When Space Exploration Was Cool

The space shuttle Endeavor docked with the International Space Station (ISS) yesterday and it set a record. It was a small reminder of how excited Americans used to get about accomplishments in space travel and exploration. This time, the record was for the most humans on the same spacecraft at the same time: 13. The shuttle's crew of 7 joined the 6 people on the ISS to break the old record of 10. There have been 13 people in space at the same time in the past, but they were on several spacecraft. This record was set just days before the 40th anniversary of the first moon landing (7/20/1969).

Back in the day, Americans followed our space exploration efforts pretty closely, watching the launches of the various Mercury Gemini, and Apollo spacecraft, the moon landings, and the early space shuttle launches. We would sit glued to radios and televisions, listening or watching launches of sub-orbital flights, the first flights around the earth, and the first tentative efforts to reach the moon. It was exciting stuff, never knowing if the spacecraft and astronauts were going to succeed, but always expecting that American ingenuity would manage to overcome all the obstacles. There were mishaps and missteps, but for the most part, the NASA efforts held our attention and captured our imagination.

After the moon landings, something changed, and not for the better. Our famous short national attention span, I think, got in the way and we were no longer as engaged with the process. We lost focus as did NASA, and there was no clear new objective after the moon landing. The space exploration that continued became routine, and not nearly as exciting. The shuttle disasters briefly recaptured our attention, but it wasn't long before our attention wandered again.

I think it's no small thing to have 13 humans on a single spacecraft. And that group is truly international, representing all five member organizations for the ISS: NASA, the Russian Federal Space Agency, the Canadian Space Agency, the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency, and the European Space Agency).

It's no Federation or Deep Space 9 certainly, but I think it's a big deal that this record has been set. We should all get excited for a few moments.

Loose Cannon On Campus?

A local story here involves a now former school board member who had been arrested for battery involving a group of students outside their high school. The full story is here. In brief, when he saw a group of students attempting to enter the school through a "restricted" door, he "ordered" them to follow him to the Dean's office. Along the way, he grabbed another student by the arm and ordered him to come along also. That student refused and filed a battery complaint against the school board member. Prosecutors eventually dropped the charge and the board member resigned from the board because he moved out of the district. He also took the opportunity to declare he'd done nothing wrong and that his actions made him a "hero."

The story is troubling for several reasons. My first concern is that comments on the newspaper story clearly indicate that many people have no clue what school board members are or what their job is. Many commenters lauded him for "doing the job he was hired for" and wondered why the prosecutors filed charges against him for "doing his job." He is not a "staff member." He was a school board member which is an elective office, not an employee of the District. He was totally out of line to attempt to herd a bunch of students to "the office."

Another issue is that school board members as individuals have no particular authority over students or even staff members of a school, or to enforce rules on campus. In fact, in Illinois, the oath of office for school board members states "...a Board member has no legal authority as an individual and that decisions can be made only by a majority vote at a public Board meeting." One school board member equals one citizen, nothing more, nothing less.

This guy is not a hero (since when do people get to declare themselves heroes?). If he thought the students were "behaving suspiciously," he should have called police, not intervene personally. His wife, who was with him in the car, and is a teacher at the high school, might have legitimately gotten involved. His claim that he was concerned about security at the high school rings hollow and sounds more like someone searching for a campaign slogan.

He is nothing more than a bully and the District is better off that he's now resigned. He clearly had no clue what the role of a school board member is and apparently didn't care very much about that small detail. For those who are petrified about students bringing guns or bombs to school, it can happen, but it doesn't get prevented by a board member who happens to be sitting in his car. It's prevented by adoption of procedures and rules by school boards and administrators, not by loose cannons on campus.

Obama's Books Damage National Security?

In what is surely the goofiest story of the month, Federal Prison authorities have denied access to two books authored by President Obama to al-Qaida member Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, who is serving a 30-year sentence at the federal supermax prison in Florence, Colo. The Associated Press report is here. Apparently, the prisoner requested access to the books last year, and based on FBI "advice," prison officials recently denied the access, because "passages in both books contain information that could damage national security." The prison system referred inquiries to the FBI, which was "looking into" the situation Thursday (7/9/09).

This is the kind of thing that gives bureaucrats a bad name. I wonder if this means that anyone who reads the President's books could damage national security, or if it's just convicted terrorists that are causing concern? It seems that if prison officials simply wanted to make the prisoner realize he's in the "supermax" federal prison and should not be enjoying reading books, citing national security was serious overkill.

