--- We fare thee well,

--- We fare thee well, Galileo.

Was catching up on my Economist
reading the other night. A few weeks previous they’d done a big story
on how unsafe the shuttle was and came to the ultimate conclusion that
science should be able to do better. Someone, it seems, agreed with
them---in the letters department. ”Sir—Most of the technology used to build the space shuttle
and its behemoth support systems were old before the vehicle hit the
drawing boards. Having been involved in various bits which fed into the
project, I was surprised it ever got off the ground. From the
heat-shield tiles which are “glued” on (some of which tend to fall
off each flight) to the insane idea of pumping volatile propellant
through the craft to its engines, the shuttle represented the “get it
working quickly” approach to space flight. NASA was not interested in
investing the time and money to get things right but was more than
willing to throw cash at patching older solutions. NASA should become a
technological incubator rather than a space-launch agency, allowing it
to offer technologies to a wider space-launch market.”
John Crabtree
Scottsdale, AZ
The guy’s got a point. I don’t know if the Apollo missions helped
or hindered the overall mission of NASA. Obviously, they succeeded in
getting to the moon, but as a result of all they learned and how they
learned it with those missions---in a trial by fire way--- there seems
to be, at least to me, a co-dependent attitude at NASA: they like
dealing with crises. It’s the only time they learn new things. The
rest of the time they seem very confident in their abilities and their
knowledge, to the point where everyone else is probably wrong, but they’ll just have to check on it to make sure.
Just once, I’d really like to hear a quiver in the woman’s voice as
she counts the timer down before a launch. I don’t think the awe,
wonder and sheer amazement at the idea of space travel ever really gets
conveyed by the robot-like calm she exudes as she ticks the seconds
off. There hasn’t been a lot of good news out of Houston lately: a
shuttle crash, failed missions to Mars, bureaucratic infighting, cost
overruns---the horrible things that happen when scientists aren’t
allowed to do what they do best which is to figure things out. It
doesn’t seem as if a whole lot of that has been happening over the
past few years. So, it’s nice to see a lowly $1B satellite did its
job extraordinarily well and ended its mission successfully in a manner
the geeks at NASA controlled, instead of in some uncontrolled, cross your fingers and pray that it does what we want it to do, fashion.

--- Well, someone finally had the balls to say it.

More Economist.
There’s no reason to link to it---you won’t be able to see it
anyway unless you pay for it---so since it’s relatively short I’m
going to type it out for my five readers. I have faith in you. Note
that this is copyrighted 2003---by the magazine (there are no bylines
in any issue of The Economist---ever) and don’t rat on me. I’m saving you money, so be nice.

Something must (not) be done
When disasters prompt new policies, the results may be disastrous.
Disaster demands a response, but it is often the wrong one. That is
what the experience of Sir Bernard Crossland, a safety expert who led
the inquiry into a disastrous underground railway fire in London in
1987 which killed 31 people, suggests. This week Sir Bernard questioned
the ₤300m ($450m) spent on fire-proof doors, metal escalators and
such like on London’s underground after the disaster. The money, he
said, might better have been spent on putting smoke detectors in
people’s houses. It would have paid for one for every house in the
country. House fires kill around 500 people a year, mostly in houses
without smoke detectors.
After a disaster, governments’ instinct is to halt or restrict the
activity concerned. That may be right, but it isn’t necessarily.
After a rail crash in Britain in 2000, which killed four people, the
rail authorities imposed speed restrictions and track inspections. That
drove passengers from the railways to the roads. Given that road travel
is much more dangerous, this probably caused more fatalities than did
the original crash. It also nearly bankrupted the railways. Arguably,
the same could be said of some of the response to September 11th. The
initial security measures imposed on airlines were based on a hunch
rather than serious analysis of costs and benefits. America is now,
belatedly, moving away from random screening, which led to absurdly
rigorous treatment of obviously harmless categories like small
children, veterans and even the planes’ own pilots, to a computerized
system that checks identities and assesses potential risk.
The same applies to most industrial accidents, environmental
catastrophes and health scares. The clean-up after the Exxon Valdez oil
spill was hugely expensive and is thought to have damaged the
environment more than the original leak. Nature deals with crude oil
better than people do. In coping with epidemics like HIV/AIDS, or SARS,
simple cheap public health measures (condoms, lifestyle, quarantine)
usually work much better than expensive technological fixes like
vaccines. The culls of cows and restrictions on movement after
Britain’s foot-and-mouth epidemic are not generally recognized to
have multiplied the cost of the outbreak, rather than containing it. If
possible, the best solution is to let individuals decide themselves how
much risk they will bear, and how much safety they want to pay for.
Given the choice, many airline passengers might prefer a slightly
cheaper flight on an airline that does not carry useless lifevests
under every seat, just as they may choose to buy a Lada rather than a
Volvo. Politicians need to avoid bowing to the cries from newspapers
that they must be seen to “make things safe.” Encouraging sensible
and informed attitudes to risk will make people richer and happier in
the long term, but would require courage and honesty up front. Don’t
hold your breath.

