It wasn’t. Einstein was right once again.
An Earthscraper
A plan for an inside-out upside-down skyscraper in Mexico City.
October 14th
A day that should live in infamy:
Hank Paulson’s bloodless banking coup demonstrated that a nearly all-powerful government which believes it is untouchable can and will do anything once it gins up enough of a crisis atmosphere. Paulson’s putsch gave cover to the long list of heavy-handed actions which have followed during the Obama administration, from arbitrarily changing the pecking order in bankruptcy, to preventing nonunion manufacturing plants from opening, to defying direct court orders, to Dodd-Frank’s attempt to permanently keep the government in banks’ boardrooms — and much, much more.
This, too, is what fascism looks like.
Reusable Rockets
Jeff Foust has an article on the latest developments at Technology Review.
Signs Of Decline
You know your city has become a hellhole when…
The War On (Some) Drugs
This by itself should be reason enough to end it, because this type of corruption is almost inevitable.
The End Of Servants
The world has changed.
I know that if I were rich, I wouldn’t want them. I hate being waited on and like to do things for myself. It’s one of the reasons I don’t really enjoy dining out — I merely tolerate it.
If Not Mitt, Who?
Is he really inexorable?
I spent last night’s Republican debate trying to imagine scenarios where Mitt Romney loses the G.O.P. nomination for president. Rick Perry gets bitten by a radioactive Lincoln-Douglas debate champion and develops a sudden facility for public argument? A long-lost codicil to the Constitution is discovered, in which the Founding Fathers endorse the 9-9-9 tax plan? Utah renames itself the Republic of Deseret and secedes from the Union, forcing Romney to make a tragic choice between his religion and his country? Or, perhaps most unlikely of all — Jon Huntsman is embraced by the Tea Party and pulls off a surprise upset in Iowa?
Those scenarios aside, right now these debates feel like spring training for Romney: A warm-up period for the general election, in which he can stretch and exercise and experiment with his pitches with no fear of suffering a significant defeat.
A depressing thought. The only possibility of avoiding him I can imagine (short of something tragic), is if the anti-Mitters get so determined that they embrace Newt, with all his quirks. At least, that’s how desperate I am. Though I supposed I shouldn’t count Cain out completely. He does seem to be the Reagan in the race in temperament, if not foreign-policy acumen.
[Update a few minutes later]
On the other hand, maybe the conventional wisdom about what it takes to win is wrong.
A Real Jobs Plan
I don’t disagree with any of this, but it’s incomplete. Off the top of my head, where is repeal Sarbanes-Oxley?
Whittington Strikes Again
He has a typically ignorant opinion piece over at Yahoo News on SLS:
The proposal to stretch out the Space Launch System, crucial for plans to send astronauts beyond Earth orbit to the moon and other destinations, is an ill-advised attempt at predatory budgeting. It would increase the cost of developing the SLS while not addressing the reasons that the JWST has gotten into trouble.
SLS is not only not “crucial” for plans to send astronauts beyond LEO, it will be the death of any such plans, because even if it ever flies (unlikely) it will eat up all the available funding for the hardware and technologies needed to actually do that. We now know that NASA itself has identified several ways to send humans beyond LEO without SLS, and that all of them are much less costly, and can happen much sooner, than an SLS-based scenario.
…underfunding the SLS will disrupt a program that has finally gotten on track, which NASA insiders believe will be ready to finally take astronaut explorers beyond low Earth orbit before this decade is out.
In what way is the SLS “on track”? He doesn’t say. Which “NASA insiders” believe this? What pharmaceuticals result in such a belief? There have been no credible scenarios put forth for the SLS do a mission beyond LEO before this decade is out. Does he just make this stuff up?
[Evening update]
I hate to give his web site hits, but this is hilarious. What’s particularly hilarious is that after all these years, he still can’t get his permalinks to not have a double hash tag.
Rand Simberg really should get out more often and read more than just the latest press release from “Tea Party in Space.”
This is stupidity on a monumental scale. I don’t get my information from “Tea Party In Space.” They often, in fact, get info from me. I work on this stuff for a living, while Mark is too innumerate to even understand it. And note, he has no response to my question of who his “NASA insiders” are, or what drugs they are on.