perfidy

Space.com is reporting that Burt Rutan and his team at Scaled Composites have successfully completed a full on test burn of a prototype hybrid rocket motor. (Another company has also tested a hybrid motor. Reportedly, Scaled Composites will decide which rocket to go with soon.)

Rutan has already conducted a series of tests of the White Knight mother ship that will carry the smaller SpaceShipOne to high altitude, where it will begin its independent flight into space. SpaceShipOne is designed to land like a glider, and it has undergone several gliding test flights.

The hybrid motors burn Nitrous Oxide (whippets) and hydroxy-terminated polybutadiene (HTPB) - otherwise known as rubber. While these are not the most energetic of all propellants (Liquid Hydrogen and Oxygen, used for the Shuttle main engines, are the most powerful) they have the advantage of being stable, easily stored and non reactive; and safer than almost all other potential rocket fuels.

It looks like Rutan is the most likely winner of the X-Prize, moving along at a rapid pace. I think it would be a rather amazing thing if they launch on Dec 17th, the 100th anniversary of the Wright Brother's first flight. It could happen.

Back in my halcyon grad-school days, I used to think Ted Rall was a pretty nifty cartoonist. Sure, he was a hard-lefty, but he scored a lot of really excellent points off the American Right, especially their gibbering and howling in the run-up to the Kangaroo Impeachment of President Billy Nutsack. Moreover, I lived in Amherst MA, where my stolid Centrism played like John Birch in some places. So, I read him, I liked him, I didn't always think he made sense. 

But no more. Over the last couple years, I've watched Ted Rall sink deep, deep into moral equivalency and come out the other side into crazyland. 

In this post, Michael Totten lovingly and thorougly fisks a Ted Rall column that among other things asserts " the more we tell ourselves that the Iraqi resistance is a bunch of evil freedom-haters, the deeper we'll sink into this quagmire," and elsewhere calls the same Ba'ath resistance "patriots."

If you read that carefully, you see that Ted Rall really is calling those crazy Ba'ath truckbombing rapist warlord shitwads "morally good freedom-loving patriots." Also, apparently the Iraqi police-trainees who were killed last week, the ones who are helping to establish a homegrown Iraqi social order that is not based on rape, terror, and disappearances, are "[c]ops, who work for a foreign army of occupation [and therefore] are not innocent. They are collaborators. Traitors. They had it coming."

Let me get this straight.

The remnants of a brutally repressive regime, who have taken to killing innocent people and are dedicated to fomenting chaos, starvation, poverty, and martial law in their own country so that they may return to their former positions as local warlords, are freedom loving patriots. Okay, sure, whatever.

And The Iraqi citizens training as police officers, who are working to dig their country and people out of the Saddam Hussein Memorial Thirty-Year Shit-Trench are traitors who had it coming. Got it. Great.

What the fuck, please? I mean, you can argue about how full the glass is. We can, and will, argue as to whether the Iraqi libervasion was justified, for years to come. But that doesn't change certain things they in most places call "facts." Fact: The libervasion happened. We broke the eggs and killed a bunch of people. Now the US can a) bug out and leave the mess they created to fix itself however it will, or b) stick around and try to keep things afloat.

Fact: There is plenty of room to argue about how best to handle the occupation. The President may, or may not, have the right strategery. I'm betting towards "not," personally. But this argument does not negate the fact of the invasion, option b).

Fact: By any moral code accepted by a large number of average people in the Western world, there is a difference between blowing yourself up along with a number of other people, and training a police force to make sure that kind of thing doesn't happen.

Fact: Moral equivalence is fine as a mind-exercise. Moral equivalence is even fine as a tool for living, as long as it is one of many designed to make a person well-rounded. However, moral equivalence is a hell of a stupid way to live. Hence the term, "Fisking."

I'm horrified that certain elements of the American Left, a group who on the whole are perfectly reasonable patriotic people who just happen to see things differently than most of the blog world, have come to the conclusion that American action is always wrong, resistance to power is always right no matter what the flavor, and that training local police forces in Iraq so that US soldiers may cede authority to them is equivalent to flying a loaded jetliner into a building full of people.

It goes without saying (or at least it should), but Iraqi police recruits are as much traitors to their country as the Democratic Party is to our own, with no respect to Ann Coulter, Michael Savage, or any of the rest of the creeps who are Ted's peers on the other side.

