Speaking of NASA, while looking to see if there was any news about Weiler being the new science chief on the NASA site (no, there isn’t as I write this), I saw this at the top of their page:

Not to put too fine a point on this, but are you kidding me? They’re comparing where NASA is now to the where we were projected to be in the movie "2001: A Space Odyssey"?

NASA folks, let’s be honest here: this does not cast NASA in a good light. Even the image itself is damning: in the movie, that space station was a rotating dock carrying dozens if not hundreds of personnel, and was used as a way station to the Moon, where there was a thriving and expanding lunar base. And that was all supposed to take place seven years ago.

NASA has a space station which is doing precious little if no science at all. It takes three people working full time to keep it operating. Yes, in many ways it’s a magnificent achievement, don’t get me wrong. But don’t show me a Volvo and tell me it’s a Lamborghini^*, especially when you charge me $150 billion for it.

In my opinion, the article linked from the picture does the exact opposite of what it aims to do. If you’re going to compare the predictions of a 40 year old movie — which showed an incredibly ambitious yet believable future — to today’s achievements in space, you need to do better than talk about glass cockpits and flat-screen monitors on the space station. They even say that exercise is routine on the station, and compare that to movie astronaut Frank Poole seen jogging around the rotating wheel of the interplanetary space ship Discovery. C’mon.

To me, this drives home the reality of where we are in the manned exploration of space. We have an aging Shuttle fleet which has 11 flights left before retirement, and no working rocket to replace it. We’ll have to rely on Russian spacecraft for years to ferry astronauts and equipment to space and back. The space station has taught us quite a bit about working and living in space, but we would have learned just as much — if not more — if we had built a space station that actually did something. And it’s unclear to me that we’ll be sending humans back to the Moon because of the political reality of funding long-term goals when we get new politicians elected on shorter cycles.

Which brings up a point I want to make clear. I’m a supporter of manned space flight, and you won’t find a bigger advocate for what NASA’s robots and space probes have done. And I also understand that NASA is beholden to a variety of forces, putting it at the mercy of whims and breezes from all directions. This is a very complex and delicate situation, with 535 Congresscritters all trying to get their say (with many, perhaps most, having no clue on the importance of space exploration), the White House’s desires on top of that, and a public very unclear on why NASA exists at all (and laboring under gross misunderstandings even then). The Administration at NASA has done an amazing job in most cases getting anything done at all under those circumstances.

But trying to compare where we are now to where visionary movies like "2001" were hoping we would be simply hammers home the cold hard fact that we’ve spent the past 45 years since Apollo circling the Earth. There are no Moon bases, no regular Shuttle flights to orbit, no rotating space habitats.

It’s politics, I know that. But politics is about choices, and we’ve chosen poorly. We need politicians who will choose wisely, who can see past their own term, past their own partisan desires, past the limits of gravity and atmosphere and current technology, and willing to do what we need to do, what we must do: go into space, do it the right way, the sustainable way, and explore it.

Our future is out there, just as our past predicted. We’ve stepped away from the right path, but that path is still there. We simply have to choose to step back on it.

As I expected, NASA just announced that Ed Weiler will be the head of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate for the duration. Weiler replaced Alan Stern, who stepped down a few months ago amid controversy over funding, budgets, and the Mars rovers. Weiler has a long history with NASA science and was the obvious choice for a temporary replacement for Stern, and it’s not surprising at all that he has been asked to stay on.

Typically, when a new president takes office, Agency heads and such tender their resignation. The new President can then decide whether to accept it and replace them, or to deny it and let them stay on. Hard to say what will happen to Mike Griffin when a new President takes office in January 2009, and what will happen to the top spots at NASA. It’s an interesting thing to ponder though. I’ve had both praise and vinegar for Griffin, and in many ways I’d like to see him stay on, though in other ways I wouldn’t mind seeing him replaced. He has done a great job for NASA in many many ways, though all things being equal I’d be happier with someone who thinks global warming is real and a danger and isn’t dismissive of those who disagree.

Probably more important is how a new Congress will treat NASA. So much to think about! It’ll be very interesting to see how this plays out over the next seven or eight months.

I wrote about Senator Clinton’s campaign the other day, showing how I think she’s jumped the shark. Well, author and blogger (and cool guy) John Scalzi hits the nail in the head, and that nail should be the last one in the coffin of Clinton’s campaign. I fear it won’t be, though; as I said she is running on nothing else but ego now, and I’m worried that even if the DNC tries to move her, she still won’t budge. After all, she’s still claiming she has momentum or come-up-from-behindedness or some other manufactured spin.

Sigh. What happened to the strong candidate who had such great things to say about science? Let’s hope that Obama picks up that mantle, if need be.

