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Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Potpourri XCIII

Let's get to it. I've got French lessons to catch up on!

Thomas Sowell has a hard-hitting piece on Obama's inexperience.

A variety of stories from my AIAA news feed:

  • A Boeing plant in South Carolina is voting on whether to keep the International Association of Machinists (IAM) union in their shop. That will not make Obama happy.
  • NORAD is conducting an exercise to prepare for the Vancouver Olympics. I didn't realize al-Qaeda had an air force.
  • NASA has selected the crew for what could be the last scheduled Space Shuttle flight. It's real, folks, regardless of what the Augustine Panel decides.
  • French wine growers are benefitting from satellite imagery.
  • NPR has a story today on NASA's Student Airborne Research Program.

Paul Spudis has a good editorial on sustainability in space exploration. The problem is that there are two kinds of sustainability in the space business: technical and political. And the technical, if "boring" to the electorate or their elected officials, will not be politically sustainable. However, a politically exciting and sustainable program might leave behind little that is reusable.

Liberal Camille Paglia, a still-strong Obama supporter, has torn into the Democrats' handling of the healthcare bill. This is not a good sign.

The United Nations Secretary-General says we have four months to act or global warming will doom us. By "act," he means sign a climate treaty in Copenhagen that will cut greenhouse gas emissions. Right. After one of the coldest summers in the history of modern record keeping.

I am in the process of reading the House healthcare bill, but it is a long, painful slog, and I have other things to read as well. In the meantime, I commend this analysis by a classics professor to your attention.

More on the Blue Brain project. Gotta wonder about the Singularity.

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