Anyway, I mentioned trying to [...]]]> For those of you who have been hanging on the edge of your seat, checking thrice daily to see if I’ve offered an update, I apologize for keeping you in suspense. Actually, no I don’t – suspense is good for you, and anxiety strengthens the heart. Well known fact.

Anyway, I mentioned trying to follow-up on the attack snail, and I did; in my online searches I came across the name, repeatedly actually, of Kathryn E. Perez, Ph.D., who has published a fair amount about land snails. She had also done postdoctoral work at two of the nearby universities, Duke and UNC, so it seemed likely that she was directly familiar with the species in the area. I dropped her an e-mail and got a prompt response – yet, not a definitive answer. Here’s how that goes sometimes:

First, while I did several direct measurements of the snail while I had it (guided by a PDF on snail identification) and got lots of images of my subject, I didn’t pay attention to the umbilicus area. Snail shells form in a spiral, of course, but they may do a flat spiral, or they may ‘stack up’ a bit making a cone, which would leave an empty space on the ‘underside’ of the spiral. The umbilicus is the axis around which the spiral twirls, and I paid attention to the top side in detail, but simply never thought to take note of the underside, which would have narrowed down the species choices a bit. The other aspect that would have given more clues was the lip of the aperture, which is the opening of the shell itself. In this case, I got a few measurements and examined it closely, but the snail wasn’t cooperating, and simply refused to retract fully so the aperture was unobstructed. What I have is a tentative identification of Neohelix albolabris, with a possibility of it being either Mesodon thyroidus, Mesodon zaletus, or Allogona profunda. These are all members of the Polygyridae family, so at least I’d gotten that correct, even if I copied a typo when relating that for the initial post.

As for the burning sensation when I contacted it? Dr. Perez confirmed that many snails have such defenses, also including yucky-tasting mucus (I know that shocks most of us who imagine snails to be succulent and fruity,) but it appears not to be known if this species in particular sports such a defense. In fact, from the dearth of information I found about this on my own, this topic hasn’t been a matter of too much study. I don’t feel bad about not finding this, since the mention of the chemical composition of snail mucus that Dr. Perez forwarded me was buried in a scientific paper.

I mentioned this before in the Amateur Naturalist series of posts, but we’re still finding out a lot of details about species as we go – biology and taxonomy are not as well-explored as we might believe. Among the smaller and more prolific members of the animal kingdom, there are such large numbers and subtle divisions that biologists are still slogging through them all, so it’s possible to come up against questions where the answer either isn’t known, or is still kind of vague. Which means that if my finger turns mauve and drops off tomorrow, I may be the catalyst for a new avenue of research, possibly resulting in a toxic snail snot being named after me. So there’s that to look forward to.

Dr. Perez provided more info than expected, especially now as colleges approach final exams and the workload gets heinous, so I’ll take the opportunity to thank her once again, publicly. There is often a disconnect between the ‘scientific community’ and information readily available to the public, even in this age of electronic publication; working scientists often don’t have the time or funding to create general education works, and most papers are too specific and dry to attract a serious consumer market. I’ve had very good luck contacting universities with questions, but am always a little circumspect, since the people within these departments have their own work to do, often quite a bit. This is also coupled with the fact that many people specialize in a narrow field, and finding one that knows your topic may take some searching. So while I don’t want to encourage anyone to immediately contact their local universities with all questions, and will stress that numerous answers are available online with a bit of effort, sometimes this is still a worthwhile avenue of information.

I’ll use the idea of special efforts among working scientists to educate the general public as a springboard for the next post, which is unrelated enough that I decided not to pursue it in just one ;-)

However, I soon became wracked with guilt over such blatant manipulations. Not to mention that, [...]]]> In yesterday’s ‘Too cool’ installment, I lamented not being able to illustrate the topic with my own images, and suspected I’d have no opportunity to do so. This was an abject ploy to make you feel sorry for me.

However, I soon became wracked with guilt over such blatant manipulations. Not to mention that, while searching through my images last night to illustrate a couple of presentations, I came across this insect photographed not six meters from my door one summer. While the wings are not being held in the right position, compare their pattern with that illustrated by Alex Wild in his post. This isn’t sufficient to demonstrate how the illusion works, but it does mean that I might be able to do so later on, without traveling to the tropics.

