perfidy

Sorry John, I've never had the pleasure of Ohio. Maybe Buckethead and I can swap Washington for Maine sometime? 

Rocket Jones found a nifty mapmaking utility on the magical interwebs. You can tell it what states you've been in, and it will draw a map for you. Here's where I been:

All educated folk know that the third millennium began on Jan 1, 2001. Not in 2000 as some rubes entranced with nice, round numbers believe. I would argue that the Millennium and our current, nameless decade began over nine months later, on the morning of September 11. It is convenient to divide recent history into bite sized nuggets. Ten years is a useful period of time, and we have very clear conceptions of the fifties, sixties, seventies, etc. But when exactly do they begin and end, if not on Jan 1 every ten years?

Here's how I would break it down:

• The Twenties began on November 11, 1918 and ended on October 29, 1929.
• The Thirties came to an abrupt halt on Dec 7, 1941.
• The Forties is a tough one. I am tempted to say that the decade concluded on August 14, 1945, but in the end I'll have to go with June 25, 1950.
• The Fifties took a bow on January 20, 1961.
• The Sixties died on May 4, 1970.
• The Seventies shuffled off into the sunset January 20, 1981.
• The Eighties took a powder November 9, 1989.
• And the Nineties ended on September 11, 2001, making it the longest decade in the twentieth century.

We can have the same fun with centuries - the nineteenth century lasted from 1815 to 1914. The eighteenth century began in 1702. The seventeenth century started in 1607. (This is for American history, of course.)

Not serious history, but something to idle away a few moments.

Over the last couple weeks, I've found that I've been hitting a few blogs almost everyday. The three blogs below stand out for their ability to write incisive commentary and to consistently find cool things to link to. Links to their blogs now have a permanent home over to my right, and below you'll find an example of the fine work of each:

• James of Outside the Beltway talks about Democrats returning to their roots. (I linked this earlier, as well.)
• John Hudock of Commonsense and Wonder talks about Euthanasia, and I don't think Godwin's law applies here.
• Michael Totten gives us some liberal perspective on why we went to war on Iraq

It comes to our ears that Bush is moving away from his spendthrift ways and is coming close to a total freeze on discretionary spending in the next budget. Bush will propose an increase of less than 1% for all federal programs save those for homeland security and defense. Fiscal conservatives have been savaging the president for "spending like a drunken sailor" and apparently this move is at least in some part a reaction to that criticism.

But the president will propose increasing governmentwide homeland security funding by 9.7 percent in the fiscal 2005 budget, and the military budget is expected to increase by a small amount.

"This is going to be an austere budget," White House spokesman Trent Duffy said of the budget that Mr. Bush will send to Congress on Feb. 2. The less-than-1 percent growth will be the smallest since Mr. Bush took office in 2001 — and the lowest since his father, President Bush, proposed his fiscal 1993 budget.

Conservatives are happy with the proposal, though some are dubious, myself included. Brian Riedl, a budget analyst at the Heritage Foundation, said the proposal is "definitely a good start."

"The key question is whether the White House will back up this proposal with a veto threat, because last year the president proposed a 4 percent increase and, with the passage of the omnibus spending bill, he's about to sign a 9 percent increase," he said.

If - if - the president actually follows through with this, and puts the arm on congress and even threatens a veto (he has yet to veto a bill) then this will be a very good thing. Deficits, all things being equal, are not a good thing. However, there are reasons to run them, and war and recessions being some of them. So I am not opposed - in principle - to deficits. However, the spending surge under this Republican president has been disturbing to say the least. Most of the spending increases have not been for the military or for homeland security but rather for social and other programs.

These increases, which Bush either proposed himself or did nothing to hinder combined with the recession stricken economy and the tax cuts to bring about our current deficit situation. But the light at the end of the tunnel is that the tax cuts did their work as a stimulus to the economy, which is now looks to be in the early phases of another ten year boom. If the president restrains spending, the increase in revenue through from the growth in the economy should level out the deficits as it did back in the mid nineties. But spending has to be restrained - because its for damn sure that the government can outspend the economy, and will if not watched carefully.

Hat tip to Pejman for the link.

The good folks over at Begging to Differ have put up their weekly Sunday Comics, and I recommend you check it out. Other cool things I've seen include:

• Newspaper Ads over at Rocket Jones.
• The XM8, a love letter to an assault rifle, over at Murdoc Online.
• Insults Unpunished talks about the Syria situation.
• James of OTB has a good one on national policy and partisan politics.
• Too many good posts to list over at Commonsense and Wonder. I hate those guys, I really do.
• And, as Allah Pundit said it best, "Conclusive proof from the Clark campaign that there are wrong answers to subjective questions."

