When the going gets tough, get your news at Kid's Post
Meant to mention that I happened to check out the weekly Washington Post "Kid's Post" section on Monday. Naturally, it was all about the Columbia.

What got me was that this section did a better, sparer job of reporting than the front page section did. Simple questions were asked and answered, with "we don't know" used up front and without much elaboration. After reading the single page, you would know about 90% of what there is to know from the front section, and you wouldn't "know" 90% of what was fluff or speculation from the front section. posted by Thomas Nephew at 12:57:00 AM -- |    

 

Good for you, Professor Dini
On the other hand, count me on Mr. Drum's side in the controversy over a medical school professor's inalienable right to recommend or not recommend creationist students for medical school as he sees fit.

Especially since Professor Michael Dini of Texas Tech University sees fit not to recommend them. For views criticizing the professor's position, see among others Patrick Nielsen Hayden, Moira Breen, and Mark Kleiman (who discusses both Drum's post, and the extensive comments to Nielsen Hayden's piece). Their arguments are long and often subtle, but to my mind they are discovering, in effect, a right to not be thwarted in any pursuit whatever, no matter how ill suited one is to that pursuit. For my part, I'd be about as easy in my mind with a creationist doctor as I would with an airline pilot who believes that the world is flat, or that God will provide in the event the fuel tanks aren't full enough.

This can not possibly be an infringement of religious freedom. Creationists remain free to believe whatever they want to. Dr. Dini's position only results in fewer of them being able to pretend to be full-fledged scientists and doctors around me. Creationism is argument from authority. While it's no doubt true that creationist doctors can acquire a thorough knowledge of the medical canon, their commitment to honest review of that canon, of new findings, or of their own work must always be suspect. You'll never know when a passage from the Bible will suddenly supersede the findings of medical science, or even of their own eyes.

I don't know where Kleiman gets off saying medicine is not a science. There are day to day practitioners, to be sure, who may be able to autopilot their way through days, weeks, even months of medical challenges, stolidly applying the "flowcharts" Ms Nickerson refers to in the comment Patrick Nielsen Hayden recommends.* But medical schools will produce both workaday practitioners and research scientists, and Dini doesn't know which the student in front of him will turn out to be. And "even" workaday practitioners will be faced with mysteries and conundrums that I would prefer be resolved by science and not by faith.

Some comments to the contrary, I believe that Professor Dini's position has the virtue, not the defect, of being above board. It seems to me that many of the objections to Dini (raised during extensive discussions at some of the sites above) are simply about the public process that Dini commits himself and his successful recommendation-seekers to. Yet that openness seems preferable to me to simply quietly ruling out applicants based on their creationist beliefs.

I commend both Professor Dini's position and the public way he has taken that position.

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*Scroll down to January 31, 2003 06:27 PM posted by Thomas Nephew at 10:55:00 PM -- |    

 

You can't win if you don't play
That, in a nutshell, is why I think the United States must maintain a manned space program. I've been following a lot of commentary about the Columbia accident. In particular, Kevin Drum ("Calpundit") has written a series of noteworthy posts on the subject, sharing his own thoughtful ambivalence about manned space exploration. From Drum's first post:

As much as I dearly love the dream of manned space flight and the colonization of other plants, the sad truth is that there's simply no compelling reason to send humans into space on a regular basis.To perform scientific experiments? Nope. It turns out that there is virtually no scientific research that requires human handholding except the study of human adaptation to space itself. So the only reason to send humans into orbit is....to see how well humans hold up in orbit.

To explore Mars? Ditto. It can be done by unmanned probes just as well.

To set up space factories? Unfortunately, nobody is much interested in commercial uses of space. Adequate vacuums can be set up on Earth quite nicely, thank you very much, and weightlessness turns out to have very few commercial possibilities.

To colonize other planets? Why? In case we bomb each other into the stone age here on Earth? How long would a moon colony last if it didn't get regular supply visits from Earth?

Space tourism? Maybe, but if this is the only reason, then NASA needs to get out of it. Let the private sector do the job.

In a later post, Drum writes:

I love the idea of manned space flight myself. If my income tax form had a box that allowed me to contribute an extra $100 to a government program to colonize space, I'd probably check it off. Unfortunately, though, I suspect the "symphonies and ballets" analogy is a pretty good one. And like the civic arts, manned space flight probably ought to be consigned primarily to the private sector, where it will be funded by enthusiasts and rich philanthropists. Maybe Bill Gates would contribute a couple billion dollars.

Today, Drum turns a William Burrows quote in the L.A. Times on its head, writing:

But turn that around and see how this sounds instead:

If anything good is to come out of the cause for which the Titanic passengers died, it should be a resolve that it is humanity's destiny to inhabit the ocean's depths, its sea floor, and beyond.

Domed colonies on the floor of the sea were a science fiction staple of Jules Verne's time, but today it sounds quaint and old fashioned. Why would we bother?

That's the problem with manned space flight. I'm not opposed to it because it's dangerous, or because the government shouldn't be in the business of basic research, or because we should be spending the money fighting poverty instead. I'm opposed because some dreams just don't pan out as well as others. Manned space flight today is like the domed sea colonies of 1900: cool sounding, but ultimately not very interesting.

Metaphors are treacherous things, of course. Needless to say, the Titanic's passengers were not seeking to inhabit the ocean's depths. Their purpose was no higher than the proverbial chicken's crossing the road: to get to the other side. The Columbia's crew's mission was more profound than that.

