Alan Boyle has a roundup of thoughts over Mrs. Nowack’s escapades. And he beats me to the punch on the article title–guess I’ll have to come up with a new one.
“The Wrong Stuff”
Alan Boyle has a roundup of thoughts over Mrs. Nowack’s escapades. And he beats me to the punch on the article title–guess I’ll have to come up with a new one.
Is This What Soros Has In Mind?
Storage Breakthrough
Hitachi has announced their terabyte drive.
Ummmmmm…..
One technical challenge: Muscle tissue that has never been flexed is a gooey mass, unlike the grained texture of meat from an animal that once lived. The solution is to stretch the tissue mechanically, growing cells on a scaffold that expands and contracts. This would allow factories to tone the flaccid flesh with a controlled workout.
The TCS Column Almost Writes Itself
What if it had happened on a Mars mission? That’s the nightmare of the psychs at NASA.
[Update at 7:20 Eastern]
I’m sure that it’s occurred to others, but isn’t wearing a diaper for an expected long mission exactly what a deranged ‘stro would do?
Tell Us How You Really Feel
I’m not sure–it’s kind of subtle, but I think that this is a guy who really hates Macs:
I hate Macs. I have always hated Macs. I hate people who use Macs. I even hate people who don’t use Macs but sometimes wish they did. Macs are glorified Fisher-Price activity centres for adults; computers for scaredy cats too nervous to learn how proper computers work; computers for people who earnestly believe in feng shui.
PCs are the ramshackle computers of the people. You can build your own from scratch, then customise it into oblivion. Sometimes you have to slap it to make it work properly, just like the Tardis (Doctor Who, incidentally, would definitely use a PC). PCs have charm; Macs ooze pretension. When I sit down to use a Mac, the first thing I think is, “I hate Macs”, and then I think, “Why has this rubbish aspirational ornament only got one mouse button?” Losing that second mouse button feels like losing a limb. If the ads were really honest, Webb would be standing there with one arm, struggling to open a packet of peanuts while Mitchell effortlessly tore his apart with both hands. But then, if the ads were really honest, Webb would be dressed in unbelievably po-faced avant-garde clothing with a gigantic glowing apple on his back. And instead of conducting a proper conversation, he would be repeatedly congratulating himself for looking so cool, and banging on about how he was going to use his new laptop to write a novel, without ever getting round to doing it, like a mediocre idiot.
Dim Prospects
…for liberaltarians. That’s what Arnold Kling thinks, anyway:
My point is not that the liberals have no case for an alternative approach. What disturbs me is that they are issuing rhetorical put-downs as a substitute for laying out an alternative and thinking through its consequences. Unfortunately, this is an all-to-typical modus operandi.
The Left’s religion often comes dressed up as science. Marxism is one example. The eugenics movement of the early twentieth century is another. The Global Warming crusade is probably another.
I think that Brink Lindsey’s overture will fall on deaf ears. I think that rather than attempt a fling with the liberals, libertarians would do better to go into counseling to try and save their marriage with conservatives.
Heading For A Cliff?
I haven’t had much to say about the submitted NASA budget, because I’ve been really busy (and have some personal problems right now), but there’s a lot of good discussion over at Space Politics (there are other posts on the subject as well).
Jeff Foust noted yesterday that it’s crunch time for NASA, sooner than many expected. I agree with Chair Force Engineer that if the program dies, or never gets beyond LEO, it will be an own goal by Griffin and company, who insisted on building new unneeded launch systems instead of focusing the funds on actual exploration hardware.
[Update a few minutes later]
Clark Lindsey has been doing some budget analysis to determine the potential fate of Centennial Challenges and COTS.
Astronauts Behaving Badly
Wow. Talk about the wrong stuff.
Dr. Sanity (a former psych profiler for NASA) has some thoughts on a culture of toxic narcissism.
Unjustified astronaut worship is one of the unfortunate consequences that lingers on, almost half a century after the Cold-War space program began. Just one more reason to try to privatize things ASAP. And of course, this is going to unfairly reflect badly on all the astronauts who really do have the “right” stuff.
[Late morning update]
Heh. Comment #50:
As another famous pilot once said,
“a trench coat and wig and, a knife, BB pistol, rubber tubing and plastic bags….Gosh a feller could have a pretty good time in Vegas with this stuff.”
[Afternoon update]
It’s already been added to her bio at wikipedia.
I see that she’s only flown once, last July. I wonder when this behavior started? Several astronauts have been profoundly affected by their trips into space. Some have gotten religion, some became addicted to various substances. The Overview Effect
[Late afternoon update]
I’m a little surprised to see that this has become the news story of the day, at least on Fox. But maybe I shouldn’t be. There’s probably a TCS column or two in this somewhere.
[Another update a couple minutes later]
I fearlessly predict that some kind of “space adaptation derangement” will play a key part of the defense. I say this because I already heard it on John Gibson’s show. Seriously, I do think that it will be played as insanity and a crime of passion. And I wouldn’t rule out the Overview Effect