Obama Cancels Moon Project

This is a strange story. While it seems to be the standard "recession causes cutbacks" thing, there are deeper considerations at work here too.

Firstly, it's clearly a reversal of the 1960s policies. When JFK committed the US to reaching the Moon, the subsequent president (Nixon didn't have time to do much about it) followed it through. In part, this was because LBJ was consciously trying to capitalise on the JFK legacy and somehow therefore ensure his administration wasn't dominated by the escalating Vietnam crisis. In that, he was only partly successful. Obama of course is trying to undo the Bush legacy in almost every way. And this project, so long term and so expensive, was designed as a Bush legacy thing - something for people to remember him by in generations to come. It wasn't a real aspiration in the way that it was in the 60s.

And the reasons for that is the second point. We're just not interested anymore. Our scientific interests are entirely to do with our bodies. Biology - that's what we want. From that point of view, our range of inquiry has narrowed. We don't look outwards now. No-one wants to go back to the moon: the practical benefits look slight; the costs and risks immense; and the sense of achievement it would bring is irrelevant - we simply don't value that kind of achievement. We are much more likely to condemn it as wasteful and so on.

Thirdly, the whole project seemed somewhat uninspired. The rocket was new, but the delivery systems were entirely based on Apollo, just with updated computers and guidance and so on. NASA's argument was to the effect of "why rewrite a hit" but it made the whole idea seem derivative and as if they were just going through the motions - very expensive motions, at that. Is this unfair? Perhaps. But for a project intended to be concluded some fifty one years after the original moon landings, using the same designs is strange. Were there really no other ideas?

While I deplore the lack of imagination in this decision, and the fact that it's all too predictable in an era that is not interested in anything outside its own genitals, the project was definitely flawed. If Obama and his government can come up with anything more interesting, I'd be all for it. It does look as if they are going for something they are condemning elsewhere -a private sector, private finance set of initiatives.

Who'd a thunk it?

Red Dwarfs

Real ones, I mean. These guys are very cool. They are 85% or so of the galaxy, but we can't see any with the naked eye, meaning that the sky we see is exceptional, not normal. They are between about 0.6 of the solar mass and something almost infinitesimal (but not quite - then you get brown dwarfs).

They burn, slowly and steadily, with surface temps of around 3000K and some of them, the smallest, presumably, with estimated lifespans of 6 trillion or so years. They just burn and burn and burn. They're not great candidates for inhabited planets because some of them seem to be a bit flary at times and a planet would need to be very close indeed to be "in the zone" for life.

These stars do not disturb the universe but are among its commonest objects; they make no waves, cause no black holes, but just plod on and on, in their little corners of space, doing their thing. For years and years and years. And we can't even see them as we look up at the night sky.

The forgotten men of the universe, quietly fiery, in every corner that is too small for us to see.

End of World Delayed

Phew.

And there was me thinking we'd seen the revival of the irresponsible scientist who'd pursue his theories with a near-insane zeal. With all wild hair and everything.

Luckily there is no chance of creating the Big Bang in a dull corner of central Europe after all.

Change p 42

People often want change because they are full of hate: they loathe what exists, so they want to replace it with what has never existed, on the basis of some damnfool theory, or on the basis precisely that it has never existed and they wish it to. People sometimes want change because they loathe the idea that the world does not encompass their worldview, and they want it encoded in all legal apparatus that they think x and that to not think x is downright offensive, indeed, an incitement to hatred. Which brings us back to our starting point. People think that because x is offensive to y, that the law ought to be changed for z too, and that anyone else who happens to exist, or yet to be created, out of a whim or whatever, must conform to it also because to be offensive to y is an offence, whereas to be offensive to t is alright. I love this idea: x does not affirm my worldview hence you, y, or whoever you are, need to bear this in mind whenever you make any kind of statement that may or may not be taken as public. If only we all had access to this: I'd make disapproval of Doctor Who an incitement to hatred on the basis that if someone said it in my earshot I'd deck the fucker. And be immune from prosection, because the twat "q" had incited me. What a cool legal principle. What I also love about thought-crime legislation is that opposition to it is, de facto, hatred, so just not agreeing with the law might end you with chokey. Indeed, stating any kind of opposition to anything a liberal doesn't like is in itself a vile act of provocation and hate. I _so_ wish I was in government, I'd ban everything just for a laugh. Plus I'd just one day say "well a has been the case for thousands of years, so now I'm abolishing it as any kind of principle and replacing it with b for no better reason than that this shows my power plus it makes me look good with people who matter". That would be ace. And even better, if I could then say "well the peer-reviewed science shows that anyone who disagrees with me is a fuckwitted twat".


I also love the idea of "peer review". As things stand, my peers think I am a) as clever as fuck; b)a twat; c)lazy; d) an arse, e) an idiot and f) a lunatic. Which of these peer reviews do we take as "truth"? (c Pontius Pilate) Well, b), c) and e), at a guess. But then again the writer of b) is a cunt; of c) an idiot who I haven't seen for years and of e) a dickhead who once didn't like the fact that I wowed the women more than him. The writer of a) is currently in prison. How cool is that: you self-select a group who agree with your assumptions, then you say that they agree with you hence you are right. What a fantastic example of recursion. Having said that, the writer of b) is an expert in twats, so it is inappropriate to disagree with him, even though I don't think I am a twat. Also the writer of e) is a linguist who knows the detailed etymology of the word "dickhead" and has written several treatises on why I am one. However, I _am not_ and so the sub-thesis fails, however well the peer review process appears to work. So not quite so self-selected, but still bloody incestuous, the bunch of arseholes.

But then, no bastard would vote for me in the first place, so I'd be fucked. Oh wait, I might be able to ban everything under some European law or other so I might not need to worry about those twat voters. Everything must be banned. We are all untrustworthy so we must start from the premise that we need to redouble our efforts to win the trust of our government (c Brecht); and therefore we must prove identities, prove suitabilities, prove the lack of murderous, sexually deviant intentions. We must prove. We must prove. We must improve.

Which brings us, once again to our starting point: I hate the government. I'm sure there's a law against that.

Horizon

So Danny Wallace, the noted naturalist and biochemist, was on horizon last night trying to persuade us that the arguments of nutters like Peter Singer (who has called for infanticide) are essentially right. Well I hope he is prepared to pay more tax, because clearly if chimps are people, with the same powers of reason, then we will need to build more prisons to cope with the rates of chimp crime. As clearly they are able to reason through their actions and to take responsibility for them. Yes, I know the chimp population of the UK is as near to 0 as makes no odds, but there must be a case for increased chimp immigration, which can only benefit the economy, given all the amazing skills they have.

Given Danny's figure of 99.4% for shared DNA between humans and chimps (which is slightly different, incidentally, from the figures given if you googlewhack the subject), I wonder if his being 60% the same as a banana will lead to his calling for the integration of bananas into human society; we could make a start by putting a banana into Danny's place on the crap Radio 4 comedy show he hosts (Genius, or something). It would be wittier, more intelligent, and would have the additional benefit of smoothing the process of giving bananas the rights they are due. It might even make Danny think that, since he is a quarter identical to a dandelion, he should go and stand in a field, swaying occasionally, until being eaten by a cow.