In honor of the occasion, I’ve decided to make all of today’s posts green.

Now I’m going out to the store to pick up a corned beef–a dish that I only have once a year (partly because Patricia doesn’t like it, but I’m back in California, and she’s in Florida, so I can indulge the holiday and my tastes). I may make some soda bread as well.

In honor of the occasion, I’ve decided to make all of today’s posts green.

Now I’m going out to the store to pick up a corned beef–a dish that I only have once a year (partly because Patricia doesn’t like it, but I’m back in California, and she’s in Florida, so I can indulge the holiday and my tastes). I may make some soda bread as well.

In honor of the occasion, I’ve decided to make all of today’s posts green.

Now I’m going out to the store to pick up a corned beef–a dish that I only have once a year (partly because Patricia doesn’t like it, but I’m back in California, and she’s in Florida, so I can indulge the holiday and my tastes). I may make some soda bread as well.

A deranged young man attempted to crucify himself. Horizontally.

He may be a danger to himself, but clearly not to society.

Just how ignorant are network news anchors?

Don’t ask, but consider that while cruising the channels, the guy on CNN Newsnight said that the new object discovered, several billion miles away, was the “most distant object found in the universe.”

Just how ignorant are network news anchors?

Don’t ask, but consider that while cruising the channels, the guy on CNN Newsnight said that the new object discovered, several billion miles away, was the “most distant object found in the universe.”

Just how ignorant are network news anchors?

Don’t ask, but consider that while cruising the channels, the guy on CNN Newsnight said that the new object discovered, several billion miles away, was the “most distant object found in the universe.”

I think that John Kerry’s…revelation…that he’s the preferred candidate of some unnamed foreign leaders is a mistake on several levels. It will obviously sell well among his base that the oh-so-sophisticated-and-nuanced-himself Jacque Chirac thinks that Kerry is his man (and who else does Mr. Kerry intend for us to infer as his hopeful future counterpart?). But it’s not at all clear that this will sell that well with independents and undecideds. What will the campaign slogan be–“Vote Kerry–The French Choice”? I suspect that in fact most American want their president to be vetted and supported by Americans, not “furriners.”

But an even bigger mistake is making the claim, and then feigning outrage when someone questions him on it, or wants more details. It opens up an opportunity for his opponents (so far not capitalized on, at least by the White House).

Their current response is to claim that if he won’t name names, then he must be making it up. Maybe this will be an effective tactic, but it sounds dumb to me. There’s no doubt in my mind that there are foreign leaders, even former US “allies” who would prefer Kerry (or any Democrat, or even any non-simian cowboy) in the White House to George Bush, so the charges that he’s a liar or making it up don’t have much weight to me.

I think that a much more effective commercial would be something like:

John Kerry says that some unnamed foreign leaders would prefer him as president to our current president. If this is true, why will he not name them?

Is it because among those names might be Kim Jung Il, the brutal North Korean dictator whose state-controlled press has been extolling Mr. Kerry’s virtues? Or Bashir Assad of terrorist-supporting Syria? Or Yasser Arafat, who continues to sponsor terrorism in Israel? The mullahs in Iran?

Or Osama bin Laden?

What is Mr. Kerry trying to hide?

We believe that an American president should be the choice of Americans, not unnamed foreign leaders.

It would serve him right for such an odious and dumb campaign tactic, and considering that I just saw a poll indicating that sixty percent of registered voters think that terrorists would prefer Kerry to Bush, I suspect that it would be a very effective ad.

And you know what else? I’ll be that, despite his supposed chumminess with Bill Clinton, Tony Blair isn’t on that list.

Maybe, but there’s no way to tell from this article.

I keep seeing these reports of how NASA and DARPA are coming up with techniques to “shape” shock waves and sonic boom, and how this is going to lead to a brave new world of overland supersonic flight. But I never see any quantification of the benefit of such techniques. The other thing that I never see is a discussion of the effect on wave drag, which is the other big factor that prevents economical supersonic flight.

As I’ve written before, there actually may be design solutions that can significantly reduce, and even approach elimination of both sonic boom and wave drag, but NASA and DARPA continue to refuse to consider them. Perhaps when this latest attempt doesn’t pan out, they’ll be willing to finally do so.

[Update a few minutes later]

Here’s a Usenet discussion on the topic from a few years ago among yours truly, and several others.