WTW3: Ok I'll Bite Why Is It Named After James Webb Anyway?

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:41 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Where There's Woke. This is episode three, second in the series on NASA's James Webb Telescope, the naming controversy, and the anti-woke activist coverage of it in the New York Times. But there's so much more to this story, and So it's not me harping on the daily episode for another hour and 45 minutes, so don't worry. And episodes is definitely criticism by implication, merely by going into the full nooks and crannies of this story. I ink and podcast bits or whatever on just reporting one side of a twitter feud, that's pretty much always going to be terrible, the but story was just some tumbleweeds blowing over an empty highway. All right, maybe you could be slightly forgiven, not much going on. So that's the story you told. But there is so much happening to this story that could have been reported on by the New York Times and could have made a very, very interesting story.

This clash people who better, wanted to makes things a little more inclusive, and people who defended a status quo that that they had no reason to care about, really, defended that tooth and nail. Were so desperate to cling on to the status quo without even a single good reason why. Intrepid, reporter might ask, how did we get that status quo? Where did that status quote come from? In other words, why in the world is the telescope named after James Webb? After all, if people are going to go through hell, really, to defend that status, and we'll see more of that in the future.

0:02:11 Thomas: Through hell to defend it, I wonder how we got it. If the reason we have it is incredibly stupid, then perhaps that would further context to how Unserious... There's a lot of adjectives I could think for NASA's defense and digging in of their heels, the name of the James Webb Telescope. It's the progressive, the woke side always gets portrayed as the yelling, angry kid, children screaming, whiny, whatever's. But why don't we get to see people properly criticize and even mock the whiny oversensitivity, the status quo defenders who are such children they can't let go of the beloved thing that they don't even know why they have. They literally didn't know why the telescope was named what it was, yet they defended the ever-loving shit out of So it. In this episode, I'm going to tell you why it was named what it was, what that process was. And furthermore, surprise, surprise.

0:03:11 Thomas: Special guest Lydia Smith is going to come on my wife, Lydia, to talk about the naming process for some other NASA things drop some bombshells on us. I'm telling you, She's got some really Good stuff. Stuff, actually stuff that I think even the other journalists didn't find Can't wait for that. So that's coming up on. But before we get to that, a little housekeeping. If you listen to series and queries only, and you heard the last episode, I mentioned that I'm never missing a deadline again. And the due date for Where There's Woke is going to be minimum once a week. It's a deep research show. So it's not going be, you know, no guarantee of more than one episode a week, but baseline minimum of one a week and that will come out Tuesday a.m. So first thing on Tuesday. But Day. There is so much. And in fact, it's kind of heartbreaking.

0:03:56 Thomas: Like I've just read hours and hours and hours. I've prepared so much and I only get to talk about just a mere fraction of that. And that seems to be kind of the norm for doing this kind of research. And you know, that is what it is. I know you can't, I would love to talk your ears off about everything, like every single thing I found, but you know people won't listen to that much stuff. So that's okay. But it means that that there is so much stuff to do bonus content on, like so much. If you go to patreon.com/wherethereswoke, and please do, please support the show, notice the second tier and above access to the patron bonus episodes. But this show is going to have so much, I'm thinking we'll guarantee one bonus episode for second tier patrons and above, for sure.

0:04:43 Thomas: But I bet there might be more. And if there's more, I'll go ahead and make those available to all patrons. Means first-tier patrons, everybody. Because if you look, first-year patrons, mainly the benefit is the ad-free show, which is totally cool. Go get that ad- free show. That's the best. So there's the potential for a lot of additional content here. I already have a million ideas, stuff I want to talk about, and I'm very excited. Excited So just so many reasons to join patreon.com/wherethereswoke, including a poll that I'm going to tell you about at the end of this episode to help decide something about the show. Oh, and each month, Lydia and I are going to do a special hangout. Don't worry, it's not just us hanging out. I mean, maybe some of you'd be into that, but I want to make sure we're delivering. So those hangouts will feature of the unused research for the month.

0:05:28 Thomas: And so we can chat, we can talk, we can interact. And that is available for the 3rd tier of patrons and up. So make sure you check out those tiers, years, check out what they have to offer and choose wisely, because that hangout is going to be super duper duper fun. And, like I said, will be fascinating with a bunch of, you know, rabbit holes we didn't get a chance to down go on the show. So it's like bonus deep dives for you. Then, while I'm on the topic, there's even yet another tier of support that I don't know if anyone's going to do, but just in case I put it out there for fun. The next tier of support to hang out with us after that, a little private hang, maybe play some, I don't know, some code names or something. Who knows? Could be lots of fun. All kinds of possibilities. Think that Patreon for this show is really, really well situated already, because there's just so much bonus stuff that I'm not even going to be able to use.

0:06:17 Thomas: And we can talk about it. We can hang out. We can chat. Can't wait. We're building, we've super cool here. So thanks so much for being on this ride. And with that said, don't we get back into the discussion of the day? So I know it's a theme I come back to a lot, again and again, but it's the theme of this episode mainly, which is context. Again, proper context. That's real reporting. Apologies for being a broken record, but that is everything.

