Alan Boyle has an interesting article about differences between their hunting styles. Dogs are built more for endurance, cats for stealth. And it notes one other thing that’s obvious once pointed out — dogs are much more domesticated than cats are, because we’ve been coevolving for a lot longer. Dogs have been helping humans hunt for tens of thousands of years, whereas cats only got involved with us with the advent of agriculture (when they came to the granaries for rodent hunting, and decided to stick around). so that explains why the dog is “man’s best friend.” Cats haven’t been as interactive with us, and haven’t done it for as long, which is why they’re much more independent.
Remember
Sixty-seven years ago, a date that still lives in infamy. And this year, it too falls on a Sunday. Will September 11th be remembered as long? It seems that, despite the recent attacks in India, many have forgotten that we are at war with an ideology just as (if not more) dangerous than the ones we fought then.
Randy Barnett happened to be visiting Honolulu, coincidentally, and describes the memorials. I was there a couple years ago, and though not on the anniversary (it was a few weeks earlier), it was a somber and interesting experience.
First They Came For The Mormons
…but this time, even though they aren’t Mormons, they said something. That’s called pluralism, folks.
Inflation Not A Threat
…yet. I think that there’s a typo here, though:
Some experts argue that Fed chief Ben Bernanke is simply replacing money annihilated in our economy’s “Great Deleveraging” and that he should print even more. Retired securities lawyer Frederick Feldkamp, a Michigan native, says the Treasury’s nationalization of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac alone erased $33 billion in bank capital. The Treasury inadvertently wiped out the two mortgage giants’ preferred stock, which hundreds of banks had held as core capital, and which was considered so safe that regulations let the banks leverage that capital by as much as 50 to 1 when making loans. Feldkamp reckons that when banks wrote off the $33 billion in preferred stock, support for about $1.65 billion in debt was erased — a significant credit contraction.
I think that’s supposed to be $1.65 trillion. $1.65 billion is seat-cushion change these days…
BCS Declares Germany Winner Of WWII
This is pretty funny.
“Germany put together an incredible number of victories beginning with the annexation of Austria and the Sudetenland and continuing on into conference play with defeats of Poland, France, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Belgium and the Netherlands. Their only losses came against the US and Russia; however considering their entire body of work — including an incredibly tough Strength of Schedule — our computers deemed them worthy of the #1 ranking.”
The US came in fourth, with only two victories — Germany and Japan.
It reminds me of the old joke that college football is the only sport where the champion is determined by drunks arguing in bars. Which is why they brought in the computers, I guess.
Space Solar Power And Launch Costs
There’s a long piece in this week’s Economist on the current prospects for solar power satellites. It’s a pretty good overview, but has a few problems. First of all, it doesn’t mention lasers at all. This is particularly a large oversight when it comes to the discussion of military applications. If space-based power is used for military logistics, it’s unlikely that it will be of the microwave variety — the power density is far too low to be practical for many of the envisioned needs. Lasers are more likely (though they will still not be a cost-effective weapon, despite the paranoia of some who will oppose the concept).
Also, in the discussion on launch costs, they didn’t spend enough time discussing the suborbital route, though they mentioned it. And while there was never much prospect of Gene Myers launching ETs into orbit, the chance that it will happen now is essentially nil, so the discussion of Space Islands is (at best) anachronistic. A description of Bob Bigelow’s activities with his orbital facilities, which weren’t mentioned at all, would have been much more useful and relevant to the reader.
[Update a few minutes later]
There seems to be a push on to get the Obama administration to adopt SBSP as a new energy initiative. Given all the other energy alternatives they want to chase (wind, terrestrial solar, etc.) why not? Even if it doesn’t pan out, it could result in lower launch costs for other things, which (as the report points out) are a prerequisite.
Blogroll
I don’t know when I’ll get around to figuring out how to properly incorporate it into the new template (and it really needs weeding/updating as well), but in response to a question in comments, I’ve added a link to my old index page with it, in the upper left box.
“Transforming Democracy”
John Cox, on the salivating glee with which people like Todd Gitlin and E. J. Dionne look forward to the fascist tactics that will be enabled by President Obama’s identity cult:
Gitlin becomes almost giddy with the prospects of how a cult of personality, fluent in Web dynamics, can exploit “his more than 3 million names – disproportionately young and energetic.” They “remain a political force as long as he satisfies them that, once in office, he can deliver.”
But Obama doesn’t have to “deliver” in conventional political terms in order to “satisfy” his netroots. In a “political landscape where passions outweigh ideological clarity,” as Gitlin himself puts it, Obama’s self-centered movement need only satisfy those passions. And Gitlin makes it clear that the Web technologies are ideally suited to do just that.
Obama can “deploy his supporters to muscle reforms through.” One gets the distinct impression that for Gitlin it’s the muscling even more than the reform that’s so satisfying. As president, Obama can get them to “bombard Congress with phone calls to break filibusters and [my favorite catch-all] otherwise stir them to action….”
As he asks at the end, into what are they are so eager to see democracy “transform”?
Missing The Real Point
I think that this is a misdiagnosis:
How come nobody connects the following dots:
1. Massive bank problems precipitate a $700 billion federal bailout.
2. Meanwhile, private companies (including automakers) find it difficult to get banks to loan them money.
3. So those private companies go to the feds for bailouts of their own.
4. Nobody says: “The federal government won’t bail out companies that can’t get private loans. That’s why we gave the money to the banks, so the banks could make private loans. Loan money is what banks do. If you need money, go see a banker. We gave them lots of money they can loan out. Maybe they’ll loan some to you.”Am I missing something?
An excellent point. So I put it to some auto supplier and finance sources, and this is what they say we’re missing: The federal credit bailout ain’t working.
Credit is still frozen. No banks are willing to lend. And the auto companies are still in free fall.
I don’t think that’s the problem at all. I don’t know whether credit is still “frozen” or not (there seem to be a lot of mortgage loans happening), but even if it were melted and boiling, I don’t think you’d find a sane banker who would lend these companies money, even at junk-bond rates, given the nature of their business plans and prospects. That’s why they have to go to Congress…
Armadillo Award Ceremony
Clark Lindsey live blogged it from NASA TV. It sounds like Mike Griffin said some good things about commercial space and the suborbital folks. But talk is cheap, and in any event, all indications are that he’s a short timer now. I hope that his successor says (and actually implements) the same things.