I'm listening to Radio 3, and I've just heard a rather celebrated lady novelist (Elizabeth Jane Howard) and a slightly celebrated composer and broadcaster (Michael Berkeley), in between reminiscing about other celebrities (such as the late Kingsley Amis, to whom Ms. Howard was married) and introducing a very nice Scarlatti recording by a somewhat celebrated lady pianist (Nina Milkina), denounce the "Cult of Celebrity". If I heard right in among embarking on this, the two of them are plugging Ms. Howard's newly published autobiography.

I'm getting very sick of this. I'd love to be a celeb, and am doing the best I can to be one within the limits set about me by the indolence of my personality. My view of those who already are celebs is what many others (but not me) feel about those ex-officio hereditary celebs, the Royal Family. They earn their money!

Celebrities are generally spoken of as if they are only an appendage of modern life, not to say an excrescence, mere parasites whom we seem to have to endure along with the good stuff, like DVDs and modern dentistry and nice toilets. But celebs contribute! No celebs and there'd be no toilets or DVDs for anything like so many people.

Suppose you are building a supermarket. While you are building it, you just want to get on with the job and you don't want crowds of people hanging around getting in the way of incoming lorries with building materials and generally being a danger to themselves on account of not wearing the proper headgear and risking death by falling objects. But then, you finish the job, and this huge, huge place is suddenly ready to open. So, suddenly, you do need huge crowds. Fail to attract such crowds and you are going to be stuck with an awful lot of stale milk and rotting fruit and vegetables.

Think about the whole twentieth century economy, and an amazing amount of it consists of unfolding scenarios of this nature. A huge effort behind closed doors, followed by the flinging open of the doors, at which point god help you if no one comes. Automobile assembly lines, mega-movies, new sorts of soap dispenser, all the good stuff of the twentieth century basically.

So, for the twentieth and subsequent centuries to work properly, you need ways to crank up public enthusiasm, and ways that will work even though you've just spent the previous six months carefully damping it down and saying nothing except "no comment".

And when you want to attract interest, one of the best ways to do that is to bring on the celebs. Your new DIY store is ready for business, so you have a big party and get a couple of TV DIY-ers to front it for you, and maybe a couple of medium-rank soap stars to just make sure, and then whistle up the local media (without whom of course celebrity would be unimaginable) to do their bit, and that way all those vegetables you've piled up on your new shelves get bought and eaten instead of thrown away.

So I say, hurrah for celebs. "Cult" just means that a lot of rather thoughtless and snobby people not seeing the point of whatever it is, but if all the celebs were suddenly taken away – pfffft!! – those mini-celeb lady novelists (who would never be asked to open a supermarket on account of not being nearly celeb enough) would soon realise how valuable was the work the real celebs had been doing. Those literary dinner parties, along with all the other pleasures of modern life, would suddenly become a whole lot harder to arrange.

On Thursday, February 06, 2003, Paul Marks of Northamptonshire wrote on Samizdata some views on the history of modern science fiction that I found very interesting (especially since they mentioned me). The following is not so much to correct him, as to add to what he said.

Modern science fiction began as little more than another way to popularize left wing socialism. Both H.G. Wells and Edward Bellamy wrote socialist Utopias, and Wells wrote allegorical attacks on capitalism and individualism. Ironically, they (and Ayn Rand) inspired me to do what I do.

I generally exclude Rand as a science fiction writer only because she didn't know that Anthem and Atlas Shrugged are science fiction -- and that science fiction is the "literature of ideas" that she erroneously believed detective fiction to be.

Anthem and Atlas Shrugged are science fiction, all right. But Rand -- at least consciously -- was not a science fiction writer. I realize I may be splitting hairs. For that matter, I've never been sure whether Kurt Vonnegut is a science fiction writer, more because of the way he's marketed than anything else.

On the other hand, Frank Herbert was definitely a science fiction writer who, after many years of unspeakable struggle (after being rejected by every American house: Dune was eventually sold to an English publisher, for an advance of $1000) was finally published in the mainstream.

But I digress, as usual.

There was also a separate literary strand that had begun with Jules Verne that wasn't very political, but was primarily technophilic and even became technocratic when it got around to politics. Doc Smith (who was nobody's libertarian and was, in fact, one of the earliest of the drug warriors) and John W. Campbell were involved in this sort of thing. I'd call them "right wing socialists". I'm not certain, but I believe Ben Bova sorts into this category.

In the 1950s and 1960s, when I was a young reader of skiffy (the correct way to pronounce "sci-fi"), socialist views were predominant in the genre. The whole "Milford Group" (named after a town in Pennsylvania where I believe they held writers' workshops) in which Judith Merrill and others were involved, were blatantly collectivist, although I'd bet they'd call it "liberal". Some famous science fiction writers of the day -- or so I'm told by those who'd know -- were communists.

In fact, it represented something of a revolution that they made room (reluctantly and grudgingly, I'd guess) for protolibertarians like Poul Anderson and possibly Gordon R. Dickson. This was probably on account of Campbell's power as editor of Astounding/Analog. On the other hand, H. Beam Piper killed himself because he believed his works weren't selling and he didn't want to go on welfare or borrow from friends. Of course Heinlein was always a phenomenon unto himself -- although as we now know, New York book publishers censored his more libertarian ideas.

I'm not the first modern, openly libertarian science fiction writer -- I believe that honor goes to F. Paul Wilson -- but possibly I'm the loudest. It has not come without its costs, as members of the Ceres Project know. In fact I'm now soliciting articles for The Libertarian Enterprise, discussing the heretofore unasked question of whether there's a deliberate blacklist against libertarians in book publishing and in Hollywood.

That'll be 800-1000 words, if you please. Send them to editor John Taylor at EditorTLE@triad.rr.com.

L. Neil Smith

Three-time Prometheus Award-winner L. Neil Smith is the author of 23 books, including The American Zone, Forge of the Elders, Pallas, The Probability Broach, Hope (with Aaron Zelman), and his collection of articles and speeches, Lever Action, all of which may be purchased through his website "The Webley Page". Autographed copies may be had from the author at lneil@lneilsmith.com.

L. Neil Smith writes regular columns for The Libertarian Enterprise, Sierra Times RoadHouse, and for Rational Review.

In the two weeks since I last wrote about the Ronald Dixon self-defence case pending in Brooklyn, New York, my blog seems to have become something of a clearinghouse for advocacy in Mr. Dixon's support. Recall that I mentioned:

This is about as clear-cut a case of righteous home and family defense as I've seen recently in the U.S. This is also an unusual opportunity to overwhelm the Kings County (Brooklyn) District Attorney's office with correspondance, demonstrating the reach of Anglosphere libertarian outrage.

Well, one of my blog commenters has reminded me of a brilliant solution which takes advantage of the free, no-registration TPC email-to-fax gateway service. To quote the annoying second-rate comic Carrot Top, presently featured in the DialATT adverts running on TV this side of the Atlantic, "it's free for you, cheap for them".

Politicians in all countries still pay much more attention to letters and faxes than they do email, if for nothing else than to weight the importance of the number of paper communications over that of electronic. I urge RKBA advocates to take advantage of this fact and deluge the Brooklyn DA's office with polite but uncompromisingly non-grovelling support for Mr. Dixon.

Russell Whitaker

The question of why the US is gearing up to fight Iraq and not North Korea has been explored at length, mostly by those who would like the US do nothing about either. The reasons given here are convincing but there is an even more likely scenario. North Korea’s power to blackmail the rest of the world by threatening or invading its neighbours is correctly put into perspective.

