An interesting discussion of the transportation tradeoffs of biofuels.
St. Elizabeth
I’ve never been as impressed by Elizabeth Edwards as the media has wanted me to be (of course, the gulf between my perception of John Edwards and the media’s desires has been even wider). Kaus says that the media continues to be too soft on her:
You’re understandably focused on your own family. You won’t say Hunter’s name. She’s “irrelevant to your life.” You don’t know if Hunter’s child–which you call “it”–is John’s. You just know “It doesn’t look like my children.” You say Hunter had no right to disrupt your marriage. “Women need to have respect for other women.” But during the campaign an aide and friend of John Edwards, Andrew Young, stepped up and claimed paternity of Hunter’s child. Andrew Young has a wife. How do you think she feels about this? How do her children feel about it, and what other kids say about it, when they go to school? Do you really not care if she’s going through whatever she’s going through because she’s playing her part in a lie constructed in service to your husband’s, and your, unstoppable ambition?. How are you respecting her and her marriage?
Both of these people are complete hypocrites, and made for each other. Fortunately, though, they weren’t made for the White House.
A Good Question
From Iain Murray:
The news has just broken that the Federal Reserve is requiring GMAC to raise $13 billion in new funding. Given the way its previous creditors were treated, just who do they think will lend to them?
Gosh, it’s almost as though they want to take over the economy.
Virgin Vision
Will Whitehorn talks a good game:
He foresees uses of the spaceship for science experiments, for example as an alternative to visiting the International Space Station or using unmanned flights for pharmaceuticals companies seeking to use microgravity to change particles.
Later, the aircraft could be used to launch small satellites or take other payloads into space, Whitehorn says. “We could put all of our server farms in space quite easily…”
…Eventually, he sees the possibility of transporting passengers to terrestrial destinations in spacecraft outside the atmosphere instead of by plane. He says a journey from Britain to Australia could be done in about 2-1/2 hours.
“That’s a 20-year horizon,” he said.
I’d take that a lot more seriously if he had liquid engines…
And of course, he never misses an opportunity to bad-mouth the competition:
Virgin is not the only non-governmental party trying to develop space travel in the private sphere, but Whitehorn is confident it will be the first to take passengers into space.
SpaceX, led by veteran Silicon Valley entrepreneur Elon Musk, is developing space-launch vehicles but they are not designed to carry passengers.
Well, yes, if you ignore the Dragon…
And of course, XCOR might beat them, though if they don’t get to a hundred klicks, the claim will be that they’re not in space, despite the stars, curvature of the earth, and minutes of weightlessness.
A Tale Of Two Axes
George Bush’s Axis of Evil versus Barack Obama’s.
C. P. Snow’s Two Cultures
Have they been superceded?
And yes, he did miss the Russo-Japanese War, though as he notes, the Japanese were westernizing rapidly at that point.
The Case For A Lunar Base
From Darnell Clayton.
Tugging On Superman’s Cape
And he doesn’t seem to mind:
The USNS Lewis and Clark was chased for about an hour on Wednesday morning by two pirates skiffs, but neither came closer than about one nautical mile to the U.S. vessel, the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet said in a statement.
The small arms fire fell well short of the U.S. ship which speeded up to evade the skiffs.
So let me get this straight. A US Navy ship is fired upon by a ragtag gang, and instead of sending them to the bottom, they run away? What ROE have they gotten from the White House? Would this have happened during the previous administration? And if so, is this bipartisan stupidity?
If you want to discourage piracy, you have to make the costs higher than the rewards. This was a perfect opportunity to make an example of them. Instead, we seem to be doing just the opposite.
[Update a few minutes later, after a lot of discussion in comments, some of it useful]
If the L&C didn’t carry standoff armament that could take out a skiff at the range of a mile, it seems like they should at least be able to call in a chopper air strike. We should have a policy that one does not fire on US vessels with impunity and without consequence.
The Documents Have Been Released
The full ESAS study, apparently including appendices (other than 12) seems to be available over at Wikileaks.
Ah, where to find the time to read it…? I hope that Norm Augustine does, at least.
Gaia Versus Medea
Two alternate metaphors for the planet. I disagree with Lovelock that there are too many people, or that there is some magical “right” number of them. It’s all a function of technology level. And I disagree with Ward, too:
In his view, the costs and distances involved in moving outward from the solar system – or even terraforming the moon or Mars – just don’t seem worth the effort.
Obviously they don’t now. Technology advances will change that.