Ilya Somin explains.

Lileks:

That he himself was rebuked for failing to stay his own desire to squeeze, some say, was proof of a Natural Law above Whipple and the society he represented, but this was seen quite correctly by critics as a reflexive sop tossed to the reactionaries, a way of undercutting the existential truths Whipple

Heather Mills:

Substitute rat’s milk for cow’s milk and you will help save the world. At least, that

All things green are getting a thorough look with oil poised to bust through $100/barrel as Russia, Venezuela, Iraq, Iran, Nigeria and other major exporters view high prices as a time to reap profits and consolidate political control rather than feed the goose that is laying the golden eggs–i.e. invest. One hope for cheap clean energy (energy independence is at our fingertips if we decide to widely deploy coal-to-liquid technology used by SASOL in South Africa and is estimated to cost $35/barrel by Wikipedia) is space based solar power (SBSP). But Taylor Dinerman gets to the key roadblock to SBSP in his Space Review article today, “The chicken and the egg: RLVs and space-based solar power”:

The SBSP Study Group universally acknowledged that a necessary pre-requisite for the technical and economic viability of SBSP was inexpensive and reliable access to orbit….

Phase one proposes a strategy that will

The game’s not quite over, but barring a miracle, the Buckeyes are going to the Rose Bowl. Surprisingly, given how Michigan started the year, the defense played well enough to win. Except for that one horrible play that allowed the long touchdown, they’d be within a score of winning, and they’ve been shutting down Ohio State’s offense in the second half. In fact, it’s pretty amazing that the defense held them to two scores considering how much time they had to spend on the field.

But you can’t win if you don’ t score. It was the offense that let them down, particularly with all of the dropped passes.

Still Michigan’s season ended a lot better than anyone might have thought it would after the first two games, when a lot of people expected them to have a losing season, and not go to a bowl game at all. It’s obviously a huge disappointment for Hart, Henne and the other seniors, who have never beaten Ohio State, and now never will. The question is, will Lloyd want to go out on this note, or try at least one more time to beat Jim Tressel next year?

So we rented Spiderman 3 on Saturday night. We were (to put it in the mildest possible terms) disappointed. Lileks explains why, so I don’t have to.

I can’t believe that it’s impossible to tell a good story, even a superhero story, while torturing basic physics and physiology, but apparently the Hollywood types do. Of course, as he notes, that wasn’t the only problem.

I was never much of a Norman Mailer fan. I read The Naked and the Dead as a teenager (my parents’ copy), and didn’t find it that impressive. Roger Kimball obviously never heard the phrase “de mortuis nil nisi bonum”–he has many not-so-good things to say of the author/cultural icon/literary thug, who died today (he had been ill for some time).

Interestingly, of all the works that Kimball mentions in his long anti-eulogy, he doesn’t talk about “Of A Fire On The Moon,” his book about Apollo XI.

The reviews here of it are interesting–many of the reviewers who disliked Mailer’s other work liked this one, and vice versa–his traditional fans had little use for it. I’ve never read it myself, and based on the reviews (including one by Roger Launius), I don’t know if I’ll bother now. Anyway, rest in peace. He certainly didn’t live that way.

Time for extreme pumpkins.

Time for extreme pumpkins.

Time for extreme pumpkins.