Patricia’s taking me to Key West for my birthday. I’m not taking a computer. I offer my best wishes to Iraqis on their first taste of democracy, except those who would wantonly and cruelly murder to prevent it.
See you Sunday night or Monday.
Applephilia
Lileks has a bad case of it, and rejoices in it.
Not Quite Full Disclosure
Clark Lindsey is disappointed that Dennis Tito hasn’t followed through on his pledge to invest in space tourism, and cites his congressional testimony:
He declared that the “only big problem that stands before myself and others who want to do this is the regulatory risk.
Nineteen Years Ago
The Space Shuttle Challenger was destroyed, with all aboard. Here’s a vivid remembrance of the event, from someone who was there.
Here are my recollections of that fateful day.
[Via Jim Oberg]
Look Ma! No Muscles
Scientists have figured out how a Venus flytrap (a plant) can shut quickly enough to trap insects.
A “Brilliant Son”
A brilliant son, that is, who ran off a cliff to his death because he feared an “unclean” dog.
One Darwin nominee, coming up.
A “Brilliant Son”
A brilliant son, that is, who ran off a cliff to his death because he feared an “unclean” dog.
One Darwin nominee, coming up.
A “Brilliant Son”
A brilliant son, that is, who ran off a cliff to his death because he feared an “unclean” dog.
One Darwin nominee, coming up.
Dilbert Does The Blogosphere
Not quite as much fun as Debbie Does Dallas, but it’s pretty amusing.
Thirty Eight Years Ago
Today is the first of three grim anniversaries in late January and early February (within a week of each other) of the deaths of American astronauts. On this day in 1967, Ed White, Roger Chafee and Gus Grissom were incinerated on the launch pad in a ground test of the Apollo capsule.
Jim Oberg has more on these closely-timed anniversaries, in which he makes a compelling case that none of them were “accidents” but that all were avoidable, and that we’ve been lucky that we aren’t commemorating even more astronaut deaths. Here’s what I wrote a year ago (in which I criticized NASA’s reluctance to send a Shuttle to Hubble, a subject on which nothing has happened in the interim to change my mind).
[Update a little after noon]
OK, my dear friend Tim Kyger is whining at me in email that they didn’t die from their burns–they died from asphyxiation. True enough.
I didn’t explicitly say that the burns killed them, but I did imply it, and probably “incineration” is too strong a word for the degree of the burn damage to their bodies. The point remains that they died from a fire (and their deaths, like those of their later colleagues in the Shuttle) were avoidable.