I see that the Orlando Sentinel has a space blog now, headed up by Robert Block, their space editor, though there are other bloggers there as well.

Is it approaching? A nickel a kW-hr would be pretty hard to beat.

Like Phil Bowermaster, this kind of thing is why I don't lose much sleep over peak oil.

[Update a few minutes later]

A lot of comments on the subject over at Randall Parker's place.

Through global warming. See, climate change ain't all bad.

SciAm has an article on the six things that Ben Stein doesn't want you to know about the movie. Just the first one is sufficient to me to think the whole thing a contemptible fraud.

For what it's worth, I set my watch to the destination time zone when they close the plane doors.

Tom Maguire says that Obama and his supporters don't know much about history:

Obama's supporters are too young to know any of this, but Roosevelt led the United States in the war against Hitler; the Allied policy was unconditional surrender, so there was very little for Roosevelt and Hitler to discuss, and in fact, the two did not meet at all (but they did exchange correspondence before the war).

So my guess is that Obama is thinking of the Yalta Conference with Churchill and Stalin as talking to "our enemies", although of course we were still allied with the Soviet Union against Germany and Japan at that point. Beyond that, is the Yalta Conference something Obama and his advisers view as a success worthy of emulation? Puzzling.

Actually, one leader did have a talk with Hitler. His name was Neville Chamberlain. And we know how that worked out.

Or at least some of us do. But perhaps Obama and his supporters are unaware of that as well. Jim Geraghty has further thoughts.

In his Senate testimony, Frederick Tarantino, head of USRA, made the following interesting recommendation:

I also want to bring to the subcommittee's attention an exciting new way in which university-led experiments with hands-on training could be boosted by NASA involvement. Within the next few years, suborbital commercial vehicles being developed by such companies as Virgin Galactic, XCOR Aerospace, Armadillo Aerospace, and Blue Origin, will provide a unique way to engage scientists and researchers. NASA has already taken the first step by issuing a request for information to help in the formulation of a Suborbital Scientist Participant Pilot Program.

By providing the opportunity for researchers and even undergraduate students to fly into space along with their experiments, not only can new experiments be conducted, but the opportunity can inspire students to engage in the math, science, and engineering. The participatory approach of the personal spaceflight industry means each suborbital launch can be experienced by thousands of people, with young people able to tune in and watch live video from space as their professors and fellow students conduct experiments in real time and experience weightlessness and the life-changing view of the earth from space. The hands-on experience will create a new generation of Principal Investigators who will be prepared to lead the flagship science and human exploration missions, later in their careers.

These new vehicles will provide low-cost access to the space environment for scientific experiments and research. The market rate for these services has already been set by the space tourist market at $100,000-$200,000 per seat, a much lower cost than existing sounding rockets.

We believe the commercial potential here could be energized by the participation of our space agency. USRA requests the subcommittee authorize NASA to follow through on the request for information by establishing the Suborbital Scientist Participant Pilot Program and issuing a NASA Research Announcement soliciting investigations. This will create a university research payloads market for these emerging commercial operations, provide a new way for university researchers to conduct experiments with student involvement and hands-on-training, and bring the involvement of NASA, and its imprimatur, to an exciting new U.S. industry.

Let's hope that the staffers were paying attention.

Sam Harris has a long piece at (of all places) the Huffington Post on the unwillingness of western civilization to stand up for its own values against radical Islam. And as others have noted (and he notes himself), this is particularly ironic:

In a thrillingly ironic turn of events, a shorter version of the very essay you are now reading was originally commissioned by the opinion page of Washington Post and then rejected because it was deemed too critical of Islam. Please note, this essay was destined for the opinion page of the paper, which had solicited my response to the controversy over Wilders' film. The irony of its rejection seemed entirely lost on the Post, which responded to my subsequent expression of amazement by offering to pay me a "kill fee." I declined.

If I thought that Gene Kranz knew what he was talking about, I'd be pretty dismayed about this comment:

"This is the best game plan that I have seen since the days of President Kennedy," Kranz said of ESAS, comparing it to the DC-3 and the B-52. "The system that Griffin's team is putting into place will be delivering for America 50 years later...

