Cerebral Flatulence

Karen DeYoung and Peter Finn of the WaPo report that the Obama Administration has yet more work to do to clean up after Cousin Dubya and his gang. And all of a sudden, now that Our Problem is finally in our laps and back yards (where it was all the time, while many of us were getting high on jingoism and xenophobia), everyone’s yelling and screaming about how “We CAN’T put these terrorists and Spawn of Satan near MY [school][country club][gym][soccer field].”

Um, grow up. Do you still think that America is a small Texas town, run by the judge and the car dealer and the insurance agent, where everyone stays in their place and the ‘disruptive elements’ get shot on a country road or tossed into solitary on a state plantation?

We deliberately set out to create this problem with no interest in a solution. Perhaps the True Believers thought that Karl Rove’s “Permanent Republican Majority” would make real planning for trials irrelevant.

There’s a goofy idea floating around to return Alcatraz Island to its former role as the nation’s top SuperMax prison. Frankly, I like it. From 1935 to 1962 Alcratraz was watertight, unless Clint Eastwood really did make it to shore the last year the prison was open. Every escape attempt ended badly, and there are more great whites in California waters than there used to be. With modern techniques, DHS could turn Alcatraz into a Lucite paperweight with Bad Guys embedded inside.
Add a Navy or Coast Guard gunboat, ready to shell the island into rubble if there’s trouble.

The best part? We couldn’t shut away our “worst of the worst” out of sight in some undisclosed location. No, the most dangerous people to the USA would be kept in a box in the middle of one of our largest cities and ports, in full view of the world and us citizens. Anyone could at any time see where the detainees are and how they’re doing. And, we’d most publicly own our s**t.

Let me also say that I lived in The City for six years and got my undergraduate degree at S. F. State, so I’m not out to foist a turd on Baghdad by the Bay.. (Herb Caen’s old tag would take an unfortunate turn, wouldn’t it?) If anything, San Franciscans would make the best guardians of danger and of American principles.

On this New Year’s Eve, it’s appropriate to remember the band most famously associated with the the Holiday — no, not Guy Lombardo and his Orchestra, that’s Dad’s era — I mean the Grateful Dead.
What began as a house band for Esalen fests and acid tests evolved into one of the great American phenomena. We hear how many scientists and engineers reached for the Moon with the inspiration of science fiction stories; less often you hear about how the Deadheads created the Internet that we enjoy today.

Think about it. The very first link in what became the Internet went live between UCLA and UC Berkeley in 1969. The Homebrew Computer Club, that petrie dish of the personal computer, met regularly on the Stanford campus in the mid 70’s to show off results from the garages around town. And it was there that the battle was joined over the Future: the Deadheads who shared software code for free, just as they recorded and swapped Dead show tapes for free, against an embryonic Microsoft whose CEO, a young Bill Gates, sent the Homebrew Computer Club an angry letter denouncing software sharing as theft. Gates and Paul Allen got rich, but despite a big ugly museum and a big, ugly corporation, they still don’t understand music or community.

What if the Internet had been invented in Seattle? Or Dallas? Or London or Beijing? I’m pretty sure it would’nt look anything like it does today. Despite every effort to turn a scientific paper publishing system into uber-TV, its communal, open-minded roots have (so far) kept it from becoming a censored, faux-filled, pay-for-play morass.

But long after Jerry Garcia’s passing and the band’s official demise, nuggets of wonder turn up from their glorious history. Here’s a quiet, special example.

“When I joined the Screen Actors Guild in 1973, I signed the loyalty oath that, 20 years earlier, the SAG Board of Directors had made a requirement for membership. I never stopped to consider what it was I was signing. It was one in a series of papers I needed to fill out, and I was so eager to join the Guild, I probably would have signed anything they put in front of me. And I did. That’s one of the most frightening legacies of the Blacklist Era: the institutionalization of fear and prejudice.

You see, the Guild Board had not yet removed the loyalty oath from our bylaws. In fact, no action was taken until some new members refused to sign it. Those new members were the rock group The Grateful Dead, and the year was 1967.

Only after The Grateful Dead refused to sign did the Board of Directors reconsider the necessity of a loyalty oath as a precondition for joining a union of artists.”

– SAG President Richard Masur at the Hollywood Remembers the Blacklist event

I popped off about this astounding item noted on DANGER ROOM, WIRED Magazine’s fine blog on matters defensive. Russia is expanding its range of classic spacecraft available to the general (well-heeled) public! Joining the world-famous Soyuz, originally engineered for the Soviet Moon missions, is the first Soviet space station — Almaz!

