NASA is full of retards.

On a message board I post to, someone noted that the head of NASA said the shuttle launch was a mistake, and wondered "Why, then, did we do it?"

This was my reply.


It's not the shuttle that was a mistake, so much as that NASA made many, many mistakes.

After we won the space race, NASA lost the largest reason for its existence. Like all bureaucratic institutions, it existed not so much to accomplish anything, but because all its members wanted to keep their jobs.

To keep NASA's funding, they had to keep justifying the existence of the agency. They had to emphasize the importance of the scientific studies (mostly not that important, and in very low volume), the importance of the continued space program for national morale (the first launch, yes, the 200th?), and the safety (...).

So they continually raised expectations, and had to keep fudging things to make sure no one ever found out how bad it was.

The shuttle was designed almost whole cloth as it was. It wasn't built and tested time and again piece by piece to make sure we knew how they functioned. Those pieces weren't integrated unit by unit and tested again.

This showed in the many problems they've always had in maintaining equipment. Eventually it showed in the Challenger explosion. It showed again two years ago with the Columbia.

As the equipment got older, it got worse. The engineers all knew it and kept reporting the increasing lack of safety. But when those reports hit management, they were unwelcome. In a single memo you find "the chance of seal failure is critically high" and lower down "seal failure is not a critical issue" (I paraphrase).

In the end, the mistake was in trusting a political entity with its own oversight. That's how we lost two shuttles.



Then I adjourned to the bathroom, where I keep magazines for companionship, and read an article in US News and World Report (7/18/05) on the then impending launch of the Discovery (happened 7/26) and what do I read?

Excerpt From a Report on NASA Dumbassity:

Of the 15 changes that the Columbia Accident Invistigation Board recommended be checked off before another flight, NASA says it is sure of only 12. Stull uncentain is whether debris will fall from the external tank during launch, and the agency has not been able to replace the leading edge [of the wing] with stronger materials nor devise a sure way, once in orbit, to repair any damage on the way up. But the agency is going ahead, after its flight team concluded that while the board's concerns are not all met, the chances of a second, similar accident are now below the risks posed by other known dangers, such as meteor damage.

Tards tards tards tards tards.

Now, to my recollection, we've had three disasters in space, only one of which did not kill everyone on board, and all of which were caused by failure of the equipment.

Here you will read that no spacecraft has ever been hit by a meteorite. They've even gone out there with collectors to try and sample them and came back empty-handed. The space station has had to patch 2 holes. Two. As in 1+1.

When an accident occurs, that does NOT mean it will not happen again. That means that the likelihood of its occurence is NOT negligible. What these goddamn fools bet on was that because they flipped a coin and it came up tails, that in the future it's more likely to come up edge.

This is exactly the dumbass attitude that was discovered after the Challenger explosion. Because they wanted so badly to keep sending the shuttle to space, the management insisted that the odds of an accident were 1 in 10^5. That's one flight in every 100,000. Or once every 300 years if we launched every day. We've had three that I can recall, and we DON'T launch every day.

And because the shuttle landed safely (8/9/05), they're just going to assume that their horse-[bleep!] statistics are valid, downgrade safety precautions, postpone indefinitely the final changes recommended after Columbia, and kill more astronauts.

Thank god, at least, that they're running out of shuttles. They're playing Russian roulette, only the bullets are million dollar, 10 year old Pintos with hundreds of thousands of miles. Here's hoping the next one lands on NASA management.



And then, after posting that, I think, "It's praiseworthy that a political figure said a succesful mission was a mistake. That guy has balls. I'm going to say what a good guy he is." Then cynicism kicked in and I decided to try and find the news story so I know the circumstances around his comment.

Good thing.

Here you'll see that I'm prescient. I'm so right it hurts. I can predict these things with remarkable acuity. That they've already happened doesn't mean it's not a prediction. With sufficient evidence of past events I was able to predict exactly this.

I don't know how long the link will work, so I'll blatantly steal the relevant information.