What an insane comparison. The DC-3 and B-52 have been operating for decades because they were mission effective and affordable (the latter because they were extensively reused, and not thrown away after, or during each flight).

If a century after the founding of NASA we are still sending people into space in little capsules on large expendable rockets, that will be a testimony to a tremendous failure of national will, and of private enterprise. If that's the best that we can do, I predict that we'll just give up on human spaceflight, and we should. So either way, this prediction is very unlikely.

Fortunately, he's just suffering from sixties nostalgia, and there's little basis for his belief.

[Update a few minutes later]

Apparently that was from his oral testimony, or an answer to a question. Here's the written testimony as submitted, which doesn't make the DC-3 comparison, or talk about fifty years in the future.

NASA Watch has the other witnesses' testimony as well.

[Update about 11 AM EDT]

One other point about the Kranz testimony from the Space Politics link:

Kranz stepped in and described the cost in money and schedule he experienced man-rating the Atlas and Titan for the Mercury and Gemini programs.

Comparing human rating an Atlas V to the original Atlas and Titan isn't a useful comparison. The latter were converted ballistic missiles, whereas Atlas V was designed from scratch to be a reliable launch system. All that's really required to human rate it is to add Failure On-Set Detection (FOSD), and ensure that its trajectory doesn't create any blackout zones for aborts (which it has plenty of power and performance to do).

Jim Oberg has the most extensive public report yet on last months Soyuz mishap, over at IEEE Spectrum.

It's a fascinating read, but it has to give us pause in relying on Soyuz when the Shuttle is retired.

Hillary is going to stay in all the way to the convention--why should she quit? That horse might still learn to sing, or there could be more bad news for Obama. And here's one of the more unsavory reasons that she stays in:

"I can't stand him," the man said. "He's a Muslim. He's not even pro-American as far as I'm concerned."

Such feelings leave Clinton and the Democratic Party in a tough spot. With the largest number of remaining delegates nowbeing party insiders, they have to decide if Obama can overcome enough of that antipathy - essentially deciding if enough working-class whites will back away from the black candidate, whether because of the false Muslim rumors, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright flap or old-fashioned racism.

I think, though, that this is delusional:

A top Democratic source with insight into Bill's and Hillary's states of mind says the Clintons are convinced that a Democratic presidency is all but certain no matter how messy the fight for the nomination.

In that scenario - which the Obama side and some Democratic elders worry is wishful thinking at best, delusional at worst - there's no downside for Hillary doing whatever it takes for as long as it takes.

How does anyone know what "the Clintons are convinced" of? On what basis? Because they say so? I'd say that if you want to know what the Clintons are really thinking, the least reliable method is to take them at their word. This "top Democratic source" makes the mistake of thinking that the Clintons care about the fate of the Democrat Party, despite their devastation of it in the nineties. He (or she) is the one who is being delusional, but about the Clintons, not the Clintons about the party's chances in November.

In fact, as I've said before, I assume that if she doesn't get the nomination, she'll do what she has to in order to ensure Obama's defeat. She doesn't want to have to run against a Democrat incumbent in 2012. So they're right that there's no down side for her to stay in. They're just confused about the reason.

There's an interesting discussion in comments over at Selenian Boondocks on the value of microgravity processing (that veers into other subjects, such as utility and value of propellant depots). I think that Jon gets the better part of the argument, and that "Googaw" is overreacting to overhype. Not to mention ignorant of orbital mechanics. As Jon says, I don't think that he's thought through the concept of a propellant depot in GTO.

...or rather, for outer space. Dennis Wingo presents a backup plan for when ESAS collapses. It's much better than Plan 9. And it's even better than ESAS*.

I was a big Shuttle-C fan twenty years ago. Or rather, I was a Shuttle-derived fan. Shuttle-C has the problem that Dennis admits--a lack of payload volume and (more importantly, from the standpoint of building really nice space stations) a lack of payload diameter, since it's constrained by current pad infrastructure, including the RSS (Rotating Service Structure), to fifteen feet. I preferred in-line concepts (such as Shuttle-Z) that put payload on top of the ET, which would allow twenty-two-foot-diameter, or larger, with a hammerhead configuration. Ah, good times, good times. At least in our dreams.

