Category Archives: Business
More Tax Money Down The Toilet
…but at least it will be an eco-friendly toilet. It’s really infuriating that the administration continues to bail out the foolish and irresponsible with the money of the productive.
[Update a couple minutes later]
More brilliant government “investment” decisions. As he notes, these clueless idiots think that any dollar spent by the government is an “investment.”
Wine Tasting
Why we can’t tell good wine from bad:
In 2001, Frederic Brochet conducted two experiments at the University of Bordeaux.
In one experiment, he got 54 oenology (the study of wine tasting and wine making) undergraduates together and had them taste one glass of red wine and one glass of white wine. He had them describe each wine in as much detail as their expertise would allow. What he didn’t tell them was both were the same wine. He just dyed the white one red. In the other experiment, he asked the experts to rate two different bottles of red wine. One was very expensive, the other was cheap. Again, he tricked them. This time he had put the cheap wine in both bottles. So what were the results?
The tasters in the first experiment, the one with the dyed wine, described the sorts of berries and grapes and tannins they could detect in the red wine just as if it really was red. Every single one, all 54, could not tell it was white. In the second experiment, the one with the switched labels, the subjects went on and on about the cheap wine in the expensive bottle. They called it complex and rounded. They called the same wine in the cheap bottle weak and flat.
I’ve always suspected this. And it reminds me of this post from a couple years ago.
PDR or CDR?
I’m glad that NASA has approved SpaceX’s Preliminary Design Review for the launch abort system, but this doesn’t seem right:
NASA has approved the preliminary design review of SpaceX’s launch abort system, which will help crews aboard the Dragon capsule get out of harm’s way should any problems crop up during liftoff, company officials announced last week. With this hurdle cleared, SpaceX can now start building hardware for the system.
Emphasis mine. That’s not my understanding of a PDR. I thought that PDR meant that you could start doing detailed design, advancing to a Critical Design Review. After passing CDR, you start bending metal. Is there not going to be a CDR?
Propellant Depots
Dana Rohrabacher makes the case. He doesn’t seem to be consistent in his terminology, though. He starts out calling them “fuel” depots, and later switches to “propellant.”
Economic Models
Why they’re always wrong.
And yet the technocrats still maintain the fatal conceit that they can run an economy better than the market.
Well, I Guess It’s Been Long Enough
So much for that “Speak no ill of the dead” thing, when it comes to Steve Jobs.
The Biggest Problem With Leftists
…is that they lack a sense of irony. Or self awareness, other than a heightened sense of entitlement and completely unjustified self esteem.
“We Need NASA To Change Commercial Crew Contracts”
Joe Pappalardo got some comments from Elon yesterday, after the hearing.
[Update a few minutes later]
Here’s Frank Morring’s report on yesterday’s hearing.
Occupy Wall Street
…exposed.
As Powerline says, the Tea Party is a political movement — OWS is a crime wave.
[Late morning update]
Occupy Wall Street and its war on the First Amendment.
[Very late morning update]
“Income inequality” is the new global warming. Hey, any excuse for socialism.