Scott Pace gave an important speech that is sure to upset many in the international space community at the Galloway Symposium a couple weeks ago. Laura Montgomery comments.
Speaking of Henry Hertzfeld, every time I see him, for over a couple decades now, we argue about the viability of reducing the cost of launch through reusability of rockets. I wonder what he’s thinking these days?
This, from Scott Adams, is a few days old, but worth posting. I’ll confess to thinking that he’d never be nominated, and if he was he’d never be elected, but since then, I’ve had no firm opinions on what would happen next. And of course, his advice goes in spades for media, but they won’t take it.
Is the tide finally turning on it? It sure should be. This smiley-face fascism has gone on far too long.
A https://www.the-american-interest.com/2017/12/21/ladies-gentlemen-take-places/ is good for all of us.
As I noted on Twitter, many people, ignorant of economics, are going to be surprised at how little reducing corporate tax rates will have on government revenue. Because corporations don’t pay taxes; they only collect them.
Corporations will “pay” less tax, but shareholders and employees will end up paying more, because their income will go up, and the increased economic growth from reduced prices will result in additional revenue as well.
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.
It’s looking more and more like it was the “insurance policy.” The only collusion here was between the Justice Department and the Clinton campaign.
[Late afternoon update]
Nearly half of likely voters think that the FBI broke the law to keep Trump from winning the election. Me, too. This means that the Trump Justice Department can go after them with acceptable political consequences.
Sarah Hoyt has the grim tale.
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…
Now he’ll have to wait until January to be confirmed as NASA administrator, and it will be a squeaker because politics. And WTF is wrong with Rubio?
Crazy idea: McCabe should be held in contempt of Congress.[
[Update a few minutes later]
Top FBI lawyer reassigned. Ann Althouse interprets the story, because it makes little sense on its face.