102 Comments

1. starling:

“And Slashdot reports that Honduran authorities have found 45 computers with pre-tallied results for an election that never happened. ”

The anti-Castro blog “Babalu” has been on the case too– perhaps the first to report this story.

The post title is “A page out of the Chavez (leftist, in other words) Playbook”
http://babalublog.com/2009/07/a-page-out-of-the-chavez-leftist-in-other-words-playbook/

And you have to love the title of the blog itself–”an island on the net without a bearded dictator”

Jul 20, 2009 - 5:16 am 2. FuzzyFace:

Reality always wins? Hardly. Has it won in the Al Dura case?

Jul 20, 2009 - 5:22 am 3. 49erDweet:

Its the same when every witness to an event tell the same “story”. Without minor discrepancies there is no truth – only the rehearsed “narrative”. That’s a great manager. He/She won’t last long.

Jul 20, 2009 - 5:26 am 4. oMan:

Probability that “reality wins” is a function of materiality of the deviation between F(antasy) and R(eality); and the rate of comparisons of statements in F and R; and the length of time over which one is asking. For seriously wrong ideas (”I can fly!”) with high comparison rates (”Let me show you, right now!”) the disjunction will be apparent very soon (”Ouch.”).

For bad ideas with lower comparison rates (e.g. dictatorship) the duration can be generational.

Lesson? Build lots of links between F and R, and interrogate them regularly. Even innocent ones can be proxies for identifying bigger lies and mistakes.

Jul 20, 2009 - 5:32 am 5. Dr. Sanity:

FuzzyFace: “Reality always wins? Hardly. Has it won in the Al Dura case?”

Reality has all the time in the world. Illusion requires immediacy to have its effect.

Jul 20, 2009 - 5:32 am 6. Tio Joaquin:

Let us heed well events in Honduras. Think back on our last presidential election, with all its still unexplained questions about the eventual winner, including the millions in unaccounted for and possibly illegal campaign donations, ACORN. I think it is quite possible that in the aborted Honduran election and Hugo Chavez’s grab for power in Venezuela we can see the template for the next presidential election in the USA. FDR’s multiple presidencies were limited only by his death. Why not President For Life Obama? It would only requre control of Congress, the MSM, the SCOTUS, the election through ACORN, martial law to pass a constitutional amendment a la Zelaya. Seems to me we may be well down that road already.

Jul 20, 2009 - 5:35 am 7. no mo uro:

Paraphrasing a response of mine on a previous thread:

“The answer is not denial that these things are happening for fear that it will cast a bad light on you. Resolving cognitive dissonance in a way which jibes with the reality of outcome is something the center/right/libertarian sector is supposed to be a lot better at than the left.

Nor is the answer to shoot the messenger.

The answer is to recognize that some of your most precious ideas about things might not be exactly right, that those who disagree are NOT attacking you personally or ganging up on you but rather are relating true facts, and for you to admit that there may be data sets and information about which you didn’t have previous knowledge, and that there are others who can see some truth in those facts that you perhaps did not.

We all need to do this, from time to time, yourself included. Fred who used to post here regaled us with tales of his awakenings. Lord knows I’ve had to do it in my life. It’s a big component of wisdom.

If you can’t do it, you end up like Arianna Huffington, who was so incapable, for reasons of pride and inflexibility, at reconciling her platitudes with reality that she ended up a leftist. Rather than be brutally honest with herself and admit she might have been wrong about certain things, and adapting to how the world really is.”

Pursuing a desired narrative over truth is the single greatest damage that postmodernism has done to the human race. It is a major contributor to the perpetual adolescence we see growing in the West.

Like the two year old who screams, “But I WANT to!!!!” in response to any reasoned explanation.

Jul 20, 2009 - 5:35 am 8. ADE:

Here are my sayings:

Reality always wins. It does, given enough time. The reality is the second law of thermodynamics – over time, entropy increases. (And over time, we can’t afford it)

certain managers internally monitored their error rates for signs that things were going too perfectly. Never doubt that we are bounded by original sin, our imperfection. Plan on it, trust it. My favourite Murphy’s law – if everything seems to be going smoothly, your control systems have broken down.

Freedom implies the ability to make mistakes. The great mystery of Western civilisation – we are free to behave.

ADE

Jul 20, 2009 - 5:45 am 9. RWE:

Or as Robert A. Heinlien once put it, “It’s ain’t the stuff you don’t know that does you the most damage; it is the stuff you do know that is wrong.”

One thing I don’t think is knowable is how much what people want to believe actually impacts what they do believe. We celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing today, but did the people working on that program really think that they could just keep on going the same way, so that we would now be up to, say, Apollo CXXXXXXI? And when they devised the Shuttle program did they really think it was a good idea – and it just happened to use the people and infrastructure of Apollo?

Did Joe Biden and the others who supported a partition of Iraq a few years ago really think that a good idea or did it just so happen that the good idea offered them a way to deal with a situation where they were clueless?

Such things are not knowable. The human mind lies to itself too well.

But reality wins out, in the end. You can put that piece of black tape over your gas gauge and tell yourself that your car really is getting 60MPG because of that magic magnetic whatsis you put in the fuel line but when the engine sputters and dies, reality will intrude most viciously.

Jul 20, 2009 - 6:05 am 10. NullificationNow:

One favorite reality that is up in smoke, affirmative action in education. BHO and the wise Latina do not exactly offer exceptional intellect to the pool of scholars. Can you imagine the cadre of affirmative action doctors coming into the National Service of Government sponsored health care, yes we can.

Jul 20, 2009 - 6:18 am 11. Dave the Kapampangan:

It is impossible to know everything before making a decision because there is such thing as time, i.e. change. In the time that it took you to make some kind of decision, something small or large inevitably changed. Therefore, every decision made has an element of uncertainty. The trick to dealing with the unknown is to use heuristics (general guidelines) that seem to get the job done (example: the ten commandments), and have “proven themselves” over eons of trial and error and random circumstances. Whether we call these eons “evolution” or simply say “God gave them to us over time” is irrelevant.

The truth is always the truth. Society can sustain lies for as long as it is willing to absorb the negative consequences of those lies without asking why they happened. But people being innately curious, some little kid always eventually asks why. This leads to tyranny, as the despot tries to silence the voice. Unfortunately for the despot, the best way to start a rumor is to say, “Shhhh” so ultimately, the truth spreads like gossip and escapes the controlled media silence bubble.

Jul 20, 2009 - 6:19 am 12. Joshua:

The fact that we nearly always make decisions under uncertainty means we ought not to be paralyzed by the fear of error as long as we get it right more often than we get it wrong.

What about scenarios where you only have one chance to get it right – either because getting it wrong would have catastrophic results, or because the action itself is so terrible that it can’t otherwise be justified?

Jul 20, 2009 - 6:31 am 13. wretchard:

What about scenarios where you only have one chance to get it right – either because getting it wrong would have catastrophic results, or because the action itself is so terrible that it can’t otherwise be justified?

Imagine you’re trapped in a cave with the water rising slowly to the roof. If you stay, you’ll drown. Beneath you are two circular glimmers probably representing exits through which you may swim outside the cave into the sea. You can’t stay in the cave. One of the exits may too long to swim, or perhaps both, and you’ll drown in the middle. Which one do you take? There’s no obvious way to determine, a priori, which. The thing to do is choose either one. You may die, but that’s irreducible risk. What you mustn’t do is stay in the cave.

Life doesn’t guarantee happy endings. The hope is that in the end, God squares it all. But within our circle, the problem reduces to the choices open to us. The flooding cave problem is a common one in real life. Many of us will, or already have faced medical decisions in which we must submit to a procedure where we could die, but we take the risk in order to live.

Captain Sullenburger had to choose from a rapidly narrowing set of choices when he landed is airplane in the river. He could have failed, despite his skill, because that’s normally a possibility that is on the cards but not to have acted would also have been a choice.

Jul 20, 2009 - 7:13 am 14. jerryofva:

Fantasy can triumph over reality in the political arena almost forever in system where elections are infrequent events. Lincoln was wrong when he said “you can fool some of the people all of the time; and all of the people some of the time; but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.” You only need to fool a majority of the people on election day to be successful.

Jul 20, 2009 - 7:15 am 15. anton:

The USSR tried telling themselves that everything was always OK. They also tried killing the millions that saw that it really wasn’t. Controlling the narrative only goes so far, people will notice the Naked Emperor sooner or later.

Reality won, it always wins, the real questions is how much destruction happens before people see it for what it is. In USSR’s case it was six decades of economic ruin and tens of millions of senseless deaths.

What we need to ask ourselves is how much ruin and collapse will accompany the “Yes We Can” and “We Won” mindset before the correction sets in.

Jul 20, 2009 - 7:16 am 16. Dave D.:

..” One chance to get it right ” scenarios don’t justify refusal to decide, Joshua. Usually , refusal to make a decision is itself a decision, and the refusal is a weasely attempt to deny responsibility.

Jul 20, 2009 - 7:17 am 17. Peter Boston:

#5 Dr. Sanity

Hello Dr. Pat. I miss you.

Reality has all the time in the world is way too close to in the long run we’re all dead to provide any comfort.

My recent favorite is Newsweek’s Why Fears Of A Muslim Takeover Are All Wrong. Your history, way of life, culture, and expectations for the future of your children get flushed down the multicultural toilet and it’s OK?

