I attended a speech by NASA Director Sean O’Keefe at the Denver meeting of the American Astronomical Society. He lightly touched on many encouraging topics in regards to NASA’s role in empowering space-based astronomy. But most of his talk was spent defending his decision to cancel the upcoming servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). In a nutshell, this dooms Hubble to die an early death.

His argument is basically that a mission to Hubble is sufficiently different from missions to the International Space Station (ISS) that it would take too long and too much money to prepare for and execute. He has said that NASA will adopt every recommendation by the Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB). This means that there must be repair and rescue contingency plans, including having a second space shuttle on the ground ready to launch.

Besides this intellectual argument he also very much played an emotional card. When NASA fucks up people die and everyone pays attention. I can only imagine how difficult it is to look in the eye of a kid whose mom or dad isn’t coming home from work ever again. Even so, O’Keefe maintains that he is not risk adverse. He says being diligent is different from being risk adverse.

These are not irrational arguments. There is one primary issue that O’Keefe’s position necessitates: Is HST worth it? This is the whole issue. Is HST worth the chance that people die working on the project. Is it worth the dollars, time and effort necessary to do the work. The astronauts have said they’ll do the mission. Astronauts know better than anybody the risks involved in manned spaceflight. The HST is the single most revolutionary scientific instrument in history. Furthermore, the HST has capabilities that no other planned space telescope has for the next 20 years (and probably much longer than that). Almost every astronomer in the world agrees that the HST should be a priority for the foreseeable future.

A secondary question is: should NASA implement every recommendation of the CAIB? I feel the answer is no. It should not be required that every possible safety is in place for every single mission. We should weigh the risks on a case by case basis. There will always be risk but we can’t become paralyzed by it.

The cancelled HST servicing mission is already planned and ready to go. If they outfit it with the most important subset of the CAIB’s recommendation, it will be safer than any previous shuttle flight. The Hubble is worth it. It has fantastically successful capabilities. Save the Hubble.

CNN is reporting that the FBI is warning of suicide attacks in the United States. This, unfortunately, is a no-brainer. The terror that was been waged in Israel is exactly the kind of terror we are going to see in the United States. Ever since 9/11 I’ve been worried that we would start to see this. I don’t think it will take very many such attacks to really cripple the American way of life. We will probably be very willing to slash civil liberties after the 10th bomb goes off. It will be not be pretty and I sincerely hope it doesn’t start happening.

Now the best way to eliminate your enemies is to turn them into friends. I’m not suggesting we kiss and make up with the likes of Osama Bin Laden, but I do believe that our mid-East policy is so horrible that we causing our own problems. We need to have a balanced and rational and not utterly self-serving policy in the middle East. We need to be fair and we need to prove that we mean to harm to the Arab and Muslin people. This may be hard because the neo-Conservatives do mean them harm!. They have a Biblical approach to policy in the middle East and it is completely nuts. We absolutely, for sure, need a win-win approach to the middle East and this is a mindset the Bush administration is incapable of.

Now it is true that for some people, John Kerry does not seem like all that compelling of a candidate. He’s male, white, rich and a politician. He does not have that straight-talking charm that seems to motivate people who are turned off by the political process. He has a voting record that the Bushies will tear apart over the next months before the election. His views on some issues are complex enough that his words can be twisted into sounding like he is on both sides of an issue.

I want to remind you of a few reasons why you must vote for John Kerry. First of all, and most importantly, when you actually listen to John Kerry on the issues, he is right on. He is very, very smart, he really understands the issues, he has a lot of experience working within the political process and his views are based on (what I think is) a true desire to solve problems. He is not a slave to his political ideology like Bush is. As the late great Paul Wellstone said, politics is about making people’s lives better. It is not about trying to convert people to your political ideology. John Kerry is brilliant when it comes to the messy business of dealing with the actual issues. If you are turned off by John Kerry I would encourage you to listen to him directly on the issues and tune out the character-bashing chatter that the Bush adminitration is orchestrating.

