This article is typical of reportage on supersonic transports. The explanation of shock waves is terrible (subsonic aircraft compress air in front and reduce density behind as well), and the focus is on the boom, which ignores the cost elephant in the room, which is wave drag, which reduces range below the vital trans-Pacific market, and puts ticket prices through the roof.
A New Titanium Alloy
Adding gold vastly increases strength and hardness. I’d still prefer just regrowing the standard body parts, though.
I wonder what aerospace applications it might have?
How To Defeat Terrorism
No, it’s not “violent extremism,” or radical Islam, and it’s not Muslims per se: It’s Islam, and it has been since the formation of the conquering political ideology masquerading as a religion.
And when it comes to Islam, Western leaders are liars or idiots. Embrace the power of “and.”
Skinny Fat People
This is an excellent example of how simplistic too many people’s (including medical professionals) view of diet, dietary fat and obesity remain. The simply notion that you are what you eat is stupid.
Hillary
She became a senator from New York as a final tribute from a Democratic electorate to her husband. The man who preceded her in office, the great Daniel Patrick Moynihan, wryly saluted her “Illinois-Arkansas enthusiasm,” Hillary and New York being as much a marriage of convenience as Hillary and Bill. She was a legislative nonentity in the Senate, because she was running for president from the day she was sworn in. (A few of the 2016 Republican contenders know a thing or two about that.) When her moment came, she was outdone in the Democratic primary by an even bigger legislative nonentity in the Senate. It was funny, in a cruel way, and people laughed at her, in a cruel way.
Barack Obama condescended to offer her the scrap of a Cabinet position, which she botched, doing great damage to his administration and the country in the process. She was one of the most inept chief diplomats in memory. Bill Clinton had found a place on the global stage through his close relationship with Tony Blair while Warren Christopher and Madeleine Albright minded the shop. George H. W. Bush before him had in a moment of Middle Eastern crisis shown himself to be a true master of the game. Mrs. Clinton’s State Department had the nation, including its Democrats, longing for the steady-handed confidence of the Carter years. She was bad enough that John Kerry was considered an improvement.
When her moment came again, she was put through the wringer by a dopey socialist from Vermont whose young, idealistic partisans — the people people like Mrs. Clinton like to think of themselves as — still don’t want her. They’ll take her over Donald Trump, of course, and they’ll feel a little like the man who hears: “You’re responding reasonably well to the chemo.”
RTWT. It’s cruel, but fair.
[Update a while later]
Link is fixed, sorry.
John Kerry
…is an idiot. No air conditioners are not as big a threat as ISIS, but if you really believe that, turn them off at the State Department.
Trump Is No Messiah
…and neither was Barack Obama. I eschew personality cults.
[Update a while later]
Trump as the disruptive president. The mess in Washington could certainly use some disruption.
The IRS
Why won’t they comply with the Congressional Review Act?
Because like the rest of this administration, they’re corrupt lying political hacks who think they’re above the law.
[Sunday-morning update]
Related: If you think that the bureaucracy is the bulwark against tyranny, you should support Donald Trump:
…the bureaucrats — allied with the press, of course — will do more to check misbehavior by Trump than they’ll ever conceivably do to check misbehavior by Hillary. And certainly much more than they’ve done with Obama, who has weaponized the IRS, the EPA, the Department of Justice, and a host of other federal agencies, all the way down to the Park Service, with barely a peep from within the bureaucracy.
So what people worry about with Trump has already happened under Obama. And that’s part of the problem. Obama broke down and devalued a lot of political traditions in this country, to very little objection from the parts of the political class that matter. That opened up a hole for Trump. My main positive expectation for a Trump presidency is that he will remind people of why those political traditions were important.
They only think they’re important when a Republican, even a faux Republican like Trump, is in the White House. Trump also has the potential to arouse Congress to finally exercise and defend its own prerogatives. The Founders didn’t put in the impeachment power with the idea it would never be used.
I Side With…
Gary Johnson, and 74% Donald Trump (13% Hillary).
Of course, the quiz is based on what Trump says, not on what he’s actually likely to do, since no on, probably including him, even knows what that is.
[Update a few minutes later]
A theory of why Thiel supports Trump. Makes as much sense as anything else.
Trump’s Acceptance Speech
I haven’t read it yet, but putatively, this is it.
I should note that I’m living in an empty house in Florida, renovating it for sale, with no access to media, other than over-the-air radio, tethering off my phone for Internet, and leaving garage door open in 90+ weather to hear Sirius on the rental-car radio. I feel like I’m living in the late 20th century.
[Update a while later]
I’m very interested in what Thiel says. I’m listening on NPR.