Jul 20, 2009 - 7:19 am 18. mac:

“What about scenarios where you only have one chance to get it right – either because getting it wrong would have catastrophic results, or because the action itself is so terrible that it can’t otherwise be justified?”

Joshua, that’s when you pray hardest. Sometimes, though, situations like that are incredibly good blades for cutting through all the detritus and exposing the core issue. Here’s one example: we’ve tolerated and effectively denied the origin of high crime rates for years because certain favored ethnic groups were the ones responsible for a vastly disproportionate amount of the crime.

When I was asked about this once by a Singaporean engineer, I told him that America put up with a lot of self-destructive behavior because we could afford to absorb the losses. His response was to say that Singapore would never be that rich, and consequently would never be so lenient to any group.

We’re now effectively bankrupt as a nation, have a government that approximately 50% or more of us absolutely despise, and have drastic and extraordinarily difficult change bearing down on us like a bullet train.
I suspect there is going to be a lot of tightening up of standards in the next few years, and a lot less tolerance for the crap we’ve been enduring since the 1960’s. We just can’t afford it anymore.

The alternative is civil war, and with every day that things get worse, that alternative grows closer.

.

Jul 20, 2009 - 7:27 am 19. Mark:

no mo uro writes: “Pursuing a desired narrative over truth is the single greatest damage that postmodernism has done to the human race.”

An ongoing question over the past seven months, and even during the election cycle, has been why Obama continues to be effective/credible in spite of espousing policies that are not in the interest of individuals and families. Even non-tax payers, one supposes, would like the economy to provide jobs and not merely crumbs from the government table.

Recently I re-read David Ehrenstein L.A. Times article “Obama the ‘Magic Negro.’”

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-ehrenstein19mar19,0,5335087.story

White guilt is a powerful, subtle phenomenon. While fewer and fewer people are going to accept the outrageous redistributionist projects of the President, they will be very careful in how they distance themselves from him.

How can the media ignore the allegation that Zelaya pre-arranged the outcome of the Honduran referendum? Even if it’s not true, how can days go by without any MSM story? The answer seems to be for the MSM nothing is true, facts are not facts, if they might not fit into what the MSM thinks is the narrative of Obama’s presidency. Obama does not have to create a Ministry of Truth. The Ministry has created itself and currently operates with the fine-tuning of a school of fish.

Facts are stubborn things, as John Adams said. But here we are, looking at the facts about national debt. etc., as in the prior post, and Americans are unaware of their significance. Maybe Americans are victims of their own basic good will and traditional confidence. They probably can not imagine that voting machinations of the Chavezian, Khomenist, Putinist, kind could happen here, even though they saw ACORN implementing a version of the strategy in this country. (At least the Huffington Post has bucked the trend in one instance and kept reporting on Iranians’ misery, but posters don’t criticize Obama.)

If Obama had been willing to cook the body-politic frog a little more slowly, I think he might have achieved remarkable successs, measured in usual historical terms. But Obama has wanted socialist transformation and redemption and . . . lots of stuff of the “stick it to the conservative/white man/gun-totin’ first and second amendment crackers” kind . . . and has over-reached. The frog might still leap out.

* * * *

Here, by the way, is Aragorn’s reply to Arwen, Lady Undomiel, whose words Wrichard quotes at the end of his post:

“So it seems,” he said. “But let us not be overthrown at the final test, who of old renounced the Shadow and the Ring. In sorrow we must go, but not in despair. Behold! we are not bound for ever to the circles of the world, and beyond them is more than memory.”

Jul 20, 2009 - 7:31 am 20. bigjimbo:

This thread makes more sense and raises more perplexing issues than nine (9) semister hours of study under tenured professors of philosophy,who,BTW, opposed devoting any resources to NASA eight(8) years before Appolo 11.

Jul 20, 2009 - 7:39 am 21. ForNow:

Why the word “anti-knowledge” when the word “ignorance” would suffice? Anyway the word “anti-knowledge” sounds likes it should either mean delusion or mean knowing something as false.

Also here when you wrote:

There was implicit knowledge even in the questions, although there were no answers. But they would be apparent only to those with the temerity to say, “I don’t know” and valuable only to those who believed that “reality always won”, even at the cost of their embarassment.

To what does “they” refer?

Jul 20, 2009 - 7:44 am 22. RWE:

“Captain Sullenburger had to choose from a rapidly narrowing set of choices when he landed is airplane in the river.’

The problem is that any number of post facto studies might well show that Capt Sully could have turned that airplane around and landed it on the runway with no more than some tire rubber used up and a slight delay as they offloaded the luggage and passengers to another aircraft.

And there was a chance of that, certainly. But the river offered the better option for survival, because he knew he could reach it.

In risk analysis you multiply the probability of the event times the possible outcomes and take the best choice. So if making the runway was a 5% chance with a 95% chance of not making it, with 100% loss of life as a consequence and making the river was 100% with a 50% loss of life then the river is the best option from the risk analysis standpoint, if more “cruel.”

But there will always be those who point out that far better outcome for that 5% probability and that you should have taken it. That the river option turned out to have the same actual loss of life as the runway option is the only reason Sully is the hero instead of the goat – but the numbers no doubt would not predicted that in advance.

Nontheless,we tend so often to focus on that wonderful high payoff 5% probability option.

Nothing is impossible for the man who does not have to do it himself.

Jul 20, 2009 - 7:44 am 23. Jamie Irons:

At least in one’s efforts to understand oneself, it is probably a good idea to operate on the assumption that “reality wins,” in order to avoid as much as possible the all too common fate of repeatedly bashing one’s head against the same wall(s).

When I was in post-graduate training, as a resident at UCLA’s Neuropsychiatric Institute, a wise old psychoanalyst told me once:

Reality sucks. But it’s the only game in town.

Jamie Irons

Jul 20, 2009 - 7:47 am 24. mark_b:

Slashdot. I can only stomach it for about the first ten or so moral equivilencies. I was genuinely surprised to see this story in /.

I think it slipped under the radar by being a story about rigged voting machines, something slashdotters have been excited about since Bush v Gore.

Is this the inconvenient truth that will bring the true believers face to face with reality?

I am still trying to reconcile President Obama winning the last election. People could not see the truth about this man? Ayers. White. College transcripts. Birth certificate. Inexperience. ACORN.

Obama won. If this is my inconvenient truth, then what is the reality that I am ignoring?

Jul 20, 2009 - 7:55 am 25. Terry Baker:

Dear Mr. Fernandez,

You are the best.

A brain and a heart to match. God bless you.

Jul 20, 2009 - 8:06 am 26. mark_b:

Mark,

How can the media ignore the allegation that Zelaya pre-arranged the outcome of the Honduran referendum? Even if it’s not true, how can days go by without any MSM story?
——————————

To my surprise Drudge has not picked up on this story. He has seen it. I submitted it.

Jul 20, 2009 - 8:11 am 27. Bob Hawkins:

Reality is optional right up until your face hits the concrete.

Jul 20, 2009 - 8:33 am 28. Dave the Kapampangan:

Nanny Obananarama says: “The truth is, that two-pound sliced ham wasn’t a payoff to my supporters. The sandwich really did cost 1.1 million dollars! If you don’t believe me, see recovery.gov, the government’s own web site, for the receipt!”

http://charliefoxtrotblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/best-ham-sandwichevah.html

Jul 20, 2009 - 8:59 am 29. Joshua:

Wretchard, #13: Imagine you’re trapped in a cave with the water rising slowly to the roof. If you stay, you’ll drown. Beneath you are two circular glimmers probably representing exits through which you may swim outside the cave into the sea. You can’t stay in the cave. One of the exits may too long to swim, or perhaps both, and you’ll drown in the middle. Which one do you take? There’s no obvious way to determine, a priori, which. The thing to do is choose either one. You may die, but that’s irreducible risk. What you mustn’t do is stay in the cave.

Perhaps I should have rephrased my original question. What you are describing above is essentially a “nothing to lose” scenario; that is, if you choose an exit and swim for it, the worst that can happen is the same as if you just stay in the cave. What I had in mind is more along the lines of what RWE described at #22 above. To apply that to your example, suppose that if you stay in the cave you will drown as before, but if you swim for one of the exits and don’t make it, then not only do you drown but one or more of your loved ones – or countless millions of your countrymen – die with you. Then what?

Dave D., #16: “One chance to get it right” scenarios don’t justify refusal to decide, Joshua. Usually, refusal to make a decision is itself a decision, and the refusal is a weasely attempt to deny responsibility.

Or simply an estimation that the expected value of inaction is, all things considered, greater than that of action. The thing is, if the “action” decision entails a risk of something so horrible that the decisionmaker deems it absolutely unacceptable, whereas the “inaction” decision does not, that tends to hopelessly skew the expected value in favor of inaction, no matter how slight the risk may be, or how unpleasant (though short of unacceptable) or great the risk of inaction. This gets us back to my response to Wretchard above.

The trouble this poses is that your estimation of expected value may not be the same as that of outside observers. This becomes a big problem if said outsiders have the force of the state at their disposal and the inclination to use it against you, or otherwise have the ability to make your life miserable, or ensure that you are remembered as a villain rather than a hero.

Jul 20, 2009 - 8:59 am 30. jimbo:

Below is an attempt by Obama/Pelosi to suppress reality. I agree with W, one way or another reality will win out. The great unknown is how nasty it will be when reality finally asserts itself.

