tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post6769751933122557046..comments2024-03-29T00:39:31.629-07:00Comments on CONTRARY BRIN: Agile Moves that Democrats might make, right now.David Brinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14465315130418506525noreply@blogger.comBlogger48125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-38112712176373072772020-12-05T15:31:31.411-08:002020-12-05T15:31:31.411-08:00onward
onwardonward<br /><br />onwardDavid Brinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14465315130418506525noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-88748078621836642692020-12-05T11:08:17.173-08:002020-12-05T11:08:17.173-08:00@TCB: I'll add an additional possibility: From...@TCB: I'll add an additional possibility: From what I have heard out of the engineering industry, Elon Musk has the reputation of being a hard and demanding boss, and while he may pay good, people end up exhausted and burned out. Eventually, this will also become a "hiring" problem as they opt for jobs that may pay less, but actually allow for a life to be had.<br /><br />@Bova: I did not read much of Bova - Mars, Jupiter and the Orion-based short stories published in Dragon Magazine - but what I read I found inspiring.<br /><br />Especially Jupiter, which puts a desperate bunch of scientists on a space station into conflict with their government, who are dominated by religious groups like the "New Morality" in North America. In a way, these scientists become radicals themselves.<br /><br />(It is interesting how our host, and authors like Bova, Heinlein, Atwood and even Herbert all presented works depicting religious-authoritarian-fascist rulers/policies in the future.)Der Ogerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00977602334642769985noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-83322369967483319082020-12-05T10:14:32.473-08:002020-12-05T10:14:32.473-08:00I'd guess the Starship tests get pushed back b...I'd guess the Starship tests get pushed back because initial examination of the craft indicates they're not quite ready for the next step after all, at least in part because, as Scidata notes, "Pandemic is a strong headwind" - it's hard to get an "all hands on deck" preparatory push when you also have to distance and mask. I would guess further that progress will accelerate again when vaccines are readily available, as it will be safer to have large numbers of people getting hands-on with the equipment.<br /><br />Musk isn't a prophet or a savior, but he's easily smart enough not to endanger his investments by killing people if it can be avoided. There's a reason why so many Dragon cargo ships launched before the first Crew Dragon.Jon S.https://www.blogger.com/profile/13585842845661267920noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-916936036327769322020-12-04T14:47:05.206-08:002020-12-04T14:47:05.206-08:00Ben Bova edited Omni Magazine during the early yea...Ben Bova edited Omni Magazine during the early years. It was one of my Favorite Things in those years, and even when I was poor as a church mouse I bought every issue during its run.TCBhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08153506222271955110noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-75768353849184634242020-12-04T13:27:02.177-08:002020-12-04T13:27:02.177-08:00Scidata, Elon is smart enough to protect the money...Scidata, Elon is smart enough to protect the money flow and the potential human casualties, so the other stuff can happen with financial and public support.<br />David Brinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14465315130418506525noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-66326300218456403082020-12-04T13:20:46.363-08:002020-12-04T13:20:46.363-08:00Just a thought on SpaceX. I've noticed that wh...Just a thought on SpaceX. I've noticed that whenever the next Starship milestone is imminent, <b>and</b> so is the next Dragon launch, Starship gets pushed back. Possible reasons:<br />- they're having hiring/scaling problems<br />- the Pandemic is a strong headwind<br />- their focus is on missions affecting crews (either onboard Dragon or ISS)<br />- Seneca's "difficult because we do not dare"<br /><br />If it's fear of ridicule from trogs for a failure, it's wasted anxiety -- trogs will always jeer others' efforts to reach the stars. Enterprise scares them.scidatahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04992209167553267488noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-4630072204240509802020-12-04T10:50:05.485-08:002020-12-04T10:50:05.485-08:00"Do you still think you can control them?&quo..."Do you still think you can control them?"<br /><br />https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/04/opinion/conservatives-turn-on-trump.html<br /><i><br />...<br />“At best, Wood-Powell are distracting from the G.O.P. message in the races, and at worst, they are convincing persuadable Georgians that it is the Republican Party that needs to be checked, not Joe Biden,” wrote Rich Lowry in Politico. At worst! Republicans would almost certainly be fine with Wood and Powell eroding confidence in American democracy if it didn’t threaten members of their party.