The maximum damage North Korea could inflict on the world, even with tactical nukes, would be to destroy the economy of South Korea. Certainly, a tragedy for the South Koreans but its catastrophic impact on the country and its population is not likely to spill over to the rest of the world to the extent Iraq's success would, as I argue below. This scenario, of course, assumes rather vaguely that the South Korean army would not annihilate the 1950s-style North Korean army in the first encounter. Tactical nuclear devices are horrendous, however, with so much at stake, South Korea would put everything it has into defending its territory and ultimately free existence. Further, it is likely to be a one shot event, so to speak. Yes, the destruction of the South Korean economy would plunge the world economy into recession but ultimately even if Seoul is destroyed, it could be rebuilt just as the Japanese rebuilt their cities.

The point I want to make is that the same kind of ‘local incidents - global effects’ reasoning should be used for thinking about Iraq. My conclusion is frightening and adds an extra urgency to the removal of Saddam and disarming of Iraq. This is because Iraq armed with nuclear weapons, tactical ones that is, could not only destabilise the Middle East, it could hold the Western world to ransom for the foreseeable future. I am pretty sure it would. Here’s how:

Saddam manages to stall US intervention long enough to develop a couple of tactical nuclear warheads and the ability to fit them to SCUD missiles. He is aided by a large number of political leaders and public opinion even in those countries where the leaders are determined to get ‘im.

Having demonstrated this ability, Saddam then re-invades Kuwait. You may think only a complete nutcase would try this after what happened last time but Saddam actually made preparations to re-take Kuwait in 1994 by amassing troops at the border. The Iraqi army may be only a shadow of its former strength, but it has more than enough to invade Kuwait, which would take a leisurely drive to the sea and retake Kuwait city in less than a day.

Saddam then digs in. The crucial point is once he possesses tactical nukes he could not be kicked back out again. A military operation to liberate Kuwait, based on the first Gulf War and the current accumulation of military capabilities, would require large concentrations of US and other allied armour, troops and helicopters, as well as the use of local Arab airfields and ports, which would present very tempting targets to Saddam. SCUDS may not be accurate, but with a 20 kilotonne warhead, who needs accurate? The United States would have to make a very different and extremely difficult cost-benefit analysis and budget for the greatest loss of all, a large number of soldiers annihilated by the WMDs in such a conflict.

There have been many comments talking about deterrence. Couldn’t Saddam be deterred from using his nukes? A nuclear threat is a combination of ability and will. Given the warheads for ability, Saddam certainly has the will. His threat to nuke our 'liberation' troops is credible. The US or allied counter-threat is highly unrealistic and politically unenforceable. First, of all it would mean incinerating three million mostly innocent civilians in Baghdad. Secondly, CND and the assorted lefties, Nobel Prize winners and more importantly many country leaders would go ape and Saddam would manage to wreak a more effective havoc in the international arena. Saddam is smart enough to know this.

Yes, on a very basic level deterrence will work like it did in the Cold War. The problem is it would work exactly as it did in the Cold War. That is, it would work for Saddam and against us. I won't scratch yours, if you don't scratch mine…. It will deter Saddam from nuking the West, but will prevent the West from 'interfering' within his 'sphere of influence'.

So the net effect of Saddam with a usable tactical nuke? At a stroke he can control not only Iraq's, but also Kuwait's oilfields, gaining direct control over a substantial proportion of the world’s real energy reserves. Unless you consider windfarms a viable source of energy, this is a situation that is going to have an enormous impact on the world economy. He already exerts veto control over the Shatt-al-arab waterway, the casus belli for the Iran - Iraq war and a vital route for half of the world’s oil.

Finally and terminally, with a nuclear armed Iraq right on the border with Saudi Arabia, Saddam will be able to force the Saudis to restrict their oil production. It is hard to imagine that the Saudi royal family will put up huge resistance to his demands, especially as they are now presiding over a population who thinks Saddam is great and the West is the source of all evil. This way Saddam dictates the price of oil and I can't see him selling it to us at a bargain price. At a stroke, he can not only cripple the world economy, but grow rich on the proceeds of his overpriced oil.

His Western 'enemies' - think France and Russia – will welcome Saddam as a long lost brother to the international family and remind him of their support to get access to that oil. The Russians might even thank him for boosting their most important foreign currency earner.

Now, I wonder what Saddam will spend all his new oil income on? Starving Iraqi children? Somehow I think he is not so fond of "schools-and-hospitals". I wonder…..just how much do you need to build an ICBM? ...and to buy a permanent seat on the UN Security Council?

Dave Barry (whose blogzistence I was reminded of by Diane of Nobody Knows Anything) links to this fine young fellow. In keeping with the Samizdata policy of explaining links, I will tell you now that his site is called Rent My Chest. If you do, he puts your choice of slogan on the said organ, and sticks a photo up on Rent My Chest.com, but from now on, we don't say dot com, we say "nipple com". My favourite slogan of the ones up there so far is: "MajorGeeks.com – Geek it 'Til It MHz"

The consensus seems to be now that advertising on the internet has been a disappointment. That may have to be revised. This guy isn't just someone who likes to show off his nipples; he's actually done some thinking. He has a blog, and it's a typographical first for me. He has a job. In short, he has a brain. Each slogan will cost you $20, and the most recent twenty stay up, so as the site gets more popular, the messages cost the same but for less time, i.e. the price goes up automatically. Smart. Seriously, watch this guy.

Last night I attended a political fundraising dinner where the speaker was a Conservative MP. Because he deals with defence issues, he was quizzed (often heckled) by members of his party about the Iraq war. Last November I heard an American 'informed source' give an explanation as to why war with Iraq was just and necessary.

The problem I have is that there was no common ground at all between the case presented by both speakers. According to one, the hunt for Al-Qaeda is the background goal. According to the other, Al-Qaeda will be cheering when that secularist Saddam falls. One said that nuclear, biological and chemical weapons were the single jusification. The other said it was a smokescreen to get UN backing. One said that there was eidence that Saddam had financed Al-Qaeda. The other said there was no such evidence, but he was financing Hezbollah instead (which is bizarre given the long-standing Iranian connection).

So we are left with this conclusion, the politicians haven't a clue what they are talking about, and the intelligence services are playing their pet theories off against each other.

If the war against Iraq is about the right of one country to disarm another I am against it. Today Bush thinks Iraq should be disarmed, who will President Hillary or President Gore pick on? Switzerland? Israel? The United Kingdom? If it is to overthrow tyrants then why not start with North Korea? If the war is supposed to install a pro-American government in Iraq then how will bombing Iraqi cities help?

A couple of days ago I noted it is not unusual for the USAF to use the landing shuttle as a test target for their space defense optical systems. They did so this time as well and are reported to have seen major wing damage.

I'd love to see those photos, but I would say there is a fair chance it would take a security clearance to do so unless they were taken by something non-black and not even "grey".

ANOTHER ONE: While I was not the one to first note this, I did report it early on. Insulation hits began causing tile damage after NASA switched to an "environmentally friendly" (read that as Astronaut killing) non-CFC based material.

EXTRA! Reader GK Elliot pointed me to this Craig Covault article on the story.

My ego being suitably gratified by the reactions to my earlier post about SUVs, well, I could not resist linking to this nice story, also by Reuters, about the latest incarnation of the mighty Ford Mustang.

It seems that folk who want us Westerners to cut back on oil as a way of squeezing the Middle East are fighting a losing battle at the moment.

Also in a totally gratuitous vein, here is a story with some picks of the latest Aston Martin, as driven by Pierce Brosnan in his, in my view, largely rather silly James Bond movie. But for this petrol-head, the car is pure eye candy. Aston Martin in my view has made some of the most beautiful cars ever. I used to rank the DB5 as the most aesthetically pleasing, but I think the Vanquish is even better.

