This is pretty neat. After over twenty years, it’s still possible to communicate with Pioneer 10, even though it’s almost seven and a half billion miles away (twice the distance to Pluto, the most distant planet) and far outside our solar system. It took over twenty-two hours for the signal to be received and acknowledged. From there, the sun is just another bright star, and there is no heat for the spacecraft except what it can still generate from its depleting plutonium power generator.

This would not have been possible if it had had any other than a nuclear power source.

The numbers involved here are staggering. It’s so far away, and the signal so diffuse, that by the time it reaches the earth, it has a power of only ten to the minus 20th or so watts. That’s 0.00000000000000000001 (that’s nineteen zeros after the decimal point). But we can still pick up the signal, using the huge dishes in places like Goldstone in California.

And the data rate is probably excruciatingly low.

Given the ability to get just a few bits through, I wonder what the conversation was…

Ground: Hello, Pioneer. Are you out there?

Pioneer: Yes.

Ground: How are you doing?

Pioneer: How do you think I’m doing? I’M FREEZING IN THE DARK! What did you think you were doing, sending me all the way out here?! And why don’t you ever write?

The EU is understandably upset by the Bush tariffs on steel (well, partially understandably–it’s not like they’re exactly innocent of subsidies and other market interference). I am also.

But I found this headline bizarre:

EU condemns Bush’s ‘Wild West’ steel tariffs

What do steel tariffs have to do with the “wild west”?

This is like when they were calling Bush a “cowboy” because he wouldn’t go along with Kyoto or ABM.

Just what is it with Europeans and the American West? Is it too emblematic of individualism? Is it the guns? Do they hate non-metric ten-gallon hats? Were they scared by a cow when they were young?

What?

I’ve already gone on the blogrecord with a prediction of a Simon win in November, but if Mr. Welch wants to make it interesting, I’m game. Just state the terms.

And I don’t think that I’m “genetically-predisposed” against Mr. Riordan (“Mrs. Simberg, you have a bouncing baby boy. And he came out of the womb holding a sign saying ‘Simon For Governor.’ Just like his daddy…”). No, it’s based on my observations and experience.

While I’m not a “rabid right-winger” (I’d be sure to fail the test on the gay, drugs, evolution, cloning, and immigration issues, among many others), I can certainly understand why Republicans would be loathe to support someone who funds the campaigns of rabid left wingers (like Maxine Waters), who thinks the minimum wage is too low, who doesn’t even seem to know where he stands on abortion, who has no problem with confiscatory taxes or gun laws, whose own wife can’t vote for him in the primary because she’s a registered Democrat…

I can understand why Democrats would like to vote for Riordan against Davis, but I have trouble figuring out why Republicans would want to bother. And as the Democrats should have learned in the Bush-McCain primary battle, Republicans like to choose their own candidates, and not those that some members of the opposite party want them to choose.

And I have to assume that Mr. Welch is just pulling our collective legs when he says:

I wish I could give all the ?Riordan isn?t a Republican? crowd copies of the LA Weekly from 1992, when Mayor Dick was presented as the most craven of influence-peddling, Old Guard Catholic, right-wing rights-abusing firebreather we?d seen in a generation.

Really? The LA Weekly? In 1992? Presenting anyone to the right of Tom Hayden as an Attila-the-Hun reactionary? I’m shocked…just shocked.

I’ve already gone on the blogrecord with a prediction of a Simon win in November, but if Mr. Welch wants to make it interesting, I’m game. Just state the terms.

And I don’t think that I’m “genetically-predisposed” against Mr. Riordan (“Mrs. Simberg, you have a bouncing baby boy. And he came out of the womb holding a sign saying ‘Simon For Governor.’ Just like his daddy…”). No, it’s based on my observations and experience.

