Fighting Somnapathy

To Slay the Mighty Gerrymander

2010-11-01T23:05:00.000-07:00

It is the eve of election day, and I'm putting up a post I wrote three weeks ago. It's about as good a way to defibrillate my blog as any.

Actually, it isn't. Practically nobody would seem to give a bat's ass about Proposition 20. I would probably do better to talk about Proposition 19, the most newsworthy and groundbreaking ballot measure up for California in November. And rest assured, I have opinions on that. But they are neither inventive or interesting. Truth be told, I'm most excited about Proposition 21, which would give me a great excuse to spend more time on Mount Diablo. But again, that's about the depth of my interest there. I doubt I could go on at great length on that subject.

No, instead I suppose I'll prattle on about Proposition 20. Which, to a more casual observer, holds little interest save possibly for odd timing which places it on the same ballot as Proposition 27. Both measures seek to enact mutually exclusive provisions; only one can pass. And in the event that both are approved by voters, only the one with the most votes will become law.

It's a fun twist, but even this isn't what I'm interested in here.
I will certainly vote against Prop 27. All Prop 27 does is repeal a measure that I voted for in 2008, Prop 11. Which is really where this whole narrative takes off (in case you're having trouble keeping all these numbers straight). Prop 11 took the power to redistrict California's state legislature away from that same legislature, and gave it to an independent commission. Which is an idea that I am, in principle, entirely for. I believe I have mentioned that I am somewhat of a political independent. And while most (but not all) of my political positions can be said to fall on the left side of the spectrum, this does not mean that I have any admiration for the Democratic Party that (sometimes) champions those causes. I will vote for their candidates -- often -- but I find the party itself only marginally more palatable than their frenemies across the aisle. So any measure that wrests power either from that party or the other, as Proposition 11 did in 2008, has my vote. And any transparent attempt to return that power to that party, a la this year's Proposition 27, does not.

But for some reason, Proposition 20 is not so cut and dry for me. Essentially, it is just a simple extension of Prop 11, setting up an independent committee to determine the redistricting of California's congressional districts. The stakes are perhaps a bit higher, but my independent philosophies do not really make a distinction between our state legislature and our congressional delegation; both need to be freed from the tight grip of our two-party system, particularly where boundaries are concerned. But that's just it. It's a problem that Prop 20 has and that Prop 11 had, and I just didn't see it until I really took a hard look. Both of these measures, in kind of a twisted way, actually empower the two-party system in a way that the old system doesn't.

These independent commissions require partisanship. Fourteen members, of whom five must be Democrats, five must be Republicans, and four must be either independents or members of third parties. At least three from each group must approve a final redistricting plan. I like the independent part, but I don't like the language which essentially requires political party participation. It enshrines the two party system in a way that the United States constitution does not, and that George Washington wouldn't have dreamed of. Nor would he have dreamed of California being a state. The biggest state no less. I suppose I digress. My point is, institutionalized partisanship simply rubs me the wrong way.

And yet, how else can an independent counsel operate under our current political situation? All independents? But what if all turned out to be left-leaning, or all right-leaning, and how would you prevent that sort of thing? And worse, what of all the Democrats and Republicans in California who wouldn't have a voice in redistricting? I may hate their party apparatus, but I hold no grudge against the people themselves, surely not to the point of shutting them out politically. On that note, if we are to discuss people being properly represented in these independent committees, why this 5-5-4 ratio? There are quite a few more Democrats than Republicans in this state. According to this poll I dug up, California is about 37% Democratic, 31% Republican, and 21% Independent. Throwing the remainders (likely third party members) to the independents, and sticking to a 14 person committee, that would leave 5.18 democrats, 4.34 republicans, and 4.48 independents. And this is using 2005 numbers; the Democrats gained a wider party advantage in 2008, though perhaps they have lost some of it since. Of course, allowing one party more power in an alleged independent counsel would allow that party to sway the results. And then we're back where we started.

I suppose what it comes down to here is this: there is no good solution toward untangling party influence from redistricting efforts. And essentially, I'm taking out my political party frustrations on a bill that is at least attempting to address these concerns. I don't love Proposition 21. But does it beat the hell out of the status quo? Almost certainly.

Of course, what they really need to do is commission an "independent committee" to write a computer algorithm. Have it take into account population swells and ebbs by region. Have it group constituencies as best it can by economic and political interests. Have it empower no political party more than the state's party identification would suggest it should. And let each party get equally angry about its tough decisions.

That would be perfect. Proposition 20 is merely okay. But I guess it's a possible step toward that direction. I should just be thankful that I live in a state whose voters are willing to experiment with independent committees, jungle primaries, and time-traveling Austrian robot governors. Insert "but not Prop 8" snark here.

The Lieberman/Crist Dilemma

2010-05-01T21:28:00.000-07:00

Partisanship is a very, very unusual thing. Not an uncommon thing, alas, but an unusual thing. When you stop to think about it. Most people don't.

It seems like every night, Jon Stewart is railing against Fox News concerning their massive narrative shift after Obama's Inauguration. You juxtapose a few clips of Bill O'Reilly calling the Tea Party protestors patriots with a few clips of Bill O'Reilly calling anti-war protestors unpatriotic. Laughs ensue. Etc. While I may lean left, I do think it is a shame that we don't have somebody comparing quotes from insurgent Democrats in 2004 to quotes from entrenched Democrats in 2010. Perhaps they are doing that sort of thing on Fox News. I wouldn't know anything about that.

