2020 Hindsight

Responses to the Columbia Accident Report

From NASAwatch. Many posts, most of them requesting anonymity. Rand Simberg at Terrestrial Musings concludes from the comments that NASA is unsalvageable

A few excerpts:

The Board's insights into cultural problems at NASA are quite accurate. If there is any single sentence that captures much of the essence of these problems, it is this one: "The Board views the endemic use of PowerPoint briefing slides instead of technical papers as an illustration of the problematic methods of technical communication at NASA." I cannot count the number of times that I've been asked to provide managers with one or two PowerPoint slides to describe the complicated research that I do. All my offers of technical papers instead have been refused.

...A former colleague of mine often said "I get tired of trying to convince management that you can't ignore the laws of physics". Members of NASA management, like most modern management ("administration", if you prefer) cares nothing for the laws of physics or for anything else except their own advancement.

...All is not lost, however. The X-38 team at JSC "got it". They learned some tough lessons early in their program, but in the end they knew what it would take to fly their vehicle, and they did it. The folks at Dryden (for the most part) get it. A young operations engineer once stood up there during a preflight review, glared at another engineer who was objecting to a risk because he thought the likelihood was overstated, and said, "ask yourself this question. If this aircraft crashes, and the pilot is killed, would you be able to go to the funeral, walk up to his widow, and tell her you did everything you could?". That ended the discussion, and the risk was mitigated. By the way, it cost both time and money, AND it was the right thing to do. NASA needs to learn how to fly again.

...As a former member of the Shuttle team, I can tell you that the good-old-boy network is alive and well within the Shuttle program and NASA. Until this changes, we'll continue to lose orbiters and astronauts. NASA has bad habit of putting the wrong people in management positions. We consider everything except whether or not they're qualified. And this has to stop.

Come now, let us reason together, saith the NASA Administrator

Thou shalt (if thou feelst the need) freely act in a role of whistle blower. If thou hadst in previous days been filled with fear, lest thou losest thine job or suffer divers plagues enacted upon thee by thine masters or thine fellow-laborers, let this stop now. Verily I say unto thee, even though the retaliation agasint whistle blowers hadst transpired in previous days, lo! a new time has come. And if anyone--anyone--threateneth thee, go and plead thine cause with the NASA Office of Inspector General. Verily I say unto thee, as I am the NASA Administrator, the Office of Inspector General will hear thine cause, consider the matter and shalt render justice. Selah.

(okay, so that's my paraphrase, but O'Keefe sent out a nice memo agency-wide as part of his response to the Columbia Accident Investigation Report.)

The Dream lives on

Billmon writes on the anniversary of Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech. Go read it.

There is, however, one thing I've always sworn to myself: The world of my childhood dies with me. My children are going to grow up free -- or as free as I can possibly make them -- of the taint of racism.

The president oozes with irony

Found on a Google News Search for stories that mention Peter Ueberroth.

Dubya said he felt the pain of those who don’t have jobs and pledged to keep working every day until every American who wants a job can find one.

And then, he took off for a month-long vacation.

[I thought I posted this. Musta just created news item without posting it]

punishing the car

Well, as of 6 o'clock this evening, I have a car again. With a new radiator. Two major parts replacements in as many weeks. If I thought it'd make any difference, I'd banish my car to the garage for a long time to punish it for breaking down on me so soon after a brand new clutch. What's it gonna do next? I don't want to take it to the shop again next week.

California has new privacy act

What I'd like to know is... on the new opt-out forms, will you still have to hand over your social security number in order to tell banks and financial corporations to shut the fuck up with sharing your personal info? That. has. never. made. sense. to. me. (it has stopped me cold from opting in to opt out.)

Under the California Financial Information Privacy Act, which takes effect next July 1, banks, insurance companies and other financial institutions are automatically blocked from selling consumers' private information with unaffiliated third parties.

... After July 1, Californians can expect to notice a drop in telemarketing calls and marketing mail and should receive letters from banks that include the opt-out form to block sharing information with affiliates.

UPDATE: Dan Gillmor has more on this, answering my unvoiced question (whatever possessed the state legislature and the governor to get behind this? — to fend off a tougher measure to be introduced as a ballot initiative), and describing what the financial services lobby is trying to get going in Congress.

Gardening resource

Dan at Flower Delivery Flowers is building a web directory of gardening resources. You can register your gardening page/site/category on their site in exchange for a reciprocal link on yours.

(I'd go and do it, except that there's a ton of work to take old stuff from 2+ years and fit it somehow into the Greenery Dept. --which has hardly anything in it, and none of the good old stuff.. Feh.)

Gruener's internet campaign

Via California Insider, a mention of Garret Gruener, founder of askjeeves.com. He's plunked $3/4 million of his own funds into his campaign, created a website, and has a weblog on (on Typepad)

I'm running for Governor with one goal in mind: to ignite a citizens' movement that forces Sacramento to get the state back on track. By using the full power of the Web, we can bring millions of Californians together to demand change.

His education whitepaper examines Maine's one-laptop-per-student results and a similar program in Michigan, and the good results of online assessment engines.

Other Gruener-related stories:

• SF Gate: Venture capitalist to use internet to aid recall run
• Oakland Tribune, (8/27): Tech mogul backs tax hike, big cuts
• Tri-Valley Herald, (8/26) Tech mogul wants Sacramento to tell the truth (no 30-second sound bites from this guy)

Mars Attacks

Forget Marvin the Martian. The Martian's real name is Murphy. Just got back from a little look-see to observe the closest the red planet is to ours.

10 minutes to go (till 2:51am).. beautiful. Binoculars (wow! it's so like a disc and not a point)... 5 minutes go to, oh wait, is that cloud gonna obscure it? Maybe not, maybe so... 2 minutes to go... it's disappeared.... 3 minutes after closest approach... still obscured by that little cloud.... 5 minutes.. did you see a little--no, it disappeared again.... 10 minutes after.. oh, there it is again! Closest approach in 59-thousand-odd years, I stay up to watch it, and a leeetle cloud comes marching along. Figures.

Endings and Exigencies

Important endings in the blogosphere:

• A Good Life, observed: Doc Searls tells stories and remembers his mother, who died after 90 years of a life fully lived. Condolences and hugs, Doc.

• Julie of Julie/Julia just finished her year-long project to cook every recipe in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Congratulations and thanks for the laughter for those of us who caught on at the end.
• Lt. Smash is now stateside after 8 months in Kuwait. Welcome back!

Another big event today:

• Tonight, the planet Mars is closest to earth than it has been in over 60,000 years. (technically the 27th, but in Pacific Time Zone, it's 9pm the 26th.
  UPDATE: My bad, in reality it's 2:51 Pacific Time the 27th. See this article at Sky & Telescope for more. Cool that our hemisphere can actually see it at the closest moment. I'll be outside in the wee hours, just knowing that I'm witnessing a once-in-a-60,000 year event)

Well, and yesterday was an ending for me: My car's radiator blew. This the week after I got it back from the shop with a brand-new clutch. I don't go on and on here about money matters, but tho I've been working tons, I've projects in the "we paid up the budget on this job but there's still a leeeeetle more work for you to do on it", "Yes, this is barter, but the client's deadline is this week, so hop to it with extra effort and then it'll be done for a while", and "I can't have you work more on this project until we get the big check from the big client" variety. Sheesh. I really don't want to resort to putting up a Paypal button, not that I'd expect anything to come in from it. But after my car pissed greencoolant all over itself and the ground beneath, it's tempting.

I declare the word for today to be exigency (The state or quality of requiring much effort or immediate action.)