And probably a futile one, and one that I’ve even probably kvetched about before. But when did top posting become the norm for email? Was it Microsoft and AOL’s fault?
And is there anything that can be done at this point? In many extended discussions, I feel like I’m driving on the wrong side of the road in my own country.
…at Keith’s brief “review” of my exploration piece:
The author of this article makes some odd, borderline misogynist, and mostly unsupportable claims (mixed with some valid points) as he rambles along trying to explain why people do or not explore. “Empirically obvious“? – Where’s the data to support this?
Where the support for the claim that it is “misogynist,” “borderline” or otherwise? Is he claiming that Cristina Hoff Sommers is misogynist?
What is “odd” about my claims?
And as for the data to support my claim, I provided it in the piece. Things for which there is an “innate human urge” are done by most, if not all humans. Most people don’t explore.
[Update a few minutes later]
One of the commenters over there gets it:
I didn’t see anything misogynist in Simberg’s piece – he’s just pointing out a potential cost of browbeating and drugging boys into behaving more like girls in school.
Exactly. If my piece was (mis)interpreted to imply that women cannot or should not be explorers, that’s absurd, and I would hope obviously so.
Is Barack Obama too young to be president?
Sure seems that way to me.
Here’s a nice piece on Mojave at Popular Mechanics.
From Instapundit.
I think that this stuff is going to sneak up on us, and the political establishment is going to not have any idea how to respond to it. But it will be a disaster for social security in its current form, as well as pension plans, though a boon for those of us who have never counted on it.
Henry Spencer (whose wisdom is finally becoming available on the web, apparently) explains:
An experienced designer with more freedom to act might have realised that there was just too much optimism in the Ares I concept, that a shuttle SRB was simply too small as a first stage for a rocket carrying the relatively heavy Orion spacecraft. There were several ways to handle the situation, but in my opinion the best was to just forget about Ares I entirely: build Ares V, or something like it, right away and use it for all the launches.
With a big launcher, there would be plenty of margin for weight overruns in development. Using the big launcher for Earth-orbit missions would obviously permit much heavier payloads there. Moreover, the lunar missions would get greater margins too, because they’d be done with two big launches rather than a big one and a little one, so they could weigh almost twice as much.
There is also an important pragmatic issue: the biggest threat to NASA’s return to the Moon is the possibility that Congress will delay or cancel development funding for Ares V. Doing Ares V right away, and using it for the Earth-orbit missions as well as the ones to the Moon, would have ensured that this crucial element of NASA’s plans actually gets built.
Of course, better yet would have been a focus on in-space infrastructure, drawing on ISS assembly experience, to allow us to use existing launchers. That would have also freed up money for earlier development of injection stages and landers, and made lunar missions much more of a fait accompli by now.
Assuming that this is correct, the biggest shut out in history is 22-0. Detroit is currently leading the Royals 18-0 in the top of the eighth, with men on second and third, and two out.
[Update a couple minutes later]
They got one more run to end the inning. Going into the bottom of the eighth, it’s 19-0. They scored ten runs in that inning. Three more in the ninth ties the record, and four breaks it. It could happen. Their bats seem pretty hot tonight, and Kansas City is deep into its bullpen. The Tigers just brought in Dolsi to preserve the shut out.
[Update a couple minutes later]
They blew it by relieving Miner. Dolsi let in a run on a wild pitch.
Dang.
[One more update]
Wow, they really blew it. The Royals got four runs in the bottom of the eighth off Dolsi and Lopez. Of course, once they lost the shut out, it didn’t really matter. But people are going to be asking for a long time why Leland relieved out a pitcher who was pitching a three-hit shut out, with one who had an equivalent ERA.
[Update on Tuesday morning]
I guess I’d misread the box score. Miner had been replaced the inning before, before it looked like there was a history-making shut out to preserve.
…are delicious.
The New York Times sends John McCain’s op ed back for a rewrite.
Words fail.
Can we call them biased yet?
And just what does he means when he’d like to see McCain’s piece “mirror” Obama? Does he mean that as in a reverse counterpoint? Or does he mean (as in servers) an exact copy?
Thoughts from Rick Moran, as the Times continues, unwittingly, to write its own obituary.