The proper context with this kind of coverage is the difference between world thinking there's a screaming leftist idiot problem canceling everything in sight, or some very reasonable people making very reasonable requests and a bunch of babies are in control of everything, clinging on desperately to a status quo they know nothing about until like yesterday, but now they're defending with their life. The context is the difference there. On, and so before I brings Lydia on which not only you're dying for, I'm dying for too, can't wait. But just before that, I want to tell a little bit of another story that adds some more context to this thing. In my Stranger Things Mirror Universe version of this news story, which really shouldn't be called that since I think it's just a fair way to do it. It's normal, what the hell? He's the the Mirror Universe being. Why should I be Mirror Universe?

He's the one that sucks. Would start with something that happened around March 2022. is just yet another event that is painting a picture of some of the anti-woke forces within NASA. An anonymous Reddit post led to attention on the fact that more than 100 employees at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center were surprised when a test project allowing them to add their pronouns to their agency identifiers was abruptly canceled.

0:07:56 Thomas: I'll read to you from some of this Scientific American article by Nadia Drake, features a great write-up of it. I know it's a bit of a confusing headline, so I'll explain it. From the Scientific American, a tech demo, a pre-pilot program, a Goddard employee says, that was a first step toward addressing concerns that issues with removing dead names from the agency's IT system. In searching for solutions, the GSFC team spoke with NASA headquarters, as well as legal departments and employee resource bunch of people going rogue, says a scientist at GSFC. During that process, the GSFC team identified an option that would let employees add their pronouns to their display names, which are used in electronic communications, including email, contact lists, instant messaging platforms, and Microsoft Teams environments.

0:08:50 Thomas: Environments. Usually, those identifiers include name, first name, and NASA center XXX, where XXX would be replaced by a three-digit organizational code. But by filling in an optional field that is typically used for nicknames, employees could add pronouns after their names. It was an efficient and inexpensive way to make a necessary change, employees say, and did not require any additional coding or IT investments. Display pronouns, particularly in visible, prominent places, not tucked away at the bottom of an email signature, removes significant burdens for trans and gender nonconforming people, people, Wachowitz says. Like all people, trans and gender nonconforming scientists don't want to be constantly self-advocating in order to be themselves in peace. We would actually much prefer to have our pronouns where you can see them so we can all get on with our lives and do some science, end quote.

0:09:42 Thomas: To summarize, this was a little test thing, and often this is a good thing in government. If you can find a solution to something that doesn't involve money, and it's not just money, it's also things have to go through official processes and, you know, people have to authorize it, and it's got to go through a million things. It looks like some people found a way to easily use something that already existed to have a good system in place to use pronouns.

By the way, this was not mandatory. This was nothing anyone was made to do. This was just something some people voluntarily took part in. Skipping down a little bit, on February 28th, NASA leaders terminated the program. During, skipping a bit, during the hour-long meeting, Melroy and others made it clear that the test program was over, the decision was final, and long-term policy, yet employees said the presenter offered no satisfactory explanation for the timing of the termination or Among the various reasons discussed were concerns about the pronoun field being used for inappropriate identifiers, including nationalities and sports team affiliations, that the program had been implemented without approval by proper personnel, and that this was not what IT systems designed for.

Now, in the Reddit post that's still up, anonymous person, and by theway, the details were verified, a lot of the details, and people were interviewed by Scientific American. So this is not just some rando. This is like an authenticated anonymous posting. They said that the basis was the display of pronouns made other employees uncomfortable, and equated our displaying of pronouns to that of sports team pride. They also tried to make justification that the the agency couldn't spare any resources for this initiative.

0:11:27 Thomas: This doesn't cost anything. They did this all through a meeting, which they refused to let anybody record, and refused to put a rationale for the decision in writing, end quote. They and gave a line of bullshit, course, you of know, cleaning, in my opinion, trying to clean up their mess, saying, well, we were ending it because, you know, the experiment was over, it yielded successful results, it showed that they could, you know, use this, and we don't want to just do something for one organization within NASA, we want to do something across the entire agency, so that's essentially why we ended this experiment, which to me just reeks of bullshit. I mean, that that absolutely, there is no reason you would need to stop it way while you're working to maybe, maybe implement a new thing. And their excuse was, well, you can still put the pronouns in the email signature block below, after everything.

0:12:15 Thomas: Now, again, this isn't the end of the world, but it's just another little thing that signifies where higher ups within NASA might be. Hard to know who, hard to know how many, this to me reads as though somebody complained about seeing seeing pronouns, and they didn't want to and made a stink. And for some reason, higher ups listened rather than just saying, what are you talking about? Who cares? There's pronouns. Get to have their pronouns in a place where they want them. It's not hurting anybody. You don't have to do it. Why, why do you give a shit about this? Literally, why don't give, you're suspended, I'm firing you. No, than having, having that very, what I think would be a reasonable reaction, they seem to have actually called a meeting and stopped over 100 people from, in this way, or getting to put their pronouns in this place, for the comfort of who knows, I don't know, whoever complained, I guess, though seeing pronouns is somehow anything to complain about.

0:13:03 Thomas: So that would be an anecdote to start the story with, maybe seat the wider story within that context. And next, I think important context would be to talk about how the James Webb Space Telescope was even named in the first place, because that is something I haven't seen anywhere in the New York Times coverage. And holy smokes, it's the least satisfying possible answer that you could imagine. It was named in 2002 by one guy, the former NASA administrator under George George George W. Bush, because he just felt like it. It was, quote, a unilateral decision that took many by surprise. He just did it himself. And it took many to surprise because NASA's telescopes are typically named after scientists.

