With less than a week to go until the centennial celebration, Dwayne Day has an interesting bit of space history about Robert Heinlein over at The Space Review.
Raves
I’ve seen several reviews of Ratatouille. I’ve not seen a bad one. Lileks was very impressed.
More Giggle Factor Decline
TGV doesn’t get as much attention as some of the other NewSpace firms, but here’s an article about a recent successful engine test, from Norman, Oklahoma, where it’s based.
Is Orion In Mass Trouble?
“Anonymous” over at Space Politics thinks so (see sixth comment):
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Perspective
Today is the hundred and forty fourth anniversary of the first day of the Battle of Gettysburg. In the three bloody days of that battle, on the Union side alone, we had about as many casualties, killed and wounded as we’ve had in over four years in Iraq.
More Glove Prize Publicity
Here’s another story on Peter Homer, at the International Herald Tribune. Not much different than yesterday’s offerings, but it’s nice to see this getting so much play in the press.
“No Sign Of The Sacred”
Michael Yon has a gruesome report from Iraq, with graphic photos:
Soldiers from 5th IA said al Qaeda had cut the heads off the children. Had al Qaeda murdered the children in front of their parents? Maybe it had been the other way around: maybe they had murdered the parents in front of the children. Maybe they had forced the father to dig the graves of his children.
This isn’t civil war. It’s a war on the Iraqi people, and on decency itself, by a mindless, butchering hateful ideology. And in their savagery, they use our own decency against us, booby trapping bodies because they know that we, unlike they, honor the dead.
“No Sign Of The Sacred”
Michael Yon has a gruesome report from Iraq, with graphic photos:
Soldiers from 5th IA said al Qaeda had cut the heads off the children. Had al Qaeda murdered the children in front of their parents? Maybe it had been the other way around: maybe they had murdered the parents in front of the children. Maybe they had forced the father to dig the graves of his children.
This isn’t civil war. It’s a war on the Iraqi people, and on decency itself, by a mindless, butchering hateful ideology. And in their savagery, they use our own decency against us, booby trapping bodies because they know that we, unlike they, honor the dead.
“No Sign Of The Sacred”
Michael Yon has a gruesome report from Iraq, with graphic photos:
Soldiers from 5th IA said al Qaeda had cut the heads off the children. Had al Qaeda murdered the children in front of their parents? Maybe it had been the other way around: maybe they had murdered the parents in front of the children. Maybe they had forced the father to dig the graves of his children.
This isn’t civil war. It’s a war on the Iraqi people, and on decency itself, by a mindless, butchering hateful ideology. And in their savagery, they use our own decency against us, booby trapping bodies because they know that we, unlike they, honor the dead.
California Election Reform
There was a discussion over on Usenet in which people were whining about how unfair it was that Gore didn’t win the presidency, even though he got a majority of the vote (he didn’t really–there’s no way to know that within the margin of error of vote counts, so close was the election), because of that anachronistic electoral college thingie. I pointed out that there’s nothing at all anachronistic about it, and that in fact it’s arguable that it’s needed more than ever, with modern media. If the president were directly elected, all a candidate would have to do is ad buys in the major media markets, and voters in places like Wyoming and Alaska would be effectively disenfranchised, since the candidates would have no need to pay any attention to them.
It occurs to me that, in fact, a lot of California’s mess could be alleviated by instituting an electoral college. As it is now, while there are legislators representing rural counties, they’re overwhelmed by those from the cities, and the entire state (most of which is in fact quite rural) is run by Sacramento.
I’m not sure exactly what the mechanism to restore some balance might be, but it would probably involve having electors proportional to state senator and representatives from some kind of new district analogous to states within the state, to at least insure that the governor was more broadly representative of all the state’s constituencies, rather than just LA, San Diego and the Bay Area. Of course, given the current political structure, implementing such a reform is probably a fantasy.
[Early afternoon update]
Just by coincidence, here’s an article by Henry Lamb defending the electoral college.