But what is one to do when one finds that same narrative switch in themselves? This is the question I hope to touch on here. I am having some trouble wrapping my head around it. I do not think I could possibly do it full justice. This is only my best, first attempt. A scratching of the surface.

I would like to do this by focusing on two senate candidates, four years apart, shunned by their respective political parties and forced to go it alone.

I live in California, where one can either register with a political party, or register as "declining to state" a political party. I have chosen the latter. I am not terrifically fond of our two party political system, although most of the time I end up voting for a candidate next to the letter D. I have long been a fan of a four party structure, where candidates are evaluated along social and economic axes. As a writer, a fan of narratives and drama, I am excited about Crist's announcement. But I also think that I might almost vote for him -- were I still a Floridian, and even though I may not agree with him as much as his democratic rival, Congressman Meek -- just on the principal of promoting earnest third party candidates.

So then why do I still have such a harsh opinion of one Senator Joseph Lieberman, [I-CT]?

When one compares their situations, the differences are slight, trivial. Lieberman stayed in the Democratic primary up until the end, losing to Ned Lamont. Crist has bowed out of the primary early. But I suspect Crist would have stayed in the race if he could have, hedging his bets, were the deadline to file as an independent not 24 hours off. Lieberman was an incumbent Democratic senator trying to keep his seat, while Crist is an incumbent Republican governor trying to make a move to Washington. But clearly, Crist has been portrayed as establishment by his Republican rival Rubio. As a Republican, Crist was a nonincumbent running with all the disadvantages of incumbency.

Perhaps, as an argument, I might hide behind Lieberman's boldness. His unapologetic nature. The fact that he was promising to run as an independent before he even lost the primary. There seemed to be something bold and self-assured there, where Crist seems much more reluctant. And yet I don't think I would want to seriously craft an excuse based on tone. For starters, it's far too subjective. In the end, it's still an excuse, and Crist and Lieberman are still walking quite similar paths.

I could take an issue-based approach, certainly. Divorce myself from the drama and focus on issues. Lieberman was always a moderate democrat. Liberal on social issues (pro Gay rights, pro gun control) and hawkish on foreign policy (unabashedly pro Iraq War. Still.) As a critic of the Iraq War from the get go, I would be well justified in disliking Joe Lieberman. His endorsement of John McCain (a man whom I respected during the first half of the 00s, until his blatant rightwing course correction) and his one-man crusade against the public option -- both occurring after his 2006 reelection -- only add fuel to the fire. And yet I have an immediate gut-level positive reaction to Crist's move, despite his proven record as a center-right politician. I disagree with Crist on many of the issues that I agree with Lieberman on -- gun rights and gay rights to name a couple. It is true that Crist seems to be moving to the center on certain issues since his independent swing. Education and Offshore Drilling are the most obvious of these. But if I were to engage in an honest examination of both politicians' positions over the years, it would be challenging to make a pro Charlie Crist argument of it. I have had agreements and disagreements with both characters, but in a head to head Lieberman would almost certainly come out on top. I am sure to have far more agreements with a socially liberal war hawk than an all around conservative with a handful of notable exceptions.

There are other factors, certainly. Crist is an all around more likable personality than Lieberman. But in the during the 2000 campaign, Bush was a much more likable personality than Gore, and that didn't stop me then. One could more easily structure a loyalty argument against Lieberman, juxtaposing his place on the Democratic ticket in 2000 against his endorsement of the Republican ticket in 2008. But as I've said before, I find loyalty to one's political party quite a strange and potentially harmful concept. I find Representative Cole's remark on the third page of this article deplorable. Since when is one's political party such a high priority anyhow? It certainly wasn't when the constitution was written.

I could even make an argument of maturity, based on my aging four years since Lieberman made his party switch. Perhaps I am somehow more independently minded, less partisan than I was four years ago? But no. I have never been registered with a political party, not once, since I first registered to vote in time for the 2004 election. I don't think I can hide behind that one.

In fact, this hiding instinct is really the root of this whole mental dilemma. It is a habit that I suspect those who spend more than a few moments a day reading about and thinking about political matters fall into quite often, whether they realize it or not. We find ways of justifying why Action X by a politician from their side is more deplorable than the quite similar Action Y from a politician on our side. The easy, semi-recent example here was when democrats and like-minded liberals went after Mark Sanford, but resented similar accusations against their own sitting president a mere decade ago. "At least we're not being hypocrites," they would say in reference to Republican platforms of family values. And yet by using that same excuse they were engaging in an equally-damning hypocrisy. And in this manner, on countless issues, both parties have created a situation where actions they undertake are right and just merely because they have taken them. And actions the other party has undertaken are wrong, misguided, using the same reasoning.

While everybody is a hypocrite some of the time, this is not a cycle I particularly want to wrap myself in. And I feel that now is the time, while I am still young and have only successfully voted one president into office, to draw lines in a wet cement. Lines in the sand can erode with the political wind, and I would prefer etch my boundaries in a less impermanent medium.

And yet the question remains. What to do about Charlie Crist and Joe Lieberman? Here is my cement line. Perhaps it will be resurfaced in time, but not by the mere actions of one politician, or in the span of a single shift of the party in power.

A credible third party candidate with a decent shot at the office in question is a rare thing. It is something worth encouraging. Particularly when their fundraising hurdles are so intense -- which is incidentally, the main reason I have zero sympathy for these arguments from both sides that somehow Charlie Crist is taking the selfish, easy route. It simply does not compute with the fiscal realities of the matter. Anyhow, so long as there is a decent amount of overlap between their opinions and my own, and the candidate in question does not implode under the weight of an inexcusable scandal, then they have will have my vote. But after obtaining office, I am free to evaluate that candidate's performance as I will. They will be held to a higher standard during the reelection campaign.

