As I write this, Space Shuttle Atlantis sits on its launch pad awaiting its takeoff. Its mission will be the last of the 135 in the program’s history. The United States has spent billions and billions of dollars on the Space Shuttle, and what do we have to show for it? Not much. Along with its fellow boondoggle, the International Space Station, the Space Shuttle program has been a colossal waste of money.
Now, I don’t know about you, but I want my spaceflight tax dollars going toward kick-ass stuff, the sort of stuff that would make a seven-year-old boy’s jaw drop. Going to the moon? That was cool. Going to Mars? That would be even better. A giant telescope that gives us amazing pictures of deep space? Pretty damn impressive. But most of the Space Shuttle’s and ISS’s science experiments did little to live up to the gigantic price tag of each mission. Head over to NASA’s website and take a look for yourself. There’s some great stuff there. One of the first ones I saw listed was about “Skeletal Development in Embryonic Quail.” Okay, I understand that people’s bones weaken in space and that animal studies about bones in microgravity could be useful, but do we really need to spend the money to send quail eggs into space? Continue reading ‘the space shuttle program and the ISS’
This year’s Mississippi River flood is the worst in decades, with record flood stages set in many places throughout the system. There are two main ways to deal with the threat of river flooding:
1) Build huge levees to contain the water.
2) Create outlets where water can be released from the river.
There are a few other possible solutions, but those are the two major ones. Unfortunately, each has its drawbacks. Levees force a river through a narrower path; the only place for the water to go is up, causing the river to get higher, so that the levees must be built taller, and so on. Along the Mississippi, the building of levees has historically been combined with a practice of shutting off almost all of the natural distributaries of the river. It doesn’t take an expert hydrologist to figure out that closing off places where water flows out means more water downriver.
Using outlets of some sort—diversions into other rivers, spillways, or simply flooding large areas of low-lying land—can damage the property or livelihood of whoever owns the land that is deliberately flooded. In some cases—for example, the Bonnet Carré Spillway—only a small amount of land is used. The Bonnet Carré is roughly six miles long and two miles wide; it empties into Lake Pontchartrain. Though the spillway is used for recreation purposes when not in use for flood control, there are no land owners to appease. Thus, it is fairly low-risk (from a political standpoint) to open it up. Sending dirty river water into the lake does annoy the environmentalists and the fishermen, but all things considered it’s not going to piss anyone off too much. Continue reading ‘saying that the morganza shouldn’t have been opened’
As you may have heard, President Barack Obama just decided to release his birth certificate. It looks like this:
Hopefully that finally settles the years of idiocy coming from the “birther” movement, a group of buffoons who have steadfastly insisted that Obama is somehow not a citizen, with most of them suggesting he was born somewhere outside of the United States. Part of this skepticism came from the fact that the previously released version of Obama’s birth certificate was this one:
That, of course, is obviously a printout of an electronic version. It did not satisfy the birthers, even though this was the standard document released when people needed a copy of their birth certificates. Also, there were birth announcements published in the local Hawaii papers, so any conspiracy would have to be as old as Obama himself.
The birther movement had its ebbs and flows. It was an issue during the presidential campaign, even though the McCain camp didn’t choose to make an issue of it. But somehow it gained steam to the point where huge numbers of Republican and conservative voters either thought Obama wasn’t born in the US or were unsure. In 2010, a lieutenant colonel in the US military refused orders to deploy to Afghanistan out of his conviction that Obama was not eligible to be president and thus was not legally entitled to act as Commander-in-Chief. And most recently, possible presidential candidate Donald Trump has been stirring the birther pot. Continue reading ‘the birther movement’
I’m not usually one to get worked up over sad or scary news stories. But I was as disturbed and upset as I can ever remember when I heard about the assassination attempt on Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. Why was I more upset about this than any other similar incident I can think of? There have been deadlier shootings in the US, accidents that have killed dozens, natural disasters, and so on. Why did this affect me so much?
