Here's the link to a Wikipedia picture of UCSB.
Wednesday, September 19, 2012
Aaron Belkin and the Palm Center: "How We Won": Kindle Book traces the history of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and its ultimate repeal
Author: Aaron Belkin
Title: "How We Won: Progressive Lessons from the Repeal of ‘Don’t
Ask, Don’t Tell’"
Publication: Kindle, from The Huffington Post Media Group,
ASIN: B0005NDLMVK, 108 pages, ten chapters
Amazon link.
I was able to find this book only on Kindle; no hardcopy
seems available. I don’t know whether it
would work on the Barnes and Noble Nook device.
So I finally bought a Kindle, which up to now I had not needed. I find it a little distracting that the
Kindle needs its own wireless access; why not just download everything on the
laptop and migrate using the USB port?
Amazon lists the book as 108 pages, but they seem to be two columns per
page; one page on the Kindle is really
one column only, so the real length was 216.
The book is timely, as on Sept. 20, 2012, “we” will mark the
first anniversary of the full repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”.
Dr. Belkin is a professor of political science at San
Francisco State University, and previous was an associate professor at the
University of California, Santa Barbara and previously, the City University of
New York.
In the 1990s, Belkin headed the Center for the Study of
Sexual Minorities in the Military (CSSM), which became the Palm Center a years ago,
always hosted at the Santa Barbara campus (link).
In February 2002, shortly after my own “forced retirement”
from my final “legacy employer”, I met
Dr. Belkin at his office during a trip to California. I had sent him my own “Do Ask Do Tell: a Gay Conservative Lashes Back” book,
and in his office, effectively the CSSM office at the time, he housed a large
physical library of books on matters pertaining to the military gay ban and the
“Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” policy.
Dr. Belkin did tell me how difficult it was to get major
media outlets to take the DADT issue seriously, now that it was overwhelmed by
the more obvious issues associated with 9/11.
I do remember my conversation with him.
Let me say at the outset, I am impressed with the amount of
historical detail – of the military ban
since 1993 -- in this relatively short work.
It is a good complement to Randy Shilts’s “Conduct Unbecoming” which
stops in 1993. (But it needs to be
available in print.) . It’s important to note here that Palm Center has helped
published two other books in the interim: one is Dr. Belkin’s own "Don’t Ask,
Don’t Tell: Debating the Gay Ban in the Military" (2003, Lynne Rienner), and
Nathaniel Frank, “Unfriendly Fire: How the Gay Ban Undermines the Military and
Weakens America” (2009, St. Martins), reviewed on this blog March 11, 2009).
Of course, Belkin’s position will be that his own effort
(and that of people he hired and contacted) was crucial to the repeal. The book suggests that it would be very
difficult for a future hostile (GOP?) president and Congress to undo the repeal
and reimplement the military ban (maybe the “Old Ban” of 1981 with “asking”). However, in recent press stories, Dr. Belkin
has indeed expressed this concern (see my GLBT issues blog, Sept. 9, 2012.
Belkin starts his book by laying out what he sees as the
right arguments to attack. While progressive activists concern themselves with
fairness and equality, the productive argument is to show that the practice of
banning gays does not contribute to military effectiveness; it may be
counterproductive or even dangerous. Abstract ideas about morality are not the
issue.
