I have some thoughts on the Sullymania in the media over at PJM.
Category Archives: Political Commentary
Picky, Picky
Several people, including Clark Lindsey and Keith Cowing, have linked to this Onion article:
“It’s always ‘Are the solid rocket boosters functioning at full capacity?’ and ‘Do the liquid oxygen prevalves operate as required?’ with John,” Discovery commander James Reid said. “If it weren’t for that guy, we’d already be in space by now.”
In addition to his insistence on mission coordinates being 100 percent accurate, Wilkins reportedly spends all his time obsessing about Discovery’s general purpose computers, which ignite the main engines and ensure that the craft can safely reach the speed of 18,000 mph.
“Is there anything John doesn’t worry about?” said Michael Dennigan, the shuttle crew’s second-in-command. “This isn’t rocket science—you’d think he’d try to relax a bit.”
Since he was assigned to it last year, Wilkins has aborted the NASA mission for a wide range of seemingly unimportant reasons, including a 4-inch crack in the exterior hull of the ship, the failure of several engine cut-off sensors, and what has been described as “the smallest of possible thunderstorms.”
I didn’t see it, but I understand that the original version actually called out John Shannon by name, but they later changed it to “Wilkins,” perhaps after complaints from PAO (or maybe John himself, though I imagine he’d have a sense of humor about it).
There actually is a grain of truth to this (though not, as far as I know, with John Shannon). I thought that they delayed a launch (that I attended) needlessly a couple years ago (under the Wayne Hale regime), and I have a more extensive discussion of that particular issue here. But as far as I know, John is doing a good job of balancing safety and cost/schedule.
Get That Man An Irony Meter
It seems a little rich to me for someone like Paul Krugman to accuse other economists of arguing in bad faith.
They Say That Like It’s A Bad Thing
Melting the Antarctic ice sheet could flood Washington DC.
And they say there are no up sides to climate change. I’d call it the “Augean Stables” strategy of government reform.
An Eggcorn?
Did Harry Reid commit one?
While I defer to no one in my disdain for our mentally challenged Majority Leader, this may be a little unfair. Unless he wrote it, how can one be sure that he said “…another thing coming,” rather than the (correct) “…another think coming”? I haven’t heard the audio, but how does the listener discern between the “k” sound at the end of “think” and the same consonant sound at the beginning of “coming”?
I discussed a similar problem previously, in speculating why aerospace engineers say “detail design” rather than (the more grammatically correct, in my opinion) “detailed design.” The “d” at the beginning of “design” masks the one at the end of detailed, and perhaps many just hear “detail design” and it has become an industry standard phrase (that I hate).
And yes, I was in fact previously unfamiliar with the concept of an eggcorn.
[Friday update]
Wow. I feel like I’m living in an alternate universe.
I have two commenters (one close to my age) who have never (or at least they think that they’ve never) heard the expression “…another think coming” and always heard (or said) “…another thing coming.” I am exactly the opposite. Until yesterday, I had never heard anyone say “…another thing coming,” whereas I’ve heard the expression from childhood with the word “think.” While it’s not grammatical (yes, “think” is a verb, not a noun), it’s colloquial, and it makes sense — “if you think that, you have another think coming.” Another “thing” coming makes no sense at all to me. “Another” implies that there was a first one, but what was the first “thing” being referred to? I’m pretty sure that it’s a confusion caused by the similar consonants that join the two words.
And while we’re on the subject, another one that I see on line all the time (and was very prevalent in Usenet) is “dribble” for drivel. Again, a case of mishearing the word.
The War Against The Working People
…by the self-proclaimed party of the working people:
The two to three trillion dollars in spending last year and this? It’s a huge grab at the wealth of working people. It has to be paid for, and there are only two ways to do it since government can’t actually create wealth. They have to raise taxes, which steals wealth from working people, or they have to print money, which steals wealth from working people.
No matter how it’s done, the so called stimulus package is the hugest money grab and wealth redistribution since the formation of the Soviet Socialist Union.
And yes, they know exactly what they are doing. It’s all about gaining, and maintaining and reinforcing, political power. We shall see if the Republic survives.
On Not Being A Dove
A long but fascinating essay from the late John Updike. I found this passage quite interesting:
The protest, from my perspective, was in large part a snobbish dismissal of [the president] by the Eastern establishment; Cambridge professors and Manhattan lawyers and their guitar-strumming children thought they could run the country and the world better than this lugubrious bohunk from Texas. These privileged members of a privileged nation believed that their pleasant position could be maintained without anything visibly ugly happening in the world. They were full of aesthetic disdain for their own defenders, the business-suited hirelings drearily pondering geopolitics and its bloody necessities down in Washington. The protesters were spitting on the cops who were trying to keep their property—the USA and its many amenities—intact. A common report in this riotous era was of slum-dwellers throwing rocks and bottles at the firemen come to put out fires; the peace marchers, the upper-middle-class housewives pushing baby carriages along in candlelit processions, seemed to me to be behaving identically, without the excuse of being slum-dwellers.
Emphasis mine.
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. They weren’t anti-war — they were just on the other side.
Civil Disobedience
I like this idea. Unfortunately, I rarely use cash.
[Afternoon update]
Glenn Reynolds has thoughts on the culture of impunity. I don’t think it’s new, though. It just seems to coincide with Democrats in power.
Cui Bono?
I wonder how many of the procrastinators who haven’t done anything to prepare for the changeover from analog to digital television are Democrats? Is the government concerned that their sheeple won’t continue to get their ABC/NBC/CBS pro-big-government propaganda if they don’t delay the switch, and fund the boxes?
The First Subway
Not just in New York, but in the world.
And note, like all of New York’s subways, it was originally privately financed. And the government contract to demolish it was corrupt and screwed up.