By TOM RAUM, Associated Press Writer Tom Raum, Associated Press Writer – 1 hr 1 min ago

WASHINGTON – The White House is being forced to acknowledge the wide gap between its once-upbeat predictions about the economy and today’s bleak landscape.

The administration’s annual midsummer budget update is sure to show higher deficits and unemployment and slower growth than projected in President Barack Obama’s budget in February and update in May, and that could complicate his efforts to get his signature health care and global-warming proposals through Congress.

The release of the update — usually scheduled for mid-July — has been put off until the middle of next month, giving rise to speculation the White House is delaying the bad news at least until Congress leaves town Aug. 7 on its summer recess.

Jul 20, 2009 - 9:06 am 31. michael hoskins:

When incorrect information (or lies) reach a critical state (anti-truth?) the paradigm must shift.
Hume discusses at length, in fact bases his skeptcism, on our ongoing attempts to call things “truth” either before or after the sell by date of the event.

Long live Entropy.

Jul 20, 2009 - 9:16 am 32. AWH:

Exellent post, Wretchard,

As a former philosphy major one of the things I lamented was that as an academic field philosophy has lost its practical emphasis on decision making. Aristotle may not have been perfect, but his emphasis on “What should I do?” and “How ought I to act?” forces anyone who reads him seriously to apply his thoughts to action and to their lives. Not just philosophy, but most academic fields today don’t teach the fundamentals that allow people to act in the way that Aristotle advocated.

While many half-baked academic courses advocate action, they do not advocate a reasoned judgment to lead to action, but rather deliberately avoid the type of judgment that Aristotle would have thought to be necessary as a pre-requisite to action. In fact, I’d argue that modern education is almost deliberately taking away the ability of their students to perform reasoned judgment on particular situations. Does anyone think that the modern student is more prepared to “size up” and evaluate situations?

With so few people capable of such analysis, judgment and action, I think it makes our society more susceptible to short-term propoganda that allows the implementation of long-term political realities that are less easily discarded. Indeed the current administration is the result of many misconceptions about the war and the economy that Bush and his team refused to address clearly in the public arena, allowing his enemies to define the scope and terms of those two debates, allowing a hopelessly unprepared fool to lead us during these times.

So while the economic and foreign policy realities will eventually, inevitably catch up to the falsehoods, the political changes that were implemented in the meantime will take on a life of their own, a “reality” of their own that will prove even more difficult to deal with.

As I see it, the next battle with a false reality will be around the economy. I believe there will be a small 3rd quarter recovery and that the administration will try to take credit for this recovery.. despite the fact that only a tiny portion of the “stimulus” will have been spent… wait for the sun to rise and then claim credit seems to be their M.O. on these matters.

http://buanadha.wordpress.com/2009/07/20/why-it-is-important-to-understand-what-is-happening-to-the-economy/

Jul 20, 2009 - 9:35 am 33. Joshua:

Another thing to consider is how “true believers” will respond once reality hits them in the face. They may flee from their erstwhile messiah like rats from a sinking ship, but that doesn’t mean they’ve now accepted reality. More likely they will simply start looking for a better messiah, one that can overcome reality where the last one couldn’t. Lather, rinse, repeat…

Jul 20, 2009 - 9:36 am 34. RCM:

49erDweet @ 3: “That’s a great manager. He/She won’t last long.”

Even if he or she is a small business person running their own business?

Jul 20, 2009 - 9:46 am 35. Roderick Reilly:

These days, reality wins only after catastrophic damage has been done by fantasy and can no longer be ignored. Even then reality is relegated to the back pages of the narrative.

Jul 20, 2009 - 9:55 am 36. Roderick Reilly:

“”"”"”Obama won. If this is my inconvenient truth, then what is the reality that I am ignoring?”"”"”"

#24 mark_b:

Perhaps the reality that a critical mass of Americans are more shallow, more amoral, and more ignorant than ever. And that would only be part of the story, since it doesn’t explain those many intelligent, educated people with loads of common sense who suddenly pull their brains out through their noses and punt them down the street before heading to the voting booth.

Jul 20, 2009 - 9:59 am 37. RCM:

NullificationNow @ 10:
“One favorite reality that is up in smoke, affirmative action in education. BHO and the wise Latina do not exactly offer exceptional intellect to the pool of scholars. Can you imagine the cadre of affirmative action doctors coming into the National Service of Government sponsored health care, yes we can.”

Perhaps the justification will be what I have heard some starry-eyed folk say intoxicatedly just before the election:

“What with slavery and all, it’s high time for a black president.”

What do qualifications, love for one’s country, worldview, and devotion to the Constitution have to do with just whom would make a good president?

For some – absolutely nothing – when “it’s time.”

Jul 20, 2009 - 10:03 am 38. Marcus Aurelius:

Disinformation does not have to win and be taken forever to be successful. The operation aimed at Nazi Germany to make them believe the invasion of Normandy would actually be the invasion of the Pas de Calais is an example.

Temporary success however can do significant damage. The myth of the USSR worker paradise wreaks havoc on us yet.

In my younger & thinner days I enjoyed slalom waterskiing. My brother and I had a friendly rivalry as to whom was the better skier. One of my brother’s points to support the contention that he was the better skier was that he crashed less than I, I would counter I was trying harder to get my shoulder on the water (the idea being you then lift it all up and then lay the other shoulder down) than he was and therefore crashing more.

People who make no mistakes are not trying, people who are always right do not push any frontiers outward.

As an IT pro I have seen this many times. The program is tested and retested using a set of test data (usually one copies over a medium sized set of data from production) and all works wonderfully. The program is released into the wilds of production and run into a condition not represented in the test data and BOOM. No serious manager is upset over such errors and mistakes but when there is a documented requirement that is not met or spin was used to support less than perfect test results than those managers are rightly upset.

but not to have acted would also have been a choice. Sing along everyone! “If you choose not to decide you still have made a choice!”.

Jul 20, 2009 - 10:05 am 39. Marty:

Define “win.”

Reality is reality and in that tautological sense, it always wins.

But, does the truth always come out, or justice prevail? I doubt it. In the fullness of time, truth probably is known, to a degree, more often than not. But, not always, and often too late for justice, anyway.

Jul 20, 2009 - 11:10 am 40. Armeggedon Rex:

Marcus Aurelius #38:

“You can choose from phantom fears and blindness that can kill…”

“I will choose a path that’s clear, I will choose free will!”

But how much longer will the Obamassiah and nanny state allow us free will?

What are we prepared to do in order to protect free will for us, our decedents and all western civilization?

Perhaps the heat on the pot has been turned up a bit quickly?

Are you feeling a bit hot and bothered yet, or are you still enjoying your soak in the socialist hot tub?

I wonder what percentage of Belmont Clubbers are getting hot and bothered enough to make serious preparations, and how many are just languidly floating along waiting for a caped crusader to save the day?

Jul 20, 2009 - 11:18 am 41. onetailtest:

Does reality win in the face of a determined disinformation campaign?

Did an angel speak to Muhammad? Did Jesus rise from the dead?

I would say maybe to both. And yet . . .

The Egyptian religion lasted at least 3,000 years. Osiris was worshiped on the basis of what we might call a “disinformation campaign.” Reality, we might think, won in that case, because the Egyptian religion is dead.

And yet, the Egyptian religion may not have been entirely untrue. Or, logically, its demise may indicate nothing about whether it is true or false.

Jul 20, 2009 - 11:27 am 42. Batman:

I see two subtexts in this discussion.

1. Can we possibly get anywhere if logic and fact have been deconstructed away leaving nothing but narrative behind? And can our narrative make a comeback when the other side has the might that makes them “right?”

2. Are we, both individually and as a group, making preparations for action, knowing all the while that we have no certainty of the outcome?

It seems to me that the past weeks of postings have been subtly urging us to prepare to act. But what action?

On the macro scale I see little likelihood of success until education and culture change.

Jamie Irons — was that psychoanalyst (my mentor) Robert Stoller?

Jul 20, 2009 - 11:28 am 43. mariner:

Reality only wins over fantasy when enough people have a burning desire to know the truth, the wisdom to recognize it when they see it, and the integrity to act on it.

I’m not seeing enough evidence of any of those in our body politic today.

Jul 20, 2009 - 11:30 am 44. Mad Fiddler:

As this thread applies to a specific set of choices lying astride the present path before us…

In about 1962, Life magazine had a feature article about the challenges presented to communities that invested in the newly-available but hideously expensive kidney dialysis machines. The machines and peripherals and training and operations were so expensive that there were far more patients dying of kidney failure than could be saved.

In order to select patients who would receive the dialysis, communities set up review boards made up of a cross-section of the community – housewives, teachers, firefighters, as well as several medical doctors. These committees, with members serving anonymously, had been suggested by Doctor Belding Scribner, one of the medical pioneers developing dialysis techniques.

Of course it was rationing! But it was rationing based on the allocation of a resource that was truly scarce.

The rationing we’re facing under the pending alleged “reform” legislation is nothing but a cynical scheme to dominate people by controlling their access to health care that is not intrinsically scarce!

Simply, what the administration is trying to impose is the forced collectivization of health care.

It’s not a matter of shortages of facilities, or of pharmaceuticals, or of skilled practitioners, or machines, or beds or operating rooms. The point of the new legislation is to put government bureaucrats as GATEKEEPERS deciding who gets any access to the goodies, and imposing political criteria for who gets what level of care.

