The Maturity Of The Space Shuttle
Some thoughts from Wayne Hale. It was always an experimental system, and NASA is making exactly the same mistake with the SLS. If anything, they’re compounding it with the low flight rate.
Michael Barone
I take some pleasure in finding I have been wrong, because it’s an opportunity to learn more. As I prowl through the 2012 election statistics I will have an opportunity to learn much more about America and where we are today. A nation dissatisfied with the results of a Democratic president, Democratic Senate and Republican House has decided to return a Democratic president, Democratic Senate and Republican House. Lots to learn for all of us.
Indeed.
Obama’s First Term
I don’t know what happened to the Tea Party this fall, but this will reenergize it for 2014. And there are a lot of Democrat Senate seats up…
Ohio Is Lost
The Republic is lost.
Ben Franklin weeps.
We now get to look forward to four more years of watching this narcissist.
[Update a few minutes later]
OK, that was a little overdramatic. Let’s think about how to take a beating.
[Update a few minutes later]
OK, the Romney campaign is not yet conceding, and Karl Rove is risible on the call.
Instapundit
A bleg. Does anyone have any idea why I can’t get anything more recent than 11 AM on the site, no matter how many times I reload? It comes in fine on my laptop, but not on my desktop. I’m in Firefox.
Vitamin D
Well, this is certainly counterintuitive:
“We found that the offspring of nonagenarians who had at least 1 nonagenarian sibling had lower levels of vitamin D than controls, independent of possible confounding factors and SNPs [single nucleotide polymorphisms] associated with vitamin D levels,” write the authors. “We also found that the offspring had a lower frequency of common genetic variants in the CYP2R1 gene; a common genetic variant of this gene predisposes people to high vitamin D levels.
These findings support an association between low vitamin D levels and familial longevity.” They postulate that offspring of nonagenarians might have more of a protein that is hypothesized to be an “aging suppressor” protein. More research is needed to understand the link between lower vitamin D levels, genetic variants and familial longevity.
Of course, correlation is not causation. For now, I think I’ll continue to supplement.
S3xbots
Some musings to distract from the election.
Imaginary Abaci
I wouldn’t be able to do this:
And the high point of the championship is the category called “Flash Anzan” – which does not require an abacus at all.
Or rather, it requires contestants to use the mental image of an abacus. Since when you get very good at the abacus it is possible to calculate simply by imagining one.
In Flash Anzan, 15 numbers are flashed consecutively on a giant screen. Each number is between 100 and 999. The challenge is to add them up.
Simple, right? Except the numbers are flashed so fast you can barely read them.
I just don’t have the capability to visualize things like that (or much of anything). It’s just not how my mind works. Some people think in pictures. I do it with words.
Re-Elect Obama
…so we can see just how much worse it can be.
[Update a couple minutes later]
Spite and revenge is the new “hope and change”:
For Obama, this entire campaign has felt like revenge against Romney, and against the kind of people Obama thinks Romney represents. Obama could have spent the last several months talking about his own record and his plans to change direction from our current economic stagnation that has kept the level of employment in the population at or near 30-year lows. Instead, Obama approached this election as a personal mission of revenge, and left the door open for Romney to present the only vision of change for the future in this campaign. Romney defined his campaign as an expression of love rather than revenge. So what Obama said on Friday was no gaffe. It’s just the obvious takeaway from a relentlessly empty and negative campaign.
But he’s “likable.” I guess.