Gives the rest of us a real bad name, it does, and it makes me wanna punch them in the neck.

Please read the fisking, and watch Michael crush a vestige of my slightly-more-liberal past like a bug. It's kind of sad. I really used to like that shitwad.

Max Power links to this article from The Wave, a San Francisco-based entertainment magazine, in which an interviewer asks certain questions of some of the city's candidates for mayor. 

They may seem familiar to you.

From the article:

Rather than confuse you with endorsements, position papers and other outmoded means of political influence, we've decided to get to the bottom of the only question that matters: Is a particular candidate human or an insidious replicant, possessed of physical strength and computational abilities far exceeding our own, but lacking empathy and possibly even bent on our destruction as a species?

The only reliable method that we know of for sniffing out replicants is the Voight-Kampff Test, created by Phillip K. Dick in his book, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and later used by Harrison Ford's character, Deckard, in the film Blade Runner. The test uses a series of questions to evoke an emotional response which androids are incapable of having. By the candidates' responses to this line of questioning, we feel we can say with some certainty whether or not they're replicants. However, we're stopping short of recommending that you vote for them or not. After all, though a replicant mayor may be more likely to gouge a supervisor's eyes out with their thumbs, they have another quality that could be great in an elected official: a four year life span.

Read on, and see which candidates would readily gouge out your eyes and wear them as a garland, and which ones are horrible inhuman machine beings. Fascinating.

New York City notes, part II.

My favorite parts of Manhattan have always been the East Village and the Lower East Side. Starting at about 10th street and heading south, and going no farther west than Broadway, is where I find the places for people like me. I am happy to report that Disney has not yet gotten a toehold here. Canal Street is still a crazy parade, Clinton Street is still full of Latinos, Welcome To The Johnsons, Motor City Bar, Barramundi, Lakeside Lounge, Beauty Bar and Tonic are all still open, and The Pickle Guys are still holding it down next door to the accordian store and the yarmulke wholesaler.

Walking around that part of the city the day after Johnny Cash died made me miss Joey Ramone all over again. The Lower East Side was Joey Ramone's New York, and it fit him to a T. Gawky and alluring, deceptively savvy yet bashingly simple, chaotic, surprisingly kind, and tragic. It was a bad week... Warren Zevon, Johnny Cash, and John Ritter, who I seem to like a lot better than most people do.

But the majority of our trip this time was spent in Brooklyn, kicking around Park Slope and Williamsburg. Being a partisan for Queens myself, I had never really spent much time in the BK apart from a few bars on Smith Street, a party or two in eastern Willamsburg, and that time I spent at a hospital just south of downtown Brooklyn when my testicle was trying to kill me.

Know what? I love Brooklyn. Moreover, the two friend we went to see both live in impossible sitcom apartments. Especially the Vet. The Vet is fresh out of Evil Animal Medical School, moved to New York to take a job in Queens, and lives in a converted warehouse space in the heart of Williamsburg. Apart from being the finest living space I have ever had the pleasure to inhabit in New York, the hipster tide around the neighborhood has ebbed just a little because the thirtysomething liberals and older hipsters have moved in with their money and chased the young Onanistic hipster crowd somewhere else. Where? Hell if I know. East New York? Flatbush? Bed-Stuy? Who cares. It's fantastic! And it makes it possible for actual human-type people to live in spectacular apartments with exposed brickwork, skylights, and four fire doors between them and the outside world. Wonderful. Brooklyn is what Manhattan would be if the power and allure of limitless money hadn't twisted it, Gollum-like, into something crabbed, grasping, and unpleasant.*

Up next: Sappho, Johnny Cash, and Performativity in Art

*Except the St. Marks Bookstore! Long live the St. Marks Bookstore! Unaccountably, I was unable to find a single book at the Strand that I wanted to buy, but at St. Marks, the Goodwife had to physically discipline me to keep me from buying the whole store.

And also the vegetarian chili cheeseburger at Veggie City Diner on 14th. They should build a statute to its immortal glory.