We shall know what we go to Mars for, only after we get there. You might as well ask Columbus why he wasted his time discovering America when he could have been improving the methods of Spanish sheep-farming. It is lucky that the U.S. government like Queen Isabella is willing to pay for the ships.
- Freeman Dyson, letter to his parents, 19 May 1958

though it is a pity the US and other governments also crowd out private space business alternatives

It must be something in the air today... couldn't be the smoke from the controlled explosion across the street from me last night... I doubt that could have wafted over London yet. I was intending to write a longish article on the evils of Saddam. Most of what I wished to say has already been said today so I will just point out why I was going to say it.

I finally found time to read the Home Office report on human rights abuses in Iraq. I knew the Iraqi leadership were truly bad news. I knew they tortured some people, beheaded a few are were really quite beastly. I was totally unprepared for the magnitude of it.

Saddam and family don't quite make it into the first rank with Adolf, Joe and Pol, at least not with the information we have so far. But give them time. They are working on it.

Read it if you haven't already. You will be thoroughly appalled and ready to volunteer to release the trap door on them... or more satisfyingly, place a .38 between Saddam's eyes so he can watch while you pull the trigger the first 5 times.

That would be a memory to treasure for life.

Reading a number of anti-war libertarian blogs such as that of the estimable Jim Henley, it occurred to me that among the various errors in their positions over what to do about Saddam, etc, is a tendency to dismiss or downplay any threat that such countries may pose to us.

Now, I am not going to engage in some long ramble about why I think the case for war is correct (though I think it is). However, what I do want to do is briefly reflect on what I think is an aspect of the anti-war libertarian position which could prove damaging to libertarianism more generally. It is the problem of evasion.

In recent years, libertarians have been aware of a growing threat to our free society, namely, the Green movement. And much time is spent, rightly, dismissing or pulling apart the scare stories (such as the Greenhouse Effect, population explosion, etc) that are offered to justify wholesale government controls over our lives. But a nagging question is - what would libertarians do if the Green case is partly, or even wholly, correct? What if global warming is as bad as they claim? What would we fans of free-wheeling capitalism do about that? It is simply not good enough for us to trash the Green case without at least working out how we would cope with such issues.

It seems to me that the isolationist libertarians who rubbish most government attempts to crack down on terrorists and their state sponsors need to answer a similar sort of question. How can free, minimal state societies deal with serious threats to liberty and life? What sort of measures should such societies take?

I think we owe it to ourselves to pose such questions and come up with a few ideas. Attacking governments for trashing civil liberties and ramping up defence spending is of course a good thing for libertarians to do, and we must continue to do so. But not offering any positive suggestions on how we defend ourselves is not just unwise. It threatens also to make the libertarian movement irrelevant.

And frankly, I don't give a toss whether such worries make me a 'neo-libertarian' or whatever. I am not interested in going to my grave knowing that I died like a good disciple of Murray Rothbard. I want to stay alive with as much freedom as possible. It is about time that we worked on a few ways to achieve that.

Consider the gauntlet thrown on the floor.

Reflections of a former British civil servant on the likely war against Iraq to replace Saddam Hussein. A measured and calm overview of the reasons for and arguments why we should remove Saddam Hussain... and kill the murderous, ruthless son of a bitch!

The upcoming war to remove Saddam Hussein was planned in the aftermath of the 11^th September attacks in Washington and has been supported more-or-less willingly by the British Government. It would appear that London and Washington decided that, for a combination of reasons, the containment of Saddam’s regime was no longer enough, and that he must be removed. As far as an outsider can gather, this conclusion was not reached for any individual reason, but because the cumulative force of a number of individual factors made the risks implied by Saddam’s continuance in office too great. The reasons encompassed Saddam’s past, present and possible future acts:

1. Saddam might acquire nuclear, chemical or biological weapons, particularly since the weapons inspectors had been banned from Iraq since 1998. Many of the weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) that he was supposed to destroy under UN Security Council Resolution 687, the ceasefire which ended the 1991 Gulf War, are unaccounted for.

2. Saddam might pass such weaponry onto terrorists. He has a long pedigree of helping terrorists, such as Abu Nidal, who died in Baghdad, and the PLO, and of sanctioning his intelligence services to commit acts of terrorism when it suits his interests - the murder of Gerald Bull in Brussels, the attempted murder of George Bush senior in Kuwait in 1993 and the assassination of some Iraqi opposition leaders.

3. Saddam is the only current world leader who has a record of using WMDs, both against his own people at Halabja in 1988 and against the Iranians during the Iran-Iraq war.

4. Saddam has a record of starting aggressive wars, against Iran in 1980, Kuwait in 1990 and Israel in 1991. None of these countries posed any threat to Iraq at the time.

5. Iraq is in breach of twenty-two provisions in nine Security Council resolutions, including Resolution 687 and Resolution 1441.

6. The internal nature of Saddam’s regime and the sufferings of the Iraqi people, which have been widely circulated since Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, inspire revulsion in Britain and the United States.

7. The fall of the Iraqi regime, and the installation of a more democratic form of government in Baghdad, could provide the Arab world with a democratic role model.

8. The Israelis, Washington’s only reliable friend in the Middle East, would be fully secured from an adversary, albeit one who had passed his prime.

From the timing of the move to war, which began in Spring 2002, it appears that the first two factors, involving weapons of mass destruction and fear of terrorism, were decisive. Of course, there is no such thing as the 'Washington mind', and different officials will have attached different weightings to each reason. The speedy rout of the Taliban in Afghanistan left America’s armed forces both available and confident, and the absence of any significant, conspicuous threat such as the Soviet Union completed the triad of means, motive and opportunity.

All of the reasons commonly advanced against the war make better slogans than rational arguments:

1. "It’s all about oil."
   This argument can be dismissed on three grounds. First, Iraq had just as much oil throughout the 1990’s and before the 11^th September as it does now. If Britain and the United States, both of whom produce their own oil, had truly been motivated by a desire to access Iraq’s oil reserves, they would never have imposed sanctions, or maintained them in the teeth of significant public hostility. Second, Saddam has given the West ample motivation to seek his downfall. Thirdly, the United States and Great Britain have frequently intervened in countries in which they have no conceivable economic interests, for security reasons, e.g. Vietnam, Somalia, Kosovo, Sierra Leone.

2. "Under international law, specific UN Security Council authority is required".
   This can be dismissed because, in failing to disarm, Iraq has breached the ceasefire provisions, embodied in Resolution 687, which ended the first Gulf War in 1991, and in refusing to disclose fully its WMD and to cooperate with the inspectors, it has violated Resolution 1441. In any case, international law is not the United Nations, and the United Nations is not international law. Indeed, international law is a very vague and amorphous concept – a bundle of treaties, vague principles and pious hopes. It may be better to jettison the entire concept.

3. "The war could have unforeseen, dangerous consequences in the Middle East".
   Any war could have dangerous consequences, and so could doing nothing. It could also have positive consequences, depending on how it is waged. Of itself, this is not a convincing argument for inactivity.

4. "Intervention in the internal affairs of a sovereign state to change its system of government is unprecedented".
   In fact, such intervention is thoroughly precedented. For example, the British, French and Israelis aimed to depose Nasser in Suez in 1956, the Americans attacked Cuba in 1961 to remove Castro, invaded Grenada in the 1980’s to depose that island’s communist dictatorship, intervened in Panama in 1989 to eliminate the drug lord, Noriega, and sent troops into Somalia to rescue that country from drug lords in 1992. None of those countries posed the threats to the rest of the world, or had the record of aggression that Iraq currently does.

5. "It would have been better if Britain or America had not supplied Saddam with arms in the 1980’s".
   Again, this is no counter-argument for attacking him now. It is important that this ancient red herring not be dragged across the trail again. Britain and America were probably the least guilty of any of the major powers of supplying Saddam Hussein with sophisticated weaponry or materials to build his weapons of mass destruction, or to fight the Iranians. They did supply a small amount of dual use technology, and some low-tech weaponry, but Saddam got his high-tech weapons from the Russians and the French, his chemical weapons technology from West Germany, and his nuclear reactors from the French. See here for an impressive list of the equipment supplied to the Iraqis.

