HERE’S SOME INFO on Jeff Bezos’ private space company, Blue Origin:

Blue Origin proposes to launch its reusable launch vehicles (RLVs) on suborbital, ballistic trajectories to altitudes in excess of 325,000 feet (99,060 meters) from a privately-owned space launch site in Culberson County, Texas.

As outlined in the EA, the Blue Origin launch site would be approximately 25 miles (40.2 kilometers) north of Van Horn, Texas. It lies within a larger, privately-owned property known as the Corn Ranch. Access to the proposed launch site is from Texas Highway 54, which is approximately five miles (8 kilometers) west of the proposed project’s center of operations. . . .

As detailed in the EA, the New Shepard RLV system would be comprised of a propulsion module and a crew capsule capable of carrying three or more space flight participants on roundtrip treks from the ground to the edge of space. The crew capsule is perched on top of the propulsion module. The stacked vehicle would have a roughly nose cone shape with a base diameter of approximately 22 feet (7 meters) and a height of approximately 50 feet (15 meters).

The propulsion module would be fully reusable, would carry its own avionics, and would operate autonomously under the control of on-board computers. The propulsion module would use 90 percent concentration hydrogen peroxide, called high test peroxide (HTP) and rocket propellant (RP) grade kerosene as the propellants.

I’m hoping it works.

INCOHERENCE ON PRIVACY: Dave Weigel thinks that the New York Times did nothing wrong in publishing the GPS coordinates of Cheney and Rumsfeld’s vacation homes, because anybody can find that stuff in this Internet age. But in the same post he writes:

As so often happens with these things, angry bloggers have struck back and posted the addresses and phone numbers of the Times’ photogs. (No link.)

No link? Why not? By Weigel’s standards, a link wouldn’t contribute to invasion of privacy. Anybody can find that stuff, right?

And if anybody can find that stuff, why’s he so upset about publishing office phone numbers of public officials?

More coherent thoughts on the subject can be found here.

UPDATE: As usual, Glenn Greenwald is clueless, accusing me of being a major promoter of StopTheACLU.com when in fact I was the target of a targeted mass-delinking at their behest. Glenn — read the Online Integrity principles linked above if you want to know what I think about privacy. Jeez.

And why is your publishing of my email different, exactly, from the “thuggish” tactics you condemn? Grow up.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Patrick Kelly emails:

In order to avoid work, I looked at Greenwald’s post on your “promoting” “Stop the ACLU.” I even clicked through the links. Greenwald’s links don’t come close to his descriptions. Your post “approvingly citing” the STACLU is a link to a Sacramento Bee story noting a guilty verdict in the Hayat (Lodi) terror case (via STACLU, hardly approving of its mission). The “often” link references the Solomon act decision, and says “John Stephenson is gloating.” Hmmm, that’ a clear endorsement if I ever saw one. The “promoting” link refers to a link that goes to a blogger asking for financial help (again, via John Stephenson, and again, hardly support for his contention).

But the bottom line is, how can anyone read your site and conclude that you are firmly opposed to the ACLU? You are either with the Left in all things, or they don’t want you for anything. Take that Joe Lieberman.

Greenwald’s readers, as previously discussed, don’t seem to follow the links. His descriptions often diverge rather sharply from the linked items. And I link lots of people I don’t “approve of” — like Greenwald!

But reading blogs to avoid work? Say it ain’t so!

MORE: Reader Jeff Kimmel emails:

If posting someone’s email address is just as thuggish as posting that person’s home address, why do you post your email address on your site and not your home address?

I don’t think it is thuggish. But Greenwald seems to think that posting a public official’s office phone number is thuggish, and those two things don’t seem very different. When Greenwald posts my email, though, he doesn’t even bother to spamproof it, as I do on my site, meaning that not only do I get lots of abusive and illiterate emails from readers of his site who don’t even bother to follow the link and read what I actually wrote, I also get emails offering to refinance my mortgage and introduce me to sexy Russian women. Which, it’s true, are often politer and better-written than the ones from Greenwald’s readers, but which are nonetheless undesirable. That’s not thuggish, just thoughtless.

Anyway, I think that the privacy guidelines at the Integrity site are pretty good ones, and the blogosphere would do well to follow them.

MORE: And, yes, I do have my email address on the site — but it’s got some sort of nifty javascript antispam that Stacy Tabb put on it. It’s generally good manners to post emails in the form “pundit -at- instapundit.com” or some such so that spam harvesters don’t catch them. That’s what I usually do. My other problem with Greenwald is that his readers seem to email based on his, often inaccurate, descriptions rather than following the link and reading things for themselves.

