A RAND SIMBERG PREDICTION: 2011 — The Year of Commercial Space Travel.
UPDATE: I told you so.
Archive for 2011
January 3, 2011
A ROUNDUP OF public pension news, pretty much all bad.
STAGNATION: WSJ: Drilling Is Stalled Even After Ban Is Lifted. “More than two months after the Obama administration lifted its ban on drilling in the deep-water Gulf of Mexico, oil companies are still waiting for approval to drill the first new oil well there. Experts now expect the wait to continue until the second half of 2011, and perhaps into 2012.”
A FIRST LOOK AT PawlentyCare.
JANUARY 2011’S HOTTEST GADGETS.
ANDY KESSLER: Videogames and the “Entertainment-Industrial Complex.”
JENNIFER RUBIN: Will GOP Chairmen Conduct Meaningful Oversight? They’d better.
IF THEY WERE REPUBLICANS, THIS WOULD BE CORRUPT: NYU Prof, Paid $905/Hour by BP, Vouches for Fund Administrator Feinberg.
NAVY TAKES DELIVERY of a fuel-cell powered Chevy Equinox. I drove one of those a while back.
STEPHEN GREEN: Storm The Bastille.
MICHAEL YON gets some attention.
now in paperback.JED BABBIN: ROTC Should Ban The Ivy League. “The right question is this: Is it in the military’s best interest to invest time and money to recruit and train young officers from among the denizens of the Ivy League? In short, it isn’t. . . . Banning ROTC at the Ivies is as damaging to the military as banning recruitment at Vassar would be to the NFL.”
DOWN ON BLOOMBERG: Botching The Basics: Mike’s Municipal Meltdown. “[Bloomberg] has been spending far too much time on ephemera — lately, the alleged evils of political partisanship — and not nearly enough on the basics of municipal governance. And, as a result, he got his pants pulled down by a gaggle of mutinous garbagemen. . . . Bloomberg should fire John Doherty, the sanitation commissioner, but he won’t — just as he refused to fire Nick Scopetta as fire commissioner after gross management failures at the FDNY conspired to kill two firefighters at the old Deutsche Bank building three years ago. In Mike’s World, a fired commissioner would be a public confession that the mayor himself has failed. But last week’s mess owns Mike Bloomberg. The label ‘failure” is stamped squarely in the middle of his forehead. The fact that Manhattan bike lanes had been hand shoveled clear to the pavement before a lot of outerborough avenues had seen their first plow demonstrates yet again that Bloomberg has lost interest in core mayoral duties — as if more evidence is necessary.”
THE ENCROACHING oligarchy.
KEN NELSON IS BLOGGING his experience following the recommendations in Tim Ferriss’s The Four-Hour Body. Start at the bottom and scroll up.
THE WHEEL OF PROGRESS: Running backward in Iran and Afghanistan since the 1950s. In the 1950s Western culture was confident, and thus widely imitated. Our cultural leaders soon fixed that.
2010 IN MOVIES: Hall of Fame and Shame.
WASHINGTON EXAMINER: AMERICA NEEDS A NEW NATIONAL DEBATE ON THE CONSTITUTION.
Related: Randy Barnett: Who’s Afraid Of The Repeal Amendment? In which Prof. Barnett responds to critics like Dana Milbank and Dahlia Lithwick.
THINGS YOU MAY HAVE MISSED OVER THE HOLIDAY WEEKEND, if you were off having a life or something:
Advice to the new Congress: My Sunday Washington Examiner column.
Dollar goes down, oil goes up.
More airports consider ditching TSA.
2010: A Momentous Year For Commercial Spaceflight.
Why California has become the epicenter of unemployment.
Lee County School Board doubles down on stupid.
Some fascinating automotive history.
Brain-dead anarchists for socialism.
Blizzard-inspired thoughts on low-budget disaster preparation. And a followup here.
Thoughts on sexual double standards.
Instead of plowing, NYC snowplow guys got plowed.
The James Cole controversy won’t go away.
FAILED STATE WATCH: How much longer for Mexico?
SYMPATHY for the IRS. “Due to the irresponsible screwing around of our CongressClowns, tax-law changes were made late in the year, with inadequate provision for the lead-time requirements of the IRS. As a result, many taxpayers will see delays in their ability to file their returns and get expected refunds. The main issue here, of course, is the inconvenience and financial impact on taxpayers. But also, imagine how much (not) fun it must be to work at the IRS and have your professional life dependent on rulers who show no recognition or appreciation for the realities of your work. Now just think…as government becomes more and more controlling of all aspects of the American economy, the same kind of problem that afflicts the IRS and taxpayers today will increasingly afflict all industries, their customers, and their suppliers.”
Nobody in their right mind would trust these clowns to babysit their cat. Why on earth would we give them control of the economy?