All posts by Rand Simberg

Golden State Donkey Implosion

They’ve apparently never learned the old adage, when in a hole, quit digging.

Members of the Assembly Democrats’ progressive caucus were heard making candid, if not intemperate, statements such as one by Los Angeles Assemblyman Fabian Nunez that they may want to “precipitate a crisis” over the budget this year. That might persuade voters to lower the two-thirds vote threshold needed to pass a spending plan, he reasoned.

“It seems to me if there’s going to be a crisis, the crisis should be this year,” Assemblywoman Jackie Goldberg, D-Los Angeles, said during the meeting. “What you do is you show people that you can’t get to this without a 55 percent vote.”

The unintentional broadcast was interrupted when someone informed the group that a microphone was on. “Oh s–,” Goldberg said as the sound was cut.

Heh…

The Republicans are going to make golden hay out of this–the Dems just blew a major part of their demogogic message.

Wings Versus Capsules

Kind of like Mothra versus Rodan, we have another round of this ongoing theological discussion in progress. Now, “Publius Rex” takes issue with the piece a few days ago by Jeffrey Bell that shredded many of the arguments for a winged Orbital Space Plane.

I discussed the issue then, but my main point remains that, while these are interesting technical arguments, they’re ultimately irrelevant to our future in space, because given its current philosophy and the politics of the situation, NASA is unlikely to come up with anything that reduces costs or significantly improves safety. That will come only when we stop looking to NASA for our space transportation needs, and increase funding to the private entities to whom those things actually matter.

Dribble

I’m going to say this once, and once only.

I’m getting very tired of you droolers out there who, having apparently never seen the word in print, and being unable to aurally distinguish between the bilabial fricative “b” and the labiodental fricative “v,” write “dribble” when they mean “drivel.”

That is all.