The Secretary of Health and Human Services says that Republicans want you to die quickly, just like that fun-loving former Congressman from Orlando. Of course, it’s hard to know why she would object to that, given that (as Ed Driscoll notes) other administration members seem to be all in favor of people dying quickly.
Category Archives: Economics
Moore’s Law
The Great Irish Hunger
Lessons learned. Hint: it wasn’t a failure of the free market.
Houston, We Have An Earmark Problem
Over at Tea in Space web site, the Senate Launch System earmark is explained:
Do the senators who authored this language have more knowledge about systems engineering than NASA employees and contractors? Do the senators who authored this language have more knowledge about acoustical flight dynamics of SRBs than NASA employees and contractors? Do the senators who authored this language have more knowledge about the inherent risks and safety of SRBs than NASA employees and contractors?
They’re no rocket scientists.
How Far Is Egypt…
…from starving?
This isn’t going to end well. Revolutions in countries with large masses of illiterates rarely do, and the naive coverage of the situation, with hopeful talk of an “Arab spring,” has been appalling.
[Early afternoon update]
Things are falling apart in Egypt pretty rapidly. As Michael Totten says, the good guys are vastly outnumbered. And this administration has no plan.
Europeanizing American Space Policy
…by stealth. I have a column over at Pajamas Media this morning on the space “code of conduct.”
A Surreal Depression
Thoughts from Victor Davis Hanson. I think we’re about the same age, and I have similar memories of being told about the Depression by my parents and grandparents who lived through it. I don’t know what we’re in, but it isn’t (at least yet) a depression, though it seems as though the government is doing everything possible to get us there.
There Goes Another Hundred Million
The next (and penultimate) Shuttle flight is now no earlier than May 16th.
John Shannon said last year that it costs about two hundred million a month to extend the program, so this two-week delay cost another hundred million dollars (note that four months of that burn rate would provide enough resources for another entire SpaceX). That assumes, of course, that this delay will also push out the the schedule of the final flight. I don’t know enough about KSC flows to know if that’s the case, or if they can be parallel processing Atlantis, currently scheduled for the end of June.
I Did Not Know That
Whenever I hear an unemployment number, and particularly the statistic of how many people are in the labor force or looking for jobs, I wonder where they get the data. Well, here it is, explained.
From One Economic Lunacy To Another
Jeffrey Immelt doesn’t seem to know much about business:
“If I had one thing to do over again I would not have talked so much about green,” Immelt said at an event sponsored by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “Even though I believe in global warming and I believe in the science … it just took on a connotation that was too elitist; it was too precious and it let opponents think that if you had a green initiative, you didn’t care about jobs. I’m a businessman. That’s all I care about, is jobs.”
Hate to break it to you, but if you’re a real businessman, what you care about is profits, and not pandering to the politically correct by declaring your fealty to the planet, or job creation. The purpose of a business is not to create jobs, and if you think it is, then the business is likely to suffer, particularly if it’s all that you care about. Immelt seems like a character right out of Atlas Shrugged.