The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by alex:

An interesting and little-known fact is this: the superior safety record of aviation (fatalities per passenger-mile) is entirely due to commercial air travel. If you only look at the pool of light planes, the safety record is just about the same as automobiles.

Fuel economy is a figure that doesn't get mentioned much in these stories. I remember the Moeller flying-car prototype, which was powered with eight Mazda RX-7 motors, a car that got about 17mpg. Those eight motors were never going to be idling, but rather operating at 50-75% of full throttle the entire time. The thing was never going to be able to lift enough fuel off the ground to give itself a useable range.

Is it just me, or did the bongo player look way too much like Chewbacca?

While it would be rewarding to the Cheney administration to sell off the Iraqi oil to the highest Western bidder (they have tried at least twice) keeping it in the ground is a very, very close second place. Exxon-Mobil is worth a trillion dollars more than they were in 2001, just due to the increased value of their reserves.

On to Saddam. One is reminded of the recent adage that Bush will screw things up more than you thought possible, even when you allow for the fact that you know he screws everything up. I have no idea what's going to go wrong with the expected "surge", but just thinking about it makes me queasy.

Theresa: believe it. Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon--all smarter, more motivated, and more flexible than Bush--continued to wade deeper into the swamp that was Vietnam, despite ample evidence that not only was there no light at the end of the tunnel, the tunnel was filled with rabid alligators* carrying chainsaws.

The source of Bush's inflexibility (immaturity, ADHD, malice, imbalanced thetans) doesn't matter. But the sooner people realize that the tools of rhetoric are useless, the better off we'll all be. Stop trying to use the pressure cooker and oven tongs to fix your car's transmission, accept that Photoshop will not cure your lower back pain, and realize that the only option left open to you with regard to the Bush administration is damage control.


*I know they can't get rabies.

Nancy @ 15:

Bush was chosen because he loves campaigning. Runs for the presidency start three years before the election, minimum. McCain, Clinton, Obama, and everyone else with a toe in the water has already taken swimming lessons and put on their bathing suit, so to speak. The ones who are real contenders will work forty to sixty hours a week between the middle of 2007 and the early primaries. After the primaries it'll be more like seventy hours a week.

It's not impossibly hard work--meeting lots of people, asking for money and support, trying not to make too many promises. But there's an awful lot of it. The closest equivalent is a long road tour for a musician, only without the opportunity to get plastered and trash your hotel room.

Bush's actual talent at the job itself, being a President, wasn't a consideration. If it hadn't been for 9/11, we would have muddled through with damage to the EPA, the Justice department, and the other places that get stuffed with appointees. There's even a good chance he would have served only a single term, which would have denied him the Alito and Roberts appointments.

But for crying out loud, the man has famously said that when he makes a decision, he "goes with his gut." Why on earth does anyone expect to get anywhere talking to his brain?

Donald Wildmon's American Family Association gives him a 100% positive rating. What else do you need to know?

McCain has his reputation as a maverick because he's willing to stand up in front of TV cameras and act angry but still use small words. What more could CNN or Fox want? Checking to see that he follows through on those angry words is an awful lot like work.

How many Caliphate points does bin Laden get if Iraq and Iran decide they don't need that pesky border?

Disabling M1A1 tanks is not so difficult--undo the drain plug on the lubrication system and fire up the turbine. The armor plate keeps exploding shrapnel *in* as well as out. Smashing a few choice electronics boxes is recommended as well. These are definitely repairable (though we control many of the spares) but they will make sure that nobody uses your heavy armor against you for at least several days/weeks, which is all that is required for an evacuation.

The four big bases the US has are probably defensible, with enough laagered fuel and munitions to cover a retreat. Lots of smaller bases don't, and those troops will have to be airlifted out (most likely by helicopter, not the safest form of transport) to the big bases.

The scary one is the Green Zone: there will only be screaming masses of civilians at the gates until the first 2,000lb truck bomb shows up. And once militias control the streets, everyone with a mortar will be lobbing shells in--nobody in there except Americans and collaborators. At least in Saigon they could use helicopters--Bagdad may well have too many MANPADs and heavy sniper rifles, which will leave several thousand people at the mercy of....well, never mind that. It's too depressing.

There were numerous injuries and a few deaths from "happy fire" in Kuwait, following the eviction of the Iraqis in Gulf War I. I recall reading about it at the time. This did involve lots of people stepping outside and ripping off entire 30-round magazines, of course. In terms of an actual hazard to life and limb, not so much. Lightning or dog attack is far more likely to kill you.

In terms of having fun shooting at things, I'm going to recommend 10-meter air pistols and rifles. They are exquitely precise (upper-end ones are intended for Olympic competition), inexpensive to use, and quiet. I sold all my firearms except the shotgun after buying an Anschutz M10. I now hate shooting handguns--they are expensive, noisy, and uncomfortable.

Any context, or is this a free-floating wordlet?

