Why the Moon Matters

Tonight is the biggest, brightest full moon of the year. And while that might be bad news for astronomers, with it blotting out most everything else in the heavens, it will certainly be a sight worth seeing. And you'd better soak it up while you can, because if rumors are to be believed, 221,557 miles is the closest we'll be getting to the moon any time soon.

Now in a period of global recession, where everyone is tightening their belts including the US government, it's important to ask what the big deal is. Why do we want to go to the moon anyway? We've been there already, half a dozen times. It's just a big ball of rock, right? Why should we spend money on space when there are so many problems right here on Earth? And why send a man or a woman when you can send a robot for a fraction of the price?

The Tonight Show, and Lessons Unlearned

I am working on a more political post than this, but the drama unfolding in the world of late night comedy seems oddly more pressing at the moment. Because it seems oh so familiar somehow.

Johnny Carson aired his last episode of The Tonight Show on May 22nd 1992. The studio announced Jay Leno as his successor, who aired his first episode three days later on May 25th. As the story goes, Johnny Carson was not too happy about this pick, nor was his intended successor David Letterman. At the time, Letterman was on Late Night on NBC in the timeslot after Carson. The same show Conan O'Brien would inherit a year later and the same show the painfully unfunny Jimmy Fallon hosts today. Letterman, rightly furious with NBC, promptly jumped ship and signed a contract with CBS for a show to compete with Leno's Tonight Show, called Late Show with David Letterman.

Hindsight, Hiroshima, and a Hypothetical Hot War

I've been reading a lot about nuclear weapons. I have since had a very scary thought. We'll turn that very scary thought to a very brief thought experiment.

Let's suppose for a moment a single, seemingly slight alteration to our own history. Let us imagine a scenario where we, the United States of America, won the war in the Pacific without resorting to nuclear weapons. Pretend that Harry Truman went the other way and chose to win the war the old fashioned way, a la Operation Downfall. Or alternately, pretend that the Manhattan Project was unable to complete its aims until after the end of the war. Or imagine a successful assassination plot against Emperor Hirohito. Or a seemingly implausible scenario where Japan surrenders of its own accord for a reason of your choice.

We have of course been told countless times about the Japanese bushido code and their supposed reluctance to surrender even in the face of inevitable defeat. I am not going to debate this here as it is beyond the scope of this thought experiment. Whatever rationalizations you decide to employ are up to you -- all I ask is that you attempt to imagine an end to the Second World War that does not involve the deployment of nukes. The details of that end are not terribly important to my argument here.