I’ve never talked about Ruben Van Mitchell much here, but he was a key player in the development of useful launch regulations, both on Hill and at the FAA, over the years. Unfortunately, he will do so no more. Condolences to family and friends.
[Bumped to Tuesday morning update]
There are a lot of justified encomia from space policy people (some of them high-powered) in comments at NASA Watch.
From Dennis Prager:
Who exactly in the European Union is condemning Israel? Its conservatives? Who in America is condemning Israel? Conservatives? Who in Australia or Canada? Conservatives? Of course not. As regards Israel (and America and much else), the Western world’s moral idiots, to use the term in the title of the Dershowitz column, are virtually all on the left, including and especially many of his colleagues in academia.
So, I have a question for my friend Dershowitz. (I say ‘friend’ because we’ve known each other for years and debated and dialogued together.)
Given that Israel’s security is so important to you, given that you believe that the ability to morally distinguish between Israel and its enemies is tantamount to the ability to distinguish between good and evil, and given that those who condemn Israel for its “disproportionate” response to Hamas terror-rockets are almost all on the left in America and Europe, why do you continue to identify yourself as a man of the left?
As he notes, there has to be a cognitive dissonance going on there. As well as a lot of other complicated issues.
I am expecting this to come along in a reasonable amount of time. I have lost my wisdom teeth, but I suspect that they’ll come up with other ways to find the needed stem cells.
[Via Mark Whittington]
The science of attractive faces.
Jay Norlinger has an ugly and depressing compendium of artists imposing their politics on their audiences.
I have to confess that I, too, have thusly sinned (though I think in a much milder manner). At the Space Access Conference last March, prefatory to giving a brief talk on propellant depots (with a hundred-and-one-degree fever, though I’m not sure that’s an excuse or that I wouldn’t have done it at normal temp) I made a brief (and oblique — probably only a few got it) joke about Hillary “dodging sniper fire” in Bosnia, which had been in the news recently. It wasn’t at all in the same class as Nordlinger’s examples, but it was probably inappropriate. It was in no way germane to the topic of discussion, and I can see in retrospect how some Hillary! supporters in the audience could have been offended, if they got it. For that I apologize here.
I’m glad to live in a country in which these artists can engage in such boorish behavior, but I’m glad also that we live in one in which we can use our own free-speech rights to point it out (even in real time), with admonishments, boos, or even voting with our feet. If more did so, perhaps the phenomenon would at least be tamped down. It’s probably hopeless, though, when you live in New York, or Ann Arbor, in which these cretins feel safe in their cocoon to behave in this manner.
Update a few minutes later]
This seems related somehow — fighting back against the new Hollywood Blacklist. Andrew Breitbart explains what he’s trying to accomplish. Roger Simon has further thoughts.
Leon Panetta gets a critical endorsement for taking over the CIA:
President Clinton called him “a trustworthy public servant who knows how to keep his mouth shut.”
“Leon was by my side for two and half years,” said Mr. Clinton. “About 14 months of his service came during the time that I was not having sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky, in the White House. During all those months, no one ever knew what my chief of staff knew or didn’t know, nor do they know it now.”
Mr. Panetta has also been a vocal opponent of the use of torture, but Mr. Clinton said “that’s likely just a lasting effect of his close contact with the former First Lady.”
The funniest thing is that I won’t be very surprised if Bill actually says something like this, given his foot-in-mouth behavior during the campaign.
Here is my take on that silly story about the Obama administration “merging” NASA and the Air Force to keep the Yellow Peril from beating us to the moon.
Meet the new culture of corruption.
Not the same as the old culture of corruption…
From Robert Kaplan:
How do you fight unconventional, sub-state armies empowered by ideas? You undermine them subtly over time, or you crush them utterly, brutally. Israel, unable to tolerate continued rocket attacks on its people, has decided on the latter course. Our own diplomacy with Iran now rests on whether or not Israel succeeds. We need to create leverage before we can negotiate with the clerical regime, and that leverage can only come from an Israeli moral victory—one that leaves Hamas sufficiently reeling to scare even the pro-Iranian Syrians from coming to its aid. In defense of its own territorial integrity, Israel has, in effect, launched the war on the Iranian empire that President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, in particular, can only have contemplated.
This war really started two and a half years ago, in Lebanon, and Israel has been fighting it mostly on its own, but as he points out, the US has to be ready to continue the pressure on Tehran if/when Israel crushes its puppet in Gaza.
Would entry heating from orbit pop a kernel of popcorn?
I don’t really have time to think about it much right now, but the answer is (as is often the case), it depends…