Category American Values

News on the march

Pat Ryan 3 Comments

Tidying up the files and hoping no one has noticed the “funny” little comments at the top of the page while I find out where they’re coming from:

I am still annoyed at the decision announced last month by the Obama Administration not to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other alleged September 11 attack plotters in civilian court…actually, “shameful” is the word that first came to mind.  It caved in to bullying and fear-mongering from those who don’t really trust the justice system and want a guarantee of a conviction, which they believe they get from a military tribunal instead of a dozen New Yorkers off the street (I refer you to a prior discussion to the issue last year).   On the other hand, Osama bin Laden didn’t get a public trial, either…

Good news and bad from our Texas Legislature.  The state senator who took heat for her plan to railroad accused sex offenders by changing the rules of evidence in their trials had the temerity to defend her position in the paper by claiming her plan actually protects the rights of the accused!  On the other hand, the bogus statistical machination that the state education agency has been using to falsely pump up the annual student assessment test results is on its way out.

In another development on the fungible facts front, the Arizona senator who intentionally misspoke on the Senate floor about the use of funds by Planned Parenthood, and who had his press secretary try to explain it all away by assuring reporters that those words were “not intended to be a factual statement,” has had the Congressional Record edited so that he’s not lying misspeaking anymore.  Because members of Congress have granted themselves the “privilege” to do things like that.

Some days you think you have a pretty good handle on things and the world is spinning in greased grooves…and then you’ve got to figure out how to reconcile that world with one in which an Iranian government power struggle in the 21st century has led to arrests on charges of sorcery, and where the Chinese have outlawed time travel in works of fiction.  If they’re against mythical stories, why do they keep calling their country a republic?

The war is not over

Pat Ryan 7 Comments

Surprise.  My first and strongest reaction was surprise when I saw on TV last night that Osama bin Laden had been killed by U.S. forces in Pakistan: after all this time—almost ten years since the September 11 attacks—I was surprised that the leader of Al Qaeda had been caught and disposed of.  Pleased at the news, yes, but a little startled: oh yeah, that’s still going on.

It’s not that I wasn’t confident that the American military and intelligence machine could do it, but like many (if not most) Americans I don’t give much regular or serious thought to the pursuit of terrorists, and that’s a shame because there are still thousands of American soldiers, sailors and Marines deployed on the other side of the world doing exactly that every single day and night.  Finding Bin Laden and defeating Al Qaeda was the reason we went to war in Afghanistan in the first place, remember?  But apart from changes in airport security, most Americans aren’t still impacted in their daily lives.  Plenty of people are—those troops, military families, survivors of victims of terrorism—but most of us are not.

Although we could be any time now: the experts on these terrorists expect the killing of Bin Laden to spark new attacks on the U.S. or on American targets around the world out of vengeance, and our government has raised the alert level at military bases and issued travel advisories for Americans around the world.  That makes sense: crazy religious zealots aren’t likely to just shrug off the death of their inspirational leader at the hands of the Great Satan and go on about their misdirected lives.  We shall see what happens.

Meanwhile, I’m not feeling the euphoria and glee I’m seeing in the video of the crowds in Lower Manhattan and outside the White House and elsewhere.  Punishing Bin Laden—with extreme prejudice—can’t help but be a good thing, but it’s not a happy ending, or even an ending at all, like VE Day or the surrender at Appomattox.  President Obama was right when he said “Today we are reminded that as a nation there’s nothing we can’t do when we put our shoulders to the wheel, when we remember the sense of unity that defines us as Americans.”  But so was Secretary of State Hillary Clinton: “Even as we mark this milestone, we should not forget that the battle to stop Al Qaeda and its syndicate of terror will not end with the death of Bin Laden.”

Or maybe ever.  And as people with short attention spans, who usually demonstrate a severe lack of patience for all but the quick and simple answer to every question, we’d do ourselves a favor by being realistic about what this news means for our future.  We won a battle, but the war goes on.

Windsor not

Pat Ryan 5 Comments

Look, since I’m kind of on a cranky roll anyway (see two most recent posts, below), here are a few unkind words about Americans’ obsession with tomorrow’s royal wedding.

The one in England…you heard about it, right?

God, who around here hasn’t!?  Honestly, have you thought about what has brainwashed American TV networks—hell, local stations even—into thinking that we care enough about this spectacle to justify their overkill?  Well I have, and the answer is: nothing.  They don’t really care whether we care or not about some royal wedding; it’s just an event—one completely absent any real significance (except for the participants and their families, I assume)—that they can turn into “An Event!” that will attract a lot of eyeballs, which is what they need to sell overpriced advertising.  Have storyline, will hype.

And even at that I wouldn’t be bothered enough to complain, except for one thing.  I have no qualms about a TV company that promotes and broadcasts an event with the intention of making a boatload of money; that’s what they do, whether it’s the Super Bowl or “American Idol” or the last episode of “M*A*S*H.”  But I have significant-sized qualms when they prostitute any credibility they may still enjoy by dressing up this sales opportunity as coverage of serious news when it is without a doubt nothing of the sort, and when we let them get away with it.  By “we” I mean the Great Unseen Unwashed American Tee Wee Viewing Audience, and by “let them get away with it” I mean act like we don’t know or care that they’re blowing sunshine up our collective skirt.