Belkin does, however, quickly get on to the most conspicuous
early arguments made back in 1993, that allowing gays to serve (at least “open”
gays) violated “privacy” in the barracks where a degree of forced “homosocial”
intimacy must occur. Over time, this
argument has gotten overlaid with a more nebulous notion of “unit cohesion”, as
was explained in the 2011 HBO Film “The Strange History of ‘Don’t Ask Don’t
Tell’”, movies blog, Oct. 13, 2011). Belkin sees this argument as morphing into
a more generalized moral disapproval of homosexuality (or of homosexuals as people). Indeed, as he points to writings by Elaine
Donnelly (of the “Center for Military
Readiness”) which “warn” that acceptance of gays in the US military would tend
to promote of homosexuality in civilian society at large. (Belkin mentions Republican Senator Alan Simpson as once saying that gays [relative to procreation] weren't part of the "human family" but then changing his attitude and agreeing that the ban should be lifted.) That corresponds to my own theory (as in my
own 1997 book) that the military, because it has had the ability to conscript
men in the past (as with me, during the Vietnam era) has a lot of influence on
the moral culture of a society as whole, particularly in nebulous ideas about
duty and obligation (outside of normal parameters of choice and personal
responsibility) and how these ideas about social (familial, tribal, communal,
religious) cohesion (as an expansion of “unit cohesion”) affect those
individuals who grow up being “different”.
Belkin, for example, points out that the whole “stop-loss”
policy, practically a backdoor draft (and the “Individual Ready Reserve” clause
signed at enlistment) might have been unnecessary
during the “second Iraq War” (and post 9/11 war in Afghanistan) had all the gay
discharges not occurred. He also
discusses the security threat in the loss of linguists, which could have been a
contributing factor in failing to stop 9/11 (although Jesse Ventura has other
ideas on this matter!) I reviewed
Paramount’s film “Stop-Loss” on my movies blog March 29, 2008.
A major part of Belkin’s narrative concerns the effort of
his group to get articles written in major media sources by major columnists
and also by others with obvious expertise and stakes, like retired
military. He says this was difficult,
and he provides interesting observations on how the Associated Press, in
particular, works. (I’ve covered AP
issues on my main blog in conjunction with copyright controversies on the
Internet.) He had to “watch his step”,
since more military officers seemed to favor the ban at first, although
gradually changed their views. After
Barack Obama became president in 2009, Belkin got into disagreements with SLDN
(Servicemembers Legal Defense Network) over whether there was the political
will in Congress to support direct repeal.
Belkin supported a plan that Obama issue an Executive Order to stop
enforcement. Even the White House
expressed misgivings about the legal or constitutional logic of Belkin’s
suggestion. Belkin also disagreed with
Log Cabin Republicans over the wisdom of litigation, but in the end, LCR turned
out to be right, as the lower court’s decision effectively nullifying the law
put pressure on Congress to agree to a staged repeal.
The later part of 2010 saw initial disappointment with the
likelihood of repeal., until activists (with the help of Senator Joe Lieberman,
whose view on lifting the ban had become much more supportive over the recent
years since 9/11 and the linguists’ fiasco) came up with the idea of a
stand-alone repeal bill, during the lame duck session in December.
I personally attended the mid-day rally at the Capitol side
(near Union Station) on December 10, about when the bill was introduced. As I got off the Metro to go, right to the
rally event, I got a call from a caregiver at home (in suburb an Arlington VA)
that my own mother had suddenly gotten much worse and would not survive more
than a few hours. I stayed for the rally
(hearing Michele Benecke, who had headed up SLDN, speaking almost immediately),
and after I got home Hospice was taking her to the Hospice facility for her
final four days. She lived just long enough for a lifelong project of
mine to come to fruition., and then, at age 97, let go.
We all know of what would follow, the surveys and the “certification
process” that would finally end in formal repeal September 20. And, I have to admit, I am concerned about
what could happen if social conservatism takes control of the White House and
Congress, and then blames or scapegoats the nation’s economic ills on the
visibility and personal values of those who are different.
There’s another interesting embedded story in the book about
the late Northwestern University sociology professor Charles Moskos, who had,
along with Sam Nunn, raised the “privacy” issue in the barracks back in
1993. He says that, during most of his
activity in the past decade, Moskos cast doubt on repeal. Yet, shortly after the 9/11 attacks. Moskos
argued for restoration of the military draft (to include women), as had some
others, such as Sen. Levin of Michigan.
