[Via Geekpress]
The Reviews Are In
…for Client Number Nine, at Eight. And this is a new low for Kathleen Parker, too.
What would possess CNN to think that people would want to watch as loathesome and hypocritical an individual as Elliot Spitzer?
This Is News?
ABC thinks that it’s a big deal that Rush Limbaugh is simply telling the truth:
The nation’s preeminent conservative talk radio host referred to Mr. Obama as a “jackass,” an “economic illiterate” and an “idiot, where capitalism is concerned.”
So, what’s the problem?
This reminds me of the old Soviet joke, about the guy who is arrested after walking down the street shouting “Brezhnev is an idiot.” He was sentenced to thirty-five years — five years for insulting the premier, and thirty for revealing a state secret.
In related news, the president stamped his hooves in petulant anger.
[Update a few minutes later]
It just occurs to me that it’s not a word with which the president is unfamiliar, or loathe to use himself. It’s what he called Kanye West.
Who Cares What He Thinks?
You know, if you have questions about vehicle development costs, or propulsion issues, I guess it would be useful to have a discussion with Dave King, but I see nothing in his experience that would render him in any way knowledgable about markets for commercial spaceflight. But a lot of clueless people will read this and think that he knows what he’s talking about, and make policy and investment decisions on the basis of it. This is even worse than having Congress call Tom Young as a witness, just because he was head of Lockheed and worked at JPL, when he has no experience with human spaceflight.
Via Clark Lindsey, who has more thoughts:
I would hope that in the future, NASA’s top administrators hire human spaceflight program managers who actually believe that human spaceflight is worth buying and are devoted to lowering its cost so that more and more people can afford to buy it.
Dream on. Not part of the job description. Which is why space remains unaffordable fifty-three years after its dawn.
No Rockets?
No problem. My survey of nonconventional launch technologies is up at Popular Mechanics.
Rare Earth
…on the moon.
It doesn’t make much sense to even speculate on the economic potential until we solve the launch-cost problem, though, and there is little in current space policy that even attempts it.
Fear
…the red button.
Out, Out, Damned Spot
This is pretty funny:
…if you were looking for symbolism, there was the moment when Emanuel finished shaking hands with commuters at a Chicago Transit Authority station and shoppers at a supermarket and climbed back into his black Dodge Caravan, in which he could be seen vigorously washing his hands — in clear view of television cameras and reporters.
I think this is going to be entertaining, starting with all the legal shenanigans he’ll have to pull to even get on the ballot.
[Late afternoon update]
Per comments:
Folks, the issue is not whether or not he should have disinfected. It was his clumsiness in or indifference to getting caught on camera. I’m not sure what he is, but he’s no politician.
I, for one, think that handshaking should be outlawed, or at least socially discouraged, and particularly in political campaigns. Think of how much productivity and even life is lost to viruses due to this archaic social ritual.
It’s Not The Tax-Rate Cuts
It’s the spending, stupid.
All this talk about “cost to the government of tax cuts for the rich” is just neo-Marxist class warfare and envy.
Monkey Self Awareness
I continue to be baffled by research such as this:
It was once thought that only humans could pass the mark test. Then chimpanzees did, followed by dolphins and elephants.
What I continue to not understand is why they don’t think that (e.g.) cats are self aware. My cats recognize each other, so they clearly recognize cats. When they see themselves in a mirror, they don’t treat it like another cat — they basically ignore it. Is there any other explanation for this than they recognize it as themselves? What am I missing here?
According to Emory University primatologist Frans de Waal, the new findings fit with his work on capuchin monkeys who don’t quite recognize themselves in mirrors, but don’t treat the reflections as belonging to strangers. “As a result, we proposed a gradual scale of self awareness. The piece of intriguing information presented here may support this view,” he said.
However, de Waal cautioned that “many scientists would want more tests and more controls” — a warning especially salient in light of a high-profile controversy involving Marc Hauser, a Harvard University evolutionary biologist who appears to have overstated the cognitive powers of his own monkeys.
“What you’re seeing in the videos is subject to all kinds of interpretations,” said Gordon Gallup, a State University of New York at Albany psychologist who invented the mirror test, and has administered it with negative results to rhesus monkeys. “I don’t think these findings in any way demonstrate that rhesus monkeys are capable of recognizing themselves in mirrors.”
It seems to me that, for whatever reason (Homo Sapiens chauvinism?), some scientists go out of their way to deny the obvious. It reminds me of the arguments during Descartes’s day that animals couldn’t feel pain, and the even more absurd ones that babies couldn’t, either, used as an excuse to not have to use anaesthesia to operate on them.
[Update a while later]
I should add that there is no definitive test for self awareness. There is no way to know for certain that anyone other than yourself is self aware.