Oh, here’s some good news: television ratings indicate interest in this pseudonews is less than expected…I hope that carries over into tomorrow, too: schadenfreude is best served with tea and biscuits.

And on a related subject: this keen interest from Americans toward a royal wedding seems a bit disloyal, inasmuch as we fought a whole war and everything to make the point that we don’t much care for fancy pants nobles and royalty because "all men are created equal."  So what’s up with that?

The gentleman from Pearland yields…

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…for some great insight on yesterday’s topic.  First, Wayne Hale, a former NASA flight director and, among other things, a one-time manager of America’s Space Shuttle Program (the big boss!), who has retired from government service, is also a wonderful writer.  And he has a great post today on why Houston didn’t get a space shuttle—because Houston takes having the space program here for granted, and assumed it was in the bag.

…with the level of interest that our citizens and leaders have in JSC, I soon expect to see that facility in the hands of a different federal agency.  Soon the National Park Service will be leading tours through the historic – and empty – halls of the Johnson Space Center National Historic Site.

I have a suspicion Wayne is trying to stir the troops to action; good for Wayne.

Those same troops got a different message today from Kyle Herring, a NASA public affairs officer for more than 20 years.  He sent along a reminder that not having a shuttle come to live in Houston shouldn’t be the end of our love affair with the program.

These space shuttles will have ended their flying careers, but not their inspirational ones. That career will live on forever in places where so many people will see what we have lived for much of our adult lives and our careers. We now can allow those who aren’t really sure what we did to see what miracles of spaceflight the space shuttle orbiters really are.

(snip)

As we travel around the country in a year, two years, five, 10, 20, our paths will take us to these museums.Discovery on SLF We’ll pass through the doors of a hangar, or round the corner of a cavernous hall and suddenly look up and see Enterprise, Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavour representing our work, our commitment, our dedication. Our forearms will sprout bumps knowing that these spaceships are there because we protected them through years of flight in an environment not friendly to Earth-built machines.

(snip)

…when we are standing in one of the four locations each orbiter finds home, we can watch the visitors stand in awe of these remarkable spacecraft and tell them about the Space Shuttle Program. We can tell them about what it meant to support such a great vehicle. We can spread the meaning of space – and the space shuttle in particular – to them.

April 12

Pat Ryan 1 Comment

1633, Galileo convicted of heresy; 1777, Henry Clay born; 1861, America’s Civil War began; 1878, Boss Tweed died; 1947, David Letterman born; 1954, Bill Haley and the Comets recorded “Rock Around the Clock”; 1961, Douglas MacArthur declined an invitation to become baseball commissioner.  Oh yeah, and a man flew in space.

For the first time.  Ever. Gagarin

I’ve never felt the significance of that.  I understand the significance, but I can’t feel just how earthshaking that must have been to anyone who was more than, let’s say, 20, at the time: people old enough to have an understanding of how things are, who lived in a world where people didn’t leave the planet except in flights of fancy.

Fifty years ago I was four years old, the oldest of three kids living in Birmingham, Alabama.   I knew nothing about Yuri Gagarin or the Soviet Union, or the Redstone Arsenal just 50 miles away in Huntsville, where Wernher von Braun and his team were developing the heavy lift rocket that would make the moon landing possible.  (You had three TV stations to choose from (not counting educational television), if you were lucky, telephones had dials and many lived in booths, cars as well as fish had fins, the prestigious post-season college basketball tournament was the NIT, and there were only 16 big league baseball teams.)

Today I’m 50 years older; I live outside of Houston, and I work in the American space program, for the public affairs office at the Johnson Space Center.  Today I interviewed the astronaut who will command the last flight of the space shuttle, which is planned for this summer.   Just a regular work day.

If I can’t imagine the amazement that people felt 50 years ago, can I imagine what the world would be like if we had never left the planet, even for brief periods?  Would we have had any incentive to create semiconductors (and then faster semiconductors), to miniaturize computers, to put geostationary satellites in orbit?  Would we still have put a powerful telescope in orbit that would revolutionize astronomy, or have figured out a way to fix it once it got there?  Would Gene Roddenberry and George Lucas still have been inspired to create other worlds that in some ways have come true in ours?  Would the Colt .45s still be in the National League?

1965, first National League game at the Astrodome (Phillies 2, Astros 0; oh well).  Less than two months later Houston became the Mission Control Center for U.S. manned spaceflight on Gemini 4, the flight that featured the first American spacewalk.  Then we went to the moon—for that, I was old enough to feel the amazement.  Then we stopped going to the moon, or anywhere else in space.

1981, first space shuttle flight.  It was amazing to watch that launch—it was so much different than other rockets we’d seen—and I remember being very skeptical about that thing making a soft landing when it came down.  Then it started pulling off missions that the Mercury 7 only ever dreamed about: retrieving and repairing satellites, supporting all kinds of advanced and (to the layman) esoteric science research, staying in space for weeks at a time—weeks, I tell you!  Then docking to a Russian space station, then building one of our very own in a successful partnership with most of the Western world.  Now that’s amazing!

2011: the 50th anniversary of Gagarin’s flight, the 30th anniversary of the first shuttle mission, and NASA announces where Enterprise, Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavour will spend their retirement.

April 12, 2061: Boy, I wish I knew…