Potpourri CXII

The fun continues...

The L.A. Times to NASA TV: Liven Up

Former Shuttle Astronaut Sally Ride seeks to address the persistent gender gap in the sciences.

The Voyager spacecraft are still making discoveries.

A little late, but here's a cute background story on the origins of NORAD's "Santa Tracker."

From Martin: movie model maker Doug Drexler posted the Constellation Program's 2009 Year in Review YouTube video to his site.

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.