Pangloss

The difference being that that site is non-partisan. They post jokes about BOTH sides.

Oddly enough, I don't see a similar thread about John Kerry here on Science Forums. I wonder why that might be.

Well put.

I thought it was a good debate. Much better than had been predicted.

I thought Kerry won on style, and Bush won on substance, but both victories were marginal. Bush got a little too argumentative and gave Kerry the "smoothness" victory. But what counts more with me is substance, and there the only flaw I could see in Bush's arguments was when he was a bit hung up on justification for Iraq.

For the most part Kerry was unable to punch a hole in Bush's armor, and Bush showed strong on foreign policy knowledge (what a contrast with four years ago!). There was only one point that Kerry made that Bush was unable refute, but Bush put up at least three that I could see that Kerry could not refute. So I think Bush won the substance debate.

Can you send me an unsolicited email please?

(grin)

I don't believe that partisan analysis of speech errors of political figures is a valid form of debate. In spite of what ideologues would have you believe, it can be applied equally to ALL candidates, and it only serves to undermine the importance of debate and discussion in the democratic process.

If you're wondering why the debate tonight was so stiffled and formal, you have no reason to look any farther for reasons than this thread right here.

Great article at Aerospace America Online about SpaceShipOne. Lots of technical detail, which I've found to be generally hard to find, about the ship's unique design (even the Wikipedia article is skimpy).

http://www.aiaa.org/aerospace/Article.cfm?issuetocid=446&ArchiveIssueID=46

It's interesting to compare how remarkably different their flight profiles are from, say, the early Mercury suborbital missions. Rutan & Co'ss choices have been so astonishingly different from conventional wisdom that they could be said to be completely re-writing the way in which we think about space travel.

Just to give some examples of that, let's start with the flight parameters. Mercury/Redstone hit a higher altitude and a higher rate of speed (5600mph vs 2600mph, and 60 miles versus 120). Not that that's anything to be ashamed of on SS1's part, mind you. They must have realized that for these early missions, speed simply isn't important. What matters is getting the ship up there. But this is where their method flies in the face of conventional engineering wisdom, which states that you must fly FAST to achieve that altitude, because the air is so thin. But with modern lightweight composite materials, your whole outlook can change.

Of course, ultimately it is speed which gets you into orbit, not altitude. The suborbital Mercury/Redstone missions achieved altitudes *higher* than the low point in John Glenn's first orbital Mercury/Atlas mission. But instead of peaking at 5600 mph, Mercury/Atlas peaked at over 17,500 mph -- orbital velocity. This gives some idea of how far the SS1 team has to go in order to achieve orbital flight. (And they'll have to completely re-think their re-entry strategy; more about that below.)

Another interesting design choice is the engine, which is described as a "hybrid". The engine development that started the whole American rocket movement was Goddard's liquid-fuel approach. From a mid-20th-Century outlook, liquid fuels make a lot of sense, because they can be started and stopped on command (solid fuel rockets, like the Shuttle's SRBs, cannot be shut off once fired). The down side of liquid fuel is that it's incredibly dangerous and difficult to handle, and it requires very complex engineering to pump it around an engine at high speed. The bigger the engine, the more complex the pumping. The Apollo's Saturn engines and the Space Shuttle's main engines are amazing feats of engineering design. But those liquid fuel pumps alone would make a ship like SS1 *impossible*. On the other hand, solid fuel would have meant more danger.

So they went with a hybrid design, which combines solid fuel with a liquid oxidizer, essentially creating a controllable solid fuel design! And to get rid of the oxidizer side of the pumping requirements, they simply pressurize the fuel container. Ingenious. (This stuff wasn't invented for SS1, but it's the first time it's ever been used in a serious rocket system.)

And it even gets MORE interesting. Take a look at the video and what do you see? A guy in shirtsleeves doing Mach 3 and 355,000 feet! The TV shows don't really talk about that much; I don't think people realize what an incredible thing that is right there. They actually felt comfortable enough in their vessel design to go with a shirtsleeve environment. No pressure suit, no G suit. Wow. (The article above talks about the hull design a bit.)

Unique avionics were also invented, which are discussed in the article. That was interesting as well.

The story also talks about the system's unique approach to re-entry. Now it's not really going all that fast, but it's still an important engineering problem. Mach 3 is no slouch in the speed department (SS1, I believe, is the first civilian vessel to ever travel anything *like* that fast; a point which the press has missed completely), but it won't burn up if you just turn off the rocket, point it at the ground and wait. On the other hand, you might lose control of the vehicle, and you don't really want that. So they invented a system where they release the rear connection of the wing to the vehicle, allowing it to flap loosly on a front hinge, which sets up a proper angle of attack. The change in aspect ratio presents more drag than the now-empty vehicle registers in mass, so it slows down, and the whole thing drifts down like a shuttlecock, slow *and* under control.

