Category Archives: Media Criticism

Safe Is Not An Option

Thoughts on flight rationale from Wayne Hale.

[Update a few minutes later]

OK, now I see why Wayne wrote that:

As NASA is working to balance all of these risks—the risk to crew on board Starliner, the risk of an uncrewed departure to the ISS, the risk to astronauts on board the space station, and more — Boeing has been lobbying to bring Starliner home with crew. Although NASA and Boeing engineers have yet to identify a root cause for the failure of the thrusters, Boeing has been urging NASA to accept “flight rationale” as a substitute. That is, Boeing believes it has provided enough data to NASA to be confident the thrusters will not fail in a catastrophic manner.

Boeing seems willing to risk the lives of the astronauts to save the vehicle. I don’t personally think it’s worth saving. I wonder what Boeing’s new CEO thinks?

Judith Curry

An interview with John Stossel.

“General” Harris

We’ve been hearing these kinds of stories for a while now. I don’t think it mentions it here, but I saw another story that reported when she was California AG, she would demand that her staff greet her every morning with “Good morning, General!” I have no trouble believing it, both because it matches other stories about her ego, and stories about her intelligence.

One of my pet peeves is people (including media types) addressing a Surgeon General or Attorney General, as “General So-and-So.” “General” is the adjective, not the noun. Morons.

[Update a few minutes later]

How is it that this woman is “Acting President”?

It has been credibly reported that they threatened him with the 25th Amendment if he didn’t drop out of the race. So if that’s true, and they don’t believe that he’s not competent, but removed him anyway, then that would have been a coup. If they do believe he’s not competent, then they have a Constitutional duty to remove him. Either way, this is not “saving our democracy.”

Make up your minds. He can’t be Schroedinger’s President.