<br /><br />“The Republican establishment, and also the conservative establishment, has always made this bet that it could open Pandora’s box and close it on command,” Rick Perlstein, a historian of American conservatism, told me. They could activate tribalism to achieve power, while maintaining a modicum of respectability. They could create an alternative reality but keep people enclosed within it. But with Trump “having pried Pandora’s box open, that becomes impossible,” Perlstein said.<br /><br />Republicans helped Trump unleash countless civic evils. They shouldn’t be surprised when those evils don’t spare them.<br /></i>Larry Harthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01058877428309776731noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-12206101014492666152020-12-03T19:41:32.387-08:002020-12-03T19:41:32.387-08:00Mother Night was a truly amazing book. I referred...Mother Night was a truly amazing book. I referred to it recently re: someone who is an agent for good by infiltrating and helping the very, very bad, and has no idea if he is damned or saved.David Brinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14465315130418506525noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-21539944929823186142020-12-03T17:27:17.859-08:002020-12-03T17:27:17.859-08:00Just started re-reading Vonnegut's Mother Nigh...Just started re-reading Vonnegut's <i>Mother Night</i>. It's a quick read. Even I, who took over a month to read <i>The Postman</i> and over a year to read <i>Psychohistorical Crisis</i> can finish it in a long weekend.<br /><br />Anyway, I just stumbled across a line that I often refer to here as a metaphor, but probably no one else knows what I'm talking about. The setting is the late 1950s. A character called "The Black Fuherer of Harlem," a black man who had been a Japanese agent during WWII, is explaining why, though in an alliance with the Nazis, the Japanese were not entirely on the same side.<br /><br /><i><br />"I was on the colored folks' side," he said. "I was with the Japanese."<br /><br />"Uh huh," I said.<br /><br />"We needed you, and you needed us--" he said, speaking of the alliance between Germany and Japan in the Second World War, "Only there were a lot of things we couldn't what you'd call agree upon."<br /><br />...<br /><br />"The colored people gonna have hydrogen bombs all their own," he said. "They working on it right now. Pretty soon gonna be Japan's turn to drop one. The rest of the colored folks gonna give them the honor of dropping the first one."<br /><br />"Where are they going to drop it?" I said.<br /><br />"China, most likely," he said.<br /><br />"On other colored people?" I said.<br /><br />He looked at me pityingly. "Who ever told you a Chinaman was a colored man?" he said.<br /></i><br />Larry Harthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01058877428309776731noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-67994747772533344432020-12-02T17:51:02.977-08:002020-12-02T17:51:02.977-08:00duncan cairncross:
Here is a new mega scandal
.....duncan cairncross:<br /><i><br />Here is a new mega scandal<br /><br />...<br /><br />Selling pardons - and the Justice Department has known about it for months<br /></i><br /><br />Sadly, neither the fact that Trump would expect/extort bribes for pardons nor the fact that the Trump/Barr justice department condones such a thing is surprising. I'd have been much more surprised (and would require a high level of proof) to find out that those things <b>weren't</b> happening.Larry Harthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01058877428309776731noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-50687240451523532772020-12-02T16:31:35.275-08:002020-12-02T16:31:35.275-08:00The bribes for pardons was also in the Guardian
h...The bribes for pardons was also in the Guardian<br /><br />https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/dec/01/bribery-president-pardon-scheme-allegation-court-filing<br />duncan cairncrosshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14153725128216947145noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-2959098918860455742020-12-02T16:21:29.479-08:002020-12-02T16:21:29.479-08:00Here is a new mega scandal
https://int.nyt.com/da...Here is a new mega scandal<br /><br />https://int.nyt.com/data/documenttools/justice-department-pardon-bribery-investigation/822b24993f8146fe/full.pdf<br /><br />https://www.politicalorphans.com/what-we-know-about-the-bribes-for-pardons-scheme/<br /><br />Selling pardons - and the Justice Department has known about it for monthsduncan cairncrosshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14153725128216947145noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-6411318968404001982020-12-02T14:44:00.326-08:002020-12-02T14:44:00.326-08:00"Disagree about the Jewish Holocaust though, ..."Disagree about the Jewish Holocaust though, as there was very little correlation between the thoroughness of Nazi Judeocide in a territory and the the pre-war level of antisemitism there."