The Tom Lehrer Wisdom Channel
1 HN recommender · recommended in 10 months, 2014–2024
2:16 · 1.2M views · Jul 11, 2009
Tom Lehrer performs his satirical song about rocket scientist Wernher von Braun, with an introduction, in a short clip posted for the Apollo 11 anniversary. It lampoons von Braun's moral flexibility.
HN brings it up as the sharpest satire of scientists who serve whoever pays them, and as a favorite Lehrer song.
10 comments from Hacker News
My favourite is Wernher Von Braun. this video Thank you Tom Lehrer for all the memories and the laughs, and a biting satire that's still fresh.
And we've come full circle: your argument here is exactly the same as here: [LINK] I am happy to let you keep showing off your circular reasoning to the world, and will happily repeat myself pointing out all my counterpoints you did not engage with and ignored. For example: - I claimed a technology's existence is enough to cause real world consequences. You ignored this point. - I mentioned you are not including safeties to building a tool to protect its user[0] (the "first party" user of your tool) and its targets ("second party" people the tool-users are subjecting to your tool). That makes it legally/morally unappealing to use as a tool (puts self in danger), and morally unappealing to be subjected to. Why build a tool this way to be completely legally/morally unappealing, unless you want to cater to users specifically that do not have such legal/ethical concerns? You ignored this point. - I have invited you to clarify your ethical view. You are circling back to a previous non-argument. - You simply refuse to verbalize your implicit moral stance -- that your role as a "toolmaker" absolves you of all the moral consequences of its use[1]. If this is incorrect, I welcome clarification from you. [0] The laundry list of features of other scrapers I mentioned, here: [LINK] [1] This moral position has long been well-criticized and is not a sufficiently nuanced moral stance in this day and age. For an old example, consider Tom Lehrer's criticism of von Braun: "'Once the rockets ar
Hard to tell, but it was consistently losing to the Soviet Union by most space-dick measurement metrics. Please don't see me as defending the USSR in any way, it's a widely accepted fact that the USSR was 0.5-2 years ahead in most milestones. My comment was more in line to contradict the statement of "this country invented everything!" when obviously the Soviets had a strong know how that certainly didn't come from the US [0]. The man on the moon is what it is: an incredibly impressive feat with an objectively terrible risk/benefit ratio, but pulling it off makes it great for propaganda purposes. Once the US did that, the crewed moon landing programs in the USSR, which already had problems, were instantaneously de-funded, as the value of being the first was gone. It's not casual that since the space race ended, rational thinking kicked in and 100% of surface exploration and analysis has been done with unmanned rovers and sample return missions. And in my opinion, unmanned missions are more impressive from a technical standpoint, but that's another topic. This is an article on the subject that covers well the main reason why the USSR failed at what they seemed to be winning. [1] [0] this video [1] [LINK]
I didn't intend to imply that he did, apologies. I realize my original post was poorly phrased, so I edited out that part. It's the people saying either that Cisco couldn't have possibly known what China would do with tech designed specifically to track a suppressed religious group, or else doing the Werner von Braun defense[1], that I'm referring to. [1] "'Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? That's not my department,' says Werner von Braun." this video
Along these lines, I've always been fascinated by Operation Paperclip [0], the US effort to collect Nazi scientists that including Wernher von Braun (of V2 infamy and Saturn V fame). As Tom Lehrer sang [1], " 'Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? That's not my department,' says Wernher von Braun. " [0]: [LINK] [1]: this video