General

Get Well Wishes

I’m certainly no fan of Governor Corzine, but I also certainly hope that he recovers fully and soon from his auto accident. And if he really wasn’t wearing a seatbelt, that was dumb, and should be a lesson taken from the incident for all. I’m always amazed at people who don’t wear one. My grandmother hated to–she claimed that it was more dangerous to do so because she might get trapped in the car in it, completely misjudging the relative odds of this happening versus getting her face plastered into a dash or through a windshield.

[Update on Friday evening]

I just heard the Lieutenant Governor say that “business in New Jersey would continue to take place as usual.” If I were a Garden State resident, I’d take small comfort in those words. One would like an improvement, I think…

Space

Will Microgravity Research Finally Pan Out?

Clark Lindsey has an interesting post on the prospects, now that people more responsive than NASA are going to offer research opportunities. I’ve always been a skeptic on it, and thought it vastly overhyped, particularly with regard to how it was used to sell the space station, but at least now, it will get a fair shot. And I agree with how he opens the piece:

One of the unfortunate tendencies of NASA is for the agency to implement a good idea in a bad way and thereby discredit that idea. Prime examples include RLVs and space tethers.

Yes, when people ask what harm it is to have NASA doing its own thing, and to just ignore it while we do ours, this is the answer. Few people really understand how much damage NASA has done over the decades in this manner. X-33 by itself probably set back the cause of low-cost spaceflight by over a decade, and we’re only just starting to recover from that debacle, with the Air Force finally starting to take space transports seriously again, even if NASA continues to refuse to do so.

Space

Diversions

I haven’t said anything about Representative Calvert’s proposal to allow NASA to accept ads on its hardware to raise money for prizes, but there’s a good discussion of it at Space Politics. I have to say that I agree with “anonymous”‘s take on it:

At this very early stage of market development, the pool of private sector dollars for any space advertising and sponsorship is going to be extremely limited. And unlike, say, a more mature market like NASCAR racing, space activities simply don

Administrative

Office Software Bleg

OK, if I have a spreadsheet in Excel, now do I convert it to a Word table?

More to the point (for the real mavens) if I have an Open Office spreadsheet, how do I convert it to an Open Office Write table?

[Friday morning update]

OK, I ended up “pasting special” into Open Office Writer as an Excel spreadsheet. Duh. And thanks for all the tips.

Political Commentary

The University Of Spoiled Children

This story of a sweatshop protest at USC is hilarious. I suspect, though, given that it’s the LA Times, that it’s unintentionally so:

Thirteen students, who came prepared with food to last three days and pillows, ended their protest after about six hours when the university threatened to suspend them and, in a move that even surprised former 1960s student activist Tom Hayden, called their parents.

“We were prepared for arrest, but not suspension,” said Ana Valderrama, a senior in philosophy.

…The students were given 10 minutes to decide whether to end their sit-in

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!