I’ve banned a moronic anonymous commenter that seems to have nothing of value to contribute, and is so illiterate that it can’t even manage to spell my last name right. Just in case anyone was wondering. I grow less tolerant of such juvenile nonsense as time goes on. If the creature persists somehow, I’ll just delete the posts as well (probably should anyway).
The Runaway Ego Of Barack Obama
The presidency as therapy?
That was a big problem with Bill Clinton.
The Fat Fight Continues
John Tierney has the latest:
What we have to keep in mind here is that nutrition is a science (or at least should be) and science is about generating hypotheses, making predictions from our hypotheses, and then seeing if they hold true. The relevant hypothesis here — i.e., what we’ve believed for the past 30-odd years — is that saturated fat causes heart disease by elevating either total cholesterol or LDL cholesterol, specifically. So our prediction is that the diet with the higher saturated fat content will have a relatively deleterious effect on cholesterol. We do the test; we repeat it a half dozen times in different populations. Each time it fails to confirm our prediction. So maybe the hypothesis is wrong. That seems like a reasonable conclusion. No one is proving anything here — as some of your respondents like to decry — we’re just looking at the evidence and trying to decide which hypotheses it supports and which it tends to refute.
…These latest trials just happen to be the best data we have on the long-term effects of saturated fat in the diet, and the best data we have says that more saturated fat is better than less. It may be true that if we lowered saturated fat further — say to 7 % of all calories as the American Heart Association is now recommending — or total fat down to 10 percent, as Dean Ornish argues, or raised saturated fat to 20 percent of calories, as Keys did, that we’d see a different result, but that’s just another hypothesis. The trials haven’t been done to test it. It’s also hard to imagine why a small decrease in saturated fat would be deleterious, but a larger decrease would be beneficial.
I think that what the nutrition industry and the FDA have done over the past decades with their pseudoscience war on dietary fat borders on the criminal. I’m pretty much convinced at this point that the biggest culprit in both our health and weight is starch and refined sugars, and that the FDA “food pyramid” has been, and remains (despite recent improvements) quackery, not science.
He Brought Light Unto The World
Gerard Baker finally sees the light himself:
As word spread throughout the land about the Child’s wondrous works, peoples from all over flocked to hear him; Hittites and Abbasids; Obamacons and McCainiacs; Cameroonians and Blairites.
And they told of strange and wondrous things that greeted the news of the Child’s journey. Around the world, global temperatures began to decline, and the ocean levels fell and the great warming was over.
The Great Prophet Algore of Nobel and Oscar, who many had believed was the anointed one, smiled and told his followers that the Child was the one generations had been waiting for.
And the polar bears rejoiced.
Unmitigated Risks
Ares 1 marches (or staggers) on:
Thrust Oscillation is specifically named in relation to end of the first stage burn of Ares I-X, which requires mitigation – proposed to be in the form of high strength fasteners.
“Preliminary results show lower axial loads and higher lateral loads during thrust oscillation at the end of the FS (First Stage) burn (T+120sec). Proposed mitigation (high strength fasteners in impacted hardware) in work, needs to be presented at ERB (Engineering Review Board).
Afraid it will shake apart? Use bigger screws!
I love this, too.
While beefing up the structure is a mitigation for the hardware, Ares I-X’s components are also in the TO firing line, with the most concerning element referencing the Flight Termination System (FTS) – which may require a range waiver due to the potential TO could exceed the components certification, and the threat of vibrating them out of action.
“Requirement – Range Safety: multiple waivers. Lack of dual S&A device. Lack of initiation of LSC at both ends. Lack of “CRD Self-test” capability. Minimum separation of FTS components,” added the presentation.
We may massage the thing so hard that we won’t be able to blow up the vehicle if something goes wrong (e.g., it starts blasting toward the VAB). Can we have a waiver, please?
NASA’s unending ability to waive itself from its own requirements is one of the reasons that the notion of “human rating” is nonsensical.
[Early evening update]
Link to NASA Space Flight was bad before. It’s fixed now. I’m kind of surprised that it took all day for someone to point it out. Just more evidence that most people don’t follow the links, at least if I post significant excerpts and/or commentary on them.
[Update a couple minutes later]
Rob Coppinger has Ares 1, then and now. That upper stage has really grown. I also hadn’t realized that it had a common bulkhead for the tanks. Well, at least it’s not hypergolic.
Sad Anniversary
Clark notes that tomorrow will be a time of remembrance in Mojave.
And one year later, they still don’t seem to know for sure what happened. And we haven’t heard what’s going on with SpaceShipTwo propulsion development, though it won’t fly before late next year (at least two years behind the original schedule, with some of that slippage no doubt due to last year’s incident).
Thank Gore
Heh:
…thank Gore that the ice is melting just as we need the oil. It’s like divine Providence at work.
This from someone who worked on his 1988 presidential campaign.
We Are The World
Lileks reviews Obama’s empty speechifying in Berlin. It’s not a pretty sight:
He also called for an end to nuclear weapons. (This was also Reagan’s dream, but he had a different way of going about it.) Of course, this isn’t going to happen, but it sounds nice. Who wouldn’t want a world in which everyone decommissions the nukes, and Iran says “wait, what? We thought these were cool. Well, then, we’ll give them up. Geez, next thing you’ll tell us, Izod shirts with popped collars are out.” We will never poke the Genie back in the bottle, and Obama knows this. But the words loft well on the breath of the assembled. The problem, however, is that he didn’t just set forth ideas humanity would be wise to make manifest – he made them moral imperatives that must be done now, because the THIS IS THE MOMENT, and NOW IS THE MOMENT THAT THIS IS, and the moment to come in a few moments is also the moment, but it’s a few moments past the previous moment, which was also now. THIS IS THE MOMENT to do something about Darfur. Fine. What? THIS IS THE MOMENT to do something about Burmese dissidents. Fine. What?
Nothing will be done about either; they are, unfortunately, matters inconsequential to the general order of things. This is not to say that they are not obscene, or horrific, or more evidence of human perfidy both general and specific, but just as the world summed the strength to turn away from Rwanda and Cambodia, it will manage to struggle with the daunting task of doing nothing about Darfur or Burma. The drone of a jet engine outside your window, bearing you to another international conference, does an admirable job of masking the sound of a machete striking bone down below.
As always, read the whole thing.
[Update a while later]
I have to also say that the unexplained image of the Magritte painting in response to the Obama campaign claim that the campaign speech was not a campaign speech was brilliant. One of the things that’s great about Lileks is that he respects his readers’ intelligence.
Manning Submarines
…with women.
Somehow, it reminds me of this classic Martin Mull (and Steve Martin) sea shanty.
Fact Checking Al Gore
It’s a busy job, but someone has to do it.