Here’s a heart-warming story to celebrate the weekend of Independence Day:
Following al-Qa’eda’s seizure of the main buildings a number of residents fled. Arkan Salim, 56, who left with his wife and four children, said: “We thought they were patriotic. Now we discovered that they are sick and crazy.
“They interfered in everything, even how we raise our children. They turned the city into hell, and we cannot live in it anymore.”
Yeah, totalitarians are like that.
Here’s a heart-warming story to celebrate the weekend of Independence Day:
Following al-Qa’eda’s seizure of the main buildings a number of residents fled. Arkan Salim, 56, who left with his wife and four children, said: “We thought they were patriotic. Now we discovered that they are sick and crazy.
“They interfered in everything, even how we raise our children. They turned the city into hell, and we cannot live in it anymore.”
Yeah, totalitarians are like that.
Here’s a heart-warming story to celebrate the weekend of Independence Day:
Following al-Qa’eda’s seizure of the main buildings a number of residents fled. Arkan Salim, 56, who left with his wife and four children, said: “We thought they were patriotic. Now we discovered that they are sick and crazy.
“They interfered in everything, even how we raise our children. They turned the city into hell, and we cannot live in it anymore.”
Yeah, totalitarians are like that.
Sorry about the late warning–I just found out myself. There’s supposedly a segment on the topic tonight–CBS, at 7 PM EDT. Hopefully the story won’t be “fake, but accurate.”
It’s easy to forget on a July 4th weekend that the signing of the Declaration of Independence is not the only profound event that we should commemorate on that day. One hundred and forty two years ago, in a little town in southeastern Pennsylvania, the back of the Confederacy was broken. Today is the anniversary of Pickett’s Charge, a disastrous event that represented a watershed–it ended the supremacy of Lee’s army of Northern Virginia and cost them the Battle of Gettysburg, and ultimately, combined with the fall of Vicksburg the next day to Grant, the war itself. Here‘s what I wrote two years ago on the one hundred and fortieth anniversary.
Yesterday, July 2nd, was the anniversary of two critical turning points in that battle, the day before the denoument on Cemetary Ridge–the last-minute defense of Little Round Top, and the suicidal charge of the Minnesotans that broke a gray advance. Powerline has more.
Cliff May points out that the CIA doesn’t seem to know that the phrase “experienced suicide bomber” is an oxymoron. They also weren’t aware of the provenance of Iran’s new president.
This is hardly surprising. They also had no idea, back in 1979, that the Shah was in trouble. I recall a cartoon that showed two agents with CIA on their trenchcoats, in Tehran, amidst a street revolution. One is whispering to the other, “Psssttt…I hear that there’s a problem in Iran.” The one replies, “Quick, call President Truman.”
I wish we’d had someone else to vote for in November.
I got a solicitation call from Virgin Galactic after getting an email reminding me I registered and asking to confirm my phone number and a good time to call. They say they are about half way through their group of “Founders”. The first 100 seats paying full price of $200,000. They are keeping two other queues. “Pioneers” are people who pay $100,000 and get to be one of the first 1,000 people in space on the whole planet. They project that will be 300-400 people depending on how many people their competitors and NASA put up into space in the mean time. Then they will start taking people who put down $20,000. All of these deposits are “refundable”.
In any case, that is about $10 million in the bank from the Founders. They did say that they are using the money to develop the product. I will seek further clarification from Virgin Galactic on whether that is just the interest and the money is in escrow or what. If not, it would really be a player mutual sort of like the one I proposed about a year ago in The Space Review. I will aim to post terms and conditions when I receive them.
You get a seat number in your queue if you put up the money. Could someone with $320,000 please put that up so I can get an exact count on the number of seats with deposits in each queue? They project 500 riders in their first year. That’s $100 million dollars. Pretty good revenue on a $100 million investment. That also means that the non-Founders and Pioneers will start flying no later than year 2.
If you don’t have the money, you will be pleased to hear that their skill game partner is Virgin Games. More about that next week depending on what I am told and what kind of non-disclosure terms I have to agree to.
If you’re not familiar with the original War of the Worlds radio broadcast, you’ll merely find this amusing, albeit a little puzzling. If you are, you’ll find it hilarious. (It also helps if you know enough rudimentary Spanish to get the jokes in the song titles.)
I’ve written about how today’s media would report WW II. Now we know how they’d handle an interplanetary invasion:
CARL PHILLIPS: Professor, as we look out and see the Martian mechano-men smashing and blowing up the countryside, I think all America wants to know: why do they hate us?
PROF. PIERSON: That
I report (well, actually, I link to someone else’s report), you decide.
Not me, but Michael Mealing is.
Unfortunately, it’s for a conference, not a procurement contract.