<br /><br />Poland had (and, sadly, still has) a high level of antisemitism; prior to WWII, Jews made up 10% of the population, and they were already under severe constraints not unlike those the Jews in Germany had to suffer in the years leading up to the November Progromes. Tens of thousands of Poles willingly served as collaborators in policing as well as in the concentration camps. (BTW, the current governing Law & Justice party has made stating these facts a crime.)Der Ogerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00977602334642769985noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-9152941619812835362020-12-02T14:27:25.113-08:002020-12-02T14:27:25.113-08:00There is a purpose to this thing pushed by Flynn.....There is a purpose to this thing pushed by Flynn... to drive a wedge between Democrats and the military. The officer corps would never support this idiotic notion.<br /><br />Also to nurse an impression among MAGAs that the officer corps does NOT hate their cult.David Brinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14465315130418506525noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-39657658160303753542020-12-02T13:39:08.172-08:002020-12-02T13:39:08.172-08:00"Any thoughts on Flynn's call for suspens..."Any thoughts on Flynn's call for suspension of the constitution and use of the military to rerun the vote, all in the interest of protecting the constitution?"<br /><br />I'd call that a military coup. <br />I'd say that the criminal justice system has not necessarily rehabilitated this man.<br />I'd also like to point out that Mr. Flynn's pardon does not cover future charges of sedition and terrorism.<br /><br />Which brings me to an interesting question: If a person just openly called for an attack on constitutional processes, wouldn't that count as a form of terrorism (with regard to using the Patriot Act's provisions)?<br /><br />Whats good for an Afghan shepherd must be good for a LTG (Ret.), too.<br /><br />Der Ogerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00977602334642769985noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-58210236055267315112020-12-02T11:56:03.509-08:002020-12-02T11:56:03.509-08:00Dr Brin:
Someone like Jim Thorpe would never happ...Dr Brin:<br /><i><br />Someone like Jim Thorpe would never happen in Germany or Poland<br /></i><br /><br />Someone like Jackie Owens did, though. :)<br /><br />And to Der Oger--I understood the above statement to refer to <b>1930s</b> Germany. To misuse a favorite (of mine) Orwell quote: "You're talking about modern Germany, but that's a different thing, in fact the opposite thing."Larry Harthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01058877428309776731noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-72236132611542570552020-12-02T11:44:30.033-08:002020-12-02T11:44:30.033-08:00David Brin,
I think you're right that the Ger...David Brin,<br /><br />I think you're right that the German genocide in Namibia was a far more likely inspiration for Generalplan Ost than either the American Indian Wars or Leopold's atrocities in Congo (the former because they were not systematic extermination, and the latter because they weren't aimed at clearing land for settlement).<br /><br />The disappointingly low food yields which the Germans experienced during the 1918 occupation of Ukraine may also have had an impact, by convincing the Nazis that the only way they could get a reasonable food surplus out of Ukraine would after its existing population was destroyed.<br /><br />Disagree about the Jewish Holocaust though, as there was very little correlation between the thoroughness of Nazi Judeocide in a territory and the the pre-war level of antisemitism there.<br /><br />France had lots of antisemitism (the Dreyfus affair for one thing!) but about half of French Jews survived World War II, while the Baltic states had little pre-war antisemitism, but almost no Jewish survivors.<br /><br />The Holocaust actually began the Baltic states, and the Nazis enlisted the locals to help them kill Jews not by appealing to prewar antisemitic traditions (which weren't strong there) bur instead by framing the Jews for the very real Soviet atrocities which took place in 1940 and 1941.<br /><br />In addition, the Nazis didn't justify their Jew-killing (to themselves, as opposed to in their propaganda) in the terms of traditional antisemitism. Rather they were fundamentalist Social Darwinists who believed that all ideologies that saw human life as intrinsically valuable (including Christianity, liberalism and communism) as being Jewish inventions designed to undermine the only truly important solidarity: that between members of a race.<br /><br />The Nazis actually valued their own German race less than they valued race war itself, and the infamous Nero Order of March 1945 was the result of that belief.