Webb, who died 1992, in was a bureaucrat who held several administrative roles in the U.S. government. So this one guy just chose it. Dr. Heidi B. Hamill tweeted, I can confirm that we scientists were blindsided by the name change in 2002. Then youngsters like me were like, who? Another responded, I remember having this reaction as a reporter as well. I was thinking Uhuru, Einstein, Hubble, James Webb? The name felt very parochial, even without knowing the other issues. Is documented further in an Atlantic article from 2021. It says, In 1999, Karen Nierman picked up a free mug at her first big astronomy conference just before she started grad school. It bore the logo of an ambitious observatory designed to peer at the most distant galaxies in the universe, NGST, short for Next Generation Space Telescope.

0:14:40 Thomas: The mug was on Nierman's desk in 2002 when NASA made a surprise announcement. NGST was going to become JWST after James Webb. NierMAN sipped from her suddenly out-of-date mug and wondered, who? That was the prevailing reaction among scientists at the time. So that all strikes me as very haphazard and not important in any way. But this is the crux. This is, I would say this is a very important point. Point of this episode, of this part, because it's so key and it's such a theme of these conflicts. So people at NASA have inherited a status quo is, could almost call it accidental, not very compelling. I don't know. There's a lot of adjectives you could use. The person who named the telescope did so just on a whim, I suppose, unilaterally, with not very good reasons, by the way, out of pattern, like naming it after an administrator for the first time ever, instead of scientists as the rest had been, as the previous examples had been.

0:15:37 Thomas: This is something that will be used worldwide. Hubble, for example, I mean, that's referenced, that in textbooks, that is in everything. You see that a lot in this coverage. So many people saying, yeah, the name will be everywhere. It will be anywhere. There will be grants based on it. There'll be worldwide observatories using this name. And we're going to go with James Webb, an administrator, a bureaucrat. Weak. It's incredibly weak. So this weak ass status quo has been inherited. And the crux of my New York Times article, were I to write one, would be, watch how these status quo warriors, these anti-woke activists, whatever you want to call them, on, cling desperately to this status quo for no reason, for absolutely no good reason, when you have every reason to change it. So I think one thing that would be very relevant in accurate coverage of this entire issue and event would be telling us about happened in the past, what, like, are other things named after, what are other telescopes named after?

0:16:35 Thomas: How did that go? Has NASA ever had to change a name of something? What's that history? What is that process? All those those questions are things that I didn't see even broached in Powell's article. But Um, much less anywhere. I don't really see it anywhere else. So I brought in there's woke correspondent and just overall hottie, my wife, Lydia Smith. How's it going, Lydia?

0:16:51 Lydia: Hi. Great.

0:16:57 Thomas: Um, what have you found in your research on these very questions? What can you tell us?

0:17:02 Lydia: Oh, a lot of really, really interesting stuff. The broad approach NASA has taken overall, kind of their tradition, is that they don't give something a name until after it's launched because in case it doesn't work out.

0:17:16 Thomas: Yeah, you yeah, yeah, I might be able to figure out why if something explodes, you wouldn't want to be like everybody hands joined for the Martin Luther King jr. Telescope. Everybody cameras are on it. And then it just completely explodes. And then you're like, that wasn't great.

0:17:19 Lydia: Right.

0:17:32 Lydia: Yep, yep. Not the way you'd want honor an individual for sure. So a lot of times when NASA is putting together their various missions and projects, they'll have a general name that describes maybe what it's going to do, what kind of project it is, and then they'll rename it to give it something maybe more specific, maybe honor somebody in that regard. So I really wanted to tackle the James Webb Space Telescope and what it's considered in the category of mission within NASA and how NASA approached the other missions within that same category. So James Webb Space Telescope is considered the successor to the Great Observatories projects, which started with the Hubble Space Telescopes in 1990. That was named after Edwin Hubble, an astronomer, in 1983. 1990 was when it was launched.

0:18:22 Thomas: Oh, so they did name it before launch though.

0:18:26 Lydia: Launch for that one, yes.

0:18:27 Thomas: Okay. Edwin Hubble, if I recall, not an administrator.

0:18:30 Lydia: No, no, unless an administrator was able to confirm that the universe is expanding. Just an astronomer.

0:18:36 Thomas: I mean, maybe it should be. No, I don't know. That is two different jobs. I don't really fault administrators for not being scientists. That' actually completely fine.

0:18:42 Lydia: That's fair.

0:18:43 Thomas: Yeah, it' like a different job.

0:18:44 Lydia: But Let's see. In 1991, we had the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory. It was originally referred to as the Gamma ray Observatory, and then it was renamed the Compson Gammaray Observatory after Arthur Compton, an American physicist, and he received a Nobel Prize for his work involved with gamma-ray physics. So someone very, you know, in tune with what this project was going to be studying.

0:19:08 Thomas: Don'' know that I one. It doesn' t get a lot of press, that one, I do think. Heard? I wonder if this is like the unsung hero of observatories that no one knows about, or is it just like kind of suck? It'd be funny if they put one up there and they're like, this one, it was a bad idea. This one looks at the stars through like a paper towel roll.

