We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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I usually steer clear of ‘local’ stories because I will almost certainly be pilloried no matter what I say. But this is just too silly to pass up.
It seems that a sociology professor, one not from a Northern Ireland university, thinks the Red Hand of Ulster is a sectarian symbol. In most cases I would just roll my eyes and mutter about ‘outsiders’ who can not possibly be expected to understand a place as confusing as Northern Ireland.
This is not the case for the Red Hand. In fact, it is partly a symbol of some of my own ancestors: The O’Neill clan. The ‘Kings’ of Ireland. My maternal grandpa was an O’Neill and there is a wee red hand in that family coat of arms.
Now, if you please Herr Sociologist, tell me why you believe the Red Hand of Ulster is merely a sectarian Unionist symbol? Could it be you have actually never read any Northern Ireland history?
We return now to our regularly scheduled programming… and yes I do intend to post a number of photo stories from Manhattan.
I have been on the road for the last week and God only knows how much longer. Right now I am backstage doing edits on the webcasts from the JP Morgan Healthcare conference in San Francisco. Twelve hour plus days… but the pay is good. A few minutes ago the Surgeon General of the United States spoke and I took a photo, not of him, but of the video monitors and the backside of the scrim.
I imagine this is a slightly different view of things than the media out in the Grand Ballroom are getting!
 Photo: D. Amon, all rights reserved
One cannot help but feel humbled before the violence of nature. The tiniest of twitches within the crust of our planet and thousands, tens of thousands or even millions die with barely time enough for a prayer.
All of us must face the question: “How should a planetary civilization of free people deal with events on this scale?” What do we as libertarians have as an answer to human misery on this level?
I know some will shrug their shoulders and say “people chose to live there”, “it should be handled by an insurance pool” because it is the “responsibility of everyone there to be fully insured” … as if people could get or afford it in areas like this which only recently have clawed their way far enough up the hierarchy of values to even know such things exist. I am not suggesting an answer. I have none. I am at a loss.
It was easier a few decades ago. Horrendous natural disasters happened in far away places to strange and alien people. They had nothing to do with us, no connection to our daily lives. Now we see real people in real time;
people who no longer seem the least bit alien; who may be related to the wife of friend’s son or the next door neighbor or friends of many years standing at a favoured resort. Given the massive amount of business and vacation travel in today’s world, it might well be one’s own sibling, parent, spouse or child laying dead on that no longer faraway beach.
It is difficult verging on the impossible to feel distant from the horror we see on television. I will not be surprised if the final toll tops 250,000: a quarter million souls. As horrifying as this number may be, it is by no means the worst nature can dish out.
Some day Yellowstone Park will go up. The entire park is, after all, a caldera that blows sky high every now and again. When next it happens, much of the American West will die. Denver and other cities will not look like human disaster areas. They will lie invisible hundreds of feet somewhere beneath thousands upon thousands of square miles of volcanic ash. Denver will become the Mile Under City.
There is a deadly fault near St Louis. A century and a half ago New Madrid was the site of perhaps the largest earthquake recorded in US history. It mostly shook trees, scared vast clouds of Passenger Pigeons into flight and annoyed the bears. No one knows when it will slip again. It is not difficult to imagine hundreds of thousands of Americans dead in an unprepared Midwest.
Then there is the disaster to rule them all. Short of the once in a hundred million year Dinosaur killer, the worst I am aware of is the Canary Islands landslide scenario. Some believe every once in ten millenia or so half a mountain slides off into the sea there. An Isle of Mann dropped into the Pond. Some scientists think there are signs of shifting already (others do not), and that perhaps we are closer to the next catastrophe than the previous. If such did occur, the resulting mega-tsunami would wipe out the Carribean islands and lay waste to the entire East Coast of the United States for tens of miles inland.
There are not many truly safe places on this living planet of ours. The next disaster might be bigger… and closer to home. Give whatever help you can as you might one day find yourself relying on the kindness of strangers.
The UK Earth Quake Appeal is reachable at 0870-606-0900. You can also give online.
The media lads are quick to jump on their own planted questions, but I doubt they will pick up on this rather incisive remark from a soldier when Rumsfeld spoke in Mosul yesterday:
Q: Sir, how do we win the war in the media? It seems like that is the place where we’re getting beat up more than anybody else? I’ve been here – this is my third tour over here and we’ve done some amazing things. And it seems like the enemy’s Web sites and everything else, they’re all over the media and they love it. But the thing is everything we did good, no matter if it’s helping a little kid or building a new school, the public affairs sends out the message, but the media doesn’t pick up on it. How do we win the propaganda war?
