Every time this issue has been discussed on/. there is a hue and cry: Violent video games don't cause violence, because lots of people who play them do not kill. Guns don't cause violence, because lots of people who have them don't kill. And so forth.
How about just accepting that it's not just one thing that brought about Columbine and continues to bring about workplace shootings. It's a complex issue that requires more than defensive, reflexive denials of responsibility by partisans motivated by self-interest.
Maybe it's a combination of the following factors in varying formulas that leads to mass shootings at schools and workplaces: - personality disorders of various types, including narcissistic, borderline, etc - breakdown in social skills and social interactions (interventions by adults or peers) - media reinforcement of the primacy of the individual over society (which is a bunch of other individuals) - media reinforcement of the infantile ideal of instant gratification - media reinforcement of violent physical or verbal conflict over negotiation and collaboration - social acceptance and reinforcement of social heirarchies based on fascist aesthetics and maintained by violence (e.g. Columbine jocks teasing geeks)
And yes, the easy availability of guns.
Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine does some salami slicing too, but he does not come to any defensible, simple conclusions as to causes or prescriptions.
No one factor causes these events to happen, but I don't think we should dismiss any one factor without weighing it carefully.
Re:The Bug is a metaphor...
on
The Bug
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· Score: 1
Hmm -- I sense a little defensiveness. Where does that come from?
The Bug is a metaphor...
on
The Bug
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· Score: 5, Interesting
Since my local bookstores do not have it in stock, I have not read it yet... (I broke down and ordered it on-line).
But I'll go out on a limb here and guess that The Bug is not just in the computer. Some of the characters are also trying to debug their personal lives. Sorry if that is off the mark or just too obvious. But some of the comments about "I don't need to read about work" might be missing the mark.
Surely, one of the greatest events of the last quarter century of planetary exploration was the launch of the first element of the International Space Station. It's the next logical step to the rest of the solar system.
I don't stay on top of the crew activities calendar, but I suspect that a lot of the crew time is spent fixing life support equipment. If they were not there all of the time then some of that would go away.
Further, it makes no sense for the crew to waste their time changing CO2 scrubbers and changing light bulbs. Mobile robots should be capable of most of the predictable, repetitive work. The crew should only intervene for cases that the robots cannot handle. (The same is true of the experiments).
The risk of the station going out of control is not really affected by crew presence. They station was designed with redundancy, and the autonomous onboard systems and the ground can intervene if malfunctions offur. There's not much the crew can do that could not be done from the ground. Anyone who knows more about ISS than I do: please feel free to find the flaw in this logic.
Whether this specific remedy is the best or not, NASA has a big problem. They can't afford to develop a new launch system under the current constraints of budget and operations. But NASA employees and contractors also fear that if they stop flying Shuttle dto develop a new launcher, they will never get started again. That is a possibility.
My proposal is no doubt imperfect, but I haven't heard any proposals that are more likely to get NASA out of the mess they are in.
After Columbia was destroyed, Charles Krauthammer wrote an opinion piece saying that we should keep sending humans into space, but that they should not brave the most risky parts of spaceflight (launch and entry) for such meager results.
I happen to think that he underestimates the risks of the "next million miles" beyond Low Earth Orbit, but I essentially agree with his point. We do need to send humans into space, but the results must be worth the risks.
For me, the results that would be worth the risks would be the creation of a spacefaring society. The early days of aviation were extremely dangerous, but 100 years after the first successful controlled flight, aviation is commonplace. The risks borne by the pioneers of aviation made a difference.
The problem is, I don't see that NASA is on a road to make human spaceflight commonplace. But if we ever do make human spaceflight commonplace, it will be a great achievement that will really change human history.
The astronauts of Apollo 8 took that famous photo of Earth rising above the surface of the Moon. They brought back a glimpse of what others may one day see for themselves.
Yes, we should be investing in the technology necessary to make a space elevator work. But NASA's cost and schedule predictions are not exactly credible, so I don't think we should give this 100% of the research money in anticipation of a revolutionary capability in a decade.
However, the materials technology needed to make an elevator possible would be revolutionary even if we did not choose to build a space tether. Even if we never achieved the ultimate goal, society would be repaid for the investment.
Mr. Koss writes cautiously about the problem without really coming out and stating the conclusion. Here is my proposal. I assume that it is not politically possible to park the Space Station in the Pacific Ocean -- too many commitments have been made by incumbent Congressmen to walk away now.
Problem: Shuttle is expensive to fly and is about to become even more expensive. The Columbia Accident Investigation Board has already issued three proposed remedies and it is likely that there will be many more specific actions taken before the Shuttles can return to flight.
Problem: From 2006 until at least 2010, there is no plan on how to support a Crew Return Vehicle that remains attached to ISS in case of an emergency. This gap is due to a combination of diplomatic, financial and technical issues. In 2006, Russia will deliver the last planned Soyuz to ISS. After that time, the US cannot buy more Soyuz due to a law regarding non-proliferation of arms technology to Iran, which Russia has apparently violated. Congress may be able to get around this, but it would still leave the ISS with a maximum permanent crew of 3. No American Crew Return Vehicle is planned until at least 2010.
Problem: With a crew of 3, very little crew time is devoted to actual science: about 20 hours per week, total. The remainder of crew time is spent maintaining ISS and the crew itself (exercise, eating, sleeping, etc).
Problem: Even with a reduced crew size of 3, the Soyuz and Progress vehicles cannot supply enough water for crew needs. That is one reason that the current crew is only 2 men.
Problem: Developing a Shuttle replacement is very costly, and NASA has failed several times already. Each attempt failed for different reasons, but I believe that better funding (and better use of the funding) will be needed to make the next attempt a success.
Problem: NASA is unlikely to gain significant budget increases in the current funding environment (unless they claim to have found terrorist training camps or Iraqi WMD in space). Let's be serious about this.
Fact: NASA spends about $6 Billion per year on Manned Spaceflight (this includes the Space Shuttle Program, the Intl Space Station Program, and a few other items such as range support).
