NASA Cuts: What Is Obama Thinking?

Congress is right now considering future budgets for the funding of our space program, and it’s got me extremely worried. The Obama administration has proposed deep cuts, especially for planetary sciences. This is crazy, stupid, and short-sighted, and I call upon Congress to turn this thing around—please! Let’s continue funding our world-class space program, especially for space and planetary sciences, which since the Apollo days have been the capstone of American scientific exploration. The U.S. has already pulled out of one important international planetary mission, based just on the proposed budget. It would be a travesty to cancel other cutting-edge space missions.

It’s practically a given most of the American public thinks we spend a lot more on the space program than we actually do. In fact, NASA’s budget has always been a drop in the bucket compared to the Defense Department’s. Even at the height of the relatively extravagant days of the Apollo Moon landing program, the space program only accounted for a few percent of the federal budget. Since then it’s been sharply cut back. And now they want to cut it back even further. This despite the fact that every dollar spent on space helps to stimulate the economy, maintain our leadership in science and technology, inspire young scientists and engineers—and that’s in addition to advancing our knowledge of the universe, and laying the groundwork for a future spacefaring civilization.

The Obama budget would put the brakes on all of this. And when you put the brakes on a programs like this, you don’t just slow things down, you cause enormous disruption to long-range endeavors and put highly trained people out of work, people whom you might not be able to get back a few years down the road. I’m an Obama supporter, but this may be his administration’s single most misguided action.

To voice your support of space exploration, contact your Congress critter. One way you can do that is by signing on with the message from the Planetary Society, which you can dispatch to your representatives here.

The Quantum Theory of Mitt Romney

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I’m not a regular New York Times reader, but this came my way and is too good not to share. In case you’re not sure if it’s accurate, let me say this: Mitt Romney was my governor. I know Mitt Romney. And if this doesn’t fit you, you’re not Mitt Romney. It’s by David Javerbaum, former head writer and executive producer of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/01/opinion/sunday/a-quantum-theory-of-mitt-romney.html

I hope this isn’t behind a paywall. Just in case, here’s an excerpt:

Complementarity. In much the same way that light is both a particle and a wave, Mitt Romney is both a moderate and a conservative, depending on the situation… It is not that he is one or the other; it is not that he is one and then the other. He is both at the same time….

Uncertainty. Frustrating as it may be, the rules of quantum campaigning dictate that no human being can ever simultaneously know both what Mitt Romney’s current position is and where that position will be at some future date. This is known as the “principle uncertainty principle.”

Entanglement. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a proton, neutron or Mormon: the act of observing cannot be separated from the outcome of the observation. By asking Mitt Romney how he feels about an issue, you unavoidably affect how he feels about it. More precisely, Mitt Romney will feel every possible way about an issue until the moment he is asked about it, at which point the many feelings decohere into the single answer most likely to please the asker….

Duality. Many conservatives believe the existence of Mitt Romney allows for the possibility of the spontaneous creation of an “anti-Romney”… that leaps into existence and annihilates Mitt Romney. (However, the science behind this is somewhat suspect, as it is financed by Rick Santorum, for whom science itself is suspect.)

Read the whole thing, if you can. It’s funny, and more than a little true.

Edit: On reflection, I think maybe I was being a little mean here. To Mitt Romney the political persona, well—yeah, all that’s true. But to Mitt Romney the man…sorry, guy. I don’t really know you. For all I know, you’re a great guy. I hope you had a nice Easter weekend. 

New Scientist and God

New Scientist is my favorite magazine, where science is concerned. They cover lots of cool science, and even have a science fictional streak I admire. But when they venture into questions of God, faith, and religion, they invariably leave me frustrated and disillusioned. The editors approach such questions with such programmatic atheism that any hope for fruitful and open discussion quickly dies. So it was with a certain reluctance that I opened the latest issue: The God Issue: The Surprising New Science of Religion.

Was I greeted by surprising new science? Not really. Did it live up to the promises on the cover? (The idea that launched a thousand civilizations / God’s existence put to the test) Not even close.

The bias was pretty upfront, starting with the headline on the opening editorial:

Know your enemy
The new science of religion tells us where secularists are going wrong

They don’t mean where secularists are going wrong in their evaluation of religious belief, but where they’re going wrong in their efforts to eradicate it. “Religious claims still wither under rational scrutiny and deserve no special place in public life. But it is a call for those who aspire to a secular society to approach it rationally — which means making more effort to understand what they are dealing with.” In other words, know your enemy. And in the opening page to the features section: “Only by understanding what religion is and is not can we ever hope to move on.” By move on, they seem to mean, discard religion for a more enlightened way of thinking.