The obvious first reaction from politicians and people of all political views was shock, dismay, and sadness at this horrific crime, which was obviously the work of a mentally unstable individual. But it wasn’t long before partisans of the left and right started lobbing accusations (whether justified or not) at the other side. Many people have called for a re-examination of the harsh rhetoric often used in American politics. Perhaps the most criticized was the map that Sarah Palin’s political action committee had posted in the run-up to the 2010 midterm elections; that map targeted vulnerable Democrats with crosshairs on their congressional districts. Now, thankfully we live in a country where the right to free speech is cherished, and people who want to use questionable rhetoric or take shocking stances can do so. But just because we can use such rhetoric, should we? Many people have suggested that harsh political rhetoric, demonization of one’s political opponents, etc. may very well trigger the mentally unstable to commit acts of violence they otherwise would not have committed. Perhaps that’s true. Jack Shafer at Slate, however, takes another approach:
“Only the tiniest handful of people—most of whom are already behind bars, in psychiatric institutions, or on psycho-meds—can be driven to kill by political whispers or shouts. Asking us to forever hold our tongues lest we awake their deeper demons infantilizes and neuters us and makes politicians no safer.”
To a certain extent, I’d agree—after all, the word “hates” is in the title of my blog.** The risk of an insane person being driven to murder by indirect vitriolic political rhetoric is small enough and the consequences of swinging too far in the direction of squelching free speech are great enough that we should continue to defend people’s rights to express their political views, even when they do so in a manner that some or many or most or even almost all of us find distasteful. I should also point out here that we have no idea whether the shooter*** was influenced by any particular politician’s speeches or writings; from what we know his politics were a collection of fringe views, but I doubt we will ever establish any sort of link between a particular phrase he may have heard and the crime he committed. And in any case, it is ridiculous to lay the blame for this crime on anyone other than the person who committed it. Continue reading ‘the arizona shooting and the state of American political discourse’
You’ve probably heard that Sarah Palin has a TV show on TLC. I caught a few minutes of it a couple weeks ago and it was pretty dreadful. Ostensibly it’s a look at her family, her life, and her unabashed worship of all things Alaska, but we all know it’s a tool for her political ambitions, which almost surely will include a campaign for President at some point in the future. I hadn’t planned on watching another episode, but then I heard that there was a bit of an uproar over the most recent episode, in which Palin and her dad go on a hunting trip in the Alaskan tundra. Aaron Sorkin, well-known screenwriter and prominent advocate and donor to various Democratic candidates, came out with a column on the Huffington Post in which he bashed Palin for killing an animal on TV. Palin had attempted to pre-empt criticism by saying that anyone who used leather products or ate meat shouldn’t criticize her, but Sorkin (who says that he does, in fact, eat meat and has leather shoes and furniture) went after her anyway.
I don’t really care to turn this into a vegetarianism or animal-rights debate. And since Palin, Sorkin, and I all eat animals, it doesn’t need to be. (If you’re a vegetarian and want to object to the episode on the grounds that animals should never be killed and eaten, go right ahead. But not on this blog.) Sorkin says he doesn’t “relish the idea of torturing animals.” From the footage shown on the episode, it doesn’t look like torture to me. Close-up on Palin, “Bang!” goes the shot from her gun, then cut to the animal to see it fall down. By the time the hunting party walks over, the caribou is long dead. If I had to choose between that death and the death of the average factory-farm-raised cow or chicken, I’d take the caribou’s death. (And if I had to choose which life to lead, it’d be the caribou, by far. Wandering across Alaska beats standing in my own shit any day of the week.) Continue reading ‘aaron sorkin’s criticism of sarah palin’s hunting trip’
I was picking up some fast food for dinner a few nights ago. The total came out to $4.98 and I handed the cashier a $5. He gave me back three pennies. I was about to call his attention to his mistake, but I figured, “Why bother?” Who cares about one cent? Hell, I didn’t even care to have the three cents. Had there been a tip jar on the counter, I’d have dropped the three pennies in. Instead they went into my pocket. I think I left them in my car, but maybe I left them in my pants. Maybe they got washed. Maybe they’re on a windowsill in my house. I really don’t know. And I don’t care either. Why? Because pennies are so close to being worthless that for all practical purposes, that’s what they are. Worthless. The penny is a relic of a distant past; the sole reason for its continued existence is the zinc lobby.
