NASA will be announcing the winner of the CEV Phase II competition at 4 PM Eastern. And since I’m supporting one of the teams, good news for me will be bad news for Thomas James, and vice versa.
As Thomas notes, NASA has been astonishingly good at keeping it a secret. It’s all the more astonishing when one considers that they had to tell Congress who the winner was a month ago.
NASA will be announcing the winner of the CEV Phase II competition at 4 PM Eastern. And since I’m supporting one of the teams, good news for me will be bad news for Thomas James, and vice versa.
As Thomas notes, NASA has been astonishingly good at keeping it a secret. It’s all the more astonishing when one considers that they had to tell Congress who the winner was a month ago.
NASA will be announcing the winner of the CEV Phase II competition at 4 PM Eastern. And since I’m supporting one of the teams, good news for me will be bad news for Thomas James, and vice versa.
As Thomas notes, NASA has been astonishingly good at keeping it a secret. It’s all the more astonishing when one considers that they had to tell Congress who the winner was a month ago.
Alan Boyle reports that Blue Origin has gotten their environmental assessment approved, which was one of the last hurdles to getting their FAA license as a spaceport. It will be the first private spaceport, but it will also be the first spaceport to be licensed for vertical takeoff and landing (Mojave and Burns Flat are only licensed for horizontal operations). I wonder if Jeff Bezos will be open to allowing others to operate from it? I’ll bet that Armadillo and Masten would like to use it.
The original poverty line was based on having enough money to select a nutritious diet in 1963. It was $3,100/year for a family of four with two adults and two children. In 2005, it was $19,800. In constant 2005 dollars using the consumer price index, the 1963 poverty line would be $18,900. Using the GDP deflator (which is based on changing rather than fixed buying patterns), we get $15,400. That is, a family at the poverty line today will buy different items today implying a $4,400 improvement in the standard of living from 1963 to 2005.
Life expectancy has gone up almost 5 years over that time. The white/black life expectancy ratio has been converging from 1.11 to about 1.07 over the same period.
Both the GDP deflator and life expectancy measures indicate those below the poverty line are getting better off in an absolute sense. A couple more are in this week’s Economist. The definition of poverty evolves over time and is more of a curve than a line so that there will alway be people in poverty.
WSJ (subscription required) says Electronic Arts is joining Microsoft in an ad serving service for video games:
Advertising in games remains a relatively small business, but many game publishers believe there’s a large untapped revenue opportunity in displaying ads to their audiences. Many games are played by 18- to 34-year-old men, a prized demographic for marketers that is spending more time playing games at the expense of traditional ad-supported media like television….In the past, companies like EA have integrated mostly “static” advertisements into their videogames that don’t change throughout the life of the game … EA is currently estimated to earn revenue in the single-digit millions from such ads….Such ads must be integrated into a game six to eight months before the title is released…[vs.] “dynamically” insert advertisements into games on a regular basis…
With hundreds of hours playing a title, ad revenues could hit tens of dollars per player which could be billions of dollars vs. millions. In a competitive industry, this should drive the sticker price of the games down.
There is a chicken and egg problem though. Ad rates for games are too low right now for game producers to make the ads too intrusive. That makes the ads less valuable per viewing.
Look for more freeware titles and 100%-mail-in-rebate deals around late 2008 for Christmas 2007 titles that have ads.
Ted Stevens says that he was only (anonymously) holding up the bill until a cost/benefit analysis could be performed on it.
[Excuse me a minute]
[Sorry, give me another minute or so]
[Almost ready now…no, wait, another minute or two]
OK, sorry. Phew. Oh, gosh…man, my sides hurt.
I may have even moistened my pants.
Anyway, where was I?
Oh, right. So he wants a cost/benefit analysis? Here’s a cost/benefit analysis.
[Evening update]
Mark Tapscott has additional thoughts.
Ted Stevens says that he was only (anonymously) holding up the bill until a cost/benefit analysis could be performed on it.
[Excuse me a minute]
[Sorry, give me another minute or so]
[Almost ready now…no, wait, another minute or two]
OK, sorry. Phew. Oh, gosh…man, my sides hurt.
I may have even moistened my pants.
Anyway, where was I?
Oh, right. So he wants a cost/benefit analysis? Here’s a cost/benefit analysis.
[Evening update]
Mark Tapscott has additional thoughts.
Ted Stevens says that he was only (anonymously) holding up the bill until a cost/benefit analysis could be performed on it.
[Excuse me a minute]
[Sorry, give me another minute or so]
[Almost ready now…no, wait, another minute or two]
OK, sorry. Phew. Oh, gosh…man, my sides hurt.
I may have even moistened my pants.
Anyway, where was I?
Oh, right. So he wants a cost/benefit analysis? Here’s a cost/benefit analysis.
[Evening update]
Mark Tapscott has additional thoughts.
Melanie Phillips writes about the media war against Israel:
The level of anti-Israel, anti-American madness has reached such a pitch in Britain that any similar expression of alarm at the manifestly blatant mendacity in the reporting of the Middle East has simply become unthinkable. Yet thanks to the efforts of the blogosphere