I have a new piece up on this week’s non-discovery of water on Mars.
It’s Always Something
Well, I got what I thought was a good deal on a laptop.
Two problems (well, three, one of which is caused by the other). First, the integrated WLAN adaptor doesn’t seem to work. That’s an annoyance, but I have a USB adaptor. More seriously, it doesn’t seem to accept Linux. When I tried to do a Fedora 9 install, it hung on one of the devices. It didn’t occur to me to check to see if it was compatible with Linux–I had just assumed that it had evolved to the point where that wasn’t an issue any more. So I’m considering returning, but not sure how to avoid the problem in the future.
Oh, the third problem? It comes with Vista installed. I hadn’t cared when I thought that it would running Linux most of the time, but now it’s an issue.
It’s Always Something
Well, I got what I thought was a good deal on a laptop.
Two problems (well, three, one of which is caused by the other). First, the integrated WLAN adaptor doesn’t seem to work. That’s an annoyance, but I have a USB adaptor. More seriously, it doesn’t seem to accept Linux. When I tried to do a Fedora 9 install, it hung on one of the devices. It didn’t occur to me to check to see if it was compatible with Linux–I had just assumed that it had evolved to the point where that wasn’t an issue any more. So I’m considering returning, but not sure how to avoid the problem in the future.
Oh, the third problem? It comes with Vista installed. I hadn’t cared when I thought that it would running Linux most of the time, but now it’s an issue.
SpaceX Milestone
They did a full nine-engine static test of the Falcon 9 yesterday. No mention of burn duration, but I assume that it wasn’t a simulation of a full ascent. I also assume that they have run individual engines at full duration. If they launch Falcon 1 this weekend or early next week, it will have been a pretty momentous week for New Space, with the WK2 rollout, the rocket racer debut, and the SpaceX achievements.
Unresolved
Clark Lindsey has the press release from Scaled about last summer’s fatal accident. Short version, by my reading: we still don’t know what happened and probably never will, so we’re just going to be a lot more careful in the future.
I still think that they continue to overestimate the safety of hybrids, and that it wasn’t a great choice for propulsion. I suspect that if Burt were starting from scratch now, he’d go with a liquid, but shifting to one at this stage would involve too large of a redesign of the airframe.
We Knew This Was Coming (Part Two)
Is climate change racist?
Sometimes these people become parodies of themselves (as in the old gag New York Times headline: “World Ends–Women, Minorities Hit Hardest”).
I’m sure glad that this issue hasn’t been politicized.
Busy
I had to write a piece this morning on the Phoenix water tasting, and I’m getting ready to fly to LA on Sunday for a new (badly needed) consulting gig. I also have to go out and buy a new laptop this afternoon, so posting may be light.
The Audacity Of Arrogance
The conventional wisdom is that this election is Senator Obama’s to lose. Andrew Malcolm explains why he probably will:
Several strategists of both parties sense that Americans want to vote for Obama, but something is holding them back. Or several somethings, as we suggested up top.
Maybe Obama’s flips — his outspoken opposition to denouncing the Rev. Jeremiah Wright until he did; his promise to take public campaign financing, since broken; his eagerness to debate McCain in town halls, now abandoned; his apparent unwillingness to see progress in the Iraq troop surge, which he opposed and predicted would worsen sectarian violence?
Is there a simmering concern over arrogance by the Ivy League lawyer and mere candidate who so blithely patted the French president on the back for a well-done news conference? Asked the other day if he ever doubted himself, Obama replied smartly, “Never!” And grinned broadly. Sounded more like a 20-year-old than someone about to turn 47 next week.
I don’t pay much attention to polls before the conventions, but the fact that it is so close in the summer, when Dems are usually far ahead, has to be very worrisome to the Obama campaign.
Science As A Religion
And a fundamentalist one, at that:
When Salon interviewed me about my new book, “Saving Darwin,” I suggested that science doesn’t know everything, that there might be a reality beyond science, and that religion might be about God and not merely about the human quest for a nonexistent God. These remarks got me condemned to whatever hell Myers believes in.
Myers accused me of having “fantastic personal delusions” that could actually lead people astray. “I will have no truck with the perpetuation of fallacious illusions, whether honeyed or bitter,” Myers wrote, “and consider the Gibersons of this world to be corruptors of a better truth. That’s harsh, I know … but he is undermining the core of rationalism we ought to be building, and I find his beliefs pernicious.”
Myers’ confident condemnations put me in mind of that great American preacher, Jonathan Edwards, who waxed eloquent in his famous 1741 speech, “Sinners at the Hands of an Angry God,” about the miserable delusions that lead humans to reject the truth and spend eternity in hell. We still have preachers like Edwards today, of course; they can be found on the Trinity Broadcasting Network. But now we also have a new type of preacher, the Rev. PZ Myers.
And they don’t even recognize it in themselves. Dawkins and Myers and Hitchens are doing more harm than good for science in their evangelizing, I think.
We Knew This Was Coming
John Glenn is arguing for an extension of the Shuttle program. I don’t really give a rip what he thinks, but a lot of people on the Hill (particularly on the Democrat side) will take him seriously. The problem is that it’s not just a matter of coming up with more money. NASA has to do pad modifications at 39 A and B to accommodate the new vehicles, and they can’t do that if they continue to fly Shuttle. I suspect that it will also start to get pretty crowded in the VAB if they’re doing Ares and Shuttle simultaneously.
Sometimes, I think that the best thing that could happen to American space policy would be a Cat 5 hurricane hitting the Cape, and scraping it clean.
[Update a few minutes later]
Here’s more from Robert Block at the Orlando Sentinel. Note the comment about there being no appetite on the Hill for a Shuttle extension.
[Update a few more minutes later]
Mark Whittington once again demonstrates his legendary prowess at reading miscomprehension. I agree with Jon (though I’m not going to vote for Bob Barr). As I said, probably the most effective (and perhaps necessary) step toward a revitalization of NASA would be a Cat 5 at the Cape. I don’t think that anything less can shake the space industrial complex up sufficiently to get any kind of new thinking or direction.