I got into an email conversation with Moskos then (I was living in
Minneapolis at the time), who wrote to me “Gays should get behind
conscription. Then the ban would be
lifted.”
In fact, SLDN told me, sometime later, by email, that it was
looking into the ramifications of the possible restoration of the military
draft. As I noted above, it has always
seemed to me that a combination of conscription and a ban together provides an
excuse for making gays second-class citizens in civilian life (and for denying
security clearances), which was the world in which I had grown up. But, of course, when we had a draft, the
military was actually more concerned that people would use it to get out of
military service, and it tended to look the other way during the Vietnam era on
concerns over gay soldiers. (The Navy
even at first tried to resist discharging Keith Meinhold when he outed himself,
but did so under political and public pressure.)
Moskos had, in fact, at one time paid attention to the issue
of gay students in college dorms, and argued that they should be
segregated. It was roommate issues that
catalyzed my own expulsion from William and Mary in 1961.
Belkin also notes the Veterans Administration made a goof in
1996 by calling homosexuality a mental illness in trying to deny some veterans
benefits.
I found this debate (85 minutes) from early 2012 of a debate
between Aaron Belkin and Elaine Donnelly on DADT at Maxwell Air Force Base on
YouTube.
I haven’t watched it yet – time considerations. Note that the debate takes place in Alabama.
Here's the link to a Wikipedia picture of UCSB.
Here's the link to a Wikipedia picture of UCSB.
Monday, September 17, 2012
"It's Simple": Collection of essays by Dean Hannotte, for the Paul Rosenfels Community
Author: Dean Hannotte, with Introduction by Rachel Bartlett
Title: “It’s Simple: Ordinary Common-sense Explanations for
Everything You Haven’t Figured Out Yet”
Publication:
CreateSpace Independent Publishing. ISBN-13 978-1477670767, paper, 144
pages, indexed, four parts.
Amazon link:
Dean Hannotte and Rachel Bartlett run the online presence
for the Paul Rosenfels Community, which followed (or descended from) the Ninth Street Center that
Dean and Paul Rosenfels formed in 1973 in the East Village in NYC. The “Community”
link (“Social progress through personal
growth) is here.
There is a review here on April 12, 2006 of Paul Rosenfels’s
core “dissertation”, “Homosexuality: The Psychology of the Creative Process
(1972), to which Dean appended a strong introduction to a 1986 reprinting by
the Ninth Street Center.
This book comprises about thirty-two (by my count) short
essays about everyday “perceptions” and the pieces come across as a bit like
blog posts. They would correspond more
to Chopin’s etudes than his preludes. The first “part” asks “What is life? What am I
doing here?”; the second goes on to psychology, the third to what matters in
life, and the last, to where we are going.
The very first chapter asks “what is natural?”
The overall philosophy is pragmatic (as one can judge from
the title). People make up religious or
political agendas that control others because of their own cravings for
self-aggrandizement.
What matters to the author is life and personal growth on
Earth, not who “created” us or where we may go afterward.
Toward the end, however, the chapters do get more
metaphysical. At one point, the author
discusses the progression in science from physics, to chemistry, to biology, to
social sciences, each stage less deterministic and more macroscopic than
before. I recall a lesson like this in a
middle school text when I was substitute-teaching. The larger the level, the more important free
will, individual consciousness, and psychology become.
There is a midpoint chapter that compares the difficulties of writing fiction, non-fiction (like my "Do Ask Do Tell"), textbooks, and poetry. I think that fiction is the hardest. Poetry -- you need the gift for verse (and for comedy, like that of Seth Meyers).
There is a midpoint chapter that compares the difficulties of writing fiction, non-fiction (like my "Do Ask Do Tell"), textbooks, and poetry. I think that fiction is the hardest. Poetry -- you need the gift for verse (and for comedy, like that of Seth Meyers).
