Is space more like seafaring or aviation? It started out like the latter, but the former is a better model once we actually get serious about it.
[Update a while later]
Meteor craters, dinosaurs and spacefaring.
Actually, while I do think it’s a federal responsibility to keep an eye out for impactors, it’s not clear that it’s NASA’s job. It’s one of the things we need a Space Guard for.
The Titanic was real? I never fail to be amazed at some peoples’ willingness to profess their ignorance in public.
…are the new squares.
There are two undefeated teams in the major leagues. Detroit is one of them (the other is the Diamondbacks).
…is autobiographical. I don’t believe that Springfield is in Oregon, though. There are deserts, but no saguaros in Oregon.
Will it scar your child’s psyche?
I hadn’t even heard of the book before the movie came out, but it sounds like the whole series might be a useful corrective against the increasing fascism in the country.
“Screw PETA.”
We met them fifty-three years ago today. It was slightly over two years since Gagarin’s first flight, whose fifty-first anniversary is on Thursday.
An open letter and history lesson:
All this is well known. I should like you to think about something that is less well known, Herr Grass, and that is the fact that the First and Second World Wars were entirely unnecessary. That’s right: the fact that they were fought in the first place is entirely the fault of people like you, and specifically of Kaiser Wilhelm II, who could have pre-empted them in 1905. Kaiser Wilhelm II and Günter Grass: a couple of soul-mates.
Like some of the commenters there, I always found The Tin Drum unreadable, in German or English.
Some thoughts on our seeming inability to any long do the big technological things, from Neil Stephenson.