Thanks to congressional incompetence, the food-safety bill is dead. Sometimes, perhaps more than not, given how evil most of what they want to do is, I’m glad that Congress is incompetent.
Space Cheese
…and other breakthroughs. Katherine Mangu-Ward reports on last week’s SpaceX success. Yours truly is cited. FWIW.
[Update a while later]
107 Since Kitty Hawk
The Wrights first flew a controlled heavier-than-aircraft over a century ago, on this date in 1903. On the hundredth anniversary, I wrote three articles that are still worth reading if you haven’t, or rereading if you have. They contain a lot of lessons for spaceflight development.
[Update a couple minutes later]
I notice that the TCS Daily link from the old Instapundit post is busted. Here‘s another one.
A California Bankruptcy
Some legal thoughts. I don’t know if it would be constitutional, but I would condition a federal bailout on reversion of the state to territory status, with an opportunity to reenter the union after it gets its fiscal act together, possibly as multiple states. For instance, if some of the eastern and/or northern counties wanted to band together to form a new government independent of Sacramento (or even including Sacramento, but independent of the coastal megalopolises) they could do so and apply for readmission. Alternatively, they might want to apply to be annexed to (say) Nevada, or Oregon.
Same thing for Illinois and New York, though the impetus to break them up would be much less in those cases.
Michael Vick’s Ant Farm
On Hannity last night, Jim Geraghty reportedly (according to Jim, in his daily email) said that if Michael Vick was going to be allowed to have pets again, he should have to start small — give him an ant farm, and see if he started up ant-fighting rings. I’d also not allow him to own a magnifying glass. If that works out, he could move on to guppies, and then gerbils.
Earthquake Prediction?
Instapundit says that it could be very useful.
Well, maybe. But only if it’s reasonably reliable, in terms of time, location and intensity. For instance, if we can’t do any better with it than we do with hurricanes, I’d prefer not to know. I spent/wasted a lot of time and hassle getting ready for hurricanes in Florida that ended up not hitting us, or not being a big deal. I’m convinced that false hurricane prep is almost as economically damaging as the hurricanes themselves. I’ve never had to worry about that in earthquake country — it’s always “come as you are,” and you should always be ready.
[Update a few minutes later]
I should note that I am actually increasingly impressed with their ability to predict storm tracks, a capability that seems to have improved quite a bit over the past decade, and is likely to continue to do so. The biggest uncertainty now seems to be in intensity, and I hope that they get a lot better at that as well. The more confidence we can have where and when it will and won’t hit, and how strong it will be when it does, the better we’ll be able to fine tune the preparedness. My concern with earthquake prediction is that we’re about where we were with hurricanes in the nineteenth century, and early attempts may be worse than useless in needless societal disruption. Imagine the traffic jams out of LA or SF to avoid a predicted “big one” that ends up not happening.
More Commie/Nazi Thoughts
Over at Instapundit.
Earlier thread here.
Digital Archaelogy
I’ve got a bunch of five-and-a-quarter floppies from the eighties that I’ve been hanging on to. Even if I could muster up an old drive, with a mobo with an interface and a cable, what are the chances that they’re still readable? I hate to throw potential data (and personal history) away. I’d love to be able to hoover them up on a hard drive.
On The Anniversary Of The First Tea Party
The Tea Partiers have won a great victory:
Speaking now on the Senate floor, Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) says he is “sorry and disappointed” to announce that he does not have the votes for the omnibus spending package. Instead, he will work with Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) to draft a temporary continuing resolution to fund the government into early next year.
Reid says nine Republican senators approached him today to tell him that while they would like to see the bill passed, they could not vote for it. He did not reveal the names of the nine. A top Senate source tells National Review Online that “it looks like Harry Reid buckled under the threat of Republicans reading [the bill] aloud.”
Mr. Smith has come to Washington, again.
[Update a couple minutes later]
More links from Instapundit. “Brave Sir Harry Ran Away.”
Heh.
[Update a minute or two later]
I should note that I haven’t had much to say about the horrible NASA appropriations in this bill (three billion dollars for SLS and MPCV — how in the world would they have sensibly spent $1.8B on a heavy lifter in 2011, with only nine months left in the fiscal year?), because I wanted to wait and see if it was actually going to pass.
I think that we will be on continuing resolutions as far as the eye can see, at this point, or at least until 2013, and the big battles over the NASA budget will be what goes into rescission bills, starting early next year. The job of people who really want to see progress in space is to make sure that the SLS is on the top of the chopping block, at least restricting it to studies in the next couple years instead of pouring hundreds of millions into obsolete technologies.
You heard it here first.
I Don’t Think It Can Last That Long
“It can’t last another decade.”
Even if Washington bails out Sacramento. Because if it does crazy things like that, Washington can’t last another decade.