It is not really the job of the DOD to win an internal propaganda war. Mr. Rumsfeld indicated his understanding of this in his answer. The press has a right to do what it is doing and nothing can or should be done about that side of the equation. On the other hand, every Yin must have its Yang. The one-sided nothingness of the old media universe begat the blogosphere in a balance restoring reaction.
Here on Samizdata, terrorists are named the enemy and coalition forces are our people. We make no bones about it, make no false pretentions of neutrality. I consult in Manhattan (I will be on that side of the Atlantic much of January) and DC; I grew up in small town Western Pennsylvania(*); people I know work or have worked in the Pentagon at low levels. Perry worked in the World Trade Center during one phase of his life. For us, neutrality is not an option. We and people we know and love are in the enemy’s crosshairs.
This does not mean we will give the State a pass on much of anything. You will find us solidly against most of the civil liberty undermining machinations in Congress. We do not believe in winning a war by turning America (or the UK here) into a prison camp. We believe in winning it by going out and killing the enemy.
* However I was born in Florida and most of the family is in the Carolinas. I therefore claim red-blooded American status. Besides which, the Western Pennsylvania towns and countryside where I grew up are pretty solidly Jacksonian.
EDITOR: For those who may be interested, here is the transcript of the original DOD Town Hall Meeting at which a soldier passed on a question for an embedded reporter. It has been much reported on since so I will not bore you with a rehash. Other DOD transcripts following the aforementioned cover the up-armouring issue in excruciating detail.
A Merry Christmas to all of our loyal readership and most especially to those serving the cause of liberty in far and dangerous corners of the world.
Austin Meyer, author of the X-Plane flight simulator, has posted a picture showing a mockup of a home computer from 1954. I particularly like the “easy to use Fortran interface”. But then I would… I started off as a Fortran hacker.
I must admit thinking this is what the (one, only) home computer of 2004 would have looked like had it been a government operation as space flight has been.
Ooops: I got taken in, as did Austin: Snopes had it. Found out minutes after hitting the publish button. We catch things fast here on the net! But it is a cute image and my final point does still stand, faked photo or not.
The picture below has been making the rounds of the net aviation (and other) communities the last few days. The young Aussie lads chanced upon a motor race event whilst on coastal patrol. They went into a temporary hover all the better to communicate with numerous and luvly birds on the ground.
Someone caught them in the act and the photo went up on a professional pilot’s site from whence it spread to other places.
The lads seem to be in a bit of hot water over it, no doubt due to complaints from the PC (Pulchritudinously Challenged) sector.
Lt. Charlie William of the British Army survived a 3500 foot fall with minimal damage to his person after his parachute rigging tangled upon exit from the airplane during training over Kenya.
He broke through a corrugated iron roof and gave some Kenyans a bit of a start. I have heard of dropping in for tea unexpectedly, but Charlie seems to have taken it a bit farther than most.
It does not appear to have been reported whether the home owners supplied their guest with a hot cuppa as he awaited assistance.
Since Brian brought the subject up… I too have been following the political posturing that has been going on about regulating the nascent human space flight industry. The regime that currently exists is quite satisfactory to all. Customers have to read a list of all the horrible ways in which they will probably die, but once they have done so the FAA will get out of the way so long as the launch company guarantees the body parts will not cause more damage than the insurance covers when they hit the ground. (It is a little more complex than that, but I am not about to give a tutorial on spaceflight FARS just now.)
I think this open letter from an old friend of mine will explain what is currently going on in DC, or at least give you an intro to it.
Friday, November 19, 2004
Dear Space Advocates & Correspondents:
This afternoon the House of Representatives had a 40 minute debate on legislation designed to advance the U.S. commercial human spaceflight industry. It was a good and spirited debate, with bipartisan supporters speaking in favor, and two partisan Democrats speaking against HR5382.
Unfortunately, the opponents’ arguments reflected the same misunderstanding of this issue that so many people have. Their presumption is that the federal government needs to set standards to protect the safety of the early adventurers who wish to buy a risky ride into space. Even before the vehicles that would fly them are designed, let alone built and flying. Frankly, Mr. Oberstar and Mr. DeFazio, the Ranking Minority Members of the House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee and its Aviation Subcommittee, seem to believe that we need to regulate spaceflight as if it were just another approach to Aviation.
