Administrative

Email Flood

Some cretin has set up a spam system to send emails to a vast number of people with the return address as *@transterrestrial.com.

While I was up at the cape, I got over two hundred emails to the effect that: so and so is out of the office, such and such a spamfilter blocked this email, etc.

All with return addresses of random names from my domain. I can’t imagine that they’re originating from my machine, since I don’t even use that domain myself for outgoing email.

Question. Other than blocking all incoming email to *@transterrestrial.com other than simberg@transterrestrial.com, what do I do about this, if anything? There’s certainly nothing I can do to prevent a third party from sending out email with a return address with my domain, though if there was, torching their genitals would be too good for them.

Political Commentary

The Flexibility Of The Word “Bigot”

Isn’t it amazing?

The Times is a good target. People who believe in the “left-wing media” believe that the New York Times is the leftiest of them all. The people who believe in the “mainstream media” believe that the Times is the mainest of them all. Hardly anyone has a good word to say about it, except that it’s the best newspaper in the country. But really, how important is that?

Also, the name of the New York Times contains the word “New York.” Many members of the president’s base consider “New York” to be a nifty code word for “Jewish.” It is very nice for the president to be able to campaign against the Jews without (a) actually saying the word “Jew” and (b) without irritating the Israelis. A number of prominent Zionist groups think the New York Times is insufficiently anti-Palestinian, so they think the New York Times isn’t Jewish enough.

Particularly considering that the latest left epithet of “neocon” seems to often really mean “Zionist Jew.”

Political Commentary

The Flexibility Of The Word “Bigot”

Isn’t it amazing?

The Times is a good target. People who believe in the “left-wing media” believe that the New York Times is the leftiest of them all. The people who believe in the “mainstream media” believe that the Times is the mainest of them all. Hardly anyone has a good word to say about it, except that it’s the best newspaper in the country. But really, how important is that?

Also, the name of the New York Times contains the word “New York.” Many members of the president’s base consider “New York” to be a nifty code word for “Jewish.” It is very nice for the president to be able to campaign against the Jews without (a) actually saying the word “Jew” and (b) without irritating the Israelis. A number of prominent Zionist groups think the New York Times is insufficiently anti-Palestinian, so they think the New York Times isn’t Jewish enough.

Particularly considering that the latest left epithet of “neocon” seems to often really mean “Zionist Jew.”

Political Commentary

The Flexibility Of The Word “Bigot”

Isn’t it amazing?

The Times is a good target. People who believe in the “left-wing media” believe that the New York Times is the leftiest of them all. The people who believe in the “mainstream media” believe that the Times is the mainest of them all. Hardly anyone has a good word to say about it, except that it’s the best newspaper in the country. But really, how important is that?

Also, the name of the New York Times contains the word “New York.” Many members of the president’s base consider “New York” to be a nifty code word for “Jewish.” It is very nice for the president to be able to campaign against the Jews without (a) actually saying the word “Jew” and (b) without irritating the Israelis. A number of prominent Zionist groups think the New York Times is insufficiently anti-Palestinian, so they think the New York Times isn’t Jewish enough.

Particularly considering that the latest left epithet of “neocon” seems to often really mean “Zionist Jew.”

Administrative

Off To The Cape

We’re going to go, and trust to luck (it’s about a two and a half hour drive, not counting inevitable launch traffic once we get close). No blogging until return–I don’t have wireless (though maybe I should get Verizon). See you tonight, hopefully with Discovery safely in orbit.

[Update at 8 PM EDT]

Well, another wasted day. The frustrating thing is that the weather wasn’t a problem for the launch–it was a problem for the extremely unlikely “attempted suicide in order to avoid certain death” maneuver of a Return To Launch Site (RTLS) abort. Unfortunately, at the last minute, as I was listening to the MMT poll, I also heard that there was a boat in the box, with no estimated time of removal.

As is often the case, the launch commitment criteria created an overconstrained system. Sometimes it amazes me that we’ve ever launched this thing.

Space

Glitch

There’s a problem with a vernier thruster heater. I’m not familiar enough with the commit criteria to know if that could result in a launch scrub. It’s certainly not something that can be easily worked on the pad, but there may be sufficient redundancy that they could go anyway. The problem is that for many missions in the past, verniers aren’t necessarily required, but I suspect they don’t want to try to dock to ISS if they’re missing one.

We haven’t left for the Cape yet. We may drive up anyway, just for the drive, and hope for the best, since it will likely be windy and rainy here the rest of the weekend.

By the way, the gang of Florida Today reporters over at The Flame Trench is probably the best place to keep tabs on the launch, at least as far as blogs go.

[Update a few minutes later]

Can’t be fixed on the pad, as I suspected. They’re figuring out now if they can live without it, if necessary. There are so many thrusters on the vehicle (though a lot more primaries than verniers), that I’d guess they can come up with a workaround control scheme.

The problem is either with the thermostat or heater. The heater was supposed to read hot, but it read ambient.

I wonder how they know that it’s not just a failed temperature sensor?

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!