Jul 20, 2009 - 11:34 am 45. buddy larsen:

It ain’t so much ‘fantasy vs reality’ as fantasy is inside reality –it’s part of it. Imagine living a life dominated by the certain knowledge of its end –pointlessness would be the feature of everyday. So we choose an attitude, and that attitude is as if we live forever.

Winning out in the end isn’t much of an accomplishment for reality anyways –look at the USSR exampled above –small comfort for the gulag’s victims to’ve been part of the process of discovery, eh?

One could say, “reality is for those who can’t tolerate fantasy” and one would be talking about most people most of the time, i tink.

Jul 20, 2009 - 11:45 am 46. Eggplant:

Wretchard asked:

“A provider of business intelligence services asked me whether “reality always won” in the face of a determined disinformation campaign.”

The disinformation campaign has succeeded. The US Treasury has been looted, refer to:

http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/watchdog-treasury-has-failed-to-adopt-bailout-safeguards-2009-07-20.html

Key quote:

“Barofsky said that while the TARP program that Congress passed amounts to $700 billion, the total federal government support since 2007 for the economy and the financial sector could reach a far higher figure of $23.7 trillion.”

Note: $23.7 trillion. That’s nearly double the nation’s GDP.

Ever wondered how the stock market Sucker’s Rally continues even though the S&P 500 P/E ratios are over 134? Refer to:

http://www2.standardandpoors.com/portal/site/sp/en/us/page.topic/indices_500/2,3,2,2,0,0,0,0,0,1,11,0,0,0,0,0.html

All that’s keeping the economy alive are lies and government market intervention. The Fed through Goldman and Sachs, and other middlemen has been buying up stocks to keep the market indices up. When that buying stops, the whole house of cards will collapse.

RWE asked:

“We celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing today, but did the people working on that program really think that they could just keep on going the same way, so that we would now be up to, say, Apollo CXXXXXXI? And when they devised the Shuttle program did they really think it was a good idea – and it just happened to use the people and infrastructure of Apollo?”

The people working on the Apollo program knew that the best they could hope for was Apollo-20 and then the money would run out. In truth they only got to Apollo-17 before the money ran out. The Saturn-V for Apollo-18 became Skylab while the Saturn-Vs Apollo-19 and 20 where hauled outdoors and became bird nests (they’ve since been hauled back indoors and turned into museum pieces).

The Space Shuttle was a dead duck after they opted for the expendable external tank and the solid rocket booster. That fatally flawed design passed the US Senate by only one vote (it was the best NASA could do). This was back in 1972 when NASA was having its guts ripped out through massive budget cuts. One might argue that NASA in 1972 should have been honest and presented the American people with a binary option, i.e.

Adequately fund a viable Space Program –OR– terminate it cleanly and spend the money on something else.

However NASA knew that the American public would have opted for complete termination so NASA created the fiction of the fully reusable Space Shuttle. NASA kept telling itself the lie that it would fix the problem later with a “second generation Space Shuttle”, but it never happened (could not get adequate R&D funding). The aerospace community and the American people have been living with that lie ever since.

Jul 20, 2009 - 11:50 am 47. Eggplant:

onetailtest said:

“The Egyptian religion lasted at least 3,000 years. Osiris was worshiped on the basis of what we might call a “disinformation campaign”.”

The ancient Egyptians were incredibly conservative. Ancient Egyptian self rule ended after they were conquered by the Persians in 525 BC. The Great Pyramid was made around 2560 BC. The time difference between the Great Pyramid to the end of Egyptian self rule was 2035 years (longer than the age of Christ).

Imagine a world where the Roman Empire was still running everything, everyone was still speaking Latin and using slighly inferior technology to what was used 2000 years ago. That’s what life was like in Egypt just before the Persians took over. It’s actually an amazing acheivement. The original Egyptian political system and social order must have run like a Swiss watch.

Jul 20, 2009 - 12:16 pm 48. Peter Boston:

“And now, I said, let me show in a figure how far our nature is enlightened or unenlightened: –Behold! human beings living in a underground den, which has a mouth open towards the light and reaching all along the den; here they have been from their childhood, and have their legs and necks chained so that they cannot move, and can only see before them, being prevented by the chains from turning round their heads. Above and behind them a fire is blazing at a distance, and between the fire and the prisoners there is a raised way; and you will see, if you look, a low wall built along the way, like the screen which marionette players have in front of them, over which they show the puppets.”

The Allegory of the Cave

Maybe the Greeks didn’t have all the answers but they sure asked all the right questions.

Jul 20, 2009 - 12:27 pm 49. Annoy Mouse:

PB – Allegory of the cave.

This really needs to be updated with Television in mind. If we keep putting fair outcomes ahead of fair hard work then all will be lost and the dancing shadows on the caves will keep us shackled to our mis-beliefs.

Sigh.

Jul 20, 2009 - 1:00 pm 50. Reepicheep:

Reality will always be revealed, as Jesus said long ago:

“Fear them not therefore: for there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; and hid, that shall not be known.” (Matthew 10:26)

Because the truth of any matter will always be revealed in the long run, there is no reason to fear those that commit injustice. No one else was in a better position to say that than Jesus, either, given that he knew the most egregious injustice in history would be committed against him.

Jul 20, 2009 - 1:08 pm 51. Roderick Reilly:

“”"”"The rationing we’re facing under the pending alleged “reform” legislation is nothing but a cynical scheme to dominate people by controlling their access to health care that is not intrinsically scarce!”"”"

Thereby negating the “Right to life” portion of the unalienable rights in the Declaration of Independence.

People forget the role and importance of the Declaration in our founding and in its importance to define the American ethos. The Declaration is our heart and soul, the Constitution is merely our brain.

Jul 20, 2009 - 1:19 pm 52. blert:

Eggplant…

NASA should have gone with the Martin-Marietta scheme.

Unfortunately the DOD pushed the notion that the delta wing form would be essential for Pentagon missions. However, that need never developed.

The weight penalty for the delta wing is brutal. It basically doubled the price per net weight delivered to orbit!

Going with solid rockets was a political gift to Morton-Thiokol. Solid propellants are much more expensive per pound.

The next generation vehicle will be a return to the past: its first stage is merely an extended version of today’s Solid Rocket Booster.

SRB do have one advantage — they start with a much higher acceleration. This means that less propellant is wasted merely pushing against the force of gravity.

The expendable fuel tank costs about as much as a new Boeing 737.

Since you must pay the weight penalty to get it all the way to orbit — well almost — why not leave the fuel tank inside the lifting body and bring it back to earth?

You just can’t get into LEO on the cheap.

And that’s the truth of it.

Jul 20, 2009 - 1:49 pm 53. Reepicheep:

By the way, this topic of lies seeming to conquer truth in the short term reminds me of the poem that ends thusly (if I remember it right from school days):

“Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne,
Yet that scaffold sways the future, and behind the dim unknown,
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above His own.”

Jul 20, 2009 - 1:50 pm 54. Evanston1:

Wretchard, thank you for a great post. Explicates a management mode that many of us have adopted without putting a tag on it or even thinking about it much — instinctive. Thank you for the follow-on comment as well.

Jul 20, 2009 - 2:00 pm 55. ChrisB:

I’ll take a slightly different conclusion.

Reality may not always win.

In a practical sense, reality, with sufficient history behind it, *seems* to be exposed. But in fact, you cannot know for sure how many time “reality” was in fact successfully buried and cloaked by disinformation. Even to the point where sufficient time could expose all the facts. Because the facts themselves become hard to discern over time.

So in fact, the disinformation artists may have won many times. You just will never know it.

Jul 20, 2009 - 2:28 pm 56. Alexis:

Eggplant:

It feels as if a technological civilization that would send men to the moon is no less of an archeological ruin than the mounds of Cahokia or the cliffs of the Anasazi; film footage of the lunar landings and other Apollo artifacts are reminders of what no longer exists.

Why do you think the public turned so sharply against NASA after the Apollo program?

Jul 20, 2009 - 2:32 pm 57. Fletcher Christian:

#44 mad fiddler – Wrong. Health care is intrinsically scarce, as in there is always a greater demand than supply. The current American system of resource allocation is rationing by size of wallet.

There are obvious categories of people who should be at the back of the queue; these include convicted criminals for example. It is not at all obvious that someone doing a socially worthwhile job (firefighters, police officers, nurses?) should be near the back of the queue, ahead of morally dubious pop stars.

As an example of this, perhaps all members of the Wunch should be at about the same place as convicted murderers? Indirectly, they have killed more people after all.

Jul 20, 2009 - 2:45 pm 58. winslow:

I apologize for not having read all the comments before me. Reality wins only in an environment of scarcity where the actors or conversationalists gain an advantage from knowing or understanding reality.

Capitalism provides itself with its own rope when its productivity gives its opponents the leisure to attack it.

Wealthy parents often protect their children from the need to face reality.

Jul 20, 2009 - 3:13 pm 59. Eggplant:

Alexis asked:

“Why do you think the public turned so sharply against NASA after the Apollo program?”

Aerospace engineering is my profession and my passion. I understand that I can not see the forest through the trees. The near complete political opposition against the Space Program in 1972 seems to have been orchestrated by the MSM along with the full cooperation of President Nixon. Why that path was chosen is very difficult for me to understand. Our long term future requires acquiring a cheap energy source that is not dependent upon fossil fuels –AND– being able to access extraterrestrial resources. To deliberately cut off R&D funding for those activities was suicidal.

blert said:

“NASA should have gone with the Martin-Marietta scheme.”