Fact: There is very little fat to cut from NASA without radical reforms that are mostly unrealistic. We can gripe about Fraud Waste and Abuse, but I really don't think anyone can find enough of it (and be able to eliminate it through some reforms) to make a significant difference. One of the biggest problems NASA faces is that it has squeezed the workforce too hard. We can't make them work harder, and it's very hard to make them work smarter (But read on for some ideas on this subject).
So where does that leave us?
If NASA were run just a little more like a business, I think the solution would be to stop focusing on satisfying arbitrary political objectives like "maintain a permanent manned presence in space" and start thinking in terms like "how can we best exploit the imperfect resources we currently have?" and "how can we get out of our current rut and into a sustainable future in space?"
These questions cannot be considered independently. To get out of our current rut, we need to break the cycle of failed NASA attempts to build a new launch system. My sense is that one reason these systems have failed is that they are repeatedly using the same failed approach in developing very risky technological systems.
How does Venture Capital develop risky technological systems? Not by betting on one implementation 10 years in advance, which is what NASA keeps doing. Instead of saying "The next launch system will be Single Stage to Orbit" (X-33), NASA should invest in many promising technologies, similar to the way VCs do. They don't know which of a dozen seed investments will succeed, but at least one should achieve some good results.
How much money can NASA afford to spend on a handful of projects? Not much, so that's where we mu
Even before Columbia was destroyed, NASA was losing the skilled workforce through attrition. The problem extends further than just NASA. Aviation Week & Space Technology magazine has had a series of well-considered articles on "The Crisis in Aerospace" over the years.
But NASA seems to be in a particularly tough spot on this issue. The combination of decades-old technology, endless paperwork, and job insecurity makes it very difficult to attract and retain top engineers to work on Shuttle and other manned space projects.
It's sad that none of my NASA and contractor friends will support the Intl Space Station as anything but a means of retaining capability. In other words, we're marching in place until something better comes along.
(sigh). Yet another book that shows us the Promised Land, but without a guide to get there. If I had a buck for every time I have cursed the lameware cobbled together to manage content on development projects...
Managers are all in favor of content management, but in my experience they don't have any idea of what that means. They would prefer to pay far more for a system developed in house instead of buying COTS components or systems developed for the very purpose.
Not that it's all their fault: IT vendors oversold their products' capabilities and ease of use & customization, so many organizations are rightly skeptical.
Still, books like this perhaps should have a chapter discussing how to motivate the managers to understand the importance of an effective system, and how to close the credibility gap.
If you change nu (the frequency of the EM wave), the energy of the wave must also change. Where does the energy go or come from? e.g. if shifting optical light waves to to X rays, there must be an energy input. Does this come from the mechanical vibration of the crystal?
Well, *you* were not fooled by the self-serving obfuscation of the industry flack, were you? If anything, the quote made the flack look even more ridiculous by totally dismissing a valid concern.
I'm not going to try to figure out whether the/. consensus is "paper trail is needed" or not, but it does seem like this issue needs some action, not just snappy debate that is then forgotten when the next/. article about the SuperWhizBang graphics card is posted.
So the question is, what are we going to do about it? Who is the relevant advocacy organization? The EFF? Are we just going to talk about it or is this important enough to take some action, and if so then what action?
For a long time I have wondered why the CIA was stupid enough to hand out Stinger anti-aircraft missiles to the Muj in Afghanistan (during the Soviet occupation) but never thought about disabling the missiles after a certain amount of time. In recent years, they have been buying the missiles back from the guerrillas.
It would not have been hard to implement a timer to disable the missile's guidance system (e.g. self-destruct of some critical component based on radiodecay, with anti-tampering features). The timer could be for about 2 years (any physicists care to comment on how accurately this could be estimated?)
Yes, if you work hard enough and you are smart enough you could theoretically defeat any such measures. The point is to make it harder than your average illiterate guerrilla can manage.
No, it would not eliminate the threat of 'manpads' against civil airliners, because the Stingers are not the only such systems. But they are among some of the more effective ones. May as well make them as safe as possible.
The same idea could be extended to anti-personnel landmines, though this could compromise their effectiveness by making them easier to detect by enemy troops.
I normally wouldn't bother to respond to such drivel, but since it's apparently been modded up to a (4) I think it needs some sort of reply.
The astronauts are heroes because they choose to face risks known and unknown to advance scientific knowledge. We can debate over the value of the science that NASA pursued on Columbia's mission, but there is a big difference between the absurdity of a random car wreck and the pursuit of knowledge. There is also a big difference between the astronauts and those who engage in perilous and essentially selfish and useless pursuits such as (fill in the blank with ego-driven sport of choice). If nothing else, I imagine that the Columbia failure will lead us to better knowledge of space flight (perhaps we will devote more resources to hypersonic research, ionosphere research, plasma physics and so on).
As to African children, bread and milk, I suggest that you consider the possibility that the US is not the 'great satan' responsible for all evil on the planet. Do African leaders bear any responsibility for the problems in their countries? I guess in your world view they do not, but somehow the US is the party responsible for fixing these problems while leaders like Mobutu lined their pockets with the proceeds of their nations' treasuries. Check out Michaela Wrong's book "In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz" for a recent and easily accessible account of Mobutu's misrule. The book by no means excuses the US or Belgium (former colonial power of Congo), but come on! At some point these places have to take *some* responsibility for their own welfare. The worst leader in Africa today seems to be Mugabe, though it's so hard to choose from such an ill-esteemed array of kleptocrats. I suppose somehow Americans are the reason for his misrule.
What's next on the hit list -- Oh it's the evil of our creating weapons to kill terrorists. I guess you're right, we should wait for terrorists to come here and kill us. I guess we should sit down with them and discuss how we feel about terrorism, and try to find some common ground, because after all, everyone is basically a good person, right? And we're all basically alike, right? Please. The inhumanity of individuals like those who commit mass murder by hijacking planes is obvious to me -- is it not obvious to you?