Tiger, raggin' and rantin' has come up with a useful method for expanding the range of your blogging. I think I'll be giving this a try:

Let's call it Go Back Five. Pick any blog on your blogroll, open the main page, go to the fifth entry, find a link to another blog, click it, if archived page, go to main page, go to fifth entry, click on a link to another blog, do this three more times until you are lookin' at the main page of that last blog, then find somethin' on that blog to blurb about.

This could certainly give you a boost out of any blogging rut you may find yourself in. Or waste a few hours at work, at the vey least.

Ap News has an interview with Dennis Miller, in advance of his return to cable tomorrow evening at 9:00 on CNBC. There's some good stuff there, as you'd expect, but this particular bit caught my ear:

"The United States right now is simultaneously the world's most loved, hated, feared and admired nation."

"In short," he said, "we're Frank Sinatra."

Newsweek has the scoop on why Clark was sacked as NATO CinC. Apparently, he was less than forthcoming with his superiors in the Pentagon during the Kosovo campaign:

Clark ran afoul of Cohen [then Defense Secretary] and Shelton [Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff] by being less than totally forthcoming in morning conference calls during the Kosovo war in the spring of 1999. From his NATO headquarters in Brussels, Clark wanted to wage the war more aggressively, but back in the Pentagon, Cohen and Shelton were more cautious. They would give Clark instructions on, for instance, the scale of the bombing campaign. "Clark would say, 'Uh-huh, gotcha'," says NEWSWEEK's source. But then he would pick up the phone and call [British Prime Minister] Tony Blair and [Secretary of State] Madeleine [Albright]." As Clark knew full well, Blair and Albright were more hawkish than Shelton and Cohen. After talking to the State Department and NATO allies, Clark would have a different set of marching orders, says the source, who has spoken about the matter with both Cohen and Clark. "Then, about 1 o'clock, the Defense Department would hear what Clark was up to, and Cohen and Shelton would be furious."

Shelton had commented shortly after Clark entered the race that he had been fired from his position for "integrity and character issues." The article also says:

As an ambitious officer, Clark gained a reputation among his peers for telling different people what they wanted to hear, without seeming to realize that his listeners might later compare notes and accuse Clark of being two-faced.

This jibes with what my friends in the military have said about Clark. I have a feeling that this revelation won't have much impact in New Hampshire, as it is still rather vague. I don't see Clark having much chance unless he finishes at least second in the primary, otherwise he's toast. He could be aiming for VP, though it's still beyond my feeble powers of comprehension why anyone one would want the job.

While reading the news about the recent Mars landers, I ran across this false color map of the Martian surface:

The colors are keyed to altitude, with blue representing the lowest parts of the Martian surface. This is a serendipitous choice, because we can get an idea what Mars might look like should we ever decide to terraform Mars. If we managed that incredible feat, the blue areas on the map above would roughly correspond to seas on a living Mars.

Terraforming is a rather bold concept - some argue that we couldn't begin to create a new ecosystem on Mars when we don't understand the one we have right here. Others argue that it would be wrong on general principles meddle with the environment as it exists now on Mars. Others, more pragmatically, argue that it's just too hard or it will cost too much, or any of the standard objections to doing anything new. I disagree with all of those objections.

The evidence is increasingly strong that there is water ice on Mars, most likely in great quantity - both in the polar ice caps and frozen in the soil. There is also frozen carbon dioxide in the polar caps, which is a useful source of materials we'd need in a terraforming program. Most of what we would need is already present on the Martian surface, but locked away where it does nothing to support conditions suitable for life. Scientists believe that liquid water once existed on Mars, and that the atmosphere was once far thicker. If we can alter the balance on Mars, we can (hopefully) tip it toward a warmer and wetter environment.

Currently, Mars temperatures are within shouting distance of conditions on Earth - just colder. But the atmosphere is very thin, and composed primarily of carbon dioxide; and the planet is very, very dry. We can engineer changes, but the most effective means will be those that start a virtuous circle of changes, and leverage natural processes on Mars to change the climate towards something that we could live in. So, we need to make it warmer, and wetter, and increase the thickness of the atmosphere. How do we go about it? There have been many proposals, and here are some:

• Cover the Martian ice caps with a thin coating of carbon dust. The black dust will absorb heat, and help to melt the ice caps. Once the ice begins to melt, water vapor and carbon dioxide act as greenhouse gases which will reinforce the melting.
• Construct very large orbital mirrors, made of very thin reflective mylar. Using these mirors, we can increase the amount of heat and light hitting the Martian surface. By aiming them at the poles (where the sun is teh weakest already) we can melt the caps with effects similar to those described above.
• Release large quantities of CFCs and other powerful greenhouse gases into the atmosphere to increase heat retention.
• Introduce genetically engineered algae and other microbes to begin releasing oxygen and other useful gases into the Martian air. These would also form the beginning of a Martian ecosystem.
• Lob a comet or ice chunk from the rings of Saturn onto Mars. Actually, you wouldn't want a big, dinosaur killer type impact. It would be more effective to have a continuous shower of ice rocks which would deposit their loads of water, oxygen, and other volatiles directly into the atmosphere without impacting the surface.