But rockets are not airplanes, and the Commercial Space Launch Act and the U.S. commercial space transportation industry are not under the jurisdiction of the Aviation Subcommittee. Space is a new sphere of economic activity, and the House’s experts on these issues are members of the House’s Committee that is focused on America’s future, the Science Committee.
More importantly, the House worked for several months with the Senate to develop a compromise version of the original HR3752, which was passed by a vote of 402 to 1 in March of this year. It is important to note that HR3752 told the Secretary of Transportation to promote and license the carrying of “space flight participants” for compensation, i.e. to make money, under an “informed consent” regime. In other words, the rocket company had to tell the passenger how likely it was they might crash, and then the passenger could choose to take the risk or not. All regulation was focused on making sure the rockets didn’t hurt anyone on the ground. The Secretary was not given any authority – and has none under current law – to regulate in order to protect people riding on the vehicle.
And I might just point out, Mr. Oberstar and Mr. DeFazio both voted for HR3752 in March, along with every other Democratic member of the Transportation Committee who showed up to vote. (The only vote against HR3752 in March was by a libertarian Republican who didn’t think the government had any right to regulate rockets at all !)
So today’s choice on HR5382 is a choice not between one level of safety and another. It’s between Congress telling the American people they have a right to go into space and an expectation that, over time, it will become more affordable and more reliable to do so… and saying “we can’t be bothered to write legislation to help enable this new industry”. Fortunately, the American people *already* have the right to go into space. And the American free market will make it ever-more-affordable and ever-safer, even without the help of federal regulators. But it would be a good thing if this bipartisan legislation were enacted into law to help accelerate the process.
Ironically, the two members speaking in favor of higher safety today will actually leave the industry free to do whatever it wants under current law, with no process by which the Secretary could, let alone would, start to set safety standards. So perhaps they are more committed to stopping legislation – and a new industry – than safety, after all.
James Muncy
Consultant to several Commercial Human Spaceflight companies
I am sure some will complain the government should not regulate space industry at all. I agree. Unfortuneately that option does not exist. We can either ameliorate what government is going to do and have a space industry, or close our eyes and let the worst sort of Nanny Statists have their way. That could kill the industry before it grows big enough to defend itself. That is to say, big enough to get your and my bottoms off this dirtball.
A few years ago I read of lower spine stimulation by a doctor working with paralyzed patients. It had ‘interesting’ effects when done in just the right spot. Another, or perhaps the same doctor, Stuart Meloy, a Winston-Salem, North Carolina anesthesiologist and pain specialist, has been experimenting with an FDA approved stimulation device for lower back pain. At least one woman in his pain trial had breathtakingly enjoyable orgasms along with the pain abatement.
Other work I have read reports there is a lower spinal nerve area which controls the timing of ejaculation in men. Perhaps it is the same? The article does not say. Dr. Meloy has completed an initial medical trial on the use of the stimulator, now dubbed the ‘orgasmatron’, by women with orgasmic dysfunction. According to women in the trial, it works exceedingly well.
It may beat the knickers off a vibrator, but at $17,000 for surgical implantation this will definitely be a rich girl’s toy. I wonder if anyone has asked Woody Allen for a comment?
Alaa of the Messopotamian has some choice words about the hellspawn of Fallujah and how our troops should deal with them:
For the valiant soldiers doing battle in Falujah today: like the medieval knights, you have engraved on your shields severed heads of kidnapped victims, murdered children, the hundreds of thousands of the dwellers of mass graves. You are the instruments of the Lord’s retribution. Have no mercy on this vermin, they do not deserve any.
God bless you and protect you for you are doing his work.
It seems the enemy forces are turning more and more to Saddam’s old tried and true methods: threatening and killing children, the elderly and even pregnant women. Iraqi’s would like to see the lot of them off to a very deep location with an exceedingly tropical climate.
XCOR Aerospace, the Mojave spaceship company which provided floor space and food for many of us who attended the first commercial suborbital launch in June, has announced a contest.
The prizes will be given to the persons, groups or companies who provide working steam engines fulfilling the contest specifications at various levels.
Yes, spaceships really can use steam engines. There is a lot of waste heat floating around a rocket engine so it makes sense to use some of it to operate the engine. If you are a home machinest or have a small engineering company and think this might be fun, go pick up the rules and the pump interfaces specification.
Ad astra my friends!
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, all rights reserved
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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