In fact, US Air should not only not settle, they should countersue against these people for (probably deliberately, based on most accounts) terrorizing the passengers and disrupting service. I’d be happy to even contribute to a legal fund for it. In fact, it would be a good idea to set up a fund and get all the airlines to contribute to it, because US Air is waging this battle for the whole industry.
Don’t Settle
In fact, US Air should not only not settle, they should countersue against these people for (probably deliberately, based on most accounts) terrorizing the passengers and disrupting service. I’d be happy to even contribute to a legal fund for it. In fact, it would be a good idea to set up a fund and get all the airlines to contribute to it, because US Air is waging this battle for the whole industry.
An Interview With Elon
Here’s a piece from yesterday’s Mercury News. He’s not a pure investor. It’s part philanthropy:
I think the probability of humanity living longer is greater if we’re a multi-planet species. I think that’s fairly obvious. But I’m also quite optimistic about Earth. I don’t think Earth is in any danger of imminent demise. I think we will solve the problems that we have before us, and that humanity will probably live for a very long time.
But there’s always a chance that it could end. That’s why people buy life insurance. They don’t expect to drop dead tomorrow. Or car insurance. You don’t expect to T-bone your car into a semi. But you might. That’s why I’m a big believer in space exploration.
For me, space exploration is actually more interesting for positive reasons. I think humanity will be far more interesting and richer and diverse and just the future will be much more exciting and interesting if we are a space-faring civilization that is expanding among the stars than if we’re forever on Earth.
That’s the attitude I’d have if I had his kind of money.
Next Stop, Telepathy?
The Economist has an interesting survey on the future of the phone.
I’m not an early adaptor, and unlike the younger generation, I don’t live with my cell phone–it’s not an intimate and essential part of my life. I often forget to take it when I leave the house. Of course, this may be less a generational thing than the fact that I work mostly from home. When I’m traveling, I’m much more careful to keep it handy. But I wonder how many of these new developments won’t be picked up by older generations unused to them?
It’s also going to be a strange world, when most people are walking around seemingly talking to themselves like schizophrenics. We can still tell today because of the earpieces, but once they get smaller, or embedded in the body, it’s going to be a lot harder for shrinks to tell the difference between people with imaginary voices in their head, and real ones.
[Update late morning]
I’m guessing from comments that my humor was a little too subtle today.
Homesick
Charles Johnson has a knack for taking pictures that remind me of when I wasn’t in Florida. I’ve seen this view many times on walks. In fact, for a time, I lived just a few blocks from where it was taken.
Much Better Than That Harman Woman
The incoming chairman of the House Intelligence Committee doesn’t come off as very…intelligent. Or at least informed.
I’ve been fearful, ever since September 11, that our government, as currently constituted, is not up to the task of fighting this war. Things like this do nothing to assuage that fear.
But then, I guess it could be worse. Senator Patty Murray thinks that Al Qaeda is a day-care provider.
Consensus?
You know, when the Washington Post tells the Baker Commission they’re out to lunch on their policy recommendations, you know they have to be out there:
…to embrace the group’s proposed “New Diplomatic Offensive” would be to suppose a Middle East very different from what’s on the ground.
Start with the supposition that resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is somehow central to ending the chaos in Iraq. In fact, even if the two-state solution sought by the Bush administration were achieved, it’s difficult to imagine how or why that would cause Sunnis and Shiites to cease their sectarian war in Baghdad or the Baathist-al Qaeda insurgency to stand down. It’s no doubt true, as study group chairmen James A. Baker III and Lee H. Hamilton have said, that every Arab leader they met told them that an Israeli-Arab settlement must be the first priority. But the princes and dictators of Riyadh, Cairo and Amman have been delivering that tired line to American envoys for decades: It is their favorite excuse for failing to support U.S. initiatives and for refusing to reform their own moribund autocracies.
Baker is living in the past, and in an alternate reality.
Calling It In
I observed that three articles on conditions in Ramadi and al Anbar Province had appeared within a week of each other giving entirely different points of view. Mine and one in the Times of London said we’re winning the war in Ramadi; a Washington Post A1 story co-authored by “Fiasco” author Thomas Ricks claimed exactly the opposite. The difference, I said, could be explained simply. I and the Times writer reported from Ramadi. Ricks and his co-author have not only never been to Ramadi, they wrote their piece from Washington.
Preemptive note: we can expect Anonymous Moron in the comments section to chime in with the chronic mindless “chickenhawk” attack on me any minute now, because, you see, I’m not allowed to criticize the media reporting in Iraq unless I go myself. He or she never disappoints.
No Jews Allowed
Mark Steyn, on the “Illustrious Seniors Group“:
Oh, but lest you think there are no minimum admission criteria to James Baker’s “Support Group,” relax, it’s a very restricted membership: Arabs, Persians, Chinese commies, French obstructionists, Russian assassination squads. But no Jews. Even though Israel is the only country to be required to make specific concessions — return the Golan Heights, etc. Indeed, insofar as this document has any novelty value, it’s in the Frankenstein-meets-the-Wolfman sense of a boffo convergence of hit franchises: a Vietnam bug-out, but with the Jews as the designated fall guys. Wow. That’s what Hollywood would call “high concept.”
Why would anyone — even a short-sighted incompetent political fixer whose brilliant advice includes telling the first Bush that no one would care if he abandoned the “Read my lips” pledge — why would even he think it a smart move to mortgage Iraq’s future to anything as intractable as the Palestinian “right of return”? And, incidentally, how did that phrase — “the right of return” — get so carelessly inserted into a document signed by two former secretaries of state, two former senators, a former attorney general, Supreme Court judge, defense secretary, congressman, etc. These are by far the most prominent Americans ever to legitimize a concept whose very purpose is to render any Zionist entity impossible. I’m not one of those who assumes that just because much of James Baker’s post-government career has been so lavishly endowed by the Saudis that he must necessarily be a wholly owned subsidiary of King Abdullah, but it’s striking how this document frames all the issues within the pathologies of the enemy.
I’ve never been a big fan of most of the people on the ISG (though Alan Simpson had his moments), but my esteem for Baker and Lee Hamilton has hit a new low.
Do I Smell A Class-Action Lawsuit?
To how many other people has Verizon been quoting their rates as 0.002 cents, when they meant $0.002? And of course, the stupefyingly defiant ignorance of basic mathematics is indeed frightening.
Via emailer Erik Max Francis, who notes:
Here’s the full customer service call recording on YouTube (which is long enough to get tedious but here it is for reference):
But here’s a YTMND entry that chops it up and only gets the juiciest bits (and despite most YTMNDs, isn’t obnoxiously flashy and annoying):
What’s interesting to me as a crank-watcher is how many people in the comments in the various blogs and places it comes up (like dogg.com and rec.gambling.poker) are actually siding with Verizon …