It’s a pretty common occurrence for a little kid to be disappointed when he loses his grip on his balloon, but this is in a different class entirely:
The former paratrooper had hoped his “Big Jump” — starting 40 kilometers (25 miles) above the Earth’s surface — would set new records for the highest jump, fastest and longest free fall and the highest altitude reached by a man in a balloon.
But those hopes drifted away over the plains of Saskatchewan in Canada when the balloon escaped.
I think he should give up on the balloon thing, and just wait for a rocket ride.
It wouldn’t shock me if Obama’s uncle was in the Red Army, given his mother’s apparent political beliefs, but I suspect that he’s either repeating a family myth, or gaffeing again. I don’t think that this is his Tuzla, though. If he claimed to have liberated Auschwitz himself it might be Hillary-class, but not this.
[Update a while later]
Does Obama even have an uncle who could have served in the US Army?
It’s one thing to get your concentration camps confused, but conjuring up family members puts this in a different class of fabulism. Does he really think that no one will call him on this? Well, considering the way the media has been swooning for him, maybe he does.
[Update a few minutes later]
Heh. From comments, I agree. Maybe he was thinking about his Uncle Joe…
I’m listening to the young (or maybe not so young) fascists disrupting McCain’s speech in Denver on nuclear proliferation, with chants of “Endless War! Endless War!” They are being drowned out by the Senator’s supporters chanting “John McCain, John McCain.”
OK, whether or not they’re fascists is just a guess, but I think it’s a pretty safe one. Though it’s probably unfair to characterize them as Black Shirts–they were mostly ex-military.
At this point, noisy protesters disrupting a McCain speech are basically advertising, “I am incapable of letting those I disagree with express their views in public; I am uncomfortable with free expression and at heart a fascist, as I do not believe opposing viewpoints should be heard.”
He thinks that they were chanting “Stop this war,” not “Endless War.” That could be.
There’s still plenty of room for disagreements –I have some myself (perhaps even a big one when it comes to capsules although it depends on the details, I think they’ve still got lots of more or less unexplored potential…
I agree that there are lots of interesting concepts for capsules and their recovery modes. But that’s beside the point. The reason that I don’t like capsules, of any form, is quite simple. They imply that the only part of the vehicle (at least the upper stage of it) that returns is the capsule. Hence they imply at least a partially, if not fully expendable launch system. I don’t believe that we are going to seriously open up space by continuing to throw hardware away.
There’s still plenty of room for disagreements –I have some myself (perhaps even a big one when it comes to capsules although it depends on the details, I think they’ve still got lots of more or less unexplored potential…
I agree that there are lots of interesting concepts for capsules and their recovery modes. But that’s beside the point. The reason that I don’t like capsules, of any form, is quite simple. They imply that the only part of the vehicle (at least the upper stage of it) that returns is the capsule. Hence they imply at least a partially, if not fully expendable launch system. I don’t believe that we are going to seriously open up space by continuing to throw hardware away.
There’s still plenty of room for disagreements –I have some myself (perhaps even a big one when it comes to capsules although it depends on the details, I think they’ve still got lots of more or less unexplored potential…
I agree that there are lots of interesting concepts for capsules and their recovery modes. But that’s beside the point. The reason that I don’t like capsules, of any form, is quite simple. They imply that the only part of the vehicle (at least the upper stage of it) that returns is the capsule. Hence they imply at least a partially, if not fully expendable launch system. I don’t believe that we are going to seriously open up space by continuing to throw hardware away.