As to the issue of self-hate -- well, speak for yourself. If must-C-TV bothers you, don't watch it, and find something better to occupy your mind than fulminating on the habits of the majority of stupid people.
I normally wouldn't bother to respond to such drivel, but since it's apparently been modded up to a (4) I think it needs some sort of reply.
The astronauts are heroes because they choose to face risks known and unknown to advance scientific knowledge. We can debate over the value of the science that NASA pursued on Columbia's mission, but there is a big difference between the absurdity of a random car wreck and the pursuit of knowledge. There is also a big difference between the astronauts and those who engage in perilous and essentially selfish and useless pursuits such as (fill in the blank with ego-driven sport of choice). If nothing else, I imagine that the Columbia failure will lead us to better knowledge of space flight (perhaps we will devote more resources to hypersonic research, ionosphere research, plasma physics and so on).
As to African children, bread and milk, I suggest that you consider the possibility that the US is not the 'great satan' responsible for all evil on the planet. Do African leaders bear any responsibility for the problems in their countries? I guess in your world view they do not, but somehow the US is the party responsible for fixing these problems while leaders like Mobutu lined their pockets with the proceeds of their nations' treasuries. Check out Michaela Wrong's book "In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz" for a recent and easily accessible account of Mobutu's misrule. The book by no means excuses the US or Belgium (former colonial power of Congo), but come on! At some point these places have to take *some* responsibility for their own welfare. The worst leader in Africa today seems to be Mugabe, though it's so hard to choose from such an ill-esteemed array of kleptocrats. I suppose somehow Americans are the reason for his misrule.
What's next on the hit list -- Oh it's the evil of our creating weapons to kill terrorists. I guess you're right, we should wait for terrorists to come here and kill us. I guess we should sit down with them and discuss how we feel about terrorism, and try to find some common ground, because after all, everyone is basically a good person, right? And we're all basically alike, right? Please. The inhumanity of individuals like those who commit mass murder by hijacking planes is obvious to me -- is it not obvious to you?
As to the issue of self-hate -- well, speak for yourself. If must-C-TV bothers you, don't watch it, and find something better to occupy your mind than fulminating on the habits of the majority of stupid people.
NYTimes story contradicts this (and who do you trust more: Fox TV News or the Times):
Excerpt: But NASA officials said there was no possible relationship, for several reasons. The foam was looking less and less like the cause, they said, and they still use it on the shuttle fleet. They said the piece that broke off and hit the wing of the Columbia was probably the old foam, not the new, more trouble-plagued material.
When it had trouble with the replacement foam, NASA applied to the Environmental Protection Agency for an exemption from the CFC ban, saying "no viable alternative has been identified."
It gained the exemption in 2001, and still uses that foam in a few spots on the shuttle fleet.
Let's compare: with wings, the Shuttle gets relatively high L/D (lift to drag ratio) of about 3.5 if I remember correctly. Ablative reentry systems (Apollo/Soyuz/Gemini/Mercury) get L/D of about 1.
Why this matters:1. More L/D means you can control descent rate better. You can control it somewhat by steering the Soyuz using the attitude control jets, but only to a limited degree. So the Soyuz generates about 8-9 G of acceleration during descent. The Shuttle only generates a comfortable 3-4 G.
2. Equally important: lateral control gives the Shuttle and other lifting bodies significant crosstrack steering capability. This means that precision landing is possible, and also offers far more flexibility for contingency landings. With Soyuz/Apollo style entry, you get a large landing footprint, which is why the Russians land in the relatively empty steppes and the Apollos landed in the ocean.
Those are the options that are available today for hypersonic reentry. Parachutes are only used for the latter portions of the descent (typically subsonic).
The recently mothballed X-38 uses both. For the high-speed reentry, the lifting body is used to control the descent rate and to provide cross-track steering. At landing speeds, the lifting body doesn't have much lift, so a parachute is used.
The credit history is just one investigative tool that companies can use to try to filter out potential miscreants or incompetents. A bad credit report should probably trigger some questions about the candidate's attitudes about personal responsibility, or ability to manage money (if that is part of his/her job). In many cases, bad credit is not the result of personal irresponsibility or incompetence, but an unexpected medical problem. So it depends.
If an individual's credit report is seen as detrimental by the employer, then the candidate should also be given a copy of the credit report so that he can refute errors, ID theft issues and so on. Labor laws might need to enforce that (a similar provision is in place for credit denial due to one's credit report).
I concur with the suggestions by other posters that some agreements should be in place regarding how the information will be used. Depending on the employer, you may be able to negotiate a more favorable situation. Any contract can be redlined until it is signed.
You could also use this issue as a "test" between you and the employer. By sticking up for your rights, you put them on notice that you are no pushover, which will influence any future negotiations between you and them. Depending on how you conduct the negotiation, the influence could be favorable or detrimental. It's a plus if you are seen as principled and reasonable. It could be a minus if you're seen as an inflexible crank.
At the same time, it's a test of the employer. If they stick to an unreasonable position, do you really want to work for them? I guess it depends on what you want out of the position and how much it depends on mutual good will.
Some of the comments I read in the "software reality" web forum that defend XP sound a little... well, defensive. One comment made it sound more like a philosophy than a set of measurable practices. I also sensed in the "case against XP" article that the author feels that XP's defenders can always say "Well, they didn't implement XP in the way that Marx^H^H^H^HBeck intended, so it doesn't count!" just as supporters of Communism sometimes said about Marxism(TM).
I think the "Case Against XP" makes a lot of valid points. Who can afford to continuously refactor 100KLOCs of C code for example? It's hard enough keeping up with the integration issues with a stable code base. You want code rage? Try breaking a few dozen test cases by making "improvements" to your design that ripple in all directions.
One important point about "Case Against XP" is that it may be criticizing radical forms of XP that might not exist in practice. A little slack might be warranted if XP projects in practice do not actually churn the code base as much as the religion might expect. And the author makes fun of Beck for excessive optimism, even as he exhorts the effortlessness and elegance of "getting it right the first time"... yea right.