<br /><br />On the subject of East Asian success against Covid, I'm surprised (given that both China and South Korea succeeded in part thanks to an extremely intrusive surveillance state) that you haven't tied this in with your own transparency agenda!George Cartyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12170378024031141482noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-58119912037066575602020-12-02T11:43:02.234-08:002020-12-02T11:43:02.234-08:00Any thoughts on Flynn's call for suspension of...Any thoughts on Flynn's call for suspension of the constitution and use of the military to rerun the vote, all in the interest of protecting the constitution?Robertnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-61456635488943065232020-12-02T11:28:37.294-08:002020-12-02T11:28:37.294-08:00A descent into an east-asian feudalism is the most...A descent into an east-asian feudalism is the most likely alt-path for us, but for now I don't think there are enough guns in the US for anyone to force that upon us... even from within.<br /><br />Maybe after we grow out of our barbaric childhood in a few generations? Maybe. I'd guess the main risk is about three generations away. We will be interplanetary by then.Alfred Differhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01170159981105973192noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-9476192164445269002020-12-02T11:28:04.149-08:002020-12-02T11:28:04.149-08:00Today's Germany is not that Germany.Today's Germany is not that Germany.<br />David Brinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14465315130418506525noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-1266408028809916742020-12-02T09:39:17.997-08:002020-12-02T09:39:17.997-08:00"Someone like Jim Thorpe would never happen i..."Someone like Jim Thorpe would never happen in Germany or Poland."<br /><br />Eighty million Federal Coaches would like to point out that one-third of THE TEAM are people of colour and have immigration roots.<br /><br />Özil could have been that guy. He might have made the rather controversial decision to make a photo OP with Erdogan, but he, in his retreat from the team and the resulting backlash, helped to relieve us of Reinhard Grindel.Der Ogerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00977602334642769985noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-36154172133485764572020-12-02T08:27:48.746-08:002020-12-02T08:27:48.746-08:00GC: "might a future dictator arise in a Weste...GC: "might a future dictator arise in a Western country who believes that it needs to be East-Asianized at gunpoint?"<br /><br />That is wholly typical... a descent into standard human pyramidal power mode. I'd PREFER the East Asian version of feudalism because at least there's some meritocracy! But we all still lose and some other race will have to get out into the galaxy.<br />David Brinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14465315130418506525noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-81490315545210774992020-12-02T08:25:04.890-08:002020-12-02T08:25:04.890-08:00Huh, yes the German massacres in Namibia were almo...Huh, yes the German massacres in Namibia were almost at a scale of the Belgian ones in Leopold's Congo, and perhaps lesser in scale only because the overall population levels were lower. And yes, both events -- along with eastern European pogroms -- were POLICY exterminations and were much more proximate influences on Nazis than the complex and drawn-out and guilt-ridden grind of the North American Amerinds into dismal reservations and despair. The latter is not excused! It was, however, a different thing.<br /><br />Someone like Jim Thorpe would never happen in Germany or Poland:<br />https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Thorpe<br />David Brinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14465315130418506525noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-13158217924127365372020-12-02T06:48:36.323-08:002020-12-02T06:48:36.323-08:00 This starts out entertaining:
https://freethoug... This starts out entertaining:<br /><br />https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2020/12/01/a-martian-odyssey-part-1-fiction/<br /><br />Short fiction, P.Z. Myers beginning, other bloggers @ freethoughtblogs.com finishing, part two is already up:<br /><br />https://freethoughtblogs.com/iris/2020/12/02/a-martian-odyssey-part-2-fiction<br /><br />Enjoy.Tim H.https://www.blogger.com/profile/12380916635831994159noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-74789858132346904092020-12-02T06:38:51.256-08:002020-12-02T06:38:51.256-08:00Found an interesting link @charlie's diary:
h... Found an interesting link @charlie's diary:<br /><br />https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/nov/24/brexit-capitalism<br /><br />The sharp focus of GOP administrations on the desires of the .001% must work wonders for their self esteem, but it comes with the danger of a "Drumph!-a-like" riding into power on the backs of a neglected 99.99%, and the next one might have more competence. I would suggest legislation that improves quality of life for the majority, if possible, without providing gist for the propaganda mills. Restoring deductibility for consumer loan interest might be helpful to many, and I suspect American finance could survive the resultant congressional scrutiny easier than American manufacturing survived (Semi) free trade.Tim H.https://www.blogger.com/profile/12380916635831994159noreply@blogger.com