I've long thought that the time was past for such things. It doesn't address the fundamental problem, which is the high cost of launch, and corresponding low levels of activity, something that neither ESAS, Direct, or Plan 9B address. But if we insist on such a trivial goal of sending a few astronauts to the moon a couple times a year a decade or more from now, then this plan makes more sense than what NASA's doing. We'd probably only waste half as much money.

I'm not sure why we even need Orion, though, in this scenario. If it's a LEO-only vehicle, why waste money to build something that competes with the private sector? I thought that the idea was to get NASA out of LEO, and force them to focus on the "beyond."

* Admittedly, a low bar in both cases--it remains uncertain whether
or not ESAS is better than Plan 9. Actually, now that I think about it, there are similarities. ESAS is, after all, an attempt to conquer space by resurrecting Apollo from the dead.

[Update in the afternoon]

I "snear"? I didn't know I knew how to do that...whatever it is. In fact, I'd never even heard of the word before today. Who knew that Mark was so hip (even if he doesn't know how to read my posts)?

You know, if there were some planetary version of Child Protective Services (not that I'm proposing such a thing--I'm sure that its primary focus would be Katrina "victims"), the Burmese people would be taken away from their rulers:

...with the clock ticking four days after the storm hit, Myanmar's reclusive military rulers insisted foreign aid experts would still have to negotiate with the government to be allowed into the isolated nation.

Also, the army, which had plenty of manpower to come in and beat protesting Buddhist monks a few months ago, is nowhere to be found.

Rob Coppinger has dug up an interesting Chinese video. As he points out, we didn't do training in a water tank in the sixties, but the Chinese are standing on the shoulders of giants. But their program will continue to move at a snail's pace, and never be a serious threat, as long as they continue to emulate NASA and Russia.

Over at Lileks' place:

Their logo looks like a deformed octopus. We get the picture, though. It's the Klan. This was still a touchy thing in '36; this must have irritated the people who thought the film ignored all the good things the Klan did, like community outreach and neighborhood suppers and the occasional potluck where a fella could get together with like-minded Americans and talk freely about the Catholics.

Gee, to what or whom could he possibly be referring?

Christopher Hitchens is willing to ask the question that so many others are not, and the one to which the answer seems pretty obvious, at least to me:

What can it be that has kept Obama in Wright's pews, and at Wright's mercy, for so long and at such a heavy cost to his aspirations? Even if he pulls off a mathematical nomination victory, he has completely lost the first, fine, careless rapture of a post-racial and post-resentment political movement and mired us again in all the old rubbish that predates Dr. King. What a sad thing to behold. And how come? I think we can exclude any covert sympathy on Obama's part for Wright's views or style--he has proved time and again that he is not like that, and even his own little nods to "Minister" Farrakhan can probably be excused as a silly form of Chicago South Side political etiquette. All right, then, how is it that the loathsome Wright married him, baptized his children, and received donations from him? Could it possibly have anything, I wonder, to do with Mrs. Obama?

This obvious question is now becoming inescapable, and there is an inexcusable unwillingness among reporters to be the one to ask it. (One can picture Obama looking pained and sensitive and saying, "Keep my wife out of it," or words to that effect, as Clinton tried to do in 1992 when Jerry Brown and Ralph Nader quite correctly inquired about his spouse's influence.) If there is a reason why the potential nominee has been keeping what he himself now admits to be very bad company--and if the rest of his character seems to make this improbable--then either he is hiding something and/or it is legitimate to ask him about his partner.

It's looking more and more like 1992 all over again. Except this time, there's no Ross Perot (at least so far) to save the Democrats from themselves.

...why I am a libertarian, but not a Libertarian:

In a column in today's Sarasota Herald-Tribune, Billy Cox notes that Hoagland's presence stands in contrast to efforts by Libertarians to tone down UFO talk within their ranks. Joe Buchman, running for Congress in Utah as a Libertarian, told Cox that state LP officials are "fuming" over Buchman's push to declassify records that he believes would prove evidence of... well, something to do with alien life. "At least I won't be the biggest nut case at the convention now," Buchman said upon learning of Hoagland's talk.

