Category Archives: Business
The Cantor Defeat In Virginia
it’s not obvious, but it’s potentially great news for space policy.
[Update a while later]
I elaborate at Ricochet.
[Wednesday-morning update]
OK, for those who aren’t Ricochet members, here’s what I posted there, under the title “What Does Cantor’s Loss Mean For Space Policy?”:
OK, I know that post title will excite almost no one, because no one (to first order) cares about space policy. It’s a prevailing theme of my (non-best-selling) book.
But for those few who care, Eric Cantor didn’t give a damn about it. Neither did/does John Boehner
But Cantor just got involuntarily retired, and Boehner has long displayed indifference to continuing as Speaker of the House.
So tonight’s electoral loss will set off a huge and unpredictable fight for House leadership. While I don’t want to predict the outcome, the most obvious beneficiary of tonight’s event is Kevin McCarthy, the Majority Whip (usually considered to be second in line behind Majority Leader, which Cantor was). If McCarthy takes over as leader as a result of Cantor’s not only loss, but humiliation, he will be next in line to take over as Speaker if (as seems likely) Boehner steps down next year.
Which means that the congressman from Kern County, California, will be in a position to select members and chairs of the committees that oversee the NASA, DoD and FAA budgets. Which means that he will be in a position to select Congresspeople who could decide to stop making insane decisions about human spaceflight based on their own parochial interests, and instead congresspeople who actually care whether or not we actually open up space. Because he will have a local constituency in Mojave that has a strong interest in commercial spaceflight, he may exercise his power to make the committee more friendly to it than it has been in the past.
Will this happen? Who knows?
There will be a potentially chaotic fight for leadership in the sudden vacuum, and McCarthy may not come out on top. But if he does, things may suddenly become very interesting for the future of productive human spaceflight, because he will be potentially a Speaker of the House whose willing ear commercial space advocates will have.
[Wednesday-morning update]
CNN (I know) is reporting that with Cantor’s defeat, Boehner’s interest in stepping down is somewhat, if not a lot diminished. Apparently Cantor was the heir apparent, and Boehner may not step aside for anyone else. Of course, there is no iron-clad law that he continue to be Speaker. Like Cantor, he himself may be susceptible to a challenge from one of the young turks.
One other point. The next shoe to fall will be Cantor’s replacement as Majority Leader, which will likely happen soon, because he’s lost a lot of clout as a lame duck. If it’s McCarthy, he will become the new heir apparent (since he had previously been favored by Boehner). And even as Majority Leader, he’ll have a lot more influence over the committee structure.
[Update a while later]
OK, according to this National Journal article, McCarthy may be a victim of a general revolt. We’ll see how he maneuvers. But actually, Ryan wouldn’t necessarily be bad for space policy either.
[Afternoon update]
OK, one thing I hadn’t factored in. McCarthy may have to buy votes with committee chairmanships, which complicates any efforts to clean up the policy mess.
The Big Fat Lie
Another review of Nina Teicholz’s book
Because the importance of cholesterol as a risk factor for heart disease had been accepted as dogma, it was pretty well impossible to challenge it. For example, one of the outstanding nutrition scientists, David Kritchevsky, suggested in the 1980s that there should be a weakening of the recommendation on dietary fat and encountered hysterical opposition. Here is what he told the author:
“People would spit on us! It’s hard to imagine now, the heat of the passion. It was just like we had desecrated the American flag. They were so angry that we were going against the suggestions of the American Heart Association and the National Institutes of Health.”
This meant that anyone who had the temerity to challenge the official line was committing professional suicide. Applications for funds to support research, which might question the prevailing views on fat, were unlikely to be supported. Even if funds were obtained (eg from independent foundations) the researchers would find difficulty in publishing their results in scientific journals and they were rarely invited to serve on expert panels. By stifling opposition, the public was presented with what appeared to be a uniform scientific consensus.
Say, that sounds familiar somehow.
SpaceX And Palantir
Trying to break in to a broken Pentagon procurement system.
[Tuesday update]
Speaking of the broken Pentagon procurement system, here’s an interesting take on it from AvWeek.
[Bumped]
Space Water
Thirteen things to do with it:
Technically we don’t need water in space for drinking because we can recycle our pee. If you’re not really fond of that idea, then you must be very fond of space mining, because otherwise recycled pee is on the menu. It’s really not so bad to drink recycled pee. Here on Earth you do it all the time. It’s just not as easy on a tiny spaceship where the proximity of the recycling equipment forces you to remember where your beverage came from. And recycling on such a small scale as a spaceship is expensive and tricky. Giant spaceships like Earth are better at that stuff. Anyhow, without space mining, you’ll be drinking lots of pee. If on the other hand you have lots of water from mining in space, then your pee can be dumped overboard to make miniature yellow comets in orbit around the sun. Consider it a form of art. So it’s your choice: making space art, or drinking pee.
News you can use.
By the way, I’ve added Phil’s blog to the blogroll.
Also, related: Chris Lewicki talks about space-based propellants.
Mad Men Ads
Lileks (who has finally replaced the irreplaceable Jasper with a new puppie) has thoughts on the decline of advertising and the suckitude of the early seventies:
What’s the opposite of nostalgia? What’s the word for an exaggerated dislike of a particular time? I know I am nostalgic for things I did not experience, and only see through the pop-culture elements left behind, which communicate incomplete and occasionally misleading messages. But I have antipathy for things I experienced at the fringe of adolescence – not because it was a bad time, or I didn’t like them then, but because they seem now to be the products of a culture that was getting cheap and lazy; it was full of gimcrack baubles turned out by an exhausted system that tried to adapt to the times, but had no strength to put forth any ideas or uphold any ideas that went before. The period from 1967 to 1975, with some stellar exceptions, was just a horrible time for everything, and you can reduce it all down to one middle-aged balding dude with wet hair plastered over his head in brown polyester pants and a mustard-yellow shirt approving one thing after the other because the kids will go for it.
That’s a generalization. Somewhat. But. I’ve said this before: “Mad Men”’s exploration of the late 60s somehow avoids the fact that advertising in that era was horrible. Compare an issue of Life magazine from 1968 to its 1958 counterpoint – it’s as if style, color, art, romance, seduction, adulthood, and bright-eyed joy had been drained from the world. The ads weren’t about the product anymore; the ads were about the ads.
[Yes, I know it’s not fresh material — I’d gotten behind on my Bleatage.]
Tomatoes
Breeding better ones, through genetic modification.
So of course, the luddites will fight it.
Piketty’s Book
Why it’s “garbage.”
Kyle Smith asked today on Twitter, if you put a check for a hundred bucks in the middle of Hillary’s new book, how many of them would get cashed? I’d say the same thing about Piketty’s book. It’s a “classic.” That is, a book that everyone wants to display and have read, but no one wants to actually read. Fortunately, some people who understand math did slog through it.
Ghostbusters
Why it’s the most libertarian Hollywood blockbuster of all time:
How many Hollywood blockbusters involve private businesses as the heroes and government regulators as the villains?
Dickless would certainly fit in well with the current EPA.
My Phone Is In Its Prime
When I first bought it, I was unhappy with the battery life, so I bought a spare, for thirty bucks. Last week I bought two for $2.41 apiece. I’ll never be without Droid juice again.