For more than a decade, at least some of the more “realistic” or “mundane” among the science fiction crowd — including various proportions of readers, writers, and critics — have been suggesting that the idea of interstellar travel is somewhere between unlikely and totally impossible in a practical sense. So I happened to be very pleased when I read in the November 26^th edition of New Scientist that two new approaches to interstellar travel had been trotted out — one of which essentially revisits the idea of the Bussard interstellar ramjet… except the propellant would be dark matter, which is far more plentiful in interstellar space than the comparatively few atoms of hydrogen that made the original Bussard concept unlikely to be successful in significantly reducing travel time to even nearby stars. The other involves the creation of an artificial black hole that radiates Hawking radiation for propulsion.

Coming up with a theoretical model for either approach is, of course, a far cry from even an engineering design, let alone a prototype, especially when the composition of dark matter has not even been determined and when we don’t yet have the engineering know-how to create anything close to a black hole, but these theoretical approaches do bring some hope to the idea that we humans may yet escape the confines of a single solar system in some fashion other than massive asteroid-sized generation ships that no government or corporate entity will ever commit the resources to build.

One of the aspects of interstellar travel that fascinates me, and more than a few others, is the hope that it might at least give a jolt to the political and cultural emphasis on limitations and upon the glorification of the small — from ever-smaller and ever more necessary electronic gadgets that tie people into self-selected and socially and culturally limited peer groups to a lack of understanding about just how immense, wide, wonderful — and awful — the universe is… and how unlikely what lies out there can be conveniently catalogued into neat and small packages designed just for human use and understanding.

Will we ever understand it all?

Who knows? But we certainly won’t if we don’t keep looking outward and striving for more than a way to use science and new knowledge for a quick buck in the next fiscal year… or quarter.

I’d certainly rather have either a black hole starship or a dark-matter-ramjet than the new and improved pocket iPhone and its sure-to-be innumerable successors.

In the last few days, several stories have popped up in various newspapers about the Barnes & Noble decision to close its B. Dalton outlet in Laredo, Texas, leaving the small city [population 220,000] with no bookstore at all, neither a chain store, nor an independent. That will make Laredo the largest town or city in the United States without a full-service bookstore, an absolutely “wonderful” Christmas present for the book-lovers of Laredo.

In past blogs I’ve pointed out the rather numerous short-comings of Borders. Now it’s the turn of Barnes & Noble. The B&N decision comes as part of its strategy to close all the remaining B. Dalton outlets in 2010, a decision from on corporate high to close high-cost, low-profit small mall outlet stores. Frankly, in the case of B&N, it makes far more sense than it did for Borders to downsize the number of Waldenbooks outlets, since from my industry sources, the word has always been that Waldenbooks was profitable until Borders started fiddling with their operations, while the Dalton outlets were, as a whole, marginal.

Even so, the B&N decision in the case of Laredo, and perhaps in other individual cases as well, is stupid. They have a local monopoly that is in the black, if not necessarily highly profitable, and B&N has been quoted as saying that Laredo will support a small but full-sized B&N — but that B&N won’t be able to open such a store for at least 18 months. Generally speaking, a city with a population of over 100,000 is profitable for the chain bookstores, and even with Laredo’s high level of Spanish-speakers, a store there should be profitable, especially with no competition.

Let’s get this straight. For bookkeeping and corporate decision-making reasons, B&N will close a profitable local outlet well before a successor B&N can be opened. In other words, they’ll destroy or at least erode their customer base…and then have to rebuild it, if they can, a year later.

All right, they have to close all the B. Daltons for whatever reasons. Then why not simply re-label the Dalton store in Laredo as a B&N Express or some such with signs saying that there will be a full-sized B&N coming before long, and add the Laredo store to the B&N supply system. Surely, it can’t be that hard. Then B&N can still claim it’s closed down all the Daltons in order to keep the stockholders or creditors or whoever happy and not anger an entire reading community.

Unfortunately, this is just another example of where pre-determined decisions are trading short-term profit considerations for longer-term profitability — and undermining the future customer base by literally chasing away readers. Exactly how much sense does this make in terms of future operations? Not to mention that it makes little sense at all from a societal point of view when reading levels among younger Americans are dropping.

We’ve all met them, the seemingly well-intentioned people who raise questions about this and that in the workplace. “Why is George doing it that way?” “Why do you think Suzanne changed the production schedule without telling accounting… or advertising?”

And if you’ve noticed, or watched carefully, you’ll have discovered that each of these seemingly innocent questions is asked in a public forum from which George or Suzanne is absent. Further, if you just happen to ask the questioner why they raised the question, the answer is almost invariably a variant of “I was just thinking of the good of… [fill in the blank with the appropriate word, such as “the staff,” “the customers,” “the students”].

Just as Lenin and Stalin, Hitler. Mussolini, and all-too-many tyrants in modern times have justified their actions on the basis of being for “the good of the people,” so too are these work-place questioners not at all interested in the good of whomever they cite. They seldom bring up their questions in any situation where the “accused” has a chance to explain; they almost never go to the accused and ask for an explanation. And the bottom line is that they’re not really interesting in solving the “problem.” They’re interested in causing trouble for another individual, preferably without leaving too obvious a set of fingerprints and without ever confronting the individual in question, always looking innocent and professing their altruism in raising such questions.

