I wholeheartedly agree with Peter Diamandis here:
Diamandis said that the wealth of individuals is rapidly increasing thanks to the evolving power of the Internet, and very shortly through breakthroughs in nanotechnology. Billionaires and multi-billionaires are making their own future happen, he said.
I’m still getting ready for a last-minute trip across the Atlantic, but Thomas James has a restorative tonic for Helen Caldicott’s ongoing idiocy about “militarizing space,” and Clark Lindsey has a lot of good stuff on the recent International Space Development Conference in Washington, DC.
I lost my internet connection on Thursday night, and only now got it restored. In addition, I’ve had a family problem come up that will necessitate a trip to Europe as soon as possible, so posting may continue to be sparse here for another several days.
We have another Eason Jordan incident. As Bryan Preston notes, the press should be even more sensitive to such charges in light of the recent Newsweek fiasco, but they seem to remain clueless.
The folks at ABC News apparently need to go back and read their history books. They seem to fantasize that it was Republicans who blocked the Civil Rights Act. In a piece on the current filibuster debate, they write the following, titled “Historical Perspective”:
The filibuster has been used historically by the minority party, which can’t win with a vote count. Democrats have opposed the filibuster before
Ann Coulter reminds us of some Michael Isikoff stories from the past that Newsweek was in no hurry to run:
…apparently it’s possible for Michael Isikoff to have a story that actually is true, but for his editors not to run it.
Why no pause for reflection when Isikoff had a story about American interrogators at Guantanamo flushing the Quran down the toilet? Why not sit on this story for, say, even half as long as NBC News sat on Lisa Meyers’ highly credible account of Bill Clinton raping Juanita Broaddrick?
Newsweek seems to have very different responses to the same reporter’s scoops. Who’s deciding which of Isikoff’s stories to run and which to hold? I note that the ones that Matt Drudge runs have turned out to be more accurate
Howard Dean’s going to be on Meet The Press this Sunday.
Clark Lindsey has a good rundown of yesterday’s meeting in Washington on space policy.
A couple of strong impressions came through. Firstly, the end of the Shuttle in 2010 is now taken for granted by everyone. Weldon wants NASA to assign a manager full-time to monitor the transition so that the community disruptions as happened after the end of the Apollo program don’t hit the KSC area again.
I also noticed a widespread awareness of the existence of an entrepreneurial space industry and that it is becoming a force to reckon with.
It’s not here yet, but it’s definitely on the way:
Police found a so-called “skirt cam” under a subway grate at 88th Street and Lexington Avenue Tuesday afternoon after a woman called police saying she had noticed suspicious wires protruding from the grate as she passed by.
Emphasis yours truly.
Once Wifi is ubiquitous, there will be no “suspicious wires” to betray the location of a camera, and cameras will continue to get smaller and more power efficient (though there is a physical limit on how small the lense can get). Consider this a glimpse not just of womens’ undergarments (assuming they’re wearing same), but of the future.
George, one of your progenitors in Hollywood once said, “If you want to send a message, use Western Union.”
”The parallels between what we did in Vietnam and what we’re doing in Iraq now are unbelievable.
Yes, I’d say unbelievable is exactly the right word.
”On the personal level it was how does a good person turn into a bad person, and part of the observation of that is that most bad people think they are good people, they are doing it for the right reasons,” he added.
Of course, most lousy directors and hackneyed script writers think they’re brilliant, profound and insightful.
I’ll probably go see the movie, but only for the special effects, which is all that Lucas was ever really any good at.