This is how the mind of an insect photographer works. This goal will remain in the back of my mind (along with many others,) and every tiny fly is going to be examined from now on to see if it might be a target species. if spotted, I’ll be trying to achieve just the right angle to illustrate this trait, at the same time watching to see if I can ever catch the function in action with a jumping spider. I admit to spending a lot of time crawling around looking for this kind of thing, but think about it: how often have you yourself ever seen, for instance, a jumping spider catch any prey? This could be a long time coming…

I am reminded on one of my past frustrations, when two jumping spiders faced off against one another on a railing. I scrambled to get camera out, missing the action where they launched to attack, but capturing the two of them clutched tightly together and dangling from a dragline, spinning madly. After regaining their perch on the railing, I could see they were belly to belly; both faces peering at me, though the smaller one was upside down on its back under the larger one and, I suspect, dying.

Then, somehow, I lost that roll of film from my bag. I never found it, and have never seen such a thing since. It is, as they say, a first-world problem, but considering that most of my sense of accomplishment comes from nature photography, I’m going to reserve the right to be annoyed over it.

The photographer part of me has this little hate-affair with the “art world.” While opinions vary a great deal, it isn’t hard to find the prejudice that photography is not art, and [...]]]> It’s funny, now that I think about it, that I haven’t tackled this subject here before. I mean, what’s a blog for?

The photographer part of me has this little hate-affair with the “art world.” While opinions vary a great deal, it isn’t hard to find the prejudice that photography is not art, and this is distinctly noticeable right where I live, in a community that considers itself supportive of the arts. Heaps of rusty scrap metal welded together into a shape vaguely reminiscent of something else is considered “art” sooner and much more often than photography, and the town art council seems to specialize in promoting pottery out the wazoo. Yet in the past year, I’ve seen them feature only one photography exhibit, and only two photographers are ever listed in their studio tours featuring roughly fifty artists – but you can see as many bowls as you’d like!

Now, I’m a fair guy, and it isn’t up to me to define what someone else should like. I’ve seen some wonderfully creative uses of pottery and scrap metal, but to consider them more valid than photography? Am I missing something?

I’m going to offer a bit of perspective, portions of which I’ve mentioned briefly elsewhere. Many people think photography takes little talent, and is simply copying what already exists – “the sunset was there; all you did was take a picture of it.” Yet if that was all there was to it, I wouldn’t be seeing the huge selection of shitty images that I do, wouldn’t you think? I wouldn’t spend my time teaching people how to compose their images, recognize how the contrast and light angles work, and critiquing approaches.

As an example, I could point out how painters can put their image elements together any damn way they please, leaving out what they don’t like, and representing a situation that never actually existed. If they want an eagle soaring against the sunset where you can still see detail in the shadowed side of the bird, no sweat! And it is even considered creative to paint a frog or lizard in some colors that could never occur in nature – a painter can get credit for ridiculous inaccuracy! It’s all good, because it’s “art.”

Yet, the photographer can only work with what’s present (we will ignore the studio photographer for the time being, and the select few who do digital composites and crap like that.) They’re handed a collection of elements almost totally out of their control, and they have to portray them in a manner that still produces a strong image. They usually cannot choose a background or foreground, and cannot leave out nonartistic elements except for selectively cropping them from the frame. They may wait for the right light, the right clouds in the sky, the right position or expression of their subject. They might seek a different vantage point that produces the right background or contrast (or reflection,) or use camera technique to purposefully blur or soften elements and draw attention to their subject. And in many cases, a particular aspect of their subject existed for fractions of a second only, and they had to anticipate this and capture it at its ideal time. Good photographers actually have to know something about art in the first place, in order to put all of the above actions to good use.

I would probably be fine with this and simply shrug it off, if it didn’t affect where and how I can market my images – too many venues are closed off from public appreciation by the director who fancies themselves in some way arteestique, and is thus dismissive of photography. Far too often, when it is included, only black & white is permissible, for reasons that have yet to be demonstrated. I have to admit to no small amusement when seeing what passes for art sometimes, especially in regards to depicting animals; I recently came across a painting for sale that I was surpassing in talent in sixth grade art class.

What’s more amusing, I think, is that far too much of art is defined by how much utter bullshit the artist can produce when describing it. A wall hanging of egg cartons and soda straws might be described as “the juxtaposition of spiritual alignments allowing the essence of mind and surroundings to unite,” but I’m pretty straightforward about it myself – it’s egg cartons and soda straws, even when painted brown. I’m all for seeing the metaphor in certain elements, and actually teach my students to look for them. But it is not a metaphor if you have to tell me that it is, and the addition of artistic buzzwords does not elevate some piece higher – call me a spoilsport. The cloying pretentiousness of the art world is astounding sometimes.

