History, Philosophy, Social Commentary

Merry Christmas

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I want to wish the best of the season to all of my Christian readers. As my gift, here is Psalm 53, being sung to the Pope in Aramaic.

[Christmas-afternoon update]

Richard Fernandez has thoughts on the Left’s continually failed attempts to purge the holiday of its meaning:

“Happy Federal Holiday” is about as information empty as you can get and perhaps that is deliberate. It advances not just another phrase, but a completely different world view, a universe safely empty of everything but numbers on a calendar.

Eventually anyone indoctrinated in this tradition will find accounts of the Federal Holiday Truce of 1914 or “I’ll be Home for the Federal Holiday of 1943” hard to comprehend. Nor will they be able to understand why anyone in Mosul should want to observe the Federal Holiday of 2017. Yet how could it be otherwise? To understand history one has to understand why such events as Christmas are and you cannot do that in a meaning-free universe.

The effort to erase Christmas will probably fail for no other reason than that it meets a human need that a mechanical bureaucratic day off cannot fulfill. Humanity needs a time to mark the growth and change in the family, an occasion to renew hopes and put aside fears and a chance to remember something we once knew: that everything’s going to be alright in the end. It really will.

The best Christmas present I could get would be for the corrupt officials at the Obama Justice Department (including the IRS) to finally be confronted with actual justice in the New Year. And I continue to be very happy that She lost.

Administrative, Business, Technology and Society

My New Computer

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Regular readers are aware of my recent travails (no, I’m not going to search for links). As an experiment this fall, I’ve been using an ASUS tablet and bluetooth keyboard and mouse. I won’t go into all of the frustration and screaming I’ve gone through to make this work, but it just. doesn’t.

I finally broke down and went out shopping at Best Buy near our place in Golden, CO (that’s where we are until the trip back next weekend). They had a fantastic deal on an HP AMD laptop for $229. Two problems with it: its 4G RAM isn’t expandable, and it has a 15″ screen. Why is the latter a problem, you ask? And well you may. It’s a problem because in addition to my old laptop needing replacement, seat pitch has gotten to a state at which you cannot use a laptop that size on a seatback table. I needed a smaller machine.

So I looked some more, and I found a 2-in-1 HP with a much smaller footprint, and a touchscreen. It also has a pen, in theory, but I don’t give a rat’s tuchus about that because the whole reason that I love computers is that I no longer have to drag something across something to communicate my thoughts. God’s gift to me, despite the fact that I don’t believe in Him/Her is the keyboard.

Its memory is also not expandable, but I’ve given up on that; these new machines are so thin that the RAM has to be soldered to the board. For $350 plus tax, it’s good enough. And so far it has been.

Next step is to see if I can install a good OS on it…

Administrative, Law, Technology and Society

Off The Air

12 Comments

I’m driving out to Denver today and tomorrow, then the suborbital researchers conference on Monday through Wednesday. Play nice in comments.

[Monday-morning update]

Arrived in Denver area without incident, other than chickenpoop speeding ticket in northern NM for 82 in a 75 zone. I’ve always assumed that if you’re within 10% you’re OK. Guess this is my decadal ticket.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Space, Technology and Society

Trump’s Space Policy

20 Comments

I haven’t seen everything, so I can’t say for sure that this is the stupidest, most ignorant take on it, but it will do until something dumber comes along.

[Update a few minutes later]

Meanwhile, a much smarter take from Sarah Cruddas.

[Monday-morning update]

Aaaaand here’s a rewriting of space history from Jason Rhian. Too busy with conference to fisk it, but it needs it badly.

[Bumped]

Business, Space, Technology and Society

SpaceX

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Another successful launch today, historic in that it’s the first reuse of the vehicle for a NASA payload, and the 20th successful landing. It also indicates that LC-40 is back in business after the explosion last year, and it’s the 17th launch of the year for them, a new record. There will probably be one more this year, the Iridium Next flight out of Vandenberg in a few days. And yesterday, they opened up applications for media credential for the Falcon Heavy launch out of LC-39A, next month.

[Update a few minutes later]

As for Blue Origin, get a dummy’s-eye view of this week’s flight of Mannequin Skywalker.

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