0:19:11 Lydia: Yeah, it's still

0:19:26 Thomas: Like my kids do, doesn't, I don't know why we did that. Was a waste of space.

0:19:26 Lydia: Yeah, gamma rays, shmamma rays.

0:19:31 Thomas: It's named after yet again a scientist of some kind.

0:19:31 Lydia: Yeah. Yep, physicist. And then we have the Chandra X-ray Observatory in 1999. This was originally called the Advanced X-ray Astrophysics Facility, but it was renamed after the Nobel Prize-winning Indian-American astrophysicist Subramanian Chandrasekhar.

0:19:34 Thomas: Okay, yeah.

0:19:51 Thomas: And just to clarify, when you, when you've said renamed, all the things you're talking about now are the, "let's not name it until we know it's not going to blow up" kind of renaming, or was it a renaming for some other, reason? Like we, ah, let's think of a better one.

0:20:03 Lydia: Interesting because I imagine manned missions, they really delay putting an official name on that. But I was also seeing in NASA's official policy, and I scoured all of that information too, that they do have a pressure to name things for budgetary reasons. So a lot of times they'll give something kind a placeholder name, but they are working to try and figure out what's its final name going to be, because the federal budget does want to know what they're putting money towards officially. Apparently, yeah, it's in their policy that they work to identify the name of the mission specifically for the Office of the Budget.

0:20:20 Thomas: Hmm.

0:20:31 Thomas: Yeah. But the name matters for that. They can't just like describe what the thing is. Okay, Okay. Well, no. Okay. So another scientist.

0:20:44 Lydia: That one was especially cool because that was from a contest that NASA held. They sought submissions worldwide. They had over 6,000 submissions.

0:20:53 Thomas: And a bunch of them were just like satellite McSatellite face, you know, and they had to like ignore all those. Hmm.

0:20:57 Lydia: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And the winners were a high school teacher and student who proposed this and know, pitched it and said why they felt this would be a good name in terms of honoring this particular individual. The next, closing out our great observatories of the original four, is the Spitzer Space Telescope from 2003. It was actually originally called the Space Infrared Telescope Facility. They also held a contest for this one, too. And the public determined that they felt space this telescope should be named after Lyman Spitzer, an astronomer. He was actually the first person that we can tell anyway that proposed large space telescopes, proposed it back in 1946. Yeah. Yeah.

0:21:20 Thomas: After Elliot Spitzer, yeah. Oh, That's big, because back then they thought like people lived on Mars. You popular media, back before we put anything in space, was like alarmingly silly about space. Like it's like, do people live on the moon? Maybe there's little men on there. Like there's a lot of stuff that you're like, I can't believe they thought that, but you know, so anyway, cool.

0:21:59 Lydia: Yeah. And this was actually one that was named in quotes, in keeping with NASA tradition, the telescope was renamed after its successful demonstration of operation. So potentially maybe not launched into space, but at least, you know, on earth that everything was working, all the widgets and

0:22:13 Thomas: Hmm. Well, that's another good point. Cause I'm sure everybody knows the Hubble history, you know? Like they launched it and it was, it was messed up. So that's pretty tough. Yeah. And that's, another reason to maybe delay. Um, I it's interesting to hear about this budgetary reason. I don't really know why that would be other than just politics. Maybe it's more appealing to like have a name to it, I guess. I just, but

0:22:21 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's a fair, you know, interpretation of that. That makes sense to me.

0:22:43 Thomas: Otherwise Otherwise, it's like you want to make sure it works because if you, again, are trying to honor someone and then it's like, well, we turned it on and it sucks. Somebody forgot. Somebody left their keys in it and now it's, like, their keychain's in the middle of the mirror system. Yeah. Like, the Hubble, some mirror was put on backwards or something like that. Something messed up. And it was amazing that we could get up there and fix it. And I remember that with the James Webb Space Telescope or with the Jelloscope, Wellescope Space Telescopes, or that one, if it didn't work, there was, we're fucked cause it's way out in deep space.

0:22:55 Lydia: Yeah, battery died.

0:23:13 Lydia: Correct. There were no plans to service or maintain it after it had launched.

0:23:17 Thomas: Yeah. It would just be a very expensive. Um. I don't even know what that would be a paper space weight. It's holding down the space up there.

0:23:18 Lydia: Correct. Yeah. Space garbage. And so, yeah, so Lyman Spitzer proposed, you know large space Space Telescopes back in 1946. And when I saw this, I thought it was interesting because in the kind of press circuit when they wanted to name the Just Wonderful Space Telescope after James Webb, they said as early as 1965, Webb also had had written that a major space telescope then known as the Large Space Telescape should become a major NASA effort. So like really pushing, He really believed in large space telescopes.

0:23:26 Thomas: Yeah, exactly.

0:23:58 Thomas: I'll try

0:23:58 Lydia: And so, yeah, yeah.

0:23:58 Thomas: To up his resume a bit. Like kid is yeah plus he volunteered after school, he was varsity basketball, uh, as well, so lots of lots yeah.

0:24:06 Lydia: Yeah. Well, as early as 1965, he's late to the game, in my opinion, at that point. Spitzer back in 1946. And then actually another major satellite that is planned for the future and who it's being named after, Nancy Grace Roman, the Nancy Grace Romans Space Telescope.

