Drove from Savannah down to Orlando this morning. I’ll spend the night here, and be back in Boca tomorrow morning. Unfortunately, I have to get ready to spend much of the month of February in LA, so it’s going to be a busy few days.
My Own Experience Confirmed
Alcohol improves men’s s3xual performance. When I’ve been drinking, my problem is not the so-called ED, unless by that one means the inability to…errrmmmm…attain…completion, yes, that’s the word…and get rid of the “E.” I can’t say that I’ve ever had a partner complain about it…
Shake Those Pom Poms, Jeff
A dispatch from an alternate reality:
I know you all have seen the public discourse regarding Ares and Orion and shuttle, and understandably such discourse can temper our resolve to push forward — if we let it. But, let’s review the bidding. First, we should remind ourselves, as we saw in intimate detail at last summer’s Lunar Capability Concept Review (arguably the finest such review the team has yet executed), that the Ares I/Ares V/Orion/Altair transportation system is highly integrated and keenly designed to open the lunar frontier to us in the years to come. Our driving requirements of going anywhere on the Moon, staying twice as long as Apollo in a sortie mode, sending twice as many crew members, and enabling their return at any time, must remain at the forefront of any consideration to alter the nation’s exploration launch architecture. I assure each of you that we are doing all we can to communicate this key aspect of our baseline plan — it is about much more than launching Orion to LEO (Low Earth Orbit).
And where did those (trivial) requirements come from?
We don’t know, because the agency continues to refuse to show its work.
But it’s pretty pathetic that forty years after Apollo, it thinks it the height of ambition to spend tens of billions of dollars on a system that, even in the unlikely event that it works as currently designed, within budget and schedule, will only do twice the number of crew for twice the duration for billions of dollars per flight. Such a paltry goal simply isn’t worth the money, even if we ignore all the design and management issues. If NASA doesn’t want to get serious about space, then it should stop wasting the taxpayers’ money, and let someone else have it who is.
“Screw-The-Taxpayer Plan”
My first attempt to come up with an accurate name for the currently misnamed “Stimulus Plan.” The Republicans can’t allow this false euphemism to continue if they want to lead the charge against it. Another one: “Pay-Off-Democrat-Constituencies Plan.”
[Tuesday afternoon update]
Michelle Malkin has the best name yet. She calls it the Generational Theft Act.
[Bumped]
[Update a few minutes later]
Jim Manzi has another accurate moniker for it: The European Socialist Welfare State Bill.
How Identical Are Identical Twins?
Not as much as you might think.
This has implications for cloning. People who expect an exact replica, whether person or pet, may be disappointed.
Light Blogging
I’m still in Savannah. The wireless doesn’t seem to be working in my room. It connects, but doesn’t provide an actual Internet connection. It was working yesterday, as long as there weren’t too many others sharing, but I haven’t been able to get it all day, even though the signal is strong. I’m posting this from the lobby, where it seems to be better. I’ll be driving back down to Boca tomorrow via Orlando, so probably not much until the evening. It’s still overcast, and there was a thick fog this morning. I took a nice buccaneery picture of the bark in the fog, but I probably won’t upload it until I get home.
Tragic Anniversaries
Today is the forty-second anniversary of the deaths of the Apollo 1 crew, on the pad. I wrote about that, and the other deadly space anniversaries of this time of year (tomorrow is the twenty-third of the Challenger loss, and Sunday is the sixth of the Columbia loss), a year ago.
Man Bites Dog
“Gaza is Hamas’ fault.” Not an unusual sentiment (though not usual enough), but scrape your jaw off the floor when you hear that it was said by an EU official. The usual suspects aren’t pleased, of course:
A Hamas official, Mushir al-Masri, was quoted by Reuters as saying his group was “shocked” at Michel’s comments. He lambasted the official for “giving cover to massacres and terrorism committed by the Zionist enemy against the Palestinian people… Palestinian resistance is as legitimate as the resistance of European countries that fought against foreign occupiers.”
Well, I have to admit that I share their shock. But not their dismay. I guess their mendacious game isn’t working as well as it used to.
[Evening update]
As long as they’re having a fit of sanity, the EU might want to consider the fungibility of money, and whether or not they’re fueling violence with foreign aid to the so-called Palestinians.
Old And New
Here’s a picture from the balcony of my room overlooking the Savannah River, of a South Korean container ship heading downriver toward the ocean (to the right in this image — the view is toward the northeast), with an old barquentine in the foreground. Well, actually, not so old. It was actually built a couple decades ago, based on concepts from the eighteenth century.
Note that it’s still overcast. Since leaving the Sunshine State a couple days ago, I haven’t seen the sun. I’m not complaining, though. Florida sun has the same depressing effect on me that rain in Seattle has on others. It would be nice to get some nice light for a few shots of the town before we leave, though.
Survey The Upcoming Disaster
The proposed “Stimulus” Package is on line now.
As Glenn Reynolds says, it’s basically a massive transfer of wealth to the politically connected from the politically unconnected.
[Update a few minutes later]
Robert Samuelson has some gloomy thoughts:
in practice, the stimulus could disappoint. Parts of the House package look like a giant political slush fund, with money sprinkled to dozens of programs. There’s $50 million for the National Endowment for the Arts, $200 million for the Teacher Incentive Fund and $15.6 billion for increased Pell Grants to college students. Some of these proposals, whatever their other merits, won’t produce many new jobs.
Another problem: Construction spending — for schools, clinics, roads — may start so slowly that there will be little immediate economic boost. The Congressional Budget Office examined $356 billion in spending proposals and concluded that only 7 percent would be spent in 2009 and 31 percent in 2010.
Assume, however, that the stimulus is a smashing success. It cushions the recession. Unemployment (now: 7.2 percent) stops rising at, say, 8 percent instead of 10 percent. Still, a temporary stimulus can’t fuel a permanent recovery. That requires a strong financial system to supply an expanding economy’s credit needs. How we get that isn’t clear.
I hope it doesn’t take another war to get us out of this.