Jeff Foust has a report of what Jeff Greason had to say about the Augustine panel at the Space Investment Summit. I agree with the coment from Paul Spudis that it was another lost opportunity to straighten out space policy, though that’s no fault of Jeff’s.
Leaners Leaning The Other Way
Some poll results from Gallup that should concern the Donkeys:
Since Barack Obama took office as president in January, the Democratic advantage in leaned party identification has shrunk each quarter, from 13 points in the first quarter (52% to 39%) to 9 points in the second quarter (49% to 40%) and 6 points in the most recent quarter (48% to 42%).
Just a coincidence, I’m sure.
Yes, I Am An Idiot
I’ve been getting messages from my server that I left my header template and stylesheet in mid edit in vi. I got tired of getting them, and went in to close it out. Did I back up the files first? No, I did not. After doing ‘vi -r style.css’ and trying to exit, and it asked “don’t you want to save that?,” of course I did. As the post title says, idiot.
This by way of explaining why my blog is once again leaning left. But only in appearance, not in content.
“Making Bush Look Like A Piker”
Thoughts on Barack Obama’s deficits.
[Thursday morning update]
Related thoughts from John Stossel: “No matter what the numbers say, it’ll be called a success.”
[Another update a few minutes later]
Happy fiscal New Year! Out with the old deficits, in with the new.
How To Be A Bigot
This isn’t really anything new. The Democrats are simply staying true to their party’s roots. They just express the racism in different ways.
Of course, the new socially acceptable bigotry is against southerners, and Christians.
The Division Series Is Underway
It wasn’t planned that way, but the schedule of Detroit and Minnesota worked out such that the last meeting of the season for both teams is a shoot out for the title. Going into it, Minnesota had to win three out of four to win, while Detroit only needs to win half the games. You’d think that would be good news for the Tigers (and a win would be a morale boost for the benighted Michigan residents, with the highest unemployment rate in the nation, albeit of their own making, due to poor political choices over the decades). But the momentum is with the Twins, who are on a hot streak, while Detroit has been slumping, particularly at bat. Their pitching staff has been great, but they haven’t gotten the runs they need to win, which is why they were separated by only two games going into the series this weekend, dropped from a seven-game lead early in September.
They were rain postponed last night, so today was a double header, and their unfortunate trend continues. They lost the first game this afternoon, 3-2 (again, can’t really blame the pitching staff). If the Twins sweep, they only need one more win, tomorrow or Thursday, to win the division. The Tigers would still be the wild card, but if they can’t win this series, there’s not much chance they can do the job when they have to win the league title, and then the championship. As a Tigers fan, I sure hope they can at least split today. As I type this, they’re up one to nothing.
Five Years Later
It’s hard to believe that it’s been half a decade since the first X-Prize flight. I remember it well because I had moved to Florida only a month before, was still recovering from being hit by two hurricanes within two weeks (Frances and Jeanne), and watching on television, frustrated that I could no longer just get in the car and drive up to Mojave to see it.
Now I’m back in California, and hope I’ll have more opportunities to go up and see the other exciting activities that it spawned. Things haven’t moved along as fast as people hoped, either for Virgin Galactic (due to some poor technical and contracting decisions on their part, in my opinion), or the field in general, but things are starting to pick up. As Arthur Clarke noted, we are often overoptimistic about schedules in the short run, but overpessimistic in the long run. It’s starting to be a longer run from 2004.
Seventy-Two Hours
A long article at The New Scientist about our current state of preparedness against an extraterrestrial hit. Bottom line: we could be doing a lot better. And it wouldn’t have to cost a lot of money. In fact, we could probably save money while enhancing planetary security, if we took a less insane approach to human spaceflight.
None Dare Call It Art
The Iowahawk endowment has born bitter, but hilarious fruit.
I like the chant, myself. I don’t envy him — it’s going to be tough to pick a winner.
The Last IMAX Movie
…filmed in the Shuttle. It should be spectacular. The future will belong to digital, though. In fact, if Constellation goes forward as planned, and they actually redo Apollo, the biggest difference will be in the quality of the imagery returned.