Political Commentary

This Is How It’s Done, Senator Kerry

Charlie Rangel has apologized for his slur against Mississippi:

There is no excuse for my having said that. I am fully aware that every American loves their respective state and city, and I’m afraid that my love and affection for New York got in the way of my common sense and judgment, and for that I sincerely apologize.

Well done.

It’s a good think that he didn’t get advice from Kerry. It probably would have come out something like this:

I’m sorry that the people of Mississippi are too stupid and crazy to realize the inherent and nuanced truth of my statement, when I asked who would want to live there. Of course, it hadn’t occurred to me, or any other well-bred, educated people, that the place is full of ignorant inbred rednecks who probably love the place.

Political Commentary

This Is How It’s Done, Senator Kerry

Charlie Rangel has apologized for his slur against Mississippi:

There is no excuse for my having said that. I am fully aware that every American loves their respective state and city, and I’m afraid that my love and affection for New York got in the way of my common sense and judgment, and for that I sincerely apologize.

Well done.

It’s a good think that he didn’t get advice from Kerry. It probably would have come out something like this:

I’m sorry that the people of Mississippi are too stupid and crazy to realize the inherent and nuanced truth of my statement, when I asked who would want to live there. Of course, it hadn’t occurred to me, or any other well-bred, educated people, that the place is full of ignorant inbred rednecks who probably love the place.

Political Commentary

This Is How It’s Done, Senator Kerry

Charlie Rangel has apologized for his slur against Mississippi:

There is no excuse for my having said that. I am fully aware that every American loves their respective state and city, and I’m afraid that my love and affection for New York got in the way of my common sense and judgment, and for that I sincerely apologize.

Well done.

It’s a good think that he didn’t get advice from Kerry. It probably would have come out something like this:

I’m sorry that the people of Mississippi are too stupid and crazy to realize the inherent and nuanced truth of my statement, when I asked who would want to live there. Of course, it hadn’t occurred to me, or any other well-bred, educated people, that the place is full of ignorant inbred rednecks who probably love the place.

Space

Slip

I’d been hearing rumors about this for a few days, and I’ve even had an email exchange or two with Elon in the last couple days on other subjects, but Clark apparently asked him what I didn’t. Falcon 1 first launch has been delayed until early next year.

Political Commentary

Is Europe Dying?

John Wixted says that Europe is an economic and demographic failure–a cultural evolutionary dead end:

What’s wrong with Europe? The same thing that was wrong with states that chose communism as an economic model, though to a lesser degree. The Europeans are not communists, but their generous social welfare state has moved pretty far in that direction. It is not an inherently evil economic approach — it might even be morally superior in some ways. The problem is that it just doesn’t work.

It is important for people to come grips with this reality because Western Europe is the embodiment of the liberal ideal. Even if you think that liberal thinking is morally superior, the empirical evidence would appear to suggest that it is not practical.

…The Europeans are driving off a cliff, but they don’t see it coming because they spend so much of their time reveling in their own moral superiority. I believe that, in their own minds, they are on the cutting edge of societal evolution (to borrow a phrase from Rush Limbaugh), but the forces of natural selection would appear to be working against them.

Space

The View From Orbit

For those of you with HDTV, the Discovery Channel will be doing a live broadcast from space in a few minutes, at 11:30 Eastern time. This will be the first time ever that there’s been such a broadcast in HD And if you miss it live, it will be repeated at 9 PM.

[Watching]

Some random thoughts. They spend a lot of time up front justifying and defending a space station. The problem is that this is a straw man. Many critics of the program agree that we should have a space station (I think that we should have multiple ones). The issue is not a space station, but this space station.

Also, there are no stars. They obviously filmed this in a movie studio, with hidden wires on the floating astronauts… (that’s a joke, for those unfamiliar with my posting style).

The beginning is just the astronaut floating and describing experiments. Not that interesting a use of the medium, I think. Now they’re showing views out the window, which is much more useful.

Now they’ve gone back to interior views, and are showing astrofood. I’m not fascinated by this, but I guess a lot of people are. Hope they won’t demonstrate use of the hygienic facilities…

[A few minutes later]

OK, broadcast over. They needed to do more views of the earth below, which is really the feature attraction. I think there’s a market for a camera that does nothing except orbit the earth at this resolution and show it in all its seasons, weather and diurnal cycles. It’s almost like a living kaleidoscope.

[Update about half an hour after broadcast end]

Glenn agrees. Great (or some kind of) minds think alike, I guess:

It was pretty good, but it was the images of Earth from space that were really captivating — they came across as IMAX-like — and they didn’t show enough of those. The stuff from the station interior was okay, be we’ve all seen people eat in zero gravity before and the demonstrations weren’t especially exciting just because they were HD. I would have rather had half an hour of pictures of Earth from low orbit, with only minimal talking-head involvement.

I wonder if you could make money with a cable channel that just showed pictures from a low-earth-orbit satellite in HD? It would certainly be cool — bringing the “Overview Effect” down to Earth — though I don’t think the technology’s really there for that yet.

[Update]

I’d like to see HD of the view of this from space:

KFC Corporation today became the world

War Commentary

No More Mr. Nice Guy?

Ralph Peters says we have to take off the kid gloves in Iraq, if we’re to have any hope of pacifying it:

Our “humanity” is cowardice masquerading as morality. We’re protecting self-appointed religious executioners with our emphasis on a “universal code of behavior” that only exists in our fantasies. By letting the thugs run the streets, we’ve abandoned the millions of Iraqis who really would prefer peaceful lives and a modicum of progress.

We’re blind to the fundamental moral travesty in Iraq (and elsewhere): Spare the killers in the name of human rights, and you deprive the overwhelming majority of the population of their human rights. Instead of being proud of ourselves for our “moral superiority,” we should be ashamed to the depths of our souls.

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!