The party does tend to attract a lot of nutballs. I can't take seriously a party that takes Richard Hoagland seriously enough to feature him at its convention.

Jeff Foust and Charles Miller talk about the real issue with space--the fact that we still can't afford to get there on any useful scale.

On a related note (though it's not obvious that they're related, other than the fact that both pieces appear in today's issue of The Space Review), Greg Zsidisin wonders whether we are going to repeat the Apollo debacle.

Well, that depends on what you think "the Apollo debacle" is.

If I read him correctly, Greg seems to think that it was abandoning the Apollo hardware and its capabilities and replacing it with the flawed concept of the Shuttle:

It's déjà vu all over again, of course. Shortly after Apollo 11, NASA triumphantly presented its funding list of "next logical steps". These included human Mars exploration, Moon bases, and a large space station in Earth orbit serviced by a reusable "space shuttle". At the time, the US was engaged in the costly, divisive Vietnam War, while the economy was beginning a big slide that would result in double-digit inflation in the early '70s.

With the race against the Russians having been won, and a decidedly anti-technology attitude settling in, Congress and President Nixon readily pulled the plug on everything but the shuttle, which nevertheless struggled for funding and support. The vehicle that emerged was a highly compromised version of what had been envisioned, and sure enough did not bring the vastly cheaper and more routine space access promised.

The Apollo infrastructure, meanwhile, was almost entirely discarded. We lost the Saturn launch vehicles, their engines, most of their directly associated manufacturing and launch capability. This, despite the huge cost and effort it took to create them.

The problem is that "the next logical steps" weren't necessarily all that logical, but they did fulfill the von Braunian vision (which is what it was based on). In a sense, the Shuttle was the "next logical step," but only in the sense that it was an attempt to make space affordable--something that Saturn never would have done, had we continued it, as so many now nostalgic for that era would prefer. In fact, such misplaced nostalgia for large expendable rockets is at the heart of the cargo-cultish approach of ESAS--it is an attempt to return to the glory days, when we went to the moon, and the whole world watched.

The mistake of Shuttle was not in seeking CRATS (Cheap Reliable Access To Space, which is essential, as Foust and Miller point out). It was in the approach taken to do it. And in that, I don't mean a reusable system. It was in thinking that it was a task for a major government, Manhattan-Project-style initiative on the scale (or even on a smaller scale) of Apollo, in which the government would develop, build and operate a fleet of vehicles (of a single design) to handle all of the nation's (and hopefully, much of the world's) space transportation needs.

No, it was no mistake to set as a goal the dramatic reduction of costs, and increase in routine access to space, which was in fact the original goal of the Shuttle program, and why, despite its many successful flights with useful accomplishments, it was an utter failure programmatically. It should still be the goal, but we have to take a different approach, and not just technically, (again) as Foust and Miller point out:

Any new initiative to achieve CRATS must address the repeated national failures (Shuttle, NASP, X-33, X-34) to achieve CRATS. Instead of trying the same old thing over again, and expecting different results, a new initiative would address the core reasons for the failure, and provide some ideas on a new approach.

Unfortunately, the core reasons for the failure lie at heart in our overall approach to, and thinking about spaceflight. I've often noted that we got off on the wrong track half a century ago, when space technology (at least for human spaceflight) became an expression of technical ability in a race between two Cold Warriors, rather than a utilitarian development for commerce and national security. In so doing, it created a mindset on the subject from which it is difficult for most policy analysts, let alone the general public, to escape. It also created a politically potent iron triangle between NASA, the contractor community, and the Congress that makes it difficult to implement new or innovative policy solutions, because the success of those rent seekers is not contingent on actual progress in space. As long as the contracts continue, and the jobs remain in place, and the lobbyists make their political donations, it doesn't really matter that much whether or not the human space program is expanding humanity into space, or making us a spacefaring nation, because those goals are not nationally important.

