I don’t see any details, but apparently he died late last week. I hadn’t seen him in a couple decades, but I know that he’d been ill for quite some time. I imagine many younger people in the space movement haven’t heard of him, but he was one of the luminaries back in the seventies, creating the potential economic driver for O’Neill colonies. Anyway, John Mankins seems to have taken up the baton from him for space solar power.
The Polar Bear-Faced Lie
Mark Steyn says that the real endangered species is climate scientists willing to defend Michael Mann.
Grant And Lee
“These guys needed cell phones.”
All summer we’ll see the sequicentennials of that bloody summer of 1864, as Grant marched down toward Richmond, after (unlike his predecessors) not retreating after the bloody battle at The Wilderness, as Sherman was in turn moving down into the deep south. The two campaigns ended up saving Lincoln’s presidency in the fall election.
Cold Harbor was one of the bloodiest, complete with the beginnings of trench warfare that was ultimately a presage to the first world war. The European observers, used to Napoleonic tactics, were appalled at the butchery of rapid-fire weaponry, a technological advance (if one can call it back) to which took decades for tactics to adapt. The only major change in the half century afterward of carnage, really, was the tank.
Dietary Animal Fat
It’s long past time to end the war on it:
The public MUST NOT let TBFS slip slowly into oblivion. Nina’s first story should create an outraged public that demands the following:
- Government-sponsored nutrition must be totally terminated.
- Freedom of information in valid nutritional sciences must be made widely available.
- All citizens must have the right to design their own nutrition plans.
- A primary prevention program based on eliminating the causes of diseases must be implemented.
It won’t happen unless we make it happen. It has to become a political issue. Attacking Michelle’s school-lunch tyranny would be a good start.
[Update a few minutes later]
And yet the USDA is still spending millions to propagandize us about low fat:
The USDA also proposed a study on changing how food is described on menus, labeling low-sodium and low-fat versions as “regular,” and “framing regular versions of certain snack products as high-fat or high-sodium.”
I’d like to see someone on the Hill make an issue of this.
Google Chrome
Go home. You’re drunk.
This is not atypical. After a while, every page starts to refuse to load, or becomes unreadable, and you can paint weird things on it by just waving the cursor over various areas. It’s version 35.0.1916.114 stable, running in Fedora 20.
In frustration, I uninstalled and tried running the current beta. It had its own problems, with continual tab crashes and freezing the machine.
I switched a while ago from Firefox, for various reasons. Opera starts chewing up half my CPU after being up a for an hour or so. It just seems like every browser sucks.
Mann Suit Update
We got what looks to be very good news today. While the appeals court didn’t actually rule on our case, they did issue an opinion in BuckleyBurke, which is closely related, as it has to do with the right to an interlocutory appeal under collateral-order doctrine in an anti-SLAPP case. Their arguments largely mirror the ones we make in our brief, and they seem to be quite aggressive in their defense of the First Amendment, so it seems likely that there’s a very good chance that they’ll actually address our merits, and perhaps ultimately end up dismissing.
[Daturday afternoon update]
Sorry, had the name of the case wrong. Here‘s Les Machado’s take:
Takeaway: the headline here is the Court’s conclusion that the denial of a special motion to quash is immediately appealable. While the Court was careful to not extend its ruling to the denial of a special motion to dismiss, parties who are currently appealing from the denial of special motions to dismiss have to be buoyed by the decision.
That would be (among others) me.
The Dragon Unveiling
I was there. I’ve had a cold for a few days, so it got a little grueling toward the end (not much in the way of seating for four hours) but it was pretty impressive, as you’ve probable seen from pictures and video. Alan Boyle was there, and has already posted the story.
[Friday-morning update]
Megan Geuss was there last night too. Here‘s her report.
Suspended Animation
Thoughts from Clark Lindsey on the latest developments.
Safety Is Not The Highest Priority In Human Spaceflight
I’ve started an on-line petition. I hope that the astronaut office will weigh in.
[Update a while later]
Due to some unhappiness about having to deal with Facebook (and a politically problematic petition site), I’ve set up a new one at the web site for the book. So please sign over there, and pass the word.
The End Of Captain Video
It’s OK, though because now we get reviews of Captain America:
It begins with a reprise of the fist-fight, which is a bit dismaying; does this mean we won’t get a new fist-fight? The elements of any serial are the Suddenly Important Piece of Technology, a fist-fight, a car going off a cliff, gunplay, and certain death faced by the hero or the Gal Friday. The best episodes have all of them; most have two.
Anyway, Gail was saved, as usual, by selective editing; Cap manages to stop the blade before she’s bisected, leaving everyone too shaken to ask why there was a guillotine in a box factory in the first place.
Well, everything that has gone on before is dropped like a hot poker; Maldor says “it’s time for the next phase of the operation,” suggesting that they’re no longer into using high-powered scientific inventions to steal art and precious metals. Rest on their laurels? Not our Maldor! He wants to go after Henley, the Oil Magnate, who’s never been mentioned, but “he also was a member of the Mayan expedition that discredited me.” As if we remember that from six weeks ago. As if the fact that all the members of the expedition are dying off except the one guy who they discredited wouldn’t occur to, oh, MAYBE THE DISTRICT ATTORNEY WHO IS ALSO CAPTAIN AMERICA.
Maldor sent Henley an extortion note, confident he will show it to Captain District Attorney, and by bugging Captain District Attorney’s apartment, Maldor will know what he is doing.
Because if there’s one thing you want when committing blackmail, it’s the constant involvement and attention of the District Attorney.
As only Lileks can do it.