0:24:11 Thomas: Okay.

0:24:24 Thomas: It's not so, not the Nancy Grace, okay.

0:24:24 Lydia: Nope. No, no. No Nancy Roman is first and last name. Grace is the middle name.

0:24:31 Thomas: Yeah. No. I thought you were doing a bit like it's gonna be like, oh yeah, the the Donald Trump Jr. Space, that's just gonna get worse and worse.

0:24:38 Lydia: Here, So she will have something named after her as well. She was a former NASA chief of astronomy, the first female executive at NASA. And she was very responsible for bringing the large space telescope efforts to fruition. She traveled the country presenting to universities, trying to partner with them, trying to get the public excited about exploring space in this way. And she proposed the technique that was similar to what they ended up using for Hubble in 1959. She worked on Hubble.

0:25:07 Thomas: Wow.

0:25:07 Lydia: Yeah, she's incredible, reading through all of her stuff. I have zero problems with her at this point. I think something came after her. She has a Lego made after her. So I guess with Sally Ride.

0:25:08 Thomas: Plus let's Launch, launch that bad boy Into space, damn it. Put that Lego into orbit.

0:25:19 Lydia: Yeah? Yeah. She said this was like, it was probably the most fun honor that she's received in her life when Lego made. I

0:25:29 Thomas: What about that lady with a stack of papers, there's so many, people, people to name stuff after but that, yeah, that lady that was like the programmer that you see the picture of all the time that

0:25:34 Lydia: Know, I know. No. I just looked up and Margaret Hamilton. I So just searched NASA programmer, female.

0:25:41 Thomas: Of papers? Yeah, that'll do it. She's amazing. There's no shortage of really cool people to name stuff after. Anyway,

0:25:44 Lydia: Yeah. Right. So, you know, great observatories, we kind of knocked all those out. And I was thinking, okay, well, NASA's had so many missions, so many different projects that they've done. Let let me go up the next level and look at the Earth satellites, heliocentric satellites and see, you know, were any of those things named after individuals? And only a handful of them were. You know, NASA tends to do like mythology-based names, right? But there are some. So the Einstein Observatory, yeah, named

0:26:18 Thomas: Did he ever do? No, that fair. I think Einstein deserves it. Sure.

0:26:22 Lydia: Let's see, Allen the Van probes, they were named after the radiation belt they were studying, which was named after a space scientist, James Van Allen, who's credited with their discovery. The Kepler Space Telescope, named after astronomer Johannes Kepler. And then the Reuven-Ramadi High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager. This one's an interesting one. So this is So originally, it was named the High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager. There was no name attached to it, but it was renamed after Reuven Ramadi after his death, which was about the year that it was launched. He was a Hungarian astrophysicist who worked at NASA, and it's the first time they've named something after a NASA scientist.

0:27:02 Thomas: Wow that was literally the first time wow and

0:27:03 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah, 2002. Nothing else really created huge controversy or anything like that. And I was curious what their process was for picking names. You know, we talked about they like to pick a more specific name closer to launch. They want to make sure that the project is successful and it works. Know, we talked a little bit about the contests that were held in some respects, focusing on scientists, scientists, and so I found their naming policy that's just straight on their website, and the current policy, the effective date is December 20th, 2022, so pretty soon after the James Webb controversy, they did a major update with their policy directive, and so I pulled up the Wayback Machine, and I wanted to see what it looked like before and kind of compare.

So going back, going way back, the policy directive that I could find kind of earliest on their website was effective February 14th, 2000, with an expiration date February 14, 2015. There was something in the middle there between this point in time and current, where they did a slight addendum, but nothing super substantial, that extended the effective date for this policy through 2025. And then they did major overhaul a couple years early, December 20th, 2022.

0:27:38 Thomas: Hmm. Yeah.

0:28:26 Lydia: So in the original directive that I found, again, from 2000, They, it's very simple. It's short, couple pages long. And I wanted to talk about the section that's referred to as responsibility within this policy.

0:28:43 Thomas: You had a way back machine that found an entry from the year 2000.

0:28:47 Lydia: I found an entry from 2010, March 2010, and the effective date on the policy is February 14th, 2000.

0:28:49 Thomas: Oh, gotcha. Wasn't. OK, so we don't know what's before that. I wasn't sure if it was like, oh, 2000 was when they put it online and this policy dates back forever or OK, gotcha.

0:28:54 Lydia: Yeah, No. Yeah, this is just what was in effect at that time, and it was drafted in 2000. So this says the official in charge of a headquarters office is responsible for identifying projects in which names are required. They're responsible for assembling a special committee to recommend names. They should serve or designate a chair of that committee and they appoint committee members. And every special project name committee is composed of one member from each of the following offices. The office of the official in charge for which a project name is under consideration. So Office of Space Science, for example. Any other NASA headquarters that's participating in a significant element of the project or is majorly involved.

A lot of times the public affairs officer will be involved as part of this, because it's public-facing and there's an optics element to this, right? And that the special committee then, as a group, solicits suggestions, particularly from the responsible NASA centers and contractors. They submit specific recommendations in order of preference to the assistant administrator for public affairs. And then the assistant administrator for public affair reviews the recommendations, makes makes a selection, and submits it to the administrator for final approval. The assistant administrator for public affairs is also responsible to make the public announcement of the approved name, and make sure that all subsequent news releases use the official name as well.