MORE STILL: People unclear on the concept. . . Reader D.G. Fisher writes:

I agree with you that publishing your email address and publishing your home address are EXACTLY the same thing.

So please, let’s have at it and publish your home address on your weblog so we can now see where you live and I can drop by and knock on your door and hand-deliver my messages to you personally instead of having to do this impersonal arms-length email thing.

C’mon Glenn, you owe us that much. Email addy/ home address — there’s no difference, nuh-uh, not as far as any sensible person can see. Get to it already and publish your home address. Your home phone number would be pretty cool too.

Funny, but I don’t think I said that. In fact — remember how we started out? — it was Dave Weigel, way at the beginning of this post, who seemed to say that publishing not just the address, but the GPS coordinates of Rumsfeld and Cheney’s houses is okay, because people can find it anyway, but that publishing the office phone number of a university chancellor was something awful. And I was the one who suggested that this didn’t make much sense.

As I noted above, I think the Online Integrity principles make more sense. And I guess, once the sarcasm is gone, that D.G. Fisher thinks the same thing.

So where does he get the idea that I feel otherwise? Where else than from Glenn Greenwald, who once again misrepresents my position in order to make his point: “Listing someone’s email address and their home address are, argues Reynolds, indistinguishable and equally ‘thuggish.'”

Except that I don’t argue that. Greenwald is arguing with himself. I think he’s got his Glenns confused. And for those who don’t follow links, here are the Online Integrity principles on this stuff:

Private persons are entitled to respect for their privacy regardless of their activities online. This includes respect for the non-public nature of their personal contact information, the inviolability of their homes, and the safety of their families. No information which might lead others to invade these spaces should be posted. The separateness of private persons’ professional lives should also be respected as much as is reasonable.

Public figures are entitled to respect for the non-public nature of their personal, non-professional contact information, and their privacy with regard to their homes and families. No information which might lead others to invade these spaces should be posted.

Clear? I think so.

IN THE MAIL: For the Insta-Daughter, I ordered Mercedes Lackey’s The Fairy Godmother, a rather different retelling of the Cinderella story.

SECRET / NOT SECRET? The Times is encountering more skepticism about its ever-changing stories.

FREEMAN HUNT:

Note to Hollywood: A “relay” or “rolling hunger strike” is not a hunger strike at all. It is a single day without food.

How about a rolling labor strike? One guy will picket outside for one day while everyone else works. He’ll go back to work the next day, and another guy will come out and picket for a day. Then that guy will trade off with someone else and so on.

Lame and unserious.

But of course.

JACKIE DANICKI: “In what bizarre universe is this guy ‘liberal’ while someone like me – who is strongly pro-gay marriage, pro-easy availability of pornography, against the stupid drug war, and stridently anti-authoritarian – is often described as ‘conservative’? If he’s a liberal, I’m a Prada handbag.”

(Via Samizdata).

AUSTIN BAY ON THE MISSILES BEHIND THE ELVIS SUMMIT:

The six North Korean missiles on Tuesday are big news, but they aren’t the strategic shocker. The shocker occurred in August 1998, when Pyongyang tested a long-range ballistic missile. That launch revitalized the United States-Japanese alliance and blew away any legitimate arguments that the United States could wait to develop and deploy ballistic missile defenses.

Pyongyang’s 1998 test shot demonstrated that Japan and the United States — and for that matter, Europe — are vulnerable to rogue missile attack, and it’s utterly false to argue otherwise. It meant U.S. diplomacy and the world economy are potential hostages to missile blackmail by regional tinpots.

Japan got North Korea’s message. The Japanese also observed China’s steady military modernization and concluded the logical, most impressive and most reliable “strategic balance” to China is the United States. . . .

In May, the Honolulu Bulletin reported that the Aegis cruiser USS Lake Erie successfully intercepted a target missile using an improved U.S. Navy Standard-2 interceptor missile. The Lake Erie also test-fired an advanced Standard-3 anti-missile missile. Japan has destroyers with the Aegis radar system, which can detect and track ballistic missiles. The Japanese destroyers would operate as electronic eyes for a regional ABM system.

The United States and Japan are also exploring ways to more effectively integrate U.S. and Japanese ground forces. The Japanese military has participated in overseas operations and gained experience. For two years, Japan deployed 5,500 troops in Iraq, and they served quite effectively with other coalition forces.

This seems like another reason — besides those stolen trains — for the Chinese to be unhappy with North Korea.

THIS SOUNDS PROMISING:

While it has long been known that bone marrow cells have the ability to clear the dead tissue after a heart attack, what has not been known until now is the critically important role of bone marrow adult stem cells in repairing a damaged heart, restoring its function and enhancing the growth of new blood vessels.