If a terraforming project ever does start, it would likely use a combination of some or even all of these methods. The key, at the start is to induce warming. Once we warm Mars, and starting with the polar ice caps, we can begin to get Mars working for us. As the polar ice caps melt, CO2 will sublime directly into the atmosphere, increasing the density. Denser air retains heat better, which will increase the effects of whatever means we are using to melt the caps. Water vapor released into the atmosphere will further push this cycle.

As mean temperatures rise, and pressure increases, we should begin to see the effects of warming all around Mars. Subsurface ice deposits and permafrost (if they exist, but it seems likely) near the equator will begin melting, adding to the effects started at the poles. Here, larger iceteroids might be used to hit concentrations of subsurface ice, and the impact will release water vapor into the air quicker than otherwise would be possible.

At the bottom of the Valles Marinaris, the immense canyon as wide as the continental United States, air pressure will rise fastest. Here we can begin to introduce the first of the microbes that will begin to change the thickening atmosphere from largely CO2 to one more closely resembling Earth's. By introducing bacteria similar to those that once lived on Earth a billion years ago, we can get oxygen into the air. These organisms excrete oxygen as a waste product. As oxygen levels rise, these bacteria will die - because too much oxygen is poisonous to them. They will then form the food for the next wave of colonists. Algae, nitrogen fixing bacteria, lichens, whatever will survive in the thin but increasingly homelike Martian atmosphere.

While the first organisms are being introduced and tested, more mechanical processes will continue. When the Martian air is thick enough and warm enough, and saturated with sufficient oxygen, we can begin introducing life that evolved for conditions at high altitudes, extreme cold and dryness. They will push the ecology further. As the basins fill with water, creating the first seas and oceans, we can stock them with life as well. The seas of Mars will quickly become the primary driving force for thickening the atmosphere, and conditions there suitable for earthly life sooner than the cold desert of the dry land.

One thing that is most promising about the introduction of life to Mars is that beyond a certain point, we don't need to be overly concerned about what we introduce. If we get an atmosphere even a quarter as thick as Earth's, with half the oxygen, we can start introducing Earthly life. Whatever thrives will thrive, and the ecosystem will begin to develop a rude equilibrium. As the air thickens, we introduce a wide variety of other species, and again let nature take its course. The only thing we need to be careful about is making sure we don't introduce mosquitos, horseflies or ticks.

The life that survives will contribute to the process. And the lessons we learn will guide us in the later stages of terraforming. It will be an immense laboratory for the environmental sciences, and those lessons could easily be applied here on earth. Eventually, there will come a day when conditions reach "shirt sleeve" levels - when the air is thick enough and warm enough that men can walk on the surface with nothing more than winter clothing and an oxygen mask. Later, we would reach a point where the air is equivalent to high altitude areas on Earth.

Then, we can build ski resorts with hot tub equipped condos on the slopes of Olympus Mons, the highest mountain in the Solar System.

Smarter people than I have looked at the ideas behind terraforming and believe it could work. Given the resources and the will, it could be done, especially as conditions on Mars are already so close to Earth's. Terraforming say, Venus, would be much more difficult. Thinking about moving comets and building hundreds of mile wide mirrors seems incredibly hard and at the very least hideously expensive. They would be, now. But if we move into space, we will develop the skills to do these things - we'll have to. If we construct solar sailing ships, we'll learn to create large lightweight mirrors. The Martian terraforming mirrors will just be larger versions. If we go to the asteroid belt, we will learn about moving rocks in space. Moving something in space is easier than moving something on Earth, because there is no gravity, no friction to slow it down. Even the largest rocks can be moved by a constant application of even a small amount of thrust. The more we live in space, the more we will learn to do things on a huge scale. Space is big - if Europeans think Americans are bad for thinking big, they will hate our descendants who live and work in space.

Soon enough, we will have the skills do do it. And the cost may not be all that much to a civilization that lives on the scale of a solar system. The biggest objection that the project will have will come from the environmentalists, who will insist that Mars be left as it is. If life is discovered on Mars, terraforming would certainly kill it. That would be a reason not to proceed. But if Mars is a dead planet, I see no reason why we shouldn't expand not just human life, but all earthly life to another home. For insurance against accidents like the dinosaur killer if for no other reason.

Instead of a dead, dry and cold world, we could have another Earth. Beautiful as Earth is, but different, with new wonders for us to experience. Dolphins and whales could swim in Martian seas; and who knows, perhaps we can make good on the Jurassic Park idea and bring back the dinosaurs, and give them a new home on Mars. Along with Mammoths, Mastodons and sabertooth tigers.

And hey, if that ends up looking a little like Edgar Rice Burrough's Barsoom, so much the better.