A man committed suicide by supergluing his mouth and nose shut.
I’m sure that there will be calls to ban its sale now.
A Cry From The Den
Long-time blogger Mommabear, over at Kathy’s place, has lost her Pappabear. Words can never fully express the depth of our condolences, but for most of us in the blogosphere, they’re all we have.
Derb’s Rant
I was going to comment on this strange and hyperbolic broadside at the Shuttle, and the manned space program in general from John Derbyshire, but Mark Whittington (who really should spell check his posts) and Clark Lindsey have preempted much of what I would have written.
Briefly, while I agree with his conclusions, he gets there by accident, because his premises are mostly wrong, and his numbers exaggerated beyond any semblance of reality.
Derb’s Rant
I was going to comment on this strange and hyperbolic broadside at the Shuttle, and the manned space program in general from John Derbyshire, but Mark Whittington (who really should spell check his posts) and Clark Lindsey have preempted much of what I would have written.
Briefly, while I agree with his conclusions, he gets there by accident, because his premises are mostly wrong, and his numbers exaggerated beyond any semblance of reality.
Derb’s Rant
I was going to comment on this strange and hyperbolic broadside at the Shuttle, and the manned space program in general from John Derbyshire, but Mark Whittington (who really should spell check his posts) and Clark Lindsey have preempted much of what I would have written.
Briefly, while I agree with his conclusions, he gets there by accident, because his premises are mostly wrong, and his numbers exaggerated beyond any semblance of reality.
Adopting Landing Slot Auctions
There is a good, but incomplete proposal for landing slot auctions at Chicago O’Hare at AW&ST, June 6, p.31. (Subscription required)
It includes the following:
- Rolling auctions annually for 5 year rights
- Forced reauction so that every airline must participate
- Peak time pricing
- Same price regardless of plane size
One thing that is not decided is “who should get the increased revenues that [the Justice Dept.’s] regime would likely generate or what should be done with them.”
My proposal is that the money go to the current rights holder for existing rights and the airport for new rights. That includes the auction winners. I.e., the rights would be resold and the former owner would get the proceeds. This gives the airport the right incentive to make improvements that allow more landings. It also turns the rights into capital assets. We might see better stewardship of them.
We might also see less screaming from existing rights holders because if they get the money, they are no worse off than under the current system. (Unless they were going to go bankrupt and stiff their creditors.)
SoCal Shaker
I was on the phone with someone in South Pasadena (CA), and he just reported an earthquake to me in real time out there.
[Quick check at USGS]
Yup, a 5.3 north of Yucaipa. They should have felt that all the way from San Diego to the high desert. I didn’t feel a thing here in Florida, though.
Concorde, The Sequel
The Japanese are foolishly teaming up with the French to build what they call “Son of Concorde“:
The new plane will have 300 seats and cut the flight time between New York and Tokyo to six hours, reports said.
While there’s unquestionably a market for such a plane, assuming the right ticket price, they provide no clues as to how they can build a supersonic plane this large, with that much range, let alone one that won’t be unaffordable to fly, given its fuel consumption. They do pretend to, though:
The ministry added that Japan had successfully tested an engine that could theoretically reach speeds of up to five times the speed of sound.
Whoop de doo.
That’s nice, but it has zero to do with building an affordable, boom-free supersonic airliner, about which they seem clueless. One can only imagine that government money is involved.
At least it’s no longer US government money.
This effort will share Concorde’s ultimate fate, if it’s lucky. More likely it will simply be a black hole of tax dollars, ending in nothing but paper, just like NASA’s equally poorly-conceived, and disastrous High-Speed Research program in the 1990s.
For Howard Dean (Non) Fans
Here’s a great roundup of cartoons.
A Very Strange Mind
That’s exactly what James Lileks has:
The [ant] colony continues its descent. The population was ten a week ago; now it