While I’m not a “rabid right-winger” (I’d be sure to fail the test on the gay, drugs, evolution, cloning, and immigration issues, among many others), I can certainly understand why Republicans would be loathe to support someone who funds the campaigns of rabid left wingers (like Maxine Waters), who thinks the minimum wage is too low, who doesn’t even seem to know where he stands on abortion, who has no problem with confiscatory taxes or gun laws, whose own wife can’t vote for him in the primary because she’s a registered Democrat…

I can understand why Democrats would like to vote for Riordan against Davis, but I have trouble figuring out why Republicans would want to bother. And as the Democrats should have learned in the Bush-McCain primary battle, Republicans like to choose their own candidates, and not those that some members of the opposite party want them to choose.

And I have to assume that Mr. Welch is just pulling our collective legs when he says:

I wish I could give all the ?Riordan isn?t a Republican? crowd copies of the LA Weekly from 1992, when Mayor Dick was presented as the most craven of influence-peddling, Old Guard Catholic, right-wing rights-abusing firebreather we?d seen in a generation.

Really? The LA Weekly? In 1992? Presenting anyone to the right of Tom Hayden as an Attila-the-Hun reactionary? I’m shocked…just shocked.

I’ve already gone on the blogrecord with a prediction of a Simon win in November, but if Mr. Welch wants to make it interesting, I’m game. Just state the terms.

And I don’t think that I’m “genetically-predisposed” against Mr. Riordan (“Mrs. Simberg, you have a bouncing baby boy. And he came out of the womb holding a sign saying ‘Simon For Governor.’ Just like his daddy…”). No, it’s based on my observations and experience.

While I’m not a “rabid right-winger” (I’d be sure to fail the test on the gay, drugs, evolution, cloning, and immigration issues, among many others), I can certainly understand why Republicans would be loathe to support someone who funds the campaigns of rabid left wingers (like Maxine Waters), who thinks the minimum wage is too low, who doesn’t even seem to know where he stands on abortion, who has no problem with confiscatory taxes or gun laws, whose own wife can’t vote for him in the primary because she’s a registered Democrat…

I can understand why Democrats would like to vote for Riordan against Davis, but I have trouble figuring out why Republicans would want to bother. And as the Democrats should have learned in the Bush-McCain primary battle, Republicans like to choose their own candidates, and not those that some members of the opposite party want them to choose.

And I have to assume that Mr. Welch is just pulling our collective legs when he says:

I wish I could give all the ?Riordan isn?t a Republican? crowd copies of the LA Weekly from 1992, when Mayor Dick was presented as the most craven of influence-peddling, Old Guard Catholic, right-wing rights-abusing firebreather we?d seen in a generation.

Really? The LA Weekly? In 1992? Presenting anyone to the right of Tom Hayden as an Attila-the-Hun reactionary? I’m shocked…just shocked.

The meme of free-enterprise space activities continues to spread. The lastest example is a piece by Radley Balko over at Tech Central Station.

My main critique is that his title (“Lost In Space”) is a little trite and overused.

I think that the media are missing the big story up in “Condit Country.” The amazing thing is not that he lost, but that sixteen thousand people voted for him…

Now that it’s become clear that Riordan has been blown out in the Republican primary, I just want to say…

YYYYEEEESSSSSS!!!

Riordan was the “moderate Democrats'” last great hope to defeat Gray Davis, who even they couldn’t stomach.

Sorry, folks, but the notion that Riordan had a better chance than Simon against Davis in November is a myth (and one that the Davis camp bought into, which will accrue to their great regret next fall).

No real Republican was going to vote for Riordan, had he won the nomination. They would have voted for a third-party candidate, or stayed home.

Yes, Simon will have an uphill battle in California, but now, at least the Republican Party is energized in a way that it never could have been by Maxine-Waters-contributing, no-fire-in-the-belly Dick Riordan. Riordan would have lost for sure. Simon has a chance. This is a blog, and my words are recorded for history. November will make me, or break me.

I do regret, however, Gary Condit’s loss of the Democratic primary. I was hoping for his loss in the general election. This was a Dem win.

Matt Drudge says that John Nash’s opinions about Jews might cost Ron Howard an Oscar win.

Yeah, we’ll just rewrite history to make it a love story, and not mention the first wife, the homosexual liaisons, or the Jew hating…