And also the exceptions noted above. It is possible that the usually worse-than-useless J/M/Z subway line is actually a giant viaduct of ley energy, funneling Brooklyn-vibes into Lower Manhattan and Lower Manhattan-vibes into Brooklyn as a guard against the encroaching armies of Disney. That'd be cool, and explain an awful lot.

New York City Notes, Part I.

So the Goodwife and I took the Chinatown bus to New York on Friday night as part of the Goodwife Birthing-Day Festivular Extravaganza 2003 celebration. It's been a long while since I had time to see the city to any great extent, since previous trips back had been on business for the Death Star, my former employer. All I can say?

Sheesh.

My erstwhile city has gone downhill in some strong and meaningful ways. That's not to say that we have slipped back to the Early Koch Years where violence could leap at you from any doorway. Rather, the Disneyfication of Manhattan has proceeded faster than a case of the gangrene up the leg of a Confed'rate soldier left in the mud at Antietam.

Case in point. On Saturday night, at the behest of new friends, we went to a bar in Chelsea, not too many blocks north of the Meatpacking District, about which more later. The Chelsea I remember was a maze of gay bars, wealthy hipsters, and arty/literary types flocking to the new galleries in the Twenties between Tenth and Eleventh. It was remote, a little barren, and a little too ugly to properly gentrify.

As we came up the stairs from the subway at 14th and 8th, it was already clear that change had happened. Roaming packs of women, dressed up like self-hating hookers, were charging up and down every street and avenue, especially coming east from the Hudson. Guh? There's no public transportation in that direction! All that's over there is the mouth of the Holland tunnel (twenty blocks south...) and... oh... Jersey. Right. What are they doing? Walking the river bottom like zombies? And what are they doing not standing in line for Puffy's place over in the Flatiron district?

The bar we ended up at was unreservedly awful, but we stayed out of kindess for the host. It was a beautiful space with a very large, multitiered, brick garden, with $11 drinks and a vew of the stupidest humans I have ever been in personal contact with. Between 10:30 and midnight, we watched the crowd flip over from cheesy debutantes and aftershaven tools living out the Wall Street Dream on the last hundred dollars of their credit line to a 90% bridge and tunnel crowd. In Chelsea!! What the hell? I have never seen that many huaraches, white pants, or hungry leers in my life, outside the gay bars that used to line the street where this place stands now. I have never felt more out of my element in New York, a city that doesn't look twice if you walk down the street stark naked with a giant rubber chicken head on your penis. So, we left. And got hassled by the staff on the way out for not being beautiful. (For the record, I looked effing fabulous)

Worse than this, the fucking meatpacking district, where gay men used to come to, erm, pack meat, is now a fucking tourist and trading desk jockey playground. Fuck! Goddamn Bloomberg, and yes, Giuliani, have a lot to answer for. All the fun, mildew, grit, soul, and nastiness has been bled out of that stretch of lower Manhattan, in favor of the hooting, backwards-hat wearing motherfucker crowd and the hoochies that hang on them like lampreys and I hate it forever.

One of the writer friends we were out with put it well. "Manhattan is the liver of New York."

Damn straight. So we hopped a train back to Brooklyn where we belong.

Next: Joey Ramone, the Lower East Side, real life sitcom living arrangements, and smashing success in the outer boroughs. Fucking Manhattan may rot.

Last night I watched a documentary about the World Trade Center in New York, from its planning to construction to the present day. It was very interesting, but I didn't really care for the ending.

This morning I found out that Johnny Cash had died. Although I can't say it was unexpected-- he's been sick for years, and June was his heart and soul-- that doesn't make it any less sorrowful.

But today I am boarding the Chinatown Bus for New York for my first pleasure trip there since I moved away in mid-2000. It's the goodwife's birthday this week and I wanted to do something special. I expect to be hammered and look fabulous doing it by 8 PM. That way I'll be in bed before all the G-d D-mned hipsters come out and I won't have to punch anyone.

It's the greatest city in the world. Where else can you get haggis delivered hot to your door at four in the morning?

Johnny Cash died of complications due to Diabetes today. He was 71.

I will regret forever that I never saw him play live. He will be missed.

Ross at Spiral Dive (hi, Ross!) gives voice to something that I've been thinking about for a long time.

