Category Archives: Political Commentary

General, Political Commentary

A DC Earthquake?

13 Comments

I’m seeing lots of tweets from DC folks.

Actually, while I have a lot of friends there, a Richter 10 would solve a lot of the country’s problems.

Seriously, there’s a lot of old unreinforced colonial masonry there. A good shake could do a lot of damage in Old Town Alexandria, and the district as well.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Wow, a 5.8 in Virginia, a few tens of miles from DC. Pentagon and Capitol being evacuated.

[Update a few minutes later]

Apparently people are reporting it from New England, including a Fox reporter in Martha’s Vineyard. Here’s a Free Republic thread, with a report from Cleveland. Instapundit has a report that they didn’t actually evacuate the Pentagon, but that some rapidly exited on their own. It’s been declared safe now.

[Update a few minutes later]

Hmmm…Obama is out of town, can’t blame him. Must be Bush’s fault.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Looking at the map, it’s just east of Charlottesville, toward Richmond. Let’s hope it’s not a foreshock.

Even if it’s not, it could still be a bad week. Irene seems to be targeting the same area, with an arrival this coming weekend.

[Update a couple minutes later]

I’ve heard that cells are jammed. Folks, text, don’t talk. That will free up bandwidth for the first responders.

[Update]

No, it’s not too soon. Quake humor: “Krugman says it wasn’t big enough.” Hey, didn’t I say that, up above? Stopped clock, I guess.

Also, social media is faster than seismic waves.

[Update a few minutes later]

See what I meant about unreinforced masonry? “The historic Smithsonian Institution Building in Washington has cracks in the interior walls by the earthquake.”

That’s the red stone “castle” on the mall, the original Smithsonian Building and now its headquarters. A bigger shake, closer to the DC area, would do a lot of damage, because it’s not designed for earthquakes (even the new buildings). East coasters are way too complacent about this. They think that because it hasn’t happened in their lifetimes, that it can’t happen.

[Bumped]

Business, Economics, Political Commentary, Space

The SLS Debate

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Continues ad infinitum at NASA Watch, with the usual illogic from the usual suspects. This is a good analogy:

SLS is like Columbus postponing his voyages to try to build the world’s largest ship, using all the funds available to him for many years to do so. Instead of outfitting three modestly-sized ships with the crew and provisions to set out as soon as he can, Columbus spends many years to build an enormous ship. Meanwhile, no exploration is done. And Columbus makes sure the shipbuilding employs lots of people in key cities in Spain for political reasons, instead of designing the ship as efficiently as possible. In the end, the English beat Columbus to the New World because by the time Columbus finishes his ship, he can’t afford the crew or provisions for it, and the costs of simply maintaining the ship while it sits in its harbor are too high.

It reminds me of the story of Don Miguel de Grifo.

This is another good analogy:

Building SLS is like re-creating Saturn V without doing the rest of the Apollo program at the same time. It would result in SLS being cancelled, just as Saturn V was, for cost reasons, but without ever flying anything useful, because we weren’t doing another Apollo at the same time.

The only programs that could possibly use SLS would be hugely expensive and take a long time to develop. So if we finished SLS without working on the programs that would use SLS at the same time, we’d end up with a hugely expensive SLS draining money for many years before the payloads could possibly be ready, even if by some miracle all that huge amount of money appeared from somewhere (the Apollo program budgets were far greater, as a share of GDP, than NASA’s current budgets).

But some people just can’t get it. I can understand why rent-seeking senators want to fund this jobs program, but I don’t understand why any sensible space enthusiast does. But then, I guess that question answers itself, doesn’t it?

Education, Political Commentary

Schools Of Education

It’s not a new topic for me, but here’s more reason to simply abolish them:

The education sector is notoriously ineffective at identifying high- and low-quality workers, making it difficult for the labor market to penalize students from education departments that produce low-quality teachers. The culture of low standards in education is partly to blame, as those within the education establishment have shown little interest in distinguishing good teachers from mediocre teachers, but why can K-12 schools get away with not distinguishing high-quality workers from low-quality workers? What makes education different?

Two words: teachers’ unions. As that famous report noted three decades ago, if a foreign entity had imposed on us this educational system, it would rightly be considered an act of war. What should we think about the domestic enemies that have done, and continue to do so?

Political Commentary

New York Nine

Could a Republican be about to take the seat of Gerri Ferraro and Chuckie Schumer? It’s about Israel, and gay marriage.

Albany is run by the Dems, and if they lose that seat, they may just redistrict it out of existence (something they were considering after Weiner imploded anyway). But psychologically, such a perceived referendum on the White House won’t bode well for the election next year and traditional Jewish support for both Obama and Democrats in general.