From what I knew of Lieberman in 2006, using this current standard, I would have voted for him. I may not have liked his position on the wars we were (and still are) fighting. But frankly, we need more [I]s in congress. And moderate voices such as his are sorely lacking, particularly in the senate.

From what I know of Lieberman now, I would not vote for his reelection. Not because of his endorsement of McCain, which I couldn't care less about. But his threat to side with the Republicans on a filibuster against the public option was too much. It is not something I would have anticipated in 2006, as it seems quite out of character with the socially liberal Joe Lieberman I knew then (and with his previous commitment toward a Medicare Buy-in proposal). This action in particular gave off a peculiar lobbyist stench -- the sort of action that reeks of nonindependence, quite frankly. It is not the sort of thing I would encourage with a vote for reelection.

Charlie Crist is now in the same boat, exactly where he belongs. I am eagerly looking forward to the drama of the Florida senate race this year, and I -- tentatively -- wish him the best of luck. It is absolutely worth supporting a fiscal conservative and a moderate without an [R] next to his name. As those marked in such a manner have shown the remarkable ability to band together on even the most trivial of legislation lately. Charlie Crist's demonstration of his independence is warmly appreciated. However, I intend to keep a close eye on him. Should he win, his reelection campaign will perhaps be judged more critically.

This is somewhat moot, of course. I am no longer a Floridian, and I never was a Nutmegger. But I can hope for a credible independent candidate in California. Certainly in this strange political climate we find ourselves in, such hypotheticals are sure to turn up with increasing frequency.

And I should note that this is not a prescription for action. This was only an attempt to analyze my conflicting attitudes toward two quite-similar situations. An effort to make sure that my attitudes and values are not conditional on what political persuasion an individual happens to possess. Of course, you might arrive -- fairly -- at an entirely different conclusion. However you do it, I would encourage you to think about such things. It can be such a hassle to flip your talking points one hundred and eighty degrees every four to eight years.

Progressive? Pissed off? Want to send a message?

2010-02-04T16:19:00.000-08:00

Progressives are mopey, and for good reason. Health care has been downgraded from single payer to public option to none of the above to what looks like none at all. The democratic president is now advocating a rash spending freeze similar to the one proposed by his opponent on the campaign trail. A republican has just been seated in Ted Kennedy's uber-safe Massachusetts senate seat.

I have seen some talk about voting Republican to punish the democrats for being a bunch of wimps, in a proposition which should sound familiar to anybody who remembers PUMA. For any progressive seriously considering voting for a conservative republican candidate, there is a proverb about nose amputation that would seem to apply.

For the record, I am not pushing for a nationwide progressive punishment of democrats. This is not an opinion piece or a call to arms. We've got another nine months until the midterm elections, and an awful lot could happen between now and then. My mind remains open. Consider this more of a how-to guide, a way to make your opinions heard if your level of patience is lower than mine. If you're mad as hell and you're not going to take it anymore, then here are a handful of much simpler, much more effective alternatives to voting republican.

(1) Vote for an opponent in the primary

This is the first step. Primary season has kicked off in some states, such as Illinois, so it's probably about time you consider this possibility (unless of course you are living in Illinois). You look at the field of candidates and find somebody who most closely matches your viewpoint. If nobody quite fits the bill, or if the candidate with whom you have a beef is running unopposed, proceed to step two. Primarying them out is the first step, even when it's a long shot. The more pissed-off progressives who vote for alternative candidates, the more the incumbent sweats. He or she will sweat tons if they are successfully ousted in the primary, but even a close race or a sizable, vocal minority should be enough to make them rethink their approach to their base. Unless of course their name is Joe Lieberman, who to my frustration (and surely, Connecticut's) seems to defy such rational projections. Otherwise, this is certainly your best first course of action. If this doesn't work or if suddenly the new candidate starts sounding suspiciously like the incumbent they primaried against, your second option is,

(2) Vote third party

I get the impression that since the 2000 presidential election, this option has become extremely distasteful. It wasn't the most popular option to begin with, but if you take a look at the 2004 election in particular a whopping 99.01% of voters went with either a Democrat or a Republican (compare to 96.25% in 2000, 89.95% in 1996, 80.4% in 1992 and if you're curious, 98.58% in 2008). The lesson we all seem to have taken away from the 2000 election was this: by voting for a less-centrist third party you are taking away votes from your party's base, and doing so can be damaging enough to cost a major party candidate the race in a close election. For some reason we fail to remember some of the rhetoric that was dancing around in 2000. That George Bush and Al Gore were largely interchangeable. Arguably, John Kerry in 2004 and Barack Obama in 2008 learned some lessons from Gore's puzzling anti-establishment campaign. You'd better believe that Al Gore had some regrets about paying too much attention to the moderates and not enough to his predecessor's base of support. Those who run these things pay attention to who votes for whom, and if they see an uptick in third party support they tend to learn a few lessons by the next election. Your last, arguably last resort option is,

(3) Don't vote at all

But Ryan, we have to vote. It is our duty as citizens, and it is what generations of veterans have fought for! Okay. Fine. But I contend that not voting can be nearly as effective a message as anything else. Because post election analysis will reveal your intentions through statistics. Take for example Scott Brown's win in Massachusetts. Here is a highly biased source which aims to examine the viewpoints of Scott Brown voters who had previously voted for Obama, and Obama voters who stayed home for this year's special election. You'd better believe that the DSCC and the NRSC are looking at those numbers too. Everybody is looking to see who wasn't excited enough to vote in the special election, and thinking up ways to use them to their advantage -- The Democrats of course, wanting higher turnout from their base while the Republicans will be seeking to dampen democratic enthusiasm. Not voting is not necessarily just the lazy way out, particularly if there are no reasonable alternative candidates to vote for during the primary or the general election. Plus, you can always show up to vote for the various propositions and amendments and local candidates while skipping whichever particular national race or races have you bummed.

