Re: From the National Review Online...

On Sat, 18 Jun 2005 07:14:30 -0500, "Paul F. Dietz" <dietz@xxxxxxx> wrote:

>Mark R. Whittington wrote:
>> Rand, no I'm not. The key paragraph to understanding Derb's view on
>> space exploration in general is this one:
>>
>> "The gross glutted wealth of the federal government; the venality and
>> stupidity of our representatives; the lobbying power of big
>> rent-seeking corporations; the romantic enthusiasms of millions of
>> citizens; these are the things that 14 astronauts died for. To abandon
>> all euphemism and pretense, they died for pork, for votes, for share
>> prices, and for thrills (immediate in their own case, vicarious in
>> ours)."
>> Venality? Stupidity? They died for pork? For thrills? I think the
>> term"evil" fits rather nicely.
>
>Mark, Mark, Mark...
>
>You claimed he was stating that "any sort of space exploration is
>[...] downright evil."
>
>But this paragraph is refering to a *specific* form of space
>exploration, the government-funded shuttle program. Other forms
>may lack many of these deplorable features.
>

Yes, but elsewhere in his article, Derbyshire puts it a lot more
generally.

Paragraph 2:

"There is no longer much pretense that shuttle flights
in particular, or manned space flight in general, has
any practical value."

I grant you that Derbyshire might /mean/ government-funded manned space
flight, but that's not what he says. And the bit in paragraph 9 about the
superiority of robots makes it clear that he's talking about results, not
about who funds the missions or how they are conducted.

In addition, the absurd statement about astatine shows him to be clueless
about technology on a very basic level.

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Mail Merge into Table
    ... I placed my cursor before the last paragraph ... > Header/footer information is stored in section breaks. ... > mark in a document is an implied section break and contains the ... >>> for each merged record. ...
    (microsoft.public.word.tables)
  • Re: changing color of font doesnt work for my bullets
    ... > reselect the para mark of the red bullet and press Ctrl+Space to reset ... I can turn on paragraph marks and select the ...
    (microsoft.public.word.customization.menustoolbars)
  • RE: how do I get out of draft view in word 07?
    ... P:ess SHIFT+LEFT ARROW to deselect the final paragraph ... "Aeneas" wrote: ... Press ALT+LEFT ARROW (deselects the final paragraph mark) ...
    (microsoft.public.word.docmanagement)
  • Re: Revision Process
    ... >> feature so useful that I fully intend to figure out a macro to make my word ... >> feature was that you could take a piece of prose and mark several different ... This way I can have bits of comments hidden within a paragraph. ... >and you can toggle the view at will. ...
    (rec.arts.sf.composition)
Quantcast