That’s what Cathy Young writes that civil libertarians are about terrorism.
Who Cares?
Can anyone explain to me why I (or anyone) should give a plug nickel about what Mikhail Gorbachev thinks? About anything?
“The Rule, Not The Exception”
The life of a soldier has been described as long periods of boredom punctuated by occasional moments of sheer terror. Michael Totten has a military correspondent who reports that Iraq is no different:
Even in the worst places, day-to-day activity is mundane and quiet. When attacks occur, they do so viciously. In my case, these resulted in my unit
“The Rule, Not The Exception”
The life of a soldier has been described as long periods of boredom punctuated by occasional moments of sheer terror. Michael Totten has a military correspondent who reports that Iraq is no different:
Even in the worst places, day-to-day activity is mundane and quiet. When attacks occur, they do so viciously. In my case, these resulted in my unit
“The Rule, Not The Exception”
The life of a soldier has been described as long periods of boredom punctuated by occasional moments of sheer terror. Michael Totten has a military correspondent who reports that Iraq is no different:
Even in the worst places, day-to-day activity is mundane and quiet. When attacks occur, they do so viciously. In my case, these resulted in my unit
A Tribute
…to Glen May. He was a lifelong rocketeer.”
[Update a few minutes later]
Dan Schrimpsher has more.
And Jim Bennett notes via private correspondence:
You will remember the scenes in The Right Stuff at the funerals of the test pilots; the Navy Hymn was always sung. This version includes the last verse, for space travellers, written by [Annapolis graduate] Robert Heinlein in 1947.
Eternal Father, strong to save,
Whose arm hath bound the restless wave,
Who bidd
Morons
Two points. First, the new power (for good or ill) of blogs:
The tragedy stunned space tourism supporters, many of whom were betting that Branson’s Virgin Galactic spaceline would be the first in the fledgling business to send well-heeled tourists out of the atmosphere.
“I suspect that this is a major setback for Virgin Galactic, because they may have to go back to the drawing board for propulsion, for PR reasons if nothing else,” wrote former aerospace engineer and space tourism consultant Randy Simberg on his blog Transterrestrial Musings.
I guess I have to be more careful what I post. At least I used the crucial word “may…”
The second point, of course (note the emphasis), is that whoever dug this up on the Interweb couldn’t read my name correctly, and felt compelled to add the obligatory (and yet, entirely not only not necessary, but insulting diminutive “y” to it).
[Update a minute later]
Great. It’s not just the Chron. This has become the AP story, as demonstrated by the same error at the Mercury News. Thus are urban legends born.
A Hundred Dollars A Barrel?
I don’t think so, despite Derb’s hand wringing. He relies on this overwrought analysis, which doesn’t have that figure anywhere in it that I can see.
The analyst is mixing up oil prices and gas prices in that scare story. But he also completely ignores alternate sources, such as shale and tar sands, which are in huge supply (larger than crude oil reserves) in places like Colorado and Wyoming, and Alberta, and profitable at thirty bucks a barrel. This effectively puts a ceiling on oil prices in the long term, and the longer prices stay where they currently are, the more and faster those sources will be expanding capacity.
I not only don’t think we’ll have a hundred dollars a barrel next November–I don’t think that we’ll ever do so, in inflation-adjusted terms, at least not for any significant (a few weeks at most, in panicked response to some event) period of time.
Unlucky Space Carnival
Brian Dunbar has the 13th one up. I’m sure there’s no relationship between this and yesterday’s bad news, though.
Just Lucky
Well, not really. Despite the idiocy and ineffectiveness of the current airline security procedures, I don’t worry about hijackers any more, because I simply don’t believe that the passengers will let it happen again. But instead of allowing qualified people to arm and protect themselves and their fellow passengers, the TSA puts up a politically and bureaucratically correct show.
What I do worry about is bombs, particularly in checked luggage. Airline security is just one more area in which I both believe that the Bush administration has been a disaster, and that the Democrats would be even worse, since they are unwilling to even discourage terrorists from suing vigilant citizens who rat on them.