Arnold Kling says that, contrary to official statistics, by unconventional (but probably more useful) measures, we’ve actually been in a deep recession for a while, and are not coming out soon.

Bush being on vacation reminds me of this Iowahawk report, from happier times two years ago (before most people had heard of Al Qaeda) about the tribulations of pampered reporters in Crawford, Texas.

E.J. Dionne of the Washington Post described a common experience of the visiting press. “When I arrived in Crawford, I had a sudden craving for a quick brioche and mineral water, and set out in search of a decent Belgian patisserie,” he recalled. “Two hours later, the horrible truth dawned on me. In Crawford, there are no decent Belgian patisseries.”

Panic stricken, Dionne said he began asking for help from local passers-by.

“I kept asking them, ‘where can I get a brioche? Where can I get a brioche?’, only to see blank stares,” he recalled. “Finally, one man in a pickup truck said he hadn’t heard of that brand of beer, but offered me a Shiner Bock.”

Tragic.

What will the handwringers in Europe and at Human Rights Watch have to say about this? The mother of one of the Russian prisoners in Gitmo would rather have him stay there than be returned to Russia. Guess he prefers the tropics.

Her son Andrei Bakhitov is one of eight Russian detainees, and the newspaper quoted a letter he wrote to his mother.

“I think that there is not even a health resort in Russia on the level of this place,” the letter said.

You know, maybe Ashcroft should be fired for making it too appealing to be a terrorist suspect.

OK, anyone want to take bets on whether or not Rainier Wolfcastle runs for governor of whatever the heck state Springfield is in this fall on The Simpsons?

For those interested, here’s Gary Coleman’s campaign platform. It’s got a lot of stuff on it, but hey, a guy like him needs a big platform…

I’m actually in favor of his anti-politician, anti-tax, anti-union, pot-reform, and anti-bus planks, but I’ve got problems with his enthusiasm for eminent domain. And as someone with a pond in their backyard, I live in constant fear of having my home declared a wetland.

Also, I’m not sure that, given how screwed up the water markets are in California (particularly considering that they don’t really exist–it’s a political spoils system), “free water” is all that hot an idea. Besides, the stuff is dangerous.

For those interested, here’s Gary Coleman’s campaign platform. It’s got a lot of stuff on it, but hey, a guy like him needs a big platform…

I’m actually in favor of his anti-politician, anti-tax, anti-union, pot-reform, and anti-bus planks, but I’ve got problems with his enthusiasm for eminent domain. And as someone with a pond in their backyard, I live in constant fear of having my home declared a wetland.

Also, I’m not sure that, given how screwed up the water markets are in California (particularly considering that they don’t really exist–it’s a political spoils system), “free water” is all that hot an idea. Besides, the stuff is dangerous.

For those interested, here’s Gary Coleman’s campaign platform. It’s got a lot of stuff on it, but hey, a guy like him needs a big platform…

I’m actually in favor of his anti-politician, anti-tax, anti-union, pot-reform, and anti-bus planks, but I’ve got problems with his enthusiasm for eminent domain. And as someone with a pond in their backyard, I live in constant fear of having my home declared a wetland.

Also, I’m not sure that, given how screwed up the water markets are in California (particularly considering that they don’t really exist–it’s a political spoils system), “free water” is all that hot an idea. Besides, the stuff is dangerous.

The California Supreme Court decided not to take up the case for Grayout. The election goes forward, as stipulated, with Arnold on the ballot, and Gray not.

I suspect that Arnold’s announcement has triggered an inexorable sequence of events. Grayout’s only hope now is for the courts to save him, and the prospects for that don’t look good. The Dems realize this, and now know that they have to have someone on the ballot to save the governor’s mansion in Sacramento.

KNX has just announced that Bustamante is running and will announce tomorrow. He makes the most sense for a Dem candidate–he’s the guy who the voters already elected to take over if the governor could no longer carry out his duties. He’s, in a sense, already acting governor, due to the recall situation, so he can plausibly run as the incumbent, or as close to one as can be had, other than Davis himself.

Only one problem. While he’s not as corrupt or nauseating as Davis, he’s probably about as dim, and most California Dems know it.

This thing is really a variation on the classic game-theory scenario called the Prisoner’s Dilemma.

If you believe that the voters want to keep a Democrat in the governor’s office (which, in most California Democrats’ conceit, they do), it’s in the interests of all the Democrats to cooperate, and not put another Democrat on the ballot. If they do, there will be an attractive alternative for the California electorate to get rid of Davis, because they get to not only toss out the disgusting Davis, who even they hate, but they also get to replace him with different one of their beloved Democrats (you know, the party that’s driven the state into a muddy ditch in the past several years).

If a single Democrat breaks ranks, and runs, then he would have a good chance of winning, because the Republican vote will be split among Issa, Scharzenegger, and whatever other Elephant decides to run. But once a single Democrat defects, others will be encouraged to as well, because the game is up, and they can’t keep Davis, and may miss their only chance at the governor’s mansion (particularly those who’ve been salivating for it). If they all cooperate, they all win, but someone who defects gets a higher payoff than the prize for cooperating, so once Bustamante makes a formal announcement, expect a Donkey stampede between tomorrow and Saturday evening.

And also expect them to all be “terminated” in October.

[Update on Thursday afternoon]

Issa has announced that he’s not running. He says he wants to stay in Congress to see the Middle East “peace process” continue to move forward. One wonders if the White House made him an offer he couldn’t refuse (perhaps their support for a Senate run against Boxer next year?).

