Home ownership is a lousy investment.
While I don’t dispute the numbers, they are based on averages, and don’t take into account location. Also, there is no accounting for the intangibles of owning your own house, with the ability to make it the way you want it.
It still remains unresolved. Amanda Carey has the current state of play over at The Daily Caller.
One of the biggest concerns about the commercial spaceflight industry is whether there will be sufficient demand to support multiple players. Technology Review has an article on the subject.
I would note that the limit on crew rotation to the ISS is somewhat arbitrary, and that the crew capacity is artificially limited by lifeboat capacity. I don’t think it would be that hard to increase the life support to handle a larger crew if they could solve this problem. I personally don’t think it’s really a problem — we don’t have “lifeboats” for McMurdo in winter, and I don’t understand why we really need one at ISS, but if we do, the solution is not to evacuate the entire station and bring everyone back to earth, which is really kind of stupid if you think much about it, but it’s been the default requirement since the eighties. As I’ve noted before, the Titanic’s lifeboats weren’t designed to get people back to Southampton — they were designed to provide a safe haven until their passengers could be rescued by another ship. A much better solution is to have a coorbiting habitat (e.g., a Bigelow facility) with a true lifeboat in the form of a crew tug (I’d make the tug large and inflatable as well, to maximize utilization of the docking port, and it could serve as a temporary safe haven itself). If NASA really wanted to goose the market, they’d buy at least one of each.
Shop Walmart:
you, and everyone else trying to sell to Walmart, have to spend all your time figuring out how to produce the same product with less. Walmart’s ruthless focus on reducing prices is driving producers everywhere to cut the costs of production: to switch to cheaper materials, use less packaging, cut down on waste of all kinds and to consolidate and rationalize both production and distribution. The result is a steady and inexorable decline in humanity’s impact on the environment for every unit of GDP.
The Green Police couldn’t do it any better. In fact, given the political cluelessness, uncertain signals (is nuclear energy a good thing or a bad thing?), and anti-scientific knuckle dragging from environmentalists on subjects like the use of GMOs in agriculture, it’s likely that a world run by Walmart would be both richer and cleaner than a world run by Greenpeace. Not that I want Walmart (or Greenpeace) to run the world, bu at the end of the day, being ruthlessly cheap is the most important way of being green. To cut out waste, to use methods of production that cut the energy consumed at every stage in the process, to strip packaging to the barest minimum, to reduce the amount of raw materials in every product: this is the mother lode of green. This is how a growing human population limits its impact on the earth. This is where Walmart and green are as one.
I still say that Sam Walton was a greater humanitarian, and did more to improve the lives of the poor, than any politician ever born.
Kyle-Anne Shiver says that the Democrats sealed their fate in March:
All the other power-grabs — taking over auto companies and banks and insurance companies — might have left the Democrats out of the electoral tsunami zone, but the health care power grab sealed their coming fate.
The health care bill, foisted upon an unwilling American public, has become this era’s Intolerable Act. Just as King George and his elitist parliament pushed our ancestors beyond their breaking point, so has the modern Democrat cabal of Obama, Pelosi, and Reid. These are names that will live in American infamy.
No Mount Rushmore for them.
By voting the fascists out in a few weeks.
More thoughts here:
Zero tolerance for expressing an opinion, or offering an explanation to policyholders? They’re more subtle than this in Caracas.
and here:
Secretary Sebelius’ Hugo Chavezesque threats against the health insurance industry demonstrate why the fight to repeal Obamacare is also the fight for the soul of our country. Obamacare and the progressive movement represent a fundamental threat to our founding principles. For the left, “progress” means fundamentally transforming America through bureaucratic dictates that will engineer a “better” society by assuring equal outcomes. Through Obamacare, progressives would redistribute wealth through a distant, patronizing welfare state that regulates more and more of the economy, politics and society. The question Americans face is: Are we a country ruled by law or by bureaucrat?
Time to take the country back.
Henry Vanderbilt is reporting that HR 5781 will not be put on the calendar this session:
HR.5781 is not on the House calendar for this week. Our sources tell us that at least in part due to a significant number of constituent calls late last week, the House Leadership does not (currently) intend to put HR.5781 on the calendar this session (at least not in its current form.) We hear that negotiations with Senate Authorizers continue, with the outcome (if any) now more likely to be based on the Senate bill. So, the battle is going well – to everyone who made a contact so far, thanks! But the battle over this NASA Authorization continues. We need to keep the pressure on, with the general message being, NASA Exploration R&D (including Commercial Crew and Cargo) is a good thing to fund, while NASA in-house booster developments (see numbers in the Generic reason below) are very likely to be massive wastes of scarce funds. Those of you who’ve already contacted your Representative might want to contact your Senators now too. Those of you who haven’t yet made a contact, why not? More when we know more.
The worst has been avoided, but the outcome could still be bad. Stay tuned.
Ten tips. I’d add that blogging helps with many of these tips.
For the first time in my political life, I am in agreement with the majority:
The numbers: Bank bailouts, 61 percent disapprove versus 37 percent approve; national health care, 56 percent disapprove versus 39 percent approve; auto bailouts, 56 percent disapprove versus 43 percent approve; stimulus, 52 percent disapprove versus 43 percent approve. Only financial reform, with 61 percent approve versus 37 percent disapprove, is a winner for the representatives and senators seeking re-election.
OK, not entirely. I think that the financial reform was a mess, and will prove disastrous as well.
Our debt is more than all the money in the world.
[Update a few minutes later]
Still no correlation between local unemployment and stimulus spending. Great to know that we put ourselves into debt for nothing.