Leftists
…are boring. Thoughts on Oliver Stone’s turgid new tome.
The Golden Spike Architecture
Here is a technical description. I’m reading through it now, so perhaps comments later.
[Update a while later]
Sorry, link is fixed now.
[Update late morning]
OK, I skimmed it. As one would expect, there’s a trade off between development costs and ops cost with regard to lander reusability. Ultimately, to get to low marginal costs, we have to not throw hardware away. I also wonder how much it would take to make the Centaur reusable over a period of months or years. They’ve got a start on it with the refueling scenario. Eventually, if one is getting propellant from the moon, that would make sense. I would have liked to see a trade between LLO and EML-1 or EML-2, though. It looks to me like they settled on LLO early on.
I’m amused that they have to defend their costs as being “too low.” They look high to me (a hundred million for training?), but I have vastly different expectations about these things.
An Untold Story Of Pearl Harbor
Finally told. It’s a good read, but I think this probably isn’t right:
Firefighters from the Hickam Air Force Base carried the victims in. The men had a red T marked on their foreheads, mute testimony of the efficiency of first-aiders in giving tetanus shots to ward off lockjaw.
I suspect that it meant that they had tourniquets that had to be managed, not that they’d gotten tetanus shots.
Dinosaurs And Lasers
I’d like to say only in America, but I can actually imagine the Taiwanese or Japanese doing it too. Not the Belgians, though.
Zimmerman Versus NBC
I hope he takes them to the cleaners.
The Eggnog Gestapo
Somewhere in the vast array of federal rules and regulations — the 10,000 Commandments — is one specifying the minimum of milk fat that eggnog shall contain. Did the men who fought at Lexington and Concord do so in order to set up a new regime that would manage their lives on this level? King George III would never have dreamed of such imperious behavior. Is there nothing too trivial for the federal government to micromanage?
Apparently not. That we put up with this is an indication of how far we’ve fallen from American ideals.
Castro’s Paradise
It’s just another day there:
For the offense of defending her aunt and other Ladies in White against taunts — “Putas,” etc. — Berenice was sliced up, with a knife, by the daughter of a state-security official. Berenice was sliced all over her body, basically. When she and her family went to seek justice — again, as I understand it — they were beaten. This is absolutely standard operating procedure in the Castros’ paradise.
For those who can bear it, an article is here, and a video (in Spanish) is here. I now await the usual mail from the American Left telling me that 15-year-old Berenice is a Batista stooge (that dictator having been removed from power in 1959, almost 40 years before Berenice was born).
A friend of mine in Miami, a Cuban exile, wrote me in particular despair. She said, “What can we do? What is the best way to stop this?” I don’t know. The Cuban people — like other peoples under totalitarian dictatorship — seem helpless before their persecutors. Most of the world is indifferent. Che Guevara’s face graces, or defaces, a billion T-shirts. Fidel Castro receives warmest treatment in American universities, and, personally, from many members of our political establishment (Congressman Rangel, Congressman Serrano, and so on).
People who admire Che and Fidel should be as vilified and ostracized as are Hitler admirers. That they are not is a cultural crime and tragedy.
Michigan Miracle
It’s about to become a right-to-work state. I hope the backlash from the thugs isn’t too bloody, and Lansing doesn’t become Madison.
[Update early afternoon]
I would note though, that the whole state will benefit, not just the lower peninsula. The place is finally starting to undo all the Obama-like damage that Granholm did to it.
That 91% Top Rate
Peter Schiff describes what a fantasy it was. No one paid it.