It’s in Barcelona. Fox is reporting that thirteen are already dead, with the toll expected to go higher. Charlie Martin is tracking it.
Charles Martel weeps.
Johnny Has “The Talk”
Trump’s Latest Demented Rant
Robert Tracinski says he needs to not be president yesterday. But as he says, if he had enough sense to resign, he’d have enough sense not to appear to be defending Nazis. He just can’t help himself.
[Update a while later]
No, “liberals,” there are no Nazis under your bed.
[Thursday-morning update]
Note that I’m not complaining about Trump’s attempt to point out that Antifa are no saints. I’m furious (as usual) at how inarticulate, tone deaf and incompetent he was at doing so.
The Google Lunar X-Prize
There’s a lot of talk today about their having “extended” the deadline to March 31 of next year. I have a clarification in email from Katherine Schelbert:
To clarify, this is not an extension. In this case, this is more of a re-focus. The most recent Dec 31, 2017 date was established as the date by which teams needed to initiate a launch, and was used as a means to down select to the current 5 finalists. Now, what is more important to teams, who all have different mission profiles (and paths to the moon, length of time in orbit) is the deadline by which they need to complete the mission, which is now the only date that matters. This competition is designed to not just inspire teams to launch, but to complete the mission, which is also why we are further incentivizing teams with the in-space Milestone Prizes, which are important achievements that will occur post-launch, on the way to fulfilling the competition requirements.
FWIW.
Postmodernism
It’s the cause of the mess in academia, and it’s starting to collide with its own internal contradictions.
New Leadership At NASA
Apparently it’s going to be Jim Bridenstine as administrator, and former Chief of Staff John Schumacher as his Deputy. This is much better news than if Lightfoot had been given the job. Bridenstine told me in February that he had read my book. He will continue to pay lip service to SLS as long as seems politically necessary, but I think he knows what a programmatic disaster it is.
Rejuvenating Aging Hearts
…with young stem cells.
Faster, please.
Space Assembly
Made In Space has tested Archinaut in a thermal vacuum chamber. Only part of the environment missing is free fall.
Beware
…the ObamaCare Industrial Complex:
You can call this a bailout or just a swindle of taxpayers who were fed a litany of lies about Obamacare’s virtues from the very start. Either way taxpayers get shafted (again) and the Obamacare industrial complex gets fat and happy. If Republicans are partners to this fiscal crime, they are as culpable as the Democrats who passed this turkey in the first place and they certainly don’t deserve to be the governing party.
John McCain can rot in Hell.
The Price Of Power
An expose of the corrupt extraconstitutional political party system. Not sure what the solution to this is, but I’m sure the Founders would have found it toxic.