Category Archives: Pedantry

Why the Moon?

The Moon

Austin Modine wrote today, over at The Register, about the selling of a new moon mission. Particularly a mission to establish what amounts to a colony on the moon, a permanent settlement. The underlying question is, simply put: why the Moon?

  • It’s there. No, really. I flatly reject the notion that we have better things to spend our time and money on than space exploration; we waste tons of money on utter crap.
  • It’s close. This is rather important, as we’re talking about long-term manned habitation of a hostile environment. If something goes wrong, we can get there a lot faster than if we skip ahead to Mars or one of the gas giants’ moons.
  • It’s visible. Everybody can look up and see it, as opposed to the occasionally-visible Mars or the effectively invisible moons of Jupiter and Saturn, the other potential settlement targets. Once established, every man woman and child on Earth can look up and point to our new achievement: a permanent off-world settlement. Extra points if its lights are visible during the new moon.

There’s some boldly-going to do, folks. Hop to it.

Surrey With a Radical Fringe Element

Oklahoma

House Bill 1089 passed in Oklahoma yesterday. For those of you who, like me, were only vaguely aware that Oklahoma existed as anything other than a Christian terrorist militia target and monument to our nation’s mistreatment of our aboriginal population, this was an effort to assert their rights as a state as originally established in the 10th amendment to the United States constitution. This was largely prompted by a backlash to Oklahoma’s recent legislation that would deny taxpayer-funded services to illegal immigrants, which is ironic, as the federal government explicitly has domain over immigration policy per Article 1, section 8, which enumerates the federal legislature’s power “to establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization.”

Well good for you guys, Oklahoma. I’ve been thinking about having my state renegotiate the terms of our entry into the union, but you seem to have found an interesting baby-step towards a modicum of independence.

Back onto the FISA subject

The above is a fragment of Senator Dodd‘s argument against retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies that colluded with the U.S. Government in illegal, unwarranted surveillance in obvious contradiction of both the FISA act and the 4th amendment to the U.S. Constitution. He puts it far better than I could. It’s a shame this man won’t be on the ballot for president this November. At least, unlike the presumptive Democratic candidate, he’s still fighting the good fight.