I don’t agree with their stance on HIV/AIDS (we need
a vaccine for HIV/AIDS---end of story) but the rest of it makes quite a
bit of sense to me. --- Hey. It’s something new and exciting. The
Strib finally admitted one agency in Minnesota finally is not the best
of the Midwest. They must be cheering wildly in Wisconsin, Iowa, North
and South Dakota and Nebraska. Check this out and then this and finally this.
MnDOT is short for the Minnesota Department of Transportation and they
handle everything from drivers’ licenses to building roads. I’m not
a big fan of them, but not for anything eminent domain related, which
is where it seems they really excel in sleaziness.
The crux of all this is that MnDOT needs land to expand freeways. Ok,
fine, that I can understand. So, they come up to the door, say we’ll offer you x number of dollars for your property and we have this appraisal to back up our offer. What MnDOT doesn’t tell the property owners is that they get two
appraisals for each piece of property, and always use the lowest one on
which to base their first offer. If the owner balks, they might come
back with something a wee bit higher and then if the owner refuses the
second offer, like in the case of the Chanhassen couple, they say
well, if you don’t take this, we’ll revert to the first appraisal
in any subsequent proceedings and we’ll condemn your property anyway.
And, until recently, the owner never had access to the appraisals that
were the basis for the settlement offers, unless they sued.
But wait, it gets even better. If the homeowner does decide to appeal
and then sue, all of the legal costs, unlike in neighboring states, are
paid by the homeowner, not MnDOT. So, to get a fair settlement these
people have to spend thousands of dollars on lawyers---sometimes years
after the property is condemned---and the burden is on the property
owner to make sure they get it. I know I don’t want to have to sit in
traffic any more than the next person, but hell, I don’t think I want
it this badly.

--- Mr. H. This one’s for you. I thought you might have missed it while you were out communing with nature this weekend.

Heheheheheh.

--- I think I’m going to throw up.

Ten?

--- I’m sorry, what could I have possibly been thinking?

Here I was all upset about the continued objectification of women. But Of course it’s all right for a woman to think that her only valuable asset is her vagina---as long as it’s a woman who’s pimping her out.
Because you actually care, right? You're giving your escorts access to
a whole different breed of clientele, right? They won't get slapped
around, or raped or any of that wicked business that happens with men
who are only willing to pay $20 for a quickie liasion. Nothing like
that could ever happen with a rich man. I don't know how I could have possibly been so naive. Forgive me.

It’s all about consensual sex, after all. Far be it from you to be all puritanical and judgmental about it, Ms. MacDonald.

Or did that only happen when your cut was less than thirty percent?

--- Chuckle for the Day
So, now that they’ve broken up, do you think Ben’s going to get a
serious case of the bloats? Do you think it’s going to be a case of
“In-N-Out Burger here I come?”
I feel for the fast food franchise that hooks it star to that guy.

Posted by Kathy at September 1, 2003 11:26 AM | TrackBack