It’s just one more example of his profound ignorance of economics.
Obama’s Foreign Policy In The SOTU
Most people have been fact checking all the nonsense that was in the domestic portion of the president’s speech last night, which was its focus, but Barry Rubin vigorously fisks the crack pipery that was the foreign-policy bits.
A Pro Tip
Don’t gash your knee horizontally right on the patella. I did it early Tuesday morning when I bumped into a glass framed picture in the dark. It also made a bloody mess on the bedroom carpet. Alcohol was not involved. Much.
I got staples in it today and it hurts like hell to bend it, and probably will for the next week or two until they’re removed. There’s just a lot of tension there when you stretch the skin, and the staples pull on it. I’ll be hobbling around for a while, especially up and down stairs. It will also be an ongoing joy to work a clutch. Fortunately, it doesn’t affect typing, except I have to work a little further back from the screen/keyboard because of my outstretched leg.
This may or may not be TMI.
[Thursday-morning update]
Thanks for all the well wishes in comments. It’s actually feeling better today. It will probably be stiff until I get the staples removed and relieve the tension on the skin, but I’m walking almost normally, albeit gingerly.
A Twinkle Of Hope
My lead article in the special Reason February issue on space is on line now. This paragraph is somewhat pertinent to today’s events:
Can space policy be fixed? Not without the national will to do so. It would take either real visionaries making policy decisions or some sort of existential crisis (e.g., an asteroid with our number on it) to break out of the policy logjam. But the chances of the former are not as low as one might think. Had Rep. Ralph Hall (R-Texas) not switched parties seven years ago while being allowed to keep his seniority, the 88-year-old defender of the status quo would not be the current chairman of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee. Instead the chairmanship would have fallen to Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.), who has defended the administration’s space policy. Rohrabacher will almost certainly take over when Hall retires or is term-limited out in five years. If Newt Gingrich by some miracle wins the GOP presidential nomination and the White House, he would be the most space-conversant commander in chief in American history. So the stars might yet align.
But I still think it’s an uphill battle for Gingrich to win, even if he wins Florida.
Newt’s Speech
So, I haven’t seen it yet, but he reportedly called for a lunar base by the end of his second term, presumably utilizing prizes, and he implicitly proposed withdrawing from the Outer Space Treaty, which does not allow claims of national sovereignty off planet.
[Update late evening]
Marcia Smith has a pretty good description of the speech.
The Purpose Of Human Spaceflight
Robert Lancaster has an interesting essay over at The Space Review, the first (presumably) two parts.
Fried Food And Heart Disease
No, it doesn’t increase the risk.
Just one more nail in the coffin of the notion that the enemy is fat. What’s important is the type of fat, and lard is actually just fine, at least in terms of either cholesterol or weight gain. The real problem with fried foods is the batter. And the potatoes in the fries.
Obama’s Green Energy Albatross
What a disastrous policy.
Mitch Daniels
It was entirely inevitable that once he gave the Republican response to the SOTU dreck last night, that people would start talking him up as a presidential candidate. Well, it didn’t take long.
Science Fiction Faces Facts
Greg Benford writes about the evolution of science fiction through the space age, up to now, as part of the Reason space issue.