It’s not a big thing, since I generally don’t “do” art, but work instead on interest and illustration. Yet I frequently take the time to put an image together in a pleasing, compelling, and artistic way – there’s no reason one cannot have both illustration and composition. My creative tendencies as a youth were channeled into photography instead of painting or drawing (though I still chase model-building from time to time.) I just find it funny that photography still gets short shrift when someone that glues broken glass together into bizarre shapes is considered “legitimate.”

Then again, maybe it’s because photography is too realistic, and doesn’t leave much room for imagination when describing it. No one needs to be told what they’re looking at, so there’s little opportunity to spew some existentialist post-modern interpretation of swirling colors.

Whatever, I’m not going to change it. I do what I like, and if someone else likes it too, great! Whether it falls into some specially defined category or not doesn’t alter it, though if someone’s perception of it is altered by such a category, well, that’s their issue. I’m sure someone can make up a description for that, too ;-)

First, in [...]]]> I had mentioned working on some 80s lyrics quizzes a few posts back, and this little exercise sparked the recognition of some interesting aspects of our thought processes, and how they are often misinterpreted. It’s examples like this that I hope can demonstrate the difference between “spiritual guidance” and meaningless neural activity.

First, in case someone is wondering what I mean by “80s lyrics quizzes,” this is where someone hopelessly stuck in their preferences for older music (like me) puts down a snippet of lyrics from a pop song, and some other lifeless wretch provides the song title and artist. It’s a fun past-time, in that lyrics without context, beat, or timing can stir our memories – we know what this song is, but have to put those factors in place in order to get the title that we’re after. Some are easy, some are notoriously difficult, and part of the challenge is to get them all (which I’ve never accomplished myself.) One of the two that I’ve been working on, off and on, can be found at http://www.stwing.upenn.edu/~pmarin/80s.html. What ends up happening is that you leave the quiz alone after a while, but it remains in the background of your mind to be worked on for the next several days or so.

One morning, I woke up absolutely convinced that one lyric sample was from a particular song – I could place it directly. But this was one of those “dawning realizations” that comes up as consciousness does, and as I got more fully awake, the song seemed to slip away and I couldn’t quite pin down the lyric in question, exactly like those world-changing ideas that some people wake up with. A little later on I was able to review the lyrics again, and determined that there was absolutely no way that I had a match, or even close. What had happened was, in my transitional stage of sleep, I had gotten the emotional impression of this “solution,” the eureka! feeling, without the actual solution. Plenty of people have tried recording their wonderful ideas upon waking, only to see them later on and find them completely meaningless. They didn’t forget the remarkable idea, they never had it in the first place – they only had the attendant emotional surge. No one has been able to determine what exactly is going on in such cases, and it’s assumed to be simply another aspect of free-association in the border between two sleep stages, similar to the sudden sensation of falling that we get sometimes.

This morning, however, I had a different response. I woke up with a song running through my head, and abruptly realized that I had a match for one of the lyrics – this time, I was exactly right. I hadn’t tumbled to the phrase at all, but my mind had subconsciously put it together and supplied the song, as if I’d heard it yesterday. Out of nowhere, I was supplied with an answer.

Now, if I told you that god had given me a sign, you’d think that I was, at the least, a bit overly dramatic, if not somewhat obsessed – it’s hard to believe that the sparse communications from a divine being would be used for such a frivolous past-time. Yet, people who pray for answers from god, for more meaningful questions than song lyrics (I hope, anyway,) become convinced that they have received their answers, that they have proof of god’s existence, from exactly the same thing happening. Where else could it have come from? The answer arrived full blown in my mind, from a song that I barely know and don’t like anyway. But that’s how the subconscious works: connections can be made on a level that’s not what we call conscious thought. It would be meaningful, perhaps, if I came up with a title and artist for a song that I did not know at all, but can this even be established? It’s been up to thirty years since some of these songs were popular – who could possibly say that I would not have encountered them somewhere in that time period, from any one of the thousands and thousands of sources that I’ve been exposed to?

