…offered by Technology Review against Aubrey de Grey’s theses doesn’t seem to be going so well. At least for the skeptics:
The judges
I Broke Firefox
So I installed a new Fedora Core 5 on my laptop, and was trying to build the drivers for the wireless. Step one was to do an upgrade of the OS.
In the midst of doing this, I was attempting to listen to a podcast from Firefox. I don’t know whether this happened as a result of the upgrade, or of the podcast, but at some point, Firefox crashed, taking down all running instances of it. And it wouldn’t reload. When I click on the icon, I get a little tab in the taskbar saying “Starting web browser” which hangs on for a few seconds, then disappears.
I completed the upgrade, and rebooted. But Firefox still won’t load. I removed it with yum, and then reinstalled it. Firefox still won’t load.
Does anyone know what’s going on, and how to fix?
[Update on Wednesday morning]
OK, I removed Firefox, removed the folder containing its settings and reinstalled. All is well now. Except I had to resurrect my settings from scratch.
Watch Out For Exploding Moonbat Heads
Brit Hume and Drudge are both reporting that Bob Novak is going to reveal that his source for Valerie Plame’s identity was her husband. Doesn’t seem like that great a source to me, but I guess at the time it wasn’t apparent what a liar he was.
The Greatest Invention Since Bottled Beer
When I was a kid, I wondered why you couldn’t have some kind of CO2 cartridge built in to the bottom of a can that when released and expanded would suck the heat out of the bottle. But I never bothered to run the numbers on it.
Paul Krugman’s Brain
…must be spinning in its little tiny coffin, at the recent economic growth and deficit reduction numbers:
Did you know that just over the past 11 quarters, dating back to the June 2003 Bush tax cuts, America has increased the size of its entire economy by 20 percent? In less than three years, the U.S. economic pie has expanded by $2.2 trillion, an output add-on that is roughly the same size as the total Chinese economy, and much larger than the total economic size of nations like India, Mexico, Ireland, and Belgium.
…here
Paul Krugman’s Brain
…must be spinning in its little tiny coffin, at the recent economic growth and deficit reduction numbers:
Did you know that just over the past 11 quarters, dating back to the June 2003 Bush tax cuts, America has increased the size of its entire economy by 20 percent? In less than three years, the U.S. economic pie has expanded by $2.2 trillion, an output add-on that is roughly the same size as the total Chinese economy, and much larger than the total economic size of nations like India, Mexico, Ireland, and Belgium.
…here
Paul Krugman’s Brain
…must be spinning in its little tiny coffin, at the recent economic growth and deficit reduction numbers:
Did you know that just over the past 11 quarters, dating back to the June 2003 Bush tax cuts, America has increased the size of its entire economy by 20 percent? In less than three years, the U.S. economic pie has expanded by $2.2 trillion, an output add-on that is roughly the same size as the total Chinese economy, and much larger than the total economic size of nations like India, Mexico, Ireland, and Belgium.
…here
A Major Commercial Space Milestone?
There may be one tomorrow, with a successful launch. We need to be developing cost-effective hardware for orbital facilities, and this could go a long way toward that end.
As Jim Oberg points out in Alan’s article (and a concern I’ve long had), Bigelow has always been too passive with respect to helping get launch costs down (though the recent Bigelow Prize will be helpful). It’s too bad that SpaceX couldn’t do the launch for him. Maybe next time.
Only Nine Shopping Days Left
Until Moon Day.
Start planning your commemoration dinner now. Invite family and friends, and contemplate the date.
Hurry, They’re Getting Ahead Of Us
According to this story, the Chinese are going to launch a space station. They don’t have a date, though:
China will launch Shenzhou VII with three astronauts in September 2008, after the Beijing Olympic Games…
After the launch of Shenzhou VII, a space station with 20 tons will be built…
Why wait until after the Olympics? What does this have to do with anything? Unless, of course, the purpose of the program is primarily for national prestige, as opposed to actually accomplishing something that’s important.
And “after the launch of Shenzhou VII” could be anywhere from October, 2008 (unlikely) until…the end of time. But we’d better hurry–we’re in a race!