SPEAKING AS A (SMALL) XCOR INVESTOR, THIS IS SAD: The XCOR Lynx Spaceplane Might Be Down for the Count. On the other hand, I was most interested in the engine business, which is going well. “In March, XCOR entered into a contract with the behemoth United Launch Alliance, the Boeing-Lockheed partnership that launches lots of military satellites, to develop a new rocket engine that uses liquid hydrogen. ULA is building a launch system called Vulcan that needs an upper stage. It is looking for a solution from private space, from Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin and from XCOR, as well as from entrenched engine providers like Aerojet Rocketdyne. This alliance may have killed the impetus to build a spacecraft at all, now that XCOR has a revenue stream coming from the engine work. A less ambitious (but revenue-generating) project has usurped the larger, grander, and riskier scheme.”
Archive for 2016
June 1, 2016
I ASSUME THIS IS SIMPLY STEVE GREEN’S SECRET UNDERGROUND HOOCH STORAGE: Secret apocalypse bunker ‘buried beneath Denver airport as US government prepares for end of days.’
THIS ISN’T THE 21st CENTURY I WAS PROMISED: James Lileks on the “joys” of mandatory composting in Minneapolis:
The amusing part, in an utterly non-amusing sort of way — the grass blankets, which had been tight rolls a few inches thick when I bought them, were now huge wet bloaty piles that required four lawn trash bags to remove, and they’re not lawn trash because they have nylon string. I will have to put them out with signs that say NOT LAWN TRASH — IGNORE THE CONTEXTUAL IMPLICATIONS OF THE CONTAINER this week, or they’ll go to the place where they put the lawn waste and nylon will enter the equation and everything will be ruined.
Except . . . I don’t know what they do with lawn waste. We have new bins now for composting, which suggests the old lawn waste is probably fed to a compactor, turned into incredibly dense cubes, shipped to China and thrown down a bottomless well. I don’t know. As for the composting bin, so far we’ve composted exactly Zero Molecules, because I don’t have a bin under the sink to dump my Organics. There isn’t any room for the bin. In a recent work meeting when the subject came up, a co-worker said she had a pail on the counter where the organics went, and I was incredulous: you have a bucket of rotten vegetables on your counter?
I am from a different country. I’d say different age, but we’re contemporaries. I am from the land where the growling grinding teeth in the hole of the sink reduce everything to fluid and hasten it along to the treatment plant, because we are not living in huts on the edge of a field and sharpening sticks in case the sabre-toothed tigers come at night, again. Save the pepper cores! They can be mixed with out filth and heaped around the gourds!
Always thought the future would be a bit more elegant than that. Growing up in the Seventies, I had residual childhood utopian sci-fi visions from the Sixties arguing with the new doomed future of scarcity. Save that apple core! The fiber can be turned into a nutritious paste to be spread over wounds! I thought we’d be tossing apple cores into the Home Disintegrator, which would reduce it to nothingness with a zap and a short sizzle.
Blue State busybodies sure love ordering the rest of us around to fulfill their apocalyptic enviro-fantasies, don’t they? For them, it’s always 1973 and Soylent Green is playing at the drive-in.
ANALYSIS: TRUE. Society is in a constant race “between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning.” As Richard Fernandez writes, “Guns, Gorillas, Moon Missions: Overprotection Makes Us Less Safe.”
The media’s obsession this week over the gorilla echoes its obsession with shark attacks in the summer before 9/11, doesn’t it? Or as the earlier, funnier Onion noted afterward in October 2001, “A Shattered Nation Longs To Care About Stupid Bullshit Again.”
THOMAS EDSALL’S COLUMN ON TRUMP, The Anti-PC Vote, is strongly reminiscent of my USA Today column. “The accusatory and vindictive approach of many social justice activists and diversity trainers may actually have increased the desire and willingness of some white men to say and do un-PC things.”
Related: How David Brooks Created Donald Trump. “When politeness and orderliness are met with contempt and betrayal, do not be surprised if the response is something less polite, and less orderly.”
Update: Link to Edsall’s column should now be working.
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MEAT — IS THERE NOTHING IT CAN’T DO? Customers at Vegan Restaurant Pelted with Meat. “This does, however, seem like waste of good meat. I mean, if I’ve got that much good stuff to eat, I won’t even throw it at people I like.”
TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 1119.
IT’S JUST YOUR 19th NERVOUS BREAKDOWN: Students say they’ll have mental breakdown if Johns Hopkins stops hiding their grades.
This seems like an awfully hollow threat, considering the mental breakdowns that screaming campus garbage babies (as Iowahawk famously dubbed them) are having every day. What’s one more?
WHY KATIE COURIC’S ‘UNDER THE GUN’ APOLOGY MEANS NOTHING: “What about repairing the actual film itself?”, Christian Toto asks. “That apparently isn’t happening, and that’s why Couric’s apology rings so hollow. So does her promise to take ‘responsibility’ for the edit. What does that mean? How does that manifest itself if the documentary isn’t altered to represent what truly happened?”
COUPS AREN’T ALWAYS BAD: Venezuela’s Uneasy Generals.
Former senior military officers have criticised the chaotic rule of President Maduro, in a sign that he may be losing the support of the armed services, previously a linchpin of his stability.
With Mr Maduro using all his powers to prevent the opposition-controlled parliament from organising a referendum on whether he should step down, criticism from the generals will be a serious blow.
Some of the officers who criticised Mr Maduro were among those who stood by his late predecessor Hugo Chávez when he launched his failed coup in 1992, a key moment in the history of Venezuela’s so-called Bolivarian Socialist revolution.