The author certainly takes a skeptical view of religious
ideas of an afterlife, creation, intelligent design, and the like. There is a degree of objectivism in the
writings. Absolute equality cannot exist
in nature. Socially and politically, it
is a goal that is necessary to provide a climate stable enough for people to
explore personal growth. The author discusses two films in conjunction with
personal growth: “Sundays and Cybele (1959)”, and “Splendor and the Grass”
(1961), the second of which I saw during my lost freshman semester at William
and Mary.
On the issue of “afterlife”, I have to agree, what matters
is how well one lives here – and that takes on a certain objective reality
which can be destroyed by misfortune or by the wrongful actions of others, somewhat dependent on luck, and regardless of whether justice is done. Really, there are no "victims". I
personally think that consciousness must persist somehow (maybe time stops and
we stay in our last moment forever, so it had better be blissful) – and I don’t
think that, even given a concept like Christian Grace, we simply live forever
(with “family”) in a condo in Clive Barker’s First Dominion.
Dean has a chapter “Are gay brains different from straight
brains?” and offers the idea that sexual orientation might change the brain
physiologically – reversing the usual argument.
I would like to take this point and expand and suggest a few other possible essays – I’ll
be writing them at one time or another. But
a big problem is that it is very difficult to sequence my thoughts in any structure that would resemble a mathematical argument or proof (like in graduate school). So I'll argue "inside out".
For example, why do gay activists insist that sexual
orientation is immutable? Such
insistence hints that there is something intrinsically wrong with homosexual
attraction if it is somehow willful.
So why have, historically, many (maybe most) cultures
persecuted homosexuals for what is normally seen as private “victimless”
activity, often pursuing it more than heterosexual infidelity? Ok, “it’s simple” – religion. But that only begs more questions.
I can give a particular glimpse because of my own stance as
an only child. I will not be able to give
my parents a lineage. Many marriages
probably depend on this sort of hope for sexual interest to persist as a couple
ages together.
There’s a deeper issue, that I can come back to after going
beyond the issue of sexual orientation and look at the broader drive for
self-expression and recognition – especially for someone with my personal bent,
which seeks a psychic reward not only in discovering but sometimes in exposing “inconvenient
truths” about the conventional drives of others (which get discussed in the
book a lot). This issue looks further to
the position of those who seem “different” in society, and asks why society
sometimes goes after and bullies its outliers. That question is much broader than just why
homosexuals have been “oppressed”.
It’s easy to come up with “simple” reasons. Many people see life in terms of mastering
social combat, and see “those who are different” as suitable for
subjugation. Nature often works that
way. More relevant, many sees the “difference-people”
as threats, who can and will expose their own weaknesses.
There’s a particular aspect of this that has surfaced in the
Internet area (or era): people can draw
attention to themselves for their speech or artistry (or auteruship, perhaps)
on the Web, without necessarily being open to taking personal responsibility
for others in a conventional way, which for people like me, can involve a lot
of risk and dealing with a lot of shame (to be distinguished from guilt) after “falling
short”.
Taking responsibility for others, for someone with my
history, can be a particularly daunting task.
I have been brought up to abhor competitive failure. It seems as though “society” wanted me to
perform competitively “as a man” and when I didn’t, it tried to back down a bit
and still interest me in conventional marriage and fatherhood – because if I
remained single and visible (and didn't add personally to "social capital") I could really become a “threat”. (Society has often viewed “failures” as
expendable or as cannon fodder – look at how we handled the draft during the
Vietnam era.) There is a logical
breakdown in thinking here, somewhere.
It seems as though sometimes I am challenged to “give up” my own
expressive goals to take care of others and learn fellowship with them, when
the whole process of interacting with “them” earlier in life simply was
humiliating. All the normal protective “feelings”
for family members – connected to conventional heterosexual attraction and an
expectation that one will pass one’s lineage on to children – come to seem repulsive.
Fantasy, based on finding angelic perfection, takes its place. I'm particularly "offended" in situations where I am expected to intervene personally to make someone else seem "all right".