Red Lights and Shopping Carts

When I drive in the Chicago suburbs, I invariably encounter people who don't really seem to understand they're piloting a couple of tons of steel around the streets and highways. They frequently seem to be preoccupied with other activities, often involving a cell phone, and to be blithely unaware of the existence of other vehicles. I think it's just too easy to get a driver's license.

As a bike rider, I pay close attention to other traffic on the streets, and it's appalling how many people think stop signs are just advisory, and roll on by.

Right turns on red, are another cause of concern for pedestrians, bicyclists, and other vehicles. A ridiculous number of drivers don't recognize that right turns on red are supposed to only be made after stopping not instead of stopping: "drivers must come to a complete stop and yield the right-of-way to oncoming traffic and pedestrians before turning" ). Because so many people don't seem to feel the need to stop before turning, or pull out without yielding to oncoming traffic, I think the right turn on red rules are among the worst rules enacted during my adulthood. I can't remember when the rules were changed to allow turning red at stop lights, but I'm pretty sure it was after I took driver training in high school back in the Pleistocene. I suppose it's too much to expect that people who don't stop at stop lights will stop at stop signs...

Too many people seem to think the rules only apply to others and that they are too important to have to slow down, stop, or otherwise change their course.

Those are probably the same folks who can't be bothered to put their shopping carts into the "corrals" in store parking lots, and prefer to just abandon them in parking spots. Recently I noticed two large lumber carts left in parking spots at a local home supply store lot, when a storage area was about one space away. Who are these people? Why are they in such a hurry? Why do they not care about anyone else's car getting dented or scratched because they abandoned the cart?

Anyone out there remember the concept of a "social contract?" I think the contract is broken.

Sara in Wonderland

Clarence Page, in his Chicago Tribune opinion column on 7/8/09, seems to share at least part of my confusion about what on earth she's talking about most of the time. He quotes from her recent speech and Facebook postings in which she claims that "countless others" have left their positions for a "higher calling" without finishing a term without the criticism leveled at her. He observes:

"Countless others?" Like who? "Higher calling?" Like what? "Different standard?" Like how? So many questions, so few answers. Yet, when her coverage implies that she might not be ready for prime time on the national stage, Palin calls the media sexist, elitist and too dense to understand "it's about country."

No, governor, it's about you.

Mr. Page goes on to discuss Palin's remarks during the Presidential campaign in which she advised Senator Clinton to avoid "whining" about media bias, and he asks

Why doesn't Sarah Palin take Sarah Palin's advice?

Because you can gain a lot more mileage these days as a victim, even if you have to inflate your victimization.

Page speculates we haven't seen the last of Governor Palin on the national political scene, and I suspect he may be right. He mentions her huge popularity among conservative Republicans and white Evangelical Republicans, and her undeniable "star power."

Who else could knock the run-up to Michael Jackson's funeral off cable TV news as easily as Palin's resignation announcement did?

Indeed. Check out this timely political cartoon by Mike Luckavich.

It's Called Quitting

OK, so the only apparent Republican on the national scene under age 60 quit her job as Governor of Alaska the other day. There's a lot of commentary and opinion flying around now about what it means and why she did it. I generally can't understand 90% of whatever Governor Palin says because it sounds like some sort of encrypted code most of the time.

"Many just accept that lame-duck status, and they hit that road," Palin said. "They draw a paycheck. They kind of milk it. And I'm not going to put Alaskans through that."

Barely half-way into her first term as Governor, she decided to walk away from her job and tried to paint it as a patriotic and high-minded act. Lame-duck status? They hit that road? They kind of milk it? What on earth is she talking about? Palin asserts she's not a "quitter," but that's exactly what she did. It's called quitting in the middle of your term. So the former Republican candidate for Vice-President who had hardly any credentials to begin with, now has less. Unless, of course, you count her responding to some sort of "higher calling." I'm afraid to even hazard a guess as to what that means.

I never had any use for Palin as a candidate, so I'm hoping she'll just go away now. We should be so lucky.

