Over at PJMedia, I write that the Republicans should have made the Democrats really do it.
The Long Space Age
This looks like an interesting new book
The Farce Awakens
Bad lip reading of the movie. Some of the dialogue is better, really.
This Presidency’s Worst Enemy
Douthat is right that Trump could use a brain trust. But some of us were told that Pence or Reince Priebus or Paul Ryan would serve that role. Certainly they’ve tried. Moreover, there are countless policy agendas sitting on the shelf for Trump to choose among.
Why so much chaos, then? A common answer you hear from all corners is “the tweeting” — the horrible, horrible tweeting. But when you talk to people with more hands-on experience in, or with, the Trump White House, the better answer is that the tweeting is just a symptom.
Trump brings the same glandular, impulsive style to meetings and interviews as he does to social media. He blurts out ideas or claims that send staff scrambling to see them implemented or defended. His management style is Hobbesian. Rivalries are encouraged. Senior aides panic at the thought of not being part of his movable entourage. He cares more about saving face and “counterpunching” his critics than he does about getting policy victories.
In short, the problem is Trump’s personality. His presidency doesn’t suffer from a failure of ideas, but a failure of character.
Yup. As I said throughout the campaign, Trump is terrible, she’s worse.
Mr. Wilson’s War
It’s been a hundred years since we entered it. Some thoughts on how it changed the world.
On-Line Privacy
The Electronic Freedom Foundation has a guide, now that the rules have been changed to allow your ISP to track you and sell the data.
More Blue Origin News
They’re working on a lunar lander:
Blue Origin would be willing to invest in development of the Blue Moon system as part of a partnership with NASA, Meyerson said, envisioning regular delivery of resources and supplies to a potential lunar colony to augment NASA missions launched by the agency’s own Space Launch System.
“The more NASA flies SLS, the more they will need commercial logistics delivery services,” he said. “New Glenn and Blue Origin and Blue Moon compliment SLS and Orion, enabling NASA’s return to the moon, and this time to stay.”
NASA’s current human spaceflight plans do not include human missions to the lunar surface. Instead, NASA has outlined an an architecture that calls for the development of a human-tended facility in cislunar space, called the Deep Space Gateway, by the mid-2020s intended to support testing of technologies needed for human missions to Mars in the 2030s.
Congress doesn’t really want NASA to do anything except build a giant rocket that hardly ever flies, but Meyerson is being politically correct.
[Update a while later]
ULA has a nice video of their vision for the future.
[Update Friday morning]
Eric Berger talked to Rob Meyerson about Blue Origin’s plans. They’ll be flying again this summer. Passengers next year.
Nerve Gas In Syria
The WaPo story is replete with grue. Especially the kicker.
The Seratonin Transporter Gene And Depression
Time to throw in the towel on the theory. Like climate, genetics remains a lot more complicated than we’d like to think.
Jeff Bezos
…sees a golden age of space entrepreneurship. Thanks to people like him, so do I. We’d previously heard he’d invested half a billion or so, but now he’s saying a billion a year. That’s serious.