[Farenheit 9/11]

Is it Stan Lee that's an Objectivist?

[Farenheit 9/11]

Moore was a third-generation auto-plant worker until he quit that gig for "broader" horizons. What can one gather from a family that spent two entire generations working at an auto-plant--where if one loses focus, the repetitive nature of the job can easily make it a mindless affair with little hope for promotion--except that the family is unwilling to pursue the value of wealth? He is a man that refuses to trim down from a reported 320lbs--what can one gather except that he is unwilling to pursue the value of health? Essentially, Michael Moore is unwilling to achieve the value of self-esteem. The unwillingness to achieve self-esteem comes from the unwillingness to value reason, thus the unwillingness to practice the basic virtue of rationality, where all the other virtues come from.

All too often the combination of low self-esteem and unreason leads to the dark, subhuman emotion of envy. Envy is the hatred of the good for being the good, or the hatred of those who achieve the values one is unwilling to pursue. With Moore, his hatred of man is two-fold: primarily he hates any man with the ability to use his mind to acquire fantastic wealth (fanned by the closure of the GM plant--where his dad and granddad worked--by wealthy CEOs) and to a lesser extent he hates the ability of anyone who wishes to look at themselves in the mirror with pride (fanned by his extreme grotesqueness). This hatred of the good can only breed the advocacy of altruism (since the advocacy of altruism is equivalent to the advocacy of the destruction of values).

So long as he keeps collecting souls, he'll continue with his slanderous tactics. His hatred for Bush is merely a wrinkle of his dark, evil soul. Moore needs to be exposed ideologically, and that means asserting rational egoism as the only good, indeed the only practical, system of ethics.

[Seizure Of Property Rights]

King County, Oregon officials are considering passing a law that will prohibit private land owners from using 65% percent of their land in order to preserve "natural vegetation." Read the Fox News article here.

In terms of activism, what can one do to directly deter things like this from being successful? Is there anyone in this forum that lives in county?

[4 Gmail Invitations]

If there are any gmail invites left, I'd like one.

As for contributions, hands down David has helped me out more than I've helped him out. After looking through the site however, here are some minor thoughts:

-Update the images that show up during navigation such as Home>Essays>Philosophy Essays so that the overall integration of the site is better.

-For people that might be overwhelmed by the information handled on your site, have a sort of "site navigation" page that explains each feature.

-Not sure if you want better visual integration between the forum and the main page, but maybe think about using a spin-off of your main header at objectivismonline.net in your forum as well as match the colors up more closely.

-Not sure if this would be necessary but have you thought about a link under "About" (or an top-level link) along the lines of "Common misconceptions about ..." and you can put objectivism, selfishness, capitalism etc.

-Have you thought about getting your hands on the domain oo.net along with your current one?

-Is it just my rank or does this forum not have the "email me when someone posts a reply" option?

That's all I can think of right now, superb job so far nevertheless.

[The first private spaceship to go into space!]

The specific wing configuration Rutan used to achieve a shuttlecock reentry is new and unique, but not revolutionary, and the main idea behind it has been around since the coming of age of Aerodynamics (back in 19th century)--namely that lots of drag slows down traveling objects. As for application toward reentry, high-drag, shuttlecock reentry vehicles have been around since the 60's. Also, moving surfaces, as well as the capability to make folding wings have been around since at least the mid 70's, there's just never been a need for folding wings in horizontal flight. Furthermore, this particular shuttlecock technique is feasible only for sub-orbital vehicles, and I claim that these will not spur the creation of space tourism among wealthy, space-savvy individuals (I don't think I made that clear in my article, but I'll say it here: as the saying goes, one man's trash is another man's treasure).

The best way of slowing down a formerly orbiting, now reentering, spacecraft has been known since the 60's: slow it down at as high an altitude as possible using as high a drag configuration as possible, and then shuttlecock it (the term shuttlecock is actually where the space shuttle got its name). Initially, early designs for spaceflight vehicles were very sleek and pointed--they actually thought low-drag configurations were best for spaceflight since back then planes that traveled at high speeds were avoiding what's called wave-drag in order to reach those speeds. They fortunately realized later on that the closer a shock wave is to a surface, the more heat it transfers to that surface. Thus, they developed the revolutionary "blunt-body" design, which moves the shock wave as far off the surface as possible, creating an extremely high-drag configuration that dumps most of the heat onto air instead of craft. The speeds at reentry from an orbiting object are so high that the bow shock that is formed highly conforms to the ship's body. Because of this, engineers were forced to discover a vehicle shape that would move the shock wave away from the vehicle surface.

With SpaceShipOne, the speeds are not high enough that strong shocks are created. Therefore, they don't need the breakthrough understanding that a strong shock near a surface creates high heating, and they also don't need the revolutionary understanding of blunt-bodies. Still, SpaceShipOne is looking to slow down, and so even though theirs is a slightly different problem than with the orbiter or capsule, the same concepts of high drag at high altitude still apply. Rutan has created a very nice, simple and efficient way of achieving this high drag, shuttlecock configuration at high altitudes with his folding wing feather effect, but this capability and understanding is nothing new (though most rely on humans, computers or both for control, unlike Rutan's which is automatic). As an aerospace engineer, I'm really more impressed with the $20 million dollar price tag than with the folding wings that create an effect that's been understood for decades.

As for whether or not a brief glimpse of the lower limits of space is enough for spurring space tourism, let's first understand that we're talking at least $100k per seat on one of these kinds of flights. I think there are many rich dopes out there that will likely get a kick out of this, but I for one (being familiar with the history of spaceflight and knowing the value of money) think that spending that kind of dough on a sub-orbital joy-ride lasting at most a matter of minutes would be a waist. However, for even just one orbit around the Earth, I think I would be willing to pay that much.

[A nod from the left-coast]

I've been in and out of this forum since it started but never got around to joining. Steve and David are incredibly productive with this site -- cheers to you. Anyhow, I'm a graduate student in aero/astro engineering at stanford. Looking forward to making some posts. I'll take this opt. to plug my site: www.d-anconia.com.