Peter Wood has an essay on the effects of our culture on science education.
You Just May Be A Racist
Twenty-five reasons. You’re probably full of hate, too.
And obviously, when Obama loses, it will be because we’re all racists. What other reasons could we possible have to vote against him?
Hey, Scalzi Fans
If you pre-order at Amazon, you can get a copy of his latest
[Wednesday morning update]
Sorry, I misread the Amazon email. It’s a savings of $8.48, not a price. Still a good deal, though.
Hope Remains
…for life on Mars. Actually, there are a lot of people who should hope that we don’t find life on Mars, if we ever want to colonize it ourselves.
Encouraging News
About SpaceX:
If the problem is confirmed to be a simple and easily fixed design flaw, they may not launch again “tomorrow” but I wouldn’t be too surprised if there was another flight within a couple of months.
…Lost in the hubbub over the flight failure was the fact that once again they were able to do a quick resumption of the launch procedure after a hot-fire abort. This sort of robustness in the launch operations and the use of small crews are crucial factors in lowering the cost of launch.
And as noted, the new Merlin apparently performed well. Had it not, that would have been a real setback for both Falcon 1 and 9.
[Update after lunch, Pacific Time]
Henry Spencer has more thoughts, with some history.
It seems quite likely that it was caused by the new engine–that’s the only thing that changed between the last flight and this one, and Henry points out a couple potential plausible scenarios for that.
That doesn’t mean that there’s anything wrong with the engine–it just means that the overall vehicle design and operations have to account for the new characteristics.
Summer Reading
Ken Murphy has a bunch of reviews of solar fiction for kids.
Hook ’em while they’re young.
It’s Healed!
Miraculously (and mysteriously), my internal wireless adaptor started working yesterday. Unfortunately, that gives me one less excuse to return the laptop.
I still have to figure out what to do about Linux. Also, I’m unimpressed with Vista so far. Last night, the machine crawled almost to a halt. It’s a 2 GHz Turion with three gigs of RAM. It took forever for task manager to load, and it provided no information as to which process was causing the problem, but the CPU was saturated. I couldn’t even shut down applications, or the computer itself. I eventually had to just power it down. It’s been OK since I rebooted into safe mode, and then rebooted again, but I have no idea what was going on.
Reporting The Edwards Scandal
Mickey Kaus makes the case:
The only legitimate reason not to cover this scandal, it seems to me, is simple sympathy for Elizabeth Edwards–and I’ve gotten enough emails from anguished and angry members of the MSM to conclude, with Estrich, that it’s the prime reason for the MSM blackout. True, I also suspect that if Mrs. Edwards were a conservative Republican, or even an unbeloved Democrat, the MSM might somehow find a way to overcome this compassionate sentiment. But that doesn’t make it wrong. Reporters don’t have to print everything. You could conclude that the need to protect Mrs. Edwards her children is so great, the karma of Enquiring so bad, that all of the obvious, public-interesty reasons for covering the story should be thrown out the window. And if John Edwards were already so damaged that in practice he’d never get a significant public office even if he wants one, I might agree (even if that meant sacrificing the deterrent effect of full exposure).
But that’s a point that clearly hasn’t been reached yet, at least not while most Americans are being kept in the dark about what, exactly, has led to Edwards’ mysterious disappearance from the political oddsmakers’ charts. A man arrogant and ambitious enough to think he can run for president posing as a loyal husband while keeping his second family secret, even as he visits his mistress in a famous hotel that is hosting a convention of journalists, will be arrogant and ambitious enough to keep hiding under the shield of his wife’s illness until he can attempt a comeback– if given the chance.
The alternative, it seems to me, is to let affection for Mrs. Edwards suck journalists into a Print-the-Legend world where they must spend their time burnishing–or at least accepting–the story powerful people and institutions want them to tell, the story of the wonderful Edwards marriage, rather than figuring out and telling readers the truth. If I wanted to be in that business I’d be a publicist.
That’s certainly what the “journalists” have been when it came to Barack Obama. Does anyone doubt that if Edwards were a Republican in similar circumstances, that there would have been a NYT story about it? The question answers itself.
It’s That Time Of The Week Again
Lileks examines the train wreck that is Garrison Keillor’s latest:
I’m sorry, but I’m just fascinated by his column. Each is nearly identical in formlessness, subject and general pointlessness. To be fair: we all write at haste and repent at leisure, unless we can somehow get it out of the Google cache. We all make inelegant remarks that seemed wonderfully writerly at the moment but curdle when exposed to another pair of eyes. It’s the perils of blogging. But he has an entire week to write these things. Never does he attempt to make an argument or explore a line of thought – it’s just flat assertions ladled out with nuance or shading. The sun rises, Bush is bad, life is long but also short and so you should sit outside and drink lemonade and think of the people who came before you and sat outside and drank lemonade and there is a comfort in that continuity and we need all the comfort we can get in these days when nihilists in golf pants are everywhere and the Republic lies in ruins. Also, he is given to run-on sentences. This week has perhaps the finest example yet.
If that’s not enough, there is some cereal blogging, too.
A Farewell To Straw Men?
Probably not, but we can always hope. I have a piece over at Pajamas today about fallacious and demagogic debating tactics.