This is where it become so hard to discuss such matters in critical ways. I have seen no revelations, no examples of near-death experience, no remarkable insights, that rule out such internal functions – no one has ever established, for instance, information that they could not possibly have had, or predictions of specific events that would come to pass (no, “a famous actor will die in a plane crash” is not specific.) Seeming dramatic to the person experiencing it is not enough – not when this occurs over such mundane, and completely incorrect, “answers.” Our minds can work in funny ways. What needs to be determined, before one can reasonably claim some outside influence, is that it really did come from outside, and not from some routine internal function. It’s not hard to convince someone that the nightmare they just had was a figment of their imagination. Yet when it’s taking place, the physiological effects on the body – the accelerated cardio-pulmonary rates, the adrenaline, the sweating, the abject fear – are all real enough, and very dramatic. We know our minds can create such things completely out of nowhere, and that they can have remarkable affect, but this provides no indication of external influence.

But if you investigate the details of someone’s experience, you’re often taken to be calling them a liar or questioning their perception or comprehension – the fact that we are all prone to such effects doesn’t register. “I know what I experienced,” is the most common response, and comparing that experience to nightmares and similar mundane occurrences never really takes place.

Someone is very likely to bring up situations such as the person that dreamed of a plane crash, the very same day that an airline flight went down – to say that this is coincidence is stretching credulity, is it not? But it’s not like we’re unaware that planes crash, and people dream of such things all the time. In a city of a mere 100,000 people, there’s that many chances that someone has a dream of a plane crash on any given night. It’s not meaningful when it doesn’t come to pass, only when it does? Statistically, you can’t count only the matches and ignore the rest, unless you’re intellectually dishonest.

There is a common saying among skeptics, so common I’m not even sure who originated it (Carl Sagan is often given credit, but like Mark Twain, this might simply be because he was most known for promoting skepticism): Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. My pointing out that “revelations” can come from mundane sources isn’t proof that they did, anymore than pointing out that ghost stories can often be explained easily denies the existence of ghosts. What it does mean, however, is that alternatives exist, and it is far easier to believe that the answer that I was actively seeking came from inside, and might even be a product of my desire to find it, than from outside. For it to come from outside, we’d have to have a source of this information in a coherent form, and a way of detecting it in the mind, as bare minimums – add in that some consciousness, like a god, wanted us to have this information, and you also need that god and the purpose of instilling that info as well.

Occam’s Razor is often introduced for such circumstances, but it is frequently misused. In common form, it’s a proverb which states that if you have multiple explanations for something, the simplest one is usually the correct one. I don’t really like the way that this has been turned into common use, however, because it’s a statistical example of probability in this form, which does not rule out statistically improbable things from occurring – indeed, it is then interpreted as implying (it does not) that such things do not happen, or should be ignored. What it really means is that the more complicated an explanation or solution, the more factors have to be in place to support it, and these would typically leave their own evidence. I have pointed out that, in order for some eyewitness account or radar track to be evidence of visiting aliens, there would also have to be advanced alien civilizations, extreme high speed travel, propulsion systems without noticeable traces, inertia-cancelling methods, and various other factors – when it’s not even possible to establish eyewitness verisimilitude, or rule out equipment error. On one side, you have a huge edifice built of things we only speculate about, and on the other, you have something that we’re abundantly familiar with. Hmmmmm…

That’s where critical thinking comes in. It causes us to examine alternatives, to put things in perspective, to remain aware that solutions are not just about finding positive evidence, but about eliminating any other options as well – the latter actually being far more important than the former. It’s the only way to avoid being fooled, really. My “revelations” regarding, literally, trivial matters demonstrates that subconscious thought processes are capable of producing sudden insights, both worthwhile and worthless.

Given all that, I should mention that the song I discovered this morning was, “Up Where We Belong.” Now, if that isn’t a sign from god, I don’t know what is!

Seriously, I don’t know what is. I mean, how would you tell?

A little free wisdom: There is no longer any purpose in quoting, playing, or even tolerating the continued existence of “Jack & Diane.” It is the most over-played song in the history of life on earth, and not even a good one. Kill it with fire, before another second passes and some asshole is tempted to play it again.

Let’s say you have heard of a new species of fish in Lake Tanganyika, and your job entails [...]]]> This is something that’s been bugging me for a while, and while I started on a post some months back, I never finished it. I need to, especially in response to a new article. More below.

Let’s say you have heard of a new species of fish in Lake Tanganyika, and your job entails studying rare fish breeds. Your boss turns to you and say, “We need to bring back live specimens. How much is it going to cost?” Can you work up a budget for this?

