Illegal fundraising by the Obama campaign? Who would have thought?
I wonder how much of that foreign money comes from oil wealth.
Monthly Archives: October 2008
Mrs. Grievance
I guess that being overambitious, and impatient with your current position isn’t confined to Barack Obama. He and Michelle were made for each other:
At big firms, much of the work that falls to young associates involves detail and tedium. There were all sorts of arcane but important rules about what could and could not be said or done in product advertisements, and in the marketing group, all the associates, not just the new ones, reviewed scripts for TV commercials to make sure they conformed. As far as associate work goes, it could have been worse — “Advertising is a little sexier than spending a full year reading depositions in an antitrust law suit or reviewing documents for a big merger,” says White — but it was monotonous and relatively low-level.
Too monotonous for Michelle, who, White says, complained that the work he gave her was unsatisfactory. He says he gave her the Coors beer ads, which he considered one of the more glamorous assignments they had. Even then, he says, “she at one point went over my head and complained [to human resources] that I wasn’t giving her enough interesting stuff, and the person came down to my office and said, ‘Basically she’s complaining that she’s being treated like she’s a second-year associate,’ and we agreed that she was a second-year associate. I had eight or nine other associates, and I couldn’t start treating one of them a lot better.”
White says he talked to Michelle about her expectations, but the problem could not be resolved because the work was what it was. He is not sure any work he had would have satisfied her. “I couldn’t give her something that would meet her sense of ambition to change the world.”
She and Barack are going to make us work. Arbeit macht frei.
Rockette Scientist
My smart, funny (and only slightly crazy) buddy from engineering school, Lynne Wainfan, has decided to torment the world with a new blog. The current top post relates her adventures in wing walking. She also has an iPhone review. But read all.
Even Deeper In The Tank
The New York Times continues to act as the propaganda arm of the Obama campaign:
Steve Diamond has made a powerful case that, whoever first suggested Obama’s name, Ayers must surely have had a major role in his final selection. Diamond has now revealed that the Times consulted him extensively for this article and has seen his important documentary evidence. Yet we get no inkling in the piece of Diamond’s key points, or the documents that back it up. (I’ve made a similar argument myself, based largely on my viewing of many of the same documents presented by Diamond.) How can an article that gives only one side of the story be fair? Instead of offering both sides of the argument and letting readers decide, the Times simply spoon-feeds its readers the Obama camp line.
The Times also ignores the fact that I’ve published a detailed statement from the Obama camp on the relationship between Ayers and Obama at the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. (See “Obama’s Challenge.”) Maybe that’s because attention to that statement would force them to acknowledge and report on my detailed reply.
Yup. Wouldn’t fit the narrative.
[Mid afternoon update]
Instapundit has a roundup of links discussing this.
Irreproducible
It’s that time of year again, for the (Ig)nobel prizes.
The Chinese Space Program Has Come A Long Way
Heh.
[From Bruce Webster, via email]
Justice, At Last
O.J. Simpson is finally going to do some hard time.
[Mid-afternoon update]
No smirking at this verdict. He’s been getting away with bad behavior all of his life. He must be wondering what finally went wrong.
Leaving The Magic Kingdom
The workshop is over, and I’m heading down to Boca. More thoughts on space solar power later.
Presidential Stock Market Response to VP Debate
Obama is still trading as a 2-1 favorite on Intrade after the debate and has even moved up a point since yesterday’s close to 66 cents (for a security that pays one dollar if he wins) as of press time. But Palin has earned her stripes. The “Palin to be withdrawn from the ticket” security has dropped from ten cents yesterday to 4 which is a penny less than “Biden to be withdrawn from the ticket”. My opinion? Palin’s the best of the four and should have been thrown to the media wolves so they could patronize her and have it backfire, so she could continue framing the debate, and so she could dominate the late-night talk shows and comedy shows. It’s not too late for her to make a circuit of the late night TV shows. Parody is a high form of praise. CNN reported that she did less than five interviews to Biden’s 100+. I don’t see McCain changing that now. I hope she runs in 2012 and if necessary 2016.
Friday Space Power Technology Session
Here’s where I’ll be picking up from yesterday, and blogging today’s session, as I get time.
The first speaker this morning is Jay Penn of Aerospace (again) talking about laser power beaming demonstrators. He’s describing the same apps as yesterday for the military, but also talking about space-to-space beaming for other spacecraft. Reviewing yesterday’s talk with concept that can put 2.5 MW into the grid per satellite. Two solar panels, two laser transmitter panels on a deployable backbone. Providing more of a description of the “halo” orbits than yesterday, but I still don’t understand it from an orbital mechanics standpoint. I’ll have to read the paper or talk to Jay later.
He’s showing several charts that demonstrate how inserting technology into the laser system can dramatically increase the power available per EELV flight (not sure how relevant this is, other than as a benchmark, because it’s very unlikely that an economically viable system is going to go up on EELVs). Also shows that you don’t save much money by scaling down the system to smaller power levels–R&D dominates the costs. His bottom line is that we could do a 125kW demonstrator on an EELV, that could scale up to 200kW with technology insertion. Laser appears to be the only practical means to provide acceptable small spot beams from GEO. Laswers have 10,000 times smaller spot for the same range and aperture compared to microwaves. In response to a question, he notes that the individual lasers are not phased, and they don’t need to be. There is a question about maintenance/repair. They hadn’t looked in detail but a quick look suggested that degradation wasn’t a major issue. he makes one other point–the system was self-lifting from LEO to GEO using ion propulsion, to save mass.
Now another talk by Jordin Kare, on laser diode power beaming. Talking about the NASA beamed power Centennial Challenge. While it’s about elevator climbers, it is essentially a contest to build a beamed-power system. Prize has almost been won, but not quite, and is now at $500K. None of the teams are using lasers. Laser-Motive (his company) was formed to develop laser power beaming technology, but the current focus is on winning the prize. Their concept uses a fixed set of laser diodes and optics, with a steering mirror below the climber. Operating on a shoestring. They are estimating 10% efficiency, but actually getting more like 13%. They have eight kW of laser power to deliver a kilowatt to the climber. Got good price on “seconds” for the lasers (a little less than $10/watt so about $80K) Didn’t care about beam profile, as long as they got the power on target. Didn’t do custom optics–used float-glass and amateur telescope mirrors, with old HP stepper motors to drive them. Lasers share (more expensive) parabolic mirrors. Bought some 50% efficiency cells that can operate at ten suns, with help from Boeing. Unfortunately they had some final integration issues (smoking a power supply) that prevented them from winning, but no on else won either.
The 2008 contest is a kilometer climb up a rope hung from a helicopter (the faster the climb, the more the money)–lasers are the only option. DILAS is offering to build a custom system ($35,000 for 2.5kW), and will set a new radiance standard. Can go to much more range with bigger optics and more power. deliver tens of kilowatts at tens of kilometers with this technology.
Laser-Motive is ready to build these kinds of systems tomorrow. Could be used for ground to aircraft or ground vehicles of mirrors on aerostats, or air to ground to simulate space-to-ground. ISS to ground is also a possibility. Next steps: higher radiance, coherent systems (e.g., fiber lasers), lightweight low-cost optics, and then operational systems.