I don’t have a problem with the sailing attempt — I think that today’s children are far too coddled and infantilized (all the way to age 26, thanks to ObamaCare). I don’t see anything particularly magic about eighteen, either. Different people mature at different rates. There are many people who would never be able to do this at any age (most people, I’d say). What I’m looking forward to is the youngest (or even first) person to sail around the moon.
Category Archives: Media Criticism
At It Again
Karl Grossman is continuing his ignorant jeremiad against nuclear power in space, including RTGs:
Last month, Japan launched what it called its “space yacht” which is now heading to Venus propelled by solar sails utilizing ionized particles emitted by the Sun.
When he writes stuff like this (light sails are propelled by photons, not “ionized particles”), why should we take anything else he writes (like all of the people who died of radiation poisoning from the SNAP 9A entry) seriously? He’s just a journalism professor.
I have to admit, though, it’s kind of amusing that this will be one more thing for the Left to be disappointed about in Obama.
Helen Thomas And The Liberation
…all this may have a strangely liberating effect on Israel. We know now that whatever it does, the world, or at least its prominent political and media figures, is going to damn it. Its longtime patron, the United States, now sees not much difference between Israel ’s democratic achievement and the autocracies around it, which we are now either subsidizing or courting. As a result, the global censors have lost leverage with Israel, since they have proven to be such laughable adjudicators of right and wrong when Israel is involved.
Israelis should assume by now that whether they act tentatively or strongly, the negative reaction will be the same. Therefore why not project the image of a strong, unapologetic country to a world that has completely lost its moral bearings, and is more likely to respect Israel’s strength than its past concern for meeting an impossible global standard?
I don’t think that she and the other Jew haters realize how much they’ve actually helped their despised Zionist entity.
The President Said What, Now?
Thoughts from Lileks on the KeisterKicker-in-Chief:
“He didn’t mean donkey,” she said, this being the only possible explanation. I shook my head. It will now be difficult to tell her not to use that word; it will now be a matter of time before my wife says, “Well, your daughter was sounding presidential today,” and it won’t be a reference to mankind’s universal aspirations. Unless you include the desire to kick BP’s tuckus, which seems fairly widespread.
I don’t know if I’ve written this, but I’ve certainly thought it. When I heard the president, my first response was, “Who is he kidding?” My second one was, “Gee, and here I thought that the purpose of getting people together to assay the facts was to determine what effective action to take. How Chicago of him to think that the only effective action is to take one’s boot off the throat of the country long enough to bury it in the appropriate fundament.”
And I, for one, haven’t been complaining about the president not emoting enough. I’ve never been interested in a president that “felt my pain.” All I’ve ever wanted is one that isn’t the cause of it.
No, my complaint is that he’s incompetent. So the all the talk about the asskickery isn’t very impressive to me. Usually, I’m glad that he’s incompetent, because most of the things he wants to do are awful, and I want them to fail at them, but this is a case where I wish that he could actually get it right.
[Update a while later]
Rich Lowry agrees with me: Mr. President, please don’t feel our pain.”
Was it Bill Clinton who started this infantilization of the American people?
[Update a few minutes later]
Jonah Goldberg isn’t impressed, either:
It’s like a Tonight Show joke.
Leno: “The president is so dorky . . . ”
Audience: “How dorky is he?”
“He’s so dorky, when he gets angry he convenes a panel of experts to tell him whose ass to kick.”
And speaking of The Tonight Show, let me reassure both editors and readers of family newspapers everywhere about my use of the word “ass.” Historian Steven Hayward reminds me that in 1979, Jimmy Carter responded to Ted Kennedy’s primary challenge by declaring he would “whip his ass.” It was one of those moments of presidential lameness that conjures the same bile of pity, schadenfreude, and heebie-jeebies one feels upon seeing a middle-aged balding dude with a long gray ponytail dancing at a rave.
As John Stewart said, the president is going to have to kick himself. In fact, if he had sufficient self awareness, he’d know that there are many reasons to do so.
[Update a couple minutes later]
The Democrats can’t put the blame genie back in the bottle. This is the kind of situation for which the Bard came up with the expression, “hoist onwith his own petard.”
[Update a while later]
Three reasons that the president should be kicking himself.
I Have A Weird Empathy
…with this woman:
I…know a Gentile lady who wishes to go to Israel if things “completely go to hell there,” just because she thinks if bombs fall on them, they should fall on her, too. She thinks if humanity lets the Jews go down, humanity is lost.
She is more motivated and braver, and firmer in her convictions than I, but I completely understand the impulse. And I am ashamed of many American Jews who, once again, as in the thirties, don’t see it coming, and continue to support those who not will only allow it to happen, but encourage it.
My Sidebar For Popular Mechanics
…didn’t run, so I’ll run it here.
In Monday’s Wall Street Journal, Andy Pasztor
Mr. Musk notes in an email:
“I definitely didn’t tell Pasztor that our LES would cost $1B. He is off by a factor of ten! All I told him is that there is no way it would cost us more than $1B to demonstrate crew transport. That includes development, testing and certification to the most stringent NASA standards of everything needed for a seven-crew vehicle. I’ve also said that our price per person would be $20M, assuming the seven-person configuration and minimum of four flights per year. This compares to $30B for Ares I/Orion and a per person cost of ~$250M.”
In a follow up, he noted that the billion (if it goes that high) will include two abort flight tests (one on the pad, one high altitude) and a demonstration flight to and from ISS. Sounds like a bargain to me.
Shocking
ACORN employees have admitted deliberate election fraud to the FBI.
Actually, I don’t think that anyone is shocked, including those who have been lying and defending the organization which, as the article notes, is simply morphing itself into other ones. An ACORN by any other name would still smell as foul.
Nostalgia
Remembering when “liberals” used to be opposed to anti-semitism. Also, Helen Thomas’ Weimar moment is a reflection on “progressive” America.
And you’ll be as shocked as I am to learn that the rabbi who outed the woman who expressed her vile views at a Jewish-History event has received hate mail and death threats. I’m sure they’re peaceful hate mails and death threats, though. Because these people are all about peace. Or so they tell us.
[Update a few minutes later]
A blast from the past. Tony Snow: “Thanks for the Hezbollah view, Helen.”
I miss Tony Snow. I disagree with the title, though. Helen Thomas has never required anyone’s assistance to look like a fool.
Birds Of A Feather
Iowahawk has discovered Helen Thomas’ retirement plans.
Stupid Commentary On Bigelow
Was this supposed to make any sense?
Robert T. Bigelow, of Bigelow Aerospace and the Budget motel chain, believes he can build the space stations, and others will be able to fly paying customers, including NASA astronauts, into orbit—all for less money than NASA and other government space agencies currently pay to transport and host spacemen and spacewomen.
Truthdig is not entirely convinced this is such a good idea. In a year of oil spills, runaway Toyotas and toxic happy meals, we’re not so sure about turning over exploration of the final frontier—and transportation of our astronauts—to private profiteers.
Apparently the word “profit” remains a dirty word to some. Which is why it continues to amaze that this new policy came out of the Obama administration.
And of course, we know how scrupulous that “non-profit,” NASA is about flight safety. Why, it’s only killed fourteen astronauts in the past quarter century.
[Update a few minutes later]
The other dumb thing about this is the notion that any space activity is “exploration.” This is one of the ignorant straw-man shibboleths of the bashers of the new plan (notably, by the moronic commenter “DCSCA” over at Space Politics) — that “exploration” is being turned over to private enterprise, which they claim won’t work, because it’s not profitable. But all that the plan actually calls for is to get NASA out of the business of transportation to LEO, so that they can finally focus on real exploration.