So we know where they stand.

But what about the articles? They’re a mixed bag. The first, by Justin L. Barrett, is a pretty interesting discussion of how babies and young children learn and develop mental models of “agents” that influence things in the world. There seems to be a built-in predilection for attributing events they see to an “agency,” or a higher power. The thesis here is well summarized by the closing lines: “[Children] have strong natural tendencies toward religion, but these tendencies do not inevitably propel them towards any one religious belief. Instead, the way our minds solve problems generates a god-shaped conceptual space waiting to be filled by the details of the culture into which they are born.” Not a bad article.

It’s followed by several others, including one that discusses how religions may have helped create social structures that brought us out of the Stone Age. I’m not sure I learned much from it, but it wasn’t a bad article, either. The collection hits its low point, however, with “The God Hypothesis,” by Victor J. Stenger, which proposes to discuss the existence or nonexistence of God by reference to empirical evidence. No empirical evidence is offered, however.  What we get instead is a warmed-over collection of statements that this or that aspect of theology has been tested and found wanting. A feel-good piece for atheists: no actual information, no details about what studies have been done or how they were designed. Finally, there’s a discussion of the position of Alain de Botton that atheists ought to seek out and adopt the “useful bits” of religion, such as ritual gatherings for the purpose of community building. Fine by me, but not exactly news. Haven’t the Unitarians been doing this for quite a while now?

Personally, I’m agnostic on the question of whether God’s existence can be proven or disproven by science, or by logic. Most people I know who believe in God do so because of personal experience, personal encounters that have little to do with abstract logical constructions. (Or in my own case, the logical questioning had to bring me to the point of saying, “Okay, this is possible.” And then the experiential part began.) When you’ve had that kind of experience, the question of “proof” starts to seem tedious and irrelevant. But that doesn’t mean I think science should stop looking. 

I think the real problem with this particular publication is that the editors, who so excel in other areas of science journalism, are blind to their own biases about the relationship between science and religion. They keep writing as though they’ve got the whole thing covered, yet seem clueless about what the actual religious experience is. If they could let go—just for once—of the notion that religion is their enemy, perhaps they could genuinely explore questions such as the role faith plays (or does not play) in mental health, or healing, or personal development, or community building, or intellectual inquiry. I’d even be happy if they could, without demonizing, examine why some religious movements (such as certain conservative Christian streams in the U.S.) so resolutely obstruct the input of science in public policy. I agree this is happening, and it’s bad; I disagree with the assumption that religious belief per se is the problem. They might even spend some time talking to scientists who are also people of faith, and see what we can learn about how some pretty rational people integrate those two modes of thought.

Maybe these questions don’t belong primarily in a science magazine, though I don’t see why not. But I do wish the editors of New Scientist would recognize that what they’re putting in the mag now isn’t so much science as dogma pretending at science.

Maybe the true enemy isn’t religion, but intellectual prejudice.

 
 

Funny, Thought-provoking C.G.P. Grey

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I actually have no idea who CGP Grey is. But I’ve just discovered his fun, funny, and provocative videos, which explain everything from why the penny costs us money to why we love our natural-pesticide beverage (coffee). Great stuff! You can see the lineup on his blog page. But here are a few to get you started:

Death to the Penny
Coffee: Greatest Addiction Ever
There’s lots more. I especially liked: 

SpaceX Falcon 9 Launches Dragon Into Space

I almost missed seeing this in the Globe’s electronic edition, but Space.com clued me in. SpaceX successfully launched another Falcon 9 rocket, and this time it had a mockup of their Dragon spacecraft on top. The Dragon, which is slated to eventually transport cargo and possibly crew to the International Space Station, went into orbit for a couple of rounds and safely reentered for a Pacific Ocean splashdown. This made Paypal / SpaceX / Tesla Motors tycoon Elon Musk ecstatic. It made me pretty happy, too. With the space shuttle coming up on retirement, the sooner we have less expensive, privately operated spacecraft hitting the Up and Out, the better.

I also have to smile that the Falcon rocket series is named after the Millennium Falcon of Star Wars, and the Dragon capsule is named for Puff the Magic Dragon. Check out the great pix of the flight at http://www.collectspace.com/news/news-120810a.html.

