The chief forces which hold a community together and cause it to constitute one State are three, common nationality, common religion, and common interest. John
This (bureaucracy) is Jerry Pournelles “Iron Law” at work (full description can be found here https://jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/iron.html) but in total it states Pournelle’s Iron Law of
It is my persuasion, that the liberties of Englishmen, being founded upon the general consent of all, must remain upon that basis, or must altogether cease to have any existence. We cannot confine liberty in this country to one class of men: we cannot erect here a senate of Venice, by which a small part of the community is enabled to lord it over the majority; we cannot in this land, and at this time make liberty the inheritance of a caste.
You know all this Scott Pelley comedy got me thinking. What if 60 Minutes became a real honest to goodness investigative reporting show? You know, like it’s claimed to be. Watching the legacy media reporting on Pelley was hilarious because they all used exactly the same wording to describe just how venerable 60 Minutes is; “the gold standard of journalism,” “unbiased and non-partisan,” “acclaimed by both political parties.” Of course, if anyone objective was within hearing of these claims, the eye-rolling was epic.
But imagine it for a moment. What if 60 Minutes did an expose about Somalians in Minnesota running daycare scams to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars? Or suppose they did an undercover investigation to find out which NGOs provide money, equipment and legal aid to Antifa? Then they would really be doing something useful. Even I would watch things like that. Or could you imagine a detailed investigation into Gavin Newsom’s spending on high-speed rail and other boondoggles. Or how about someone doing an audit on the “massaging” of the data used for the global warming studies?
Well, anyway, I don’t actually expect this level of honesty from legacy media but even if all they do is take a more balanced approach to interviewing political figures it would be a revelation. Now the question remains whether a more even-handed approach to reporting would increase the market share for CBS. Well, in my opinion, yes! I used to watch 60 Minutes back in the ancient days before all of journalism became a leftist monolith. Let’s say 1985 as a time when some vestigial fairness could still be found in the media. If Bari Weiss succeeds in convincing the Right that she is willing to give respect to both sides of the country I think she can increase the audience by more than just a few percentage points. And just as importantly if other networks see something like that it will make an impression.
Okay, that’s enough happy-happy talk. We haven’t seen anything substantive yet. Maybe all of this is just a way for Sky Dance to eliminate a lot of high-priced employees from their payroll. I’m sure Scott Pelley was making eight figures and since they fired him for cause they don’t have to pay off his contract (as long as his lawyers don’t win in court). But potentially this could be another case of the economics of angering fifty percent of the country leading to the collapse of another corporate dinosaur. Just as Hollywood can’t both fight off new entertainment technology and also alienate more than half its audience, we may be seeing the breaking point for this crooked industry. And isn’t it just poetic justice that it’s happening under the Trump administration. Tonight, I saw a clip where a reporter asked Trump about Pelley and he said, “I think Scott Pelley’s got his own problems, he’s terrible. Look, Scott Pelley’s a stiff and he’s afraid, and he’s part of this, you know, gang of crooked, stupid people that don’t care about our country.” Well, I think that sums things up admirably. Hopefully from here it will get even funnier.
Government will always be conducted for the benefit of those who govern. If the few alone govern, the interests of the few only will be provided for; if the people themselves have a share in the government, the interests of the many will be consulted.
First Stephen Colbert and now Scott Pelley? Has the whole of CBS gone topsy turvy? The insufferable Pelley has been fired for cause from 60 Minutes after verbally assaulting his new boss (Executive Producer Nick Bilton) and the editor-in-chief of CBS News (Bari Weiss) at Bilton’s first staff meeting after taking over the news show. During the meeting Pelley said to Bilton, “What qualifies you to be in this position? … You have slender qualifications for this job.” He also accused Weiss of “murdering” 60 Minutes.
And then a day later he got the termination letter from Bilton, “Yesterday, you hijacked my first meeting with staff to disparage me, my qualifications, and my intentions with remarkable incivility and contempt,” He described Pelley’s behavior in the meeting as a “performative display of hostility — enacted in front of the staff. … Your antipathy to the future of the show has come through loud and clear. And I have heard you.”
Pelley has been making accusations that Weiss ordered him “to inject falsehoods and bias into a politically sensitive story” and “to include assertions that are unverified.” He stated that “Incompetence and unprofessionalism in the new management have wreaked havoc.”
Alright, suppose Pelley was my favorite journalist. Would I then think he was right to say those things to his new boss? Of course not! Anyone who works for a large corporation knows that you don’t call out your boss and especially not at a staff meeting and you definitely don’t tell him he’s unqualified for the job. You don’t do it even if he is unqualified for the job. You can try to make your point of view known in a respectful and convincing way or you can keep quiet and send your resume out to the headhunters right after the meeting. But calling your new boss and his boss idiots or crooks is a very, very bad strategy. It will not only get you fired, it will get you black-balled in your industry. I guess Pelley thought he was bullet proof. I guess he wasn’t. Bye Scott.
So, what does all this mean? It sounds to me that Bari Weiss is making a decent attempt to turn CBS News into a news organization again instead of a propaganda machine for the Democrat party and the Left in general. I’ve got to say I’m stunned! What next? Will Donald Trump get an honest to goodness interview without the usual “Mr. President, are you still beating your wife?” question?
Well, even if nothing more gets done this is a spectacular result. Personally, I think they’ve been hoping to trigger Pelley into something like this because ending his contract will save them many millions of dollars and their bloated budgets are probably the real focus of Sky Dance and their efforts to make Paramount profitable. Well, whatever the real reason my hope is it continues and accelerates. There is no shortage of insufferable journalists at CBS and firing another dozen or two can only make life in these here United States that much better.