There’s too many variables, aren’t there? Where is the fish? How deep does it live? How numerable is it? What’s it eat, what eats it, does it migrate for spawning, can I hire dive boats and equipment nearby, or perhaps seine boats… it’s pretty hard to come up with a budget, isn’t it? Instead, if you have any sense at all, you simply set “obtaining live specimens” as a goal, and attempt to secure open funding for it.

Maybe your task is to create a new fuel efficient engine, from scratch. How much would that cost? You’d certainly be within your rights to look askance at someone making that inquiry and consider them naïve and, certainly, not good management material. After all, you’re not using off-the-shelf parts, cannot determine how long research is going to take, and have only basic physics goals to aim for. One can certainly set a budget, but cannot reasonably guarantee results within those constraints.

Why, then, do we expect something different from NASA? A scathing article in Discover Magazine demonstrates this approach, as well as a near-total innocence of space programs in general and the Space Shuttle Orbiter in particular.

Nearly every time I hear NASA mentioned in any form of popular media, some comment about “budget overrun” is made, and this article is no exception. And it is abundantly clear that such issues are what helps direct Congressional funding decisions. The other item you hear often enough is “management problems,” which has been paraded endlessly throughout the media as being responsible for the space shuttle accidents.

If you’re faced with a project or a department that suffers from bad management, what is your choice of action? Slash funding? That’s going to fix the matter, is it? If you have any sense at all, you raise the standards for managers, and try hiring better choices. Are these going to come cheaper? Well, fast food franchises think so, but I’d suspect that’s not a model of business we’re really aiming to emulate. Quite often, the solution is to bite the bullet and hire the best person available, even though they are very likely to come at a higher price.

If you buy a bargain DVD player and it fails within a month, who, exactly, is to blame for this? No, wait, let me rephrase that: if you hand your employee $20 and instruct them to get a DVD player, which fails, now who’s to blame? If you blame the employee, you’re not good management material yourself (I was going to leave the question hanging, figuring it was self-evident, then I remembered some of the idiots I’ve worked for.)

I do feel the need to point out here that the entire United States consistently runs over budget. We should either slash taxes or figure there’s serious management problems, shouldn’t we? Maybe we need to be looking carefully at those people we keep putting in management positions ourselves, the ones that generally couldn’t pass a high-school science final exam. Are these the people we need making decisions on funding such programs?

Leaving congressional incompetence aside, another aspect that continually comes up is what kind of returns we can expect from things like space programs. It’s just research – there’s nothing we can sell afterwards, right? Why bother with NASA at all?

You see, this is a significant part of the problem with a capitalist society – everything is supposed to make a profit. I could go into the economics of how there’s a finite supply of money in the world, and the quest for this to increase is what drives inflation, but that’s not even as direct a point as can be made. Instead, I’ll ask you how much you’re paying per day to receive a GPS signal in the car, or to see weather reports on TV. Do we pay royalties to Maxwell’s family, for the advancements of electrical theory, or Salk’s for the idea of vaccines?

Knowledge itself is a worthwhile investment. Once we have knowledge, we never actually stop using it – it is a permanent, perpetual benefit to all of us. In fact, it is demonstrably the best investment we can make, period. How much is too much to pay for something the entire human race (and even other species) can use forever?

When Einstein proposed the Theory of Special Relativity, where the passage of time between two bodies depended on their velocities relative to each other, it remained just a curiosity for 55 years, because we had no way to test it before then. If, when he presented it, he was asked what the practical applications were, he could only have spoken in terms of a space program we did not have. I doubt he would, in his wildest dreams, have said, “it will one day be used to prevent people from getting lost, for navigation of aircraft and sailing vessels, for pinpointing accident victims, finding missing children, and determining cheating spouses.” Yet the aforementioned Global Positioning System requires precise time measurements to even function, and these could not be made without the knowledge imparted by Special Relativity, since time passes differently for those satellites in orbit than it does here on earth.

If that knowledge had required a demonstrable, immediate profit to even have received funding in the first place, we would not have it now. We would not, in fact, have at least half of the scientific advancement we now use every day.