6. "Wouldn’t the money be better spent on foreign aid/local housing/health/education/transport/government project of choice?"
   This argument involves weighing apples against oranges. It usually implies that insufficient funds are being spent on the competing government programme. Spending money on transport infrastructure will be no use, however, if that infrastructure is paralysed by terrorist attacks, and much higher health spending will be needed if biological weapons are released by terrorists on the open societies of the west.

7. "If we attack Iraq, shouldn’t we also attack Israel/North Korea/Saudi Arabia/Syria/other country?".
   Once more, not a counter-argument. However, while Israel may have violated UN Security Council resolutions, and North Korea may have weapons of mass destruction, neither state has the weighty list of charges against it that Iraq does (see above).

8. "Haven’t the Iraqi people suffered enough?"
   Indeed they have, but the best guarantee for their future welfare is good government in Iraq, not a continuation of Saddam’s regime with associated crocodile tears from editorials in New York, London and Paris. The likely civilian casualties in any war have to be offset against the human rights abuses to be committed by Saddam’s regime if it continues in office.

Sir Humphrey, the Not-so-civil

In the 'classical age' of science fiction, most American writers seemed to be limited or even minimal statists (Heinlien, Piper, "Doc" Smith and so on).

Most writers tended to support a strong military defence - but not very much more government (indeed they were hostile to welfare statism).

These days science fiction writing seems to have changed. A minority of writers (such as L. Neil Smith) are actual anarchist (real anarchists - not people who do not like the word 'government' but still want a collective power to control everything), but most other writers are welfare state - interventionists writing 'feminist science fiction', 'environmental science fiction', 'psychological science fiction' or even straight science fiction - but with the normal statist slant of main stream literature.

Perhaps the problem started when science fiction began to be 'taken seriously' (studied at universities, taught in writing classes and so on). Or perhaps the general statism of our culture just flows in everywhere eventually.

However, whatever the cause the old classical view of science fiction (fairly strict limited statism - tending towards minimal statism) is gone and has been replaced by a few anarchist writers and a mainstream of welfare statists.

This is even getting into fantasy writing. Again I am not referring to modern British writers (I do not expect much from writers beloved by the B.B.C. - such as Mr Pullman), but even best selling American fantasy writers seem to be coloured by statism.

For example Mr Jordan (of the highly successful ten book Wheel of Time series) seems to assume that good government involves all sorts of interventions (hence his hero, oddly enough called Rand, keeps ordering people about in their economic life), and there are the normal signs of mainstream literature - wealthy businessmen are dodgy, the utopian society of the 'Age of Legends' was an interventionist welfare-state and so on.

Actually modern fantasy writing in Britain started out as broadly anti-statist. Tolkien (for all his Catholic distaste for people who were obsessed with money making) was no statist - and neither was C.S. Lewis. And the American fantasy writers followed them in the their belief that a good government was one which protected the nation against other powers and did not do many other things.

In short there was similar political outlook among the fantasy writers and the science fiction writers.

This reflected itself in role-playing (when this grow up), the format of most role playing was an individual or group of individuals opposing evil (evil being defined as forces, human or other, who came to rob-kill-control). External invaders, internal corruption, tyrannical government - it was all basically the same thing (force attacking people).

People who were socialists in 'real life' never thought of setting up welfare states in fantasy or science fiction games - because that was not the nature of things (and games did have an effect on "real life" beliefs over time).

Sadly this all seems to be ending.

The sports utility vehicle (SUV) is the bete noire of the anti-globalista class, epitomizing much that they hate about western, and specifically American, culture. They are big, brash, consume a lot of fossil fuels and symbolise an almost Wild West ethos (although in my experience many of them are driven by stockbrokers in deepest west London).

I must say that in my more ideologically manic moments, I fantasize about buying a SUV for no other reason than to cock a snook at the flat-earthers. Check out this interesting story for the enduring appeal of these capitalist behemoths on wheels. Vroom!

Sir Humphrey: "Minister, Britain has had the same foreign policy objective for at least the last 500 years: to create a disunited Europe. In that cause we have fought with the Dutch against the Spanish, with the Germans against the French, with the French and Italians against the Germans, and with the French against the Germans and Italians. Divide and rule, you see. Why should we change now when it's worked so well?"

Jim Hacker: "That's all ancient history, surely."

Sir Humphrey: "Yes, and current policy. We had to break the whole thing [the EEC] up, so we had to get inside. We tried to break it up from the outside, but that wouldn't work. Now that we're inside we can make a complete pig's breakfast of the whole thing: set the Germans against the French, the French against the Italians, the Italians against the Dutch. The Foreign Office is terribly pleased, it's just like old times."

- Yes, Minister, British comedy series

A law firm with a fetching name, Public Interest Lawyers intends to prosecute Prime Minister Tony Blair for war crimes at the new International Criminal Court (ICC), if an Iraqi war goes ahead.

Phil Shiner of the law firm is leading a campaign to prosecute leaders in the seven-month-old ICC, if military action goes ahead without a second United Nations resolution expressly authorising force, or if any Iraqi civilians are killed in bombing campaigns.

"The ICC brings a new international context to war - Blair now has to consider his individual accountability."

The ICC's independent prosecutor can initiate proceedings at the request of a state or can receive evidence from anyone, and then decide whether to prosecute, subject to advice from three of the court's 18 judges. The prosecution will be based on the fact that national leaders could be held individually responsible for war crimes and be tried as ex-Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic has at a separate court for former Yugoslavia.

The United States fiercely opposes the ICC, saying it would infringe U.S. sovereignty, but Britain has ratified its treaty and would have to give up any citizen the court wanted to try.

"The ICC will now place a serious constraint on Blair."

Oh really?! That must make Blair quake in his boots. I fervently hope he ignores the self-righteous and attention-seeking bunch of idiotarians. The International Criminal Court, what a brilliant idea, I hear people cry, just like the UN. The picture comes into focus once the client of Public Interest Lawyers' who initiated the proceedings is revealed! Enter CND, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament! And I thought they were all in Iraq making sure Saddam gets disarmed and prevented from acquiring nuclear weapons. You can't rely on anybody these days.

But there is a serious lesson for Blair and the UK government in this farcical episode - next time read the small print on all those treaties and agreements and codes and declarations you are signing, in case the Tranzis decide you are not dancing to their tune. It seems that in this case, the US knew better...

So if, for the time being, we can't conquer space, maybe we can conquer Delaware. According to Brian Doherty at Reason Online Hit and Run (I hope I've got that roughly right), there's a plan for libertarians to descend en masse on Delaware and take the place over and generally let utopia erupt.

According to the Delaware News-Journal:

If successful, by 2010 an army of 20,000 will move in, ascend to power and eliminate virtually all taxes - along with nearly all government programs and regulations. No public schools, no health, welfare or social services, no liquor laws, no gun control or land use laws. Smoking would be allowed nearly everywhere, as would almost all forms of gambling and prostitution.

The free market would run riot.

Doherty reports all this without really saying whether he thinks it makes much sense.

For me, this scheme is almost the definition of how not to try to do things. The right way to do things is to combine long-term background education with short-term opportunism. You read and write and propagandise. And, you grab that job on the local paper that someone offers you, or grab control of that local committee that suddenly seems grabbable and do what you can with that. You see the chance to become President of Portugal, and you take it. Nigeria comes up for sale and you can afford it. What you do not do is make big, public, medium-term "plans" like this one, which depend on 20,000 libertarians all agreeing about what plan they're all supposed to be following, before anything of any value can be achieved.

