I’ve really got to start paying more attention to this stuff, because my blood pressure has gotten ridiculously high to the point where I need to be pretty drastic about it.
How The Public-Employee Unions…
…are destroying California.
High-Speed Rail Troubles
…in China. I’m shocked, shocked.
John Edwards Should Not Be Indicted
I agree with Mickey. I do think, though, that campaign finance laws should be tossed on the ash heap of history. One of the few good things that Barack Obama did in 2008 (or ever, for that matter) was to make spending limits irrelevant.
[Update a couple minutes later]
I also agree with Mickey that while he shouldn’t be indicted, he hasn’t been punished enough.
Heading Back To CA
Conference is over, and I drove down to south Florida this evening from Orlando for a morning flight out of Fort Lauderdale. Likely no more posting until tomorrow afternoon Pacific time.
The Coming Violence
And if it happens, even on a large scale, look for the same media that has been in an uproar for the past couple years over imagined violence at Tea Parties to minimize it, if they are unable to continue to ignore it.
[Update a while later]
Or of course, they won’t minimize it, but will instead maximize it and blame it on the “violent right-wing rhetoric.” Somehow.
The Climate-Change Gravy Train
How well paid are the warm-mongers? Looks like nice work to me, if you can get it, and all you have to do is go along with the politically correct status quo. I don’t know of anyone who’s done as well by scepticism. But then, the latter are being true to standards of science.
[Update a few minutes later]
The EPA person responsibility for regulating CO2 levels doesn’t know what the current level is. The country’s in the very best of hands.
When Is No-Fly Zone…
…a no-fly zone?
Joe Pappalardo makes the case against one. I’m on record as supporting one (though of course, it was a quick blog post, and I always reserve the right to change my mind), but I was actually being more generic. While the points Joe makes are all valid, what I was really advocating was rendering Colonel Whathisname incapable of attacking civilians from the air. The scenario he lays out would do that just about as well, and at much less cost and risk.
A Harsh Assessment Of The Past Half Century
…in space. I wouldn’t go quite so far as to say that we’ve pi**ed away fifty years — we did lay a foundation for what’s to come, but we certainly could have been a lot further along with smarter policy, actually focused on opening up space (something that US space policy has never been). Several people at the suborbital conference here have commented (as I often do) that there is very little happening today in the newspace world, at least suborbitally, that we couldn’t have been doing twenty, or even thirty years ago (though modern computer and manufacturing technology has certainly made things cheaper and faster). But we have another half century to start getting it right. I hope.
A Hero In Pakistan
Death threats were a constant in Bhatti’s life for many years. He once told me that he had never married because he did not think it would be fair to a wife and children to subject them to this concern. His work was his life: At the end of each day, he left his government Cabinet office and headed over to his office at the All Pakistan Minorities Alliance, where he continued to help Pakistan’s persecuted minorities until late into the night.
“I personally stand for religious freedom, even if I will pay the price of my life,” he had said when he received the USCIRF award. “I live for this principle and I want to die for this principle.”
Sadly, he got what he wanted. I’d like to comfort myself with the thought that this was the work of extremists, but in Pakistan, the extreme is the norm. And they have nukes.