I guess we should be grateful that she didn’t wear an early 40s Luftwaffe uniform.
All posts by Rand Simberg
Coffee
A list of its health benefits.
This sort of thing is why I finally started drinking it a few months ago, even though I don’t perceive any actual benefit in doing so. I’ve been making it for her for years, so it was just a matter of making extra. One discovery I made that reduces the awfulness of the taste is to throw some sea salt in the filter before brewing it. It really does take the bitter edge off it. But it’s still something I basically drink as medicinal. I derive no pleasure from it, and sometimes forget to pour it or drink it if I get distracted, so I’d say I’m not addicted in any way. The only obvious benefit I’ve gotten is much cleaner dental exams, to the point that I’ve backed off from quarterly to semi-annual cleanings.
Bibi To Barack
“Don’t second-guess me on Hamas again.”
What fools we have running the country.
Off To Florida
Taking a red eye to West Palm Beach tonight, for a week and a half of misery. I’ll have a laptop, but not sure when I’ll check in again. There’s a possibility we’ll drive up to the Cape for the SpaceX launch on Tuesday, but it’s at a gruesome hour: 1:15 AM.
[Tuesday-morning update]
Blogging will be light this week. We’re prepping a house to get it on the market.
Glad I didn’t attempt to watch the successful launch. It would have been an all nighter, with the delay.
Space Kiwis
Another new smallsat launch venture, based in Auckland.
[Update a few minutes later]
Here‘s Jeff Foust’s take on it.
The World’s Oldest Profession
It’s long past time to legalize it.
“We Are Collectively Perpetrating A Fraud”
A brief history of SLS, up to this week.
Reactionless Drive?
This looks too good to be true, and it probably is, but it’s worth pursuing.
And since when is thrust rated in “grams”?
The Air Force
Is it time to abolish it?
To me, the more interesting question is what to do with milspace, which isn’t discussed there at all, with its focus on airpower.
The IRS
Can it be fixed, or should it just be abolished?
I think that the culture is so toxic, we probably need a clean slate there. As I noted when the “phony” scandal first broke:
The Founders, in their wisdom, understood that the key to good government lay not in hoping that the governors would be angels, but to restrict its power, knowing that they would never be. We can fire employees, we can even jail them, but the problem won’t be solved until the power of the “service” is reined in vastly. Step one might be to re-ban government employee unions, including that of the IRS, because that’s part of the system we can fix, and this deserves that death penalty.
Ideally, of course, the income tax would be abolished entirely, but perhaps a simpler and (perhaps) more politically feasible solution would be to at least eliminate the corporate income tax, so that no one would have to justify their tax status to the bureaucrats. It’s not possible to prevent people, particularly people whose goal is power, from abusing it. All we can do is deprive them of it. Newtown didn’t justify any of the legislative attempts to disarm us that followed it, and even some who jumped on that bandwagon are now recognizing that we need control of government more than control of guns. But if this travesty of tyranny doesn’t lead to serious tax reform, and government reform, we will have missed a true opportunity.
And it looks worse now than it did then.