So… when you hear one of these kinds of questions, and especially if you get an explanation that the questioner is “only looking out for everyone’s good,” start asking exactly what the questioner really has in mind. Does he or she want to discredit the subject of the questions, or covet their job, or get back at the other person?

History and experience suggest that people who are interested in doing good do just that. They do; they accomplish; they work at make things better. Trouble-makers ask questions that stir everyone up without ever pointing toward a solution. There’s a very fine line between an honest question and one designed to incite trouble, but asking who benefits personally from a question and who is harmed is a good start to sorting out one from the other.

Even so… be on your guard when anyone cites “for the good of…”

Last Friday, students at the University of California staged a protest and pelted the house of the university chancellor with rocks and other projectiles, breaking windows and causing not-insignificant damage. According to various reports, the students were protesting teacher layoffs and furloughs, canceled classes, and high tuition and fees. The latest protest followed earlier occupations of halls on the Berkeley campus designed to call attention to the student grievances.

While I happen to agree with the anger and concern about the cutbacks in higher education, these protests, as with so many student protests over the years, are aimed at the wrong people. No state college or university administration has that much control over the rising costs of education. Nationally, over the past three decades, the percentage of college costs at state institutions of higher education paid for by state governments has dropped, often precipitously, from a national average of around 40% to far, far, less — in some states dropping below ten percent. During the same period, various additional requirements and mandates have been imposed on state institutions by both federal and state governments, and governments at all levels have pressed for more and more students to attend college. In general, the increased costs do not come from significantly higher faculty and staff salaries. While the salaries of football coaches have soared, so have administration salaries and costs, largely in response to all the mandates and administrative paperwork and “accountability.” On the other hand, faculty and staff salaries, in general, have not kept pace. Over the last 15 years, for example, faculty salaries at my wife’s university have been frozen four times, and the average raise in the years when they were not frozen has been around three percent. Similar figures apply to other state universities in the region. With the contribution from state governments dropping yearly, and legislative mandates to “do more,” the only way state institutions can meet their budgets is by increasing tuition and fees — or by cutting faculty and part-time or student instructors.

Blaming the administration, whatever the faults of those administrators may be, doesn’t get to the heart of the problem. Those students would be better served by asking their parents and their friends’ parents, “Why don’t you support more state taxes to fund higher education?” Or… they could accept the fact that, if they don’t want to pay for education through taxes, they’ll have to pay higher tuition and fees… or allow the universities and colleges to raise the bar for admission and reduce the number of students.

Destructive rioting in front of a chancellor’s house isn’t going to do anything except make already intransigent legislators even less willing to grant funds to a state university… and all too many of them don’t like finding higher education anyway.

The other day, I went to the store to buy some hundred watt light-bulbs. Guess what? I found I had a choice of either 90 watt standard soft-whites, or reduced “natural” illumination 100 watt bulbs. I’d been hearing about the future phase-out of incandescent light bulbs, but this isn’t “future.” It’s now, and there’s clearly a great push to replace the once-standard 100 watt bulb with compact fluorescents or, apparently, with lower wattage bulbs.

It doesn’t stop there, either. I have track lights in my kitchen. We installed the track lighting some ten years ago to replace the fluorescent lights that always seemed dim, and never directed enough light to specific areas. The track lights solved the problems. Except now… I can’t find the 75 watt halogen bulbs the track lighting was designed for. All I can find are 70 watt bulbs that seem to produce less light than 60 watt bulbs, and the kitchen is getting noticeably dimmer as the 75 watt halogen bulbs expire. Some people may find cooking and eating in dimness romantic, but we’d prefer that it be a choice and not a requirement.

Then, too, we have ceiling lights in several hallways and rooms, and the fixtures were designed to provide adequate light based on incandescent bulb sizes, and they don’t take compact fluorescents. Oh… and by the way, the “natural light” incandescents burn out in a couple of days in ceiling fixtures.

I’m presuming that all of these dimming down light bulb initiatives are in the service of energy efficiency and designed to “replace” the inefficiency of the incandescent light bulb. I don’t have a problem with replacing less efficient lights with more energy-efficient and environmentally friendly lights, but I have a huge problem with a forced reduction in light levels. Frankly, even with glasses that correct my once-perfect vision back to theoretically perfect vision, I have trouble reading fine print in dim light. So do millions of other Americans, most of us past 50.

I have a lower level office [i.e., walkout basement] which has overhead fluorescents. With them alone, the office light level is that of a medieval monastery in midwinter. So I have a desk lamp that has a three way bulb, and it does make everything light enough in the work area — but it’s getting harder and harder to find the three-ways with the 250 watt bulbs.

Now… I suppose I could install more lighting with lower wattage compact fluorescents and modified incandescent bulbs… and the way things are going I may have to… but why should I have to? If compact fluorescents are so good, and so efficient, why can’t someone manufacture one that delivers the lumen levels I need? So far as I can see, all these initiatives and changes are merely semi-mandatory light-reduction measures, not a replacement of current light levels attained with inefficient technology with the same lighting levels obtained more efficiently.

Or am I missing something? Is this another part of the sinister plot to do away with reading? Is it a way to make seniors stumble and fall and increase their mortality to reduce Medicare outlays? Or is it another form of age-discrimination against those of us who don’t operate by the light of blackberries or palm pilots or the like? Perhaps it’s a way to keep light from shining into the way government operates? Or is it a hidden subsidy to the lighting manufacturers as we all have to buy new and redesigned lighting in order to be able to see in our own homes?

Whatever it is… it’s not efficiency.