IMHO, the bimese TSTO (two stage to orbit) space shuttle concept with the orbit vehicle and booster mounted keel-to-keel was the way to go. The booster could have been powered with two or three F-1 engines burning kerosene and LOX while the orbit vehicle could have been powered by two or three J-2 engines burning liquid hydrogen and LOX. The thermal protection system could have been carbon-carbon leading edges along with titanium shingles everywhere else. The wing box, frame and landing gear should have been titanium and designed to take a good heat soak after every flight sufficient to reanneal it (like the SR-71).

However it didn’t happen and now the Space Program is in a death spiral along with everything else. We had the opportunity to acheive an interplanetary civilization with some long term staying power. The pieces were all there in the early 1970s and intelligent people were advocating this, e.g. Werner von Braun. Those same people recognized that this was a finite “window of opportunity” that would close sometime in the early 21st century. For what it’s worth, von Braun died a broken man.

Jul 20, 2009 - 3:22 pm 60. Whitehall:

Eggplant,

Nixon also killed NERVA, a flight-ready nuclear rocket engine that could have taken us to Mars (once refined).

One spin off is the rocket fuel is the basis for Pebble Bed reactor fuel.

Jul 20, 2009 - 3:28 pm 61. Eggplant:

blert also said:

“You just can’t get into LEO on the cheap.
And that’s the truth of it.”

If the previously described bimese TSTO concept had been tried and failed –then– I would agree with you that Cheap Access to Space (CAtS) was technically impossible. As it stands, we really haven’t yet made an honest effort to find out.

Jul 20, 2009 - 3:31 pm 62. Eggplant:

Whitehall said:

“Nixon also killed NERVA, a flight-ready nuclear rocket engine that could have taken us to Mars (once refined).”

NERVA needed the Saturn-V to get into Low Earth Orbit. After the Saturn-V was terminated there was no practical way to use nuclear thermal rocket technology.

I’m very pro-nuclear for both space and terrestrial application. However there has been some quiet controversy amongst aeronautical engineers about whether or not nuclear thermal rockets would have done the trick. Nuclear thermal rocket engines are very heavy and only offer a modest improvement in specific impulse over a hydrogen-oxygen rocket. Some studies indicate that if the safety requirement is added that the nuclear thermal rocket be lifted by chemical propulsion means to a “nuclear safe” orbit before the reactor goes critical then all advantages for a nuclear thermal rocket go away.

IMHO, the most exciting propulsion technology is the VASIMR plasma propulsion system powered by a Brayton cycle nuclear power reactor. I believe something like that could have opened up the Solar System to human colonization. Again, we’ll probably never know because the Window of Opportunity appears to have closed.

Jul 20, 2009 - 3:43 pm 63. presbypoet:

The way I express this understanding is by a paradox:
I must learn what I don’t know.

It is a paradox, because I will never know what I don’t know. Remembering this helps keep me humble. Always seeking what i don’t know.

A related truth, which i am not sure is a paradox, is:
The more certain i am, the harder it is to find the truth.

Both part of the instruction manual for the universe.

True access to space was torpedoed by the nuke test ban treaty. The original orion, which consisted of throwing out nukes, with a pressure plate to push on, would have given us all the solar system by now. Pluto is one week at one G.

Jul 20, 2009 - 4:02 pm 64. Mongoose:

Christian: False metaphor. A market is not rationing. That is just nonsensical. It may push up prices, and even then in general only temporarily, but it does not ration supply. Your statement is absurd for if it were merely a matter of money then supply would increase to meet demand. There is no rationing for no one would be denied service due to a lack of resources. This is actually implicit in your argument of “wallet rationing” if you think about it–your argument depends on it, and it is a self-contradictory one. That is what markets do, and in the case of medical care, there are no real material barriers to resource creation, which I believe is the point that the person was trying to make. So your argument is rather irrational and thus invalid.

In any case, the same would obtain to a socialized system, and without recourse to the market you would indeed have shortages because resources are allocated by government fiat, and there is no room for competition, improvement, efficiencies, etc. This is just basic economics, and you would be hard pressed to rationally argue against it.

But more to the point, you do not really seem to understand the American system. The really driver of cost are:

1) Lack of competition due to direct government subsidies (medicaid and medicare being the main ones, but there are also deals like SCHIPS, Social security disability medical allowances, etc.). These programs pay for half of the direct medical cost in this country. You are somehow under the impression that the so-called “poor” do not have decent access to medical care. This is simply not true. We in effect have socialized medicine for half of the country as it is now. It is actually more than half for any person–even an illegal immigrant–may walk into an emergency room and receive medical services even if they are not insured. If anything, it is the Middle Class, the class that is paying a great deal of the taxes for this system, that suffers from “wallet rationing”, as you say. All those Democrat talking points about “X number of people being uninsured” are mostly bogus bits of agitprop. The “uninsured” are people in between jobs, rich people, college kids, people who merely wish not to be insured. They do not make up some sort of “social block” or “Underclass”. The “poor” have, in the main, excellent access to medical care in this country. You are quite misinformed here.

2) Lack of rational personal responsibility in that group that use these government programs. This irresponsibility is supported by a coverage that is too broad for a what was intended as a “safety net” program, and a medical industry that is all too eager to (irresponsibly) spend the taxpayers dollars. It is an open spigot, again, with no competition and few checks and balances.

3) A lock on the industry by professionals. There is a real attempt to limit the kind of care non-doctors may give, and a artificial limit to the amount of doctors. This too leads to a lock in of doctors fees. The AMA (and other professional organizations) act in effect as labor unions. For example, in the early 90’s a position know as a “Physician’s Assistant” was opened up–it was part of the Hillarycare fallout. The level of skill and authority was to be between a head nurse and a Doctor. It was hoped that this position would be flushed out such that in many cases they could make some diagnoses, prescribe medicine, etc. and that this would obviate the need for many visits to an actual Md. and thus lower costs. The Medical profession managed to sandbag it and radically reduce the authority and range of these people. It was going to cut into their fees.

4) Incredibly bad tort law that has driven up the cost of insurance, particularly malpractice insurance, to absurd levels.

5) Some really poor regulation in the insurance industry that cut both ways: 1) unnecessary burdens placed n this industry, and 2) some lack of accountability as well. This drives up cost.

6) The general costs of doing business has risen dramatically due to increase regulation, taxes, etc. This has put pressure on company health plans, and has in fact chased companies overseas.

7) The simple fact that medicine has advanced; people live longer and thus are treated more often with more treatments. The cost of veterinary care tracks and validates this aspect of the industry as well. It parallels, to a degree, the rise in human medical costs. One may also not, that the shear size of the Boomer cadre in the developed nations adds to this cost structure

8 ) General inflation.

So the solutions are really to get government out of it as much as possible, and get government out if business if controlling business in general.

For it is really all about how money is spent, and who is responsible for that money.

People need to pay for their own medical bills either directly or through private plans offered by their firms, and, of course, that is what we did in country prior to the huge growth of government programs and the immense interference with business starting in the 1960’s.

Get government out of they way, get people’s money back in their own pockets, and things will be just fine. It is not government role in the first place. The American federal government’s primary duties are security and the protection of Constitutional rights. It is not its business to supply services. We are in this mess precisely because we have forgotten this. Government can only make matters worse.

I would urge you to learn a bit more about the system before you start making pronouncements on it. You appear to be quite misinformed about the American system, and Amercia in general, I might add, and are buying a lot of Left wing hogwash. Let me say respectfully, this often seems to be a common error of yours hereabouts. It is extremely difficult to get an accurate understanding of America through the UK media. You seem to have spent no real time here, fron your responses, so I would urge caution in taking the left wing media at its word. They lie.

Jul 20, 2009 - 4:03 pm 65. blert:

Eggplant…

One notion for a low life-cycle cost booster would be to go with super-pressurized cryogens ( Methane/ Oxygen ) inside a full pressure containment in the manner of a solid rocket booster.

The pumps are gone with this scheme. The lower density of the cryogens is balanced by their reduced mass/ higher specific impulse and the fact that in larger sizes the ’skin’/ pressure bottle moves to a lower mass fraction.

This scheme splits the difference between Saturn and the SRB.

The segmented structure of the SRB goes away.

The cost of fuel drops.

In really large sizes such a booster should beat all comers. It’s simplicity itself.

Jul 20, 2009 - 4:05 pm 66. Eggplant:

Mongoose said:

“4) Incredibly bad tort law that has driven up the cost of insurance, particularly malpractice insurance, to absurd levels.”

The Republicans got voted into Congress on a platform saying they would reform tort law (no way the Democrats would do this). During the many years that the Republicans controlled Congress along with a Republican President, they did ***NOTHING*** to reform tort law. Their failure to fulfil this fundamental promise was more than ample reason to vote them out of office. Of course by doing so, we put the socialists and moonbats back in control (the fat is now truly in the fire). The situation would be very depressing if the federal government wasn’t already bankrupt. As it stands, we’ll do surface impact at Mach 3 rather than Mach 2.

Jul 20, 2009 - 4:14 pm 67. Eggplant:

blert:

It’s tough to beat the old F-1 as a booster motor. It’s big, dumb and very reliable (the ultimate KISS technology). Methane/oxygen supposably has poor specific impulse. I’ve met people who really believe in wax hybrid rockets, i.e. wax and LOX. I once watched a static test with a wax hybrid and it was interesting.