Whoo-hoo!!! Un-fnorging believable.

Darn, but us and the Rooskies designed well back in the day, didn’t we? We really, really should have built the Manned Orbiting Lab and all that extra Apollo stuff — call it Classic Space and sell surplus hardware on eBay! Use the Skylab rescue layout to send 3 paying doofusses around the Moon! A Lunar Rover ought be worth at least as much as a 1971 Hemi ‘Cuda convertible, huh?

Back to our regularly-scheduled serious commentary.

– cross-posted [with later edits] from DANGER ROOM

DANGER ROOM’S “Five for Fighting” cliptage feature links to Bill Sweetman’s fine blog entry at Ares, about Russia’s drone-launching rocket.

Now that Russian 9M534 rocket and 9M61 drone is dark cool — proven delivery system, tough little plane with A PULSEJET (famously used in the V-1 “buzz-bomb” - simplest, highest power-to-weight powerplant known), and it swarms. You can lay down a barrage with its own spotter squadron — and catch Bill Sweetman’s last paragraph:

“Operational status of the 9M534 round is uncertain, although most of the Smerch rockets identified by manufacturer Splav - including sensor-fused explosively formed projectile (EFP) submunitions and a fuel-air explosive (FAE) rocket - are believed to be operational. The UAV system has been criticised on the grounds that a reconnaissance shot gives away the location of the firing battery; however, a more logical use might be for strike damage assessment, particularly in support of a sensor-fused weapon attack. In that case, the “spotter” round could be launched with the first ripple of rockets, refining the targeting of the next salvo.”

Now, given the reportedly poor performance of Russian air support in the Georgian War, were these used at all? Or is their operational status “uncertain?”

– cross-posted from DANGER ROOM

You’ve probably seen this odd news story about cows pointing north. It’s a neat little dollop o’ weirdness which masks a couple of profound matters.

1) Why hasn’t anyone noticed this before? Sure, remote sensing is relatively new, but, I mean, hominids evolved as neighbors of herd animals and we’ve herded and hobbled them for tens of millenia. You’d think that somewhere in the published literature you’d find repeated references to herd animal orientation across cultures. There may be; I don’t know of anyone looking into the issue, and it may be the sort of useful knowledge informants don’t surrender easily to nosy anthropologists. But I read some about Andean llama herding and its prehistory in grad school, and the Incas and their ancestors don’t mention it.

2) Scientists stumbled upon the phenomenon while using a macroscopic spatial tool: Google Earth. In just the same way, Dr. Bob Christiansen “discovered” the Yellowstone Caldera in photos taken during Earth-observation tests aboard the Gemini space missions. It was too big to notice on the ground, but once seen from 200 miles up, the source of Yellowstone’s geysers, mudpots and disturbing geology was thuddingly obvious. Makes you wonder what else is out there hiding in plain sight.

Drones are big. Big news, big ups, and getting bigger.

How big can drones get? Well, if by drone one means “uncrewed remotely-piloted aerospace craft”, they can get reeeeally big. During the U.S. atmospheric nuclear tests in the Pacific, B-29’s were converted into giant drones and flown through the mushroom clouds on sampling and blast-effect missions:

“I’ll never forget seeing those B-29 bombers move up to the end of the runway by the Rawinsonde shack and go through warm-up of their four engines, without a soul inside of them! As you well know, these were drone aircraft that had a ground controller that taxied them out for takeoff, began their ground roll and lift off, and then a sister ship flew over and controlled the drone, steering it over the test site to collect samples of air to measure radiation. One time they used a B-36 as a drone. Talk about an awesome spectacle!”

– John A. Sapp, meteorological technician, USAF (ret.), quoted from The Wetokian

The biggest drone ever? How to top the crowning achievement of the Soviet space program, The Energia/Buran spaceplane system? Although outwardly resembling the American spacecraft enough to get tagged the “Shuttleski”, and borrowing its expensively-researched hypersonic form, the Buran was in some ways a more advanced vehicle:

“The completely automatic launch, orbital manoeuvre, deorbit, and precision landing of an airliner-sized spaceplane on its very first flight was an unprecedented accomplishment of which the Soviets were justifiably proud. It completely vindicated the years of exhaustive ground and flight test that had debugged the systems before they flew.”

– Mark Wade, Encyclopaedia Astronautica

Mark’s complete article on the Buran and its launch vehicle is in his rich and amazing reference work on spaceflight history.