To be clear, I am not advocating not voting as anything other than a last resort, when you feel the need to punish an incumbent of your party (or the party you most identify with) and there are no reasonable alternatives. I don't believe voting should have to be some "lesser of two evils" scenario where you are forced to make Sophie's Choice on the ballot. If any race presents you with two equally repugnant options, then leaving that section unmarked is a much better way to send a message than putting a grudging check next to a name you feel has betrayed you or a name whose politics are the direct opposite of yours.

* * * *

It's your choice, depending on your thoughts on the value of voting. But any of these is going to be an effective message you can send to the Democratic Party that they have abandoned your needs as a voter. If you, a progressive, decide that voting Republican is the best way to send that message, you are wrong. Post-election statistics will show that your area voted more republican than 2008, due to people switching parties. Which will send a message to democrats that they need to be more centrist and more conservative, not less.

And please note, for any pissed off Republicans who are reading, you could insert "conservative" for "progressive" and switch around the democratic and republican terms in this article, and the same rules apply. If your congressman/woman or senator or governor or president is no longer sticking up for their base, and you are a conscientious member of that base, then either primary them out for a better candidate, vote third party, or don't show up. They'll get the message. And it will make our democracy more vibrant and more representative in the process.

Want to dig the knife in even further? Then write them a letter explaining exactly why they lost your vote.

Just don't defect to the opposite party. More likely than not, nobody analyzing election patterns will be able to discern a thing from your attempt at punishment. Or the message they discern will be the direct antithesis to the one you intended. Even if the end result is the same, and the opposing party wins the election, the loser will at least get the right message, and hopefully their party will get it right the next time.

I feel like this should be fairly common sense stuff. Civics 101. But too often I hear about people voting opposite their political leanings in protest. Or forcing themselves to vote for a candidate in a race fielding two equally unappealing candidates. Arguably, both of these actions actually dilute the power of your voice in a representative democracy. Better to vote for an alternative candidate, or not vote in that race at all. These are rational actions, in line with your intentions as a voter. And as a result, they are much easier to decipher by analysts than votes based on apathy or irrational spite.

Make no mistake; this is the end of America's Manned Space Program

2010-02-01T15:57:00.000-08:00

The announcement came as expected and of course they are trying to spin this as a new beginning for NASA. And while there are some good investments being made here, there's shockingly very little focus on the present. Let me tackle a few of the biggest issues I see with this new plan.

1) The Constellation Program is not just Apollo Redux

Let me just cut this one down right here. While yes, the Ares rockets are using shuttle technology, and yes the Orion capsule itself is a bigger, higher tech version of the Apollo capsule, the mission itself is entirely different.

Apollo was a PR stunt, pure and simple. We went up there to inspire our nation while flipping off the Ruskies. There were plans to extend the program into something more practical, but the Apollo program was canceled long before any of those got off the ground.

Constellation is, at its very core, about "extending human presence across the solar system". We aren't just going back to plant a flag on a rock. We're going back to stay. Or at least, we will if the fine people in Washington ever get their priorities straight. The technology isn't new, with exceptions, but the mission is actually forward thinking this time, with plans for a permanent base by 2024.

It is just asinine for white house officials to complain about Constellation for "revisiting old places astronauts had already been". I could go on all day about the critical importance of a moon base to our long term space exploration goals -- and I have -- but what I think is even more troublesome is,

2) What are we supposed to do in the meantime?

The space shuttle is being retired this year. This September. In less than nine months' time. Now one of the great things about the Constellation program is, it's versatile. While the heavy rocket intended for the moon has not yet been tested, a smaller rocket designed to take the Constellation's Orion capsule into Earth orbit made its maiden flight this past October. Of course, quite a few more tests will be required in order to certify the rocket for manned flight (not to mention all the testing of the Orion capsule itself). But we've made a lot of progress on that front already. Now tell me, what is the current state of commercial spaceflight?

We are already far behind where we need to be. It should be quite humbling for our country to have to rely on those very Ruskies whom we dominated during the space race in order to ferry our astronauts up to the space station. Which we will, no matter what is ultimately decided for NASA's future. And we can either hope that honest efforts at manned spaceflight materialize in the commercial sector, as we have been prophesying since the early days of the space program. Or we can do it ourselves, as we have been all along.

Projections for manned flights of Ares-I to the space station are set at 2015. Commercial flights have been estimated as feasible by 2016. One might anticipate delays either way. Meanwhile, we are set to retire the space station in 2016. No doubt that will be delayed as well. But what happens then? What are we supposed to keep doing up there in low-Earth orbit that we haven't been doing for the past 29 years? Which brings me to the most important point,

3) This new direction lacks direction, vision

Say what you will about Bush's Vision for Space Exploration. At least it lived up to its title.

