Why you’re not working on one.
With bonus quotes from my former colleague at Aerospace, Bill Ailor.
I’m surprised the article didn’t mention the B612 Foundation.
Monthly Archives: February 2013
The State Of The Union
…is inappropriate:
Jefferson’s happy settlement lasted for just over a century, until, in the heady progressive climate of 1913, Woodrow Wilson brought the damn thing back. Given Wilson’s attitude toward limited government, toward the Constitution, and toward the American settlement, that it was he who did this should raise alarm bells even in the ears of the speech’s defenders. With the admirable openness that marked his unadmirable hostility to America’s founding ideals, Wilson announced that he would restore the speech because it was fitting for a strong and king-like president with an agenda — in other words, he directly reversed Jefferson’s logic. A brief respite followed the Wilson administration: After delivering his first in person, Calvin Coolidge agreed with Wilson’s characterization of the event, and, wishing to be anything but a king-like president, re-abolished the practice, delivering the remainder of his reports in writing and setting an example that was followed by his successor, Herbert Hoover. But it wasn’t to last. FDR had higher pretensions and brought the speech back. With a few exceptions (none based on principle), it has stayed with us ever since.
One more reason that Wilson was such an awful president, and Coolidge is ovunderrated. The SOTA is nothing but an opportunity for political grandstanding.
Screwing The Youth
Will Obama tell them how much he’s doing so?
No. Next question?
Plus, more thoughts on the selfishness of the Boomer generation.
No, Suzi Parker
Sarah Palin is not going to work for Al Jazeera.
Too good to fact check, I guess.
[Update a couple minutes later]
More scoops for Suzi. Heh.
Hopefully, her humiliation is just beginning.
[Update a few minutes later]
#suziparkerscoops
Iowahawk: “There are times when we should cease the cruel humiliation of a fellow human being. This is not one of those times. #suziparkerscoops”
Solar Geoengineering
A quick and easy way to stop global warming?
It would certainly be cheaper than carbon reduction, but it’s not clear if it would work, or what the other side effects might be. And of course, if it’s even necessary.
But if it really is a problem, schemes like this, or space-based ones, make a lot more sense than screwing up the global economy.
Good Timing
Obama is going to pontificate on non-proliferation tonight after the North Koreans tested a miniaturized nuke. Because his speeches are always so effective:
It’s not a pretty picture to present to the world at the start of Obama’s second term. Vietor, asked about the apparent failure to halt either Iran’s and North Korea’s nuclear programs, replied: “How is that different than four years ago?” On the broader issue of nonproliferation, Vietor also noted that the U.S. and Russia had signed a New START pact in 2010. Yet Republicans in Congress have resisted further cuts in the U.S. nuclear arsenal, suggesting this effort signals U.S. weakness, especially after Obama was heard telling Russia’s then-president, Dmitry Medvedev, over an open microphone that “after my election I have more flexibility” in making concessions on America’s missile-defense program. The North Korean test is likely to only stiffen GOP resistance.
As it should.
Gun Control, Mental Health And Public Safety
A requested letter to Ted Cruz:
The United States is at something of a crossroads here: we can remain focused on gun control, or we can look at the root cause of not only the random acts of mass murder, but many other serious social maladies. The deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill has played a destructive role not only with respect to crime, but also with the degradation of urban life, and with the barbarous degradation of mentally ill people, who are a large fraction of the homeless in our country.[11]
Deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill is the root cause of most of these shocking acts of mass murder, and the much more common but less publicized murders that happen every day in America, which very seldom involve high-capacity magazines or scary looking black rifles.
Pretending that gun control is going to have much of an impact on this is like putting a Band-Aid on an arm with a severed artery. It is only a short-term solution, because it covers up a deeper problem. It is time to recognize and solve the root problem.
Gun control isn’t about guns, or public safety. It’s about control.
[Update later morning]
Randy Barnett has a letter for Ted, too, as does Dave Kopel.
Islam’s Demographic Disaster
Thoughts from Spengler:
Muslim civilization is in catastrophic decline. It is passing from infancy to senescence without ever reaching maturity. Iran has one last bulge generation of military age men, born before the fertility collapse got underway. It perceives one last historic opportunity to achieve Shi’ite dominance. It won’t have another.
It is too much to hope that the establishment will draw the appropriate strategic conclusions from this “mysterious” trend, as Ignatius obtusely characterizes it.
The point of my 2006 studies in Iran’s demographics was not academic: I argued that a demographic cataclysm helped explained the apocalyptic mindset of the Iranian leadership, which felt that it had nothing to lose by betting everything on a Shi’ite resurgence under the umbrella of nuclear.
It’s certainly too much to hope that an Obama administration will get it, particularly with John Brennan as DCI.
FISO
Harley Thronson and Dan Lester describe the history of the Future In-Space Operations working group. I hadn’t realized that it wasn’t a formal NASA activity. Which makes it all the more remarkable, because it’s one of the most valuable things that’s been happening for the past several years.
Benghazi
I think he is ashamed. Here’s what I’ve been assuming happened: It looked like our people were overwhelmed and doomed, so there was shock, sadness, and acceptance. But then the fight went on for 7 or 8 hours. The White House folk decided there was nothing to do but accept the inevitable, and then they witnessed a valiant fight which they had done nothing to support. It was always too late to help. It was too late after one hour, then too late after 2 hours, then too late after 3 hours…. When were these people going to die already? After that was all over, how do you explain what you did?
You lie, apparently. And I don’t think he’s ashamed at all. I’ve seen little evidence that he has any sense of shame.