SOME HEAVY-GAUGE NEWS: Loop quantum gravity: getting closer to reality.
Archive for 2009
March 9, 2009
FASTER, PLEASE: TR10: Traveling-Wave Reactor. “A new reactor design could make nuclear power safer and cheaper.”
THINGS YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED this weekend, if you were off, you know, having a life or something:
Chris Dodd update: A Pardon For A Friend, A Good Deal For Dodd.
“Tea Party” protests in Harrisburg, as well as Green Bay (1,200 in the cold) and Fullerton (15,000 in the warm!) Also Kansas City (where it’s become a weekly thing) and Lafayette. And Salt Lake City.
Buyer’s Remorse among the Obamacons.
The unfortunate relevance of Ayn Rand.
And, searching for exoplanets. Can I have my Manschenn Drive now?
WELL, THIS IS CHEERFUL: “Buffett said Monday during a live appearance on CNBC that current economic turmoil has basically followed the worst-case scenario he envisioned.”
SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE: Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner is Open to Ideas. Plus, “Everybody has to pay taxes — that’s the law!”
NEW YORK TIMES: Events are getting ahead of Geithner.
HIS WORDS, the President’s voice.
WASHINGTON POST: Pentagon’s Unwanted Projects in Earmarks: Democrats Press Backyard Spending.
When President Obama promised Wednesday to attack defense spending that he considers wasteful and inefficient, he opened a fight with key lawmakers from his own party. . . . The champion was defense appropriations subcommittee Chairman John P. Murtha (D-Pa.), who collected $743,275 of the industry’s money; second place was held by Armed Services Committee Chairman Ike Skelton (D-Mo.), who collected $268,799, according to the center’s tally.
Murtha added more than $100 million in earmarks to the fiscal 2008 defense bill, nearly a fifth of the total inserted by all Democrats, according to the watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense. Every earmark reflects a project that the Pentagon did not seek in its budget request, and some of Murtha’s earmarks benefited clients of a lobbying firm called PMA Group, now under FBI investigation for possible violations of federal election law. PMA is run by a former Murtha aide, and some of its clients were donors to Murtha campaigns.
Hope, change, and a new kind of politics. One even greedier and more corrupt than the old kind of politics!
AN AMUSING CHRIS DODD THROWAWAY LINE: “Two compensation caps are in effect. In one, the Obama Administration is by regulation limiting executive pay to $500,000 a year at 421 bailed-out firms until the government’s money is repaid. The other is a provision inserted into the $787 billion stimulus bill by congressional Democrats led by Chris Dodd, the Connecticut senator with the somewhat ethical Countrywide mortgage.”
Heh.
THOUGHTS ON OBAMA, THE RIGHT, and being “tired.”
Plus, this:
I have this picture of President Obama sitting in the White House, thinking I hate my job. He was all about running for President. What did he really know about being President?
Less than he knows now, that’s for sure.
THIS IS KINDA SAD: After 60 years Circuit City powers down. I remember when they were “Dixie Hifi.” Of course, it’s saddest for the unsecured creditors . . . .
CLIVE CROOK: Why Obama’s left leaning is no tactical feint.
MORE THOUGHTS ON THE SINGULARITY, from J. Storrs Hall.