What’s happened to Lileks?

First there was no response from the domain, and now I’m getting a generic “Welcome to your new website” page.

Phil Bowermaster officially launches his new blog The Speculist today after a month of…speculating about it.

It’s futurist oriented, with stuff on space, life extension and technology in general. Go check it out.

And while you’re at it, head over to Marsblog, where T. L. James has a lot of interesting space-related posts from last Thursday, including several posts about loony anti-nuke-in-spacers (featuring perennial paranoid luddite Bruce Gagnon), and thoughts on Russian/Chinese hypocrisy on space-weapons treaties. Just keep scrolling.

There’s an interesting article over at USNWR about the condition of our spy satellite program. I don’t know whether it’s valid or not, and can’t because the program is so secret (even though some of the curtains have been raised in the last few years) that it remains relatively opaque. I do agree with this part, though, which is at the core of the problem:

“Any time you have secrecy,” says Loren Thompson of the Lexington Institute, a defense think tank, “performance and accountability suffer.”

The article raises some other disturbing questions as well. Among others, why is this man:

Peter Teets, was forced to resign as president of Lockheed Martin Corp. in 1999 because of management failures in its Titan rocket program, according to government and industry sources. The NRO and the military lost three satellites during Teets’s run as Lockheed Martin’s top boss. In one case, a rocket blew up on launch; in the two other cases, the satellites were launched into useless orbits. Teets declined to discuss his removal.

…holding down two jobs, as both the head of the NRO and an undersecretary for the Air Force? And not to defend Boeing, but wasn’t there a conflict of interest for him to be involved with the decision to shift launch contracts from that company to Lockmart?

In many ways, I think that military space is even more ripe for reform than NASA, if for no other reason than our lives may depend on it in the near term. Unfortunately, it may prove just as resistant.

Does anyone remember that corruption sting at Johnson Space Center over a decade ago? It turns out that the FBI agent in charge manufactured the evidence, ruining the lives of several NASA contractor employees.

And the hits just keep on coming.

OK, everyone who thinks that Bill Lockyer is positioning himself to attempt to become governor of California in a couple months, by announcing in less than a couple weeks, raise your hands…

Apparently Christopher Hitchens, ever the iconoclast, doesn’t buy that old bit about “de mortuis nil nisi bonum” (don’t speak ill of the dead). He decided that this was a good week to write a column in Salon about how unfunny Bob Hope was.

Boy, first Mother Theresa and now this. Apparently Christopher never learned that other old bit–friends come and go, but enemies are forever.

Apparently Christopher Hitchens, ever the iconoclast, doesn’t buy that old bit about “de mortuis nil nisi bonum” (don’t speak ill of the dead). He decided that this was a good week to write a column in Salon about how unfunny Bob Hope was.

Boy, first Mother Theresa and now this. Apparently Christopher never learned that other old bit–friends come and go, but enemies are forever.

Apparently Christopher Hitchens, ever the iconoclast, doesn’t buy that old bit about “de mortuis nil nisi bonum” (don’t speak ill of the dead). He decided that this was a good week to write a column in Salon about how unfunny Bob Hope was.

Boy, first Mother Theresa and now this. Apparently Christopher never learned that other old bit–friends come and go, but enemies are forever.

Yeah, we used to make jokes about having to go down to Huntspatch to give briefings to the folks at Marshall Space Flight Center, but, as Bill O’Reilly would say, here’s the most ridiculous item of the day.

I’d be embarassed to work with the kinds of folks who thought this was funny.

For the record, I’m not a citizen of the United States of the Offended, as I’ve heard conservative commentators call our PC society. But I have to admit that one e-mailer had a good point when he wondered what the theme for the party might have been if Marshall had been transferred to one of Boeing’s offices in Harlem or San Francisco.”

And as Glenn would say, indeed.

As usual, Iowahawk has scooped the rest of the media in the biggest political story of the year. A new, dark-horse charismatic candidate has emerged in the race for the Democratic nomination for president.

If I were the White House, I’d be worried. After all, this guy’s a proven vote getter–last time he won with almost a hundred percent. The only thing that could hold him back is that pesky Constitutional business about having to be native born here…

Actually, I suspect that this piece is going to enrage Democrats.

Hmmmm…just as an aside, I wonder if this is going to become the updated, twenty-first century version of Godwin’s Law?