You get the distinct impression, from the very first sentence, that Kevin Williamson doesn’t like them.
Category Archives: Media Criticism
Challenger Day
On the 28th anniversary of the event (and my birthday), Mollie Hemingway (to whom I gave a copy of the book at the Ricochet podcast Sunday night) has already read and reviewed it over at The Federalist. I would clarify this, though:
He suggests that NASA consider returning to an R&D function consistent with its original charter, otherwise getting out of the human spaceflight business entirely.
I don’t necessarily want them out of the human spaceflight business entirely, but I do want to get them out of now-mundane things like getting people (or anything) into orbit, and focus on the systems they need to go beyond. We have a commercial launch industry, and they should avail themselves of it instead of trying to compete with it.
[Afternoon update]
Molly has a post up at Ricochet, with a lot of discussion in comments.
[Bumped]
[Update a while later]
I was particularly gratified by this:
In any case, the book is just wonderful. I’m not someone who’s particularly interested in space exploration (though I have gone to many Space Shuttle launches and landings, so maybe I’m selling myself short). I’m definitely not someone with much knowledge of the space industry. And I wasn’t sure if this book would be so technical or wonkish as to be inaccessible. It’s not. It’s just a really engaging read with a compelling story about human nature, risk and reward.
That was what I was aiming for.
Obama’s Assault On Science
…will he continue it tonight?
Yes. Next question?
In The Second Term
Get ready for a lawless president to double down on the tyranny.
Pete Seeger
I love this line in this NPR puff piece:
Seeger actually was a member of the Communist Party in those early days, though he later said he quit after coming to understand the evils of Josef Stalin.
Yeah. You know when he came to “understand the evils of Josef Stalin”? Not until the nineties. He was in his seventies before he figured out what I knew as a kid in the sixties.
[Update a while later]
Glossing over the dark side:
As an apology Seeger’s words are underwhelming. While “cruel misleader” is by no means a term of endearment, in light of Stalin’s monstrous record, it vastly understates the depth of his depravity and the true horror of Stalinism. There are many more apt nouns and adjectives in the English language to describe the man who gave us the purges of the Great Terror, the Gulag, and the Ukrainian Terror Famine. Lost in the obfuscations of Seeger’s moral equivalencies is the fact that contemporary Christians, White people, and Mongolians are not responsible for the acts, however heinous, of Christians, white people, or Mongolians of the past, because they had nothing to do with them. Whereas Seeger is all too culpable for the crimes of Stalin because he was an open apologist for “old cruel Joe” and other communist thugs at the very time they were slaughtering millions.
Yes.
[Late-morning update]
If only Leni Riefenstahl was a communist like Pete Seeger.
The 100+ Million lives lost under communism during Mr. #seeger's lifetime could not be reached for comment @PeggyBrava @AmPowerBlog @MsEBL
— Peter Ingemi (@DaTechGuyblog) January 28, 2014
Climate Change Versus Free Speech
Benjamin Weingarten weighs in at The Blaze.
Another Book Review
Mark Lardas had a review a couple weeks ago in the Galveston Daily News, but it was behind a paywall. But I just learned that he reposted it at Ricochet. It’s an appropriate time to note it, given that today is the 47th anniversary of the Apollo 1 fire, and tomorrow is the 28th anniversary of the Challenger disaster.
[Update late afternoon]
Here’s another brief (partial) review, in comments at the same web site. It’s the first one to discuss the quality, as opposed to the content of the book.
Does Virgin Galactic Have A License Problem?
It would be nice if they did. That would be a lot easier to deal with than their real problem, which is propulsion.
As Jeff explains, there’s a lot of misunderstanding about the nature of spaceflight regulation in the US, both here and across the pond. As I noted on Twitter:
Let's be very clear: The FAA has NO STATUTORY BASIS 2 withhold a license from VG with regard to passenger safety. No test flights required.
— SafeNotAnOption (@SafeNotAnOption) January 26, 2014
The purpose of VG's test flights is to satisfy THEMSELVES that the vehicle is safe for their customers. The FAA DOES NOT care, legally.
— SafeNotAnOption (@SafeNotAnOption) January 26, 2014
To emphasize, you could have 1% chance of survival, and the FAA will STILL ISSUE THE LICENSE, as long as you've been made aware of that.
— SafeNotAnOption (@SafeNotAnOption) January 26, 2014
This, from Jeff’s article, is a good summation of the license situation, despite the recent misleading stories about it:
The emphasis on a lack of a commercial launch license, then, is something of a red herring. Virgin doesn’t need a launch license now to continue its testing regime, isn’t late now in receiving one, and given current law, there’s no reason to believe the Virgin won’t receive one before it plans to begin commercial flights, so long as as it can demonstrate the vehicle’s safety to the uninvolved public.
Yes.
[Afternoon update]
Jeff Foust also has a summary of the London Times article that’s behind their paywall, with some corrections.
[Update a couple minutes later]
If the reporting is true, and they really are finally running away from the hybrid, and particularly the rubber hybrid, as fast as possible, I wonder what the implications of this are for Sierra Nevada? Will they continue to promote hybrids, and will they still use one in Dream Chaser assuming it flies in three years? I’d bail on it myself and just buy something from XCOR, but they have a lot of PR invested in the technology, thanks to Jim Benson.
Obesity
Here’s an idea. Let’s stop pretending that we understand it.
The State Of The Union
Why bother to even listen any more?
Looking back on this presidency, it has from the beginning been a 17,000 word New Yorker piece in which, calmly, sonorously, with his lovely intelligent voice, the president says nothing, or little that is helpful, insightful or believable. “I’m not a particularly ideological person.” “It’s hard to anticipate events over the next three years.” “I don’t really even need George Kennan right now.” “I am comfortable with complexity.” “Our capacity to do some good . . . is unsurpassed, even if nobody is paying attention.”
Nobody is!
He gave a speech on the National Security Agency, that bitterly contested issue, the other day. Pew Research found half of those polled didn’t notice. National Journal’s Dustin Volz wrote that Americans greeted the speech with “collective indifference and broad skepticism.” Of the 1 in 10 who’d followed it, more than 70% doubted his proposals would help protect privacy.
The bigger problem is that the president stands up there Tuesday night with ObamaCare not a hazy promise but a fact. People now know it was badly thought, badly written and disastrously executed. It was supposed to make life better by expanding coverage. It has made it worse, by throwing people off coverage. And—as we all know now but did not last year—the program was passed only with the aid of a giant lie. Now everyone knows if you liked your plan, your doctor, your deductible, you can’t keep them.
When the central domestic fact of your presidency was a fraud, people won’t listen to you anymore.
They never should have. Peggy Noonan never should have. But at least, six years too late, she’s on to the scam.