This is another devastating blow to Governor Low Beam. The Dem story line has been that Issa was just doing this to buy an election, and make himself governor. With Arnold entering, and Issa dropping out, their “Vast Right Wing Conspiracy” hysteria is looking ever more laughable.

The Donkeys have to be in full melt down at this point.

There was a skeptical article about suborbital flight in the Independent, yesterday. There’s much to fisk here.

Going suborbital is like firing a cannonball into the sky and waiting for it to come back down again. It requires speeds of only about 2,500mph, and is the equivalent in terms of distance to going from Watford to Birmingham and back again. True orbital space travel – when you accelerate fast enough to fly continually above the Earth’s surface – can only be achieved if the space vehicle reaches 17,000mph.

The problem is that there is no halfway house – you are either in suborbital flight or true space orbit.

I don’t understand what this statement means. What kind of “halfway house” is the reporter seeking? What are its characteristics? And what is it that’s “true” about a “space orbit”? Is he saying that if it’s not in orbit, it’s not worth doing, or not in space?

This whole bit is quite misleading, because it implies that suborbital is slow, and orbital is fast. But the 2500 mph is just a minimum (and a good place to start, given our paucity of experience). Velocities all the way up to 16,999 mph can also be suborbital. In fact, one can go faster than orbital velocity and still be suborbital, if pointed the right way (that is you include in the definition of suborbital those orbits that intersect the earth’s surface…).

And if you reach orbit, there is the complex and dangerous issue of re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere, with all the friction and heat this generates – a phenomenon that led ultimately to the disintegration of the Columbia shuttle.

Entry isn’t a problem unique to orbit. It’s a problem for suborbital as well. After all, if you enter space, you have to leave it. The difference is that by starting in small suborbits, where the entry is relatively benign, we can gain experience with techniques and materials, and gradually increase the entry velocities, expanding our operational envelope until we can do it from full orbital velocities.

But the folks interviewed here don’t get it, so neither does the reporter.

Ellis says that a prize for a suborbital flight does little, if anything, to foster true orbital space travel. “It’s like being in the early 19th century and someone says, ‘Well, I’m sure one day someone will get to the South Pole, here’s a million-dollar prize for someone to go to the equator.’ Getting into space cheaply – genuinely into space, that is – is a very different thing.”

Alan Bond, the British rocket engineer who was the brains behind the ill-fated but revolutionary Hotol (horizontal take-off and landing) rocket engine, is equally scathing about the claims being made for the X-prize. “It’s very fringe, and in particular it is potentially dangerous. On paper you can lash up a rocket and get the prize, provided you can cut out the safety measures. But it is putting lives at risk for no possible gain,” says Bond, who now runs an Oxfordshire-based company called Reaction Engines…

…More important, Bond wonders, what would be the point of a suborbital flight lasting no more than 10 or 15 minutes? “Trips round the lighthouse have been popular for a number of years,” he says, but they serve no purpose other than amusement for people with money to spend.

Yes, poo poo. We can’t be bothered with that piddly suborbital stuff. We have much more important uses for the money.

And what’s the point? So what if people are willing to spend their own money to go into space? They aren’t going for reasons that I think are good, so it’s a waste of money.

A little background is in order here.

Alan Bond is a British engineer, one of the technology uber alles types, who believes that launch is expensive because we just haven’t funded the right concept (his, naturally). He has spent much of the past couple decades attempting to talk Her Majesty’s Government into parting with the funding needed to develop his airbreathing launch concept, which he believes holds the key to universe.

He can’t be bothered with all of this silly suborbital stuff, or the foolish dotcommers who would waste their money on it when they could be funding his project instead.

“Ellis” is Richard Ellis, a former Cambridge professor of astronomy now at Cal Tech. Let us put aside for the moment the nonsensical notion that a professor of astronomy would have any particularly useful insights into rocketry, or business–it apparently arises from the confusion between astronomy and astronautical engineering on the part of lay people, including journalists (hint, they’ve very little in common). Instead, just read this little vignette from earlier in the article:

Caltech was courting Bezos because it was looking for financial sponsors for its new, ground-based telescope. After a tour of some of JPL’s research projects, the party sat down to lunch. Bezos had brought along a few of his employees from Blue Origin, as well as the science-fiction writer Neal Stephenson, a close friend and confidant of the internet billionaire.

Over lunch, the Caltech scientists realised that their dreams of receiving a large cheque for their new telescope were not to be. “It became obvious that Blue Origin was where Bezos was putting his money,” recalls Richard Ellis, a Caltech scientist and a former professor of astronomy at Cambridge University.

Sure, he’s a great unbiased source for opinions on the validity of these ventures…

The naysaying goes on to the end of the article:

But one cannot help but feel that the very rich men behind the private push to send people into space are not all in it for the benefit of humankind. As Richard Ellis says: “These guys have lots of money to spend, and they seem to be having fun.”

When he met Jeff Bezos, he came away with the distinct impression that the Amazon boss was having fun also with the idea of space tourism. “But I have to say I just didn’t see any evidence that Bezos and Blue Origin had an idea.” It will take more than a rich man’s intellectual distraction to get fare-paying passengers into space – and safely back again.

Well, I can’t say whether or not Blue Origin has a solid plan or not–they’ve been extremely secretive, but there are certainly a number of other companies that “have ideas,” and they’re implementing them, regardless of the blinkered views of frustrated astronomers and propulsion geeks.

It’s a shame that the reporter, Steve Connor, never bothered to interview anyone who actually understood the technical, economic and business issues.