This is not to say that something like this won't happen. But if it does happen, it will happen naturally, with each step making sense for its own sake. A few libertarians will gather in some little spot for some particular reason or other, and then they'll make a nice place and attract more libertarians (perhaps because they've set up an attractive propaganda operation which can use and will appreciate more talent), and suddenly, without any big shared plans that anyone has been stressing and straining over, they find that they can have a lot of local influence without any great fuss, so they duly have it.

But don't plan it. Just let it happen. And in the meantime try to increase the odds of things like this happening everywhere, somewhere, but nowhere in particular.

A few of you may have noticed a comment I made a few days ago about the flaking problem being due to NASA trying to be green. I didn't follow up on it at the time because I had very little more than hearsay on it then. Brian Carnell has the confirmation.

We may just have to lay this disaster at the feet of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Further, I believe safety recommendations for return to flight should require a return to the old and proven CFC based ET (External Tank) insulation foam.

While I was at tea (or more accurately, pizza) after my earlier flurry of keystrokes, I received a call from Jim Bennett. Some of you know him from "Anglosphere". I known him from his AMROC and Starstruck launch company ventures. The pizza got cold but the ideas flowing back and forth over the phone line should have been enough to reheat it.

First of all, Jim came up with one more question which needs to be dealt with.

If the engineers saw the insulation hitting the wing, couldn't they have called for an RTLS (Return To Landing Site) or TAL (Trans Atlantic) abort? No. The material was not easily seen. It was later that it was noticed and at least two days before it was analyzed. An abort would have had to occur almost instantly. Even if we assume someone could have monitored, realized implications and reported it as it happened, we are left with a stark choice. We don't know if it is a Category 1 problem and the shuttle has never flown an RTLS or TAL outside of a computer simulator. I won't go into great detail on the maneuvers required. Lets just say they are "interesting".

As we talked, it struck me there was a possible scenario if a shuttle could be gotten up quickly. Those old rescue balls must surely be in storage somewhere. A second shuttle with a skeleton rescue crew could send one man across to stuff the plastic balls in the outer airlock. Then they could cycle the crew through one at a time and have them carted across. I still had strong doubts a shuttle could be programmed for the weight and balance and particulars of the rendezvous in less than 6 weeks unless NASA took serious risks. (If there is anyone at KSC or HMSFC out there willing to put a hand up, please correct me). Then Jim came up with the idea. Some of the new commercial ELV's are more easily programmable. All you really need to get up there is probably O2 for breathing and CO2 scrubber cartridges. You could perhaps get some food and water as well, but I don't believe they are as limiting.

I can only see one problem here. The Canadarm was not installed and there is not (to my knowledge) any sort of portable maneuvering unit on board a flight that only has an EVA suit for the contingency of payload bay doors not closing properly. So the one astronaut in the one EVA suit is going to have to bet his life on a jumping for it. If he hasn't enough tether, he'll have to free jump. That's an all or nothing, life or death bet.

Then they have to survive.

The shuttle is in a low orbit, it would probably re-enter in much less than 6 weeks unless measures were taken to reboost. They could do a small OMS burn since their goal is not re-entry. They might even have enough margin to do it without cutting into the fuel for re-entry.

Then they power every thing down; sit as quietly as they can; talk to friends and relatives on the ground and try to stay alive for 6 weeks or more. It would be simply awful, and I imagine the - how to put this delicately - "scent" would be somewhat like a sewage treatment plant in the summer sun. But they might be able to last.

Then bring the crew across in a combination of rescue balls and EVA suits. If a repair kit can be put together, the damage could be assessed and perhaps repaired. If it cannot, the shuttle can be set on autopilot to do a controlled self destruct re-entry; if repair is possible, a two person crew of pilot and commander could take the risk of bringing it back.

If all of this seems to be moving in the direction of large numbers of dice rolls falling your way... you are absolutely right. There are so many potential problems with the re-supply and rescue I've not even bothered listing them. But if there were no other way and we were sure of the consequences of the re-entry, I'm sure drastic measures would have seemed more reasonable than watching seven people die.

NOTE: Many thanks to Jim Bennett for the brainstorm upon which this post is based.

By the way: Here is Jim's column about the shuttle and its' replacements in National Review.

The last 36 hours have seen a lot of traffic on the "Draft L. Neil Smith for President 2004" mailing list, most of it centered around you-know-what, the same obsession we've all shared this weekend. One refrain I've been hearing is, "I need to dig out my copy of that Victor Koman book", Kings of the High Frontier.

I made the mistake of lending my copy to a former colleague a few months ago, who just now got around to mailing it back to me. See my own longer article on the book: there aren't many copies of this superb work in publication. If John Ross' Unintended Consequences is "the Atlas Shrugged of the gun freedom movement", then Koman's book is "the Atlas Shrugged of the free space movement".

Russell Whitaker

I have seen numerous questions which come down to "If NASA had taken the wing impacts on launch seriously, the astronauts could have been saved".

Unfortunately this is not true. I'll work through the scenarios. Some have been covered reasonably well in the media; some not so well due to a lack of real understanding of orbital mechanics.

• Why didn't they have a docking collar?

The Columbia is the heaviest of the shuttles because it is the oldest. For that reason it performs many of the non-space-station missions. This one in particular had a Spacehab in the bay. The spacehab couples to the main airlock of the crew cabin. It also supplies an EVA lock if I remember correctly. What it does not do is allow for an International Docking Collar. There simply will not be room (or more accurately enough payload weight capacity or "payload mass budget") for one on any flight doing really major non-station hauling.

• Couldn't they have gone to the space station if they'd known?

No. The space station is in an "orbital plane" tilted around 50 degrees to the Equator. Since KSC is at around 25 degrees latitude, a spaceship going into orbit there will be best off going into an orbit that is tilted 25 degrees to the equator. If you have a globe handy, look at the location of KSC in Florida. An orbit is a circle around the earth with the centre of the earth as its' centre.

The Earth is about 24,000 miles in circumference. If you are standing on the equator, you must do a full rotation in 24 hours; thus you are travelling at about 1000 miles per hours. If you were to launch from there, in the direction the Earth is turning, you get your first 1000 mph for free. As you move further north or south, the "length" of your line of latitude gets smaller and smaller. You travel a shorter distance in 24 hours, so the velocity is lower. When you reach the pole, you just turn in a circle once a day but don't actually go anywhere. Your velocity is 0 mph.

When a rocket takes off, it must go into an orbit; it cannot follow a line of latitude except if it is at the equator. So it not only gets a lower free boost the further it is from the equator; it can't even use all of it. I'd really like to get into the velocity vectors but that would require diagrams and an assumption you have all had geometry. Instead, just think of the extreme case: if you wanted to launch due North, a "free velocity" in the due East direction is something which not only doesn't help; it must be cancelled out.

So we now have an idea about why a particular orbital plane (actually a pair of them) is the "cheapest" for a given point on the Earth's surface. If you are at KSC, it is about 25 degrees; if you are at a Russian launch site, it is more like 55 degrees or higher.

When a shuttle is going to the ISS, it must do a "plane change". This is most efficiently done during the boost phase. The shuttle rolls onto an azimuth for that orbit and boosts up along the East coast of America. But this is costly; it is not getting the full use of the "free velocity" it would have gotten if it instead rolled onto a 25 degree azimuth. It has to replace that lost factor by burning more fuel. A longer burn means more fuel; more fuel means more fuel to lift that fuel and so forth... this is what is known as the rocket equation.

Carrying more fuel means less of the total mass budget is available for payload.