So yes I'm a critic of XP, but I'm also a critic of ~XP.
If you meet the XP {booster,critic} in the road, listen to him but don't follow him... chaos and madness may await you as surely as dereferencing NULL. You must find your own way on the road, grasshopper.
Re:Where to put angular momentum
on
Hack in Space
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· Score: 2
Good question. Here are a few disturbance forces and moments which perturb the trajectory and attitude of satellites. In all cases, we are talking about very small forces acting over long periods of time.
- Aerodynamic drag. Most satellites have all sorts of things protruding into the breeze: solar arrays, antennas, instrument booms, thermal radiators, and so on. If these protuberances are not symmetric with respect to the center of mass, then one side is pushed more than the other.
- Gravity gradient. If a spacecraft (SC) is designed to maintain a fixed orientation wrt Earth, then the designers may take advantage of this to help stabilize the SC, as has been mentioned. For maneuvering vehicles like Hubble, Ikonos etc, the GG moment on the SC varies according to the attitude. There are also higher-order gravity terms due to Earth oblateness, mass concentrations and so on. The GRACE spacecraft pair will be mapping those 'mascons' in great detail; there was something recently on AvWk about this: http://www.AviationNow.com/content/publication/aws t/20020304/aw56.htm
- Drag within the momentum wheels and other moving appendages (antennas, cameras) will tend to torque the SC over long periods of time. Probably a *very* small contribution, unless there is a malfunction in the mechanisms.
- Slow leaks of propellant, battery gases, pressurants, coolants, etc. Early in the mission, possibly even material outgassing, though generally a thermal vacuum cycle is supposed to bake this stuff off prior to launch.
- Propulsive maneuvers which raise, lower, or change the orbit plane. Usually, the propulsion force vector does not align perfectly through the center of mass. To account for this, the SC is steered to minimize the propulsive moment (think Shuttle using a single OMS engine, there is a large offset), but this steering is imperfect.
- External forces from space tethers, applied at the point of attachment to the SC. (Not an issue for FUSE.) Aero drag, gravity gradient, and electrodynamic forces can apply to the tether.
- Light pressure, Solar wind could be disturbances to consider in deep space. They're probably too small to worry about in Earth orbit.
There might be some others I've forgotten. There are some good books out there on SC design, you could search ieee.org or a technical library.
Most of the other disturbances (thermal, e.g. early Hubble solar array problem) tend to be random in direction, and would not therefore tend to affect steady state angular momentum.
Jerry Mander (yes that's his real name) wrote an extensively researched book on the evils of TV many years ago. Mander was in the advertising biz, so he knows of what he speaks.
His arguments for the elimination of TV are grouped under 4 headings:
The Mediation of Experience
The Colonization of Experience
Effects of TV on the Human Being
The Inherent Biases of TV
The citation is:
Mander, Jerry. Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television, 1978, Quill.
ISBN 0-688-03274-5 (hbk)
ISBN 0-688-08274-2 (pbk)
The scariest quote from the story
on
Monsanto and PCBs
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· Score: 3, Insightful
At the very end of the article is the scariest quote, from a Monsanto 'environmental affairs director':
"I'm really pretty proud of what we did," Kaley said. "Was it perfect? No. Could we be second-guessed? Sure. But I think we mostly did what any company would do, even today." [emphasis added]
The individuals who work for NASA and its contractors definitely do care about the Astronauts. The Apollo 1 Astronauts did not die because of lack of concern, but because the risks were high and the technology was immature.
Your 'New World' analogy seems to indicate that we should accept more risk to human life... doesn't that undercut your argument about the Apollo Astronauts?
I would say that the Challenger accident was more like the type of bureaucratic lack of concern you mention. Happily, that type of thing is behind us.
Most employees of NASA and its contractors also want desperately to engage in a vigorous exploration program, but Shuttle/Station is the only game in town (at least for manned exploration). Even a bad game is better than no game. If NASA's goals were set by a democratic vote among NASA and contractor employees, we would likely have a very different space program. Unfortunately, Congressional pork barrel politics determine policy. Hence, instead of exploring the vast reaches of our Solar System, our space program is designed to occupy the vast reaches of Congressional districts.
A few years ago, there were several smallish companies working on commercial launchers: Beal Aerospace, Kistler, & Roton come to mind. The big hogs were feeding at the trough (LockMart's X-33).
Of these projects, only Kistler is still standing.
Meanwhile, the joint TRW / LMT / Alenia "AstroLink" project has quietly died. This project was to bring advanced broadband technologies into reality, building a constellation of communications satellites. The decision to terminate this project must be seen as an entirely rational one, in light of falling prices in global telecom capacity.
NASA's Space Shuttle, contrary to public opinion, is not the reason that access to space is expensive. In fact, the Shuttle is not even a market consideration because no commercial entity has the slightest bit of interest in launching payloads on Shuttle.
I'm not sure what will be accomplished by spinning Shuttle off to private enterprise. Here are some hypotheses:
Establishes a budget firewall. Perhaps. This might have the effect of making the decision to launch a Shuttle a more rational economic decision. The weakness in this hypothesis is that the fixed costs of maintaining and operating the Shuttle fleet will need to be paid by some party, and there is no indication that it can be done without massive subsidies. Ultimately the costs will be borne by NASA, so what will have changed?
Frees the Shuttle program from the Federal bureaucracy. I'm not so sure. Shuttle will still be primarily serving NASA's high value / heavy launch needs. All of the same contracting rules and documentary paperwork will still be in force.
Permits radical changes in Shuttle doctrine to be considered. Possible. NASA mucky-mucks vigorously opposed Dennis Tito's trip to ISS, and perhaps they have realized that they blew an opportunity to capitalize on the biggest PR event of the Station so far. By pushing Shuttle out to a commercial operator, maybe someone will create a passenger module which could carry 20 Dennis Tito's into space. That could never happen while Shuttle is under NASA's wing.
Hot potato hypothesis My personal favorite. Under this scenario, NASA just wants to be free of Shuttle, and doesn't much care how.