Returning to NASA, countless pundits decried the lack of foresight demonstrated by both the Challenger and the Columbia accidents, and continue to do so with the lack of a space shuttle replacement program. This borders on the asinine, however, and needs to remain in context; NASA has never been short of ideas, contingencies, and projects. The question has always been, how many actually get funded? Zeeberg might have exercised his remarkable journalism prowess, and referred to Wikipedia if he found himself that unaware of how the program works:

Based on the advice of the Space Council, President Nixon made the decision to pursue the low earth orbital infrastructure option. This program mainly consisted of construction of a space station, along with the development of a Space Shuttle. Funding restrictions precluded pursuing the development of both programs simultaneously, however. NASA chose to develop the Space Shuttle program first, and then planned to use the shuttle in order to construct and service a space station. [Emphasis mine]

Another example is the X-38 Crew Return Vehicle, a proposed standby spacecraft to evacuate up to seven people from the ISS in the event of an emergency. Able to be launched on a rocket and docked autonomously with the ISS, it can simply remain in place until needed. Or at least, that was the idea, until funding for it was cancelled. Because of this, the emergency evacuation option is a Soyuz capsule, a product of the 1970s which holds only three people. So the greatest crew the ISS maintains due to this is three, which is far from both functional and supportable capacity. While Congress may make noises about both efficiency and safety, it doesn’t appear that they know what either word means.

The Space Shuttle Orbiter was proposed as a fast turnaround, frequent-flying craft able to perform multiple functions. Once built, however, it turned out to be more expensive and higher maintenance than proposed. Is this bad planning? Perhaps (unlike others, I wouldn’t presume to judge without knowing at least something about the management of such a program,) but possibly a lot more like non-psychic designers – no one had ever produced a vehicle even remotely like it before, and virtually none of the parts or components existed. Remember that, when proposed, we’d been in space less than a decade. This was uncharted territory and no one could operate from experience. That’s the very nature of space exploration. The only attitude that makes sense is to accept what comes. However, the inability to meet initially proposed expectations has been held against the shuttle from the flight test days, despite the long list of successes throughout its history.

Yes, the Challenger and Columbia accidents are a tragedy. Were they avoidable? With the wisdom of hindsight, it’s easy to say, “Yes” – but that’s true of any accident, isn’t it? The car you drive right now could be safer – I can say that without having the faintest idea what you drive, and you probably know you cannot reasonably argue with me, either. To be fair, though, automobiles are a new technology, only existing since before powered flight began…

Space exploration encompasses a list of hazards that will remain unsurpassed for decades. This is not news to anyone in the industry, and most especially not the people flying them. Yes, it’s dangerous – so is firefighting. Any pundit insisting or implying that space exploration should be safe is talking out of their ass, and such an attitude need not be fostered or continued – it actually deserves to be treated with contempt and derision. It can be argued that safety can be increased, and this is almost certainly true – but that comes at a cost, does it not? Complaining that the US space program isn’t safe and costs too much is talking out of both sides of your mouth (or ass, or we determined previously.)

The media likes to present simple explanations to people, but this is a bit of a disservice when it comes to space flight, and we need to stop falling for the attitudes implied in every hand-wringing sensationalistic article. The number of people who have died in space flight, the world over, doesn’t even approach monthly highway deaths for most states, much less “friendly fire” incidents in military endeavors. Aren’t these both avoidable? Let’s use some intelligence, here – orbital flight involves accelerating machines magnitudes faster than anything else on earth, using highly volatile compounds. Thousands of factors bear on every flight, every exercise, and they all bring a certain degree of reliability, or lack thereof. Weighing these risks is a routine aspect, but there is no way to reliably assess the total risk involved. The confluence of factors in both the Challenger and Columbia accidents were known, as were countless others that had no bearing whatsoever on the accidents. One must also consider, for instance, the lost opportunities for effective orbital insertion (one of the payloads on the STS-51L, the fateful Challenger mission, had to rendezvous with Halley’s Comet, and needed a very specific trajectory to do so.) One must know how soon the orbiter will be back and overhauled for the next mission (and its own time constraints); one must have emergency options for launch abort available (one of the 51L delays was the unavailability of the emergency landing field in Senegal, a specific and important safety procedure); one must calculate what expensive missions will be thrown away if the SRBs go in for radical redesign. You may have noted that Thiokol repeatedly maintained that they warned NASA about the O-ring issue; did you also consider that this was their own design flaw, incorporated into every solid booster for decades? Why did it take them so long to find it, much less fix it?