The reasons to get rid of the penny are numerous. Perhaps the most glaringly obvious one is that it costs more than a cent to make a penny. 1.7 cents, in fact. (Thanks, Wikipedia.) In other worse, the government is just throwing away money. Furthermore, they then passed a law to make it illegal to melt down pennies for the cost of the zinc and copper. Sounds like a dumb law, right? There would be no need for it if the penny were made out of something else (steel, say) that costs less than one cent per penny. But Jarden Zinc Products, the company that makes the blanks the pennies are made out of, won’t have any of that. They hired lobbyists to fight a Congressman who tried to outlaw pennies. Continue reading ‘pennies’
Now, a good Catholic boy like me should have no objection to gambling. And for the most part, I don’t. (I mean, I do think casinos are pretty sleazy with the way they block any natural light and prey on old people, but it’s a free country, right?) After all, I grew up playing turkey bingo in the church gym and cherry bells at the church fair. But what If I told you that there’s a form of gambling where the house edge (which is usually a couple of percent at most if you’re at a casino) is 67.5%? You’d think it was an outrage, wouldn’t you? You’d never want to play a game like that, would you? But when you buy a Powerball ticket, that’s exactly what you’re doing.* It always baffles me when I hear about co-workers who get together and buy a bunch of tickets every week in the hopes that they’ll hit the big one. What the hell are they thinking? Obviously, they’re not very good at math.
Now, my point here is not to criticize the guy who goes into the convenience store maybe once or twice a year when the Powerball jackpot is $250 million. If you spend $2 a year on the lottery, you may be losing money—the odds are against you in virtually any** situation—but you’re never going to miss $2 a year. On the other hand, those millions of dollars would be really nice to have if you do luck out. SInce losing $2 a year is essentially equivalent to nothing, but winning a huge amount of money (even at odds of almost 200 million to 1) is really, really awesome, it’s not a bad deal (from a life perspective, not a strict financial perspective) if you play on very rare occasions. My point here is to criticize the people who spend $5 or $10 or $20 or more a week, every week, in the hopes of winning the big prize. Continue reading ‘state lotteries’
Living on the Gulf Coast I’m used to dealing with natural disasters. But this decidedly unnatural disaster we’re dealing with is quite bizarre. In some ways it’s like dealing with a hurricane—we even get a daily NOAA forecast—but it’s not like we have to board the windows and evacuate. We just move on with our daily lives and watch as what could become the worst environmental disaster in our nation’s history rages on some 60 or 70 miles from downtown New Orleans.
At this point I don’t really know how to feel. Should I pissed off at BP? Yeah. The government? Yeah. Maybe this is the work of a company cutting every corner it can, regardless of the risks. Maybe it was just a freak accident. (I think the former is more likely, but that’s besides the point I want to make). What I am pissed off about is the fact that for far too long we in Louisiana have run the risks and taken so much damage from the oil industry without being fairly compensated. For years Louisiana and the other states with offshore drilling got completely screwed out of oil royalties.* We got nothing.** States with inland oil and gas production? A 50/50 split between the state and the feds. What is wrong with this picture? Sure, there’s an argument to be made for giving the federal government some of the money; Americans have a right to enjoy all of our natural resources, not just the ones from the state they happen to live in. But we are the ones bearing the negative externalities while the federal government reaps the benefits. We are the ones who have had our wetlands ripped apart by subsidence and canals. We are the ones with Cancer Alley. And we run the risk of a spill like this. Continue reading ‘not getting a fair share of offshore oil royalties’
Earlier today as I was browsing facebook instead of working (which is what I should be doing right now), I saw a link to an article about Kelsey Grammer, who is currently starring as the less-flamboyant half of a gay couple in the Broadway revival of La Cage aux Folles. The story* is that Grammer is investing in and appearing in a promotional campaign for a new right-wing website called RightNetwork despite starring in a musical known for its sympathetic depiction of its leading gay couple—a show most famous for the defiantly proud song “I Am What I Am”:
(Skip to 3:01 to see the song; the first half is the similar “We Are What We Are.” That part is included for the many of my readers who enjoy drag queens and fancy costumes.)
So certainly, there’s a bit of irony that a noted conservative is starring in one of theatre’s most first and most prominent cries for gay rights. (Note: I have no idea whatsoever what Grammer’s specific views are on gay rights, gay marriage, or any other particular issue, but he’s made his support for the Republican Party quite well known.) But he’s an actor, isn’t he? That’s his job. Continue reading ‘people who only associate with like-minded people’
There’s 50 states in the USA. And 49 of them have something horribly wrong with their state governments. The sole exception? Nebraska. And what does Nebraska do right? They have a unicameral state legislature. Uni-what? Instead of having a senate and a house of representatives (or whatever the equivalent names are in various states), they have just a single chamber.
Some background: the US has a Senate and a House of Representatives. As you may or may not remember from your 10th-grade American History class, this was a compromise between the states with small populations (who favored an equal number of seats for each state) and the large states (who favored seats based on population). Eventually Roger Sherman masterminded the Connecticut Compromise, which led to our bicameral federal legislature.* Continue reading ‘bicameral state legislatures’
