Via WorldChanging, an item about a NASA sponsored simulation of Mars colonization that’s being sat on instead of released. I don’t see why there is a need to do much of anything active to release it other than just slap it on a web server, but then again, I’m not a NASA official. Who the hell knows what calculus leads to this sort of thing. From the article linked in the WorldChanging post it sounds like most likely somebody had an overly ambitious plan to release it on CD, and once the money dried up they didn’t come up with an alternative. If anyone reading this has free server space and is willing to host the game, I’d suggest contacting Professor Henry directly and offering to distribute the game. Double bonus if you distribute source as well. My bet is that if source is released the very first hack will be to add hostile aliens and weapons.
Not So Lucky Any More
Somehow, this headline takes on an irony that wouldn’t have been discernable when it first appeared, over three weeks ago, right after the Dem’s convention.
It will be quite amusing, and poetically just if, after raising hundreds of millions for these Dem-supporting groups to disseminate spin and lies, Kerry’s campaign is sunk by a small group of dedicated Navy veterans and a few hundred thousand dollars. By the way, their fund raising has apparently been going great guns since the story has gained traction. They reportedly raised almost half a million yesterday alone.
Campaign finance laws are a disaster, and I agree with Andrew Stuttaford that signing McCain-Feingold was one of George W. Bush’s more shameful acts as president. Even Michael Kinsley on NPR said this morning that the situation is hopeless, and that we need to get rid of all the rules, and just have full disclosure. I agree.
[Update a little after 11 AM PDT]
Power Line has a nice roundup of reader commentary on the Swiftboats, almost all of which is more intelligent than what we read in the vaunted mainstream press. Example:
The men who were best able to observe and judge John Kerry’s performance in combat were the men who had the same level of training and expertise that he did; and those are the young officers and noncommissioned officers who commanded the boats operating in close proximity to his, young men whose very lives depended on the coordinated action of all units participating in any particular mission. Successful riverine combat maneuvers require inordinate observational skills. So were these officers and NCO’s, all of them skilled observers, asleep at the wheel while some pillaging preppie ravished the countryside unbeknownst to all but himself?
Well, if you will but listen to them, no, they weren’t. These men, these Swiftvets, several dozens of them, who ate, slept and fought with John Kerry will tell you that, no, they were quite aware of what was going on around them, and that their recollection of events is far different from those attested to in Congress by their onetime comrade in arms. They are as befuddled as the rest of us that a man who launched his political career on claims of being duped into committing war crimes in an unjust war wants to now use his service in that war as the foundation of his campaign for the presidency.
Think about this: John Kerry had to know that his fabrications were ultimately unsustainable and that the men he falsely condemned would not remain silent were he to run for the presidency. Yet he has ignored that reality and attempted to build his whole campaign on his wartime service and his questionable awards. It would be interesting to hear what a psychiatrist might conclude from such bifurcated reasoning. Which brings us, unavoidably, to this question:
Does this sound like the kind of judgment we want in a Commander in Chief in this time of terror?
Problems North Of The Border
Mark Steyn says that Canada needs to be broken up.
At a superficial level, America
That Will Help
According to Brit Hume’s show, Kerry is being defended by a group of expatriate Americans. In Hanoi.
[5 PM update]
Here’s the link.:
HANOI, Vietnam (AP) — Vietnam veterans supporting John Kerry for president made their case Friday in the heart of what was once enemy territory.
Calling President Bush a draft dodger, the veterans in Hanoi donned T-shirts emblazoned with “Americans Overseas for Kerry” and showing Bush’s face with a line crossed through it.
You couldn’t make this stuff up. Maybe they can help elicit more support for Senator Kerry from “foreign leaders.”
Full Melt-Down Mode
It’s being reported that the Kerry campaign is going to petition the FEC to pull the Swift Boat ads.
[voice=”Jack Nicholson”]
The truth? You can’t handle the truth.
[/voice]
This bespeaks desperation. And these folks call Republicans Nazis.
I wonder what their grounds for this egregious violation of the First Amendment will be?
Kerry, Cambodia, blah, blah, blah…
Virginia Postrel posts an email with some speculation about Kerry’s Cambodia story. Read it if you still give a damn. Long story short: some of the problems with the story go away if you assume Kerry confused Christmas and Tet. Read it and make up your own mind.
Here’s The Inevitable Article
…on “price gouging” (otherwise known as the law of supply and demand) in the wake of Hurricane Charley. The Mises Institute preemptively responded to this, but it never slows down the economic ignoramuses at the New York Times:
Janet Snyder, a pharmacy technician in Cape Coral, said several men in two pickup trucks spotted her roof damage and offered to lay down a temporary covering of plastic sheeting. They wanted $600, about four times what she figured was the right price, based on 15 rolls of plastic that usually sell for $10 each.
OK, so Janet is clearly no business major, but how dumb is the reporter to pass this on without comment? She seems to think that the men’s labor should be free, and that she should only have to pay for materials. In the real world, even with no hurricane, she wouldn’t get free labor. She certainly can’t expect it when there is so much to be done.
Here’s The Inevitable Article
…on “price gouging” (otherwise known as the law of supply and demand) in the wake of Hurricane Charley. The Mises Institute preemptively responded to this, but it never slows down the economic ignoramuses at the New York Times:
Janet Snyder, a pharmacy technician in Cape Coral, said several men in two pickup trucks spotted her roof damage and offered to lay down a temporary covering of plastic sheeting. They wanted $600, about four times what she figured was the right price, based on 15 rolls of plastic that usually sell for $10 each.
OK, so Janet is clearly no business major, but how dumb is the reporter to pass this on without comment? She seems to think that the men’s labor should be free, and that she should only have to pay for materials. In the real world, even with no hurricane, she wouldn’t get free labor. She certainly can’t expect it when there is so much to be done.
Here’s The Inevitable Article
…on “price gouging” (otherwise known as the law of supply and demand) in the wake of Hurricane Charley. The Mises Institute preemptively responded to this, but it never slows down the economic ignoramuses at the New York Times:
Janet Snyder, a pharmacy technician in Cape Coral, said several men in two pickup trucks spotted her roof damage and offered to lay down a temporary covering of plastic sheeting. They wanted $600, about four times what she figured was the right price, based on 15 rolls of plastic that usually sell for $10 each.
OK, so Janet is clearly no business major, but how dumb is the reporter to pass this on without comment? She seems to think that the men’s labor should be free, and that she should only have to pay for materials. In the real world, even with no hurricane, she wouldn’t get free labor. She certainly can’t expect it when there is so much to be done.
Dynamic lab notebook
I’ve been mulling the idea of keeping my lab notes on my Mac for a while, and I’ve started moving in that direction. The problem with keeping notes on a computer rather than on paper is that the computer is far less flexible. It’s much more powerful, but it’s quite constrained by the need for exactly the right software. The major advantage of a computer over a lab notebook is that you can put in a whole lot more data, and interlink the data in ways that you just can’t with paper.
The ideal lab notebook software would combine some of the functionality of a blog with some of the functionality of a wiki. The blog function would be to simply keep a log of all entries, with timestamps. The entries would consist of text, images, and tables of data. The wiki function would integrate the linear collection of entries from the blog to build up a coherent time-independent picture of the object under study. The wiki would include both information about the current state of the experiment and a set of tentative conclusions about the phenomenon under study, along with things like lists of references with comments.