Private Space

Rand Simberg's "Legacy space companies running scared" is a nice read if you're following the ups and downs of SpaceX. 

I'm hoping for the privatization of space flight and colonization of space.  Some will be lost, like so many who were lost colonizing our own world.  We may never know what becomes of some, just as early colonies in America disappeared without trace.  But we need to get off this lovely rock.

NNDB

I sometimes look up celebrities on NNDB to see what their education levels are, esp. when they appear before Congress. Most of them have a high school level of education, some less, which is fine, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs didn't need college degrees to change the world, but actors present themselves as experts in all kinds of fields not related to acting. NNDB also has a relationship cloud mapper, as the picture above of Johnny Depp. You can click on the picture to make it bigger.

Racers

Republicans and Libertarians should always bring an air horn with them when they go on Sunday news shows. That way, when David Gregory or one of the others go all racer, accusing conservatives of being racist when describe Obama's defects from the Right (as Gregory did to Newt this morning), they can just blow the air horn in the news person's face in response.

Obama to open Alaskan Petroleum Reserve

President Obama has decided to open up NPRA (the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska) for more oil exploration.  This is a good start, but  when did we allow the President of the United States complete authority over where oil companies can and cannot drill on public lands?  President Bush did the same thing, opening up offshore drilling with the stroke of a pen... why no EPA?  Why no Congress?  How have we come to a point where one guy in Washington D.C. can wake up some Saturday morning and say, "What the hey, this'll shut them up."

It's good to be King.

Grand Prix - The Killer Years

Low Energy Nuclear Reactions (LENR)

Are we ready yet to accept Cold Fusion as a real phenomenon?

"The Fleischmann-Pons announcement [in 1989] should have been the start of a new era of cheap, clean energy that would have saved us from the financial and environmental disasters and wars caused by fossil fuel energy. Instead, denial and dirty tricks caused us to waste 23 years and tens of billions of dollars on failed nuclear projects as though nothing had happened."

Since Adrian Rossi is shipping a product in October, I'd say, "Yes!"

VMT Tax

Even though it sounds like something from "The Onion," this article from "The Hill" reports an apparently serious Obama plan to tax cars by the mile driven.  Obama's "Transportation Opportunities Act" apparently builds on a Senate Budget Committee proposal by Kent Conrad (D-ND) to gather revenues by taxing cars:

Among other things, CBO suggested that a vehicle miles traveled (VMT) tax could be tracked by installing electronic equipment on each car to determine how many miles were driven; payment could take place electronically at filling stations.

This is a non-starter.  Why is anyone wasting tax money developing a plan that would require installing government tracking equipment in everyone's car?  And "payment could take place electronically at filling stations!"  -- It already does!  It's called the Federal Gasoline Tax!

R.I.P Jackie Cooper

Jackie Cooper has passed away at 88