Jul 20, 2009 - 4:21 pm 68. Mongoose:

Eggplant: Well I certainly agree with your vision of space. I certainly think it essential too, and not just for purely material reasons either. Yes, it is suicidal.

I am not sure, however, that the whole of the problem can be placed on Nixon. He had to cut costs somewhere due to various LBJ screwups, Vjet Nam being not the least of these, and the Democrats were not giving him much room to maneuver in. I have often thought that the Democrats wanted to drag us back so that the Soviets could catch up. I feel that they are up to that same old game as regards China now.

That being said, I always thought that they should have moved to the next phase sooner (i.e., lunar settlements).

But we could return to this program; the window is not that closed yet.

We have to reverse the Obama/leftist project. To actually reverse it we may well have to dismantlement much of the federal government. This may be inevitable now if we are to manage this huge debt. But our civilian space outlays are tiny, something like under 18 billion.

Should the current batch of self-appointed aristos be replaced, and American industry revived, we may find that the will is still there.

You know doubt have your quibbles with Bush’s direction, but in general I thought it was wonderful and well received.

I do not really believe that Americans want to be anything other than leaders in Space.

Jul 20, 2009 - 4:32 pm 69. Mongoose:

Eggplant: well if we can get the right people back in office, we can start a chain of events tha can turn this around. Cutting out the New Deal programs, eliminating corp tax, etc.

It is not impossible to turn it around. It depends on the will of the American people and, of course, leadership.

This administration has started of as FDR 6th term. Maybe it will end with Reagan’s 3rd and 4th term. Obama may end up doing in the Democrats for a few decades.

It will take courage–and hard work, but it is not impossible. The question is: What is the true character of the American people today?

Jul 20, 2009 - 4:39 pm 70. blert:

Near Earth Space is the critical high ground for military and commercial interests.

Loss of primacy there would mean loss of primacy, period.

Jul 20, 2009 - 4:41 pm 71. Eggplant:

Mongoose said:

“You know doubt have your quibbles with Bush’s direction, but in general I thought it was wonderful and well received.”

I’m proud to have voted for George W. Bush and still believe he was one of our best Presidents. However his fiscal policy was nothing to write home about and I stand by my earlier comments about the Republican Party’s failure towards tort reform.

Mongoose also said:

“well if we can get the right people back in office, we can start a chain of events tha can turn this around.”

I would love to believe that. The Republican Party has shot its credibility and the Democratic Party never had any. The MSM has established itself as the propaganda agency for the socialist wing of the Democratic Party. The American economy is crumbling before our eyes. The first Iranian nuke will probably go off within a year, assuming the Israelis don’t strike first.

Who is going to lead us out of this mess? Whoever it is would need the political cunning of Franklin D. Roosevelt, the pragmatic compassion of Abraham Lincoln, the intelligence of Thomas Jefferson and the moral grit of Harry S. Truman. I haven’t seen that person yet and suspect he may not exist. More likely, the whole system will fall down and go “Boom!”. Then an Oliver Cromwell or a Lucius Cornelius Sulla will crawl out of the woodwork.

Quite frankly, I’m getting more focused on escape and survival strategies for myself and my family. I see no obvious solutions.

Jul 20, 2009 - 5:11 pm 72. Jim Nicholas:

To Peter Boston’s @17 quotation of John Maynard Keynes, “In the long run we’re all dead”, I add a second from him: “The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent”. How does one make decisions for the future, such as plans having an impact on children and grandchildren, when the time of the triumph of reality or truth is uncertain?

Also the existence of disinformation and irrationality is itself a reality that affects behavior in the present and, thus, creates a different future than if that disinformation and irrationality had not existed. It seems to me that reality is not a fixed state which can eventually win or be revealed. Rather, it is a moving or changing state that is shaped in part by present reality or truth and in part by real reactions to fantasy and falseness.

Clearly, I am talking about evolving reality in this life, not about an ultimate and unchanging reality that can triumph in a future existence.

Jim

Jul 20, 2009 - 5:15 pm 73. Mongoose:

Eggplant: I would urge you to not give into despair. It is possible to turn it around. We need to not think that it require one leader. It requires many.

If Obama goes down, the media goes with him too, BTW.

Jul 20, 2009 - 5:22 pm 74. Peter Boston:

Whatever you think about GWB he prevented Al Gore from lecturing us for at least 4 years. That’s gotta’ be worth something.

Jul 20, 2009 - 5:27 pm 75. Eggplant:

Mongoose said:

“If Obama goes down, the media goes with him too, BTW.”

Yes, that’s the silver lining. The MSM has bet everything on the Chosen One. Unfortunately, will there be anything left after the Chosen One goes down? I’d say there’s about a 25% chance that Obama will be removed from the White House in handcuffs after the “Lord Protector” takes over. I’d also say there’s about a 10% chance that Obama will be vaporized by an Islamic nuke. Obama definitely has a lousy job.

Jul 20, 2009 - 5:35 pm 76. RWE:

Eggplant:

I became involved with a nuclear rocket engine effort while at the Pentagon. You have not had fun until you have come to the Pentagon on a Saturday morning to explain nuclear rocket engine design to a 3 star fighter pilot.

It was not heavy, was dirt simple, very safe before launch and for use as an upper stage and could not fail to work – but did represent a materials challenge, given that the environment it created around itself made the Sun look like a 60 watt bulb.

Never had a chance. SDI decided they did not need it, it did not fit any USAF programs, NASA was years behind it and therefore had no interest in it, and the FAS and a certain Congressman decided to take it out for no obvious reason.

But you need to realzie that politicians do not think up ideas for a one shot stunt like Apollo or a monster money consumer like the Shuttle. “Experts” think that stuff up, people in the industry. When the head of NASA that the “after Apollo start over again from 1957″ approach would not fly in Congress, he was going to suggest a NASA version of Dyna Soar, but was told by Nixon’s people he could think a bit bigger than that. And it got bigger. And Bigger. And BIGGer. And finally had to consume all of the money there was for space launch and a lot more.

Jul 20, 2009 - 6:21 pm 77. Alexis:

Eggplant:

For whatever it is worth, I have my doubts that NASA can run any worthwhile space program. I know just enough about NASA to distrust its ability to make decisions.

I think some kind of massive bureaucratic reorganization may be necessary to get the space program back on track (and not like the one at Homeland Security). Perhaps mapping organizations such as the USGS, NOAA, and NASA should be put together. In any case, space enthusiasts need to get behind politicians with a passionate voice in favor of manned and unmanned space exploration and colonization.

As it is, I am worried that Buzz Aldrin may actually kill any future move to Mars. Why? He is acting as if plans for a lunar base would undermine plans for Mars exploration. Well, the Moon may be “been there, done that” to him, but younger Americans don’t remember the lunar landings at all. If the American public can’t get the political will to go to the Moon, there won’t be any for Mars. Also, if the American public sees that we can get to the Moon, support will be greater for going to Mars. Support for one builds support for the other. If we are forced back into an “either-or” decision by the likes of Buzz Aldrin, the pressure may very well break the back of the space program entirely.

I want us to go to Mars. It is precisely my support for the exploration of Mars that leads me to be angry at Buzz Aldrin. There’s no nice way to say this, but every time Buzz Aldrin disparages lunar exploration, he undermines my support for going to Mars and leads me to wonder if space exploration is a lost cause entirely. Going back to the Moon is a project near and dear to my heart, and Buzz Aldrin is trying to kill it!! I want a lunar base not merely because it is supposed to uplift mankind, but also because it will materially help win against our enemies on planet Earth. Victory against al-Qaeda may very well depend upon the existence of an American lunar base.

Does the future of manned space exploration need to wait until Buzz Aldrin is dead so he won’t be constantly trying to undermine whatever agenda a future Prince Henry the Navigator may have in mind?

Jul 20, 2009 - 6:30 pm 78. JFSanders031:

The moon base is a good idea if only for reseeding the planet after doomsday. Buzz should really just buzz off. He was pretty lame back in the 70’s and hasn’t aged well at all.

Who was the one who saw UFO’s? Oh yeh, Him…

Reading you engineers brings me back to my youth when all of Dad’s buddies from Martin-Marietta were over BBQing in the backyard. Nice to see at least some of us think that space is worth at least a honest try.

Jul 20, 2009 - 7:13 pm 79. Against the Wind » Blog Archive » Book review:

[...] serves up some interesting ideas. This post from today deals with some of my favorite themes. Belmont Club A provider of business intelligence services asked me whether “reality always won” in the face [...]

Jul 20, 2009 - 9:18 pm 80. Mad Fiddler:

Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, whatever you may think of their writing individually or collaboratively, gathered a buncha folks together several times in the 1980s and 90’s to brainstorm concepts for the privatization – or maybe more correctly, the commercialization – of space.

Does anyone know what came of that?

I mind a former Atari games designer who wrote a provocative open letter: BJ West, “Eight Steps to the Stars: How NASA Can Make A Successful Massively Multiplayer Online Game”

This seems to have been in response to an RFP from NASA aimed at game developers to come up with an MMO (massive multiplayer online) interactive game to stir up interest in Space among kids.

Mmmmmm. I recommend checking out Mr. West’s comments. He seems to have learned some good stuff working at Atari even as it circled the drain.

Jul 20, 2009 - 9:39 pm 81. Jonathan:

Joshua @ 33: “Another thing to consider is how ‘true believers’ will respond once reality hits them in the face.”

