…but no trip for you!
Red Meat
More junk food science (not junk-food science).
People who do these studies don’t seem to understand statistics, or know how to do studies.
Complex Societies
Why they need simple laws.
[Update a few minutes later]
Are regulations strangling the economy? Samuelson thinks so.
The East Antarctica Ice Sheet
Another nail in the socialist Doomsters’ coffin.
Osama’s Plot To Destroy America
…by making Joe Biden president. No, really.
[Update a while later]
You couldn’t make this up: The non-embarrassment that is Joe Biden.
Why California Is Going Broke
Reason number 154,976: one third of all Americans on welfare live there.
[Update a while later]
California sounds a (slight) retreat in its ongoing war against arithmetic.
The Rock
Lileks is unimpressed:
Time was a sculptor looked at a big slab of stone and saw the figure within he would liberate with hammer and chisel; time was, people gathered to see a monolith pass because it was a gift from Egypt, and stood for the power of another culture your culture had managed to subdue. Plus, it was cool; it was exotic. Time was, you valued something for what we could make of it, not the fact that you could just drag it somewhere else and say “now walk under it, and think things about big rocks.” Feh.
I have to confess, I couldn’t figure out what the big deal was, either, but if I had gone to watch, it would have been to see the vehicle, not the rock.
Derbyshire
Well, this sucks, big time. Hope he can beat it.
A Successful Test Jump
From over seventy-thousand feet:
Baumgartner is gearing up for an even bigger leap — his so-called “space jump” — from 120,000 feet (36,576 m) this summer. The current record for highest-altitude skydive is 102,800 feet (31,333 m), set in 1960 by U.S. Air Force Captain Joe Kittinger.
Baumgartner hopes his attempt will also set several other marks. He is chasing the record for longest freefall (estimated to be about 5 minutes and 30 seconds from 120,000 feet), and he hopes to become the first person to break the speed of sound during freefall.
At some point, this raises the question: at what point does a space suit become a very small, tight-fitting supersonic aircraft?
Another question. If someone wanted to try this from (say) an Armadillo vehicle, would the expectations of safety during ascent be the same as (again, say) someone doing a research experiment? Or someone who just wanted to enjoy the view?
The Power Of Property Rights
Pictures of East Germany, before and after the fall of the Wall.