly.  Even if it were true, people argued, we were so dependent on CFCs that we would go through untold hardship if we were asked to give them up.  Economic ruin.  Impossible.  Besides the notion that we could affect the atmosphere that was preposterous!

Sure enough, some of the early NASA readings specifically to measure ozone seemed to put the notion of an ozone hole to bed.  Except, it turns out that an algorithm was discounting the measured readings because they were so far different from the expected values that the software for the measurement was throwing them out as errors.  When we got the real picture(1985), no one expected it to be as bad as it actually was.

Fortunately, the scientists who supported this were taken seriously even before 1985 and many countries were already reducing or eliminating CFCs (including the US).  Within the decade, nearly every country was doing the same.  And we’re seeing some improvements with the ozone layer despite the vast quantities of CFC that were still filtering upwards.  It looks like the damage will be undone within 40 years. 

And what was the impact on you?  Did you have to give up refrigeration?  Air conditioning?  Aerosal cans?  Nope, once we committed to change, we made it happen with minimal if any effect on regular folks.  Amazing what you can do when you put your mind to it. 

When I think of the difference in energy costs of the homes in Palm Desert, California , going from costing $1400/month in energy costs to $500/YEAR with city financed solar arrays (repaid via property tax), I know we can do more than we think we can.

For the second time in a week, the ISS folks are addressing what, if anything, to do about a close encounter with more space debris.  Last week (3/12/2009), ISS crewmembers camped out in the Soyuz for a few minutes as a “yo” weight from a PAM-D upperstage less than 5 inches across ventured into ISS’ vicinity.  Word that it was going to pass too closely for safety came too late to maneuver the ISS out of the way, so the crew waited in the Soyuz in case there was a critical impact.  Fortunately, there wasn’t.

Before anyone gets too critical of USSATCOM, which tracks our debris, for the late notification, they might want to realize how difficult it is to track something ~10 cm across.  Think about being able, from a ground station looking through the atmosphere, spot something whizzing by, several times faster than a bullet and hundreds of km above the surface of the earth. Now imagine it’s just five inches long.

Several factors combined to make this difficult.  First, it’s small.  Big honkin’ expended rocket boosters and stuff are easy to track, even without transponders, because, hey, they’re big and easy for radars to never miss.  As you get smaller, though, only your best radars can catch stuff.  Smaller yet, and they only catch stuff once in a while, say every third orbit or once or twice a week.  What that means is that there is more uncertainty in its position.  When you have lots of data on a debris item, i.e. you catch its position several times a day with several radars, you can be pretty sure you have a handle on its orbit and can predict well where it will be several days in advance with good confidence.  Something smaller, with only a few and diverse data points to work with, it’s not so easy and predictions are less exact.

Additionally, this was on a very eccentric orbit, dipping into space that is affected by atmosphere and then moving into a very high orbit.  That atmospheric friction changes the orbit, and, although that can be taken into account, it adds to uncertainty.  

Today, yet another smaller bit of debris, this time from a Kosmos 1275 that broke up for reasons we’ve never entirely nailed down, also in an unusual orbit, also ~10 cm, is being discussed by the ISS team, to see if they should move out of the way.  I believe, at this time, that they now believe it will pass by far enough away to preclude needing a maneuver, but, coming close on the heels of the other scare, it’s a pretty impressive reminder of the difficulties of hanging around in space cluttered with debris.  And, as the ASAT detritis and fallout from theIridium collision work their way down things will only get worse.

Update:  NASA did determine that the junk would be far enough away to be outside the danger zone and did not require a maneuver.

It occurred to me, as I watched the Shuttle preparing to launch this evening, that I’ve been watching Shuttle launches for some time.  I know, when the countdown restarts after all the “go-calls” at T-9 minutes, that, whether I can hear the commentator or not, that things are getting close when I see the main engines gimballing from null to each of their extreme positions and then back to null, hydrogen escaping in little plumes from the engine bells.  (For those that don’t know, the engine bells are cooled by liquid hydrogen that goes through pipes on the bells before being shunted into the bell for combustion.)