It seems that “society” does have a practical “vested
interest” in maintaining a culture where people will be able and inclined to
make an maintain emotional bonds that actually respond to real need and augment
the welfare of other members in an extended family, which is set up (ideally)
by married parents. People like me
refuse to show emotion (or experience it) when it is normally expected. Whole moral philosophies (particularly the “camel’s
eye” metaphor in the Gospels) grow around this sort of experience. This capacity for "aethetically realistic" love, as a moral requirement (quite possible in same-sex "polarities" context), seems to arrive as a corollary of the need to make every human being in a civilization (that is, all of "the people") "valuable". It’s easier for a lot of people to develop
emotionally in a “communal” sense when they believe everyone else has to (and when no one is allowed to depend on the crutch of upward affiliation). Totalitarian systems get set up to feed on
this need. One of Dean’s chapters, “Why
are some cultures better than others” gives some interesting history about the
connections of Paul’s family to communism.
Sunday, September 16, 2012
Time's "Global Warming" glossy scrapbook available at supermarkets, pharmacies
Recently, Time has been selling a heavily illustrated
paperback “Global Warming: The Causes, The Perils, The Solutions”, by Bryan
Walsh and other Time correspondents, in retail outlets like supermarkets. The
book has 112 pages, heavily illustrated with gloss photographs.
It does reiterate, with even more arguments, the substance
of Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth”.
Bryan starts out with a piece, “How hot does it have to get?” It analyzes the idea that we might be able to
tolerate a carbon level of 450 ppm, but warns that recent information says that
we can tip over at a much lower number. And there are some grave risks that can
materialize suddenly, such as the release of methane from permafrost. Climate change tends to affect people
unpredictably by causing extreme events, such as superstorms with floods or
extreme droughts. It tends to affect
poor people much more.
Some of the focal points include extinction of species (such
as in Madagascar) and detailed analysis of deeper fossil fuels, including oil
shale and tar sands.
The last part of the book starts with technological
solutions, which sound like piecemeal, local measures like fuel cells, electric
cars, green buildings., and solar powers.
The last page of the book is “20 things you can do”, and top among these
are carpooling, telecommuting, and living in large cities, particularly if you
have a small family. Universal use of
wind and solar panels by homeowners or buildings could not only reduce
greenhouse gasses but decentralize the grid and make it more robust. A smart grid could detect inefficiencies,
even though it would be a lot more vulnerable to hackers or terrorists. Near the
end of the book there is a sensitive essay by Bill McKibben, “Children of a Hot
Planet”.
The book casts questions of global climate re-engineering
with ideas like the (Intellectual Ventures) Mhyrvold StratoShield, which would
pump sulfur aerosol particles into the stratosphere. These could “blowback” with suddenly catastrophic
results.
Sociology would seem to have some effect on the
sustainability of our way of life (and not doing it on the backs of the Third
World, which is more vulnerable to many perils, especially drought and seal
level rise). The book is critical of population of expansion, and does not take
up right wing (“demographic winter”) arguments that richer people often are not
replacing their populations and allowing poorer populations do the job or
providing the next generations. The book does present the idea that people
need to drive much less and maybe give up car ownership, and idea that so far
has been workable only in cities with very dense public transit (like
NYC). Car sharing (like ZipCar) can
help. It presents the community of Vauban,
Germany where private carports would cost $30000 a year. There is a suggestion that people could have
to start learning the values of “intentional communities”. (ABC's story about Vauban in 2009, by Jim Sciutto, is here.)
The book also takes the position that consumers need to
know, on a “pay as you go” basis, the carbom footprint cost of every little
thing they do. Perhaps I would not be
able to rent sole-occupant cars on my own (at least non-hybrids).
