I remember very well the Apollo I fire and the loss of Grissom, Chafee and White. It was the day before my birthday, and it was a shock to the nation. But it was different than the later losses of Challenger (a quarter of a century ago tomorrow) and Columbia (seven years on Monday), because they were Cold-War warriors, and, unlike today’s human spaceflight program, what they were doing was important to the nation. So instead of shutting things down for years, as we did with the Shuttle each time, they overhauled the management at the contractor (even though it was really NASA’s fault) and a little less than two years later, we had sent men around the moon, and won the space race.
Category Archives: Political Commentary
Thoughts On Sarah Palin And Blood Libel
…from Carolyn Glick.
Socialism Is Back
A long but interesting essay, by Kevin Williamson.
The Myth Marches On
No, Jim, Barack Obama did not “cut NASA funding” last year. He proposed an increase, none of which went to “Muslim outreach.”
Is SF Becoming More Conservative?
An interesting discussion. I agree with the commenters, like Eric Raymond, that there seems to be a confusion between conservative and libertarian.
No Shows
At least three justices from the SCOTUS won’t be showing up at the prom tonight. Good. Hard to blame them, after the lying lecture last year by the president.
The American Sociological Association
…doubles down on defending the indefensible Frances Fox Piven. There may be more worthless and socially harmful fields of study than sociology, but there can’t be many.
The Puritan Political Tradition
…and the modern left:
Over the centuries, New England has changed its theology while remaining loyal to its cultural foundations. The Calvinist orthodoxy of the seventeenth century yielded increasingly to Deism and Unitarianism in the eighteenth — and Harvard officially became Unitarian in 1803, dropping its belief in the divinity of Christ. In the nineteenth century literary and intellectual New England hedged its bets, backing a range of horses from Emersonian transcendentalism to the more evangelically flavored Calvinism of the Victorian years. During the second half of the twentieth century the mind of New England became more secular than in past generations– but nothing has ever changed the deep belief in this cultural stream that, however defined, morality exists and that it is the job of the state to enforce true morals and uphold right thinking.
They’re just prudes about different things.
“There Is No Birth Certificate In Hawaii”
I wouldn’t be shocked if it turned out that the president was born overseas and his enablers have been covering it up (because their behavior certainly matches that theory), but Neil Abercrombie apparently was. I thought it was pretty strange that he decided to raise the issue again, after the political class had declared it dead, but obviously he really believed it. No way it goes away now.
[Update a while later]
For those who don’t understand the implications of this, Neil Abercrombie, self-declared boyhood friend of Barack (“Barry” at the time) Obama, and new governor of the state of Hawai’, declared war on the “birthers” last month, saying that he was going to release the document and put all of the rumors to rest:
Abercrombie said he was going to work with the attorney general of Hawaii to release additional documentation of Obama’s birth on Aug. 4, 1961, at Kapiolani Maternity and Gynecological Hospital.
In other words, he has both the motivation and power to find that document, if it exists. What this radio interview indicates is that he has not been able to find it, and that his faith is shaken. I’ve always assumed that the reason they were hiding the document was that it had something politically embarrassing on it (e.g., that his religion was stated as “Muslim” or that Barack Obama was not listed as the father). But now I’m starting to wonder myself where he was really born.
The Battle For The Moon
Joe Pappalardo target=”_ “deflates Mark Whittington’s favorite space fantasy. Over the past half century, the Pentagon has never found any compelling use for military man in space commensurate with the cost. That could change if the cost comes down dramatically, but there was nothing in NASA’s Constellation plans to make that happen. The new programs offer much more hope in that regard, if they can survive the coming budget tsunami.