At lunch at #AIAASpace2013, NASA is proposing ten tons of it for propellant for the asteroid mission. World production is about a ton per year.
Category Archives: Business
The Pension Crisis
I think that most of the nation’s fiscal problems are. Something that can’t go on, won’t.
The Obama Economy
Five years on, he can’t blame it on the financial crisis any more. He owns it. As do the low-info underemployed fools who voted to re-elect him.
[Update a couple minutes later]
“This was a very bad jobs report.”
Fred Pohl
Rest in peace.
He wrote great fiction, but his economics was short sighted.
In general, SF writers aren’t that great at economics — (too) many of them are, after all, leftists, particularly the New Wave types. Heinlein was one of the few who generally got it right.
A “Living Wage”
What an economically stupid idea. Particularly if you think that Washington can come up with one, one-size-fits-all, for the entire country, from Omaha to New York City.
The STEM “Crisis”
“If there was really a STEM labor market crisis, you’d be seeing very different behaviors from companies,” notes Ron Hira, an associate professor of public policy at the Rochester Institute of Technology, in New York state. “You wouldn’t see companies cutting their retirement contributions, or hiring new workers and giving them worse benefits packages. Instead you would see signing bonuses, you’d see wage increases. You would see these companies really training their incumbent workers.”
“None of those things are observable,” Hira says. “In fact, they’re operating in the opposite way.”
And even if there was, the notion that NASA would help it is ludicrous. Particularly if anyone thinks it’s going to do so by building rockets to nowhere.
“The Republicans Have No Health Plan”
Calling out the demagogues on their Bravo Sierra.
These liars are just contemptible.
Happy Marx Day
So why do we have a Labor Day anyway? What is it about “labor” that deserves a day off (isn’t that ironic) and a three-day weekend, but not (say) Entrepreneurs Day, or “People Who Have To Meet A Payroll” Day?
I know, I know, it was a reaction to some of the brutal labor practices and strikes of the later nineteenth century, particularly Pullman. But as Detroit exemplifies, we went too far in glorifying labor, and we don’t seem to care enough about the people who actually create the jobs, to the point of abuse. It’s not surprising that, in the wake of ridiculous overregulation (capped by ObamaCare) they’re going on strike, and we’re becoming a part-time nation, at best.
Climate Change
The World Federation of Scientists says it’s not a planetary emergency. So #ScienceSaysSo, right? #Consensus.
Health-Code Violations
Looking for them because you don’t like someone’s political opinions.
Well, people voted for the guy who said he wanted to “fundamentally transform America.”
He got what he wanted. Did you?