0:29:27 Thomas: Really? Yeah, didn't. So this is great. I I feel like this isn't maybe well known. So you're for sure confirming that this policy was in effect in 2002 when some asshole was just like, I don't know, James Webb.

0:30:35 Lydia: Yes. Yes. Correct. And so I do not know if if a committee at all existed, Sean Sean O'Keefe certainly was not the person that should have been making that announcement.

0:30:50 Thomas: Everything I'm seeing is just like this one guy was like, eh, yeah, James Webb. I. I can' say for a hundred% certain that there wasn' like t a committee form, but I' m not seeing anything. I mean everything seems to be, yeah, this guy just decided it was going to be named after James Webb. Are you seeing anything different?

0:30:56 Lydia: No, I'm not seeing anything different at all. And I think that if that were the story, NASA could have used it in their own to the controversy.

0:31:14 Thomas: You would think. That' a very good point, star researcher Lydia Smith, hottie extraordinaire. Yeah, good point. So from the best we can tell, and again, allowing for some margin of error here, but the best we can tel, they had a policy in place for naming stuff. They did not follow it whatsoever. Like, it sounds like not even close. I mean, you're making a committee, you know, got alternates, you know, like, oh, here's our order of preferences, you know, from what you read in that policy.

0:31:28 Lydia: Yep. Yep. Right.

0:31:42 Thomas: And they just didn't do that. And yet when called on it, when challenged about naming the space telescope after James James Webb, they dig in anyway. Like, how about just go back and look at the history and be like, oh, you know what? And you could even take take us kind of a slimy way out for all I care. Like, just go and be Like, hey, you in reviewing it, we look back, the policy wasn't followed at all. Tell you what, why don't we redo it? And you don't even have to fucking acknowledge the whatever. If you're apparently so scared of acknowledging that a past historical figure might have been problematic, dodge all that and just say, hey, yeah, let's redo this, but properly, because it looks like procedure wasn't followed. How hard is that?

0:32:23 Thomas: You can even dump it on the guy from 2002. He doesn't work there anymore. Blame the guy who quit the job. That's classic, classic bureaucracy.

0:32:19 Lydia: Yep, yep, yep. I know. I

0:32:32 Thomas: Blame the guy whose gone and be like, yeah, he fucked it all up. Idiot. All right, let's try this again, very

0:32:31 Lydia: NASA realizes also how much they messed up because, like I said, their current policy came into effect before the previous one was set to expire. They did a mini amendment in the middle, right? Right. But then this one effective December 20th, 2022, is far more comprehensive. And specifically in that responsibility section, which is what we just looked at from the 2000 policy. Now it says more specifically who needs to be involved in the ad hoc name selection team. Name.

0:32:50 Thomas: Interesting at least one member of Gen Z

0:33:13 Lydia: Yeah, So obviously the project, office that the project is coming from needs to be part of it. At least one member representing every other NASA headquarters participating, which was from the other one as well. But now they're including an office of communication historian that they need to be either officially part of the naming team or included early in any consideration of the process, they have to do an entire review of any individual whose name is being considered. And that is going to help inform name selection. They also specifically say, where possible, limit the practice of naming projects, missions, instruments, etc. after individuals. So like, just don't do this anymore.

0:34:00 Thomas: Well, yeah, I mean, that feels like an overreaction. I don't know why that would be. I, that's that strikes me as another, like, well, I guess we can't name anything after anybody. It's like, well, no, just fucking Jesus, you have to overreact every time, can't you? Just take the loss, that's not even a loss because it's just you saying some guy in 2002 didn't follow any procedure. Maybe he jumped the gun. That's all it is.

0:34:21 Lydia: Yeah. But I do think that this is like a major your recognition of, you know, at least internally, like we really screwed up and let's fix this policy and hopefully they actually follow it this time. They also say that the historical analysis from the historian needs to include a human capital review to ensure diversity, unity, inclusion, and inspiration are considered as part of the naming process.

0:34:22 Thomas: Yeah, but So you've acknowledged with a giant policy change that seems pretty geared and timed along with this controversy, you've the evidence seems overwhelming that not, not even this policy, but the policy that was in effect in 2002 was not followed. But can't, but you have to cling on to like, you can'T dare let the woke win. That's what it is. There's certain people I think high enough up and the emails bear this out that just, can't I stomach letting somebody who is quote unquote woke, who's upset about something, win. I really think that's my personal opinion as to why you would do this.

Because otherwise, what are you mad that, that like, if you take it away from James Webb, he's going to come out of his grave and like hunt you. Who cares? He's a dead guy. He died in 1992. Maybe he has some family that'll be upset, but okay. Is that one family member or two family, whoever that is, is that really more important than everybody telling you like, Hey, this is kind fucked up what's happening right now.

It just really strikes me as this clinging to the status quo, defending it to the death, even though you inherited it and it wasn't good reason for it anyway.

0:34:58 Lydia: Right.

0:35:49 Thomas: And it's because they can't stand the woke mob, quote unquote, ever winning anything. That's my opinion.

0:35:56 Lydia: But you know, there is another federal entity that doesn't mind renaming things, and that's the Army, surprisingly. So the Army's been going through and officially renaming a handful of military bases that were originally named after Confederate leaders.

