Category Archives: Media Criticism

Humor, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Satire

Well, This Was Inevitable

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New scandal at D of J, as illegal guitars find their way into the hands of Mexican druglords:

The secret program came to light early this morning in the border town of Nogales, Arizona, after what was described as a wild battle of the bands between members of the Sinaloa cartel and Los Zetas, two of Mexico’s most notorious violent drug gangs.

“Usually these guys are armed with Mexican Strats and Squires, Epiphones, small caliber stuff like that,” said Pedro Ochoa, 36, an eye witness to the sonic melee. “This time they were packing the heavy firepower.”

The steady barrage of power chords and piercing solo attacks attracted the attention of nearby U.S. Border Patrol agents, who arrived at the scene just as Los Zetas broke into Led Zeppelin’s ‘Immigrant Song.’ By the time the dust had cleared, U.S. Border Patrol Agent Oscar Jimenez was found in a catatonic state of headbanging. He was later flown to University of Arizona Hospitals, where his condition is listed as seriously rawked.

And the cover up will continue.

[Update a couple minutes later]

What’s the difference between Martin and Gibson? Nope, not the “illegal” wood. One donates to Dems and the other to Republicans. I’m sure it’s just a coincidence.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Prescient

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Others have noted today how prophetic Gerald Warner was on inauguration day:

To anyone who kept his head, the string of Christmas cracker mottoes booming through the public address system on Washington’s National Mall can only excite scepticism. It is crucial to recall the reality that lies behind the rhetoric. Denouncing “those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents” comes ill from a man whose flagship legislation, the Freedom of Choice Act, will impose abortion, including partial-birth abortion, on every state in the Union. It seems the era of Hope is to be inaugurated with a slaughter of the innocents.

Obama’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan is like one of those toxic packages traded by bankers: it camouflages many unaffordable gifts to his client state. With a federal deficit already at $1.2 trillion, Obama wants to squander $825 billion (which will undoubtedly mushroom to more than $1 trillion) on creating 600,000 more government jobs and a further 459,000 in “green energy” (useless wind turbines and other Heath-Robinson contraptions favoured by Beltway environmentalists).

Maybe they’ll listen to us the next time around. But probably not.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space

More Whittington Nonsense

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Where does he come up with this stuff?

Rohrabacher suggests that “several hundred million dollars” could be transferred from the SLS program to commercial crew. There are several problems with his proposal.

First, commercial crew space craft such as the SpaceX Dragon are not due to start carrying human passengers until 2015 at the earliest.

What does this mean? Where does he come up with that date, and why would they not be “due” to do it sooner? I am aware of no reason that Dragon couldn’t be flying people in a couple years, given sufficient investment. It could fly even sooner if one were willing to forgo an abort system.

The cargo version, depending on some test flights being flow successfully, would start flying next year. There is little evidence that a transfer of “several hundred million dollars” would advance the start dates of either version by as much as a day.

This is ridiculous. The request for Commercial Crew for 2012 (which starts in about a month) was $850M. The House reduced it to about $300M. Does Mark really imagine that this reduction will not impact the schedule? And that increasing it won’t accelerate it? On what basis?

On the other hand, siphoning off money from the underfunded SLS would pretty much cripple that project and add to the arguments of those who want it scrapped entirely. That may be the entire point of Rohrabacher’s proposal. However the proposal is so transparent that it is not likely to be met favorably by other members of Congress. Rohrabacher is in the strange position of being a man who has advocated free market capitalism demanding more government subsidies for a space craft whose sole purpose, at least thus far, is to service the government.

Other members of Congress don’t really give a damn, except the ones whose states and districts are affected. He continues to not understand the meaning of the word “subsidy,” and continues to turn a blind eye to the real subsidy — multi-billion cost-plus contracts for vehicles that will likely never fly.

[Update a few minutes later]

Michael Belfiore discusses the implications:

If all goes according to plan, another unmanned Dragon, also riding a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, will dock with the International Space Station this December. A strong commitment from SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and independent funding from the company’s satellite launch business puts Dragon on the fast track to manned flight within three years.

“Within three years” means 2014 by my math. And as I said, the long pole in the tent is the abort system, not life support. If there were an emergency, they could fly without the abort system much sooner (Ken Bowersox has said that someone could have flown last December with a beanbag chair and scuba tank). Of course, that would only happen if space were important.

[Friday evening update]

OK, I know I shouldn’t link his stupid blog (just as an aside, it’s hilarious that after all these years, the permalinks on his blog still have double tags), but as usual he doubles down on the stupidity and reading incomprehension:

Rand Simberg reacts. He doesn’t offer any evidence to refute the position that adding just a few hundred million is not going to advance the schedule of the commercial space vehicles becoming operation, besides throwing out words like “nonsense.”

Really? I’ll repeat again (it’s right up above), though he’ll ignore it again, rather than responding to it, because he has no response:

The request for Commercial Crew for 2012 (which starts in about a month) was $850M. The House reduced it to about $300M. Does Mark really imagine that this reduction will not impact the schedule? And that increasing it won’t accelerate it? On what basis?

He goes on:

Of course, one might concede the point that if one were to pour billions of dollars into the commercial crew program, which I think Rand is implying, one might get something flying in “a couple of years.”

Note that I wrote nothing about “pouring billions of dollars into the commercial crew program.” He may be inferring it, but as almost always, what he insanely infers is not what others imply.

Also, I think Rand has also admitted, though he will likely deny it, that funding projects like the Space Launch System more than currently contemplated would advance the advent of that launch system as well.

Again, I “admitted” nothing of the kind, though I would in fact concede that if we actually do “pour billions” (that is, tens of billions) into the SLS, it’s possible that its schedule might be moved up a year or so, perhaps only two or three years past the current date after which there is no guarantee that the ISS will even be flying. How he thinks this helps his case Jehovah only knows.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Technology and Society, War Commentary

More Green Madness

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…on the plains:

The greens lobbying President Obama to block the pipeline are asking him to forgo thousands of jobs (in an election year in which jobs will could well be the major issue!) and billions of dollars in economic advantages — not to save the planet or reduce the carbon in the atmosphere, but to confer an economic and political advantage on China. If President Obama takes the green advice, the US will get almost all of the disadvantages that come from using the oil ourselves, and lose out many of the benefits.

There’s another factor that has to be weighed. Getting secure oil sources for the United States isn’t just a matter of convenience; reducing US exposure to foreign blackmail, and reducing our need to consider military interventions and other actions to protect our energy supply helps make war less likely — and allows us, all things being equal, to get along with somewhat smaller armed forces than would otherwise be required.

More, forcing China to look to less stable places than Canada for its oil transfers some of the costs of global energy security to the Chinese, and also helps tie them into the development of a rule driven global system. If the US oil supply comes largely from friendly neighbors, while China (and other US competitors) must rely on unstable, far flung sources, we are going to have more flexibility in our foreign policy and China will have so many fish to fry and cats to herd that it will be less likely to think about mounting a global challenge to the US.

Don’t expect the enviroloons to think rationally about this. We should prefer ethical oil over conflict oil. Of course, in their unrealistic fantasies, we would use no oil at all, and just power everything with windmills (ignoring the bird kill) and unicorn flatulence.

[Update a while later]

Speaking of green madness (and now anger) it looks like climate models will have to be revised. Damn those extraterrestrial causes! Can’t you just leave us green Ptolemaians alone?