You notice that Zeeberg, in the Discover article, points out the difference between projected launches per year, and actual; he also points out projected launch costs, and actual. Did he point out that these were based on initial funding requests from Congress, something that was never received? Did he tumble to the fact that number of launches per year and cost of launches are directly related, having to be worked into the yearly budget approved by Congress? Welcome to the New Journalism, where having some knowledge of your subject is considered completely unnecessary.

Was he thorough enough to compare shuttle costs against other launch vehicles capable of performing the same missions? Too much to ask, I suppose. How about considering the multiple mission scenarios practiced in virtually every flight? How about the construction of the ISS – was an unmanned rocket going to handle that? Repairs to satellites? While Hubble was launched with an unfortunate major problem, most definitely avoidable, it also received not only the repair it needed, but also a major upgrade extending its life, not something even remotely possible with an unmanned mission. The Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo manned vehicles were all discontinued, and the products of long-obsolete technology, so some manned vehicle had to be in place, and the shuttle performed far more than simply boosting a small capsule.

Now, of course, we find ourselves with a gutted program and countless cancelled projects, and the absolutely brilliant idea of farming virtually everything out to private contractors. Somehow, this is supposed to make sense, as if a profitable organization is somehow going to provide the services we need cheaper and/or safer than a specific government agency. Now, think about this a second: Congress, in effect, has said that a government agency under their direct purview is too incapable of maintaining both oversight and efficiency, and subcontracted these both out to large-scale corporations with no oversight whatsoever. I suppose we’re lucky they didn’t turn it over to the banking industry.

Too few seem to understand that no private organization is going to pursue this unless they can make a profit, which remains to be seen, and that they’re under no obligation to produce anything, much less the specific launch vehicles we might need in the next few decades. While innovation is all well and good, and I applaud the idea of seeking outside input, I can’t feel that dropping everything in the laps of companies that are far behind their own projected schedules and have no track record to speak of is establishing this “foresight” that everyone seems so concerned was lacking in the shuttle program. I mean, if you find the family car is getting a bit unreliable, does it make sense to throw it out and wait for a brand new one to be created from a company that has never even built a go-cart? And when they cannot, or it turns out to be far worse, what then? And most especially, who’s to blame for that utter fiasco?

Notice that almost nobody ever says anything about the successful NASA missions, either. How we landed people on the moon within the projected schedule, despite it being a complete unknown, and negated the Soviet Union’s head start in doing so (NASA’s budget has never been higher than that period, by the way.) How we landed probes on Mars and radar-mapped Venus through an obscuring cloud cover, and the numerous probes both in orbit and fully operational right now, returning information on a daily basis. How the Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity are just a wee bit over their projected 90 day mission profile. How we are taking for granted the surveyors of both Mars and the moon which provide exceptional information with every pass; satellites orbiting Mars have returned repeated photos of the rovers, previous missions like Viking 1, and even the parachute descent of the Phoenix Lander. Hubble has confirmed and refined numerous theories regarding the age of the universe and measuring distant stars, and has produced images of the most distant (and thus oldest) objects to date, and Kepler and Spitzer are responsible for the frequent announcements of new planets found orbiting other stars. This says nothing of the global communications, weather, and navigational satellites that every one of us uses multiple times daily.

Now, we hear that the James Webb Space Telescope is proposed to be removed from the budget by Congress – again, citing cost overruns and management issues. The JWST, considered Hubble’s successor, is designed to be capable of many times the imaging power of the hugely successful Hubble, working in bandwidths much better suited towards the information we’ve been receiving. What we learned from Hubble, we can expect to be multiplied significantly from JWST. Not only that, but this is a joint venture with both the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency, and bailing on this is, in essence, reneging on an agreement.

I can ask a lot of questions regarding this. I can ask what the monthly cost of maintaining troops in Iraq and Afghanistan is (better than twice JWST’s total budget of 6.81 billion dollars); and what the expected advancements from those investments are (nothing – we’ve already achieved the supposed goals, and have been doing nothing but damage control for years.) I could ask what benefit we can receive from the not-quite half of the budget already spent (nothing); or what percentage of the bank bailout that JWST’s budget represents (estimates vary, since it’s ongoing and constantly revised, but 10% is close enough to illustrate); or what percentage JWST is of the annual corn subsidy budget, which largely supports the total boondoggle of ethanol fuel additives (they’re roughly the same, showing that Congress once again needs some help in identifying inefficiency and mismanagement, or even basic science.)