0:36:11 Thomas: Well, to be fair, these are probably way the fuck worse than James Webb. Like if James Webb is dead.

0:36:13 Lydia: Oh, yeah. No, of course. Of course. I'm not trying to equate the two at all.

0:36:16 Thomas: No, I'm just saying like that. I mean, yeah, like it could account. It might not necessarily be like the army's super woke. It's like, oh, fuck. All right. Yeah. No. Even us, even the army, we better.

0:36:26 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah, it was from, you know, the George Floyd protests and everything. They had a committee, of course, it's the government, everything's a committee. And they evaluated, you know, all of the bases that they had, who were they named after, and they identified nine that needed to be renamed. And they wanted to rename them from Confederate leaders to people of color who made significant contributions with their service in whatever effort they were were fighting in.

0:36:28 Thomas: Yeah, and even just not Confederate leaders is already enough of a step in the right direction. Like, unbelievable. Confederate leaders. We have bases. I think to this day, right? Or did they fix all of them? Because I'm pretty sure we have bases, or at least very recently, named after people who fought against government. Like, I don't know that we would do that with any other country, I mean, I could be wrong, I don't, I don't think we name anything else in our army after people who fought against, against our army. That's a, that's a you know, that sportsmanship. I don't think we're we're at that level. But for some reason, when it's, you know people who fought tooth and nail to keep fucking human slavery, then we were like, well, naturally we have to name our army base after the people who tried to take out our fucking army in the name of slavery. That that's, good use of of our honoring, you

0:36:55 Lydia: Right. Yeah. Yep. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so the most recent one that I've seen, I think it's an effort they're still working on. The most recent rename was June 13th of this year. And they renamed, yeah... So they renamed named Fort Polk to Fort Johnson. Fort PolK was a Confederate commander, Lieutenant General Leonidas Polk, and it was renamed to honor Sergeant William Henry Johnson. He was a black U.S. soldier during World War I who fought off two dozen Germans alone and killed at least four. He enlisted two months after the U. S. became involved in the war. Hewas in a segregated New York regiment out of Harlem. And while he was fighting, his rifle ran out of rounds. He was out in France, deployed there. So he used the butt of his rifle, grenades, his fists, and a knife, saved another soldier as part of this. He had 21 wounds and wasn't able to return to his job after the

0:37:49 Thomas: Jesus, that's yesterday.

0:38:36 Thomas: Wow.

0:38:36 Lydia: War. And the army, obviously, they were like, this is a hero. We're going to send him on speaking speaking engagements. And then he started speaking out publicly about the racism that Black soldiers were experiencing during World War I on the front lines.

0:38:49 Thomas: Ah, nevermind. Not a hero. Let's not, uh, never mind.

0:38:50 Lydia: Yep. Yep, yep. And the army canceled all of his speaking engagements to punish him.

0:38:56 Thomas: Wow, I mean, thus proving obviously there's no racism involved. God, you

0:38:57 Lydia: Yep right. So they're trying to fix that now. No.

0:39:04 Thomas: Now how many heroes obviously there are? Tell you what, there's enough black war heroes who then often, by the way, were lynched when they came home. There's enough people like that who suffered the ultimate injustice, I can't think of anything more unjust than that, like conceivable for our country, for the country to do to somebody. There's enough of them, let's, NASA can borrow some of them, fuck it, they can take, you know, what I think the Army has so many, why don't we, can name some, some space stuff after him too, because this is ridiculous. Let's contrast that with Leonidas Polk, who, at first when he said that, I thought it was going to be James Polk. I thought I was going be the president, which and I have a weird memory. I don't think you'll know this, but Richard Spencer cited James Polk as his favorite president. Do you remember that?

0:39:13 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Oh. That sounds familiar.

0:39:51 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. And it was everyone was like, what? I don't know. What the fuck?

0:39:51 Lydia: Yeah yeah Random. Oh.

0:39:54 Thomas: I don't understand. But anyway, point is, we already know this is a Confederate general. Is this going to be somebody who was a a traitor to the Confederacy, did, was he a spy, was did you actually save lives of the actual Americans fighting, not the Confederate pro-slavery assholes, like, what's, what the story here, is there gonna be

0:40:10 Lydia: No. I mean, everything I'm seeing is that, um, he was just really popular with all of his Confederate troops, they loved him.

0:40:19 Thomas: Wow. So he's just like, really good racist, they're just like, ah, should we honor this person who served our country, happened to be black, and because they were black, died in poverty after being a complete war, war hero, like, amazing, unbelievable war hero, or, uh, my buddy knows a guy who knows a racist, oh yeah, let's go with that one, cool.

