…to downsize the federal government. None of them are new, but it’s nice to summarize them all in one place.
The HondaJet
A review, by Glenn Reynolds, over at Popular Mechanics. A commenter claims that the engine development is having certification problems, but I don’t know how credible the commenter is.
I found this interesting:
Honda is also saving development money by taking advantage of modern computer power. Fujino notes that it’s possible to do serious design work on a laptop nowadays, where not long ago it took an expensive engineering workstation. And Honda is making heavy use of simulations, with a sophisticated whole-aircraft simulator that allows real parts to be swapped in and tested against virtual parts and vice versa, allowing many stages of refinement before parts ever reach the test-flight stage.
I wonder why these kinds of development-technology savings aren’t making their way into the spacecraft design world. But they probably are, actually. It’s one of the reasons that SpaceX has accomplished so much for comparatively little money. And when you’re on a cost-plus contract, you can always find other ways to spend the money.
Chicago’s Pointless Gun Ban
Thoughts from Steve Chapman:
If we were starting out in a country with zero guns, it might be possible to keep such weapons away from bad guys. But that’s not this country, which has more than 200 million firearms in private hands and a large perpetual supply of legal handguns.
Only a tiny percentage of those weapons has to be diverted to the underground trade for crooks to acquire all the firepower they need. While gun bans greatly impede the law-abiding, they pose only a trivial inconvenience to the lawless.
This is especially true at the local level. Banning guns from one city makes about as much sense as banning them on one block.
It’s hard enough to halt the flow of guns over international borders, where governments police traffic. It’s impossible to stop them from crossing municipal boundaries—which are unmonitored, undefended, and practically invisible.
Tens of thousands of cars enter Washington and Chicago each day from places where guns are easily and legally obtainable. Any of those vehicles could be transporting a carton of pistols to sell to willing thugs. If you’re on an island, you’re going to get splashed by the waves.
This is also why gun buybacks are an idiotic waste of money.
Operation Overlord Cancelled
Mark Whittington attempts, and massively fails, to make a space analogy with WW II.
If anything, Constellation was a lot more like Dieppe than Normandy.
Uh Oh
Walmart’s customers are running out of money.
That’s both a symptom of and a bad portent for the economy.
[Update a few minutes later]
Somehow, I can’t help but think that this is related: consumer confidence in the economy’s future is at the lowest point yet in the Obama presidency. And it wasn’t high when it started.
I suspect that won’t change before November. And even then, we’ll be stuck with him for another two years, though at least he’ll be defanged. As Glenn often says, another Jimmy Carter is a best-case scenario.
[Update a couple minutes later]
This was particularly disturbing:
Forty-six percent (46%) of all adults now say it is at least somewhat likely the United States will enter an economic depression similar to the 1930s within the next few years, showing little change in this view over the past two months. That number includes 21% who say it’s very likely. Another 46% see a 1930s-like Depression as not likely, but just nine percent (9%) say it’s not at all likely.
I think that the probability of that depends on the voters, this cycle and next. If they keep reelecting people who enact policies that, for whatever reasons, continue to sicken the economy, as they did in the thirties, it could get really bad. I hope that the voters are smarter this time around. It’s possible to learn from history, at least in theory.
It Should Have Been Folklore And Mythology
Notorious con artist and fraud Al Gore is going to be given an honorary doctorate by the University of Tennessee:
Gore will receive the degree — an Honorary Doctor of Laws and Humane Letters in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology — at the spring commencement exercises of the College of Arts and Sciences on May 14.
Instapundit is likely quite embarrassed.
[Late afternoon update]
You know, I think that this is pretty much a guarantee that UT commencement is going to be snowed out this spring.
Hope Is Not A Strategy Or Method
Unless you’re Barack Obama.
“The Dam Broke Today”
Charlie Rangel may be on the verge of being forced out of his chairmanship.
Too bad. I was hoping that he would continue to bleed the Dems on the subject of their corruption all the way to November. Not to imply, of course, that there isn’t abundant other evidence of it.
[Update a few minutes later]
The Republicans shouldn’t give them any cover on this. They should all vote “present.” Make the Donkeys clean up their own road apples.
The Worm Can Stays Closed
It’s looking like the SCOTUS is going to incorporate the Second Amendment, but not via the Privileges and Immunities clause.
4.5 Raids A Day
It’s time to demilitarize the police. Long past, actually. And what’s the “conservative” position on this?