Cut off Shuttle R+D, free up NASA brains for other research Another strong possibility. Astronauts will tell you that the Shuttle is still not an operational flight vehicle -- that it has flown only about 100 times, and that far more research is needed. There are some squirrely hypersonic and transonic issues which are more than an idle curiosity -- they could destroy the Shuttle and kill the crew. Handing Shuttle off to a commercial entity might free up some brains at NASA to go work on the next generation of technology.
It's probably the right economic decision. NASA cannot hope to make progress on affordable access to space until they can establish a firewall against that drain of money and talent. It is my hope that NASA's space research programs will turn away from operations (missions) and will start research on basic technologies such as materials, propulsion, rail launchers, etc for 'affordable' access to space. Just as NACA's airfoil research laid the foundation for a vibrant and competitive aircraft industry in the 1930's, NASA should develop the foundations of a vibrant and commercially competitive launch industry.
However, I fear for the Shuttle Astronauts. Although NASA's safety record has been good under Goldin, the Shuttle program is already stretched too thin on safety and maintenance. It's an amazing vehicle which requires a standing army to launch it safely.
Slashdot Mirror
Every time this issue has been discussed on /. there is a hue and cry: Violent video games don't cause violence, because lots of people who play them do not kill. Guns don't cause violence, because lots of people who have them don't kill. And so forth.
How about just accepting that it's not just one thing that brought about Columbine and continues to bring about workplace shootings. It's a complex issue that requires more than defensive, reflexive denials of responsibility by partisans motivated by self-interest.
Maybe it's a combination of the following factors in varying formulas that leads to mass shootings at schools and workplaces:
- personality disorders of various types, including narcissistic, borderline, etc
- breakdown in social skills and social interactions (interventions by adults or peers)
- media reinforcement of the primacy of the individual over society (which is a bunch of other individuals)
- media reinforcement of the infantile ideal of instant gratification
- media reinforcement of violent physical or verbal conflict over negotiation and collaboration
- social acceptance and reinforcement of social heirarchies based on fascist aesthetics and maintained by violence (e.g. Columbine jocks teasing geeks)
And yes, the easy availability of guns.
Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine does some salami slicing too, but he does not come to any defensible, simple conclusions as to causes or prescriptions.
No one factor causes these events to happen, but I don't think we should dismiss any one factor without weighing it carefully.
Hmm -- I sense a little defensiveness. Where does that come from?
Since my local bookstores do not have it in stock, I have not read it yet... (I broke down and ordered it on-line).
But I'll go out on a limb here and guess that The Bug is not just in the computer. Some of the characters are also trying to debug their personal lives. Sorry if that is off the mark or just too obvious. But some of the comments about "I don't need to read about work" might be missing the mark.
Surely, one of the greatest events of the last quarter century of planetary exploration was the launch of the first element of the International Space Station. It's the next logical step to the rest of the solar system.
NASA says it, so it must be true.
I don't stay on top of the crew activities calendar, but I suspect that a lot of the crew time is spent fixing life support equipment. If they were not there all of the time then some of that would go away.
Further, it makes no sense for the crew to waste their time changing CO2 scrubbers and changing light bulbs. Mobile robots should be capable of most of the predictable, repetitive work. The crew should only intervene for cases that the robots cannot handle. (The same is true of the experiments).
The risk of the station going out of control is not really affected by crew presence. They station was designed with redundancy, and the autonomous onboard systems and the ground can intervene if malfunctions offur. There's not much the crew can do that could not be done from the ground. Anyone who knows more about ISS than I do: please feel free to find the flaw in this logic.
Whether this specific remedy is the best or not, NASA has a big problem. They can't afford to develop a new launch system under the current constraints of budget and operations. But NASA employees and contractors also fear that if they stop flying Shuttle dto develop a new launcher, they will never get started again. That is a possibility.
My proposal is no doubt imperfect, but I haven't heard any proposals that are more likely to get NASA out of the mess they are in.
After Columbia was destroyed, Charles Krauthammer wrote an opinion piece saying that we should keep sending humans into space, but that they should not brave the most risky parts of spaceflight (launch and entry) for such meager results.
I happen to think that he underestimates the risks of the "next million miles" beyond Low Earth Orbit, but I essentially agree with his point. We do need to send humans into space, but the results must be worth the risks.
For me, the results that would be worth the risks would be the creation of a spacefaring society. The early days of aviation were extremely dangerous, but 100 years after the first successful controlled flight, aviation is commonplace. The risks borne by the pioneers of aviation made a difference.
The problem is, I don't see that NASA is on a road to make human spaceflight commonplace. But if we ever do make human spaceflight commonplace, it will be a great achievement that will really change human history.
The astronauts of Apollo 8 took that famous photo of Earth rising above the surface of the Moon. They brought back a glimpse of what others may one day see for themselves.
Yes, we should be investing in the technology necessary to make a space elevator work. But NASA's cost and schedule predictions are not exactly credible, so I don't think we should give this 100% of the research money in anticipation of a revolutionary capability in a decade.
However, the materials technology needed to make an elevator possible would be revolutionary even if we did not choose to build a space tether. Even if we never achieved the ultimate goal, society would be repaid for the investment.
Mr. Koss writes cautiously about the problem without really coming out and stating the conclusion. Here is my proposal. I assume that it is not politically possible to park the Space Station in the Pacific Ocean -- too many commitments have been made by incumbent Congressmen to walk away now.
Problem: Shuttle is expensive to fly and is about to become even more expensive. The Columbia Accident Investigation Board has already issued three proposed remedies and it is likely that there will be many more specific actions taken before the Shuttles can return to flight.
Problem: From 2006 until at least 2010, there is no plan on how to support a Crew Return Vehicle that remains attached to ISS in case of an emergency. This gap is due to a combination of diplomatic, financial and technical issues. In 2006, Russia will deliver the last planned Soyuz to ISS. After that time, the US cannot buy more Soyuz due to a law regarding non-proliferation of arms technology to Iran, which Russia has apparently violated. Congress may be able to get around this, but it would still leave the ISS with a maximum permanent crew of 3. No American Crew Return Vehicle is planned until at least 2010.
