Did the Department of Justice get a gag order? If so, as he says, this is a gross abuse of power. And typical of this administration.
Category Archives: Media Criticism
Why Haven’t We Built Cities In Space?
There’s a long piece over at Gizmodo, mostly about the NRC report. Sadly, the reporter didn’t seem to talk to anyone except Ariel Waldman:
The US has a plan for Americans to live in space. In 2012, the National Research Council was commissioned by Congress to roadmap the future of human space exploration. Last June, the team published its findings in a massive report, which called for several action steps to be taken immediately.
No, actually, the NRC report was not really a plan. It was a set of fairly vague and broad recommendations. There is no plan.
Statistically, China’s space program is a few decades behind the US, but consider these facts: Just in the last two years the country has sent ten people into space.
Really? No, not really. In the last two years, China has sent three people into space. Go back three years, and they’ve sent six.
The agency is currently working on a mission to Mars and a proposal for its own space station, which is planned for sometime in the 2020s. Soon, China will undoubtably surpass the US in its efforts for space colonization.
That’s ridiculous. China is using legacy Soviet-type hardware. No one is going to colonize space that way.
Thanks to a 2011 Congressional act that bars the US from collaborating with China’s space program, NASA is not allowed to work directly with the most quickly accelerating efforts to get humans into space. Thanks to a 2011 Congressional act that bars the US from collaborating with China’s space program, NASA is not allowed to work directly with the most quickly accelerating efforts to get humans into space. This is a huge problem. “There are only two places that are going into space,” says Waldman, referring to current crewed missions by Russia and China. “We’re not one of them, and we’re not in collaboration with the other one of them.”
This is delusional. China is not the place with the “most quickly accelerating efforts to get humans into space.” That is happening in Hawthorne and Mojave, California, and Seattle. We do not need to work with China or Russia to get into space, and we are not in a race with them.
So much of what seems to motivate any space exploration is the concept of flag planting, which the US pretty much invented: I HEREBY CLAIM THIS MOON FOR AMERICA. Take away these imperialistic aspirations and the goals of human spaceflight become unmeshed with these ideas of nation-building—and a lot more pragmatic.
Ummmmmm…no. We did not CLAIM THIS MOON FOR AMERICA. We “came in peace for all mankind.”
Anyway, you get the idea.
Sid Blumenthal
…neocon:
Of course, one basic difference between Iraq and Libya is that the Bush administration had a plan for what would happen after Saddam was gone, and they executed it, with mixed results. The almost incredible fact is that the Obama administration–most notably, Hillary Clinton–had no meaningful plan for what would follow Qaddafi. The result was, almost immediately, a disaster. This is the fact that should be pounded home whenever Hillary’s tenure as Secretary of State is under discussion.
Just to recap. She didn’t turn over the Sid’s emails to Congress, despite their clearly being related to Libya and Benghazi. This is called “obstruction of justice.” It runs in the family, I hear.
Mark Steyn’s Latest
Go read it. You know you want to:
As for my basing a large part of my career on attacking Mann, I do sometimes marvel at the way people who profess to be saving the planet can be so fantastically parochial. In 2001, I wrote about the then-newish hockey stick in Britain’s Sunday Telegraph and Canada’s National Post, and some five years later in The Australian. But, as far as I recall, until November 2009 I had never ever mentioned Michael E Mann’s name in print. That was the month Climategate broke, of course, and I alluded to him a handful of times in the ensuing weeks. (Mann knows all this because I responded to his discovery requests almost a year-and-a-half ago, since when he’s refused to respond to mine.) And after that handful of times, I never mentioned him again until a 2012 blog post for which he’s suing me.
So now I mention him somewhat more often.
The same is true of me, in fact. If this does go to trial, Professor Mann is going to be very disappointed to discover how little attention I paid him up until I wrote that blog post.
Brian Williams
Ed Driscoll called it: He’s going to his natural home, MSNBC.
The Country’s In The Very Best Of Hands
Well, then I guess they do have a point that encryption wouldn’t have been very useful
Seriously, I think it’s time to completely overhaul the civil service system. We just had a cyber Pearl Harbor. Will anyone be punished? We know the answer to that one.
[Thursday-morning update]
The military-clearance OPM breach is an absolute calamity. And Obama can’t even bring himself to admit that the federal government screwed up.
Eugene Volokh
“I’m going to continue microaggressing.”
Of course, he has tenure. You’d be crazy to teach at or attend these places.
The Kickstarter
There’s only about seven hours to go, and we’re still two thousand dollars shy of the goal. That’s about the same amount of money that NASA spends on SLS in three seconds. Between now and when the window closes, they will have wasted about one and a half million bucks.
I’d say, at this point, given the current trickle, that either we’re not going to get there, or it will come in close to the end, as people are perhaps holding back to see if it will make it without them.
[Update a couple hours before it closes]
OK, doing pretty well. We just need a little over $600 now before 5:30 Pacific. SLS spends that much every second. Thanks for all the new donors, and the upgrades.
[Update about 3:40 PM PDT]
We did it! Over $12,400, and still an hour and a half to go, for those who still want to support the stretch goal of a video, and get the reward. Thanks to everyone who made it happen. Suck it, Shelby.
Remembering Runnymede
My thoughts on today’s anniversary, over at PJMedia. I haven’t been posting much because I’ve been attending a mini-conference on the subject, which was fascinating. I learned a lot of history from a lot of learned people. Sadly, it’s a history that we have not been teaching our youth. It doesn’t fit the narrative.
[Tuesday-morning update]
More thoughts from Iain Murray.
[Bumped]
[Afternoon update]
We need a Magna Carta for the regulatory state.
Indeed.
The University Of California
Alumni of the UC system should immediately cease wasting their charitable dollars on such an anti-intellectual, fascist institution. And any intelligent young person should avoid it like the plague. The system has clearly been captured by individuals with micro-brains possessing micro-tolerance and micro-confidence.
It’s fascinating to sit back and watch the academy destroy itself. Unfortunately, it’s also tragic, and destroying millions of young peoples’ lives, with taxpayer dollars.
[Update a while later]
“The Left’s “microaggressions” are a sign of their micro-totalitarian tendencies.”