But some people are still giving it the old college try.
Ed Driscoll has more.
The Space Code Of Conduct
Over at Open Market, I have the latest on the administration’s decision to start negotiating new protocols for space, and the potential concerns with them.
The Ship Captain And The Italian Coastguard
A surreal conversation. As someone over on Twitter noted, Italian ship captaining has gone downhill since that guy from Genoa half a millennium ago.
Please Don’t Sell Them Down The River
Just when you think it can’t get more absurd: DC exterminators aren’t allowed to break up rat families:
Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli says he is worried that a new District of Columbia law that governs how pest control operators must handle rats may result in entire rodent “families” being relocated across the Potomac River into Virginia by D.C. pest control personnel.
Lately, there have been reports of growing rat infestations around the Occupy DC protests at Freedom Plaza and McPherson Square.
Cuccinelli said D.C.’s new rat law–the Wildlife Protection Act of 2010 (Wildlife Protection Act of 2010.pdf) –is “crazier than fiction” because it requires that rats and other vermin not be killed but captured, preferably in families; no glue or snap traps can be utilized; the rodents must be relocated from where they are captured; and some of these animals may need to be transferred to a “wildlife rehabilitator” as part of their relocation process.
The law does not allow pest control professionals “to kill the dang rats,” Cuccinelli told CNSNews.com. “They have to capture them–then capture them in families. [Not sure] how you’re going to figure that out with rats. And then you have to relocate them. That brings us to Virginia. Now, if you don’t relocate them about 25 miles away, according to experts, rodents will find their way back. Well, an easy way to solve that problem is to cross a river, and what’s on the other side of the river? Virginia.”
“So we have real concerns about this ridiculous–ridiculous!–law and we’ve been pretty genial about dealing with D.C. on it,” said Cuccinelli. “But when you see an article like the ‘Rats Occupy Occupy DC,’ it points up the problem that we’re going to have in Virginia because of that–and because D.C’s really outrageous–outrageous!–treatment of these varmints who, for those who don’t remember their history, carried things like bubonic plague. I mean, these are true vermin.”
The easiest thing to do would be to leave the rats and move out the occupiers. It would improve sanitation, too.
Go Buy The Latest Reason
So says the editor. It’s about space. Yours Truly is given a plug.
The Great Wikipedia Blackout
How to survive it.
What The “Republican Establishment” Really Means
It’s about the spending, stupid:
The current trajectory of American government spending is one in which spending by government in general, and by the federal government in particular, just keeps on growing as a share of the economy, further and further crowding out the space occupied by free private citizens and businesses in the private sector. Worse, much of this happens automatically, without the consent of the governed in any but the most perfunctory way: discretionary spending is designed to grow because budgets are set by using the prior year’s spending as a baseline, and entitlement and public employee benefit spending – which consume a far larger share of spending – grows by itself in the absence of any affirmative legislation to stop it. The federal government has not passed a budget in nearly 1,000 days (President Obama’s State of the Union speech will mark the 1000th), yet spending has continued to grow, and will continue to grow as far as the eye can see – a dramatic change in our country taking place on auto-pilot – unless dramatic action is taken in response to stop it. Jack’s magic beans have nothing on public spending.
And the growth of spending bleeds over into every other issue. Federal spending comes with strings attached, and those strings reduce the independence of the states and burrow the arms of the federal octopus ever further into the area of social policy. Institutions like churches, schools, and hospitals become hooked on federal money, and have to dance the federal tune. Spending gets earmarked and targeted to favored people, businesses and groups, making society less equal and government less ethical. Spending distorts energy markets, housing markets, and markets for higher education, creating bubbles and inefficiency. And that’s before we even get to the metastatic growth of federal regulation. And eventually, runaway domestic spending saps our ability to adequately fund our national defense.
There is general philosophical agreement among both Republicans and conservatives about all of this. Where the fault line lies is in exactly how far we are willing to go to do something about it.
If we don’t do something, America as we knew it is over.
No Manned Flights From Kourou
At least according to this article. I wonder what it would take to modify the Soyuz for a water landing? At least it would be warm water. I think that a trajectory to 52 degrees from there, unlike one from the Cape, would avoid the north Atlantic.
This is also an indicator that it’s not very important to launch crew from there, or they’d take the risk.
NASA Is Still A Go
A Yale senior attempts to educate those who continue to ignorantly think that Obama ended the space program.
Space On Earth
Brian Doherty pays a visit to XCOR.