Thursday, November 08, 2007

Be a hip Nasa nazi and win friends.


McNasa the Feinsteinocrat!

Instead of debating budget allocations for NASA–i.e. do we choose rockets instead of funding medical research for dying and diseased women and children, or upgrading public education, saving national parks, etc.–Max rubber stamps NASA Corp and Mars dreams. Weldon would be proud. As would Nixon/Kissinger, NASA allies.

Speaking of the Mars business, even a WaPo pundit has her doubts:

""None of which is to say that it isn't interesting or important for NASA to send robotic probes to other planets. It's interesting in the way that the exploration of the bottom of the Pacific Ocean is interesting, or important in the way that the study of obscure dead languages is important. Like space exploration, these are inspiring human pursuits. Like space exploration, they nevertheless have very few practical applications.

But space exploration isn't treated the way other purely academic pursuits are treated. For one, the scientists doing it have perverse incentives. Their most dangerous missions -- the ones involving human beings -- produce the fewest research results, yet receive the most attention, applause and funding. Their most productive missions -- the ones involving robots -- inspire interest largely because the public illogically believes they will lead to more manned space travel."""""

Das stimmt.



(and those 1-2 people lurking on Goy Worlds may have noted one crypto-rightist Betya misquoting Scripture and what he takes to be the "sophists". After admitting his mistake, he claims he was quoting Nabakov. What a laugh. Nabakov sagt auch: "Du bist Scheiße").



Zubrin, current Mars guru, has approved of substantially increasing the NASA budget, and he defends Bush’s recent Mars hype; a Pilate-like approach would entail debating the NASA budget (ye olde cost-benefit analysis perhaps?), in light of other concerns, social, economic, environmental, etc. INSTEAD of taking Mars exploration as sacred gospel.

The Jeffersonian-Madisonian tradition of American politics would indeed require such rational debates–not that that occurs too much given the hysteria of most Dempublicans. Madison, secularist, himself a bit closer to a Pilate than to a Yeshua (in fact the Founding Fathers were all quite well read in Latin political classics, Plato’s Republic, etc., while perhaps objecting to some of the greek authoritarianism). Let’s ask Gary Hart, who knows his Mad-Jeff, what he thinks of Zubrin.


Max googles "Sophist!" THe spammed in definition doesn’t really apply. It was your pal who alluded to historical figures: Pilate/Yeshua (he misquoted a literary text, but it’s quite obvious “sophist” was being used to refer to the ancient sort of rhetorician or disputant). A debate exists even over the status of the sophists. They opposed the greek authorities of the time (including Plato). Probably sort of a school of lawyers and politicians, maybe cutthroat, but skilled debaters.

The history lesson (and semantic clarification) isn’t the central point. The point concerns the need for rational discussion of NASA, and one might say in Popperian terms, an OPEN society, where NASA, defense, economic reform, democracy as a whole–even blog politics and communication issues– are on the table, instead of always being taken over by “experts” and apparatchiks of left or right.)

6 comments:

J said...

And you won't be published here. Your pal made a mistake. He's the one who referred to traditional sophists. The clarification is fairly obvious, except to a censor and megalomaniac such as yourself.



First, you don't understand what rational discussion and dissent implies--like discussing the cost-benefits of NASA and Zubrin's Mars visions.

The sophist point merely was to demonstrate the difference between rational discussion (which sophists did attempt to uphold, at least slightly) and dogma, which Yeshua and the jew-xtianity tradition upholds. So you again side with dogmatists.

Moreover, you are a coward. Beyta can barely write. His misquote is typical--as is his ad hom ("oh he's a sophist, therefore don't have to listen"). Even the ad hom was mistaken, since he was using sophist in ancient sense.

The attachment to Mars exploration itself odd and dogmatic, if not delusional.

(There's no little sing-songs here at Contingencies--you and yr pals are the singers and fiddlers. I work on an analysis of La Mer when I have time, hippie)

Anonymous said...

I meant to add that there was good stuff in all three comments so it's a shame to axe them in toto. I'm very hesitant to muck with content. Either they're publishable as-is or not.

J said...

Oh and I forgot my yeats quote:

"BASE born product of base beds."

That's you B-ron, whoreson.

Anonymous said...

"My Bad."


Squeaking like the little spineless scenester bitch it's always been.

J said...

Logic. Hah. D-weed botched a categorical syllogism: he doesn't know what a valid form is. You have no logic. Everything you write is in error, fallacious, ad hom, ad populus, pathos, generalization. You have no facts, no arguments. You don’t know modus ponens from the Mormon church; Frege from yr Football game.

You’re full of shit, liars, and going to hell, if such a place abides. The mockery of Kant and Plato, 24/7--indeed of screepture--thou shall not bear false witness.

That’s all ye need to know.

(and as soon as someone dared to question the sacred NASA dogma, little YumaRon and McK got all upset, and the lies and libel flow. The usual psycho-statist defamation (yet yr too stupid to understand that NASA ain't the left anyways). You're not even Americans, nor democrats in any normal sense. Move to like North Korea or maybe Tel Aviv).

J said...

"Pride, the never failing vice of fools", as Pope said. And suffer fools gladly.

Not only incapable of like producing a valid categorical syllogism-- or for that matter a coherent discussion of federal budget and the NASA funding issues--none of the monolingual idjits at NW seems even able to read binary.

Not merely the mockery of religious ethics, but of technology, logic, and Jeffersonian and Madisonian secularism as well.

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