Arnold Kling has a very good article about non-linear thinking. Nothing new (at least to me) but a cogent way of explaining the implications to those for whom it is.

Glenn reminds me of an email we both got from Gary Hudson, about the Methuselah Mouse Prize.

The prize structure is quite clever, and anyone interested in life extension and aging reversal should be supportive of this.

I’m finishing up a column on the Concorde, and have a lot of other things to do, so posting will be light.

Monday is Suborbital Action Day on Capitol Hill. If you’re in the DC area and want to help lobby Congress on this issue, get in touch with the Suborbital Institute. For further info, follow the link.

Thanks for this link from commenters and emailers. It seems that some namby pambies are concerned about sending astronauts to Space Station Albatross, because its environmental systems are breaking down.

I don’t have time for a lot of commentary on this right now, but I’ll make two points.

First, this is the most important factor:

Station astronauts have consistently said they prefer to keep the orbiting facility occupied during the shuttles’ grounding and that they accept the attendant risks and discomfort. Foale and Kaleri are seasoned veterans, Foale having survived a collision and Kaleri a fire during their tours aboard the Russian Mir space station.

I tire of pantywaist politicians and bureaucrats, and those nervous nellies in the public who urge them on, deciding for other people how much risk they should take, particularly when taking risks is part of their job.

Now, I don’t really care if ISS falls into the ocean (though hopefully it will come in without hitting anything with actual value on land), but for people who don’t want to see a hundred-billion-dollar “investment” littering the seabottom, the notion that we should risk letting it do so because we don’t want to risk a couple of astronauts is ludicrous. Human life is priceless and invaluable to people who know and love the particular humans, but it’s not that invaluable. The government manages to put a value on it every day, in myriad ways, and this should be no exception.

But the second point is that this is the almost inevitable result of flawed space policy over the past three decades, in which we developed a fragile monoculture of a space transportation system, with which we’ve now built a fragile monoculture of a single, politically-driven-but-largely-useless facility in orbit.

NASA’s current manned spaceflight programs are largely irrelevant to our nation’s future in space, and any new policy that purports to care about that future must accept this reality, and rethink our entire approach to this frontier.

Here’s a good companion piece to my National Review column about the Chinese space program.

Ed Hudgins says to unleash American private enterprise.

Lileks has the goods on it. Normally I’d say read the whole thing, and I don’t want to say that it’s not worth doing so, because Senor Lileks could write about his dog’s bowel movements (or equally, or even more entertainingly, the lack thereof) and be worth reading, but apropo the title of this post, be sure at least to read the first half or so.

The second half is optional, at least from that standpoint.

Well, there’s good news and bad news. I was watching Fox, in anticipation of Bush’s live speech to the Australian parliament.

They cut to the parliament, but as PM Howard started to speak, they focused on President Bush’s face, illuminating his expression as the PM introduced him, without a camera on Mr. Howard.

Then, they cut away to an inane discussion between Hannity and Colmes, and Laura Ingraham and (shudder) Democrat hack Vic Camber, at which point they finally cut to a video of the PM’s speech, but with no audio, so that no one could any longer even hear the intro.

When the Bush speech finally commenced, they finally cut back to it (though not until after Laurie Dhue’s half-past newswrap). It was a good speech (except for the repeated use of the pronunciation “nookyalur”–is there no way to break him of this, or does no one in the White House care?), made all the better by two interruptions from leftist Senators, to which his response to the second was “I love free speech.”

That’s actually the bad news, so from that relative perspective, perhaps there’s no good news.

Of course, the worse news (which makes Fox look much better in contrast), is that neither of the other two American cable news channels (MSNBC and CNN) interrupted their programming for any coverage at all…

The historian that the Gray Lady hired to look into the Walter Duranty Pulitzer has recommended that the prize be revoked. It’s up to the Pulitzer committee now. If it actually happens, it will be interesting to see the response from academia.