For anyone having similar problems to mine with Firefox 3.5 in 64-bit Linux, here’s the solution. You have to use Adobe’s beta 64-bit flash (or get the 32-bit wrapper installed properly). Here’s the scoop.
Armed Revolution
What’s so funny about it? The Iranian people are demonstrating the need for a Second Amendment. The right to self defense should be a universal human right.
Backlash
Maybe The Ming Dynasty Had The Right Idea
Legend has it (whether true or not) that, after Zheng He’s voyages were shut down, it was made a capital offense to build a ship with more than four masts.*
If I were Norm Augustine, I would suggest that NASA be encouraged to innovate by being forbidden to develop a vehicle with more capability than the biggest existing Atlas V. This would finally force them to stop wasting money on the heavy-lift fetish, and get on with the business of developing a cost-effective (and scalable) in-space transportation infrastructure. If they really want to continue to indulge in this economically irrational behavior, let them do it with their own money, or find some crazy investor, instead of continuing to screw the taxpayers.
*It was not the size restriction of the ships that prevented the Chinese from being a naval power. The Portuguese and Spanish conquered the New World with much smaller ones.
The “Chavez News Network”
A report from Roger Simon, on what’s happening in Honduras. And US reportage.
The Seven Types Of Employees
…that you meet at Best Buy. Well, we don’t have Circuit City to kick around any more…
Space Frontier Conference
I’m sure that some among my readership must be attending the conference. Is there anyone out there with whom I could share a ride to Ames from SFO on the evening of the seventeenth if I were to attend?
In Defense Of Cats
John Tierney versus the National Academy of Sciences.
You Know The Program Is In Trouble
…when the major contractors are running down the lines of the ship:
According to industry officials present, former astronaut and Boeing Vice President Brewster Shaw, Lockheed Vice President John Karas and other executives met with the staff of powerful U.S. Sen. Richard Shelby to discuss creating a media campaign to counter Ares I critics and alternative ideas. Shelby, R-Ala., is a fierce protector of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, which is designing the Ares rockets.
But the campaign never materialized. Instead, Lockheed and Boeing have softened their positions and even indicated some support for looking at alternatives.
Lockheed, which has a $4.5 billion contract to design and build the Orion crew capsule to ride on top of Ares I, now says it is “neutral” on which rocket takes its capsule into orbit.
In addition, it allowed United Launch Alliance, the company that Lockheed jointly owns with Boeing, to make a presentation to the Augustine Committee advocating its Delta IV rocket — now used to launch military and commercial payloads — as a cheaper, better alternative to Ares I.
When asked this week which rocket his company supports, spokesman Stephen Tatum replied: “Lockheed Martin is focused on building the best Orion crew exploration vehicle possible for our NASA customer.”
Diplomatically put.
Dead rocket walking.
Girl With No Future
A gloomy dispatch from Michael Yon, in Afghanistan.