Month: February 2008

21 February 2008 minus 19 March 2003 equals

Eighteen hundred days

Since the invasion of Iraq

No end in sight

Will rough seas, clouds,

Delay missile shield protecting

Us from holocaust?

Dr. Jeffrey Lewis at Arms Control Wonk.com has a worst case scenario about the attempted satellite shoot that some others think is plausible:

I am very worried about the debris creation — particularly the debris that the light-weight interceptor will kick into higher orbits when it hits the massive (bus-sized) satellite. Thnk, as Geoff Forden suggested, of a ping pong ball hitting a superball.

Virtually all the debris should come down quickly. Cartwright said 50 percent would come down within two orbits, with the rest coming down in weeks and months. That seems plausible, at first blush.

But those two orbits could be hairy and some of the debris will remain in orbit. Michael Griffin, NASA Administrator, said there are “good times and bad times” to conduct the intercept, based on the position of the ISS but that “bad times are not all that bad” comparing the risk to an order of magnitude lower than flying the shuttle.

Last I checked, the PRAN [probability risk assessment number] for the shuttle was 1 in 100. Extrapolating, there would be only a 1 in 1000 chance of wiping out the ISS.

Great.

In a comment on one of the Oregonian‘s Community Writers columns (“An alternative patriotism” by Lillian Mongeau) the commenter suggests a book and makes an oft-heard charge:

I want to suggest you dig deeper. A new book may provide what is needed, a sound reason for prejudice, and I do not mean racism.

The book is, ‘In Praise of Prejudice” the necessity of preconceived ideas’ by Theodore Dalrymple. 126 pp.

The main bookstores will not carry conservative books. The bookstore owners were also taught by teaches with the same agenda as yours.

Now, despite what the “teaches” taught, and the fact that I don’t spend much time these days at my long-ago employer Powell’s Books — which is about as much of a “main bookstore” as it gets — I know when someone’s talking out of their ass. 50 copies of Dalyrmple’s In Praise of Prejudice alone.

Production is carried on for profit, not for use. There is no provision that all those able and willing to work will always be in a position to find employment; an “army of unemployed” almost always exists. The worker is constantly in fear of losing his job. Since unemployed and poorly paid workers do not provide a profitable market, the production of consumers’ goods is restricted, and great hardship is the consequence. Technological progress frequently results in more unemployment rather than in an easing of the burden of work for all. The profit motive, in conjunction with competition among capitalists, is responsible for an instability in the accumulation and utilization of capital which leads to increasingly severe depressions. Unlimited competition leads to a huge waste of labor, and to that crippling of the social consciousness of individuals which I mentioned before.

This crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism. Our whole educational system suffers from this evil. An exaggerated competitive attitude is inculcated into the student, who is trained to worship acquisitive success as a preparation for his future career.

I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals.

—Albert Einstein, “Why Socialism?”, Monthly Review, May 1949

Forty-odd years of Cuba

Sanctions have really made

Some great progress