RUSH LIMBAUGH, APPLE FANBOY.
Archive for 2012
June 13, 2012
21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: My hippie date wasn’t interested in leaving the house, cleaning or not smoking pot. Okay, that sounds a lot like the latter part of the 20th Century, really . . . .
THANK YOU MA’AM, MAY I HAVE ANOTHER? The left’s Hindenburg Moment, Part 2: “Crying Man” begs for more time on conservative talk shows.
TEST-SHOOTING Nikon’s new top-of-the-line D4.
They like it. Sounds kinda pricey though.
AT AMAZON, up to 50% off on Oscillating Power Tools.
WHY GAS PRICES ARE STILL HIGH even though oil production is up.
ASTRONAUT TOM JONES ON what the success of SpaceX’s Dragon means.
For an astronaut, the import of Dragon’s test flight was twofold. First, it means that NASA can start to fill the 40-ton cargo shortfall it faces at ISS, supplying the six-person outpost with the research and habitation supplies needed for full productivity. Unlike the Russian, European, and Japanese robot cargo ships currently flying, SpaceX’s Dragon can make a round trip. On this first ISS run, it returned about 1400 pounds of cargo safely to Earth. Most was used or obsolete equipment, along with a few pounds of science samples. This return capability, lost with the shuttle’s retirement, is an important plus for Dragon and key to getting the most from space station research.
Second, it means chances are better that my colleagues might soon be riding to and from the station on a safe, economical spaceship. The SpaceX success brightens the prospects of NASA’s Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) program, hiring commercial firms to fly US astronauts to ISS. The reusable Dragon is aimed at meeting that need; NASA hopes to have a private astronaut transport ready by 2017. There are many design milestones and test flights still to come, but Dragon shows that NASA may be on the right path to end the necessity of paying $60 million per astronaut to fly to orbit on the Russian Soyuz.
ISS astronauts were impressed with Dragon as a potential transport ship, finding its roomy interior clean and inviting.
And with that “new-car smell.”
WHY CHRONIC INFECTIONS CAUSE CANCER. “One of the biggest risk factors for liver, colon or stomach cancer is chronic inflammation of those organs, often caused by viral or bacterial infections. A new study from MIT offers the most comprehensive look yet at how such infections provoke tissues into becoming cancerous.”
U.S. NEWS: AFL-CIO Pulling Funds From Obama Campaign.
INCENTIVES FOR DRIVERS who avoid traffic jams.
ED MORRISSEY: Obama Is On The Wrong Side of the Union Debate. And of history.
IN THE MAIL: 180 Movie.
#GREENFAIL: Syracuse’s little-used electric car chargers being replaced after just months.
A Syracuse nonprofit got a $700,000 government grant last year to buy and install 68 electric car charging units around Central New York.
But this week, Synapse Sustainability Trust ripped the last of the chargers out of a downtown Syracuse parking lot.
But reader Kenneth Strumpf writes that this is the key bit:
The goof-up will have little impact on the public. After all, there are only 30 electric or electric hybrid cars in five counties surrounding Syracuse. There are more charging units than there are cars that can use them.
He comments: “I regularly park in a lot containing about a dozen of these charging stations and have never seen a car attached to one.”
Interestingly, the company that got the grant, Synapse Partners, is run by the county Democratic chairwoman. “Fed by government grants, their company and its nonprofit arm also have strong connections to the Democratic Party.”
ANOTHER VICTORY FOR THE FREE-SPEECH LITIGATORS AT F.I.R.E.: Federal Court: University of Cincinnati Free Speech Zone Violates First Amendment, ‘Cannot Stand.’ I thought America was a free-speech zone.
VERIZON WIRELESS JACKING UP DATA CHARGES.
IN CASE YOU MISSED YESTERDAYS’ PHOTOSHOP FUN, here’s one of the contributions.
WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: Wilsonian Wars, Wilsonian Ruin. “After we expressed our concerns during NATO’s Libyan war that the afterparty was likely to be chaotic and unpleasant, we’ve been watching the horrific humanitarian and political consequences unwind in several places, most dramatically in northern Mali.”
Meanwhile, in Iraq they’re serving pizza, fried chicken, and “San Francisco steaks.” Seems like the Bush approach is looking better than the Obama Administration’s “more rubble, less trouble” approach. See, this is why I opposed that approach 5 years ago. Pizza good. “Horrific humanitarian and political consequences,” bad. That’s how things work here in simplistic InstaPunditland.
UPDATE: Okay, it’s a bad day to make that point.
WHY YOU SHOULDN’T BE A WRITER.
HUMAN RIGHTS UPDATE: Weapons Laws of the Russian Federation. “On the whole, the Russian Federation’s arms laws show considerably greater respect for the fundamental human right of self-defense than do the laws of some other European nations, such as the United Kingdom or Luxembourg.”
AT AMAZON, new releases on Blu-Ray and DVD.
THE HILL: Poll: Weak economy hits Obama approval rating. “A new poll finds President Obama’s approval rating hitting a low thanks to growing anxieties among voters on the state of the economy’s recovery. Forty-seven percent of Americans approve of Obama’s job performance in a new Reuters/Ipsos poll, down from 50 percent in the same survey last month. The poll finds 63 percent believe the country is on the wrong track, up 6 points from May.” These people are crazy. The country is doing fine.
UPDATE: Obama’s Economic Approach A Dud With Voters. “Specificity is the enemy of the Obama reelection campaign.”
Not surprisingly, Romney is responding by getting specific.
THERE’S STILL A WOMEN’S CHRISTIAN TEMPERANCE UNION? Apparently so. That’s interesting. Now shut up — you people caused enough trouble in the last century. . . .