A "Marketplace" Home Run

These days, I find myself getting more of my news from the American Public Media program Marketplace, on National Public Radio, than from anywhere else. The show is self-described as "a program which looks at the entire world through the lenses of business, economics and finance." It's not just about money. I pride myself for being a liberal arts major, and I think I managed to take just a single economics course in college way back when. Marketplace puts all those "business" topics into easily understood terms, even for liberal arts majors.

IMO, Marketplace hit a home run on Monday 6/29/09. The entire program was filled with worthwhile, and in some cases, uplifting stories. Even if you don't normally listen to this program, if you have any interest in history or what's going on around us these days, I urge you to either download the podcast or read the text of the stories for 6/29; it will be a half hour well-spent. The link for the show is here. The stories include:

• Victims of Madoff react to his sentence of 150 years in prison
• Toxic assets are still looming in the murk (and some banks don't want to sell them per the Fed plan)
• Fee hikes rise for debit cards
• Nigerian oil production disruptions due to rebel attacks (and why they're not affecting our gas prices very much)
  
• Fireworks shows and how many communities can't afford them this year (this is the uplifting one)
• Michael Lewis on the fall of Wall Street (the author mentions that government watchdogs still haven't actually spoken with the people at AIG who caused much of the chaos)
• Debt wasn't always the enemy (how the GI bill after WWII helped expand the middle class and home ownership in the US)

The article about fee hikes might cause some people to complain once again about those damn banks, but this one is a little different. Seems some folks over the years have treated debit cards less like checkbooks and more like credit cards. Since debit cards are linked directly to your checking account, you're not supposed to use it if you don't have the cash to cover it, and banks weren't supposed to let you use it if you lacked the cash. Seems the rules changed several years ago, and many banks now let you use the debit card even if you don't have the bucks to back up the transaction. Who woulda thunk?! Now, with looming limits on credit card interest, banks are imposing higher fees on those "overdraft" debit transactions. First thought: if you're nuts enough to not keep track of how much cash you have in your checking account, you deserve whatever fees the bank may impose on the privilege of overdrafting with a debit card. I don't have the same kind of sympathy for these people as I do for those being charged 20-30% interest on credit card debt.

The interview with Michael Lewis and what's still wrong with Wall Street includes the assertion that we still have not actually dealt with much of the underlying problem, and that there will be a "greater reckoning down the road" (i.e., more economic collapse before we're done with the Depression/Recession). One of Lewis' main observations is that when he went to interview people, like at AIG (the people who "actually know what happened") he's the first person they've talked to. That is, no one from Treasury or the NYS insurance regulators had "showed." He calls that amazing, I call it nonfeasance at best, and malfeasance at worst.

The 6/29/09 program is here. You can read the segments or listen to the podcast. Either way, these stories are eye-openers.

Enough Already

Is there no end in sight of the King of Pop Mania? We don't seem to be anywhere near the end on news and entertainment programs, but everyone I know that has an opinion is very tired of the hype and hoopla concerning Jackson's death. Lately, there's been relatively little news coverage of things like multiple American States teetering on bankruptcy, the Iraq and Iran situations, and any number of other more important matters. Susan Estrich pretty much sums it up in her column from July 1. Let the man rest in peace and let's the rest of us get on with life.

Golfing With Jesus, Moses, and...

Today, a good joke! Thanks to Pat!

Moses, Jesus, and an old, bearded man were out playing golf one day. Moses pulled up to the tee and drove a long one. It landed in the fairway but rolled directly toward a water trap. Quickly Moses raised His club, the water parted and it rolled to the other side safe and sound.

Next, Jesus strolls up to the tee and hits a nice long one directly toward the same water trap. It landed directly in the center of the pond and kind of hovered over the water. Jesus casually walked out on the pond and chipped it up onto the green.

The third guy gets up and sort of randomly whacks the ball. It heads out over the fence and into oncoming traffic on a nearby street. It bounces off a truck and hits a nearby tree. From there it bounces onto the roof of a nearby shack and rolls down into the gutter, down the downspout, out onto the fairway and right toward the aforementioned pond. On the way to the pond, it hits a little stone and bounces out over the water and onto a lily pad where it rested quietly. Suddenly, a very large bullfrog jumped up on the lily pad and snatched the ball into his mouth. Just then, an eagle swooped down and grabbed the frog and flew away. As they passed over the green, the frog squealed with fright and dropped the ball which bounced right into the hole for a beautiful hole in one.

Moses then turned to Jesus and said, "I hate playing with your Dad."