They will not respond well or quickly, since they have invested so much in the fantasy. Some of them may emerge injured from the flaming wreckage and wonder where they went wrong, but many won’t know what hit them and some will look to cast blame on everyone but themselves. It was always thus.

(See also Jim Nicholas @ 72.)

Jul 20, 2009 - 11:07 pm 82. Eggplant:

RWE said:

“I became involved with a nuclear rocket engine effort while at the Pentagon. You have not had fun until you have come to the Pentagon on a Saturday morning to explain nuclear rocket engine design to a 3 star fighter pilot.”

I presume that was Timberwind. Below is the link for those who are interested:

http://www.fas.org/nuke/space/c08tw_2.htm

“It was not heavy, was dirt simple, very safe before launch and for use as an upper stage and could not fail to work – but did represent a materials challenge, given that the environment it created around itself made the Sun look like a 60 watt bulb.”

A nuclear reactor ***before it has been activated*** is quite safe. I’ve handled an unactivated nuclear fuel rod myself with my bare hands (it’s no big thing).

Some folks at Belmont Club made negative remarks about Buzz Aldrin. Not only was Buzz Aldrin the second man to walk on the Moon but Dr. Buzz Aldrin has a doctors degree from MIT in aeronautical engineering. He also was a Korean war fighter pilot with two MIG kills to his credit. Dr. Aldrin is an honest-to-god hero and should be treated with extreme respect even if one disagrees with his opinions.

It so happens that I personally agree with Dr. Aldrin’s opinion about the Moon. It’s a dead end. The best path to Mars is via the asteroids to Phobos. After a successful landing on Phobos where the basic transportation technology has been proven, we should then proceed to the Martian surface. Once we’re on Mars, we should stay there permanently using in situ resources.

Colonization of the Moon is physically impossible. Almost all the volatiles got cooked off the Moon when it was formed, e.g. no nitrogen. Also there is no atmospheric shield against primary cosmic radiation and the gravity is too low to maintain human physiology. Sending people to the Moon is a waste of limited resources. It’s much better to go to Mars via the asteroids.

Here’s a little gee-wiz tidbit: It requires less delta-V to land on Phobos and return to the Earth than it does to land on the lunar surface and return to the Earth.

Again, this is all academic because the Space Program is just about to implode along with everything else.

Jul 20, 2009 - 11:32 pm 83. M. Simon:

Mac says:

Here’s one example: we’ve tolerated and effectively denied the origin of high crime rates for years because certain favored ethnic groups were the ones responsible for a vastly disproportionate amount of the crime.

Its the prohibition dude. Covert Jim Crow. In fact if you look up the history of the laws they were Jim Crow from the get go. Same for the origin of gun control.

Jul 21, 2009 - 12:59 am 84. M. Simon:

If the Polywell Fusion Reactor works (we will know in two years) we will have very cheap access to space.

We Will Know In Two Years

Jul 21, 2009 - 1:11 am 85. buddy larsen:

Second, or third, the high opinions of Dr. Aldrin. Plus he’s got a mean right.

http://pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/82247/

(glance at the comments to understand the incident)

Jul 21, 2009 - 3:40 am 86. Ursus Maritimus:

Reality always wins in the end, and that is why those who profit from the lies try to engineer an event horizon, something that changes everything so that the previous reality becomes irrelevant, before ‘the end’.

“Sure, we lied about your company making shoddy goods, but now it has gone bankrupt, so what are you going to do about it?”

“Sure, we lied before the election, but further elections have been canceled, so what are you going to do about it?”

Jul 21, 2009 - 4:49 am 87. RWE:

Eggplant:

I agree with you about Buzz Aldrin. Among other things he was the pilot of the Eagle LEM, while Armstrong was the mission commander. So Col Aldrin was the first pilot to land on the Moon.

But he favors the Apollo style “direct ascent” for going back to the Moon. Dumb, dumb, dumb. As you point out, going to the Moon is almost pointless. The only reason for going there is to prove out the technology to go to Mars and elsewhere in the Back Yard. And the only way to do that is to assemble ships in orbit. NASA has asserted that the Space Station assembly has proved you can’t do that. So NASA essentially has proved that we can’t go anywhere past the Moon. If they believe that, then they need to get out of the business.

Admittedly, the Giant Spaceship Launched From Earth approach has the advantage of employing lots of people in certain places here in Earth. But so would building automobiles out of paper mache.

As to the “Timberwind” reference, no comment, no comment.

Jul 21, 2009 - 6:17 am 88. mariner:

I agree with you about Buzz Aldrin. Among other things he was the pilot of the Eagle LEM, while Armstrong was the mission commander. So Col Aldrin was the first pilot to land on the Moon.

No, he wasn’t. Although Aldin had the title of Lunar Module Pilot, Armstrong actually had the controls.

Jul 21, 2009 - 11:23 am 89. Eggplant:

M. Simon said:

“If the Polywell Fusion Reactor works (we will know in two years) we will have very cheap access to space.”

For the last month I’ve been studying IEC fusion. The notion of building a nuclear fusion device in one’s garage for under $3000 is intriguing.

Have you actually built a Philo Farnsworth style fusor that produced measurable fast neutrons? What method did you use to measure the neutron flux? How much did it cost? What sort of vacuum vessel did you build? Where did you get your high voltage power supply?

I can see the basic problem with IEC fusion: It’s the Bremsstrahlung radiation. It’s a show stopper and I don’t see any easy way of getting around it. I also looked at Bussard’s polywell reactor. It appears to be a reinvention of the old Lawrence Livermore Yin-Yang coil. I actually saw the Yin-Yang coil a million years ago during Family Day shortly before the project was cancelled. It was never explained to me why the Yin-Yang coil was a no-starter. Never the less, I think an IEC fusor would be a cool science fair project. If the thing wasn’t so damned dangerous, I’d try to convince my son to build one.

RWE:

Both Buzz Aldrin and Neal Armstrong were pilots. It’s true that Col. Aldrin was the LM pilot but Armstrong was the pilot in command during the actual landing. A million years ago in graduate school as a teaching assistant I had a student named Mark Armstrong. He was a very nice young man who was a near clone of his daddy and also one of my best students. Supposably one of things that drove Dr. Aldrin was always being in the shadow of his father. Buzz Aldrin’s full name is “Dr. Edwin Eugene Aldrin, Jr.”. His father, Edwin Eugene Aldrin, was an aviation pioneer, a student of rocket developer Robert Goddard, and an aide to General Billy Mitchell. I believe the driving force behind Buzz Aldrin was his desire to rise above his father’s shadow. Buzz Aldrin did that with a vengence and now Edwin Eugene Aldrin senior is permanently in his son’s shadow (perhaps not what Buzz really wanted).

RWE said:

“But he favors the Apollo style “direct ascent” for going back to the Moon.”

As far as I know, Buzz Aldrin is against going back to the Moon. Dr. Aldrin has long advocated “Mars Direct” and bypassing the Moon (a correct strategy IMHO).

Jul 21, 2009 - 11:51 am 90. Eggplant:

RWE:

Do you or anyone else on this forum know anything about the Pershing-II RV? It’s now called the “Hera Missile Target Vehicle” or MTV. The prime contractor for the Pershing-II was Martin Marietta. I’m mainly interested in the reentry vehicle’s aerodynamics and G&C. The Pershing-II RV was a maneuverable RV or MaRV. Apparently Goodyear Aerospace developed the active radar guidance system for the Pershing-II RV. It’s unclear whether the actual RV aeroshell was developed by Martin Marietta or Goodyear Aerospace. I’m sure all the guys involved in designing the Pershing-II RV have since retired. It would be nice to have a long conversation with one of them.

Jul 21, 2009 - 12:27 pm 91. Mad Fiddler:

I see that former astronaut (and, oh yeah, Honorable Senator) Jack Schmitt is connected to the University of Wisconsin IEC project.

Seems like there are a few knowledgeable people that reckon the moon has some valuable resources, like Helium-3. (WHAT? I thought helium had mostly escaped from the Earth already! If there’s Helium to be found on the moon, doesn’t that raise some intriguing questions of how it occurs?)

The arguments for near-term utility of IEC (Inertial Electrostatic Confinement) for fusion list some interesting potential applications:

* Detection of explosives in baggage
* Radioisotope production
* Food sterilization
* Positron production
* Detection of Highly Enriched Uranium
* Location of chemical and radioactive waste
* Gemstone enhancement
* Fission waste transmutation

An online article titled “>Non-Electric Applications of Fusion”expands the details a bit more:

High energy neutrons can be very useful for the following processes:
i.) production of radioisotopes (for medical applications and research)
ii.) detection of specific elements or isotopes in complex environments
iii.) radiotherapy
iv.) alteration of the electrical, optical, or mechanical properties of solids
v.) destruction of long-lived radioactive waste
Low energy neutrons can be very useful for the following processes:
i.) production of radioisotopes (for medical applications and research)
ii.) detection of specific elements or isotopes in complex environments
iii.) destruction of long-lived radioactive waste
iv.) production of tritium for military and civilian applications
v.) production of fissile material
vi.) destruction of fissile material for nuclear warheads
vii.) production of radioisotopes for portable g ray sources
High energy protons can be used for the following processes:
i.) production of radioisotopes (for medical applications and research)
ii.) detection of specific elements or isotopes in complex environments
iii.) destruction of long-lived radioactive waste
6
Electromagnetic Radiation (ER) can be used for:
i.) food sterilization
ii.) equipment sterilization
iii.) pulsed x-ray sources
Ultra high heat fluxes from fusion grade plasmas, sometimes called a “Fusion Torch”
9 can be used for:
i.) ionizing waste materials and separating elements
a.) municipal and medical wastes
b.) spent reactor fuel elements
c.) chemical weapons
d.) extractive metallurgy
ii.) production of sources of intense radiation to treat industrial, medical,
and municipal wastes

I assume these will only come to pass when a hand-held IEC device is ready for market. Or laptop version. (sorry i’m incurably sarcastic. it’s printed on my driver’s license.) But seriously, you can’t just order a few grams of low-energy neutrons to sprinkle on a suspicious suitcase at the airport.

