Matt Yglesias doesn’t think that property exists, unless it’s his.
This reminds of me the Occumoron who made the crucial (to him, not to anyone sane) distinction between private property and “personal” property.
Category Archives: Political Commentary
Inspiration Apollo
Amy Shira Teitel writes that Apollo 8 was not done for the purpose of inspiration, though that was a huge side effect.
Here’s what I wrote in the book:
…despite all of the precautions, NASA did demonstrate its willingness to risk the lives of its astronauts, when in a daring mission, it won the space race in December of 1968 with the Apollo 8 mission around the moon. What was daring about it?
The previous April, there had been a partial disaster during an early test of the new Saturn V rocket, whose express purpose was to send astronauts to the moon. It suffered from the same “pogo” problems that had earlier afflicted the Titan, almost shaking the vehicle apart during ascent, with some structural failure in the first stage. Two of the second-stage’s five engines failed, and the single third-stage engine failed to reignite in orbit. Von Braun’s team went to work to sort out the problems, and a few months later, after some ground tests, declared it ready to fly again. NASA was under some pressure because there were rumors that the Soviets were going to send some cosmonauts to circumnavigate the moon with the Zond spacecraft by the end of the year (they had already sent some animals on such a trip).
While it wouldn’t have been a loss of the space race, the goal of which was to land on the moon, and not just fly around it, being beaten to that next first would have been another blow to the national psyche after Sputnik and Gagarin, and the first space walk. The lunar module wasn’t ready yet, and not expected to be until the spring of 1969, so NASA decided to scrap their plan of doing an earth-orbit rehearsal, and instead decided to go for the moon on the very next flight of the Saturn V, and without another unmanned test flight despite the problems on the previous flight. They were willing to throw the dice, and the astronauts (Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and Bill Anders) were willing to risk their lives, because it was important. The whole purpose of the program was to demonstrate that our system was superior to the Soviets, and to be afraid to fly would have rendered it pointless. It is hard to imagine today’s NASA taking such a risk with its astronauts’ lives, because nothing NASA is doing today is perceived as being sufficiently important.
[Cross posted at Safe Is Not An Option]
The Fermi Paradox
Eleven of the weirdest solutions to it.
Actually, I continue to prefer this one.
NASA’s Technical Report Server
Has Frank Wolf shut it down?
As the emailer who sent me the link notes, “I understand the need for an ITAR review, however, what we have so far is a blanket ban, with no prescription in place for when and how this issue will be resolved. In the meantime NASA’s vast archive of technical information, so vital to the commercial and private sector has vanished in a single day.”
So where in the days of sequester is NASA going to find the funds to review the data and get it back on line? Just more ITAR madness that has cost the US space industry billions over the past decade and a half.
[Thursday morning update]
More over at NASA Watch.
[Bumped]
If You Don’t Support The “Assault Weapons” Ban
…you hate children and want them to die.
Plus, Ted Cruz gets a scolding, not an answer:
Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California wants us to know that she is “not a sixth-grader.”
Anyone who saw the recent exchange before the Senate Judiciary Committee between Feinstein and Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas over guns and the Constitution might speculate that the reason she said this is because she couldn’t pass the entrance exam.
As for Cruz, a friend of mine for a decade, it turns out that the most important of the “Senate rules” is unwritten: Thou shalt not embarrass a fellow senator – even one in the opposing party – by making him or her look unprepared, uneducated or uninformed.
That’s not always an easy thing to avoid. The rulebook doesn’t say what to do when a Senate colleague who wants to ban certain guns dodges a tough question and then goes on the attack – thus embarrassing herself.
Nevertheless, Cruz, 42, is headed to the principal’s office. His infraction was asking the right question. What Cruz wanted to know was this: Why do liberals cherish the First and Fourth Amendments, but trash the one in between – the Second Amendment?
That’s a brainteaser. Why does the left play favorites with different parts of the Bill of Rights?
Experience teaches that the better the question, the less likely you are to get a straight answer.
That’s what happened here. Feinstein went on the offense. Abandoning reason for emotion, she scolded Cruz for daring to “lecture” her. After all, she said, she had seen the bodies of people killed by gunfire.
The illogic of these people defies description. They run on pure, grade-A unadulterated emotion.
The Paranoid Russians
…think we’re wrecking the world on purpose.
Someone needs to tell them about J. Porter Clarke’s Law.
“Pay Now Or Pray Later”
Green Energy In The Red
Remember how if we didn’t let Obama hand out taxpayer money to his cronies like Solyndra, we’d be buying our solar panels from China? Well:
The world’s top-selling producer of solar panels has defaulted on a $541 million bond payment. The Chinese firm Suntech hasn’t posted a profit since the first quarter of 2011 and has been relying on the government of Wuxi, the city where it is headquartered, to stay solvent. But as more bills come due, this renewable energy producer is looking less and less sustainable.
Just shocking. If you’re an economic ignoramus, anyway.
The Benghazi Cover Up
With an apparent full-blown cover-up and perhaps dozens of public servants eager to talk, the House immediately should move to subpoena the Obama administration for the names and contact information for all 33 Benghazi survivors. It then should subpoena each of them, immunize them against prosecution, and protect them, their jobs, and their pensions and other benefits under the appropriate federal whistleblower statutes.
While some of these people should testify under oath behind closed doors, to protect classified information, others should offer sworn testimony in public hearings.
If Benghazi unfolded as Team Obama claims, and these 33 people have remained Sphinx-like merely because they had nothing contrary to say, so the historical record should read.
If, however, Obama & Company bribed, threatened, or intimidated these public servants to stay silent in order to secure Obama’s reelection, then Benghazi will prove to be a conspiracy more explosive and evil than Watergate.
Nobody died in Watergate.
Common Sense From The FDA
That’s a rare headline, but they’re going to make it easier to test Alzheimer’s drugs.