And now for something completely different: a near-miss for the Darwin Award. A man who was shocked and burned chasing a rabbit. His last name was Asher.
As is often the case, the Freeper comments are quite entertaining.
Category Archives: General
An End Of A Personal Era
There may not be a lot of posting over the next couple weeks. There are a lot of changes coming up in our lives, some good, some bad, but mostly (I think) good.
For the first time in over a decade, we’ll both be living, at home, in LA, and with a semi-normal schedule — getting up early, going off to work, and coming home at night. Patricia has a real job (something that I should have) that will require that. No more seeing each other only on weekends, no more wondering where each of us will be over the next month, no more having a cat who doesn’t understand why mom or dad are absent for days or weeks.
For the first time in over a decade, we won’t be watching tropical waves coming off of Africa with personal concern.
Way back in 1998, she moved to San Juan, and we started to have to worry about hurricanes. We got a break from that in 2002, when she came back and worked in Reno, then Milbrae, then (very briefly) in LA, then got transferred to south Florida, where we once again had to not only worry about, but deal with hurricanes, when I actually drove a car out here, knowing I was driving out to help get ready for Frances, back in 2004.
In another week or so, almost exactly five years later, I’ll be driving the same car back to California, again in the heart of hurricane season.
When I drove out, once I left El Paso, or a few hundred miles east, I left the mountains behind. I left the west behind (even though I know that many consider central Texas the west, despite its lack of scenery, mountains or cactus). I left it with regret.
Driving back west again in the same car, will be very cathartic.
I’ve always loved the west. I read about it voraciously as a kid, from Dennis the Menace to Mark Twain, and once I visited as a kid, over forty years ago, I was hooked. I can’t wait to get back, despite the dysfunctionality of the California government. The geography, the history, the people of California, I hope will overcome the current disastrous state. The state of California has always bounced back. I hope that it will do so again.
But if it doesn’t, I have property there, so I have to delude myself anyway…
In any event, I am going to enjoy the trip, in exactly the converse of the way that I disenjoyed the trip east, despite the fact that I was (bittersweet) driving to my darling Patricia. This time, I’m driving home, with all its flaws. And I won’t miss Florida. There is nothing that I will miss about Florida, except the new friends that I met here, and the thunderstorms. Those, are golden, all, and I will miss them much. But all we can do is say our goodbyes this weekend, and enjoy our new life, back home.
Not Quite Escaping?
I’m planning to leave for California from Boca around September 10th. I was hoping that I could avoid a hurricane, as we’re heading into the heart of the season, but Ericka has formed (sorry, not a permalink):
The cloud mass just east of the Windward Islands developed into Tropical Storm Erika late Tuesday afternoon. The storm was able to develop thanks to the overall flow plus warm sea surface temperatures between 83 and 86 degrees in that part of the Atlantic. Erika is moving slowly and will not threaten the Southeast coast of the United States before Labor Day. Before then, the storm will have some impact on the Leeward Islands, Puerto Rico and Dominican Republic before moving east of the Bahamas.
Will it continue through the Bahamas to “west of the Bahamas” (i.e., the Florida Peninsula)? Or head north, as everything else has so far? The models are all over the map, with some of them taking it through the Greater Antilles. Extrapolating the five-day track (again, unfortunately not a permalink), it looks like south Florida would be on the southern edge of the cone.
Will he manage to get away without shuttering? Will he manage to get away at all?
Stay tuned.
Media To Cindy Sheehan
They weren’t anti-war. They were just anti-Bush.
[Update later morning]
The good old days, when Charlie Gibson was enthralled with Cindy Sheehan.
[Early afternoon update]
The pro-Obama media want the anti-war movement to just go away.
[Another update]
It’s not easy being a has-been.
Every Man
“…would give up his brain for a decent size.”
That was the subject of one of the myriad spam emails I get encouraging me to enhance…something or other. I have to believe that women get them, too.
Anyone who responds to such idiocy had no brain to give up in the first place. It’s as stupid as the ones that tell me that no one can resist buying a new watch. Watch me.
A One-Two Punch?
It’s still too far out to be worried, but the long-range tracks on tropical storms Ana and Bill (which is expected to form late today or tomorrow) both have south Florida in the middle of the bullseye for late next week and weekend. It’s worth noting that this is the latest first named storm since 1992. The name of that one was Andrew, which hit exactly where the current five-day track for Ana is centered, in Homestead. But it came in from a more northern, unobstructed path than the models are currently showing for Ana, which may be weakened by crossing the mountains of the Greater Antilles. We’ll know more in a couple days.
[Update late afternoon]
Bill is born.
Back In FL
I just took a non-stop from LAX to MIA. It looks like I’m getting back just in time for some tropical weather. More anon.