Bizarre. And, by the way, totally computer-free. (Amazingly, there's no computer control of the vehicle at all. None was needed. The article also talks about the three control systems used for the three different aspects of flight, but none of the three are computer controlled.)

Anyway check out the article, it's really interesting.

Is that Concierto de Aranjuez? I didn't know Paco de Lucia had a version of that. Isn't he more of a flamenco guitarist?

Here's the pic I have on my desktop. Of course, you can't actually see it right now because it's completely covered in icons. I really need to clean it up, it's just gotten totally out of hand.

I apologize if I seemed to be defending Saddam in my earlier post.

Believe me, I don't think that at all.

Chemical and biological weapons are certainly capable of killing plenty of people, but what I object to is when optimum numbers are bandied around like it would always happen that way. The masses have a kind of Hollywood version of their capabilities in mind and when you couple their relative cheapness in materials and labor with overestimation of their effects, you give the terrorists exactly what they need.

Yah, it's an excellent point, and well said.

The sucky thing about it is that that very Hollywoodization of the issue contributes to the "disruptive" aspect of those weapons. It's a nasty self-perpetuating problem, because it's not like you can tell people that these things are "safe" either! So intelligent people are put in the ridiculous position of seeming to defend the undefendable, and if they don't, misappropriation occurs (resources allocated poorly). It's really unfortunate, no question about it.

Given how difficult a plan like this would be to implement, why would they even bother?

Yah, well that's what I wondered, but when you look at a case like the Kurds, they certainly made sense to Hussein, and he certainly got his money's worth out of them. Of course, he likely was expecting far more than he got, but that would be true of nukes as well (great for blowing up cities, but perhaps not so great for destroying entire groups of predominantly rural peoples).

No we don't. We see how multiple military applications over a long period of time cause tens of thousands of casualties.

Yah, I got that point, but it's not every day that a single machine gun mows down 5,000 people. Not to be gruesome about it, but what I guess I'm looking for is specific evidence that the gas attack had a higher cost-per-death ration than a standard military pogrom. (I can’t believe I just said that. I’m gonna need a shower now….)

Chemical and biological weapons do not cause destruction.

Well, in terms of terminology (chuckle), they cause destruction in the sense of denying access to an area. Whether you’re cleaning out sarin gas or rebuilding your house, the effect on the occupant is the same.

How about the “weapons of mass disruption” term? Any objection to that?

They aren't treated the same as bullets and bombs. They are for stressing logistical networks and area denial - that puts them in the same category as mines.

Okay, and I’m not comfortable with that either. Although I admit you have a point, both here and with the “no destruction” argument.

This article at FactCheck.org kinda expands on that idea a bit:

http://www.factcheck.org/SpecialReports.aspx?docID=137

Oh I see. Silly me, I lost track of the thread!

I'm not sure I have an answer for you, but in an obvious and slightly embarassed effort to keep the conversation going, I'll mention something else. (grin)

I think an under-recognized impact of the present 527 situation is that it further insulates the candidates from negative advertising. They don't have to do as much of it because the 527s are doing it for them. Furthermore, when they DO present some of it, it doesn't look as bad because it's tame in comparison with what the 527s are doing.

By the way, perhaps we should call chemical and biological weapons "weapons of mass destruction", and nuclear weapons "armageddon weapons" or something equally more severe. After all, nothing about the actual phrase "weapons of mass destruction" (aside from its socio-political *context*) is actually contradicted by your arguments.

But of course that context cannot be ignored, so I'm not adverse to suggesting that chemical and biological weapons should be excluded from that category. But I'm also not convinced they should be treated on the same footing as bullets and bombs.

You mean when Saddam was on our side, fighting against Iran, with whom some of the Kurds were siding?

It was a technical question, not a political statement. I'm not defending Douglas's position; on the contrary I find the position presented by you and Sayonara to be compelling.

I'm skeptical, of course, this being a new argument to me. I'm familiar with the basic limitations of chemical and biological weapons, but some of the specifics here are new to me, and the debate approach is unfamiliar. But it seems reasonable enough at first glance.

I still think I've struck a note of significance with the Kurd attack. One previous post suggested that a mass chemical attack on a city would produce casualties in the mere double digits. Yet here we see how an attack produced tens of thousands of casualties. Certainly your point about them being forced to stay in place is relevent, but I don't think it's hard to envision other, similar scenarios causing similar effectiveness.