0:40:19 Lydia: Yeah, yeah. Yeah

0:40:43 Thomas: There's nothing, I'm looking in his Wikipedia, at least I mean I haven't done an Oluseyi style deep performing an internet search of everything that Polk did yeah, I, but like, and again, we're, it's it's apples and oranges, like I'm not saying that Web is anywhere near this, it's not that situation, but this is part of the context I referenced in the first episode. This is context, the context is, wow, look at all these things. Until literally fucking as of recording, what, weeks ago, not last month, 1923, 2023, last month, we had an an army base named after a Confederate soldier, general, who just was a, that's it, that's his accomplishment, he fought against our country in the name of protecting slavery, and to set this up as, look at the woke, constantly just no tolerance for the old white men, we've named stuff after, it's like, no, how about this is the fucking context, you set up, this is, you know, how many black people probably have served at that army

0:40:43 Lydia: Everything that NASA has on sure

0:41:44 Thomas: Base and are like, cool, man, awesome, real great, we're honoring some asshole racist who did nothing, unbelievable, all,

0:41:52 Lydia: Mean, and he's being honored, I just saw a little bit too that, um, he actually, per this military historian Steven E. Woodworth, he, um, was actually really incompetent and uh

0:42:03 Thomas: Right if we are ironically honoring him, I will accept that, actually, like if it's if it was the Confederate, like, forgot, tried to shoot an actual American, and then, but it was pointed the the wrong way and he just shot himself, that would be like okay you

0:42:04 Lydia: Okay yeah that's true, yeah, it seems like it's pretty bad It says pokes Polk's incompetence and willful disobedience had consistently hamstrung Confederate operations west of the Appalachians, while his special relationship with the president made him untouchable. They couldn't do anything about it.

0:42:29 Thomas: Know what I rescind all my criticism of this when Again, it's not directly NASA, but this it's original article, this daily episode is presented as this sweeping pattern of the woke left just being intolerant of history of, you know, the timores of the time. And it really, really could have badly used the context of, no, even by the way, this as that podcast episode went up, this army base was still named after a fucking racist Confederate general, general, and so that's better context, perhaps.

0:42:32 Lydia: Yeah.

0:43:04 Lydia: Yeah, and then, I mean just even including, you contrary to policy at the time, they decided to name the telescope after James Webb. Those blind spots. And yeah, I'm doing some digging to find this stuff, but I'm not a journalist by trade. I'm a researcher necessarily by trade, so this stuff is available. You can find it and figure out exactly what's going on here, but then it doesn't match potentially your agenda and what what you're trying to accomplish with your article.

0:43:35 Thomas: Right, hon, well, thanks for outdoing a New York Times reporter, uh, as not your job in like the, I don't know, fucking 30 minutes you probably spent on this easily out-researching a New York Time's fucking, by the way, New York Times, hire my wife, sounds like she's fit for to print it, as they say. So if you're listening, Russia, if you're listening, hire my wife to the New York Times. All right. Thanks so much, Lydia Smith. And I'm sure we'll be hearing more of you very soon on the Where There's Woke feed, maybe the Patreon as well. So thanks for joining us.

0:43:53 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah thanks for having me again.

0:44:09 Thomas: So that's our show for today. And I'm trying to do these teasers at the end, but you'll notice I already messed up a little because I thought this was going to be the email episode. The NASA's damned emails. But that is turning into a two-hour long monstrosity that I need to keep working on. But it's because there's so much. I know I keep saying it so much, it's really good good stuff, lots of surprises, lots of seriously smoking guns in these emails that were FOIA'd, and not an ounce of coverage on that Michael Powell article. I want to ask you folks something. I can't tease the next episode because I think I'm going to leave it up to patrons. Here's the thing. I, as you you can no doubt tell, I'm endlessly interested in this topic. Everything about it, the bad coverage, NASA, telescopes, space, history.

0:44:57 Thomas: Oh, there's so much. There's so much. I'm super into it. But I just want to, you know, stop here and maybe gauge. Would you prefer, and I'm going put up a Patreon poll, so that's where I want my answers. Don't email me or anything else. Would you prefer if I finish this James Webb series out or should I do a one-off? Because we've already have a great one-of recorded, really more of a fun one. And I mean, it's still batshit crazy because it's anti-woke stuff, but it's a batshit crazy, fun, funny episode. Would you rather have that kind of break up the series a little, will that bother you, like it will kind of bother me. I feel like I don't necessarily want to break up the series, but I also think that two, three, four parts of something is a lot to expect from people if I don't, if you're all as into it as I am necessarily. I could do 20 parts on this, I love it, I can't stop thinking about it all day. That's the poll again.

0:45:56 Thomas: For patrons, that's on patreon.com/wherethereswoke. I don't want to see any answers anywhere else, sorry, but that will be the poll I'll put up. You want next week's episode to be a fun one-off and then carry back on with the uh NASA James Webb New York Time stuff, or should we finish that out? I could go either way, I've got, honestly, I've got a lot recorded for either of those options, so I could go either way. Thought I'd put it up to you folks since, since this is still a very new show. We're still figuring things out, calibrating, and it's fun to do that together. So please check out that poll and vote. I'll go with the, I think I'll pretty much, yeah, I'm so 50/50. I'm going to with whatever the patrons decide. So that's the show. So the preview for next week is, I know, either the woke are coming for our pizza ovens, or or trove of FOIA'd NASA emails that shows Oluseyi is full of shit, much more.

0:46:49 Thomas: So I don't even know how to summarize it. So much more, it's really good. Let me know. I'll see you then.

0:47:00 Thomas: Yeah, I kind of hate that it rewrites everything as Johnson, like I almost would, like I know you don't want to dead name an old army base, but like, like it's kind of useful to know when it was, own your racism, like tell me, tell me when it, it was named after a racist.

0:47:09 Lydia: Yeah.