It’s not just Lois Lerner. Apparently, some of the State Department employees responsible for the Benghazi disaster have been punished with a paid vacation.
The Pima Air (And Space) Museum
OK, since I have to check out of my room, and I have a few hours to kill before my flight, I’m going to check it out, since I’ve never actually been there. Like Aviation Week (and space technology) I expect the “Space” part to be an afterthought.
[Update, waiting at the airport]
As I expected, the emphasis was on the “Air,” but there were a lot of pretty neat aircraft there. It was 104 degrees, but didn’t seem that bad to me (as it generally doesn’t in the desert, particularly in the shade). I was more put off from wandering far out in the field by the sun for which I had no sunblock than the heat itself. I pointed out to a docent that Gene Kranz never said “Failure is not an option,” at least while he was a NASA mission controller. He said he’d talk to the curator.
I also showed the book to the space docents, and they all wanted a copy. The gift-shop manager was out for the day, but I’ll email her. But it would look pretty lonely amidst the other books. Almost nothing about space –mostly aviation. But I did put it up on the shelf to see how it stood out. It did, a lot. I think we’ll be glad we spent extra time on the cover design.
[Update a while later, before boarding]
I forgot to mention that it happened to be Orville Wright’s birthday. There were remnants of a cake (I had a small piece). I got a picture of it, but not on my phone — on my good camera, and I don’t have a card reader with me, so I’ll have to post it later.
[Bumped]
The Stuxnet Leak
The trail leads to the White House.
I’m as shocked as you are, of course. They love to leak when it makes them look good. They only intimidate people into not talking (see Benghazi) when the opposite is the case.
We Need To Burn More Coal
At first glance, it would appear that the largest recent contribution to global warming is clean-air laws. Fortunately, China is continuing to help with their coal plants.
The Middle East
President Obama has had a rude awakening in the Middle East. The region he thought existed was an illusion built on American progressive assumptions about the way the world works. In the dream Middle East, democracy at least of a sort was just around the corner. Moderate Islamists would engage with the democratic process, and the experience would lead them to ever more moderate behavior. If America got itself on the “right side of history,” and supported this hopeful development, both America’s values and its interests would be served. Our relationships with the peoples of the Middle East would improve as they saw Washington supporting the emergence of democracy in the region, and Al Qaeda and the other violent groups would lose influence as moderate Islamist parties guided their countries to prosperity and democracy.
This vision, sadly, has turned out to be a mirage, and Washington is discovering that fact only after the administration followed the deceptive illusion out into the deep desert. The vultures are circling now as American policy crawls forlornly over the dunes; with both the New York Times and the Washington Post running “what went wrong” obituaries for the President’s efforts in Egypt, not even the MSM can avoid the harsh truth that President Obama’s Middle East policies have collapsed into an ugly and incoherent mess.
I wonder if Mead, usually a very measured man, realizes the irony that many of the president’s opponents have impolitely (but not inaccurately) nicknamed him “Bambi.”
And then there’s this, strongly related:
What is the common denominator of his failed foreign policy initiatives (reset with Russia, a new, kinder, gentler Middle East, supposed breakthroughs with China, outreach to Iran, Cuba, and Venezuela) and his domestic catastrophes (Obamacare, deficits, huge debts, or chronic unemployment)? In a nutshell, he does not seem to know much about human nature, whether in the concrete or abstract sense. Obama either never held a menial job or ran a business. In lieu of education in the school of hard knocks, he read the wrong, if any, seminal texts at all.
That’s the fundamental problem with Marxists and leftists in general, all the way back to Rousseau. They either completely misunderstand human nature (“the noble savage”) or they completely deny its existence (“the New Soviet Man”).
A Libertarian Moment
Is America having one?
Let’s hope.
The Airline Business
I have a late-afternoon flight out of Tucson to LAX, but the business that I thought I had in Tucson today has fallen through. There’s a morning flight with seats available.
In days of yore, American would have let me go standby on an earlier flight same day with no change fee, which makes business sense, because if they can satisfy their commitment to me to get me where I want to go earlier at essentially no cost other than fuel to carry my weight (assuming that the flight isn’t full), they have an opportunity to sell my seat (at $252 according to a quick check) on the later flight.
Apparently, the suits have decided that they’d rather charge me $75 bucks for the change. Now, it would be nice to get home earlier, but it’s not worth $75 to me, because I can do work here and just catch the later flight. So they just lost the opportunity to sell that seat on the afternoon flight. I guess they think this makes business sense, and maybe they have revenue models that indicates it does, but I’m annoyed.
DC-X Show’s Over
And that wraps it up. Heading back to Tucson for a flight back to LA tomorrow.
Book Status
I’ve been showing people at the DC-X anniversary workshop the proof copy.
I've been showing this to people at #DC-X. #ItExists #JustAProof. Model signed by Bill Gaubatz and Jess Sponable. http://t.co/CrjG3VchE8
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) August 18, 2013
DC-X At Twenty
I’ve been at a celebration/workshop since Friday to commemorate the first flight of a radical new vehicle back in 1993 (which I attended at the time — it was just two or three months after I resigned from Rockwell International to try to be entrepreneurial).
Here’s an article about it by my (new) friend Megan Gannon at Space.com.