…and the new medical ethics.
Category Archives: Business
How Bad A Shape Is The Music Industry In?
I’m having trouble working up much angst about this. But then, I’ve never been a fan of Big Music.
People will continue to make music, and sell it. But they’ll have to rely more on talent than hype, and few will get as unreasonably rich as they did in the past on it. More will be doing it because they want to make music. And the general collectivist inclination of political contributions of the industry and individual “artists” (to use the term loosely in many cases)) is just a bonus.
That Missing Post From Yesterday
…returns this morning, over at Pajamas Media — what is the right analogy for the battle of Madison?
Note that I’ve added in the comments here that slipped in to the other post before I unpublished it yesterday.
[Afternoon update]
Yes, I got the sequence of Jutland and Lusitania confused. Mea culpa.
How To Save $1.4T
Eh, but who cares what the Congressional Budget Office things? What do they know? I mean, just because their word was gospel when the Democrats fed the garbage in last year?
Can’t Happen Soon Enough
Is the higher-education bubble on the verge of popping?
Desperation
The administration is asking the judge who declared the health-care law unconstitutional to order it to be implemented.
I’d say good luck with that, but I’d be lying.
[Update a while later]
It’s not just the mandate. Just in case the bill survives the Supreme Court, the waivers are unconstitutional as well. These would seem to be a slam dunk from an equal protection standpoint. It’s government by fiat, and rule of men rather than law. Which is the only kind that works for the White House, because the people sure don’t want it.
Who Would Have Thought?
There are documentation problems at NASA. It’s endemic to the industry. It’s one of the causes of high costs. And failures. Be sure to read the comments.
One of the advantages that SpaceX has is that with a tightly integrated co-located team, the knowledge is much more accessible, though individuals become more critical
Behind The Scenes
…of the Atlas Shrugged movie:
And an interview with the screenwriter and producer:
“I’m Starting To Think It’s Time To Panic”
Thoughts on the unsustainable deficit, from Megan McArdle. And once again, the president demonstrates that he’s the opposite of a mensch.
Speaking of which, Barack Obama’s foreign policy debacle.
[Update a few minutes later]
NASA Budget Issues
Andy Pasztor (I know, I know) has a piece in today’s Journal about the NASA budget proposal that was released a few minutes ago. As Jeff Foust notes, when he writes:
Commercial-space projects are years behind schedule, and critics still worry about placing undue reliance on them.
…compared to what? At least they weren’t slopping more than a year per year, as Constellation was, and they were spending orders of magnitude less money. Jeff also says:
…the article doesn’t say what that cutback in commercial crew funding is in respect to. If it’s compared to the 2012 projection in the administration’s FY11 budget request, which called for $1.4 billion, that is almost certainly correct, especially since the NASA authorization act passed last year included only $500 million for commercial crew development in 2012. It would be more newsworthy if the administration’s commercial crew request was less than that $500-million figure, especially since the article also indicates that the budget proposal “would be broadly consistent” with the act.
Actually, my reading of it is that it’s a cut from the $500M figure:
The White House last year initially proposed NASA spending of more than $1.2 billion annually on commercial spacecraft. Congress later reduced that figure to less than $500 million a year, and the latest budget envision further trims.
That sounds like a cut from the half billion to me. But then again, it is Andy Pasztor. Anyway, we’ll know today.
[Update a few minutes later]
Clark Lindsey has more thoughts, and there’s a lot of discussion in comments.
[Update a few mintues later]
Jeff Foust has more over at The Space Review today.