There's no guarantee that an atomic bomb will kill millions either. For one thing, you have to drop it on the target. Dump it in the water or deep in the desert and you're looking at dead fish and cacti. (grin) So if we're looking at the *potential* casualties of a weapon system, the above example would seem to suggest that the earlier posit that a drop on a city would only kill 20 people is an exaggeration on the low side. The number could clearly be higher.

Getting back to the larger issue, which seems to be "are chemical and biological weapons worthy of condemnation, and should they be studied for methods of defense", I think your reasoning that these weapons should NOT be labelled in the same way as nuclear weapons is valid. But I can't help but see them in a more serious light than I view something like a machine gun. Yes, an army with thousands of machine guns is potentially more dangerous, but you haven't convinced me (yet) that it's an easier weapon to wield.

As for the "disruptive" qualities of chemical and biological weapons, I think we all agree on that. But I think my point was missed: These qualities add to the overall significance of these weapons, raising their importance above that of machine guns.

Not so far as I know. Why do you ask?

What about the generally-accepted numbers for the gas attacks on the Kurds in the 1980s, which are in the tens of thousands (50-100k)?

Maybe we get Barney to rig up some kind trap with his reverse screwdriver.

He claimed that these voting terminals could be accessed wirelessly from up to a mile away.

I can't think of any particular reason why an eVoting manufacturer would be stupid enough to put a wireless LAN card in their machine. I don't believe there was anything about that in the SciAm article.

5614: Actually that's one of my dilemmas/questions lately as well, in a larger sense. I'm working on a Master's in Computer Information Systems, and it's not exactly Computer Science, but it's still an area of computer-related research and study, with plenty of legitimate grant-work underway. More along the lines of "applied" computer science, if you will.

I thought perhaps this would be considered an example of this.

What are you guys talking about, if you don't mind my asking?

Heh! So NC is still pretty much a die-hard Bible-belt state, then?

I grew up in North Georgia so I know a bit about how that works. (grin)

All true, but you know they'd love to do it anyway. Some of the more intelligent articles I've read call them "weapons of mass disruption" -- the sheer terror and panic they can obviously cause is tremendous.

Which puts governments and scientists in the position of having to focus attention on how to stop them, deserving or not.

Interesting stuff about the NC senate race. Who are the other candidates?

Oh I think the point that chem/bio weapons are "area denial" weapons rather than "WMDs" is fascinating, and more power to you guys for debating and discussing it. There's no question that the misconceptions by the public in that area, even with regard to actual nukes, are tremendous, and much in need of discourse.

But it's a different subject. If we're going to talk about whether "Iraq had WMDs", then the discussion has to include chem/bio, because the context is an historical one -- we're trying to determine whether the decisions made were correct from a political perspective, not a scientific one. To go on to discuss whether they were scientifically correct is *also* very interesting and relevent, but it's a different subject.

Put another way, it's not Bush/Blair's fault that chem & bio weapons are considered WMDs. The obligations we have to hold them to should be pertinent to the socio/political understandings of that time frame.

Put yet another way, if 50,000 barrels of Sarin were found tomorrow in a warehouse outside Baghdad, the primary debate over whether the war was justified would be over. We could certainly go on to discuss other aspects of justification, but I think most observers would consider that a technical/scientific debate, and not of primary importance.

One should also probably keep in mind that the purpose of UN resolution 687, establishing the term "weapons of mass destruction" and including chemical and biological weapons, was not scientific, but sociological.

Interesting, thanks guys.

Great article this month in Scientific American on electronic voting systems.

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&colID=1&articleID=00018DD5-73E7-1151-B57F83414B7F0000

Let me know if it requires registration and I'll just post some excerpts, but I'd rather not because it has interesting illustrations.

One of the more interesting examples they talk about is a system that actually does a printed receipt that's encased behind a transparent panel. The voter looks at the paper to make sure it's correct and then touches a button to confirm, and then gets a receipt. That way a paper trail exists, in case of electronic screw-up, but the official paper printout is KEPT, so it can't be tampered with.

In a related note, California governor Schwarzenegger (yes I cut-and-pasted his name!) passed a bill today banning paperless voting systems by 2006, so a system like this would be required.

That article can be found here.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/apus_story.asp?category=1110&slug=E%20Voting%20Paper%20Trail

That's fine if you (we) want to use that as an internal point for discussion. I think it's an open debate and some good points exist on both sides. Just bear in mind that there is a larger context for WMDs that happens to be different, so you're going to continue to run across articles and discussions that take a different point of view. (shrug)

I think the point here was just that budullewraagh was trying to explain why someone above responded in a certain way.