Monday, September 10, 2012
"Monday Mornings": medical novel by CNN's Sanjay Gupta
Author: Sanjay Gupta, MD (Chief Medical Correspondent, CNN;
a practicing neurosurgeon in Atlanta)
Title: “Monday Mornings: A Novel"
Publication: Grand Central Publishing, 2012, ISBN
978-0-446-58385-5, hardcover, 290 pages, 48 chapters
Amazon link:
Medical schools tell incoming students that medicine (most
of all, surgery) can become a unifocal existence for young doctors for
years.
So it’s great to see that Gupta, by his early 40s, has
branched out from surgery, which he says he still practices, to medical
journalism for CNN (sometimes talking about “jungle medicine” as in Haiti) to
authoring fiction, which is tougher to do well than non-fiction, I think. Gupta has always worked as an enthusiastic
reporter for consumers, and is probably not quite so moralistic as Mehmet Oz,
Oprah Winfrey’s find in medical journalism.
There isn’t a lot of plotting here, not the “beginning,
middle and end” that English professors teach, and not quite the sensationalism
of say Robin Cook (since his 1970’s novel “Coma” was recently a repeat cable
miniseries – TV blog, Sept. 5).
Nevertheless, Gupta manages to get his doctors into trouble. One young
female resident is fired after a poor surgical result results in aggressive
litigation from the patient (and that sequence is quite well-written). Then
the doctor who fired her gets into serious trouble himself. OK, that’s plotting.
Gupta does provide a lot of medical warnings along the
way. A sore hip that doesn’t improve
might spontaneously fracture from metastatic tumor. Persistent flatulence might be a sign of advanced colon cancer. An abscessed tooth could lead to a brain
infection. (Dentists love that warning; I just came back from a visit about my own
need for extractions and implants, with no “clear choice”.) One of the most startling episodes involves
an Asian surgeon who id diagnosed with an aggressive brain tumor after
headaches, and undergoes surgery. He
then faces aggressive (if oral) chemotherapy, and wonders if his kids and wife
will accept him after he becomes as hairless as a “newborn baby” (even though
the surgery itself requires little scalp shaving, and the radiation is precise
and uneventful). From the chemo (more than from the tumor
itself) he also faces loss of cognitive ability required of his profession and
even needed interpersonally. The ability of people to sustain relationships
where they can give and receive love after a medical catastrophe has always
been a big issue with Dr. Oz (a heart surgeon), who (much more so than Gupta)
says he doesn’t like to treat seriously ill patients who are socially isolated.
And, yes, near the end of the book, one
of the major characters drops dead of a heart attack after exertion; Gupta
describes what his last conscious moments are like in excruciating detail.
The title of the book (reminding me of a 1960s song) comes from the very early Monday
morning sessions at hospitals where doctors review their mistakes. (One mistake can deep-six your career.) It must be pretty early. In 1999, my other
mother had her coronary bypass surgery start at 7 AM on a Monday; she was
aroused and showered at 5:30 AM.
I would have been interested in more details about nosocmial infection control, including issues ranging from MRSA and aggressive bacteria to the mechanics of scrubbing for surgery (and hand-washing all the time), which I think could become even more fastidious in the future.
I would have been interested in more details about nosocmial infection control, including issues ranging from MRSA and aggressive bacteria to the mechanics of scrubbing for surgery (and hand-washing all the time), which I think could become even more fastidious in the future.
The novel is set in Michigan. I like the line about counting states to Vermont.
Readers might enjoy this MSN report of a "cell phone electrocardiogram" invented by teenager Catherine Wong. I don't know how you would apply it to the body to get the 12 leads. The link is here.
Readers might enjoy this MSN report of a "cell phone electrocardiogram" invented by teenager Catherine Wong. I don't know how you would apply it to the body to get the 12 leads. The link is here.
Gupta is interviewed by “The New Doctors”:
I recall reading a non-fiction book “Five Patients”, by
Michael Crichton, (published by Knopf in 1970) – based on his experiences
treating patients at Massachusetts General.
Even then, Crichton explained how easily medical costs can get out of
control.
