David Foster

Journalists and Rocket Scientists

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In 1920, Robert Goddard was conducting experiments with rockets. In an editorial, The New York Times sneered at Goddard’s work and particularly at the idea that a rocket could function in a vacuum:

That Professor Goddard, with his ‘chair’ in Clark College and the countenancing of the Smithsonian Institution, does not know the relation of action to reaction, and of the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react – to say that would be absurd. Of course he only seems to lack the knowledge ladled out daily in high schools.

In 1969…the year of the Apollo moon mission…the NYT finally got around to issuing a correction for their 1920 mistake.

What is noteworthy about the original editorial is not just the ignorance, but the arrogance and the outright nastiness. As the AstronauticsNow post points out, “The enlightened newspaper not only ridiculed the idea that rocket propulsion would work in vacuum but it questioned the integrity and professionalism of Goddard.” The post goes on to say that “The sensationalism and merciless attack by the New York Times and other newspapers left a profound impression on Robert Goddard who became secretive about his work (to detriment of development of rocketry in the United States)…”

It appears that some of the attributes of the NYT which make it so untrustworthy and unlovable today are actually cultural characteristics of long standing.

Worth keeping in mind when reading NYT analyses of Climategate.

Great Demos of All Time

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Product demonstrations can sometimes be useful in convincing prospective customers that your product is a Good Thing, or in convincing prospective investors that your company represents a substantial opportunity. (Although many demos are so badly executed that they do more harm than good.)

In business history, there are a few examples of demos that stand out for their dramatic nature and their impact. Here are the ones that come to mind:

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The Identity of the Enemy

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Chris Matthews of MSNBC, commenting on Obama’s choice of a West Point venue for his Afghanistan speech:

“He went to–maybe–the enemy camp tonight)”

(video clip here)

Does Matthews himself consider the U.S. Military Academy to be “the enemy camp?” If a commentator with a strong reputation for neutrality had said something like the above, then we might believe he was stating a conclusion about the beliefs of others, rather than an opinion he himself necessarily agreed with. But it would be hard for anyone to argue that Matthews is “a commentator with a strong reputation for neutrality.”

Whatever Matthews’ personal beliefs may be, I think his comment reflects the belief of a substantial part of the “progressive” movement which represents Obama’s core support. These people are very reluctant to use words like “enemy” in talking about America’s terrorist adversaries. They are primarily concerned with instigating conflict within American society itself, and in achieving victory in such conflict–and the American military, along with many other important parts of American society, does indeed in their view constitute an enemy.

Here are some relevant thoughts from Neptunus Lex, which I’ve previously quoted because they are so insightful:

The innate character flaw of the political right, with its thrumming appeals to the logic of blood and soil, is its lamentable tendency to go in search of enemies abroad. The left, on the other hand, with its own appeals to the politics of envy and class warfare, is content to find mortal enemies closer to hand.

Britain: How Bad Is It Really?

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In a week of depressing news items and blog posts, one of the most depressing was this.

A British writer surveyed members of Britain’s WWII generation and asked: Given the way the country has turned out, do you think the sacrifices made in the war were worth it? The most common answer was “NO.”

Some of the reactions are probably the typical “things-were-much-better-when-I-was-younger-and-now–everything-is-going-to-hell-in-a-handbasket” common among older people in all times and places. A couple of them sound like narrow-mindedness and xenophobia. But most of the reactions sound very understandable given what I’ve read about the current social and political climate in the U.K.

A couple of questions:

1)Especially for Brits: Are things really this bad?

2)For everyone: To what extent are the factors that have been so destructive in the U.K. also operating in the United States?

Climate Science and the Inner Ring

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It now seems clear that many climate scientists have shown a most unscientific lack of interest in following the data wherever that data may lead, coupled with an unwholesome eagerness to disregard and to disrespect the opinions of anyone outside of a closed circle of “experts.”

In comments on a NYT blog (excerpted at Instapundit), someone comments:

“It is possible that some areas of climate science has become sclerotic. It is possible that climate science has become too partisan, too centralized. The tribalism that some of the leaked emails display is something more usually associated with social organization within primitive cultures; it is not attractive when we find it at work inside science.”

This kind of tribalism is by no means limited to “primitive cultures,” rather, it is dismayingly common in societies of all types. The phenomenon was astutely analyzed by C S Lewis in his writing on what he called the Inner Ring.

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