Once you get into orbit, a "plane change" maneuver is just about the costliest (in terms of fuel) thing you can do. You are travelling at 18000 mph in a very heavy vehicle in a "straight line". Remember "things in motion tend to stay in motion". There is a lot of momentum. If you want to go from 25 degrees to 50 degrees inclination, you have to fire your engines at right angles to your direction of motion. You have "turn" your entire orbit. It is almost "cheaper" to land and re-launch than to make that change. It is certainly beyond the abilities of any of the shuttles.

But that is only the first maneuver! The ISS is in a higher orbit. So you also have to do a burn that raises the apogee or high point of your orbit. This is a "Transfer Orbit". When you next reach perigee, you have to do another burn to raise the perigee. This is a "Circularization burn".

Oh, yeah... you will have to then be in an orbit slightly above that of ISS so you'll rendezvous with it within a few days. Then you do minor orbital changes and carry out the rendezvous and docking.

If this all sounds like a nonstarter... you are correct.

• Well, couldn't they just sit tight and be rescued?

No. They have limited food and water, but most critically, they have limited Oxygen. Whether the margin left after that 16 day mission was in days or a couple weeks I don't known. I guarantee you it was very finite.

Shuttles are not "launch on demand" reusable vehicles. They are more "re-buildable" vehicles that are extensively refurbished after each flight. There might have been one already stacked (I haven't checked the status) but even so, it would take days to get it out to the pad; days more to do a rush checkout job... and they still wouldn't have the computers set up for the mission. I do not know how hard they can push that. Maybe weeks if they took lots of risks. Shuttle flight software used to be scheduled and tested over a period of many months in advance. They have in recent years done some "rapid" re-profiling of missions, but at the best I think we are talking 4-6 weeks.

Not soon enough I'm afraid.

• Couldn't we have asked the Russians to rescue them?

The Russians had an unmanned, full cargo ship on the pad. But the Progress vehicle is discarded. It has no re-entry system. The Russians currently build 2 Soyez per year. None were on the pad to my knowledge. Even if they were, a Soyuz holds 3 persons. You are going to need at least one inside to deal with on the spot issues. So best case, you can draw lots and save two... but ooops... There is only one EVA suit. So I guess you save one guy and wave to the rest.

• Couldn't one of the Astronauts have gone EVA and fixed it?

No. It's conceivable the EVA could have been carried out; however one astronaut spokesman has pointed out the risk of the inspector causing damage. And if he finds "a situation"... there is no means of in-orbit repair.

• Couldn't they have just been really gentle on re-entry?

Doubtful. The re-entry glide path is tightly constrained. Too shallow and you skip a number of times and then when you dig in you dig deep; too deep and you burn up. Like the three bears, you have to get the one that is just right. Perhaps they could have avoided the S turns, started re-entry further out and stayed wings level... but my level of hope for that is rather low. It's probably the option they would have tried.

It comes down to this. If they had known from immediately after launch, those seven people would have spent their last 20 days of life facing certain death. Instead they enjoyed themselves immensely and died instantly doing exactly what they wanted to do.

Who could ask for a better way to go?

NASA has set up this FTP site here for the public to use to upload photos, videos and documentary commentary of found debris. It may be the first use of the Net to assist in disaster evidence collection on such a massive scale.

REMEMBER not to touch anything. And FORGET about trying to profit from this tragedy.

In the classic British television comedy "Yes, Minister" the bureaucracy engineered the elevation of a conviction-free mediocrity to the post of prime minister. The episode, called "Party Games" involved the following altercation between Jim Hacker, the minister who is looking for a "big idea" to campaign about and a French-speaking Brussels bureaucrat¹:

Jim Hacker: "Do you know, there's an office at the European Commission where they pay people to produce food and next door there's another office where they pay people to destroy food?"

European Bureaucrat: "It is not true!"

Sir Humphrey Appleby (British bureaucrat): "Oh really?"

European Bureaucrat: "They are not even on the same floor!"

Now consider that exchange in the light of my Case for "War on Chirac" versus this defence by Gemini, presumably a Chirac fan:

Just a few things - Chirac as PM wasn't sacked, he's the only PM of the 5th Republic who actually willingly quit. Second, the bicentenary of the execution of Louis XVI couldn't have been in 1992, since he was executed on 21/01/1793. So out of the 7 wrong-doings in 27 yrs, 2 at least are wrong....

The first objection is of the "yes he was pushed... no he jumped" variety. See this page for a very different view than the "official Chirac" line. I might add that Chirac's nicknames include "Chameleon Bonaparte" and "Supermenteur" - Super Liar.

The second is too funny to take seriously. The row occured in late 1992 because the royalists asked for permission to lay the wreath in late 1992, but as M.Gemini put it, the event was due to take place on 21st January 1993. As an excuse for Chirac's partisan support for Communists who set up a mock guillotine to decapitate a pig carcass against laying a wreath of white flowers in a dignified ceremony, I find quibbling about the date a little rich. As for claiming that this means that "2 out of 7" claims are wrong, I couldn't help laughing.

Which reminds me of three additional reasons for declaring War on Chirac:

1. It was Chirac who was instrumental in assisting the sale of nuclear technology to Saddam Hussein in the late 1970s. The facility at Mossul was bombed by the Israeli air force in 1981. I've no doubt that many French politicians made a packet out the deal.
   
2. I still haven't discussed the financial corruption of the Chirac family.
   
3. I post this quote in full from a 1990 election meeting.

   "Comment voulez-vous que le travailleur francais qui travaille avec sa femme et qui ensemble gagnent environ 15000 francs, et qui voit sur le palier à cote de son HLM, entasses, une famille avec un pere de famille, trois ou quatre epouses, et une vingtaine de gosses, qui gagnent 50000 francs par mois de prestations sociale sans naturellement travailler ! Si vous ajoutez à cela le bruit et l'odeur, eh bien, le travailleur francais sur le pallier il devient fou ! Et ce n'est pas etre raciste que de dire cela. Nous n'avons plus les moyens d'honorer le regroupement familial. Et il faudra enfin un jour poser le grand debat qui s'impose dans notre pays, qui est un vrai debat moral, pour savoir s'il est naturel que des etrangers puissent beneficier, au meme titre que les Francais, d'une solidarite nationale. À laquelle ils ne participent pas puisqu'ils ne payent pas d'impots."

   "How do you expect the French worker who works with his wife and between them earn about 15000 Francs per month (about £1,500 at the time), and who see their next door neighbours in their tower block stacked together, a family with a father, three or four wives, and twenty odd kids, who make 50,000 Francs a month in in state benefits without naturally actually working. If you add to this the noise and the smell, well the French worker on the landing will become insane! And it is not racist to say that. We no longer have the means to honour family reunions (which allow relatives of working immigrants to come to France). And it will be necessary to start the great debate which our country requires, which is a truly moral debate, to decide if it is natural that strangers to this country should benefit, with the same entitlement as the French, of a national solidarity (the French term for government welfare) to which they do not participate because they don't pay taxes."

This is the same politician who in the second round of last year's presidential election thought it was "shameful" for Jean-Marie Le Pen to be his second round opponent. The unofficial election slogan was "Votez l'escroc, pas le facho!" - Elect the Fraudster, not the Fascist. Regarding Saddam, could France do a swap?

¹ = I'm recording this from memory so I don't mind being corrected.

I really don't want to add anything to this statement by the families. If it doesn't bring a tear to your eye, you have no soul.

Since Doug Jones uttered the name Henry Spencer in a recent comment, I decided to ring Henry and compare notes. A very interesting 15 minutes pooling our various bits of hearsay and rumour...

Henry thinks a heat induced tireburst in the wing is one possible scenario. As we know (think Concorde) such events can be extremely violent and cause air frame damage.

For my part, I note the best place to run the hydraulic loops from the APU's is right through a section of rear fuselage and wing root where the news have been pointing to as places where the temperature rises were seen shortly before loss of communication. Neither of us knows exactly how the hydraulic lines run and how far apart their independant paths are. However the lines all have to come together at the actuators for the ailerons (or elevons since they can provide both functions I believe).