Monday, September 03, 2012
NASA museum in Tidewater VA offers illustrated mission reports from Apogee
My visit to the Virginia Air and Space Museum in Hampton (on
the notorious “Peninsula”) tempted me with a few picture books with vistas of
other worlds, so here goes:
In the Museum itself, there was a giveaway, a 389-page
paperback (full size) of an official NASA report by Joseph R. Chambers, “Innovation
in Flight”, from the NASA Langley Research Center, dated August, 2005.
The book is mostly technical, with one of the most curious
chapters being “Personal Air Transportation Concepts”. For the very rich?
The chapter reminds me of an apartment neighbor here in Arlington in 1990; he was in to private aviation, tried to recruit me into promoting it, and took me on one private flight to the Shenandoah Valley, from Manassas, on Labor Day 1990. Back in 1970, I had ridden with a coworker from Trenton NJ to near Harrisburg PA in a private plane, and I took one complimentary lesson, courtesy of an American Airlines promo, at Redbird Airport in Dallas in 1982.
The (privately-owned) bookstore on the premises sells the
rather pricey (about $27 a pop) Apogee
mission books. Most of the Apollo
missions have a book, and I picked up “Apollo 15” (272 pages), which documents
the July 1971 manned mission to the Moon. It seemed to be the most heavily
illustrated of all the volumes. There is
a one-side DVD (requires a computer with a ROM drive) with lots of little
movies. For some reason, the “.htm”
files would not load on my Macbook in Safari.
But the books (NASA
Mission Reports) going to the rest of the Solar System got more interesting. Most are edited by Robert Goodwin.
“Mars” (Volume 2, 2004) offers a lot of original photos from
the Red Planet. The DVD is 20-sided,
with the A-side playable on a regular player (not requiring ROM), having
interviews (of scientists like Steve Squyres) and press conferences, and two
animated simulations of the mission, each around 13 minutes, the better one
being that filmed by Cornell University (privately owned and copyrighted), the
last five minutes of which shows the rover landing in its padded chute,
opening, then driving itself around the desert landscape until it finds a
suitable rock to drill, behaving like a robotic alien. The pictures tend to make the thin Mars
atmosphere look smoggy with dust.
“Deep Space” is organized (like the Mars books) as a series
of official papers in more-or-less chronological sequence, and often cover the
same material, about the outer planets and moons, from the viewpoint at any
particular time. The knowledge of the outer planets has grown with the Pioneer
missions, to that accumulated by Galileo (launched 1989) and Cassini (launched
1997), which sent a probe to the surface of Titan in January 2005, which it
says landed with a “splat”. Galileo
(which would send a probe into Jupiter) and Cassini were both in the Jovian “metropolitan
area” in 2000.
There are numerous speculative descriptions and diagrams
(sometimes repeated) of the internal structures of Jupiter and Saturn. Some people thought that the Pioneer findings
suggested that Jupiter was entirely fluid.
Most descriptions show a complicated layer, with water and ammonia,
hydrocarbons and nitrogen at reasonably warm temperatures and reasonable
pressures, suggesting the possibility of primitive airborne life, with energy
coming from lightning. The gas hydrogen
layer goes for thousands of miles and must become liquid at some point, at some
particular pressure. It would seem that
this would still have to “look” like an ocean surface (at night). At an even higher pressure, there probably is
a conversion to metallic hydrogen, which would look like mercury. Apparently there is still no definitive proof
of a solid core, although Jupiter obviously generates its own heat (retained from
its formation) and magnetic field.
The book has a few predictive descriptions of Titan (and Io
and Europa), with a brief report on the Huygens probe descent into Titan’s
atmosphere near the end of the book.
The above video is “Probe of Saturn Could Tell Us More About
Life on Earth” (8 minutes), from Euronews (the European Space Agency).. Also
look for “The Quest for Expolanets”. From the same publisher.
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