Problem: With a crew of 3, very little crew time is devoted to actual science: about 20 hours per week, total. The remainder of crew time is spent maintaining ISS and the crew itself (exercise, eating, sleeping, etc).
Problem: Even with a reduced crew size of 3, the Soyuz and Progress vehicles cannot supply enough water for crew needs. That is one reason that the current crew is only 2 men.
Problem: Developing a Shuttle replacement is very costly, and NASA has failed several times already. Each attempt failed for different reasons, but I believe that better funding (and better use of the funding) will be needed to make the next attempt a success.
Problem: NASA is unlikely to gain significant budget increases in the current funding environment (unless they claim to have found terrorist training camps or Iraqi WMD in space). Let's be serious about this.
Fact: NASA spends about $6 Billion per year on Manned Spaceflight (this includes the Space Shuttle Program, the Intl Space Station Program, and a few other items such as range support).
Fact: There is very little fat to cut from NASA without radical reforms that are mostly unrealistic. We can gripe about Fraud Waste and Abuse, but I really don't think anyone can find enough of it (and be able to eliminate it through some reforms) to make a significant difference. One of the biggest problems NASA faces is that it has squeezed the workforce too hard. We can't make them work harder, and it's very hard to make them work smarter (But read on for some ideas on this subject).
So where does that leave us?
If NASA were run just a little more like a business, I think the solution would be to stop focusing on satisfying arbitrary political objectives like "maintain a permanent manned presence in space" and start thinking in terms like "how can we best exploit the imperfect resources we currently have?" and "how can we get out of our current rut and into a sustainable future in space?"
These questions cannot be considered independently. To get out of our current rut, we need to break the cycle of failed NASA attempts to build a new launch system. My sense is that one reason these systems have failed is that they are repeatedly using the same failed approach in developing very risky technological systems.
How does Venture Capital develop risky technological systems? Not by betting on one implementation 10 years in advance, which is what NASA keeps doing. Instead of saying "The next launch system will be Single Stage to Orbit" (X-33), NASA should invest in many promising technologies, similar to the way VCs do. They don't know which of a dozen seed investments will succeed, but at least one should achieve some good results.
How much money can NASA afford to spend on a handful of projects? Not much, so that's where we mu
Even before Columbia was destroyed, NASA was losing the skilled workforce through attrition. The problem extends further than just NASA. Aviation Week & Space Technology magazine has had a series of well-considered articles on "The Crisis in Aerospace" over the years.
But NASA seems to be in a particularly tough spot on this issue. The combination of decades-old technology, endless paperwork, and job insecurity makes it very difficult to attract and retain top engineers to work on Shuttle and other manned space projects.
It's sad that none of my NASA and contractor friends will support the Intl Space Station as anything but a means of retaining capability. In other words, we're marching in place until something better comes along.
But no one wants to die.
(sigh). Yet another book that shows us the Promised Land, but without a guide to get there. If I had a buck for every time I have cursed the lameware cobbled together to manage content on development projects...
Managers are all in favor of content management, but in my experience they don't have any idea of what that means. They would prefer to pay far more for a system developed in house instead of buying COTS components or systems developed for the very purpose.
Not that it's all their fault: IT vendors oversold their products' capabilities and ease of use & customization, so many organizations are rightly skeptical.
Still, books like this perhaps should have a chapter discussing how to motivate the managers to understand the importance of an effective system, and how to close the credibility gap.
E = h * nu
If you change nu (the frequency of the EM wave), the energy of the wave must also change. Where does the energy go or come from? e.g. if shifting optical light waves to to X rays, there must be an energy input. Does this come from the mechanical vibration of the crystal?
Well, *you* were not fooled by the self-serving obfuscation of the industry flack, were you? If anything, the quote made the flack look even more ridiculous by totally dismissing a valid concern.
I'm not going to try to figure out whether the /. consensus is "paper trail is needed" or not, but it does seem like this issue needs some action, not just snappy debate that is then forgotten when the next /. article about the SuperWhizBang graphics card is posted.
So the question is, what are we going to do about it? Who is the relevant advocacy organization? The EFF? Are we just going to talk about it or is this important enough to take some action, and if so then what action?
For a long time I have wondered why the CIA was stupid enough to hand out Stinger anti-aircraft missiles to the Muj in Afghanistan (during the Soviet occupation) but never thought about disabling the missiles after a certain amount of time. In recent years, they have been buying the missiles back from the guerrillas.
It would not have been hard to implement a timer to disable the missile's guidance system (e.g. self-destruct of some critical component based on radiodecay, with anti-tampering features). The timer could be for about 2 years (any physicists care to comment on how accurately this could be estimated?)
Yes, if you work hard enough and you are smart enough you could theoretically defeat any such measures. The point is to make it harder than your average illiterate guerrilla can manage.
No, it would not eliminate the threat of 'manpads' against civil airliners, because the Stingers are not the only such systems. But they are among some of the more effective ones. May as well make them as safe as possible.
The same idea could be extended to anti-personnel landmines, though this could compromise their effectiveness by making them easier to detect by enemy troops.
I normally wouldn't bother to respond to such drivel, but since it's apparently been modded up to a (4) I think it needs some sort of reply.
The astronauts are heroes because they choose to face risks known and unknown to advance scientific knowledge. We can debate over the value of the science that NASA pursued on Columbia's mission, but there is a big difference between the absurdity of a random car wreck and the pursuit of knowledge. There is also a big difference between the astronauts and those who engage in perilous and essentially selfish and useless pursuits such as (fill in the blank with ego-driven sport of choice). If nothing else, I imagine that the Columbia failure will lead us to better knowledge of space flight (perhaps we will devote more resources to hypersonic research, ionosphere research, plasma physics and so on).