Excerpt From Yet Another Report on NASA Dumbassity:

In a numbing setback sure to set off a national debate over the future of the space program, NASA has grounded all future shuttle flights because of a large chunk of foam that broke off Discovery’s fuel tank in hauntingly similar fashion to Columbia’s doomed mission.

That the Columbia accident didn't happen again is because they got damn lucky.

Tards.

Odysseus/O Brother, Where Art Thou?

I just finished rereading the Odyssey, and then the whim struck me to rewatch O Brother, Where Art Thou?, and it struck me how well the movie was written.

I'm not just talking about the obvious parallels; they're all over the place:

1) The Kyklopes, Polyphemos/The one-eyed Bible Salesman, Big Dan Teague
In the poem, Odysseus happens upon an isle that is wild, verdant, and lush with food. He ventures with some men to a cave. They wait for the cave's inhabitant to return, and prevail upon his hospitality. Instead he messily devours some of them. They remain for a day, and sharpen a log while waiting. When he returns, Odysseus gets him drunk and they put his eye out with the fire-hardened spike. The poem's actually fairly graphic at this point, though I don't know how realistically. I've never had the good fortune to watch as someone's eye gets stabbed out with a burning hot, pointy stick. Anyway, they escape, though they leave a few behind.

Big Dan instead gets them to serve him a free meal, and pay for the one he was eating when he decided to rob them (two meals, just as in the poem). Then he beats the crap out of them (saving Ulysses Everett McGill for last, just as Polyphemos promised Odysseus he'd be last) and steals their money and car.

2) The Sirenes
Well, this was obvious. They ended up on the rocks. In the movie at least. In the book, Odysseus has his men tie him to the mast and stop up their ears with wax so he can listen. Turns out their song was about... wait for it... the glories of the Trojan War. That's right; they were going to lure him to his death with a song about his own prowess. More on this later.

3) Kirke
The malign goddess didn't really show up in the movie, but I think there was a bit of a reference. Kirke's thing (everyone has a "thing" they do) was to lure people in for a feast and turn them into pigs (à la Bavmorda, in [u]Willow[/u]). Those she really liked, she'd sleep with until she got bored with them, then turn them into something noble, like a lion or a wolf. Odysseus survives because Hêrmes gives him a potion.
Anyway, the movie's parallel is Delmar's (mistaken) belief that Pete's been turned into a toad.

4) Menelaos
Did you catch "Pappy" O'Daniel's first name? Menelaos, just like the red-haired king, husband to Helen, for whom Odysseus sailed off to war in the first place.

Actually, one of his epithets was "Menelaos Xanthos", which is why he's called the red-haired king. "Xanthos" means "blond", or "slave". So why do they call him red haired? Have you ever seen a blond Greek? Of course not, so he couldn't have been blond.

Um, have you ever seen a red headed Greek?

5) Man of Constant Sorrow
I didn't get this until I watched it tonight. Here's a sample of the lyrics.

I am a man of constant sorrow,
I've seen trouble all my days.
I bid farewell to old Kentucky,
the place where I was born and raised.

And further,

Your friends think maybe I'm a stranger,
my face you'll never see no more.

Ha! Get it? It's the whole theme of both poem and movie! He's a wanderer, having adventures. That's his idiom (his "thing"). Odysseus bid farewell to old Ithaka, where he was born and raised.

6) The Wife
Penélopê in the poem, Penny in the movie (ha!). He has to leave her behind, and she gets courted while he's away. To quote one of Everett's daughters, "He's a suitor!"

In both poem and movie, the wife welcomes this attention.

Penny's motives are clear. She's got seven daughters to look after, and Vernon T. Waldrop (the suitor) has good prospects.

