One of the most hilarious things that I found about the Florida voting fiasco in 2000 was the Democrats’ cheerful willingness to advance the proposition that uninformed morons, unable to read a ballot or punch a hole all the way through a flimsy piece of cardboard, were a key (in fact, apparently essential) part of their constituency (a notion that I mercilessly mocked a couple years ago). Shamelessly, and utterly innocent of how foolish it makes them look, they’re apparently still at it.
All posts by Rand Simberg
Guest
Those who read the byline on the last three posts will notice that I have a guest blogger, Sam Dinkin. Sam is a regular contributor to The Space Review, but wants to start publishing (on both space, and other topics) more than once a week. So if the rate of new content picks up noticeably in the next few days, that will be why.
Vanity Press
Well, it sounds like Alan Binder’s book may be less interesting (or interesting in a different way) than I originally thought.
On page 722 he describes one NASA manager as an “incompetent jerk engineer”. On page 710 Binder refers to another NASA manager as a “arrogant, fat little bastard” and after repeating this compliment dozens of times, adds “pompous” to his tirade on page 728. On page 421 he refers to someone else as a “back stabbing SOB”. And so on. If I spent 5 more minutes I am sure I’d find more examples of gratuitous name calling.
Sounds like an editor was in order–in fact, badly needed. This is a shame, as I’d previously had a pretty high opinion of Dr. Binder.
One Brain-Dead Government Agency Down
And hundreds more to go. Still, this is worth breaking out a bottle of bubbly for.
Missed Opportunity For Moron Interaction
Better luck next time, Thomas.
There Goes The Sun
Partial solar eclipse this afternoon. I’ll have one of the best views in the US, if the weather clears. It should be about 45% occlusion in Palm Beach County.
I Didn’t Think So…
I was too busy to comment at the time, but when I saw this post at NASA Watch the other day, I said “Huh?”
In recent days [Courtney] Stadd has made it known to people that he would be interested in the position of Deputy Administrator – if asked.
My own sources indicate that Courtney could have had the administrator job, back before O’Keefe was picked, but didn’t want it because he couldn’t afford to take it, and didn’t want to become as consumed with it as he’d have had to in order to even hope to straighten out the agency. So why would he now be interested in playing second banana to Mike Griffin, when the workload would be just as high, and the pay and authority less? As Keith notes, however, Courtney has denied it (as I would have expected).
I Didn’t Think So…
I was too busy to comment at the time, but when I saw this post at NASA Watch the other day, I said “Huh?”
In recent days [Courtney] Stadd has made it known to people that he would be interested in the position of Deputy Administrator – if asked.
My own sources indicate that Courtney could have had the administrator job, back before O’Keefe was picked, but didn’t want it because he couldn’t afford to take it, and didn’t want to become as consumed with it as he’d have had to in order to even hope to straighten out the agency. So why would he now be interested in playing second banana to Mike Griffin, when the workload would be just as high, and the pay and authority less? As Keith notes, however, Courtney has denied it (as I would have expected).
I Didn’t Think So…
I was too busy to comment at the time, but when I saw this post at NASA Watch the other day, I said “Huh?”
In recent days [Courtney] Stadd has made it known to people that he would be interested in the position of Deputy Administrator – if asked.
My own sources indicate that Courtney could have had the administrator job, back before O’Keefe was picked, but didn’t want it because he couldn’t afford to take it, and didn’t want to become as consumed with it as he’d have had to in order to even hope to straighten out the agency. So why would he now be interested in playing second banana to Mike Griffin, when the workload would be just as high, and the pay and authority less? As Keith notes, however, Courtney has denied it (as I would have expected).
Echoes Of History
While I agree with his general thrust–that (as Iraq seems to many) the early US didn’t look for very promising for forming a government either–Publius errs slightly when he writes:
There were Scottish, Irish, English, Indians, Dutch, French, Germans, and those who had lived in America since its founding. And more; many speaking languages other than English at the time.
Yet we ended up with a Constitution and a country to rally around. Our eventual Civil War was never fought on the basis of ethnic differences either, but serious compounding issues over nearly forty years that led to a war not of national origin, but of the preservation of our nation.
The roots of the War Between the States did in fact lie (at least partly) in national (or at least regional) origin. It was a war between groups of people descended from the English settlers who first settled North America. The Union was an alliance of the Puritans of New England (originally from East Anglia) and the Quakers of the Delaware Valley (originally from the Midlands), fighting against the Confederacy, which was an alliance of the Cavaliers of southwest England who settled the Tidewater country of Virginia and the Piedmont and the redneck Presbyterians from the borderlands and Ulster who had colonized Appalachia and the deep south. The war was to a large degree a fight over different conceptions of liberty, and in some senses, could be said to be an echo of the English Civil War, with a similar result.
For more information, read Albion’s Seed, by David Hackett Fischer.