For busting the pork. I’m not now, and never have been a Republican, but I sure hope that they can get their act together. It would be nice to have at least one serious political party.
Liberation For The Great White North?
Polls indicate that the Conservatives have a chance of getting a majority in the Canadian parliament. At the least, they may be able to get a governing coalition by peeling off just a few members, rather than having to do a grand deal with the Block Quebecois. As is the case down here with the Democrats, I’m less thrilled with seeing the Tories win than I am in seeing the Liberals lose big. Sic semper tyrannis corruptis.
I’ll bet Belinda Stronach is having a big-league case of buyers’ remorse now, for her thirty pieces of silver. What a difference a few months makes. Maybe she and fellow turncoat Jim Jeffords can start a club.
On the other hand, if it’s that close, she’ll no doubt be one of the MPs that they peel off to form their majority. She knows she doesn’t have much future with the current Liberals, and we already know what she is–it will just be a matter of haggling over the price. Simply letting her keep her current cabinet position would probably suffice, considering the alternative.
Stop Global Warming
Keppler and his colleagues discovered that living plants emit 10 to 100 times more methane than dead plants.
Scientists had previously thought that plants could only emit methane in the absence of oxygen.
David Lowe, of the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research in New Zealand, said the findings are startling and controversial.
“Keppler and colleagues’ finding helps to account for observations from space of incredibly large plumes of methane above tropical forests,” he said in a commentary on the research.
But the study also poses questions, such as how such a potentially large source of methane could have been overlooked…
Hey, I can answer that one–maybe because we haven’t come up with a way to blame it on the rapacious, capitalist, resource-scarfing western world.
Seriously, it really is amazing, given that living animals definitely emit a lot more methane than dead ones (particularly after a Mexican meal).
Is Anyone Surprised
…that Ted Kennedy is satire challenged?
The 1983 essay “In Defense of Elitism” by Harry Crocker III included this line, read dramatically by Kennedy: “People nowadays just don’t seem to know their place. Everywhere one turns blacks and hispanics are demanding jobs simply because they’re black and hispanic…”
The essay may not have been funny, D’Souza acknowledges, but Kennedy read from it as if it had been serious instead of an attempt at humor.
“I think left-wing groups have been feeding Senator Kennedy snippets and he has been mindlessly reciting them,” D’Souza said. “It was a satire.”
Emphasis mine.
Well, I can understand why. I mean, the guy’s practically a walking (well, staggering) gasbag parody of himself.
Guess We’ll Have To Try Harder
The global test is no longer number one on Google! It’s been demoted to numero dos.
C’mon, blogosphere. Are you going to let some cheesy marketing firm get away with that? Open up your hearts, and links.
Guess We’ll Have To Try Harder
The global test is no longer number one on Google! It’s been demoted to numero dos.
C’mon, blogosphere. Are you going to let some cheesy marketing firm get away with that? Open up your hearts, and links.
Guess We’ll Have To Try Harder
The global test is no longer number one on Google! It’s been demoted to numero dos.
C’mon, blogosphere. Are you going to let some cheesy marketing firm get away with that? Open up your hearts, and links.
A Horrible Choice And A Worse One
Victor Davis Hanson has some thoughts on what he views as the inevitable American air strike on Iran.
As I’ve said, this is our Munich moment. A world in which the mad mullahs have nukes is a frightening one indeed. Our previous totalitarian enemy in the Cold War at least had a keen sense of self preservation, that allowed MAD to work, at least for a while. We can’t bet on that from the Iranian government.
A Feyn Man
In honor of the rerelease of some classic books, Cathy Seipp has some stories about a quirky genius.
Short-Term Thinking
We’re starting to see the programmatic consequences of NASA’s political inability to get the Shuttle/ISS monkey off its back. I was reading the final Call For Improvement from NASA on the CEV program, that just came out this week, and noted that one of the biggest changes in it from the draft that came out late last year was that the word “methane” had been excised from it, whereas in the draft, it had been baselined. Apparently, NASA doesn’t have the funds to pursue this propulsion technology, despite its potential for improved safety, reduced operational costs, and extensibility to eventual Mars (and Near-Earth Object) missions.
The Shuttle and ISS have both been programmatic disasters exactly because of decisions made early in their development to skip key technologies that could have dramatically reduced down-stream costs, and (as seems to be inevitable with a space program funded on an annual basis by a Congress that’s focused on the next election), we’re apparently following the same path with CEV.
NASA Watch has more on this subject, as does Clark Lindsey:
The fundamental criticism of the Exploration program that has come from the alt.space community is that the program as currently designed will make little progress towards development of a sustainable, long-term, in-space infrastructure. This decision further pushes the program towards “flags and footprints” rather than “return to stay” or “steppingstone to Mars.”