The Warsaw Uprising began sixty years ago. Not the ghetto uprising–the other one that essentially destroyed the city as the Nazi regime was entering its death throes. It was a true display of the evil of both Hitler and Stalin.
By the way, I happened to watch “The Pianist” last night, and I was amazed at the level of destruction shown in the movie, and was wondering how accurate it was.
Here’s more on the Return To The Moon Conference a couple weekends ago, by Leonard David. In USA Today. It’s got some new stuff that wasn’t in his initial space.com piece.
[Via Thomas James, who seems to be posting more now that he’s settled into his new digs in Colorado. Though shouldn’t he change the name of his blog to the Colorado Mars Society?]
You know all those things you haven’t done in a blue moon? Well, get ready to do them again tonight.
I heard Kerry dredge up another old socialist chestnut today, when he was talking about health care. “I’m going to give every citizen the same health care that senators give themselves.”
That kind of demogoguery is just as nonsensical now as it is when the senator’s portly colleague, the senior senator from Massachussetts, used it over two decades ago.
Does he propose to provide every American citizen with a Senator’s salary? With other senatorial perks and benefits, such as free haircuts and subsidized meals? Free gym memberships?
Secret Service security details? I’ll bet a lot of people in the inner cities would like that one.
How about a generous pension?
No?
Then what’s his point? Why should they get senatorial health care?
Just heard a clip of Bush on his new tour (as in the title of this post)–a dig at Kerry’s comment that the heart and soul of America was represented by Whoopie Goldberg & Co. He said “Springfield, Missoura.” I wonder if that’s a natural Texan pronunciation, or if he knows it’s what the natives (outside of St. Louis) call it?
Just heard a clip of Bush on his new tour (as in the title of this post)–a dig at Kerry’s comment that the heart and soul of America was represented by Whoopie Goldberg & Co. He said “Springfield, Missoura.” I wonder if that’s a natural Texan pronunciation, or if he knows it’s what the natives (outside of St. Louis) call it?
Just heard a clip of Bush on his new tour (as in the title of this post)–a dig at Kerry’s comment that the heart and soul of America was represented by Whoopie Goldberg & Co. He said “Springfield, Missoura.” I wonder if that’s a natural Texan pronunciation, or if he knows it’s what the natives (outside of St. Louis) call it?
If you think that the prospects for Iraq are good, here’s a way to make money on your belief.
DOE has decided to scrap plans for FIRE, which was originally intended to serve as an alternative to the International Thermonuclear Energy Experiment (ITER, later changed to ‘Iter’). This is a bad thing for reasons too numerous to list. For one thing, it puts all the fusion eggs in one basket. For another, that basket is internationalized, so that every election, every economic shift, every change of national priorities, in every one of the major participating nations will threaten the experiment.
The original recommendation from the Fusion Energy Sciences Advisory Committee was that if there had not been a decision to proceed with Iter by the end of July 2004, then work should move ahead on FIRE. Unfortunately the Bush administration decided that Iter was a good idea, for reasons which are still not clear to me – I suspect the desire to do a little international fence-mending had something to do with it. Anyway, with Iter rejoined (the US had dropped out in 1998), FIRE is superfluous, at least if you assume Iter is going to meet its program goals, which I seriously doubt (at least, assuming that staying under budget is one of them). FIRE has been criticized for relying on pedestrian technologies like copper magnets instead of superconductors, but that’s a feature, not a bug. FIRE is a much smaller and less ambitious experiment than Iter, and it’s firmly in the hands of the US. Both things increase the prospects of success – the lower ambition makes the technical aspects more likely to succeed, and the single government funding source makes the political aspects less likely to force major redesigns partway through.
Given my druthers I wouldn’t fund either Iter or FIRE, preferring to put money into a basket of alternative confinement concepts, and try novel things like prizes. Kerry has made energy independence a major platform plank, so if he wins there may be additional funding for fusion, but Iter is going to suck up a lot of that, and any project which runs alongside Iter will almost certainly get killed as soon as there is a funding crunch. I like the energy independence platform plank: it seems obvious to me that reducing our dependence on oil from the mideast increases the range of options for dealing with militant Islam. In particular, getting to the point where the Saudis no longer have any ability to affect the US economy seems quite desirable, since their official national religion is extremist Islam – how anyone could possibly consider them to be our allies is beyond me, but that’s a post for another day.
The upshot of this latest development is that commercially viable fusion energy has receded still further into the future. Under a Kerry administration it would most likely get a little closer, but not by much, and not cheaply.
A just published study (actually still in preprint) suggests that Earth like planets may be quite uncommon. I’m a little skeptical about the reasoning (based on the discussion in the link: I haven’t read the paper). It’s quite possible that the reason we haven’t found system’s like Sol’s is just that we don’t yet have the capability. The existence of systems which evolved in an entirely different way doesn’t really bear on the number of solar systems like our own except very indirectly.