When I grew up in Los Angeles, it always seemed both astonishing and mundane to me that my home town was one of the world’s greatest oil-producing regions. Adding Texas-type mineral riches on top of gold, agriculture, housing, movies and aerospace seemed like gratuitous good fortune, like a Hollywood star’s preposterous new contract. Yet petroleum production is the grimiest of industrial enterprises and glamorous only in Gothic terms; native industries were called upon to hide the “Big Oil” shoot on the back lot using marvelous, kitschy sets.

Current crude oil prices are driving old fields back into production, and the L.A. Basin still holds an estimated 2/3 of its reserves. If those reserves are opened up (gently) some funds would become available for expanding production under California environmental standards. (”Whaaa!” I hear neocons say, “strict eco-standards are costly and meddlesome!” Why, then, have Cailfornia’s auto and air standards been adopted worldwide? Answer: most people want the same air quality that rich folks do.) Perhaps we could find a way to artificially create contained underground reactions, or build big fuel-cell power stations powered by crude oil right out of the well next door. Now consider the new economic and political landscape created by America’s second largest city and biggest industrial region becoming a net energy exporter.

Do I want this? Do I dare admit that ANY part of me wants to run around with this? Oh, my soul, the Twinkies are bad for you…

The converging asymptotes of our age are driving the most unexpected developments…no flying cars or flights to Mars in this new 21st Century, but compare the computers envisioned 40 years ago in John Brunner’s Hugo-winning novel Stand On Zanzibar –

“Sal was of two minds. His eyes darted across the equipment laid out below. There were eighty or ninety feet of it at least– cables, piping, keyboards, readins and readouts, state-of-action banks, shelving loaded with gleaming metal oddments. …

“…That, [the tour guide] said solemnly, is Shalmaneser.”

“That thing?” the plantee said doubtfully.

“That thing. Eighteen inches high, diameter at the base eleven inches, and it’s the world’s largest computer thanks to GT’s unique patented and registered system known as Micryogenics. In fact, it’s the first computer estimated to fall within the megabrain range!”

– with the current iPhone model. (OK, OK, a better comparison would be to Roadrunner or other recent supercomputers.) In the 1960’s we were sure we were going to spend the year 2000 zipping down the road in turbine bullets and zooming around the world in SSTs, and we hardly noticed the decay and abandonment of our once-splendid rail and streetcar networks. The kids were going back to the land and reviving all sorts of charming crafts, growing food slowly, and driving funky, fuel-sipping vehicles from Germany and Japan.

These days many of those kids are silverback adults approaching retirement with pots of money, and for several decades the boomers have fueled the growth of the quality craft market. Think of how the offerings of the 1970 Whole Earth Catalog are now so widely available that Stewart Brand, in the Millenium Edition of the popular handbook, noted that as a simple “phone book” it had been made obsolete by the Web. And as anyone who has invested in good furniture, fine wine, granite countertops, musical instruments and artisanal cheese knows, the good stuff ain’t cheap. Therefore, its production pays well if there’s volume enough.

Much is being made of the new “Slow Food” movement and its rethinking of our relationship to our food creation and distribution systems. So, say I, what about Slow Transit? Who cares about getting to New York in 6 hours instead of 3 days, if you’re fleeced, manhandled and drained by the experience? Take Amtrak, for example, and catch up on sleep, reading and paperwork, avoid jet lag (prediction: in 15 years sleep disturbances will be understood as “behavioral tobacco”) and save beaucoup barrels o’ oil on transporting your bad self.

What sort of demand is out there for Slow Transit? Check this out, from San Francisco.

More on this most groovy subject later.
Think about sail/fuel cell-electric freighters and ocean liners, biofueled turboprop flying boats, animal-powered city transit, etc.

You may have read or heard a common analogy:

guerrillas/counterinsurgents/bad guys = cockroaches/rats/vermin

Obviously, human/pest warfare is veddy, veddy old, and we’re not winning overall. So what do pests do that’s so effective? What mitigation plans really work? How for example, would establishing a stable Iraq or Afghanistan be like restoring our now-burned hillsides to minimize erosion ( = “infrastructure”) and promoting the growth and spread of native species vs. invasives like pampas grass ( = “nation-building”). Or consider ecological succession in a meadow:

pond -> meadow -> shrubs -> saplings -> forest

If the grass wants dominance, replacing the water and not being replaced by trees, what happens in nature to accomplish that? And so forth.

Perhaps “the ecology of defense” is a forthcoming notion? Hey, I coined it first.