The good news is that there is pressure from outside that system to force change. One, as is noted in the Foust/Miller piece, is the growing awareness in the military of the vulnerability of our space assets, and that the only real solution to this is responsive space, not just in terms of access, but also in terms of replacement systems. One of the several ways in which NASA has completely flouted the recommendations of the Aldridge Commission is to propose an architecture that contributes almost nothing to national security. Another way, equally if not more important, is that it contributes almost nothing to nurturing private space enterprise.

Even ignoring all of the technical problems with it, these two factors are probably what will doom it. When the budget crunch comes, unlike the Shuttle, NASA will be unable to call on the Pentagon to come to bat for it. And while private space companies will continue to support the Vision for Space Exploration in the abstract, none of them have any motivation to support ESAS itself. Particularly when there are much more lucrative, and less fickle markets, as they start to satisfy private desires to go, and ignore NASA's continued emphasis on a voyeuristic program that allows us to watch a few civil servants go to the moon while we foot the bill.

I have long said that NASA's approach is essentially socialist, but I realize now that I've been wrong in that assessment. Since reading Jonah Goldberg's book, I've slowly come to realize, over the past few months, that a much more accurate phrase for it is fascist (not that there's anything wrong with that).

Chair Force Engineer recently came to the same conclusion:

In order to justify the enormous expense of the space shuttle borne by the American taxpayers, and to get the flight rate up to levels which would make the vehicle economical, the shuttle was used to launch commercial payloads during its early years. The thought of a government-funded, government-operated vehicle launching commercial payloads should be anathema to freedom-loving Americans. But the shuttle served its need as "the moral equivalent of war." After all, the Russian efforts to duplicate the shuttle capabilities with Energia-Buran helped to bankrupt the Soviet Union. And the shuttle & space station continue to serve as symbols of national pride, promoting the religion of the state.

Exactly. We are supposed to contribute to the glorious State's Space Program, and be content to watch the chosen Representatives of the State, our Celestial Gladiators, go out into the cosmos for us. That is the von Braunian vision (hey, anyone remember where he got his start?), and Mike Griffin (who I'm pretty sure sees himself as von Braun's successor) is eager to continue it. And it doesn't help that neither he, nor any of his other OSC compadres--Tony Elias, Bill Claybaugh, Doug Stanley, et al--even believe that CRATS is achievable. It's a convenient belief, of course, if one wants to build big rockets at taxpayer expense. But we shouldn't fool ourselves that it has anything to do with classically liberal American values. Or becoming a truly spacefaring nation.

Fortunately, we are reaching a point at which we will no longer be able to afford such grand visions of "One NASA" (Ein NASA, Ein Volk, Ein Administrator), and will instead be focused on actual mission needs by the military, and commercial desires of people who actually want to do stuff in space, with their own money. At that point, perhaps, the Cold War will finally be over for the one agency that, like a few Japanese soldiers on remote islands, who hadn't gotten the word, even into the sixties, continued to fight on well past its end.

[Update about noon eastern]

OK, maybe Mike Griffin isn't von Braun's heir:

Werner Von Braun's body was found in China this week after making the trip from D.C. No, he wasn't exhumed, he just churned in his grave until he augured all the way through after an unidentified visitor paying respects whispered to him graveside about the latest hare-brained scheme to make ARES 1 lift off and fly right.

OK, so it's not simple or soon. But as noted at the link, if it never flies, at least it will be safe.

[Late Monday evening update]

Based on his comments, Mark Whittington apparently hasn't read Jonah's book, despite the fact that he attempted to review it.

From the first edition, pages 210-211 (my annotations are in square brackets, and red), "Even Kennedy's nondefense policies were sold as the moral analogue of war...His intimidation of the steel industry was a rip-off of Truman's similar effort during the Korean War, itself a maneuver from the playbooks of FDR and Wilson. Likewise, the Peace Corps and its various domestic equivalents were throwbacks to FDR's martial CCC. Even Kennedy's most ambitious idea, putting a man on the moon, was sold to the public as a response to the fact that the Soviet Union was overtaking America in science..."