“These cells act like generals in a battlefield, explained Dr. Shafie Fazel, cardiac surgery resident at TGH, University of Toronto surgeon/scientist program fellow and lead author of the study entitled, “Cardioprotective c-kit+ cells are from the bone marrow and regulate the myocardial balance of angiogenic cytokines,” published today in The Journal of Clinical Investigation. “When damaged heart tissue sends out an ‘SOS’ distress signal, this subset of bone marrow cells mobilizes quickly and stimulates the growth of new blood vessels in the heart. This is the first step in repairing the heart and in preventing the vicious downward spiral of heart failure in which the heart progressively thins and dilates, eventually causing death.”

Let’s hope this leads to new treatments. (Via Slashdot).

ANTI-AMERICAN, MUCH? The BBC has apologized for remarks that President Bush can “rot in Hell.”

Irish blog Slugger O’Toole calls it “anti Americanism gone mad,” and Biased BBC observes “the mask slips.”

It wasn’t much of a mask anyway.

If only they talked about mass murderers like Robert Mugabe, or would-be mass murders like Ahmadinejad, the same way.

UPDATE: Ouch.

FOLLOW THE MONEY: Dan Riehl and Rogers Cadenhead continue to look at the Netroots’ finances, though it still seems to me that what they’re finding is just politics as usual. (Via Kaus). And, like Allison Hayward, I don’t get the loan point.

HILLARY CLINTON:

“I’ve known Joe Lieberman for more than 30 years. I have been pleased to support him in his campaign for reelection, and hope that he is our party’s nominee,” the former first lady said in a statement issued by aides.

But she’ll support the Democratic nominee, even if it isn’t Lieberman.

UPDATE: Hugh Hewitt comments: “Joe Lieberman was the Democratic Party’s standard bearer only six years ago, but now he’s the object of a political purge because of his centrist politics.”

Or maybe it’s just payback.

KEN LAY IS DEAD. Heart attack.

ROGER SIMON bows to the inevitable.

FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE 1950, no tornadoes in Kansas/Nebraska. Reader Matt Crandall emails: “Hey, isn’t it obvious that this must be the result of Global Warming?”

No. Global warming only causes bad weather.

UPDATE: See?

TEACHING 9/11 DENIAL at the University of Wisconsin – Madison.

WHAT’S SO GREAT about America?

FIVE LESSONS from avian flu.

STRATEGYPAGE ON NORTH KOREA:

Meanwhile, North Korean officials engage in even more bizarre behavior. For example, food and fuel supplies sent to North Korea have been halted, not to force North Korea to stop missile tests or participate in peace talks, but to return the Chinese trains the aid was carried in on. In the last few weeks, the North Koreans have just kept the trains, sending the Chinese crews back across the border. North Korea just ignores Chinese demands that the trains be returned, and insists that the trains are part of the aid program. It’s no secret that North Korean railroad stock is falling apart, after decades of poor maintenance and not much new equipment. Stealing Chinese trains is a typical loony-tune North Korean solution to the problem. If the North Koreans appear to make no sense, that’s because they don’t. Put simply, when their unworkable economic policies don’t work, the North Koreans just conjure up new, and equally unworkable, plans. The Chinese have tried to talk the North Koreans out of these pointless fantasies, and for their trouble they have their trains stolen. How do you negotiate under these conditions? No one knows.

Jeez.

MICKEY KAUS: “Has McCain blown the GOP nomination? Not yet!”

NEWSFLASH — MARKETS WORK:

Rising gasoline prices this year are blunting demand for trucks, which account for a majority of sales at the three U.S.- based automakers. Fuel concerns are also boosting demand for more fuel-efficient cars, which dominate the product lineup of Japan-based Toyota Motor Corp. and Honda Motor Co.

Imagine that.

POST-MATURE ANTI-FEMINISM, or something like that: “Just six months after quitting the all-male social club to which he belonged for 50 years, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy is questioning one of President Bush’s nominees to the federal bench about his membership in an all-male dining club.”

THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR has a followup on the Kentucky blog-ban story.

KOREA LAUNCHES: “The reclusive communist state launched the missile at 3:32 a.m., or 2:32 p.m. Tuesday EDT, and it crashed into the Sea of Japan several minutes later, public broadcaster NHK reported.”

UPDATE: Peter Weisskopf emails: “Did you ever consider that missile was downed by an american frigate in the Sea of Japan?”

I hope so, but I think we’d be bragging about it if that were the case.

Austin Bay has posted an analysis.

ANOTHER UPDATE: A roundup on the topic, from Pajamas Media.

A SUCCESSFUL SHUTTLE LAUNCH: That’s good news. Much more here.

IT’S A BIG FOURTH OF JULY ROUNDUP over at Pajamas Media.