Getting Swine Flu
…and living to tell the tale.
Some Thoughts On Comparing The President To Hitler
They seem to have won back their democracy, no thanks to the White House.
As a test of the state of “Bush the Nazi” rhetoric, I went to Google and typed in “Bush is a Nazi” and got 420,000 hits, well behind “Hitler was a Nazi” (654,000 hits), but then Hitler WAS a Nazi and had a 75-year head start. (Computer searches like this are very crude instruments. They sweep up many references that cannot fairly be listed as slurs. But they do offer a rough idea of the amount of name-calling.)
President Clinton did fairly well in the Nazi sweepstakes (158,000 hits, but that’s only 20,000 references for each presidential year, compared to 120,000 annually for the 3 1/2 year-incumbency of George Bush.) The odd thing is that I typed in the names of every Nazi I ever heard of, excluding only Hitler himself, and the group total was still less than George Bush gets alone. This might indicate that either that George Bush is by far the second most important Nazi of all time, or that the Democrats and the left now require some sedation.
But that was then, this is now…
And remember, that was five years ago. I’ll bet that a similar search now would provide much larger results.
The Heavy-Lift Empire Strikes Back?
Thoughts over at Space Transport news. It was a little dismaying to see Augustine’s comment.
I have no predictions as to the outcome, but I’m not particularly hopeful, given the nature of bureaucracy and entropy. But we are continuing to get useful ideas out there, for the private sector to pick up on even if we continue to waste billions on NASA’s HSF program.
[Update in the evening]
This article would indicate that the panel overall remains stuck in the conventional wisdom that heavy lifters are on the critical path to space exploration. One of the hopes for my piece in The New Atlantis was to break that consensus, but it doesn’t seem to have succeeded, so far.
[Late evening update]
Here’s an interesting chart (that appears to have been captured by a camera at the actual presentation) that summarizes the seven options currently being considered. I assume that “IP” is international participation (aka the Russians). I’m not sure what “SH” means, but perhaps one of my readers will be smarter at deciphering than me. I’m guessing something like “Super Heavy.”
Note that the panel (as a whole — there could be dissent among individuals) assumes that refueling is not an option within the current budget, as the chart is currently configured. Note also that it assumes that Ares V is required. I assume that these two assumptions are not coincidental. Take away the heavy lifter, and there’s abundant budget for depots, and other things.
The real question to me is: what is the driver for the perceived heavy-lift requirement? Is it a credibility factor with the flight rate necessary for smaller vehicles to deliver all the propellant for (say) a Mars mission? Or a “smallest biggest piece” (again for, say, a Mars mission) that begs credibility in terms of ability to assemble it on orbit? Or a “let’s keep the options open for some kind of need that we can’t anticipate”? Or all of the above? I expect that we will know the answers to these questions in a very few weeks. I don’t think that the panel will hide the ball the way that NASA did with ESAS.
But one hint might be in noting that the Mars mission (presumably to the surface) is the biggest driver — it assumes both “many” Ares V launches while also noting that refueling is “enabling” (i.e., cannot be done without it). This is a simple recognition of the reality that at some point, even the heavy-lift fetishists have to recognize that there is a limit to the degree to which they can afford to avoid orbital operations — there are some missions simply a bridge too far to do with a single launch.
Anyway, I’m slightly more encouraged by this chart, if for no other reason that it recognizes refueling as a viable option, and that minds are clearly starting to change. I may have more thoughts anon, though, and it’s a long way to August 31st, I suspect, with a lot of perturbations to come.
[Update a few minutes later]
One other point. The chart isn’t good news for Ares I.
[One more update before crashing to catch with with loss of last night’s sleep]
“Brad” has some more comments on the table:
1) The porklauncher, Ares I, looks dead. Only two of the seven options use Ares I, and one of those two options uses commercial crew services as well.
2) Commercial crew services is going to happen. Five out of the seven options exploit commercial crew services.
3) The Shuttle orbiter looks like it will still retire close to schedule. Only one of the seven options extends orbiter operations through 2015.
4) Ares V may not survive. Even though HLV is endorsed with every option, Ares V is only included in four out of the seven, and those four (IMHO) consist of the less probable choices.
5) Propellant depots are enabling to one option, and mentioned as enhancing three options, so depots are not ignored and have a fair chance for future development. Particularly when you take into account that commercial services are included in every option.
6) The ISS is not going to de-orbit in 2016. Five of the seven options extend ISS operations through 2020. The committee’s hope to expand international cooperation will only emphasize the importance of the ISS. Perhaps this might not be a drain on NASA, if international cooperation offsets the cost of flying ISS beyond 2016.
[Thursday morning update]
Todd Halvorson reports on the subject. Does anyone else see something missing in the reporting? You know, the thing that’s “enabling” for Mars First?