…a desire to see Bush name Ann Coulter to the Supreme Court, just to see the apoplexia that this would arouse among Democrats and liberals. The halls of Congress would be bloody with bursting veins and arteries. I wouldn’t expect (or even hope) that she’d be confirmed, but the entertainment value, particularly at the hearings, would be immense.
The Green Stuff
Slick Goodlin, who lost a chance to be the first man to exceed the speed of sound in level flight to Chuck Yeager due to a dispute over the pay, has died.
Stunts
Frank Borman apparently displayed a distinct lack of imagination the other night at the Smithsonian. Clark Lindsey comments, pointing out once again why we shouldn’t take pronouncements of astronauts on space (or any subject, for that matter) as seriously as we too often do, just because they’re astronauts:
As I found from books such as The Right Stuff and John Glenn’s autobiography, most of the Space Age astronauts, except for a few exceptions like Buzz Aldrin, were not space buffs. They had instead been obsessed their whole lives with flying airplanes. After working their way up to the elite world of test pilots, they saw their selection as astronauts as the ultimate proof that they were the hottest flyboys around. They didn’t go through all that just to open up the cosmos to any Tom, Dick, or Dennis Tito.
And as Clark also stingingly points out, Frank Borman should hardly be considered an expert on commercial anything.
Market Feedback
I just noticed that I have a very skinny blog, relative to almost everyone else.
No, it hasn’t lost weight–we designed it that way years ago, to be friendly to as many browsers and screen resolutions as possible. It also makes for nice square paragraphs in posts, as opposed to long, wide, spaghetti-ish things like some other people’s posts who I could mention.
But it wastes a lot of real estate on the screen for those using modern, large monitors with high resolution. So, should I do a redesign? (I’m thinking about this anyway, as part of running ads, and establishing some prominent ad space).
It Ate The MSM
It’s almost Halloween, and Iowahawk is celebrating with a repeat of that scary horror classic, The Blog. Here a trailer:
“I’ll teach that thing to target journalists! This is Jordan Eason, signing off!” The television reporter suddenly dropped his microphone and hurtled down the street screaming, headlong into the Blog, which was now over 20 feet tall.
“No… Jordan, you suicidal fool, you can’t stop it!” cried Professor Von Kleinstein, but it was too late… the reporter was quickly swept up into the pulsating plasmoid mass. Suddenly, instinctively, it began heading for the Eastvale movie theater…
…”It’s got to have some sort of central nervous system,” said Biff. “Jeepers, if we could just find its brain, maybe we could kill it.”
“That’s just it, Biff — it doesn’t seem to have any head whatsoever! It seems to be some sort of pure unedited energy, and any attack only seems to make it stronger!”
Unmiered
I hope that this withdrawal is the trough of this presidency, and that he’ll quickly nominate a worthy candidate. My suggestion (agreeing with some over at The Corner)–Ted Olson. He’s got sterling credentials, and it would be very tough for the Democrats to beat him up in the hearings, because he’ll bring a natural sympathy due to his loss in the war.
Oh, and by the way, are these people serious? The conspiracy mongery on the left apparently knows no bounds.
[Update a few minutes later]
I’m listening to DiFi, who just informed us that Miers’ answers to her questions were not fulsome. I continue to be amazed that California chooses to have two of the dimmest bulbs in the Senate (and that’s a tough competition) represent them in that body.
Hoarding Tamiflu
Roche announced today that it is stopping US wholesale shipments of Tamiflu to prevent “hoarding”. Hoarding is exactly what they are doing. The move will shock wholesalers while people buying in advance of avian flu like me are shocking some retailers. Distributers are the last link in the chain. As they process this news, all retailers will begin to restrict access to Tamiflu. Rationing at a below market price results in the drug not going to people who value it most.
Higher prices put Tamiflu out of range of the bulk of the market. The only way they benefit from the higher prices is indirectly through the higher tax revenues from higher profits in the supply chain or increasingly as shareholders. Rationing benefits people who get the ration cards or whatever. There is an ubounded loss in efficiency when some people who want the drug are turned away because they have money, but do not qualify for a ration. An optimal policy might be a tax on emergency use that is distributed to everyone in the country equally. Don’t expect politicians to adopt that one.
Doctors, pharmacists and drug companies clearly know best exactly how much to provide becaue they are so good at economics. And they are prescribing, dispensing and producing Tamiflu for the good of the country. Perhaps I know better how many doctors, pharmacists and drug companies the country should have. I think there should be a medallion system like taxis.
Previous posts: Spanish Flu Published, Flu Update
Living “Forever”
A recent interview with Aubrey De Grey:
Why do you personally want to live forever?
It
Living “Forever”
A recent interview with Aubrey De Grey:
Why do you personally want to live forever?
It
Living “Forever”
A recent interview with Aubrey De Grey:
Why do you personally want to live forever?
It