Earth gets a rush of weekend visitors:
“The scary part of this one is that it’s something we didn’t even know about,” Patrick Paolucci, president of Slooh Space Camera, said during a webcast featuring live images of the asteroid from a telescope in the Canary Islands.
At least we’re doing a better job of looking for them now. And crowdsourcing of the amateurs with their increasing capabilities could help. A couple decades ago, hardly anyone was talking or writing about this, though I was.
Just in case you don’t think he has a screw or two loose:
New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg expressed concern that private jet owners could clog up the city’s homeless shelters.
It’s frustrating that some of the screwiest people can become billionaires. Or presidents and mayors.
Some thoughts from Dennis Wingo.
I haven’t crunched any numbers (and am unlikely to absent a paying client), but it struck me at the time that it was very unlikely that this mission is technically feasible in a single launch, unless the launcher is SLS. Which would, of course, put it outside the range of financial feasibility, not to mention schedule feasibility…
That’s actually a feature, though, rather than a bug. Demonstrating that a two-launch Mars scenario can work will dissipate much of the Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt promulgated by Senate Launch System boosters.
Alan Boyle, supplemented by Henry Vanderbilt, has some thoughts on the potential comet strike of the Red Planet.
Am I the only one struck by the almost Dickensian poetry of that name for a White House spokesperson? Particular as it seem oxymoronic. Are we supposed to use the first, or last name as a guide to the veracity of statements made? Given the many absurd statements coming out of this White House, particularly lately, I’m going to go with the former.
I drove up to Mojave and back yesterday, and then got busy trying to tweak the book website, so posting has obviously been light.
Can anyone tell me why the sidebar is displaying at the bottom of the page on the static home page, but on the side where it belongs on the dynamic pages? I’m not seeing any significant difference in the code, unless it’s a stylesheet issue.
For decades, Democrats have straddled a divide: they sought to represent both the producers of government services and the low and middle income citizens who depend on those services. Democrats want the votes and the contributions of teacher unions, and they want the votes of the parents whose kids attend public schools. As long as the blue model worked, the contradictions could be managed.
Increasingly, however, the contradictions have come to the fore. Teacher unions want life employment for incompetent teachers; their representatives negotiate farcically unsound pension arrangements with complaisant politicians and want taxpayers to pony up when the huge bills come due. Other producers of government services also have their sweetheart deals.
The result is that the consumers of government services, many of whom of course are Democrats, are getting a raw deal. They are paying too much money in taxes to support a system of government that, however outstanding and dedicated some people in it may be, simply cannot deliver acceptable services at a reasonable cost. The Democratic claim to represent both sides fairly is getting harder to sustain.
What can’t go on, eventually won’t.
[Update a while later]
In a different era, he might have been called a fascist. After all, Hugo Chávez was an anti-Semitic demagogue and chauvinistic nationalist who hated Israel, hated the United States, hated democracy, and favored state control of the economy. A onetime paratrooper and failed coup leader, Chávez aggressively militarized Venezuelan society, creating pro-government citizen brigades to serve as his own praetorian guard and arming them with Russian-made assault rifles. He threatened neighboring countries and constantly warned of looming foreign invasions. He promulgated wild conspiracy theories about Jews and Americans. He befriended the most reactionary and fascistic governments on earth, including the theocracy in Iran, the gangster regime in Russia, and the racist Mugabe dictatorship in Zimbabwe.
I’m happy to call him one in this era. And he is living proof of Jonah Goldberg’s thesis.
What “liberals” need to understand about them:
I want to go back to the gun law history. In 1987, Florida responded to a wave of crime by loosening restrictions. Were you surprised by what happened as a result?
At the time, I thought, “Oh, this is going to be a bloodbath.” And it wasn’t. The late ’80s were a very violent time in the U.S. The crack cocaine thing was in full flower. Then Florida did this, and most liberals thought it was crazy. But crime dropped. A lot. Crime there is now half of what it was before then.
…These are precisely the kind of people the Democratic Party says it exists to serve. Over and over, people I met on my trip would say, “I don’t get it. Democrats are the party of the working man. How can the Democrats do this?” They feel so alienated that they won’t listen to the Democrats on climate change or health care or immigration or anything else. As a Democrat, it broke my heart to hear this over and over and over again. These are our guys. These are our people, and they hate us. We take this anti-gun position and we’re giving these people away, and we’re getting nothing in exchange. We are not making the country safer.
He might want to reconsider some of the other things that “liberals” think are crazy.
I just got this email from them:
Steve Mims mentioned you in a comment.
Steve wrote: “The ACLU wholeheartedly supports Senator Paul’s efforts to make the Obama administration explain why it feels it has the right to kill Americans on American soil when they are not attacking America.
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/03/06/Exclusive-ACLU-backs-Rand Simberg“
Apparently the bot that makes these connections is confusing me with Rand Paul, to the point that it’s actually substituting my name for his.
[Update a few minutes later]
OK, I’ve deleted the link to the Facebook discussion, per comments.
[Update a while later]
OK, here‘s a safer link to the original FB post.