Next the vent hood is pulled back from the external tank.  The vent hood pulls any escaping oxygen and hydrogen away from the structure during the time the tanks are loaded but prior to lift off.  Time is getting short. 

We’re only seconds away when the noise suppression deluge begins, a flood of water that pours into a trench beneath the mobile launch platform (that hearken back to the Apollo years).  In addition to reducing the noise of our rockets as they go to full power for launch, they also provide the huge clouds of steams that you see during a launch.  Gotta love a night launch.  

Next, the sparks, an orange wall of fire that lights the main engines with their almost invisible red-blue flames.  The main engine bells swivel and it holds there for several seconds, even after engine light as the solid rocket boosters are lit, as the thrust overcomes gravity and slowly pushes the ungainly contraption up into the sky.  

For me, this is when I’m most anxious, watching the blurring long range video for plumes that don’t belong, for flashes of foreign object debris, for anything that might presage something bad.  Thankfully, tonight, as has happenedover a hundred times before, there was nothing immediately visible.  Each step after that, each milestone, is just one less worry.  Throttle down, where both the SRBs and the engines are throttled back to keep from putting too much dynamic load on the Orbiter.  Throttle back up, where they climb back out of the “bucket” and push the main engines to full power.  

As the solid rocket boosters run low of fuel,  pyro bolts fire and release them from the stack, to fall back to the ocean where they’ll be retrieved, refurbished, refilled for another flight.  The burn their last as they fall away.  

All that’s left is a little spot (the smoke you see during launch comes from the hypergolic fuel in the solid rocket boosters, not the clean-burning main engines) with the triangle brightness of the three engines.  Time ticks by as the milestones pass us.  Two engine TAL, where we could abort to across the ocean even if we lost an engine, then one engine, then we call out being able to make orbit losing one engine.  Then two.  But, tonight, all the engines burned well and we made it into orbit exactly as planned.

There are literally thousands of people who worked to make sure that flight worked, that the launch was successful, that everything worked as designed.  But it isn’t just their launch, it’s yours as well.  The Shuttle belongs to all us, here in America and, with the different crews going up of more and more different nationalities, to all mankind, at least to an extent.

Go STS-119.

In honor of venturing out into the world with yet another blog when I’m not even wildly popular with this one, I’m picking out quotes that have to do with bravery and the like.  Wish me luck!

Boldness is a child of ignorance.
                  –Sir Francis Bacon

Every successful person has had failures, but repeated failure is no guarantee of eventual success.
                          –Ashleigh Brilliant

A pound of pluck is worth a ton of luck.
                         –James A Garfield

Without courage, wisdom bears no fruit.
                      –Baltasar Gracián

Courage without conscience is a wild beast.
                          –Robert Green Ingersol

Hope is the feeling you have that the feeling you have isn’t permanent.
                      –Jean Kerr

Most people would succeed in small things if they were not troubled with great ambitions.
                 –Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Moral courage is the most valuable and usually the most absent characteristic in men.
                –Gen. George Patton

The simple step of a courageous individual is not to take part in the lie. One word of truth outweighs the world.
                  –Aleksander Solzhenitsyn

It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.
                 –Mark Twain

The basis for optimism is sheer terror.
                   –Oscar Wilde

Be willing to make decisions. That’s the most important quality in a good leader. Don’t fall victim to what I call the Ready-Aim-Aim-Aim Syndrome. You must be willing to fire.
                            – T. Boone Pickens

Courage… is when you know you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what.
                           – Harper Lee

Don’t be afraid to take a big step. You can’t cross a chasm in two small jumps.
                     – David Lloyd George

Don’t dare to be different, dare to be yourself — if that doesn’t make you different then something is wrong.
                 – Laura Baker

Have the courage to say no.
Have the courage to face the truth.
Do the right thing because it is right.
These are the magic keys to living your life with integrity.
                         – W. Clement Stone

Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.
                              – Vaclav Havel

I can not do everything, but I can do something. I must not fail to do the something that I can do.

