Western Union sent its last telegram last week.
Surreality
All this lunacy is understood only in a larger surreal landscape. Tibet is swallowed by China. Much of Greek Cyprus is gobbled up by Turkish forces. Germany is 10-percent smaller today than in 1945. Yet only in the Middle East is there even a term “occupied land,” one that derived from the military defeat of an aggressive power.
Over a half-million Jews were forcibly cleansed from Baghdad, Damascus, Cairo, and other Arab cities after the 1967 war; but only on the West Bank are there still refugees who lost their homes. Over a million people were butchered in Rwanda; thousands die each month in Darfur. The world snoozes. Yet less than 60 are killed in a running battle in Jenin, and suddenly the 1.5 million lost in Stalingrad and Leningrad are evoked as the moral objects of comparison, as the globe is lectured about “Jeningrad.”
Now the Islamic world is organizing boycotts of Denmark because one of its newspapers chose to run a cartoon supposedly lampooning the prophet Mohammed. We are supposed to forget that it is de rigueur in raucous Scandinavian popular culture to attack Christianity with impunity. Much less are we to remember that Hamas terrorists occupied and desecrated the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem in a globally televised charade.
Instead, Danish officials are threatened, boycotts organized, ambassadors recalled
Alt-Space On The Radio
On NPR, coming up at noon Pacific.
Blimps
Joe Katzman say they’re part of the Air Force’s future. With civilian applications. I’d love to see dirigibles come back, with modern materials, as aerial cruiseships. I think there’d be a big market for them.
Keeping Fingers Crossed
Clark Lindsey writes that next week’s inaugural launch of the Falcon 1 is still on, and that this time it will be webcast. So there was some benefit (to those interested) in the delay.
On Track?
I’m still swamped at work, but Clark Lindsey has updated his commercial space timeline. I personally continue to find it quite encouraging, though 2005 wasn’t nearly as groundbreaking and eventful as 2004 was.
Extrasolar Planet Next Steps
SpaceToday.net has a good summary of the recently discovered extra solar planet massing only five times as much as ours.
My recommendation for the planet finders is to start looking for wobbles on the wobbles of the super massive planet orbits to see if they can find smaller planets or Moons. Or wobbles on cold binary stars that circle near the hab zone of hotter primaries that may also turn up lower mass planets.
Even if we never directly detect low mass planets, big hab zone planets may be like Jupiter or Saturn and have lots of moons, some of which have comfortable gravity and an atmosphere.
How Do You Enforce It?
I agree with Ron Bailey’s column on Bush’s health-care proposals, until I get to his proposed solution:
My advice to President Bush on how really to jumpstart consumer-driven health care: mandatory private health insurance. Poor Americans would be offered a voucher with which they would buy private health coverage. Such vouchers could be paid for by abolishing Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Programs….Mandatory private health insurance would avoid the problem of adverse selection, provide insurance for the currently uninsured and make consumer-driven health care work for every American.
While this would be (in theory) a vast improvement over the current employer-driven mess, there’s one problem, which is why I say “in theory”: How is it enforced? What happens to people who don’t do it? With mandatory auto insurance, one in theory revokes the privilege of driving if one doesn’t obey the law, but what’s the equivalent for health insurance?
I suppose the libertarian response is, “their tough luck.” It’s mine, too, but it doesn’t seem very politically correct, or from a policy standpoint, politically palatable.
If There Was Any Doubt
…that John McCain is trying to rehabilitate his image with conservatives, in preparation for a run for the White House, this should put it to rest:
Sen. John McCain, who is to endorse Rep. John Shadegg for Maj Leader at a 3:15 Capitol presser, has already started calling around to some of his GOP pals in the House.
One thing to offer an endorsement to his fellow AZ’an and pork-buster, but quite another to actively whip support for his bid.
Suborbital Plug
Rob Wilson over at Out of the Cradle asked me to direct you to a forum where Gary Lantz, engineer at Rocketplane, is currently answering questions. My company, SpaceShot, Inc., is working with Rocketplane to provide suborbital spaceflight prizes to anyone who can enter a skill game tournament for less than $5 per entry.