If we’re going to have any space program at all, then we need to speak up to Congress, and emphasize that the goal is to have a space program, not to see if one fits into “disposable funds.” We need to reiterate that science (and education as well, while I’m at it) are not goal-oriented programs, but investments in future prosperity, health, and advancements – there is nothing more important. If management is an issue, then commit to good management, which often means deferring to those that actually work in these fields, rather than treating them as opportunistic swindlers, which has been the attitude towards science advisory in Congress for at least the past decade. We spent twenty billion dollars a year having air conditioning in tents in Iraq – how much could it have possibly cost to start a factory in Iraq that manufactured the damn things (and would have provided ten times the benefit on top, creating jobs and improving economy and relations in that country)? Science and educational funding is a drop in the bucket of the annual budget, and a smidgen of the defense budget – where I don’t see Congress worrying about efficiency or management, much less recognizing that there is literally no country that could effectively pose a threat to us. If you want to argue that, figure the logistics of forcefully occupying half a continent.

We need to be able to dispose of the senseless rhetoric, and focus on what produces results. And we need to hold our representatives to this as well – which means we actually write to Congress over this issue.

And you might notice that this is more of a solution than Zeeberg’s idiotic rant…

The image at right is an example of a planned shot, kind of. For years, I’ve had the idea of catching a falling autumn leaf in a gap of clear blue sky, surrounded by branches of fall colors – [...]]]> [Since I'm out of town, this post was scheduled ahead of time to appear today.]

The image at right is an example of a planned shot, kind of. For years, I’ve had the idea of catching a falling autumn leaf in a gap of clear blue sky, surrounded by branches of fall colors – the idea is that the leaf would be close and dominating the frame, but clearly in free-fall. On the face of it, this may not seem so hard: simply pick a photogenic spot and wait for the wind to shake loose a prime subject. But from numerous attempts now, I can tell you there’s a lot more to it than that. Leaves fall surprisingly quickly and very erratically, dodging sideways in almost random directions. The requirements of maintaining tight focus and timing one within an ideal gap are demanding and, so far at least, beyond my abilities.

This is one of the more distinctive ways that nature photography differs from many other forms, like commercial, portrait, and artistic. While we may certainly plan a particular style of image, all too often it relies on vagaries of weather, light, animal behavior, and other such factors that we have little control over. It’s reasonable, and in fact recommended, to plan out some shooting opportunities, such as arriving in a photogenic locale before sunrise to be ready for the early morning colors, but it must be recognized that this is usually hit-or-miss; the sky colors may not be cooperating, or the sun may be blocked by distant clouds or cloaking fog and haze. The wind may be too stiff to capture the subjects we’re after, or a drought might have drastically changed the appearance of the foliage. Some things we have control over, and some we don’t, and must work around. This is naturally part of the challenge.

Thus it’s important not to sell oneself on the prospects of a good day of shooting, or of achieving the one special image we had in mind – that can lead very often to frustration, which can ruin our spirit for shooting. There is always another day. Meanwhile, other opportunities and ideas may be available when our sights aren’t set too narrowly, and this is one of the reasons I carry more than just one lens, everywhere I go. Even if you’re planning on nothing but landscapes, the rare insect might save your day, or some cooperative deer or raccoons might put on a show. Carrying a bunch of equipment can be tiring, but you’ll get over that with a good night’s sleep – the same can’t be said for missing the mating display of an egret because you left that lens behind; it “wasn’t in the plans.” Luck plays a large part in nature photography, but at the same time, so does being able to exploit it. Remain flexible and ready.

Yes, that background mountain you might have seen before – this was the same day, just a few klicks up the road. Or you may simply know it from visiting it yourself, since Pilot Mountain is a fairly well known natural attraction in the Piedmont region of North Carolina.

The up side is, there’s a few [...]]]> If you’ve been trying to access the blog in the past few hours and were running into issues, it’s all my doing. I’ve been trying to get through a list of upgrades, and it means lots of trials, shutting things off and back on, and so on.

The up side is, there’s a few more options available, some of which I’ve implemented. The down side is, I’m not done yet, but this is probably as far as I go tonight.

While I like the Atahualpa WordPress theme, the initial install was an old version that didn’t upgrade to the latest without major errors, so I left it alone for a while. I finally walked it through several versions tonight, but it’s stalled again at 3.6+; there are known issues, but so far the remedies haven’t worked for me.

Anyway, it’s better, but not current. I apologize for any issues you may have had.