                                                -Helen Keller

I can not do everything, but I can do something. I must not fail to do the something that I can do.

                                                -Helen Keller

I have brought you to the ring, now see if you can dance.

                        -William Wallace

So, I’m sure you’re wondering:  Where’s the Tarot Queen?  I mean I stacked the deck and everything.

 Well, I’ll tell ya.  See, I’m bowing to popular demand (two regular readers) who seemed to feel that answering questions and or providing a shoulder to cry on justified a blog all unto themselves.  So, I made one.  I’ve called it Ask Me Anything .   It’s so new, the paint isn’t even dry on it.  

All it need, in fact, are some visitors and, at least as important, some questions because that’s what I’m going to do.  You ask me questions and I turn the answers and sympathy into blog posts.  Like my Fridays except all the time, and, with no restrictions on which of my personas you can ask. But, no questions=no clever blog posts.  You don’t want that to happen, do you?

 It also means my blog poll goes bye-bye (unless someone has a good idea for a use for it) and that my “Ask …” Friday’s are a thing of the past here. *Sniff*  But I’ll still do my other weekly features and, who knows, I might come up with something else clever for Fridays.  There’s really no telling.  After all, I’m very interesting people.

So, don’t be shy, come right on in and kick your shoes off at my new blog.  After all, this blog is all about me and what I think on my schedule.  The other blog is all about you and…what I think.  Hmm.  Might want to think about that…

So, once again it’s thieving Thursday and I was really wondering if I had any comments worthy, you know, of stealing.  Between being emotionally devastated on Tuesday and Roxy’s birthday yesterday, I figured my comments had been pretty nondescript.  Fortunately for everyone, Habitation Intention gave me my big break.  They showed a design submitted for a contest sponsored by NASA and SolidWorks .  Clearly the folks at Habitation Intention were taken with the spherical design and the notion that artificial gravity could be brought to bear by spinning it “on it’s X,Y, and Z axis.”  I noted that you can really only spin it on one axis and that rotating space stations are really a very old concept (as far as space technology goes).  Not that the idea isn’t interesting, or even worth pursuing, but space stuff is rarely as simple as that.

I mentioned a few things that might make this concept challenging to implement, not because they are insurmountable, but because it’s easy to lose sight of different aspects in space.  For instance, spinning anything in space adds considerable complexity to a space craft.  With all of the mass at the edges (rather than near the center of gravity), just moving around this sphere could really cause substantial oscillations.  Also unless you were at just the right place, the gravity gradients would be different and could very well wreak havoc with the inner ear equilibrium, making it perhaps perfect for some and vomit-inducing for others.  I suspect that’s one reason previous spinning space stations were generally in a ring as opposed to a sphere (which would be less complicated to control).  Docking with a spinning spacecraft is challenging and power generation and radiative cooling were not clear to me.  Again, this isn’t to say it couldn’t be done, just that there are some complexities that might give one pause.  Not that new ideas aren’t good to play with…

Naturally, of course, I went to go see if I could reassure myself that I wasn’t misremembering those early space station concepts and, sure enough, I wasn’t .  Actually, I had a great time reading about the many and clever ideas we’ve had in the past (and I say we like I was involved, but they were all before my time), though seeing the potential concepts (one as inexpensive as $100 mil which seems a bargain even by yesteryear’s standards) that came to nothing primarily for politics is a little disheartening.  There’s a lovely write-up of Langley’s attempts to address space station needs here and another write-up where Marshall touts their own space station history , including Skylab.  Astronautix.com (a must for any space history enthusiast) has a wonderful history of the different notions , concepts and plans for space stations the US has contemplated over the years. I’m including a few here from the one-man Mercury based “station” to the huge  “Space Base,” even stations that simulated gravity from the inflatable toroid of Von Braun to Langley’s hexagonal spinning self-deploying hexagon.

Fun stuff.  Oh, and one more picture from NASA (STS-119, which was delayed yesterday).  Isn’t that a cool picture?