As to African children, bread and milk, I suggest that you consider the possibility that the US is not the 'great satan' responsible for all evil on the planet. Do African leaders bear any responsibility for the problems in their countries? I guess in your world view they do not, but somehow the US is the party responsible for fixing these problems while leaders like Mobutu lined their pockets with the proceeds of their nations' treasuries. Check out Michaela Wrong's book "In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz" for a recent and easily accessible account of Mobutu's misrule. The book by no means excuses the US or Belgium (former colonial power of Congo), but come on! At some point these places have to take *some* responsibility for their own welfare. The worst leader in Africa today seems to be Mugabe, though it's so hard to choose from such an ill-esteemed array of kleptocrats. I suppose somehow Americans are the reason for his misrule.
What's next on the hit list -- Oh it's the evil of our creating weapons to kill terrorists. I guess you're right, we should wait for terrorists to come here and kill us. I guess we should sit down with them and discuss how we feel about terrorism, and try to find some common ground, because after all, everyone is basically a good person, right? And we're all basically alike, right? Please. The inhumanity of individuals like those who commit mass murder by hijacking planes is obvious to me -- is it not obvious to you?
As to the issue of self-hate -- well, speak for yourself. If must-C-TV bothers you, don't watch it, and find something better to occupy your mind than fulminating on the habits of the majority of stupid people.
I normally wouldn't bother to respond to such drivel, but since it's apparently been modded up to a (4) I think it needs some sort of reply.
The astronauts are heroes because they choose to face risks known and unknown to advance scientific knowledge. We can debate over the value of the science that NASA pursued on Columbia's mission, but there is a big difference between the absurdity of a random car wreck and the pursuit of knowledge. There is also a big difference between the astronauts and those who engage in perilous and essentially selfish and useless pursuits such as (fill in the blank with ego-driven sport of choice). If nothing else, I imagine that the Columbia failure will lead us to better knowledge of space flight (perhaps we will devote more resources to hypersonic research, ionosphere research, plasma physics and so on).
As to African children, bread and milk, I suggest that you consider the possibility that the US is not the 'great satan' responsible for all evil on the planet. Do African leaders bear any responsibility for the problems in their countries? I guess in your world view they do not, but somehow the US is the party responsible for fixing these problems while leaders like Mobutu lined their pockets with the proceeds of their nations' treasuries. Check out Michaela Wrong's book "In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz" for a recent and easily accessible account of Mobutu's misrule. The book by no means excuses the US or Belgium (former colonial power of Congo), but come on! At some point these places have to take *some* responsibility for their own welfare. The worst leader in Africa today seems to be Mugabe, though it's so hard to choose from such an ill-esteemed array of kleptocrats. I suppose somehow Americans are the reason for his misrule.
What's next on the hit list -- Oh it's the evil of our creating weapons to kill terrorists. I guess you're right, we should wait for terrorists to come here and kill us. I guess we should sit down with them and discuss how we feel about terrorism, and try to find some common ground, because after all, everyone is basically a good person, right? And we're all basically alike, right? Please. The inhumanity of individuals like those who commit mass murder by hijacking planes is obvious to me -- is it not obvious to you?
As to the issue of self-hate -- well, speak for yourself. If must-C-TV bothers you, don't watch it, and find something better to occupy your mind than fulminating on the habits of the majority of stupid people.
NYTimes story contradicts this
(and who do you trust more: Fox TV News or the Times):
Excerpt:
But NASA officials said there was no possible relationship, for several reasons. The foam was looking less and less like the cause, they said, and they still use it on the shuttle fleet. They said the piece that broke off and hit the wing of the Columbia was probably the old foam, not the new, more trouble-plagued material.
When it had trouble with the replacement foam, NASA applied to the Environmental Protection Agency for an exemption from the CFC ban, saying "no viable alternative has been identified."
It gained the exemption in 2001, and still uses that foam in a few spots on the shuttle fleet.
Let's compare: with wings, the Shuttle gets relatively high L/D (lift to drag ratio) of about 3.5 if I remember correctly. Ablative reentry systems (Apollo/Soyuz/Gemini/Mercury) get L/D of about 1.
Why this matters:1. More L/D means you can control descent rate better. You can control it somewhat by steering the Soyuz using the attitude control jets, but only to a limited degree. So the Soyuz generates about 8-9 G of acceleration during descent. The Shuttle only generates a comfortable 3-4 G.
2. Equally important: lateral control gives the Shuttle and other lifting bodies significant crosstrack steering capability. This means that precision landing is possible, and also offers far more flexibility for contingency landings. With Soyuz/Apollo style entry, you get a large landing footprint, which is why the Russians land in the relatively empty steppes and the Apollos landed in the ocean.
Those are the options that are available today for hypersonic reentry. Parachutes are only used for the latter portions of the descent (typically subsonic).
The recently mothballed X-38 uses both. For the high-speed reentry, the lifting body is used to control the descent rate and to provide cross-track steering. At landing speeds, the lifting body doesn't have much lift, so a parachute is used.
The credit history is just one investigative tool that companies can use to try to filter out potential miscreants or incompetents. A bad credit report should probably trigger some questions about the candidate's attitudes about personal responsibility, or ability to manage money (if that is part of his/her job). In many cases, bad credit is not the result of personal irresponsibility or incompetence, but an unexpected medical problem. So it depends.
If an individual's credit report is seen as detrimental by the employer, then the candidate should also be given a copy of the credit report so that he can refute errors, ID theft issues and so on. Labor laws might need to enforce that (a similar provision is in place for credit denial due to one's credit report).
I concur with the suggestions by other posters that some agreements should be in place regarding how the information will be used. Depending on the employer, you may be able to negotiate a more favorable situation. Any contract can be redlined until it is signed.
You could also use this issue as a "test" between you and the employer. By sticking up for your rights, you put them on notice that you are no pushover, which will influence any future negotiations between you and them. Depending on how you conduct the negotiation, the influence could be favorable or detrimental. It's a plus if you are seen as principled and reasonable. It could be a minus if you're seen as an inflexible crank.
At the same time, it's a test of the employer. If they stick to an unreasonable position, do you really want to work for them? I guess it depends on what you want out of the position and how much it depends on mutual good will.