I am all for spending money on advanced lift technologies. And the extra money for climate change research is a Godsend. But suddenly, if these budget changes come to pass, we'll find a NASA without any overarching aim. The shuttle will be retired. The space station will be limping along. NASA will no longer have its own dedicated lift vehicles for manned spaceflight.

About the only sort of goal I can glean is a vague plan to send astronauts to near-Earth asteroids on the fruits of this new technology investment. We've had vague goals to do just that since the sixties. There is no overall mission here, there is no grand new vision. And without that, I just don't see our country's manned space program surviving.

Low earth orbit is a fun place, sure. There will always be science to be done up there that we simply can't do down here. But that's all we've been doing since 1973, since Skylab, Apollo-Soyuz, and the Space Shuttle. We've been limping along for almost thirty years with a fancy launch system but no grand aims. And now we're on track to lose our launch systems too.

I can't see how this translates to a net positive for manned space exploration. At best it's a gamble, that these technology investments will materialize into some grand new next generation vehicle that will reinvigorate our space program once and for all. But until then, we have no mission and no vehicle. Just a bunch of astronauts paying for tickets on the Soyuz. And at that point, our manned space program is no different than, say Brazil's or Israel's or Japan's.

So go ahead and add manned space exploration to the list of things our country was once number one at. Celebrate its death if you're into that sort of thing. But make no mistake, this is the end. There's really no turning back after this.

Why the Moon Matters

2010-01-29T13:58:00.001-08:00

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?

There are a lot of questions you can ask, and some of them are of course more valid than others. Let me summarize my thoughts on the matter in the most straightforward way I know how: Our destiny is out there beyond the orbit of this planet. Our most promising possible futures have us spread out across this solar system, and perhaps beyond. But if this is the case -- and I assure you it is -- why aren't we doing more to make these dreams a reality? If I may quote the very president who is initiating these cuts in the first place:

"From the day I took office, I have been told that addressing our larger challenges is too ambitious — that such efforts would be too contentious, that our political system is too gridlocked and that we should just put things on hold for awhile.

For those who make these claims, I have one simple question:

How long should we wait? How long should America put its future on hold?"

There is no time like the present. This year will mark the final flight of the space shuttle, most likely sometime mid-September. And given the track record, the number of close calls, and the age of these vehicles (the initial projection for the lifespan of these vehicles was ten years), the retirement can't come soon enough. And what then? We still have a multi-billion dollar space station in orbit. In order to get there we'll have to pay Russia to ferry our astronauts back and forth until either we come up with a replacement or we de-orbit the thing in 2016.

But then why not just build a cheap capsule and use an existing rocket to reach the station? Why this expensive, ambitious plan to return to the moon? Why the moon? What does the moon matter?

One might as well ask why manned exploration of the solar system matters. It amounts to the same thing. If we don't go back to the moon and stay there this time, we're not going much of anywhere.

The moon is a three day's journey. No Apollo mission there and back was longer than 12 days. Its low gravity provides a much easier launching point for rockets than Earth's. We recently confirmed the presence of water at the lunar south pole. Water, of course, has many uses beyond potability: one can separate it and make oxygen to breathe and hydrogen for rocket fuel, and it also works well as insulation to protect from harmful solar radiation. Perhaps even more interestingly, the dust that coats the surface of the moon (the lunar regolith) contains everything we need to fabricate solar cells. With water and power, we can build a habitat that -- over time -- would require fewer and fewer expensive launches to resupply it. In short, a permanent moon base could eventually become self sustaining, and would provide an ideal stepping stone for missions to other bodies in the solar system.

But why not skip the moon and go straight to Mars, as some have argued? It is certainly possible. But it would be more expensive, and we'd get less return on our investment. It would essentially be a publicity stunt, the same way the Apollo missions were. A gimmick to capture the public's attention. There's little science it would accomplish, and it would do astoundingly little to advance our species' tentative foothold in space. I mentioned Apollo 17 lasted 12 days. The current record holder for the longest time spent in space is Valeri Polyakov, who stayed in orbit for 427.7 consecutive days. That's a bit shy of projections of two or three years for a manned mission to Mars. We still haven't solved some major, major problems of long duration spaceflight, such as muscle atrophy and premature osteoporosis. And of course the trip would require a rocket much, much larger than any the world has yet seen. We could do it. But not yet, and not without great cost.

The most feasible, most realistic way to get our species beyond low Earth orbit is to start with the moon. It's close, it contains the resources we need, and it's easy to launch off of. I dare you to imagine a future where humanity has explored the far reaches of our solar system but has not yet maintained a permanent presence on the moon. It's laughable. It doesn't make any sense. Columbus stopped off at the Canary Islands to resupply on his first three voyages. And so will we at the moon on our way to Mars, at least while we're still starting off.

The moon is essential, absolutely essential to manned spaceflight efforts. We screwed it up the first time by cancelling the Apollo missions as soon as the public lost interest, before the really ambitious stuff started. We'd better not screw it up again, or it'll be a long, long time before our species goes much of anywhere.

But to bring this home, let us ask why that is so important? What's the big deal if our species just stays put and works things out down here? Why should we spend money on a future we'll never see, when we have so many problems right here on Earth?

Well all of those things would stop mattering pretty quickly if an asteroid or a comet of sufficient size was barreling toward us. All of those things would stop mattering if a nuclear war erupted. Or if our worst fears about climate change are realized. Or once our population levels start exceeding the food production capabilities of our ecosystem. The more time passes, the closer the probability of our species' survival approaches zero, unless we spread out and lighten the load on our poor planet. You can argue for climate change legislation until you're blue in the face -- and I'll be right there alongside you. But if you don't see the merits of colonizing our solar system, then I'm afraid you're being just as short sided as those who got our planet into this mess in the first place.

