| Wednesday, January
30, 2002 The State Of The Union.
It was a good speech. I was a bit concerned about the security guards
inside the House chamber, but they turned out to be ushers, members of the
Sergeant at Arms staff. When we start having soldiers and secret service
agents in the Capitol itself we know we are on the way to Empire. Not that
we aren't now.
I fear the new war. It is well intentioned, but there is no way out as
we are conducting it. Our goals are not to make ourselves feared, or be
left alone, but to put the world right. We can't do that, but we have
enough power to try.
Let me say it again: our goal ought to be to make certain that the
ruling class in every nation understands that it is very much to their
interest to avoid having their territories used as places to conspire
against the United States, to launch attacks on the United States, or even
to learn how to attack the United States.
There are regimes which have already violated this rule. They should be
brought down, in blood, with their rulers hounded off the face of the
earth. I'll go further and say that we ought to establish monuments,
visible monuments, in their capitals as reminders. Then we come home.
We aren't good at running the world. The Brits were at one time but
they have lost heart. They don't have any ruling class to export. There's
no one capable of putting the world right. What we can do is be ourselves.
"We are the friends of liberty everywhere, but we are the
guardians only of our own." Guarding our own can require
overseas interventions. It shouldn't require an empire.
Having said that, it was a good speech, and Bush doesn't have imperial
ambitions. He may make it a lot easier for those who do, but then so would
anyone else in that position. Alas.
More imbecilities in the air: someone walked through fertilizer and now
half the planes out of San Francisco are being diverted to other airports.
And we are really so very much more secure.
(As I write this they only know that someone with "trace elements
of explosives on his shoes" managed to get on an airplane that took
off. The Feds are now diverting all planes that left SFX this morning, and
cops are searching everyone who was on any airplane that left San
Francisco today. We all know what the result will be.)
When someone who looks like a retired Marine general with the CMH tries
to bomb an airplane, we can worry. When an 80 year old grandmother in a
wheelchair tries to bomb an airplane we can get scared. Until then the
simplest security is to search hell out of people who look like
terrorists. Like the madman who was going to ignite his shoes. He may as
well have had "I am a terrorist" tattooed on his forehead.
We do not want to inconvenience people who look arabic or middle
eastern. I can sympathize, but not to the point where we decide to wreck
the economy and inconvenience everyone else just to avoid the appearance
of profiling.
I suppose I am merely being splenetic, but once again I find fewer and
fewer incentives to go near an airport.
Blowing up an airplane might kill a few hundred people: about as many
as are killed on the highways every day. The important thing is to keep
from crashing that plane into a major building or city: but we know that,
and that's a lot easier to do than to prevent some fanatic from bombing
the plane. But those who are likely to blow up a plane with their shoes
aren't likely to look like you or me.
I need to check on whether they have extended the DSL area to my part
of the city. Probably not. Adelphia sent flyers around to get people to
join their cable service but no mention of cable modem.
Actually the dual system, satellite for most web surfing, 40KBS
landline for the rest including on-line games, works, although it is not
convenient. Alas it doesn't work well. I don't tend to do much web lookup
because the landline is impossible for big pages, and the satellite takes
forever if the pages call for lots of small files at a few seconds
turnaround per file called for. I long for something simpler. Wireless
would be fine. Return of Ricochet would work. Where is WIFI now what I
need it? (But then I have always needed it, and for a little while
there I had it...)
But the prospects for new investments in fast bandwidth do not seem
very good just now.
I have a lot of stuff on analysts, and I'll put together a page on the
subject, but the bottom line is, they tend to be shills, boosters,
salespeople for the companies they "analyze." To some extent it
reminds me of the Kremlinologists of the Cold War: if you told the truth
(as the Pipes brothers did) you would never get a visa to go to the USSR
and thus you would not look like an expert. As it happened, in 1989 both
Richard Pipes and I got our first visas to the USSR and went with the
World Media Association, along with Georgy Anne Geyer and Armand de
Borchgrave, also on their first trip to the USSR. But by then the USSR was
crumbling. But in general, those who 'analyzed' the Soviet Union were
never given access to official Soviet stuff or taken on junkets or invited
to embassy parties unless they said nice things about the USSR: and stock
analysts don't tend to do well unless they say nice things about the
companies they analyze. Which makes one wonder why anyone wants to pay
attention to them, but people do, and buy stuff through the firms that
employ the analyst -- thereby paying for the analyst in one way or
another. (Yes there are commissions on sell orders, too, but if I just
told you to buy something and a few weeks later told you to sell, would
you ever buy on my advice again?)
Anyway I have a lot of mail on that and I'll get it posted into a
special page.
Following is interesting. It brings up a pdf file:
Below is the URL for a NASA rlv report from MSFC. http://www.highway2space.com/RLV_TFDS.pdf
It's worth reading. I have no idea how well received it will be at
NASA. And I understand that Newt Gingrich is now pushing for prizes as a
way to get to space. I talked him into that notion in the 80's but when he
became Speaker he didn't seem to do anything with it. It's still a good
idea.
I proposed in 1984: "Be it resolved by the Congress of the
United States:
The Congress has determined that a permanent colony on the Moon is in
the national interest of the United States.
The Treasurer is directed to pay the sum of $10 billion (Ten Billion US
Dollars) to the first US-owned company that shall place 31 American
citizens on the Moon and maintain them there alive and in good health for
the period of three years and one day.
This payment shall be exempt from Federal taxation. No money shall be
paid under this act until the conditions set forth above are
fulfilled."
End of legislation. That would have done it then. It might take
$20 billion now. Note that there is no government risk at all. If nothing
happens the cost is the paper to print the bill and record it into law.
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