Online Auction for Vineyard Community Servings

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The Boston Vineyard church in North Cambridge has a terrific group dedicated to community service: kids’ soccer, college help for high schoolers, food pantry, etc. They’re holding an Ebay charity auction right now, with a lot of nifty items and services up for bidding, all proceeds going to the community service program. The full list of items is at
http://donations.ebay.com/charity/charity.jsp?NP_ID=35322

I’m one of many folk who donated items—in my case a collection of five autographed, first-edition, hardcover science fiction novels. The market value of the books is around $125, and the current bid is way low. So if you’d like a shot at a deal on some collectors-item hardcovers for the SF-lover on your gift list, here’s a chance to score some books  and contribute to a good cause at the same time!

White House Adviser Calls for Asteroid Defense

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In a rare outbreak of forward-thinking in the federal government, John Holdren, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, has called for defensive planning against the possibility of an asteroid hitting the Earth. In letters to both the House and the Senate, the White House adviser has called for the development of plans for emergency response, and for coordination with other nations, in the event the need arises to deflect an incoming asteroid.

While hardly a new idea—science fiction, astronomy, and space technology types have been calling for this for years—what is new, I suspect, is the idea reaching the point of being taken seriously at the White House level.

(A tip of the hat to Mike Flynn, fellow member of Sigma SF, for pointing out this story.)

Texas Supreme Court Cites Mr. Spock

In what surely must be a legal first, the Texas Supreme Court has cited an alien off-worlder in a recent judgment, a fictional alien at that. In Robinson v. Crown Cork and Seal, the Texas court cited Star Trek’s Mr. Spock, from the movie Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. You will recall that, in one of the finest scenes in the film, Mr. Spock dies heroically saving the Enterprise and her crew. Just before dying, he says to Kirk, “Don’t grieve, Admiral. It is logical…” And he reminds Kirk that “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few…or the one.”

In the following movie, The Search for Spock, Kirk turns this dictum on its head by telling Spock that the reason they came for him was because the needs of the one outweighed the needs of the many.

SFWA quotes the Texas Court:

“Appropriately weighty principles guide our course. First, we recognize that police power draws from the credo that “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.” Second, while this maxim rings utilitarian and Dickensian (not to mention Vulcan21), it is cabined by something contrarian and Texan: distrust of intrusive government and a belief that police power is justified only by urgency, not expediency.”

Footnote 21 reads:
See STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN (Paramount Pictures 1982). The film references several works of classic literature, none more prominently than A Tale of Two Cities. Spock gives Admiral Kirk an antique copy as a birthday present, and the film itself is bookended with the book’s opening and closing passages. Most memorable, of course, is Spock’s famous line from his moment of sacrifice: “Don’t grieve, Admiral. It is logical. The needs of the many outweigh . . .” to which Kirk replies, “the needs of the few.”

Some have pointed to earlier quotations for this thought, including Aristotle, and the Gospel of John 11:49-50 in the Bible (which quotes Caiaphas, the High Priest, expressing a similar thought). But really, I think Spock said it the most succinctly.

Students Shoot Down Disintegrating Spacecraft!

Yes, it’s true! (If you forgive my slight poetic license.) High school students from Brookline, Massachusetts shot a terrific video of Japan’s Hayabusa spacecraft coming down through the atmosphere and breaking apart in a fiery cascade over the Australian outback. The lucky students were aboard a NASA DC-8 aircraft, monitoring the reentry, which landed a separate reentry vehicle (visible to the right of the breakup in the video), bringing back samples of an asteroid.

I can’t find a way to embed the video (dang!), which might be just as well, considering how my last embedding effort turned out. But watch it here. And read the full story about these high school students who got a surprise trip Downunder in a NASA jet.

What Drives Us?

I first came across this video on Tobias Buckell’s blog. It’s a short animation of a talk about what gives us motivation, according to psychological studies. The speaker is Dan Pink, author of the book Drive. If you’re interested in which drives us more, money or satisfaction, take a few minutes to watch this.

(EDIT: That totally broke out of my template, and I can’t seem to make the screen smaller. So I took out the embedded video. But click the link!)

There’s a longer version of his talk on Ted.com. (And enough cool talks on Ted.com to keep you from your work for hours.)

I wondered how sound the actual science was, so I asked my resident expert, my brother Chuck, who happens to be a distinguished professor of psychology. The answer? “Go to selfdeterminationtheory.org. Deci and Ryan have been studying these things for…40 years.” Sound, in other words, but hardly new.

New or not, though, it’s something people all walks of life would do well to think about.

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