If there is any reason for our destructive, inconsiderate species to exist on this planet at all, it is this. For all our carnage and our rape of this planet, we are the only ones on it with the power to escape it. We are the only ones here capable of propagating life beyond the confines of Earth. What higher purpose could we have? What loftier goal than to spread our planet's blessings to the far corners of space?

If that rhetoric is too much for you, then I propose a simple alternative: either we spread our wings or we die. It is your choice. But the more you put it off, the closer you bring our doom.

We can't do any of this without first settling the moon. And to settle it, we have to go there. And if we decide not to because it's too expensive (for comparison, NASA's current budget is about 3% of that of the department of defense), then we're missing the point. It's far more costly not to.

So for those who have read this far, I have one more request. Over this weekend, write your senators. Write your representative. This is kind of a big deal. If our president -- whom I supported during the election -- is going to be so stubborn and short sighted on this issue, then the only alternative is to take it up with the legislature.

Thanks for reading, thanks (I hope) for acting, and Godspeed.

The Tonight Show, and Lessons Unlearned

2010-01-12T16:13:00.000-08:00

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.

And here's the kicker. Allegedly, Jay Leno and NBC were keen to avoid all this drama once his run on The Tonight Show ended. So in September of 2004, they announced what some might describe as a peaceful transfer of power, five years in advance of the actual event. A couple of highlights worth noting:

"But the silent treatment also is likely a maneuver to avoid any semblance of the contentious transfer of power that occurred when NBC last engineered its late-night transition 12 years ago. When Johnny Carson retired from "Tonight" in 1992, it set off a well-publicized struggle between Leno and David Letterman to become his replacement."

and

"But the most crucial aspect of O'Brien's new deal is a guarantee that he will inherit Leno's chair, an assurance Letterman did not secure when he was host of "Late Night" on NBC from 1982-93. After his failed bid to succeed Carson, Letterman switched to CBS, and O'Brien replaced him."

Clearly, these aspirations broke down somewhere along the line. Probably at that point where Leno decided that maybe he didn't want to give up his job anyway, so he cut a deal with NBC for a new show, quite similar to his old show, at a new 10:00 timeslot. Clearly, his feet were cold. He even mentioned in interviews his willingness to return to The Tonight Show if asked. And we all know what happened from there. Leno's new show, although cheap to produce, did not earn the ratings that local NBC affiliates were looking for. People changed the channel, and watched somebody else's 11:00 news instead. And then Conan O'Brien's new incarnation of The Tonight Show at 11:35 suffered without as many viewers watching the local news as a lead in. The affiliates revolted, and here we are.

This doesn't paint a particularly good picture of NBC in general or of Jay Leno in particular. As always, Conan O'Brien is a class act, seemingly more concerned about the integrity of the fifty-six year old institution of The Tonight Show than anything else.

Perhaps I am a bit biased, as I enjoy Conan O'Brien's show (although I am not a regular viewer), while I find Jay Leno's shtick bland and humorless. But if you take a fair look at the history of the situation, as I have attempted to here, it is difficult not to plant one's face firmly in one's palm. The last Tonight Show transition was painful enough, and it resulted in the exodus of one of NBC's most talented comedians to another network. It seems like history is on the verge of repeating itself. I hope at the last minute somebody at NBC sees reason, remembers that Conan's Tonight Show is still young, is still building an audience, and that its audience is not as close to death as Leno's. If Fox steps in, snags Conan, and puts him up at 11:35, the future of NBC's late night lineup looks pretty danged dim.

Hindsight, Hiroshima, and a Hypothetical Hot War

2010-01-05T01:09:00.000-08:00

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.

Now then, the war is over. And the world has entered the nuclear age. The first nations to develop this power are of course, just as in our own history, the United States and the United Soviet Socialist Republics. And tensions between these powers are still every bit as strained as in our postwar history, as of course the war in Europe concluded in precisely the same manner.

Except in this particular history, no nuclear weapons have yet been used in wartime. Nobody has seen their effect on human life firsthand. And in such a case, might the trigger fingers of our superpowers have been perhaps a bit itchier?

Might Truman have been willing to give MacArthur more leeway with atomic warfare during the Korean War?

Might the Cuban Missile Crisis have resolved itself in an entirely different manner?

If you wish to delve into more detail and make this perhaps a bit more frightening, let us imagine a Harry Truman who refused to bomb Japan and allowed the Pacific Theater to drag on into 1946 and 1947. A Harry Truman who, as a result, lost the 1948 election to a candidate far more hawkish and conservative than Thomas Dewey. Imagine a United States in the late 1940s who was both deeply resentful of letting the war with Japan drag on while sitting on its budding nuclear stockpile, and simultaneously oblivious of the actual consequences of nuclear devastation. Such a superpower would not have allowed the Cold War to proceed as it did.

Now, to be perfectly clear, I am not attempting to rationalize our bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. On the contrary, I have always been rather skeptical of this country's justifications of its use of atomic power to end the war. I understand the stakes were quite high. But I am simultaneously repulsed by the scale of devastation wrought, particularly against civilians. The traditional debate on this subject is somewhat of an aside to my own argument, but I feel it is important to state my feelings on it nonetheless.

A history where nuclear weapons were never developed, or never deployed, would of course be preferable to any of these histories, and I invite you to imagine one.

