An interesting interview about spaceflight regulation with COO Andrew Nelson.
[Update a couple minutes later]
I should note that much of this is ground that I cover and justify in the book.
Category Archives: Business
ObamaCare
It’s not working as advertised, but it is working according to its design.
The Peter Principle
Could it explain the Fermi paradox?
NASA’s Budget
Jeff Foust has the details.
As usual, SLS/Orion is funded above the request, and Commercial Crew below it. And technology takes it in the shorts yet again. But at least they didn’t underfund Commercial Crew as much as they have in the past. It’s only about a hundred-twenty-five million less than the $800M+ request. It apparently also contains a three-year extension on launch indemnification.
Note that Congress is demanding a cost-benefit analysis for Commercial Crew, but (as Clark Lindsey notes) not one for the wasteful $3B that’s going to SLS/Orion.
Jobs
How Democrats kill them. While lying (perhaps even to themselves) about how they’re creating them.
Income Inequality
Republicans should own the issue, with competition and markets, and fighting cronyism:
Well, no. Inequality has increased across advanced economies. Macro factors such as globalization and technology deserve most — but maybe not all — of the “blame.” Big Government loves to pick winners and losers in the private sector. Some lucky ducks owe their place in the 1 percent or 0.1 percent or 0.01 percent to federal favoritism. Conservatives shouldn’t mind at all when value-creating innovators and entrepreneurs strike it rich while crony capitalists do not. The precious tax breaks and subsidies that go to rent seekers, such as those in the agriculture and alternative-energy sectors, should get the ax. Sorry, Big Sugar and Big Solar.
Unfortunately, they don’t mind cronyism that much, as long at it’s their cronyism.
Our Prussian School System
More thoughts from Glenn Reynolds on the public-school disaster, over at the Daily Caller.
[Update a few minutes later]
Related: Meanwhile, back in the Fatherland:
Got that? Let me repeat it just in case. A German judge took children away from their parents because “he family might move to another country and homeschool, posing a ‘concrete endangerment’ to the children.”
In August, 20 armed police, equipped with a battering ram just in case, arrived at the door of this Darmstadt family and forcibly took four children, ages 7 to 14.
Was there anything wrong with the children? Nope. The judge — whose name, by the way, is Marcus Malkmus, in case you have a voodoo doll handy or wish to burn him in effigy — the judge admitted that the children were 1) academically proficient and 2) well adjusted socially.
He just didn’t like homeschooling.
Why? Pay attention now: this takes us deep into the heart of a leftist: because he feared that “the children would grow up in a parallel society without having learned to be integrated or to have a dialogue with those who think differently and facing them in the sense of practicing tolerance.”
The invocation of “tolerance” is especially cute, don’t you think?
As Glenn writes: “Everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state. Gleichschaltung!”
The Latest California Idiocy
Condoms for cooks’ hands:
So this law is in fact encouraging the very problem it strives to prevent. God, I’m glad I’m not governed by California—what a bunch of knuckleheads when it comes to food! Why don’t you people actually try to know what the f**k you’re talking about before legislating? Jesus.
I am continually washing my hands in the kitchen when I cook. This is moronic.
The Weather Channel
Is DirecTV going to drop them?
I’ve never watched it since I left Florida, when they had OK hurricane coverage (though the local channels generally did a good job when the things got near). But at least they did fire “decertifier” Heidi.
Commercial Space In 2014
Leonard David has a roundup of prognostications. I hope that Virgin has commercial flights this year, but I don’t expect it, based on history.