I've been thinking about the [Palestine-Israel] conflict extensively for the last day or two, and I've decided that I just don't have enough evidence to decide one way or the other. I've been critical of Israel in the past, but let's face it -- it's armchair, arms-length criticism. I really don't have any idea about the reality on the ground. Read the web and you'll find two polar opposites. Does the truth lie in the middle? On one extreme or the other? I have no idea.

Read the entire thing. There's a long, long history behind the situation that makes matters even more complicated than Ross's analysis, but I share Ross' sense of resignation, sadness, and beleagured faith in the goodness of people. I'm strongly inclined to back Israel, but frequently something happens-- a missile goes astray, a raid kills civilians-- that makes it hard to separate the just from the unjust.

Maybe it's due to today's date, or perhaps to my general fatigue, but I find myself growing weary of the hothouse of petty punditry that the internet fosters, especially when it comes to thorny, impossible situations like Israel or the roots of Islamic terrorism. The level of informedness, even from the most erudite sources, hovers somewhere between "Cat In The Hat" and "Weekend At Bernie's II".

Not that I will take a break from blogging-- oh, no, no!-- but the sheer blinkered partisanship just makes me tired. Between the Coulters and the Moores, the content-free blandishments of NPR and the counterfactual drum-beating of Fox News, not to mention the awful entertainment-pap that masquerades as network news, I have an unstoppable urge to draw the curtains, order a pizza and watch Adam Sandler and Chris Farley movies until my brain dribbles out my ears. Today, all America should do just that, for the good of all mankind. F'r god's sake, what a bunch of immature A-personality attention whores our public figures are.

Oh, and I see that the President used September 11, 2003 to start stumping for pieces of the Patriot II.

Asshole.

Two years ago, on a clear, sunny day just like today in every respect but one, over 3000 people died. They died at the hands of terrorists willing to sacrifice their lives to kill the innocent, in the service of an insane and evil cause.

Some ways, we were lucky. Had the planes hit the towers later, many more might have died. Had the towers collapsed sooner, the death toll might have been in the tens of thousands. Had the plane hit the Pentagon on the inside of the north side, it would have missed the mostly untenanted, newly remodeled section on the south. Had the passengers not taken action over rural Pennsylvania, the Capitol or White House might have been hit instead of a field. We should give thanks that only 3000 died.

We have hunted those responsible, with some success, though their leader remains at large. We have sought to end terrorism, and the governments that make it possible. We have not had a terrorist attack on American soil since that terrible day. That must count as at least provisional success in the war on terror.

Over 250 American soldiers, marines and pilots have died in the war on terror. We must remember them also. They fight, and sacrifice, so that we may be safe and free.

But for the 3000, and the 250, we have to continue the fight, to give meaning to the sacrifice of the dead. We have to win. The cost of terrorism to its practitioners must be made so high that no one will ever think to do it again.
I have already mentioned the 9/11 Digital archive, which is well worth seeing. You should also go to Voices: Stories From 9/11 And Beyond at A Small Victory. Bill Whittle has a new post that adds some perspective.

For more links, simply go to the Winds of Change which has the best round up I've seen.

Even though the RIAA is Johno's bete noire, I seem to be posting a lot about it lately. That Junior college across the river from MIT must be keeping him extraordinarily busy for him to miss this incredible monument to recording industry hypocrisy.

The wired article details the activities of BigChampagne, a company that creates databases of information on song downloads, sorted by region. It sells that information (at a substantial markup) to the record labels. When a label sees that one of their songs is being played once a week at three in the morning, and in the same market that song is the number ten download on kazaa; they can put the arm on the local radio station to increase its airtime.

On the one hand, this is clever, sensible and good business. BC has found a need in the market for a certain type of information, and it has filled that need. The labels are responding to the actual desires of real customers by trying to get frequently downloaded songs onto the radio. Which will increase their album sales.

On the other hand, it is rank hypocrisy for the labels to be using this information gleaned from file download services to increase their profits while simultaneously extorting $2000 from twelve year olds, and sueing the grandmas who are using those same file download services. Even congressmen, not known for being with it, are saying that, hey, record people, if you keep going like this, people aren't going to like you.

The record industry needs, at the very least, step down its evil to the level of Microsoft, and adopt an "embrace and extend" policy. By using the file trading services, they could (especially in combination with clever ideas like selling cheaper cds) increase profits. And not be quite so evil.