However, if we are to assume that the deployment of nuclear weapons in wartime is inevitable -- and I am not necessarily convinced that it is. Or if we are to allow their wartime deployment as a "given" for the sake of logical argument. Then I am suddenly struck with the notion that the world as a whole got off rather light. That we were, in a sense, lucky.

Lucky -- and I don't use that word lightly -- that at the point in history where those nuclear weapons were deployed in a theatre of war, there was only a single nuclear power on our planet.

We saw their wartime devastation at a time when there was nobody to retaliate. Had their development been delayed a mere five years, that would not be the case. The USA and the USSR would be two powers sitting on a grand new display of power and no real-life example to dissuade them from deploying it.

If nothing else, Hiroshima and Nagasaki taught us lessons. I am sure that brings little solace to the victims and their families. But I am nonetheless horrified at the idea of a pair of superpowers who never learned from them.

Fighting Somnapathy

2009-12-09T16:16:00.000-08:00

I've used the made up word "somnapathy" for several years now as a web handle. I don't know how or why I came up with the idea for the portmanteau. The word "somna" is Swedish for "to fall asleep" -- it meshed better than the Latin equivalent "soma" would have. And then the apathy part is pretty much self explanatory. I suppose I was probably in a state of somnapathy when I donned it -- I was probably fairly tired and I didn't much care about anything at the moment.

I've been meaning to come up with a better name for this blog than the placeholder "Just Thoughts," and I kept coming back to this idea of somnapathy. And how it's actually a very dangerous state. We all come by it here and there, particularly when we're not particularly busy, or have perhaps just finished being particularly busy. It happened to me a lot as an undergrad, as I imagine is quite common.

When I started this blog I didn't want it to just be a bloggy blog where I talked about mundane details or ranted about my life -- I wanted to make it about something. But at the same time I didn't want to make that something so specific that it would constrain what I could or could not say here. It's a problem I've been kicking around half seriously for a few days now, and as a result I have come up with the new title as seen above.

Fighting Somnapathy.

Because in the end, the most valuable use this blog can have is to be productive. So if I want to dig into climate change and report my findings, I can do that here. If I want to rant about the current state of the space program and its place in the federal budget, I can do that here. If I want to fool around with data and make charts and graphs and maps, I can do that too. And even if nobody sees it, I'll still feel like my whims will have been sufficiently productive.

About that Raw Data from the 80s....

2009-12-05T13:54:00.000-08:00

I don't mean for this to be a climate change blog in the slightest, nor did I intend to actually update this blog more than one day in a row. But I feel like my previous post here might be well supplemented by addressing a third issue that the skeptics and pundits have raised recently. Namely, the issue of the missing raw data from the 1980s.

This won't be nearly the in depth analysis my previous post was. I haven't found quite as many justifications or explanations for this, nor is there all that much to look into -- the facts are fairly straightforward. And while the climategate business is a clear smear job intended to coincide with the Copenhagen Diagnosis where the accusers are afraid of context, this is harsher and more damaging. But that said, there are a few things we need to keep in mind anyway.

1) The data was dumped in the 1980s, before the mass hysteria toward (and counter-backlash against) global warming. Nobody at that point could have predicted the subsequent political contention over climate change -- and if they had, perhaps they might have made efforts to preserve the data. I guess the conspiracy theorists won't be too convinced by the timing, but it's a little hard to claim malicious intent with a straight face.

2) We live in the age of cheap terabytes. It's easy to forget that this was not always the case. Back when storage was expensive and unwieldy, all sorts of companies and organizations were forced to ditch old data. Any fan of Doctor Who can tell you this. And if the BBC couldn't afford to keep a comprehensive archive, do you really think a group of climatologists relying on grant money could?

3) I feel like the public (read: the pundits) are overemphasizing the importance of "raw data," and, likewise, the scientists aren't doing themselves any favors by referring to what they kept as "value-added data." Do people seriously think that the scientists sat around and added a few degrees to each data set and then deleted the originals to fleece the public? Don't answer that. Anyhow, here is a link to an article by Thomas C. Peterson and Russell S. Vose for the American Meteorological Society that discusses adjustments they make to their own temperature data. I'll pull a quote from the ninth page (2844 in the journal):

"Most long-term climate stations have undergone changes that make a time series of their observations homogeneous. There are many causes for the discontinuities, including changes in instruments, shelters, the environment around the shelter, the location of the station, the time of observation, and the method used to calculate mean temperature. Often several of these occur at the same time, as is often the case with the introduction of automatic weather stations that is occurring in many parts of the world."

Raw data simply isn't all that helpful. You have to account for quite a few variables in order to get accurate numbers -- it's not simply a matter of holding a thermometer up in the air.

Now then, would everything have been better if they had held onto the raw data? Of course. It would keep the skeptics and sticklers a chance to double check the numbers. But I get the sense that the desire to confirm the scientists' math has less to do with scientific interests and more to do with political motivations. Again, this is the case of something that sounds damning, but isn't quite so bad when you actually examine it. I'll give the skeptics one thing though, that this does sound a little scary when you first hear it. I'm actually a little surprised that they're focusing more on the email shtick. But I suppose I don't want to give anybody any ideas.

