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.
Inevitable?
Iranian newspapers continue to beat the war drums against Israel. Will this be the first move in their hoped-for Armageddon?
And the so-called “realists” from the first Bush administration continue to make plans to appease them.
More Cowbell, Too
Dean Barnett is as unimpressed as I am with the election of Trent Lott as Minority Whip:
If there
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.
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
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.
It Stinks
Jonah Goldberg writes about institutionalized racism in the academy.
The New Culture Of Corruption
John Fund has the lowdown (and it’s pretty low) on potential incoming Majority Leader John Murtha:
Mr. Murtha has said his only interest in the purported Saudi sheiks’ money was that he hoped it would be invested in businesses in his district. But the full tape makes clear that Mr. Murtha was primarily interested in talking about such investments as a possible cover should he later decide to have the money transferred.
“And what I’m sayin’ is, a few investments in my district, a few you know, is big to me, to this guy apparently is not too big, to a couple of banks which would get their attention. And investment in a business where you could legitimately say to me–when I say legitimately, I’m talking about so these bastards up here can’t say to me, well, why, in eight years from now, that’s possible, we’d never hear a thing for eight years, but all at once, ah, some dumb bastard would go start talking eight years from now, ah, about the whole thing and say, ‘[expletive], ah, this happened,’ then he, then he, in order to get immunity so he doesn’t go to jail, he starts talking and fingering people and then the [expletive] all falls apart.”
The undercover FBI agent in the meeting then spoke up and said “You give us the banks where you want the money deposited.”
“All right” Mr. Murtha responded. “How much money we talking about?”
“Well, you tell me” replied the FBI agent.
A few moments later in the tape, Mr. Murtha continues his discussion of how “a business commitment” in his district would be structured: “A business commitment that makes it imperative for me to help him. Just, let me tell you something. I’m sure if–and there’s a lot of things I’ve done up here, with environmental regulations, with all kinds of waivers of laws and regulations. If it weren’t for being in the district, people would say, ‘Well that [expletive], I’m gonna tell you something this guy is, uh, you know, on the take.’ Well once they say that, what happens? Then they start going around looking for the [expletive] money. So I want to avoid that by having some tie to the district. That’s all. That’s the secret to the whole thing.”
…Crile reported that prior to Mr. Wilson’s arrival on the Ethics Committee, it had largely given Mr. Prettyman, the special counsel, a free hand in his probe. That quickly changed: “Before Prettyman could fully deploy his investigators to move on the Murtha case, he was informed that the committee had concluded there was no justification for an investigation.” The Ethics Committee chairman, Rep. Louis Stokes of Ohio, suddenly declared “This matter is closed.”
Mr. Prettyman, who had already likened the Ethics Committee to “a misdemeanor court faced with a multiple murder,” was furious at the dramatic change of course. He abruptly resigned his post the same afternoon the committee voted to clear Mr. Murtha. While Mr. Prettyman continues to refuse to discuss the case, he told Roll Call newspaper in 1990 that it would be “a logical conclusion” that he resigned over the committee’s exoneration of Mr. Murtha. Crile’s book notes that “a teary Murtha had confided to a colleague that Wilson’s effort had saved his life.”
Does Nancy Pelosi really think that this is the route to long-term power?
Sublimating The Instinct
Phil Bowermaster (who’s not the man he once was) has a some musings on virtual children. His co-blogger responds.
Visionaries
Gerry Williams has a report from a space awards ceremony in San Diego, featuring Peter Diamandis and Burt Rutan.
Pet peeve–I wish that people would learn the difference between “risk averse” (correct) and “risk adverse” (incorrect).