P.S. After writing this, I found out that Lawrence O’Donnell at HuffPo talked to a senior Clinton campaign official who hinted she’ll drop out in a month or so. Interesting. Money quote: "Nothing [the official] said indicated that he actually expected the superdelegates to move to Hillary in the week after the final election. The Clinton campaign has not lost its grip on reality. Yes, Clinton spokespersons publicly seem to be lost on gravity-free planet Clinton, but privately they know the end is near."

I pointed out recently about the anti-intellectual gasbag that is Tennessee Republican John Duncan, saying that using experts to help make policy decision is "elitist", like that’s a bad thing.

But now Hillary Clinton has jumped on this make-us-all-dumber bandwagon. Sean basically nails it.

Mrs. Clinton’s campaign has been going increasingly off-the-rails lately, between her lying, her pandering (such as on this ridiculous gas holiday issue), and her attacks on Obama that are undeserved and unwarranted. It’s really become obvious to me that she is still in this race due to ego, and hardly anything else. I think the Hillary Clinton of several months ago would have made a good President — and I think that if push came to shove she’d still do pretty well, and certainly better than McCain (but then, I think a ficus would do better than McCain) — but it’s nonsensical garbage like this that pushes me toward Obama.

Let me make this clear: people are generally experts in a field for a reason. They’ve studied it. They’ve experienced it. They’ve done research, published papers, looked at the results, tried to interpret them, made predictions, done further experiments. They learn from what they experience.

That’s why they’re experts.

So when she uses the (oft-cited by Republicans) "elitist" card, then what she’s saying to me is "experience counts for nothing". Which is pretty darned funny and ironic, given that’s that how she terms the struggle between her and Obama for the Democratic nod.

Plus, it’s just stupid. Experience should count, and it must count. The last thing we need is yet another know-nothing Administration that ignores all the advice being given and all the reality taking place around it.

In the maybe-next-time-you-should-actually-interview-people-before-hiring-them scenario, an English lecturer at Dartmouth went ballistic (link goes to the WSJ, ewww, sorry about that) when students questioned her suppositions.

Mind you, we’re only getting one side of the story, and that side is from the Wall Street Journal, which still thinks we’re being too easy on Iraq. Also, it opens with this anti-intellectualism line:

Often it seems as though American higher education exists only to provide gag material for the outside world.

Why do neocons hate smart people? Oh, I bet I can venture a guess.

Still and anyway, the story makes a good point. The lecturer appears to be something of a post-modern lunatic. The line of win is:

Ms. Venkatesan’s scholarly specialty is “science studies,” which, as she wrote in a journal article last year, “teaches that scientific knowledge has suspect access to truth.” She continues: “Scientific facts do not correspond to a natural reality but conform to a social construct.”

You can guess how I feel about that. Scientific facts do reflect natural reality. Of course they do! That’s what they are. I’d love to see her scientific background.

Maybe she can get a job with the Disco ‘tute, if they’re not already burgeoning to overflowing with Expelled teachers. But then, she chose to sue Dartmouth, and DI tends to cut and run when faced with actual lawsuits.

If anyone has any more info on this case, please feel free to link to it in the comments. I’d like to know more; she does sound nutty, but I have to also account for the source of this info.

And incidentally, I do get ragged on by commenters who think I am some sort of far-left liberal goofball, but perhaps they should save it for people who really are way over on the rive gauche.

Tip o’ the deconstructionist hegemonistic mortarboard to Fark. Typical childish taunts ensue in that link, duh, but some funny ones too.

From PZ comes word that the creationists in the Louisiana state legislature are still trying to ram teh stoopid through the system to become state educational law.

Barbara Forrest, one of the Heroes of Dover, is fighting this garbage with everything she’s got, and one thing she’s got is us. If you live in Louisiana, please please please contact your representatives and talk to them about this. Barbara has all the information you need; she’s written a summary of the bill as well as a series of talking points for you.

Mind you, this is for Louisiana residents only for now. She may need all our help eventually, but for now this is a state issue.

Man. Whack-a-creationist is a game that never ends. As Barbara herself says:

The children and teachers of Louisiana are being used as pawns by the Louisiana Family Forum and, most likely, the Discovery Institute, about which I have written so extensively. These people will assuredly not be around to clean up the wreckage they will leave in their wake if we don’t stop them. We have to stop them.

Otherwise:

While I was in England, the good folks at nature.com let me glom on to their pub party, which turned into a Nature/Randi/BA/Brian Cox fan/meetup thingy. It was quite the good time.

In return, all I had to do was write up a soapbox speech and record it for their podcast! What a scam. Suckers.

As it is, they interviewed Randi on it, as well as Alan Marscher, another astronomer who talks about active galaxies! So it’s a skeptical and astronomical smorgasbord.

You can download the podcast directly, read the transcript, or check out their archives for tons more cool podcasts.

If you’re curious, the woman who does the voiceover ad at the very beginning is none other than Gia.