Making Sense of Climategate

2009-12-04T11:22:00.000-08:00

INTRO

I spent the greater part of last night reading up on this so called "climategate," realizing that I didn't have a great handle on the alleged damning evidence or what it was that made people so upset. I was going to just put this up on Facebook, but I figured it was more of a blog thing, so here we are. I had to weed through quite a bit of scientific gobbledeegoop, and everyone should be aware that I'm not exactly fluent in that sort of thing (though I try real hard). Where possible, I will link to sources so that you can check up if you like and correct me if I have perhaps misinterpreted something along the way.

First off, is a link is very much worth reading. It was posted on a blog called RealClimate, which is run by leading climate scientists. Full disclosure on them, the domain is hosted by a PR firm, but they have never exercised editorial control over its contents, nor are the contributors paid for their time (more info on that here)

That disclosurey stuff out of the way, the link is here.

This is a pretty good overview of the situation, I think, though there's scientific language that is tough to sift through for a novice. I particularly like this paragraph:

"More interesting is what is not contained in the emails. There is no evidence of any worldwide conspiracy, no mention of George Soros nefariously funding climate research, no grand plan to ‘get rid of the MWP’, no admission that global warming is a hoax, no evidence of the falsifying of data, and no ‘marching orders’ from our socialist/communist/vegetarian overlords. The truly paranoid will put this down to the hackers also being in on the plot though."

Go ahead and read the full thing if you like. I don't think it's a perfect rebuttal by any means, particularly when a layman has so much trouble figuring out what they're saying. I'll try to simplify matters based on a little digging I've done.

Now, this climategate business. So much data was stolen, but really only a couple major quotes are getting airplay and are getting talked about, so those are the ones I'm going to address. We'll go one at a time, here.

FIRST QUOTE

"I've just completed Mike's Nature [the science journal] trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (i.e., from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline."

According to the realclimate link above, these scientists are talking about a subject called dendroclimatology. In a nutshell, this is the science of interpreting tree rings in order to reconstruct climate data from the past -- as in, before we started having reliable global data. We've got a pretty decent instrumental temperature record going back to around 1850, but to look back any further you have to use secondary means, and tree rings are a major component in that. It is an imperfect science sure, still in the process of taking off. But it is useful nonetheless.

Anyhow, the Keith mentioned in this quote is a man named Keith Briffa. Look him up if you like, his specialty seems to be dendroclimatology just as the RealClimate article suggests.

So what is the quote getting at? Well it's relatively simple. There is something called the "divergence problem" where the temperature predicted by the tree rings stops coinciding with the actual measured temperature after a certain point (that point is different depending on the method you use -- Keith is being singled out because he uses MXD -- a measure of density, rather than width).

Here is where I speculate, but only slightly. It seems the scientists were worried that somebody might misinterpret a graph of projected temperatures based on tree ring data (and that's the end of the speculation part). So they put actual, recorded temperatures on top of that to avoid confusion. Here is a rought picture of what I'm getting at here if you need a visual.

It seems rather silly when you actually read the quote, because the scientists are talking about adding "REAL TEMPS" in order to "hide the decline." Pundits are reading so much into the hiding the decline part, that they're not noticing that what's being added is actual temperature data. And they're not asking what the decline refers to.

Now, worst case scenario here -- if we are to assume these scientists did anything wrong here at all -- then perhaps they merged the orange and blue parts of my graph together. I don't have the actual graph in question, I couldn't say for sure either way. But I don't think that's what they did for two reasons. First, the realclimate post mentions "‘hiding’ is probably a poor choice of words (since it is ‘hidden’ in plain sight)" -- at the very least a notation was made of where the tree ring predictions ended and the real temperature data began. And second, perhaps more importantly -- WE'RE NOT EVEN TALKING ABOUT DIRECTLY MEASURED TEMPERATURES HERE. Why would a scientist go to all the trouble to make a deceptive graph about tree rings? How would that further any hypothetical global warming conspiracy?

The whole quote breaks down once you place it in any sort of context, which of course the pundits don't. Go ahead and check my math on this, I'd love to see some more input on this.

SECOND QUOTE

"The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't."

This one is even easier to explain away. Super easy. For reference, here is that quote in context of the rest of the email:

" Well I have my own article on where the heck is global warming? We are asking that here in Boulder where we have broken records the past two days for the coldest days on record. We had 4 inches of snow. The high the last 2 days was below 30F and the normal is 69F, and it smashed the previous records for these days by 10F. The low was about 18F and also a record low, well below the previous record low….

The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment, and it is a travesty that we can’t. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate."

(source)

The email is from a guy named Kevin Trenberth. And the article he refers to is here.

You can read it if you like. I skimmed it. There's nothing there about global warming being false. The language used in the article isn't altogether different from that used in the email. It's just a scientist wondering aloud why 2008 was a little cooler than previous years, why some parts of the globe show cooler temperatures despite the global trend moving upward. He's asking why our models are so imprecise. That's it. Big deal. His article goes into more detail than I care to right here, but he makes a good case for why certain data anomalies shouldn't be trusted.

CONCLUSION

It's bunk. Almost entirely bunk. The worst any scientist here is guilty of is prettying up a graph, and it wasn't even a graph about actual recorded temperatures. It's a hit job and a smear, and I dare say it wasn't even worth the effort of their hackers. Or at least, it wouldn't be if people weren't so gullible as to latch onto this story the way they did.

And unfortunately, it's difficult to come up with clear straightforward rebuttals. I've tried here, but as evidenced by my word count, it's tricky. And like it or not, the pundits have a better narrative here.

But in any case, I hope this has been somewhat enlightening. Feedback is appreciated -- particularly if I can clear something up for you or you can clear something up for me. Thanks for reading.