Penélopê's motives are less clear. She takes joy at their presence, even though they're impoverishing her. This is clearly indicated by the dream she relates to Odysseus in his guise as a beggar (was it even a real dream, or was she testing him?). I think Homer was simply an astute observer of the human scene. Greek women were fairly circumscribed. Their fathers, husbands, and sons were technically in control of their lives (though this poem and others indicate that women held more power de facto than they were considered to de jure). Legally, a woman had no real control over her life. With the suitors around. Penélopê was more than just the wife waiting for Odysseus; she was the center of the plot. Without them, Odysseus could just come home and she'd be a minor point to wrap up at the end of the poem. Because she was sought after, she became important. She was a proving point to her husband and her son. She had to be fought for. She became known for her guile in holding the suitors off for years. More than just the waiting wife, she was special and had to be acknowledged.

7) The Blind Prophet
Odysseus has to travel to the underworld in order to speak to Tiresias, the blind prophet of Thebes. Ulysses happens upon a blind prophet after escaping from the penal farm. Both prophets give unwelcome news.

Tiresias tells Odysseus that he'll be away from home for years, and will have to travel MORE after getting home. The nameless prophet of the film says they won't get the treasure they seek, but they'll get another one, despite obstacles in their path.

8) Finally, the man himself
Odysseus was famed for his ability as a thinker, a tactician, a debater, rather than as a fighter (although, as a hero, he was necessarilly death incarnate when the poet got around to it). He could talk anyone's ear off, lie on the spot, come up with whatever story he needed to get someone to do what he wanted. That was his skill. He told a long (and subtly insulting) story to the king of the Phiaikians in order to get a ride home. When he gets home, he tells a lie to the first person he meets. Hell, he lies to EVERYONE he meets. Even after he's killed the suitors and slept with his wife (while dissembling to her about the time he spent with Kalypso, nudge nudge), he lies to his father. He's just a fast talking, likeable liar.

And so is Ulysses Everett McGill.

Neither had much control over the men nominally under their command. Both were vain.


All in all, the movie was incredibly well written. I also enjoyed the many Wizard of Oz references. The KKK dance was funny, too, especially the lyrics.

Yo hi yo hi yo hi yo
eenie meenie miny moe

Ah well. This has gone on long enough. I'll talk about the odd feminist/antifeminist tone of the Odyssey some other time.

Cain and Able, oh, Onan, too.

People don't like other people, it's a fact. Especially if they're foreign or different. Most especially if they've got a different religion than you. Hoo boy, watch out for religious folks with a grudge!

So you have the Israelites, who are mostly shepherds. They herd, and being herders, they're not farmers or hunters. We know that herders hated farmers, who hated them right back. Different lifestyle, it makes you weak or stupid or indolent or you smell funny.

Able was a shepherd; his gift to god was a sacrifice of meat, and god liked it. Cain was a farmer; he gave god some fruitw, and god said, "What, are you calling me a fruit? I don't like yourfruity gift. Go away and let me go ack to liking Able."

So Cain threw a hissy fit and killed Able, then went awa to found a foreign country where they do fruity things, like farm.

See what this story really is? It's a canonization of an excuse to go to war.

1) God hates farmers, just like we do! Yay! Look, it says here that God doesn't like their gifts, he likes OUR gifts.
2) Foreigners are evil! See, Cain went off and founded some other country! All foreigners, bad! Hiss! Spit!
3) They started it! They hit us first!



And while I'm at it, I don't like people talking about the story of Onan like it's a condemnation of masturbation or of birth control. See, Onan's brother died, and he did so before he could get his wife properly knocked up with a son. No son means no heir. By the laws presented in Leviticus, it was therefore Onan's duty to get his brother's wife pregnant (If they got married, it would be known as a Levirate marriage) so his (dead) brother would have an heir.

Onan didn't want to do this. With his brother dead and heirless he would be the sole inheritant of his father's property. Or maye he just didn't like his brother all that much. For whatever reason, he didn't want to get his sister-in-law pregnant. That was his crime, failing to fulfill the Levirate law that said he had to do so. Nothing else.

And it's not like it was ambiguous in the Bible. It says straight out that he didn't want to get his brother's wife pregnant, so he didn't, and God killed him for it.