Some of the comments I read in the "software reality" web forum that defend XP sound a little... well, defensive. One comment made it sound more like a philosophy than a set of measurable practices. I also sensed in the "case against XP" article that the author feels that XP's defenders can always say "Well, they didn't implement XP in the way that Marx^H^H^H^HBeck intended, so it doesn't count!" just as supporters of Communism sometimes said about Marxism(TM).
I think the "Case Against XP" makes a lot of valid points. Who can afford to continuously refactor 100KLOCs of C code for example? It's hard enough keeping up with the integration issues with a stable code base. You want code rage? Try breaking a few dozen test cases by making "improvements" to your design that ripple in all directions.
One important point about "Case Against XP" is that it may be criticizing radical forms of XP that might not exist in practice. A little slack might be warranted if XP projects in practice do not actually churn the code base as much as the religion might expect. And the author makes fun of Beck for excessive optimism, even as he exhorts the effortlessness and elegance of "getting it right the first time"... yea right.
So yes I'm a critic of XP, but I'm also a critic of ~XP.
If you meet the XP {booster,critic} in the road, listen to him but don't follow him... chaos and madness may await you as surely as dereferencing NULL. You must find your own way on the road, grasshopper.
Good question. Here are a few disturbance forces and moments which perturb the trajectory and attitude of satellites. In all cases, we are talking about very small forces acting over long periods of time.
s t/20020304/aw56.htm
- Aerodynamic drag. Most satellites have all sorts of things protruding into the breeze: solar arrays, antennas, instrument booms, thermal radiators, and so on. If these protuberances are not symmetric with respect to the center of mass, then one side is pushed more than the other.
- Gravity gradient. If a spacecraft (SC) is designed to maintain a fixed orientation wrt Earth, then the designers may take advantage of this to help stabilize the SC, as has been mentioned. For maneuvering vehicles like Hubble, Ikonos etc, the GG moment on the SC varies according to the attitude. There are also higher-order gravity terms due to Earth oblateness, mass concentrations and so on. The GRACE spacecraft pair will be mapping those 'mascons' in great detail; there was something recently on AvWk about this: http://www.AviationNow.com/content/publication/aw
- Drag within the momentum wheels and other moving appendages (antennas, cameras) will tend to torque the SC over long periods of time. Probably a *very* small contribution, unless there is a malfunction in the mechanisms.
- Slow leaks of propellant, battery gases, pressurants, coolants, etc. Early in the mission, possibly even material outgassing, though generally a thermal vacuum cycle is supposed to bake this stuff off prior to launch.
- Propulsive maneuvers which raise, lower, or change the orbit plane. Usually, the propulsion force vector does not align perfectly through the center of mass. To account for this, the SC is steered to minimize the propulsive moment (think Shuttle using a single OMS engine, there is a large offset), but this steering is imperfect.
- External forces from space tethers, applied at the point of attachment to the SC. (Not an issue for FUSE.) Aero drag, gravity gradient, and electrodynamic forces can apply to the tether.
- Light pressure, Solar wind could be disturbances to consider in deep space. They're probably too small to worry about in Earth orbit.
There might be some others I've forgotten. There are some good books out there on SC design, you could search ieee.org or a technical library.
Most of the other disturbances (thermal, e.g. early Hubble solar array problem) tend to be random in direction, and would not therefore tend to affect steady state angular momentum.
His arguments for the elimination of TV are grouped under 4 headings:
The citation is:
Mander, Jerry. Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television, 1978, Quill.
ISBN 0-688-03274-5 (hbk)
ISBN 0-688-08274-2 (pbk)
At the very end of the article is the scariest quote, from a Monsanto 'environmental affairs director':
"I'm really pretty proud of what we did," Kaley said. "Was it perfect? No. Could we be second-guessed? Sure. But I think we mostly did what any company would do, even today." [emphasis added]
The individuals who work for NASA and its contractors definitely do care about the Astronauts. The Apollo 1 Astronauts did not die because of lack of concern, but because the risks were high and the technology was immature.
Your 'New World' analogy seems to indicate that we should accept more risk to human life... doesn't that undercut your argument about the Apollo Astronauts?
I would say that the Challenger accident was more like the type of bureaucratic lack of concern you mention. Happily, that type of thing is behind us.
Most employees of NASA and its contractors also want desperately to engage in a vigorous exploration program, but Shuttle/Station is the only game in town (at least for manned exploration). Even a bad game is better than no game. If NASA's goals were set by a democratic vote among NASA and contractor employees, we would likely have a very different space program. Unfortunately, Congressional pork barrel politics determine policy. Hence, instead of exploring the vast reaches of our Solar System, our space program is designed to occupy the vast reaches of Congressional districts.
Of these projects, only Kistler is still standing.
Meanwhile, the joint TRW / LMT / Alenia "AstroLink" project has quietly died. This project was to bring advanced broadband technologies into reality, building a constellation of communications satellites. The decision to terminate this project must be seen as an entirely rational one, in light of falling prices in global telecom capacity.
NASA's Space Shuttle, contrary to public opinion, is not the reason that access to space is expensive. In fact, the Shuttle is not even a market consideration because no commercial entity has the slightest bit of interest in launching payloads on Shuttle.
I'm not sure what will be accomplished by spinning Shuttle off to private enterprise. Here are some hypotheses:
It's probably the right economic decision. NASA cannot hope to make progress on affordable access to space until they can establish a firewall against that drain of money and talent. It is my hope that NASA's space research programs will turn away from operations (missions) and will start research on basic technologies such as materials, propulsion, rail launchers, etc for 'affordable' access to space. Just as NACA's airfoil research laid the foundation for a vibrant and competitive aircraft industry in the 1930's, NASA should develop the foundations of a vibrant and commercially competitive launch industry.
However, I fear for the Shuttle Astronauts. Although NASA's safety record has been good under Goldin, the Shuttle program is already stretched too thin on safety and maintenance. It's an amazing vehicle which requires a standing army to launch it safely.