An interview on the subject of space transportation safety. Just for the record, I have always thought, and continue to think, that the notion that private operators are likely to be less safe than NASA to be foolishly ludicrous. All the incentives are the other way.
A Failure Of Imagination
Thoughts on our continuing fecklessness with regard to the Iran threat.
[Update a few minutes later]
Michael Totten says that the war may have already started, quietly. Well, it wasn’t that quiet in Isfahan.
It Was Just A Matter Of Time
They’ve cloned a Stradivarius with a 3-D printer. I don’t think we’re that far from Star Trek replicators.
The economic and market effects of this technology will be far reaching. For instance, as Eric Drexler pointed out in the eighties, what happens when there is no way, other than a chain of custody, to tell the difference between the original Mona Lisa and an exact copy?
Why Did American Declare Bankruptcy?
Megan McArdle explains.
No Woodstock For Him
Did Mitt Romney miss out on the sixties?
Black And Blue
The blue model batters black America. Black unemployment is now above 15%. So that’s what the change has been for Eric Holder’s people.
After Atlas Shrugs
…comes the ice. Thoughts on a new book by Jerry Pournelle.
Newt’s Not-So-Greatest Hits
Jim Geraghty’s been mining the archives. I think that if you look up the word “mercurial,” you’ll find his picture there.
Did The Fed Just Save The Eurozone?
Maybe, but it’s just buying time.
Climate, Or Weather?
It depends on whether or not it serves “the cause” (to use Phil Jones’ words):
For those of you who are confused, let me remind you: the only meteorological phenomena that count are the ones that confirm the climate alarmist case. It doesn’t matter what it is — drought, flood, blizzard, heat wave — if it can be made to support fear about the climate, it matters and it needs to be thoroughly analyzed and widely publicized.
Meteorological phenomena that, to the unsophisticated, might appear to undermine the case that WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE if we don’t immediately pass a stringent carbon treaty, are meaningless and should be ignored.
A spate of hurricanes is climate; an absence of big storms is weather. The absence of any major hurricanes for six years is a meaningless phenomenon; should a couple of big ones hit in any given year, then every editorial page in the country will fill with hand wringing, dire warning and I told you so.
Bet on it.