Sounds like a huge improvement over the current leadership, to me. Here’s hoping.
Bad News For Shuttle Fans
More foam cracks on the PAL ramp.
At the current flight rate, if they get it off next fall, the cost per flight will be many billions. Either fly it, or retire it, but stop wasting all this time and money on trying (in futility) to make it safe.
Technical Difficulties
I can’t get to Space Transport News using the http://www.spacetransportnews.com URL (the one I use in the blogroll), but I can get to it through Hobby Space.
Is anyone else having this problem or is it just me?
[Update]
If anyone is having the same problem, please note your ISP as well, so we can eliminate that as the issue.
What I Would Want For Christmas
…if I still lived in the Great White North. Behold, the Chevy 454 big-block snowblower. I’ll bet that sucker will toss your driveway’s contents into your neighbor’s yard. You know, the one three blocks away?
Somewhere, Tim the Toolman is grunting. And drooling.
Get down on your knees and beg, Mother Nature! Who’s your daddy now?
Speaking Of King Kong
Two women were handed pink slips for refusing to flash their mammaries at a gorilla.
Remember this whenever you think your job is bad.
When Archeology Meets Politics
Has King David’s palace been found?
In Defense Of Science
As usual (on this subject, that is), I agree with John Derbyshire:
Malraux (I think it was) said that there are two reasons to be a socialist: You may love the poor, or you may hate the rich. There are similarly two reasons to get worked up about I.D.: You may love science, or you may hate religion.
My entire and sole motivation in writing against I.D. has been love of, and reverence for, science, and indignation that people should claim a place for their theory at science’s table when they have done no science whatsoever to back it up, and plainly have no intention of doing any, and when their fundamental premises are not merely unscientific, but willfully anti-scientific.
Just A Big Gorilla
Here’s a rave review of Peter Jackson’s latest–a remake of King Kong. I have a confession to make, though:
Jack tells me all children – “at least all boys” – love King Kong.
“He is the king of all the monsters, even better than Godzilla. Kong is stronger and smarter than Godzilla, who’s just a stupid, slimy lizard.”
Sorry, but I was never a big (or even little) King Kong fan. I’ve still never watched the original all the way through. I tried one night a few years ago, and gave up. It simply didn’t hold my interest, either as a boy, or as a man. The prospect of three hours of it, even with new spectacular effects, simply doesn’t motivate me to go to the theater.
Of course, I’ve never been a fan of horror or monster movies in general (I’ve never seen any of the classics–Frankenstein, the Mummy, Dracula–and have no interest in them). Lest my all-American red-blooded male credentials be questioned, though, I do like (or at least did as a youth) the Three Stooges.
A Major Step
…toward utility fog? And get your bumper sticker.
A Lot Of Crab
Jay Manifold has some interesting statistics on the latest spectacular image from Hubble of the Crab Nebula.