If you could put a reaction control system into them to allow them to rendezvous with each other, you might have some interesting fractionated satellites.
This is a good example of Arthur C. Clarke’s rule that when a distinguished elder scientist says that something can’t be done, he’s very likely wrong.
It’s an embarrassment for the administration. Well, yeah. What’s surprising, though, is who is saying it:
“An embarrassment for the administration,” Blitzer stated. “Hopefully, they’ll get all those glitches out of the way by Monday, if possible. They’ve only had three years to get ready for this roll out.”
When you’ve lost Wolf Blitzer…
It’s not just our Syria non-policy that has the Saudis at arm’s length. The newfound cooperation between President Obama and President Rouhani of Iran has put an added strain on the US-Saudi relationship. The Saudis, like the Israelis, are displeased with the prospect of US-Iranian non-proliferation talks. They see them as an Iranian ploy to ease UN sanctions while continuing to press toward getting the bomb. And while the Saudis are a key American ally, they are adept at securing their interests in the region and are not beholden to Washington. If they continue to be dissatisfied with US policy, they might hinder, or at a minimum do nothing to help, other US interests in the Middle East.
I’d be very surprised if Jerusalem and Riyadh aren’t having some serious back-channel talks. They both know they can’t count on this White House.
Blame it for the government shut down. It’s doing exactly what he intended it to do:
As a practical matter, it’s Obama’s refusal to negotiate that matters. A member of Congress can’t get time with the president or his top aides on demand. A president can always get through to a member of Congress — as Obama did, finally, Monday night for a conversation described as “less than ten minutes.”
Astonishingly, Obama said in a prepared statement that no president had negotiated ancillary issues with Congress when a shutdown was threatened. Four Pinocchios, said Washington Post fact checker Glenn Kessler.
Unfortunately, only one side understands that. Of course, they hate James Madison, and all of his limited-government works.
Only a fool would think it’s a coincidence:
… until the FBI bugs the West Wing of the White House, or the Treasury building next door, or the Internal Revenue Service’s headquarters a few blocks to the southeast, we might never know the exact origin of America’s tax collectors harassing President Obama’s political adversaries.
Maybe there was never an explicit order. Considering the threat of being overheard, it’s part of the job of the capos to know what the boss wants and make him happy by giving it to him without him even having to ask.
The IRS and the Obama administration are on the same page when it comes to big government: Tea Partiers and other conservatives threaten the massive state they love, and the IRS’ powerful army of bureaucrats is a pretty handy weapon for use against them.
…This is not a coincidence, any more than awakening with a severed horse’s head in your bed after being made “an offer you can’t refuse” is.
Someone — either within the IRS bureaucracy or above it — saw what Carson did, didn’t like it, and decided to make him pay. The American people must know who it was.
Remember, the president “joked” about auditing his political enemies four years ago. If this isn’t punished, it will continue, and get worse.
…and Barack Obama’s vindictive streak. It’s amazing how many still don’t see what a petty, thin-skinned man he is.
There will be one:
You might depart the theater after Gravity with mixed emotions about going to space yourself. Cuaron’s tracking shots and sweeping vistas of the blue marble below evoke a sort of spiritual response, especially in the spaces between suspense when the movie gets quiet. Of course, the Bullock and Clooney spend much of the film spinning and flailing in mortal danger, dodging hunks of metal that become ballistic missiles at orbital speed. Jones sees Gravity as appearing amid a rising wave of interest in space brought on by the emerging private space industry, and that’s a hopeful trend. But humanity has to be realistic about risk assessment, and ready for the high drama of trying to rescue space travelers after a disaster in orbit. Perhaps when space travel becomes common, and not simply the domain of professional astronauts, we’ll treat space disasters like plane crashes—tragedies that can be made extremely uncommon, but never eliminated. And that will be a good thing.
Yes. That’s the fundamental premise of my book.
The possibilities were endless! and then came the facts:
The driver wasn’t a Tea Party member
Wasn’t a person involved in politics,
Wasn’t armed
Wasn’t a man
Wasn’t even white!
Sucks when reality refuses to conform to the narrative.
Cars that only come with them. They aren’t dead yet.
“…is sick and collapsing under its own weight.”
The biggest problem, he says, is the anonymity granted to reviewers, who are often competing fiercely for priority with authors they are reviewing. “What would be their reason to do it quickly?” Tracz asks. “Why would they not steal” ideas or data?
Anonymous review, Tracz notes, is the primary reason why months pass between submission and publication of findings. “Delayed publishing is criminal; it’s nonsensical,” he says. “It’s an artifact from an irrational, almost religious belief” in the peer-review system.
Climaquiddick was a particularly egregious case of it, but the whole system is broken. And this is what leads to so much crap science, not just in climate, but in nutrition and other areas. It doesn’t get properly reviewed or argued.