Second, and less importantly, the lesser of two evils is still better than the greater of two evils. You may not think John Kerry is perfect but George Bush is a catastrophe. The Bush administration are right-wing extremists in a country that is almost exactly 50/50. We need a President in the center, or at least closer to the center than Bush.

Lastly, when asked, people overwhelmingly think that the government works best when there is some balance between left and right. Right now we have all three branches of government effectively controlled by Republicans. We need to restore some balance. This forces some compromise and in a country that is 50/50, we should all recognize the importance of compromise.

I believe John Kerry is smarter, more experienced, more honest and better equipped to lead this country. Even if you don’t agree with all of this, chances are you agree that a little compromise and balance in government is good. Support John Kerry.

Reuters reports: “The Recording Industry Association of America (news – web sites) began filing lawsuits against individual users this fall, and so far has reached at least 220 out-of-court settlements, usually for $5,000 or less.”

Let’s do the math on this. 220 times $5K is $1.1 million dollars. Now subtract the estimated cost of each such suit to the RIAA. I’d say the cost of instigating any sort of lawsuit is at least a thousand bucks. Maybe twice that. Conceivably much more than that. So they are netting, and this is being nice, less than a million bucks a year suing their fans and their customers. The RIAA is a group of companies representing artists. How much do you think Mettalica’s share of that few thousand dollars is worth? How much does Madonna benefit from that? It’s a complete joke that the RIAA has gone to war with their fans.

They argue: it’s not the money it’s changing people’s attitudes about copyright infringement. I guess they want to put the fear of god in file traders. Again, what is the net benefit to Madonna? For the most part, pissed off people. The common case of file trading is a common trait of fan behavior and fan behavior is what creates revenues for record companies. Even for smaller names, the economics are the same — the best way to make money is to have a lot of people that love your music. Don’t sue those people.

I don’t think people should steal music. In this new networked world, record companies need to figure out how to create a valuable relationship with their customers because that’s what their customers want. Your average music buying listener loves to buy music. The mp3 phenomena is ultimately a good thing for record labels once they figure out how to capitalize on their real strength, which is that fact that customers like the artists they listen to. The market for any artist is as big as the number of people that like them. mp3’s introduce artists to future customers. The record companies have been slow to react to this fact. They still haven’t.

Here’s an example:

“Bless My MP3” — Fill out this form for an mp3 from our label. You answer these questions and join our list and we’ll give you a personal license for that song for free. It’s legal now. All you have to do is join our list.

Now market to your fans. Offer them (for a price) early release downloads, artwork, t-shirts and crap, show tickets, movie tickets, cool mp3 players. Use the songs they register to profile the person (a la Amazon) and market their favorite bands to them. Suggest other new bands.

This is one little tiny idea of how record companies could use the mp3 phenomena to their advantage.

A new articile is here. Even more music enthusiasts being sued for spreading the word about the artists they love. Another few grand will go into the record companies’ pockets and a few billion in bad blood will be created. The RIAA is killing music. Let’s kill them. Any label in the RIAA should be boycotted.

SCO, the shit-ass company that decided they can’t compete in the marketplace so they will compete in the courtroom, is now turning their attention to the Feds. This is not so noteworthy but provides a nice opportunity for me to bash them. Here is a quote from the above:

“Free or low-cost open-source software, full of proprietary code, is grabbing an increasing portion of the software market. Each open-source installation displaces or pre-empts a sale of proprietary, licensable and copyright-protected software,” McBride said in a letter, republished by the Open Source and Industry Alliance. “This means fewer jobs, less software revenue and reduced incentives for software companies to innovate.”