But wait, there’s more:
But don’t expect military officials to cozy up to march alongside the protestors calling for Maduro’s ouster. If and when Maduro does exit, the people who replace him in power aren’t likely to be friendly toward the military. Which means the military doesn’t have much of a choice except to stand next to Maduro and watch what’s left of Chavismo collapse in slow motion. . . .
It’s difficult to imagine how this ends well. Chávez’s revolución may be over, but there’s plenty more unrest to come as the power struggle between multiple candidates—none clearly strong enough to overtake the others—intensifies.
When Chavez was briefly ousted in a coup, he should have been killed. Instead, he returned to power and millions suffered as a result.
HUMAN RIGHTS GROUP TELLS KERRY TO DIVEST HIS INVESTMENT IN CHINESE FIRM: Tibet Water Resources, Llc., is a firm close to the Chinese Communist party. Perhaps that’s why it has such a sweet deal to exploit Tibet’s rich mountain waters, which it sells in Europe as a competitor to Evian and Perrier. Guess who is one Tibet Waters’ most famous investors?
Secretary of State John Kerry’s family fortune has investments in Tibet Waters even though official U.S. policy has long deplored China’s repression of Tibet, which the Asian giant treats as a vassal. Now Free Tibet, the international human rights group that has been defending the embattled nation, is calling on Kerry to divest that investment, according to the Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group’s Richard Pollock.
Free Tibet’s challenge came in a May 17 letter obtained by Pollock. A Kerry State Department spokesman refused to comment when asked by Pollock about the letter. Perhaps the fact his predecessor as secretary ignored State Department policy on a highly significant issue leads Kerry to think it’s ok for him to do the same with regard to investing in a foreign company whose profits have a certain tint of red to them.
SORRY, BUT THE SAME POLITICAL CLASS THAT IS WRINGING ITS HANDS NOW SPENT THE LAST SEVERAL DECADES BREAKING THESE DOWN FOR FUN AND PROFIT. The Seven Broken Guardrails of Democracy: The American republic was long safeguarded by settled norms, now shattered by the rise of Donald Trump. They were shattered before Trump. He’s a symptom, not a cause.
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YOU GET WEIMAR MOMENTS WHEN EXISTING LIBERAL INSTITUTIONS ARE TOO WEAK AND CORRUPT TO COMMAND CONFIDENCE: Is This The West’s Weimar Moment?
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: SLU Law School ‘Right-Sizes’ Via 47% Enrollment Reduction, 5 Faculty Buyouts; Faculty May View Consultant’s Report Only In Presence Of Dean’s Assistant After Signing NDA.
CNN’S “POLITICS EXECUTIVE EDITOR:” TRUMP’S ‘COMBATIVE’ APPROACH TO MEDIA ‘NOT A VERY GOOD STRATEGY.’
Wanna bet? Besides, not every candidate can have the rough edges of his past magically airbrushed away – “Wright” before his eyes — at CNN.
SCHOOL BANS “WHISTLES” FROM PLAYGROUND FOR BEING TOO “AGGRESSIVE:”
A [British] school has banned whistles to signal the end of playtime as staff are worried the “aggressive” noise will scare children
reports the Daily Telegraph’s Elizabeth Roberts.
Staff at St Monica’s Catholic Primary School in Milton Keynes must instead raise a hand in the air to get the attention of pupils at the end of break time.
A teaching assistant at the school, Pamela Cunningham, attacked the ban in a letter to Country Life Magazine.
She said that she keeps her hand-carved whistle in her pocket ‘just in case’ children don’t spot her hand in an emergency.
Professor Alan Smithers, of Buckingham University, branded the move as “crazy” telling the Sunday Times:
“We have become extraordinarily over-sensitive. Does this mean children are not going to be able to play football and hockey because the referees use whistles?”
Get the feeling we’re just a year or two away from the British Army concluding that new recruits can’t handle any training more intense than how to defend themselves from fresh fruits?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U90dnUbZMmM
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT: Austin Bay: So Many Warnings, So Many Lies: Clear Patterns Emerge in State Dept Doc: The system Clinton cheated exists because world is a dangerous place. Key bit:
I carried a Top Secret clearance for over three decades. I understand the system we have in place to protect national security information. The system has excesses and inadequacies, but there are common sense procedures for dealing with mistakes, excesses and inadequacies. I respect the system’s purpose because I know the stakes. The system exists for a reason: the world is a dangerous place. Freedom is precious and fragile. Defending America—which still means defending freedom, and I’ll take on anyone who disagrees—requires keeping secrets.
But have no fear: Clinton Campaign Has A Brand New Explanation For Hillary’s Email Setup. These are her explanations. If you don’t like them, she has others. (Bumped).
ASHE SCHOW: Now a woman has been expelled for allegedly sexually assaulting a man.
It’s finally happened — a woman was accused of sexual assault by a man and ended up being expelled under the same terrible policies that have railroaded so many male students.
The woman, identified as “Rose” by Buzzfeed News, tells a story similar to that of so many young college men. While drinking at a party, she and a male student went to her room and performed oral sex on each other. The male student left briefly to get a condom before the two began intercourse.
But the male student would eventually tell Washington State University officials that he felt “really uncomfortable” and “kept trying to leave” after the intercourse, but that Rose tried to make him stay. Apparently a group of students had gathered outside of Rose’s room during the sexual activity and tried talking to the accuser through the door because they thought he “did not want to do this.”
The male student told Rose he had to “go find his friends” and went into another student’s room, where he hid in a closet while Rose tried to find him. She eventually texted him to say “I miss you.”
The male student was allegedly teased about sleeping with Rose because she is short and overweight. She believes this is what led to the accusation.
If you regret it, it’s rape. Right?