This is pretty funny. And as someone familiar with the history of the company, the irony is quite amusing. I remember when I was a kid, we drove down to Battle Creek to tour the factory. I got free Cocoa Crispies at the end of the tour.
As an adult, though, I can’t take sugary cereals any more (in fact, I’ve quit almost all cereals except the occasional oatmeal, and toasted oats, due to carb concerns). But then, it’s been decades since I did a bong hit. Or wanted to.
A lesson from Plato, on how Republics die.
[Update a while later]
Here I come to save the day:
Unfortunately, some politicians see the current crisis as an “opportunity” to push an agenda. They haven’t stopped to consider to what extent that agenda may exacerbate the very problems they are trying to solve. The WSJ captured the philosophy of the present administration in White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel’s remarks that “you never want a serious crisis to go to waste. Things that we had postponed for too long, that were long-term, are now immediate and must be dealt with. This crisis provides the opportunity for us to do things that you could not do before.” Emmanuel subsequently proceeded to enumerate a list of social spending items some of which arguably sound like new versions of the same community housing spending which may have been one of the original “political risks” to start with. When asked whether the stimulus package had turned into a spending spree, President Obama acknowledged it with pride. “That’s the point. Seriously, that’s the point.”
But that’s not the point; not the point at all. And it’s a shame BHO doesn’t realize it and a greater shame if he does. The real question is whether current government solutions to the crisis contribute to political risk or reduce it. That means knowing what’s broke before applying the screwdriver to the screw.
Well, it’s what politicians do. Too bad we have politicians, and not statesmen.
A petition for common sense. Expect Congress and the administration to ignore it. So much for Obama’s campaign promises.
They continue to grow, and Iowahawk has the exclusive:
The Chu hobo kerfuffle was the latest in a week-long series of Obama administration personnel imbroglis that have led to 36 White House resignations. Former HHS Secretary Tom Daschle and Chief Performance Officer Nancy Killefer saw their tenures cut short over tax issues, which continue to dog Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. Geithner is also dogged over dogs, after his failure to report over $14,000 in income from his backyard pitbull fight business. An earlier federal grand jury probe over an alleged 12-state outlaw motorcycle gang methamphetamine network forced Commerce Secretary designate Bill Richardson to resign before Mr.Obama’s inauguration. Labor Secretary Hilda Solis faces continued scrutiny over late taxes, lobbying, and involvement in a Tijuana car theft ring, while National Security advisor Samantha Power has received GOP criticism over her 2006 volunteer work as a sniper for the Taliban. Her boss, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, has yet to deliver a promised ‘full explanation’ after police discovered 11 Laotian prostitutes caged in the garage of her Chappaqua NY home. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack faces increasing questions over his one-time membership in an all-white golf and satanic baby snatching club.
It’s hard to get good help these days.
You will be as shocked as I was to hear that Bob Zubrin thinks that we should stimulate the economy by sending people to Mars.
I have some thoughts on the Sullymania in the media over at PJM.
Several people, including Clark Lindsey and Keith Cowing, have linked to this Onion article:
“It’s always ‘Are the solid rocket boosters functioning at full capacity?’ and ‘Do the liquid oxygen prevalves operate as required?’ with John,” Discovery commander James Reid said. “If it weren’t for that guy, we’d already be in space by now.”
In addition to his insistence on mission coordinates being 100 percent accurate, Wilkins reportedly spends all his time obsessing about Discovery’s general purpose computers, which ignite the main engines and ensure that the craft can safely reach the speed of 18,000 mph.
“Is there anything John doesn’t worry about?” said Michael Dennigan, the shuttle crew’s second-in-command. “This isn’t rocket science—you’d think he’d try to relax a bit.”
Since he was assigned to it last year, Wilkins has aborted the NASA mission for a wide range of seemingly unimportant reasons, including a 4-inch crack in the exterior hull of the ship, the failure of several engine cut-off sensors, and what has been described as “the smallest of possible thunderstorms.”
I didn’t see it, but I understand that the original version actually called out John Shannon by name, but they later changed it to “Wilkins,” perhaps after complaints from PAO (or maybe John himself, though I imagine he’d have a sense of humor about it).
There actually is a grain of truth to this (though not, as far as I know, with John Shannon). I thought that they delayed a launch (that I attended) needlessly a couple years ago (under the Wayne Hale regime), and I have a more extensive discussion of that particular issue here. But as far as I know, John is doing a good job of balancing safety and cost/schedule.
Yesterday, over at Space Politics, I saw a very peculiar comment:
…NASA failed to achieve the goal of low cost shuttle operations when they failed to pursue the privatization of the shuttle transportation system. Regrettably this failure may cost the lives of another shuttle crew as one of the cost saving features of the privatized shuttle would have been crew escape pods…a fatal flaw.
To which I responded: “Huh?”
Then, today, over at the Orlando Sentinel space blog, I saw something seemingly similar, from the same person:
Sen. Bill Nelson is backing a dead horse. If his staff had done their homework they know Ares I Orion shuttle replacement is not feasible. Too expensive to develop and to operate. Sen. Nelson is driving nails in NASA’s coffin…and maybe a shuttle crew by not supporting the shuttle crew escape pods…see: wwwnasaproblems.com [sic]
Posted by: Don Nelson | February 06, 2009 at 10:33 AM
So I corrected the URL by putting a dot between the “www” and “nasaproblems,” and wandered over there to see what was going on.
What a mess. Ignoring the site design, very little of this makes any sense, either from a business or technical standpoint.
I don’t have the time or the energy to delve into all the problems, but just to respond to the blog comments, I don’t know what “opportunity” NASA ever had to privatize the Shuttle. I actually supported a privatization study by USA back in the nineties, and it was very difficult to come up with a scenario that would make any kind of business sense for Shuttle privatization, given its intrinsically high costs, with little demand for it outside of government. And that’s ignoring all of the intrinsic institutional resistance that NASA and particularly JSC had to handing over the keys to anyone else.
But even if it could have been privatized, the notion that adding “crew escape pods” (even assuming that it is even really technically feasible) to the existing design would somehow “reduce costs” is absolutely loopy. What is the basis of this claim? Similarly, why would a private entity do this?
Putting a crew escape system into the orbiter as designed makes zero economic sense. As I’ve noted many times, crew are replaceable, while orbiters are not. If the Shuttle isn’t safe enough to fly crew, it’s not reliable enough to fly at all, as we’ve learned with the Challenger and Columbia losses, because we’re now down to a fleet of three vehicles, and it would cost billions to replace them, even if it made economic sense to operate them privately. That, in fact, is why we’re retiring it. The notion of privatizing Shuttle at this late date is utterly ludicrous.
This is obviously the work of an engineer, and not a program analyst.
It seems a little rich to me for someone like Paul Krugman to accuse other economists of arguing in bad faith.
Melting the Antarctic ice sheet could flood Washington DC.
And they say there are no up sides to climate change. I’d call it the “Augean Stables” strategy of government reform.