Examples from the "Snitch on your Neighbor" section of the points schedule:
base points: 10
points increase of any of the following apply:
+ based on rumors and innuendo 10
+ including photos 20
+ including sound recording 20
+ including video 50
+ neighbor is an immigrant 30
+ neighbor is an illegal immigrant 100
+ including HOT photos 500
+ including HOT sound recordings 500
+ including HOT video 1000
]]>Summary: Space Race is a nicely written, relatively non technical narrative focusing on the parallel careers of Wernher Von Braun and Sergi Korolev. Von Braun is well known to anyone with even a rudimentary knowledge of the early US space program; Korolev was the mysterious "Chief Designer" whose identity was only revealed by the USSR upon his premature death.
The book spends considerable time on the early years of both individuals, and does not shy away from the seamier side of Von Braun's past in Nazi Germany. It also details Korolev's time in the Gulag, which resulted from false accusations during Stalin's reign of terror.
The most interesting feature of this book, without a doubt, is the look at the life of Korolev, portrayed as the mysterious "chief designer" in the film version of The Right Stuff. His identity kept a secret until his death, very little has been known about him. Far from a domineering figure, Korolev spent his career fighting against competing Soviet design bureaus for funds and recognition, maintaining his status simply because his actual accomplishments were greater than those who were fighting him for resources and recognition. His success is best understood by the consideration of this fact: his R-7 was the first true ICBM, launched the first satellite (Sputnik) and the first manned mission (Vostok), and remains the foundation of the Russian space program today, as the Soyuz and Progress are still launched on modernized versions of the R-7. By comparision, while the US still has a launch vehicle called the "Atlas", it has little in common with the original Atlas ICBM that was used to launch the first orbital Mercury flights.
The contrast of Von Braun and Korolev is well handled; while Korolev was exiled in the Gulag, Von Braun was building his A4 rocket for Nazi Germany (later labeled the V-2 by Hitler). As Nazi Germany collapsed, the rehabilitation of Korolev began, and the West and the East began angling to get their hands on the best German scientists available. The narrative of Von Braun's escape and the Soviet attempt to grab up as many of his team as they can is fascinating, as is the discussion of the American effort to hide evidence of Von Braun's team's complicity in running the slave labor camps that built the V-2.
A fine job is done capturing the nature of the early Soviet program, which had its share of disasters and fiascos (but they were different from the oft rumored disasters and fiascos talked about in the West). It also captures well the fact that Korolev was often forced away from his straightline development program to work on publicity stunts to satify Khrushchev's propaganda requirements; these stunts (first 3 man flight, first space walk, first apparent rendevous in space) fueled the early American inferiority complex, but were in fact annoying deviations from the task at hand for Korolev.
On the American side, it's nice to see proper attention to the fact that Von Braun was not responsible for the entire program in the US. In the oversimplified film The Right Stuff, Von Braun shows the first Mercury capsule to the original astronauts, and is admonished by them over the lack of pilot control. Cadbury clearly indicates that Max Faget was in charge of capsule design, not Von Braun, and points out that Von Braun advocated full pilot control over the craft in opposition to Chris Kraft and others who wanted to build what we know of today as "mission control".
I rather like this book, and would recommend it to anyone looking for a readable, accurate introduction to the early years of the space race.
]]>My original posting on the ad is Here.
The Times-Union blog entry on the latest development may be found Here.
]]>I'll post a link here when I see the posting over there.
]]>He's actually being challenged in the Democratic primary, which I think is an entirely new thing for him. This should be festive.
McNulty voted for the Iraq adventure, but has since changed his position. Raleigh wants to make Iraq the major issue in the election, and has a very detailed position outlined on his web site, but I can't entirely make sense of it. He seems to be calling for more international help in Iraq (like that'll happen.)
]]>Maybe the race in this district is going to be more interesting than I expected.
]]>We got a Sweeney flyer in the mail the other day -- he's gone full tilt wingnut anti-immigrant looney on us. It makes no sense; this is upstate NY and we don't have a lot of immigrants, other than maybe local university students from overseas who might decide they want to stay around, and I don't see how a flyer like this energizes much of anyone in these parts. But he's gone and done it. I'm hearing he may be in trouble; maybe he has bad consultants telling him this is what he needs to do, but I have to think that if there were many typical, not terribly well informed voters who were going to default into voting for Sweeney without thinking about it, this might get there attention -- and not in a good way for Sweeney.
I put the flyer in the burn pile, but it probably isn't gone yet. Maybe I'll dig it out and post details at some point.
]]>No need to actually blow up a plane, they can cost us all this money and cause all this inconvenience with ever trying to smuggle a single bomb or box cutter onto an airplane ever again.
Once the technique is perfected, they'll be well position to manipulate our elections at will. Plant a few plots and leak their existence when appropriate.
This is what IT guys in security call "Social Engineering", on a grand scale.
]]>I have no opinion about whether or not Floyd has done something he shouldn't have. I hope he didn't, but my officiating sensibilities are such that I tend not to express opinions about these sorts of things when I'm not fully informed.
What I see coming from cycling officials scares me. It's not supposed to be done this way. You don't leak. You keep things private until you actually need to go public. You never DQ until you're quite certain as to what you're dealing with.
To provide a concrete example: after most races, we bring in the top 3 finishers and check to make sure that they make the minimum weight as specified in the rule book. As experienced officials, we know that scales act up, wires get disconnected, and as such if a car comes in underweight, the first assumption is that we screwed up -- and so we check connections, we take the car back off the scales and recertify, and we put the car back on and weight it again. 7 times out of 10, it turns out to be our goof. We never start filling out the paperwork until we have made a major effort to make sure we haven't screwed up.
So cycling officials leaking test results when they apparently haven't finished the full testing regime strikes me as unprofessional, ethically questionable practice. But then, these are the same officials who were leaking highly questionable experimental results from Lance Armstrong's old 1999 tour samples 6 years later.
Which brings me to another point -- once we release a car from impound without filing paperwork, as far as we're concerned, it's over. Nobodys numbers from 7 years ago, or even last weekend, matter if we didn't write it up in a timely manner. There comes a point when things need to be over.
]]>It's for a good cause; I want to improve the documentation of that incident on spamvertized.org.
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