This is the scary part about this SCO bullshit. Almost everyone agrees that SCO does not have much of a case. The problem is, we have a government, controlled by the Republicans, which always sides with industry. The above argument from McBride will resonate with the trickle-down good ol’ boy capitalists. Now clearly you cannot even wage, not to mention win, a war against Open Source. The government cannot take action against the willful cooperation of developers to contribute to Open Source. They can, however, back ill-conceived efforts like that of SCO. I wouldn’t put it past them. The problem is, the Open Source movement now has the vehement support of IBM, Novell, Apple, Sun, Google, Amazon, etc. If you are on the side of industry you can’t draw a clean line here — it turns out Open Source is good for industry, it creates great software, it adds a ton of value and in many ways it is driving our economy. For example, the Apache web server software is a big win for a lot of companies. It is bundled with a lot of operating systems and applications. Many companies dedicate paid programmers to Open Source.

So, as usual, McBride is wrong. His motivation is lining his own pockets and should not be interpreted as any valid economic argument against Open Source. McBride is a loser who makes his living litigating instead of competing and that is anti-marketplace. SCO is going to die and they should die and McBride should take his anti-competitive bullshit off the table.

There are two general arguments people make when people sue to have the Ten Commandments removed from a court house or government building near you:

1. This country (or state) was founded on Judeo-Christian values and we should recoginze this fact as a foundation of our government and do away with this whole separation of church and state business.
2. This is an issue of free speech and religious free speech is being attacked.

For the first argument we may be in a situation where 2 + 2 = 5 because enough people vote for it. If you truly believe #1 then you should agree that we need a constitutional amendment saying that we have no separation of church and state and the church is X. It’s the same thing. I think if we had an amendment that we are a Christian nation, it might pass. That’s scary as fuck because it destroys one of the things that makes America great: religion is free.

For #2, clearly if this were the issue one solution would be to allow the religious free speech of any religion on government property to an equitible degree. This is hard but not impossible. No one is proposing it. The people that want the 10 Commandments on the lawn of the court house want it there because they agree with the religion. They are making a secular decision based on religious arguments. I am still apalled that Judeo-Christians are so willing to trample the separation of church and state. For religion to remain free, the state has to be utterly impartial. We are a secular state, folks, regardless of our origins and everyone, Christians included, want the separation of church and state. If you want your religion to stay free, you have to feverishly support the separation of church and state. I’m sorry to say that means the statue of your religious document has to be put somewhere else. Put it in your front yard, put it on your business property, put it anywhere you want except on our public property.

I saw a great bumper sticker that said “Don’t believe everything you think.” This is profound. Everyone, myself included, believes things that, if we were to gain more insight, more facts or considered it more carefully, we disagree with. We disagree with some things we think. That’s pretty funny. It is really important that we all keep this in mind. If you believe that everything you think is 100% for sure correct, you are a moron with a deluded view of your own perfection. I suspect everyone reading this agrees: none of us are perfect and some of what we believe is wrong.

This is important because debate is often seen as each side trying to convince the other they are right. It is seldom that we are open to being convinced! The paralytic political warfare we are all suffering through (and participating in) does not further the issues. We don’t get nearer the truth. If you read my blog is it clear I am a raging liberal but I still feel a responsibility to seek the truth, even in cases where it may not appear to match the liberal agenda. I don’t want to be right because I shouted louder and longer than the other guy, I want to be right because the facts agree.

So I’m asking you to remember that there is room in your world view for improvement. You can learn and grow and your beliefs and opinions may change in the process. This is good! Leave the door ajar on your opinions and beliefs.

This article at CNN reports that House Speaker Dennis Hastert is refusing to extend a deadline for the 9/11 commission, even though “the bipartisan members of the commission unanimously supported the extension, and the White House has publicly indicated it would support it”. Can you say fall guy? The Republicans are orchestrating a ploy, in essence using 9/11 as a political chess piece, and you should be outraged. We want the truth, that’s all. We want to learn from this attack. Why are the supposedly security-focused Republicans thrwarting the efforts of Americans to learn from this horrific attack?

In addition, Condoleezza Rice, Bush and Cheney are all refusing to meet with the commission. Meanwhile, Clinton and Gore are fully cooperating with the commission.

I’ll remind you that this commission is not a bunch of liberals — it was created by Congress in November 2002 and is a 10-member bipartisan panel.

How can honest conservatives support such evasive bullshit?