Jul 21, 2009 - 12:54 pm 92. Eggplant:

Mad Fiddler said:

“I assume these will only come to pass when a hand-held IEC device is ready for market.”

It already does, refer to:

http://www.nsd-fusion.com/

Philo Farnsworth (a Robert Fulton / Thomas Edison class genius) patented the IEC fusion concept in 1966. Apparently lots of high grade talent has been thrown at IEC fusion since its conception but so far with no success. Again, the show stopper is Bremsstrahlung radiation. With fusor technology, it’s clear that Mother Nature is playing games with us. She’s made it possible for almost anyone to buid a nuclear fusion reactor in their garage but the device is physically unable to produce more energy than in consumes.

Ma Nature dangles the prize of infinite cheap energy just out of our reach (she’s definitely a mother).

Jul 21, 2009 - 1:20 pm 93. RWE:

Eggplant:

The Hera target vehicle contractor is Coleman Aerospace in Orlando. Since Space Vector apparently did the modified Minuteman booster stages for Coleman, I would assume that Coleman handled overall integration, including using the surplus Pershing II RV. You might give them a call. I used to know a guy there but it has been a while.

When Pres Bush’s space explortion initiative first came up I saw Buzz Aldrin on TV advocating a duplicate of Apollo using Shuttle SRBs.

The WSJ had an interesting article a few weeks back about the replacements of older big fission power reactors by modularized small reactors that don’t even use control rods. You would have several of these in a nuclear power plant rather than one big one, making it much safer and easier to shut one down and still keep the plant up in the event of a need for maintenance. And I guess they are much cheaper and easier to build, too.

Jul 21, 2009 - 2:09 pm 94. Eggplant:

RWE said:

“The Hera target vehicle contractor is Coleman Aerospace in Orlando. Since Space Vector apparently did the modified Minuteman booster stages for Coleman, I would assume that Coleman handled overall integration, including using the surplus Pershing II RV.”

Thank you. I’ve actually been interacting with some of the folks at L3-Coleman Aerospace. It was through L3-Coleman that I acquired an aerodynamic model for the Pershing-II MaRV or “MTV” as they like to call it. This model is extremely sophisticated (easily the most sophisticated model that I’ve ever worked with). However L3-Coleman did not develop this model on their own but rather inherited it from the original manufacturer (presumably Martin Marietta or Goodyear Aerospace). L3-Coleman has already provided me with the raw aerodynamic coefficients but without the functional forms (the actual equations). For example, there are corrections to the axial and normal body force coefficients based upon the fin deflection angles. However I do not know the functional form to apply those corrections. What I’d really like to obtain is the Martin Marietta / Goodyear Aerospace technical report that provides the functional forms for the aerodynamic model (the aerodynamic data book). This report would have been classified when the Pershing-II MaRV was still a weapon. If standard practice was followed, all copies of the report would have been shreded after Martin Marietta / Goodyear Aerospace ceased to have a financial interest in the Pershing-II MaRV (the report would have been declassified but no longer exists because all copies were shreded). However a retired engineer who was originally involved might have a copy of the report stuck in a box in his garage.

Jul 21, 2009 - 3:24 pm 95. Eggplant:

RWE also said:

“When Pres Bush’s space explortion initiative first came up I saw Buzz Aldrin on TV advocating a duplicate of Apollo using Shuttle SRBs.”

I suspect Buzz Aldrin was advocating this in the context of a manned Mars program. It is not common knowledge but a big limiter for a heavy payload (manned) Mars lander is the fairing diameter of the launcher to Low Earth Orbit. The martian atmosphere is just dense enough that a designer must worry about aerodynamics. However the martian atmosphere is so thin that getting something to slow down before whacking into the planet’s surface is very difficult. An obvious solution is to make the aeroshell really big and thus reduce the ballistic coefficient. We’ve learned over the years that on-orbit assembly is really not an option (too hard to do with guys in pressure suits). Consequently, a Mars lander needs to be launched as a single piece thus requiring a really big launcher. People have been trying to work around this with deployable decelerators, e.g. ballutes, etc. However ballutes are a very dodgy technology. You really don’t want something flapping around at Mach 10. The decelerator really needs to be rock solid with a well defined thermal protection system.

Jul 21, 2009 - 3:38 pm 96. RWE:

Eggplant:

Have you talked to the people at Army Space and Missile at Huntsville (the real one, not the Atari video game)? Seems that I recall they have kind of a tech library there you can access.

Jul 21, 2009 - 4:51 pm 97. Eggplant:

RWE:

Thanks for the suggestion. I’m going to request our documents person to do a search on this. However my past experience has been that most of the documents have been shredded.

There’s a very good book out about the development of
the Titan-II ICBM titled: “Titan II: A History of a Cold War Missile Program” by David K. Stumpf. I had previously done a literature search on the Mk-6 RV that the Titan-II carried but was only partially
successful. Then I found Stumpf’s book and was surprised by what he could dig up. I think the secret
to Stumpf’s success was that he accessed material archived in the classified section of the US Air Force Academy Library. I have a sneaking suspicion that there is a huge body of single copy paper documents dry-rotting on the shelves of the US Air Force Academy Library that have not been microfilmed or scanned into PDFs. We might be in a “Library of Alexandria” situation where a single fire could wipe out a significant fraction of what the human race knows about aerospace technology.

Jul 21, 2009 - 5:40 pm 98. WillDoMathForFood:

I agree with Wretchard, for the same reason Dr. Sanity states. Time is always on the side of Reality. Look at the Soviet Union: that was a 71-year-long spin campaign, and for 63 years or so, they looked like they were doing a pretty good job. And Reality triumphed. But at what cost!!! Millions dead, all but a miserable handful of apparatchiks suffering endlessly, progress halted, a society three generations in the making whose only biological selection pressure was the ability to lie. Reality might always win, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s useful. And its lessons are quickly forgotten, or never learned. Our current electorate and elected leaders are proving that every single day. Only 70 more years to go!

Jul 21, 2009 - 6:40 pm 99. b goldman:

If you think “reality always won,” you’ve never heard of Vietnam.

Jul 22, 2009 - 8:06 am 100. Evanston1:

b goldman: you’re absolutely right. People aren’t mechanistic, they act based on perceptions so as long as you convince them you’re the best alternative, they’ll stick with you. Even as you f ‘em up the ‘a. As is happening now in the USA.
Jonah Goldberg, whom I respect greatly, has recently argued on NRO’s The Corner that the USSR’s collapse was inevitable. Uh, perhaps, but it would’ve lasted a lot longer if the elite themselves hadn’t given up. They were the most informed about the alternative — the West — having travelled and otherwise “spied” on us and they were the ones who lost the will to win. Keep a society blinded to alternatives, like in N. Korea and you can last a long, long time.

Regarding the rest of the recent comments here, all this space talk is interesting technically, but I must say it is silly. “Colonize Mars.” For “resources.” The expense of getting to/from is incredible, no less trying to sustain yourself there. Your return on investment for those resources would be 1/100, at best. The “space race” was helpful in giving us strategic control of the “high ground.” Satellites, materials, advanced computers. But the technological breakthroughs discussed in these comments on how to “get there” are regarding propulsion/energy systems which could be developed for different uses (power generation applications) here, on earth. We don’t need the goal of further space travel to develop better technology in that regard. It’s quaint that y’all still hear sirens calling from Titan, but like Vonnegut (who wrote a book by that name), space travel is dead. It’ll be unmanned or not at all from now on. The original discussion here was about reality, and it is impinging on your vision because people have an abundance of alternatives when it comes to spending money.

Jul 22, 2009 - 10:53 am 101. Kirk Parker:

Reep,

You got it right, but it’s worth reading the whole thing:

Once to every man and nation, comes the moment to decide,
In the strife of truth with falsehood, for the good or evil side;
Some great cause, some great decision, offering each the bloom or blight,
And the choice goes by forever, ’twixt that darkness and that light.

Then to side with truth is noble, when we share her wretched crust,
Ere her cause bring fame and profit, and ’tis prosperous to be just;
Then it is the brave man chooses while the coward stands aside,
Till the multitude make virtue of the faith they had denied.

By the light of burning martyrs, Christ, Thy bleeding feet we track,
Toiling up new Calv’ries ever with the cross that turns not back;
New occasions teach new duties, time makes ancient good uncouth,
They must upward still and onward, who would keep abreast of truth.

Though the cause of evil prosper, yet the truth alone is strong;
Though her portion be the scaffold, and upon the throne be wrong;
Yet that scaffold sways the future, and behind the dim unknown,
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above His own

-James Russell Lowell

Jul 22, 2009 - 11:17 am 102. Kirk Parker:

And yes, I know the provenance of Lowell’s poem, but sometimes art really does transcend its origins.

Jul 22, 2009 - 11:27 am

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