This isn’t news any more (it was published in February), but Paul Dietz had a post that I just found out about describing a new asteroid-hunting scheme that seems very promising:
All NEOs down to a few hundred meters in diameter will be found. If any are possibly going to hit Earth soon, we’ll know.
Good. We can’t do this too soon.
Dear Mr. President,
I want to bring to your attention a major opportunity to get people thinking about the future in the only area of federal activity you threatened a veto: Space. There are new opportunities for ordinary citizens to fly into space. Major industrialists Jeff Bezos, Paul Allen, Elon Musk, George French, John Carmack and Jeff Greason have all started rocket companies to carry ordinary citizens into space for far less than the $20 million price to fly on the Russian Soyuz. You have the potential for a major win here. These industrialists will beat China and NASA back to the Moon. Anyone can buy an entry into a skill game for $3.50 to win a trip to space at my web site http://www.space-shot.com
Take some credit for the good news.
Regards,
Sam Dinkin
CEO
SpaceShot, Inc.
3101 Lating Stream Lane
Austin, TX 78746
(512) 750-1751 Sound
(512) 347-9149 Image
http://www.space-shot.com
dinkin@space-shot.com
At this point, I’d like to think that teaching Marxism in an economics course is the academic equivalent of teaching Biblical literalist creationism in a biology class. But nutball academics don’t agree, of course:
Siddique plans on filing a complaint with the USG regarding an introductory economics course, because it ignores “Marxist economic viewpoints, privileging capitalist ones exclusively.”
Just a little blowback from the recent efforts to get a little balance into the college classrooms.
I’d like to think that this polling result is as significant as Instapundit thinks:
Among all Americans, a 39% plurality say the single most important thing for Congress to accomplish this year is curtailing budgetary “earmarks” benefiting only certain constituents.
Sounds like a political tsunami that will sweep away earmarks, right?
Probably not. First of all, though the number is high, it’s not a majority. And even if it were, there’s a familiar phenomenon, in which large numbers disapprove of Congress, but like their own Congress(wo)man. It’s all those other clowns that are the problem. I suspect that they’ll have the same attitude toward pork. They oppose it in principle, but when it comes to benefitting them, I suspect that most people will take the money and let their Congressman run. One man’s pork is another man’s vital district need.
Ron Bailey explodes it.
Ron Bailey explodes it.
Ron Bailey explodes it.
is not for sale. Volvo doesn’t rent lists or send out third party solicitations. 135,000 people who registered for a spaceflight giveaway after Super Bowl 2005 I have to contact the hard way about my site, Space-Shot.com.
In The Ethicist column in the New York Times Magazine last month, Randy Cohen talked about organ transplant sales being unethical:
For a system of acquiring organs to be ethical, it must be equitable, which is not the case when one economic class is exploited (and put at significant medical risk) for the benefit of another. And exploitation it is when the seller is not making a truly voluntary decision but responding to financial desperation.
Is it unethical to hire a maid who is financially desperate? If I had trouble getting a job out of college, I would be financially desperate, but I would be very grateful for the opportunity to sell my labor.
Organs are different than jobs. But the difference is not financial desperation.