Drum is right: from a short-term practical perspective, and other than the circular reasoning of manned space flight research, there's probably little to recommend manned space flight over safer, cheaper alternatives. Except this: in space, human presence will always be nine tenths if not 99,999 one hundred thousandths of the right to be there, and to have a say in how the exploration and exploitation of our solar system will proceed. You can quote me the UN Outer Space Treaty and the like until you're blue in the face. We won't matter if we're not there.

In truth, this has always been one of the main forces driving exploration, and it's not a stupid one. You plant your flag first, and worry about economic feasibility later. I'd guess that most of the first hundred voyages to the New World lost money ... or worse. I'm all for getting out of the way of private sector space exploration. One example of how to do this is provided by the X-Prize competition, a great idea to encourage low-cost private manned space flight. But I'm not for leaving space exploration solely up to the vagaries of private enterprise and economics, not for now. Drum's own list of objections to manned space flight convinces me of that.

Whether we continue with manned space exploration or not, others will. I'd prefer that Americans be part of that, rather than watch from the sidelines as countries like Europe, Russia, China, or India eagerly take up the effort Drum suggests we drop. Even in the nicer world we wish for someday, it will remain true that those with the skills, and capital and courage to actually be in space will have right of way over those who merely send up probes and satellites. Whatever is of value up there, from lunar or asteroid mining to prospects yet unknown, will accrue mainly to those with the foresight to put humans up there to oversee the machinery and stake the claims.

Finally, it's not altogether corny to suggest that the United States benefits by being the kind of place where the Kalpana Chawla's of the world want to come. There are people bolder, less calculating, more risk-taking than either Mr. Drum or myself; people who instinctively know it's important to be there, not just watch it on a screen from Mission Control. It's likely that the Columbia had seven of them aboard. The world will always have such people; I'd like to make sure some of the ones in space are from this country, on this country's dime.

I mourn the loss of the Columbia and its astronauts. And therefore I don't at all support using the Columbia accident to cut short the very careers and aspirations that these people chose. We need more like them, whether they're flying space shuttles or better space vehicles. The payoff from their work and experience will come someday. In the meantime, I think it verges on short-sightedness to insist that manned space flight be anything than what it is: exploration, pure and simple, without the prospect of or need for immediate returns. The payoffs could be enormous; they could be crucial. It's best to stay in the game.

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UPDATE: Kevin Drum e-mailed to say,

In one of my pieces I tried to make it clear that my view is *not* based on the Columbia tragedy. [...] In fact, I'd almost hate to see us pull back now because it would seem like we were doing it for the wrong reason. That's the problem with not doing the right thing from the start: when a crisis comes, you then have to continue with the old failed policies because anything else looks like caving in.

(link added). Since I implied the Columbia tragedy was why Kevin felt as he did ("don't... support using the Columbia accident to cut short..."), I'm setting this record straight. posted by Thomas Nephew at 10:05:00 PM -- |    

 

It won't be over till it's English over there. (Not.)
Norwegian blogger Bjørn Stærk urges European political bloggers to write in English:

A blog in German or Norwegian stays locked behind borders. A blog in English transcends them. I'm sure there are a lot of Germans below the political and media radars, who have interesting views on what is happening these days. But as long as they write on the web in German only, few outsiders will ever know they exist. All we ever see of Germany is Schröder & Co. I don't know your political views, but if I were you I wouldn't be very content with that.

By the same token, Americans and other English-speakers could do more, too: learn and practice more languages, and explore foreign-language (to us) blogs and media more often. It would be interesting, and maybe a real service, to do a foreign-language blogwatch/mediawatch, teaming up with other bloggers who can speak French, Russian, etc.

It would be nice if more Americans were as fluent in a second language as most Germans are. I'm not quarreling with Bjørn, really; as a practical matter, that's not going to happen overnight, so European political bloggers who want to gain a hearing in the "Anglosphere" would be well advised to to write in English more often.

But given the good English most German bloggers I'm aware of command, I suppose it's clear that gaining an English-speaking readership by is not a priority for them -- just as most American "war" and other political bloggers don't have the ambition of writing for, say, the French, German, or Arabic readerships. Who do you try to speak with first, persuade first, amuse first? Your countrymen or someone halfway around the world?

Some German blogs do feature fairly frequent English entries. Scott Hanson's blog PapaScott is a special case; he's an ex-Minnesotan now living in Hamburg with his wife and son. He's frequently mentioned by Glenn Reynolds (Instapundit), so most readers are probably familiar with him; his observations on German politics are always worth reading. Camp Catatonia is another good German blog with frequent English entries. Oddly, it too is by an expatriate living in Hamburg*, in this case an Austrian woman (I think) who goes by "katatonik." Via comments on Bjørn's first entry about this, I've learned of another blog by German Tobias Schwarz that appears to be all in English so far.

Maybe someday more German bloggers will look for overseas readers, and maybe I don't know about the ones who already do. For my part, I get a kick out of my CETZ (Central European Time Zone) page views. Thanks to Scott Hanson, Peter Praschl, and Jens Scholz for linking to my blog, and to everyone from Europe who's dropped by! Y'all hurry back!

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* Rounding out the Hamburg expat scene is Peter Praschl, an Austrian who teams with Stefan Knecht to produce the indispensable Le Sofa Blog. However, the writing is almost always German, although occasional English and (mon Dieu) French entries happen from time to time as well.
Edit, 2/3/03: added "(I think)" posted by Thomas Nephew at 9:24:00 PM -- |