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.”
No Sauce For The Gander
Apparently, the NYT is fine with unwarranted domestic spying, as long as there’s a Democrat in the White House, and we aren’t at war.
Speaking of which, I wonder if there’s any relationship between the Times’ unilateral (though they had accomplices, if not allies) decision a few weeks ago to tell the enemy how we’re tracking their communications, and this:
Federal agents have launched an investigation into a surge in the purchase of large quantities of disposable cell phones by individuals from the Middle East and Pakistan, ABC News has learned.
The phones
No Long Pork For Them
The Donner family didn’t resort to cannibalism:
No cooked human bones were found among the thousands of fragments of animal bones at that Alder Creek site, suggesting Donner family members did not resort to cannibalism, the archaeologists said at a conference of the Society for Historical Archaeology in Sacramento, Calif.
“The Donner family ended up getting the stigma basically because of the name,” said Julie Schablitsky, one of the lead authors. “But of all the people, they were probably the least deserving of it.”
Just In Case You Had Any Doubts
The goal of the enemy:
He said democracy was crumbling and laid out a two-stage plan to replace it with a Muslim nation.
The first he said meant “bleed them from their sides, their heads, their economy, everything until they surrender.”
The preacher went on: “Like you imagine you have only one small knife and you have a big animal in the front of you, the size of the knife you can’t slaughter him with this.
“You have to stab him here and there until he bleeds to death, until he die, then you cut his meat the way you like it or leave it for the maggots.”
After that he claimed: “The people who called you terrorist before, they will call you khalifas (Muslim rulers) and the scholars who used to call you khawarij (rebels against Islam) yesterday, they will write poems about you.”
The second stage involved taking control of the whole world, he added.
“Don’t be a shield for the kufr because we will get you,” he added. “Even if you are not a target and you are in the target area. If you fear them, you should fear Allah more. It’s a bloody way.”
Hamza told his followers they would eventually see a Muslim ruler in the White House and added: “The whole earth, it will be for Muslims, this is a promise from Allah.
No, they’re nothing like Hitler.
Hitler only had ambitions to rule Eurasia.
Space Tourism On The Beeb
Clark Lindsey points out a potentially interesting program tonight for those of my readers who get BBC2.
Then What?
Europeans leaders say that Iran should go before the UN Security Council. What will they do, send in Hans Blix to wander around for a few months?
SpaceShip Three
This isn’t really big news–Burt has always said that he wants to get to orbit, but it looks like Virgin Galactic has made an announcement recently. What will be really interesting is when they reveal the design (if they have one), because the current “badminton birdie” approach isn’t going to work for orbital entry velocities.