Clark:

Thank you for your clarification on military fuel types--I am sadly out of date. My point, however, stands: refineries and tankers are too big and have too much staff to keep many secrets. Somebody in Iran has been thinking about how long everybody in the Persian Gulf can fight a war. US strategy and tactics are expensive in terms of energy and technology and dollars too.

If the US economy crashes and there are food riots (an extreme example) how long do you think anyone outside the beltway will support a Mideast war? How expensive does oil have to get to make that happen? Does Iran have enough leverage to make that happen?

A small point: "lose" does not equal "dead". Captives are even worse than casualties; their release must be bargained for. Also, with our somewhat lackadasical view of the Geneva Conventions, we can't expect our protests at POW treatment to fall on sympathetic ears. The term "reparations" comes to mind.

Aside from all of that, I challenge you to take the survivors of such a clusterf*ck, who have had to run for their lives due to upper management's incompetence, and ever get them to follow an order again. A large percentage will wind up being traumatized enough that they can't be relied on in combat. As they will have to be replaced, they're a loss as well.

Does anybody here know how many days worth of JP-4 and bunker fuel the US has on hand in the Gulf? I know they've been buying most of it in Kuwait fromm local refineries. Does anyone want to bet that Iranian intelligence doesn't know, to within +/-5 days, how long the US can sustain full combat operations with their current supplies?

Air support that's stuck on the ground may as well be on the moon.

If things go all pear-shaped in the Gulf, you can expect some of Iran's first targets to be other countries oil-export facilities, as they are nearly impossible to defend. Oil goes to $200/barrel, and the US faces insta-recession. We have three months' supply in our strategic reserve, and are 12-18 months away from bringing any new domestic wells on-line, not that they would do much to help.

Don't expect the Iranians to do stupid things. They already got someone else to take care of their biggest enemy.

Mr. Gould:

Biometrics are good for low-security items, or for systems that can be replaced entirely if security fails. I wouldn't touch them with a ten-foot pole. In Malaysia, an owner of a BMW(?) that used a fingerprint reader instead of a key had his finger removed by the thieves that stole his car. Bad failure mode.

Now consider a system that can't be replaced--banking, for example. What do we do for clients who lack the appropriate finger or eye? How do we handle clients who lose one? How do we handle undercover agents and relocated witnesses?

I am going to plug Bruce Schneier here, as one of clearest writers on security. He comes at the subject from a background of cryptography, but his last two books are written for a general audience. Secrets and Lies introduces the concepts of threat models and attack trees. Thinking about these things can keep one from making foolish mistakes with limited resources.

The only component of fundamental religious belief being seriously threatened by science is biblical inerrancy. And the sooner it's gone, the better.

Now, religion as a social institution is definitely under some heavy pressure from technological progress. Once someone has seen what tetracycline can do it's real hard to convince them that prayer holds all the answers. I don't have any real problem with people who want to live in the cultural equivalent of the twelfth century, but I don't want to go along for the ride.

Well, the rationale for the tight restrictions on some drugs is pretty easy to understand if you look at it from the right angle. After reading a great deal of drug-war propaganda, much of it can distilled to the following precepts:

1. People who abuse drugs are defiling the temple that is their body and are bound for hell.

2. People who aid and abet such drug abusers make the baby Jesus cry and are likewise bound for hell.

I remember reading somewhere that in the late nineties the city of San Francisco was spending six million dollars a year treating infected needle sites alone, never mind incidental costs associated with IV drug abuse. That problem could have been reduced by a factor of twenty with a needle-exchange program, but that would "send the wrong message".

People denied medication live in pain and die early. But they're going to heaven! And most importantly, so are the people who make the rules!

Reason #11,004 why the religous right makes me gag.

I'm sure Rush's probation officer is currently wondering if there were any other bottles of pills in his possession with somebody else's name on them.

If you want a short course in how an Ivy education can go slightly rancid, head down to your local library and check out a copy of Mind Over Water, by Craig Lambert. Although it's puportedly about sculling, its theme changes gradually from "I was so lucky to go to Harvard" to something along the lines of "This is such a lucky world to have Harvard in it, and Harvard men to rule over it."

I stopped reading then, and I never found out if he took that thought to the logical conclusion: "Kneel before the King, serf!"

It's not the education, it's the entitlement.

Some people go to horror movies.

Some people ride roller coasters.

Some people read books wherein the human race is dissolved by intelligent viruses.

Some people indulge in racial and class-supremacist fantasies.

All of these are methods of dealing with fear, and reinforcing self-identification as a survivor. The first three, however, have few negative effects in the real world.

There's not much point in arguing with Victim Christianists--they're playing to lose. They want to be insulted and re-convinced that the world is going straight to Hell, and they are a beleagured minority...

All for the happy glow of martyrdom without the ickiness of actually being martyred.

It's a perfectly fine idea, as long as the student's transcript gets an (alt) notation next to each alternative class. Then employers can offer them an (alt) salary commeasurate with their skills...

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