Loss of the hydraulic loops would cause instant and violent loss of control, but I would expect at least a small amount of data showing the lines popping before the control loss occurs. I am not privy to any such data.

Henry's suggestion on the tire gives us a very sudden air frame damaging event, but unless it causes immediate catastrophic structural failure, I can't see it happening without the crew knowing a few seconds in advance something was terribly wrong.

I would expect clear signatures of either in telemetry. I guess we all have to say "we don't know", and we are at a disadvantage without access to the actual telemetry and time sequence.

Which is of course what teams of engineers at NASA are most likely doing right now.

Also, Henry reports from his sources that there is uncertainty that remains of all 7 have been found yet. They announced one way and then back tracked apparently.

No one has found the significant heavy structures of the shuttle: the SSME's or major portions of the crew pressure vessel. Something the size of a compact car is said to have gone down into a reservoir but it has not been found and no one knows what it was. The fact that remains have been found tells us the pressure vessel must have been split open.

It is likely these items travelled the farthest. They could be deep into Louisiana or perhaps into the Gulf of Mexico. If the latter, there is the risk they will not be found for a very long time.

Hopefully Henry will drop by and add his tuppence (Canadian) to these random jotting about our brief brainstorm.

MORE: A 6-7ft long piece of the cabin has been found. Added to the evidence that astronaut remains have been found, I think it is safe to say the pressure vessel and contents were shredded pretty thoroughly. The good news is, more of it is likely to be found around Nacogdoches rather than further down range. There is still no word of the three SSME's.

STILL MORE The Indendant claims bits will still be turning up in ten years. Ten years hell: centuries more like. Not to mention the few odd bits that will make it into fossil layers to be dug up a hundred million years hence. We are talking about hundreds of thousands of shuttle bits spread over half of East Texas and potentially spread from California to Louisiana and the Gulf of Mexico. They'll be lucky to even find all the big parts this side of 2100!

AND MORE They have now found the nosecone

The government's 'consultation exercise' on the introduction of ID cards and which we flagged up last month officially ended yesterday.

A lot of people who hold strong views on this subject, including the Samizdata team, have made those objections known to the Home Office but I rather doubt that that will stymie the determination of HMG to press ahead with their introduction. The governments wants an ID card scheme and, if opinion surveys on the matter are to be believed, so does much of the British public. It is only a matter of time.

A trifling relief though, is that the Independent has decided to live up to its name for a change:

"Initially the state bureaucracy made showing one's card a precondition for dealing with it. Today, it is business that increases the reach of identity cards. Spaniards have long needed them to open bank accounts; now they are vital for any credit-card purchase, and bureaux de change won't serve you without them. It's also impossible to buy a mobile telephone without theDNI, for the network will log its number with that of the phone. I guess the police can see such records: they are certainly told who is checking into Spanish hotels, since Spaniards must show their DNI. The hotel passes its number straight to the police.

Employers love identity cards. They photocopy the DNIs of new staff, whose payslips then carry the number for tax purposes. This, linked to bank records, allows the authorities to track individuals all through Spain's financial system. What really amazes me is the way Spain's card is needed for such harmless activities as renting a car or flat – or getting married. Our church did not read the banns but instead asked for DNI numbers. Even the nursery school expected to see it before taking our child.

When I ask Spaniards "Why?", they seem surprised. Then I remember that at 14 they all had to visit their local police station to be fingerprinted and photographed before receiving their first DNI card. It's a rite of passage that makes young Spaniards feel grown up, yet the first time they use their card is to sit school exams. Many will argue that such obsessive bureaucracy is cultural and could never come to Britain, but I predict it will. In Spain, British giants such as Barclaycard and Vodafone already ask to see customers' identity cards and will do so here."

A salutory reminder of not just the way that compulsory ID cards turn a society into an open-air prison but also of the profound difference between Anglo-Saxon ethos and that of Continental Europe. In Britain sadly, the former has been discarded in favour of the latter. Madness, utter madness.

"Continental experience shows that identity cards will dramatically change life in Britain. It also reveals why Whitehall really wants them. The daily logging of their unique card numbers will create audit trails that lead to that Blairite dream, joined-up government! This already exists in Europe because entire populations dutifully troop along to acquire identity cards, just because they always did. I wonder how Mr Blunkett will force 50 million-odd Britons to do likewise."

All true enough but, unlike the author, I do not expect either Mr.Blunkett or any of his successors to be thwarted to any significant degree by the public. Due to the enactment of anti-money laundering laws, it is already impossible to open a bank account, transact money or buy a property in Britain without being required to produce a passport or driving licence. These impositions were introduced by stealth in the 1990's without either a word of dissent or murmer of complaint. Moving to a universal ID card of the continental variety is but another few steps, especially in a few years when the principle of a government audit trail will have become widely accepted as a part of the social landscape.

I daresay the introduction of the cards will prove to be fraught with bungling and bureaucratic horrors but if anyone expects the British people not to stand for it, then they are heading for a crashing disappointment.

Fox News today reported information given out by Shuttle program manager Ron Dittemore I find quite useful:

"He [Dittemore] added that engineering data shows a rise of 20 to 30 degrees in the left wheel well about seven minutes before the spacecraft's last radio transmission. There followed a rise of about 60 degrees over five minutes in the left hand side of the fuselage above the wing, he said.

The shuttle temperature rose the normal 15 degrees on the right side over the same period, he said. All the readings came from sensors underneath the thermal tiles, on the aluminum hull of the craft.

The temperature spikes were accompanied by an increased drag, or wind resistance, that forced Columbia's automated flight control system to make rapid adjustments maintain stability. Dittemore said the corrections were the largest ever for a shuttle re-entry, but still within the craft's capability."

If you put this together with other information, the picture starts falling together. An amateur astronomer in California saw an orange trail before the shuttle crossed the US Pacific coast. This roughly matches up in time with the sensor data and I believe what this man saw was the ionization trail of material being burned off the port wing. I am unable to state what material it was, but perhaps someone who did more than barely pass Qualitative can suggest. I can only think of Potassium (K) and Sodium (Na) of course those would be likely constituents of the tiles (I think - I have not dug into literature to refresh my memory on the tile ceramic). I out right do not remember the colour of ionized Aluminum; there are many other possibilities as well, such as hydrazine or hydraulic leaks.

But his description of "an L shape" makes me think of a tile or tiles unbonding and disintegrating into powder as they smash against the pitched up wing, and then being ionized into a burst of glowing plasma... followed by a steady erosion of surrounding tiles in the 3000F+ slipstream. A spectrogram would have been wonderful for the investigation team.

His photos may well show the beginning of the end, the initiation of an unzipping of tiles.

NOTE: The DOD sometimes uses the re-entering shuttle as a sensor test target for space defense systems. It is possible NASA is already getting such information. I have seen unclassified photos of a shuttle re-entry taken by experimental DOD optical systems. Such might exist this time as well.

I have absolutely no way of knowing. This is pure (but "educated") speculation on my part.

STILL MORE: Doug Jones from XCOR may also have seen tiles disintegrating if I am right. He posted a comment here on Saturday:

"I watched the reentry from Mojave, CA at about 0553 this morning. Although there was some light haze (clearly visible when viewing Venus and Jupiter with 10x50 binoculars while waiting for the event), I was able to see an orange dot leaving a glowing trail behind it. At about the time of closest approach (about 220 miles, I believe) the brightness flared for an instant and a small speck came away from the main body, drifting backwards relative to it. Over about ten seconds, it dimmed and went out, then perhaps thirty seconds later the shuttle flared again but no debris was visible."