"What made [Kennedy's administration] so popular? What made it so effective? What has given it its lasting appeal? On almost every front, the answers are those elements that fit the fascist playbook: the creation of crises [We're losing the race to the Soviets! We can't go to sleep by a Russian moon!], national appeals to unity [They are our astronauts! Our nation shall beat the Soviets to the moon!], the celebration of martial values [The astronauts were all military, the best of the best], the blurring of lines between public and private sectors [SETA contracts, anyone? Cost plus? Our version of Soviet design bureaus?], the utilization of the mass media to glamorize the state and its programs [No Life Magazine deal for chronicling a bowdlerized version of the astronauts' lives? Really?], invocation of a "post-partisan" spirit that places the important decisions in the hands of experts and intellectual supermen, and a cult of personality for the national leader [von Braun? "Rocket scientists"? Not just Kennedy Space Center, but (briefly) Cape Kennedy?]."

Bold type mine (in addition to red annotations).

Nope, no fascism here. Nothing to see here, folks.

As Halperin writes, you can't make this kind of thing up:

Hillary Clinton enthusiastically picked a filly named Eight Belles to win the Kentucky Derby and compared herself to the horse. Eight Belles finished second. The winner was the favorite, Big Brown.

Eight Belles collapsed immediately after crossing the finish line, and was euthanized shortly thereafter.

Like Mark, I too have no other comment.

Oh, and while we're on the subject, does Hillary! live in a permanent state of denial and fantasy? Mickey makes a good case.

[Mid-morning update]

Speaking of denial, Jim Geraghty explains (once again, for those who continue to miss the point, or obfuscate it with straw men) that the issue with Wright is not the concern that Obama secretly shares his views (though that is certainly a possibility). It's the judgment, stupid:

In Wright, Obama saw what he wanted to see. He wanted a wise, shrewd, kind, funny, educated man who could show him the ways of the world (and Chicago politics), one who perhaps went a little too far every now and then, but who was overall a good person.

Instead, we see that Wright is a toxic figure, arguing that blacks and whites have different brain structures, that the American government created the AIDS virus for genocidal purposes, that U.S. policy can accurately be called terrorism, that the U.S. Marines can be compared to the Roman soldiers who tortured Jesus, who calls Italians "garlic-noses," who calls the Secretary of State "Condoskeezia" and "Con-damn-nesia", etc.

Here's where the example of Wright is truly disturbing when contemplating an Obama presidency. If Barack Obama looked at Jeremiah Wright and saw only what he wanted to see... how sure can we be that he wouldn't look at say, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and see only what he wanted to see?

Also, as a bonus, some psychoanalysis based on Obama's book. So now both Hillary! and Obama are put on the couch in this post.

That's why no posting this weekend. We tore out some shrubbery, and it was a good opportunity to paint the house, which we had never done since we bought it, four years ago. New landscaping, too, so drive-up value should be improved considerably.

Thomas James has more thoughts on the kludges.

Has the dollar hit the bottom?

Given that the Fed is signaling no more rate cuts, I think that it's a pretty good bet. Which means that it's also a peak for oil prices (at least if they remain denominated in dollars). And (more) bad news for the Dems in the fall.

I think that Victor Davis Hanson has diagnosed the situation spot on, and it's good news for Republicans, because it means that a) Obama is almost a lock on the nomination and b) there's no way he can win the general election. Particularly since Hillary! will do everything she can to prevent it, as long as her fingerprints aren't on it.

...privately they acknowledge:

--that their candidate made a devil's bargain with a racist to create an authentic black persona in order to jump start a political career in Chicago;

--that their candidate was so inured to de rigueur anti-American speech from his church days, black-liberationist friends, assorted reverends, and former radicals like Ayers, that he never really thought things that Wright said were all that big a deal -- hence his deer-in-the-headlights approach to the initial scandal and serial hedging. After all, in Obama's adopted world, his church really isn't "particularly controversial;"

--that their Obama messiah is hardly a new politician, but instead a very gifted and charismatic actor, who, in skillful fashion, can talk about utopian politics but then backstep, hedge, and get away with more than anyone since Bill Clinton in his prime in 1992 (one of the reasons that those two dislike each other so is that they are so much alike) -- and that is not such a bad thing after all.