“Project Hail Mary” is an sf novel by Andy Weir. It’s currently finishing off a theater run as a motion picture made by Amazon (MGM). And in fact, this is Weir’s second book to be turned into a motion picture (the first one was “The Martian”).
Just to start with the most important question, I think this is an excellent book.
(Spoiler Alert – Skip down to last paragraph to avoid spoilers and read recommendation)
My review will have spoilers but I think I’ll be cagey about some of the plot elements because they’re pretty important to the way the story unfolds for the reader and I think they shouldn’t be sacrificed for the sake of my plot synopsis.
The book’s protagonist is Ryland Grace; a biology PhD who now teaches Middle School science because a paper he wrote about the possibility of extraterrestrial life in the absence of water was severely criticized. As the story unfolds an autocratic European Space Agency administrator named Eva Stratta whose been given almost unlimited authority commandeers Ryland into a multinational science and engineering project that is studying a mysterious non-terrestrial organism that is absorbing an enormous amount of energy from the sun and threatens to throw the Earth into a cataclysmic ice age.
Ryland discovers that the lifeform (which he names astrophage) has a life cycle which sees it looping around between basking close to the sun in order to store up enormous energy traveling to Venus, reproducing in the atmosphere of Venus and then returning to the neighborhood of the sun. And it travels back and forth in this cycle at speeds approaching c (the speed of light). And the explanation for this capability is that astrophage can convert energy into matter and matter into energy. There’s some hand-waving about neutrino production creating matter/anti-matter annihilation but of course there’s nothing that makes any sense. Anyway, the astrophage is increasing its numbers asymptotically and within thirty years Earth will freeze and mankind will disappear.
And it is discovered that all of the stars in our neighborhood are also dimming because of astrophage. All except one Tau Ceti. So, a star ship will be built by the combined technical skills of humanity and staffed with a crew of three including a scientist trained on the current knowledge about astrophage and hopefully they will discover why Tau Ceti is immune to the dimming and use this to find a cure for our solar system. And the star ship is powered using astrophage as fuel. Well, actually the light that the astrophage produce for motion is the propellant pushing the ship through space. Unfortunately, in the short window they have to create the ship and breed the enormous amount of astrophage needed, they cannot make enough for a round trip. This is a suicide mission (thus the name “hail Mary”).
And in order to keep the crew from killing each other in the tight confines of the ship for four (relativistically speaking) years, they are in a coma state. When the ship reaches Tau Ceti, Ryland is awakened and doesn’t remember who he is or where he is or why. He discovers that aside from robotic presences he is the only living human aboard. His two crewmates have long ago died during their coma states.
Gradually Ryland’s memory returns and he realizes that he must carry out the mission unassisted by the deceased pilot and engineer. Slightly later on he realizes that another star ship is in his neighborhood and he discovers that the inhabitants of another local star system (40 Eridani) have also sent a mission to Tau Ceti to solve the problem of astrophage. The alien is a sort of five-legged giant crab with an outer shell of metallic minerals. His atmosphere is ammonia at twenty-nine atmospheres and 200°C and so Ryland cannot go into his ship but must allow the alien to come to the Hail Mary in a protective suit.
The remainder of the book is a journal of Ryland and Rocky (the name he gives the Eridian engineer who is the only surviving member of the 40 Eridani mission) learning how to understand each other and cooperate to combine their highly complementary skill sets to solve what should be an impossible problem; translating the resistance of the Tau Ceti system to astrophage into a practical solution for Earth’s sun and 40 Eridani. And after many setbacks and several acts of selfless friendship by both partners they overcome the challenges and solve the problems and save Earth and Erid (Ryland’s name for Rocky’s home world). Now Rocky’s ship has an enormous surplus of astrophage and he is able to provide Ryland with enough fuel for a return trip to Earth. But after they separate for their voyages home Ryland discovers that a flaw in a containment tank will mean that Rocky’s ship will be out of fuel and doomed. Ryland reverses course and rescues Rocky and returns him to Erid in the Hail Mary and must therefore abandon his own return to Earth. He is able to send the solution to Earth’s problem (another single cell lifeform that Ryland dubs Taumoeba that eats astrophage and can be inoculated into the atmosphere of Venus) in four robot ships that will return to Earth on their own. In the last scene of the book Ryland is living in a special enclosure on Erid that protects him from the atmosphere, temperature and pressure conditions that would kill him instantly. But he has his friend Rocky around to keep him company and he has returned to his former occupation as a school teacher to Eridian children.
Okay. This guy Weir doesn’t kid around when it comes to detailed scientific descriptions. He’s got two different artificial gravity mechanisms (centrifuge and continuous acceleration/deceleration travel) and he describes their successful and unsuccessful usage in the story. He goes into gory detail to show how his astrophage can be used in a stellar drive. He goes into gory detail to describe his efforts to get Taumoeba to “evolve” into a population that will survive the atmospheres containing nitrogen on Venus and the planet near 40 Eridani. He goes into gory detail to discuss his efforts to isolate and remediate the contamination of his fuel by Taumoeba. This guy love technobabble. But I guess most people reading science fiction love technobabble too so it’s a forgivable sin. The other thing I notice is that Weir writes characters that correspond to millennials. They’re much more touchy-feely and prone to virtue signal than I care for. In other words, he’s writing for a modern audience, not a caveman like me. In fact, even though she’s very much a girl-boss, the character I most closely relate to was the autocratic administrator, Eva Stratta. My verdict is this is a very inventive and entertaining science fiction story and well worth the reader’s time. I highly recommend it.
