I’d note, though, that 661,000 lbf is not 300K kilograms — it’s about three meganewtons.
Healthcare.Gov
Is it a black swan event?
An IT project with a cost overrun of 150% or more is in the black swan category. Such projects seriously disrupt businesses and costs some workers their careers, he said.
“You can’t really forecast which [IT projects] are going to blow up,” said Budzier, though in hindsight reasons like too tight deadlines may become clear. A tell-tale clue of problems ahead is a categorization of a project as “unique,” he said.
“If your system integrator, if your in-house IT, if everybody tells you that this project is unique, that’s a clear sign that this is going to go massively wrong,” said Budzier.
As Bruce Webster notes in email:
Of course, the natural tendency on the part of HHS & the Administration will be to minimize [as opposed to underpromise and overdeliver] the estimates of how long it’s going to take to fix things — and those estimates will almost certainly be wrong. So what we may see is the ‘Never-Ending Story’ pattern, where for several months they’re perpetually 4-6 weeks away from having Healthcare.gov working properly.
If I were in charge? I’d pull the plug completely and give no completion date at all until the website reconstruction was at a point where I felt comfortable opening it up for public alpha testing. Based on how the alpha testing went, I might announce a subsequent date for beta testing; and if that went well, then and only then would I announce a planned date to go live.
But they’ll find it politically impossible to do that. They’ve put themselves in a box with this legislative atrocity. It’s a Rubik’s cube that someone took apart and put back together to render it unsolvable and, so far, ObamaCare has caused far more people to lose their insurance than to get it.
I hope this costs more than “some workers their careers.” It should be an asteroid slamming into an ideology.
[Update while later]
More from Bruce Webster: ObamaCare and the Project of Doom:
Let me start by saying: there is no royal road to software. Good intentions, earnest efforts, and noble causes don’t count for jack. As I told John Fund over at National Review, saying (as SecHHS Kathleen Sebelius did), “We needed five years but only had two” boggles the mind. It is an admission, inadvertent or otherwise, of profoundly irrational and childish thinking, of magical thinking, if you will. “Clap! Clap to keep Tinkerbell alive!” That type of thinking.
There’s a lot of that type of thinking going on in this administration.
[Bumped]
[Afternoon update]
Kirsten Powers isn’t in denial. The ObamaCare roll out was a disaster for “progressive” politics.
Good.
Air Supremacy
…and bamboo spears. Bill Whittle, on the need for a change in strategy.
This is one of the reasons that I don’t call myself a conservative. The other is that I’m not a conservative.
The Democrats’ United Front
…cracks:
Alternate headline: The rats are jumping off the sinking ObamaCare ship. Remember all that talk about how damaged the GOP was after the Obama/Reid government shutdown? My, how things change in just a week. No longer able to obsess over Ted Cruz, the media realizes what a shambles the Democrats have become.
They’re not happy about it, either, but they’ve reached a point at which they can’t ignore it any more.
Electronics In The Air
Some thoughts on email and battery conservation in airplanes.
Also from Achenbach: a nice review of Gravity (with spoilers, for those who, like me, haven’t yet seen it).
The Space Debris Problem
Can we fix it by taxing it?
Womens’ “Liberation”
In which Emily Yoffe offers common-sense advice, is accordingly attacked by “feminists,” and defended by Ruth Marcus.
The American-Saudi Alliance
It’s in danger of collapsing.
I’d say it’s collapsed. As Glenn often says, another Jimmy Carter was a best-case scenario in terms of foreign policy.
Commercial Spaceflight
…weathers the shutdown. Jeff Foust’s report on last week’s ISPCS conference.
Alternatives To ObamaCare
It’s time to propose some.
Yes, I think it’s ripe now, thanks to the monumental cluster effery of the administration.
[Update a few minutes later]
The Republicans next strategy to kill this monstrosity:
Alexander, the ranking member on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, has a plan for replacing Obamacare. It includes providing governors with more flexibility in operating state Medicaid programs, strengthening workplace wellness programs, permitting small businesses to pool their resources and offer lower-cost insurance plans for employees, expanding opportunities for consumers to purchase insurance across state lines and providing greater access to health savings accounts.
Alexander said his plan offers “step-by-step reforms that would reduce the costs of healthcare.”
Alexander isn’t alone in advocating for a process known as “repeal and replace.” The House Republican Study Committee, a conservative group within the GOP caucus, also has offered an Obamacare alternative that it intends to continue pursuing.
“American families and businesses deserve and demand real solutions to the serious problems that exist in our healthcare system,” said Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.), the committee chairman. “The RSC’s American Health Care Reform Act is a common-sense bill that will lower costs using conservative, free-market solutions which give American families more choices without the unworkable mandates and billions in taxes included in President Obama’s healthcare law.”
The 200-page bill offers $20,000 in tax deductions to families and a $7,500 deduction to individuals to purchase insurance from vendors in any state — thus, supporters say, allowing people to save money by selecting lower-cost providers.
The measure also offers altered proposals to some of the more popular aspects of Obamacare – creation of a $25 billion fund to lower costs for those afflicted with pre-existing conditions, permitting people to carry their insurance from job to job and permitting coverage for adult children up to age 26.
That last remains stupid, regardless of how popular it is.