The Phantom City

Space probe Cassini is going into orbit around Saturn this evening. It has been travelling for close to seven years to get there. In December, the Huygens space probe it has been carrying along for the ride will take off for a landing on Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, which appears to have an atmosphere and oceans of some sort.

Cassini is one of the last relics of NASA from before the “Faster, Better, Cheaper” era, and as a result is a big, nuclear-powered — through radioisotope decay — Cadillac of space probes. Wonder if future missions will start looking like that, now that we have the “Moon, then Mars” agenda?

My first computer was a Commodore 64, so, like a lot of folks my age, I feel sort of proprietary about the Commodore name, even though the company went out of business years ago.

That being said, I’m not sure how I feel about this digital music player, named after the VIC-20. Keeps the name out there, but I guess I would like it better if it wasn’t called the “e”-Vic.

The C64 joystick should be neat, though. Too bad they probably won’t include Conflict in Vietnam.

Courtesy of The Register.

If you are a member of Congress, and someone hands you a crown, put it down and leave. (After determining it isn’t meant for you, of course.)

Courtesy of The New York Times (free registration required)

A debate at Harvard about the efficacy and results of minority-recruitment programs is fascinating, if largely because it starts to illumine the conflict between trying to divide the world into groups and dealing with actual individuals.

In this case, there doesn’t seem to be a question that Harvard has succeeded in increasing the number of black students in the University. However, once you start subdividing the ethnicity they have used as a touchstone, some odd differences start to come to light: Students of recently-immigrated black families — Africans and West Indians, for example — make up the bulk of the increase. Descendents of African-American slaves — familes that have been in the US for more than three generations — have not been as successful.

This leads to an interesting couple of comments by Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Lani Guinier, but no one seems to bring up the problem, particularly among smaller groups, of how one achieves aims of ethnic and socioeconomic balance when the decisions are largely being made about and by individuals who each are going to be located in a fairly unique space, even if you just look at ethnicity, class, and gender. What is balance, and how do you measure it?

Courtesy of The New York Times (free registration required)

Pretty good argument for Kerry picking John Edwards as his running mate. However, according to the article, it looks like Kerry is leaning towards Dick Gephardt or Tom Vilsack, which I don’t quite understand.

I don’t know much about Governor Vilsack (Iowa), but I do know that Gephardt has a record of not being able to deliver in elections, aside from his home district. Why would a man who struggles with the charisma/connection thing select Gephardt, who has an even worse time connecting, as his VP choice?

That being said, even though I’m from North Carolina, I think Edwards as the preferable candidate just goes to show both parties’ weaknesses. That he is taken seriously is a testament to the weakness of the Democrats; that he should be taken seriously attests to the weakness of the Republicans.

I must admit, that while I may vote for Kerry, I was pulling for Edwards as the Presidential nominee. However, I still wish, deep down, that I could vote for John McCain.

Courtesy of Talking Points Memo.

Interesting article on the confusion concerning the numbers of al-Qaeda terrorists around the world, brought to us by Spiked.

It doesn’t seem it is possible to talk about al-Qaeda without bringing up a question that just puzzles me. For a terrorist group with supposedly well-established political aims and members all over the world, doesn’t al-Qaeda seem far more murderous than strategic? In other words, do they really have a plan of how any of their horrific acts are going to accomplish what they say they want? For instance:

• How do they plan to bring down the House of Saud without directly attacking it, either politically (through assassination or open rebellion) or economically (destroying the oil infrastructure)? Even with car bombings, you hear very little about the Saudi populace being panicked or resentful of their leaders (probably because recent bombings seem aimed towards foreigners). Is there some kind of deal with the Saudi government, or is al-Qaeda actually that weak inside Saudi Arabia right now?
• Aside from assaulting civilians, transportation systems, and global symbols in big attacks, I wonder why al-Qaeda hasn’t started attacking the West in “smaller” ways. While the world has changed for a lot of Americans, most don’t think about terrorism in their daily lives, as opposed to Israelis, who suffer through it every day. Could it be that even in an open country, al-Qaeda’s assets are too limited to carry out a continual war of terror, or is it primarily due to the preference of the organization’s top personalities?

Obviously, al-Qaeda has had a huge impact on millions of people, and a highly personal impact on hundreds of thousands. However, we continue to talk about the organization using metaphors of multi-national corporation, apocalyptic cult, Islamic revolutionaries, or SPECTRE-like entity, but I wonder whether those fit what al-Qaeda actually does. It’s worth some more thought.

One of the nice things about working where I do is that we occasionally have little sales during the day, primarily for charitable purposes. In this case the sale was of used books, and the charity was the Food Bank of North Carolina.

Now, anyone who has seen our house knows we do not need more books, but I ended up with 11 of them anyway. Must keep the books circulating. The weird thing is, I almost never buy biographies new, but I’m compelled to when I see them used. Something about thumbing through a musty biography just seems right. Good haul in this set:

• Autobiography of Malcolm X
• Black Boy, by Richard Wright
• I Am Spock, by Leonard Nimoy
• Reba: My Story, by Reba McEntire

I should point out that the books were donated by Felton’s Books, which is doing its thing online now. Check them out. I highly recommend them.

As has been blogged about quite a bit since it happened, SCOTUS has ruled in a 5-4 decision that people are required to give their names if asked by a police officer. (With the caveat that there must be a law on the books that requires you to do so, which isn’t necessarily true in every state.)

I find it interesting that the Court ruled that you had no Constitutional right to withhold your name, but didn’t necessarily rule on producing your identification papers. It provokes the idea you could simply give a false name, but, if arrested, differing from one’s physical ID would probably lead to being charged with giving a false statement.

Courtesy of The Newshour with Jim Lehrer

This list has some great suggestions. Personally, I suggest games. I’ve spent many an hour staring at the trading screen in Madden 2004 or optimizing my cities in Civ III without once having to look at the Internet. Books are also a good choice, but I usually find I’m not in print-reading mode if I’m noticing the Internet is down.

TV, not so good. Using the TV as a substitute for more interactive activities you’d rather be doing tends to lead to lots of fiddling around with the DVR, which can be irritating to those attempting to watch with you.

Since I use them as my primary browser and email programs, I should point out that Firefox 0.9 and Thunderbird 0.7 are now available for download from the Mozilla site. I have noticed a couple of problems with the update feature — which has caused some folks to not be able to use the browser — but I suspect that may be due to site traffic as “us geeks” flood the servers. Seems to be calming down now, though.