Kyle Smith isn’t impressed with WALL-E. Lileks loved it (though he’s an admitted Disney/Pixarphile).
Guess I’ll have to see for myself now.
WASP Nation?
I’ve always thought that Allan Lichtman is an idiot. His book, per its title, and as reviewed by David Frum confirms my beliefs. One doesn’t have to be a conservative to think that much leftist criticism of conservatism is completely clueless, and brainless.
More Stuff White People Like
Changing their middle name to “Hussein.” As Glenn notes:
Our own lives are weak and meaningless. Only through identification with a great leader
can they achieve substance and purpose.
That About Sums It Up
Eric Raymond and I are on the same wavelength:
Gun owners who are (like me) libertarians and swing voters are in the same fix as SayUncle. Many of us have good reasons to loathe McCain; mine, as I’ve previously mentioned, is that I think BCRA (the McCain-Feingold campaign finance “reform” act) was an atrocious assault on First Amendment liberties. Others can’t stand McCain’s position on immigration, or the idiotic blather he tends to spew on economics-related subjects. But for those of us who think Second Amendment rights are fundamentally important, voting for anyone who would appoint more anti-firearms judges (a certainty from Obama given his past views) is just not an option.
That translates into votes for McCain. Probably including (though I shudder and retch at the thought) my vote. It’s not like there’s any chance Obama’s going to push for the repeal of BCRA. So I’m left with a choice between a candidate hostile to both my First and Second Amendment rights and one that supports the Second Amendment. (Normally I’d vote Libertarian, but the LP’s isolationist foreign-policy stance seems so batty after 9/11 that I can’t stomach that option in this cycle.)
Yup. One of the arguments that McCain will make with the bitter gun clingers is that he will be able to provide a Supreme Court that strongly, not narrowly supports gun rights. That’s going to be very important now as the various cases work their way through the courts to define the limits of the “newly found” (that is, one that has been there since the Founding, but which many have attempted to pretend didn’t exist for the past several decades) right.
Boostback
Jon Goff has another installment in his excellent series of tutorials on future space transport concepts. The interesting thing, as he points out, is that one can see a clear development and technological maturation path to these types of affordable systems via operational suborbital vehicles, both horizontal and vertical.
Hooking Them Early
Behold, Space Camp Barbie. Maybe math isn’t as hard as she thought.
A Solution To The Ares 1 Problem
A tuned mass vibration damper:
Due to both the immense size of Taipei 101 and the fact that it sits just over 600ft from a major fault line, engineers had no choice but to install one of this size at a cost of $4m. Too heavy to be lifted by crane, the damper was assembled on site and hangs through four floors of the skyscraper. It can reduce the building’s movement by up to 40%.
And only 728 tons. Hey, the vehicle’s already overweight. What’s a little more?
Wonder How Many There Are?
I’ll bet that the Obama campaign does, too and worries about it. Hillary! supporters for John McCain:
I believe strongly that all of us should now unite for McCain because he needs all of badly…I am sure all of us won’t vote for Obama and then all of us want Hillary badly to return 2012…..
The only way to make sure that Hillary will be our President 2012 is to make sure that McCain will win 08….
You know that’s what Hillary! is thinking, regardless of the “Unity” speech.
[Afternoon update]
Here’s someone else who is bitter, though it’s not clear if he’s clinging to God and guns:
A senior Democrat who worked for Mr Clinton has revealed that he recently told friends Mr Obama could “kiss my ass” in return for his support.
A second source said that the former president has kept his distance because he still does not believe Mr Obama can win the election.
Whatever else you want to say about Bill Clinton, he’s not politically stupid. Though perhaps his judgment is slipping, based on the behavior in the campaign (which could in fact be a result of his heart surgeries). Either way, this isn’t going to help heal the rift.
Thanks, Florida!
Florida just bought 300 square miles of cane fields in the everglades to return them to wetlands. They paid $1.75 billion. That buys out US Sugar that was responsible for 10% of the US sugar lobby. In April, in response to one of Rand’s posts, I wrote that we needed to find a way to buy out big sugar. For 6 MT times $0.10 implicit subsidy/lb, that’s $1.2 billion/year. US Sugar’s share of that is $120 million per year. So $1.75B is a pretty good price for their concession.
Sweet deal, Rand! Thanks for taking one for the team as a Floridian to lower sugar prices nationwide.
Caulking Up The Leaks
I’ve noticed since upgrading to Firefox 3 that my browser (and general system) performance has been much better. An independent consultant claims that it’s now the most efficient browser on the market in regard to memory leaks, at least for Windows, and Safari has problems (though it’s not clear whether that’s just on Windows, or on Macs as well).