The Centre for Policy Studies published a report warning that the National Health Service is "on the brink of implosion" as government plans for a record 40 billion pound cash injection risk being squandered on bureaucracy. The author of the report, Dr Maurice Slevin, is a cancer specialist at a top London teaching hospital:

"I have seen at first hand the steady decay of a great public institution ... The NHS is on the brink of implosion."

Slevin, who came to England from South Africa and now works at Barts and the London NHS Trust, said he was full of enthusiasm when he started working for the NHS 24 years ago. But today it was clear that the quality of care delivered in Britain was far below that of other western countries. He warned that without major reforms, the 40 billion pound promised for the NHS over the next five years would "simply disappear into deeper and deeper layers of bureaucracy, with more and more monitoring of more and more targets."

"Waste is endemic. The Department of Health itself admits that up to a fifth of the NHS budget is lost through waste, fraud and inefficiency."

So it's not more money that needs to be thrown at the public services as some community minded people would have us believe. The NHS is a strange institution, rooted in the meta-context of the collective effort the British nation experienced during the WWII and resisting any rational discourse by both the politicians and the public. Horror stories of patients suffering at the hands of NHS are part of regular reporting routine and yet, it still seems to be a political suicide to talk about real modernisation and de-nationalisation of the health care system.

Public services, being the most direct way for politicians of bribing the public into voting for them, have always been the most sensitive political issue. I have this horrible vision of the entire GDP disappearing into the NHS blackhole before the British public acknowledges the failure of the NHS as a system of health care provision and confronts the gruesome reality of public services.

Hear a speech declaring a holy war and, I assure you, your ears should catch the clink of evil's scales and the dragging of its monstrous tail over the purity of the language.
- Dr Cruces, head tutor of the Guild of Assassins in Pyramids by Terry Pratchett

And now for something really different... those of you interested in the battle of musicians against the RIAA may be aware of the good fight songstress Janis Ian has been carrying out. She's fired off another broadside in the LA Times.

Janis is giving the RIAA fits because she is exposing the Big Lie: that RIAA has any interest whatever in the welfare of the average artist. Anyone who has worked in the lower echolons of music knows what sleazy bastards they are. If you complain, people assume it's just "sour grapes" because you are small fry. But Janis and other artists like her are a very different matter. They've seen it all from the top and have come out of the closet to tell us it isn't any different there either.

The Sony's and Times Warners of the world are simply out to rob the artist and the consumer blind. They cook the books, they lie, they cheat... and as Glenn Reynolds has often said: "They may be vulnerable to a RICO."

I look forward to the day it happens.

Oh, yeah... go visit her website and buy something. The lady has to make a living if she's going to keep on fighting for Truth, Justice and all.

Peggy Noonan hit the right tone. I think she understands the dream.

And Buzz... I did to:

"Buzz Aldrin captured it this morning. He tried to read a poem about astronauts on television. He read these words: "As they passed from us to glory, riding fire in the sky." And tough old Buzz, steely-eyed rocket man and veteran of the moon, began to weep.

He was not alone."

The Washington Post reports that remains of all seven crew members have been found.

This will make it easier on the families. I hope they all get a missing man flyover.

I've now seen more (but still sketchy) details on the telemetry timeline in the port wing. There is enough there for me to suggest another possible scenario.

The first problem detected was a temperature rise in the port hydraulics. All the flight surfaces on the shuttle are controlled by hydraulics. Pressure is supplied by the APU's; control is supplied by actuators controlled by the shuttle computers (GPC's). There are 5 GPC's. If I remember the architecture correctly, each controls a seperate hydraulic loop. If a GPC fails and tries to ram an aileron full down, the other 4 override it. This is not handled in electronics, it is handled in the hydraulics themselves. The pressure from 4 actuators pushed by hydraulics one way over rides the one going the other way. So long as no more than two GPC's fail unsafe, control is still possible.

Let's posit a heat induced hydraulic failure in the port wing. The temperature rise is a common mode failure which overrides the redundancy. I do not know if they have any additional failsafe to return and lock the position of the aileron at a neutral position. However even if they did we can see a potential problem. The shuttle was in the second of two banks in an S curve the shuttle follows for bleeding off energy. Just at the time communication was lost. If the shuttle has just been commanded to roll and lost all hydraulics when put under the pressure by the actuators, we have the shuttle going into a roll that will go faster and faster. It seems likely (to me) we'd lose the aileron very quickly, followed by breakup within seconds.

Even on level flight, I could imagine serious problems from complete loss of use of control surfaces on the port side. I doubt the fly by wire system could deal with something that extreme. I doubt you can fly a brick that way. Period.

CORRECTION: After chatting with another knowledgeable friend and doing a bit of checking I found I was in error about the number of loops. There were 4 loops in the Enterprise drop test article; they apparently cut this down to three independant loops for the first flying article.

THIS is a tragedy, too. What makes the Columbia's loss more striking than the deaths of train passengers is that space exploration is forward-looking, not just part of ordinary life, and such a loss is a setback to something important, and noble. It's not that astronauts' lives are worth more than those of anyone else; it's what they do, and what it stands for.

- Glenn Reynolds yesterday

Richard Madeley & Judy Finnigan, a well known pair of daytime television presenters on UK Channel 4, are the epitome of Middle England sensibilities, not to mention falling hook line and sinker for whatever PR hype is trawled in front of them. When they saw the music video for All The Things She Said by the teenage Russian lesbian couple called TATU, they were so shocked that they are demanding not just a boycott but that the TATU single be banned.

So yet again we here are told by the self-appointed guardians of 'morality' that things which they find distasteful or threatening should be suppressed by force of law. I can almost hear Ivan Shapovalov, TATU's creator and promoter, chuckling as these idiots take the bait and provide his winsome couple with a whirlwind of free publicity.

Disturbing to some, it seems!

Well given that TATU's single looks like topping the UK charts, I guess not all that many people agree with these statist prigs.

For those of you who are not upset by lesbian schoolgirls in really short skirts singing infectiously catchy tunes, check out their live gig at the 2002 MTV Europe Music Awards (in English) or their rather splendid little OTT video in Russian (fast connection recommended for both links).

TATU singer Julia signs petition to ban Richard & Judy

I've noted a few interesting items as I've read through coverage this AM.

1. My first sighting of the media's second stage reporting: when they start finger pointing and looking for a "whistleblower" or a "smoking gun". Jackals need a carcass, and they will find one.
2. I was right about some debris making it into the Gulf of Mexico. Coast Guard cutters have been dispatched to search for locations where debris is supposed to have come down off shore.
3. There is an unconfirmed report of something coming off over California and someone suggested it might have been tiles. I'm a bit skeptical a tile would cause a trail visible at a distance of 70 miles or so. Meteor trails come from dust particles, but they are traveling many times faster.
4. The breakup occurred near the point of maximum temperature. It's hard to imagine a worse time for it. Or perhaps a more likely one for the top scenario.
5. O'Keefe is immediately putting the investigation into an external investigation team's hands, which is a wise move. During the days after the Challenger, some of the sleazier denizens of Capitol Hill tried to use it for political advantage. In particular I seem to remember Senator Fritz Hollings (D, Disney and sometimes NC) as one who particularly tried to use the 7 deaths to gain media attention for his own political ends.

I think I will be calling it a night very soon as it has now passed 3am here in Belfast and I am starting to hear my mattress' siren call; "come to me".

ONE MORE THING: If you can't sleep and need reading material, you might find it interesting to relive the past. I believe all the discussions about the Challenger accident will be found in this 2.5 megabyte tar.gz file. Right click and download, Look for January 28th, 1986 and start reading from there.

You might even recognize a few names.

Fox News has a number of anecdotes from people who have reported on debris. The report includes some knowledge on the effects of spaceflight disasters I would rather have lived out my life without knowing.