So our President has finally made it official — he now endorses an amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America that defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman. First of all let me say that this is the right way to approach the problem. The Right is now notorious for using the idiotic phrase “judicial activism” — they have decided that if they disagree with the courts then the courts must be biased liberals who have no integrity and are hell bent on solely pursuing their own political agenda in spite of years of dedicated and proven service to this country. This is shameful. No matter who you are, the courts are going to disagree with you sometimes and it is pretty lame to assume that the court has traded integrity for political activism, especially when your man, the Right-Wing George W. Bush, was placed on the throne by the courts in a decision widely criticized. I’m going to say here and now, and I’m a raging liberal, that the act of the Supreme Court handing Bush the presidency does not in and of itself cause me to question its integrity. I disagree but I will not claim it was judicial activism. Karl Rove, next time you program our president to speak, delete this subroutine that constantly calls the courts “judicial activism”. It is insulting, it represents a hostile power struggle between the branches of government and it is unbecoming of the President of the United States.

So I agree — if you don’t like how the courts have interpreted the Constitution, the correct course of action is to change the Constitution. This may be the only time you’ll ever hear me say that Bush is doing the right thing.

Given his views. Which I strongly disagree with. I believe this Constitutional amendment is about the stupidest thing I have ever heard.

The polls are pretty unambiguous — most Americans do not support gay marriage. This is not a referendum on marriage, though — most Americans just plain don’t like homosexuality. The question they are answering, whether they are asked it or not, is do you support homosexuals and their answer is no. There are many an estranged father and son because of this issue — people who will literally disown their children because they don’t like homosexuality. Almost, if not all of these people, are also religious. They think the Bible says homosexuality is a sin. Nevermind all the other sins they gladly participate in, this one needs a Constitutional amendment. Fucking A.

One of my only criticisms of John Kerry is that he is wishy-washy on this issue because he, too, knows what the polls say. He is still saying the right thing, which is that the state is not and should not be involved in religious rituals and what we call marriage at the state level would be more appropriately called civil union. This is a legal matter as far as the state is concerned. John Kerry should have the balls to say that as president he will not support this amendment and that he supports gay marriage.

Which brings me to my final point. Bookmark this page and come back here and give me shit if I am wrong. I hereby predict that there is no way, none at all, zero percent chance that a Constitutional amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman will ever pass. That is one reason I encourage them to try — this issue will end political careers because it is completely against more than one aspect of the Constitution. First of all, we’re supposed to have a separation of church and state, so when Bush talks about the sanctity of marriage, he is violating that. Second, we afford equal rights to all people. Read that sentence again. It is nonsense to even be talking about this. Same-sex marriage is a done deal, for sure, gonna happen, no question about it. What you can do is quietly and insistently support it to those people around you who don’t. They’ll come around.

Here is another example of how if you disagree with the Bush administration you are instantly labeled partisan or biased. This article at WiReD describes a report from the Union of Concerned Scientists detailing how the administration has distorted science whenever it disagrees with its ideological agenda. I suppose just like Republicans like to cry about how academia is consistently more liberal than they would like, they will now accuse scientists around the world of being puppets of the liberal agenda. I’m sorry, but just like there is a correlation between being rich and being conservative, there is a correlation between being educated and being liberal. This is because the conservative agenda is about protecting the status quo and the liberal agenda is about improving the status quo. Conservatives think that money is the best motivator and liberals think that doing the right thing is the best motivator. Both sides are correct, in a sense. But liberals are much more open to the profit motive than conservatives are to the “do the right thing” motive. Case in point: I will pay more if strengthening lead poisoning regulations makes things more expensive. I will not bitch. The Bush administration would rather have us pay less and be more at risk. The science is unambiguous — small amounts of lead are very dangerous, especially to children. How can you possibly defend companies who knowingly pollute the world with lead when we know this? Fuck their shareholders, do the right fucking thing.

I’ve digressed but the above mentioned article is more proof that the Bush administration will stop at nothing to further their fucked up political agenda, which no rational person should support.