Yes, I can easily imagine letting such talk pass, while not necessarily agreeing with it, accepting it as well within reasonable discourse. I remember doing it a lot in college.

But I grew up.

But few showed up. Workers of the world apparently didn't unite all that much today, at least in Portland, according to a photoessay by Patrick Lasswell.

No, not that kind of strap on. Get your minds out of the sewer.

A strap-on helicopter:

Tiny rockets at the tips of the helicopter's rotor blades take the place of a tail rotor, a component which couldn't be safely attached to a human body. According to the company, the Libelula would be the lightest helicopter in the world, so light that it could be strapped to a person's body with a carbon fiber corset.

"The best [part] of this technology is that [these] kinds of helicopters don't need a tail rotor because they don't have any torque, so with a simple vane they can turn - being the simplest form of an helicopter and the easiest and safer to fly," the company says on its Web site.

So, first question is: how do they prevent the pilot/passenger from rotating with the blades (there's bound to be non-zero friction in the bearing)? Seems like you'd get kinda dizzy, and it would be hard to steer.

There would also seem to be safety issues for bystanders--that thing could easily decapitate someone.

Jim Manzi reviews Expelled. He's not impressed.

And John Derbyshire is appropriately dismayed by Jews like David Klinghoffer and Ben Stein latching on to this anti-science schtick:

One of the best reasons to be a philosemite in our time is sheer gratitude at the disproportionate contribution Jews have made to the advance of Western civilization, and to our understanding of the world, this past two hundred years. The U.S.A. dominated the 20th century in culture and technology, to the great benefit of all mankind, in part because of the work done in math and science by the great tranche of pre-WW2 immigrant Jews from Europe.

Now you have joined up with people who want to trash the scientific enterprise and heap insults on one of the greatest names in intellectual history. For reasons unfathomable to me, you and Ben Stein want to sneer and scoff at our understandings, hard-won over centuries of arduous intellectual effort. Don't the two of you know, don't Jews of all people know, where this anti-intellectual agitation, this pandering to a superstitious mob, will lead at last? If you truly don't, I refer you to the fate of Hypatia, which you can read about in my last book (Chapter 3), or in Gibbon (Chapter XLVII). Your new pals at the Discovery Institute no doubt think Hypatia got what she deserved.

Civilization is a thin veneer, David. Reason and science are bulwarks against the dark.

The mistake that these people make is to equate science with atheism. It is true that, as science advances, and more scientific explanations are put forth, much of the need for God, at least insofar as an explanation for natural phenomena, is removed. But then, that's the nature of natural phenomena--if they require the supernatural, they are by definition not natural.

But it doesn't follow that a belief in science in general, or evolution in particular, requires atheism. Many (including Manzi in the link above) have pointed out numerous examples, going back to Aquinas, of the compatibility of rationality and reason, and theism. Stein and Klinghoffer would return us to the dark ages, even if they don't realize it.

There's a long piece on the the current state of space law over at the ABA Journal. I only have a couple issues with it. First, I don't know what they mean by this:

Even though the United States eventually outpaced the Soviet Union by putting men on the moon in 1969, the space race continued until the early 1990s.

No, the space race was essentially over by 1968 or so, once the Russians realized that they weren't going to beat us to the moon, and instead rewrote history to pretend that they'd never even been trying. There was no urgency or racing after that--had there been, NASA budgets would have been higher, and schedules faster. So I don't know what this sentence means, unless it just a vague reference to the fact that progress, such as it was, continue on both the US and Soviet side, until the fall of the Soviet Union.

On ITAR, I strongly disagree with Pam Meridith:

"I think the hysteria over ITARs is out of proportion," says Pamela L. Meredith, who co-chairs the space law practice group at Zuckert, Scoutt & Rasen­berger in Washington, D.C. "They've been around for a long time now, so people have had time to adjust."

No matter how much "time people have to adjust," it still adds time and cost to projects, and prevents many from ha