I hadn’t seen it this explicit before, but unless he’s off the reservation, apparently NASA bans sex in space, at least at the ISS. No big deal. They’re only up there for six months at a time…
I could write a long essay on the ways in which this encapsulates everything that is wrong with the American space program, going all the way back to Mercury. I’ll bet that NASA banned adultery back then, too. Tom Wolfe just made those stories up.
[Update a few minutes later]
Glenn says that this opens up a market niche for other facilities. Well, yeah. Though it’s more like just one more reason not to count on the ISS as a tourist destination. Or at least as the hotel. What we need is a habitat coorbiting with it where space visitors can stay, and use as a base for visiting the ISS for tours, which will minimize disruption if they ever actually start doing research there, and allow people to do what they want in the sack (or floating out of it) without disturbing the little Miss Prisses on DE Street.
We’re middle class. Thoughts from la Camille. I thought this relevant to the new movie production venture:
The elemental power of sexuality has also waned in American popular culture. Under the much-maligned studio production code, Hollywood made movies sizzling with flirtation and romance. But from the early ’70s on, nudity was in, and steamy build-up was out. A generation of filmmakers lost the skill of sophisticated innuendo. The situation worsened in the ’90s, when Hollywood pirated video games to turn women into cartoonishly pneumatic superheroines and sci-fi androids, fantasy figures without psychological complexity or the erotic needs of real women.
This writer has some tips on finding the best seats on a plane, but there’s an apparent bias:
Middle seats tend to be filled starting from the front of the aircraft and moving toward the rear—which means that if your flight isn’t full, you’re likely to get an empty seat next to you if you request an aisle seat in the center section in the back.
…I love 767s because there’s only one middle seat per row. This means that your chances of getting one are less than on any other two-aisle aircraft: A 767 can be 86 percent full before anyone gets stuck in the middle. Two-aisle planes tend to give you bigger seats, more legroom, and larger overhead bins than one-aisle aircraft.
…Unless I’ve achieved my personal nirvana of an aisle seat in an exit row, I always ask the gate agent if a better seat is available. Preferred seats (e.g., aisle seats up front) often open up at the gate because the elite-level or full-fare passengers who were occupying them get upgraded at the last minute.
Emphasis mine. Note that there’s an apparent assumption on her part that a) middle seats bad and b) aisle seats nirvana, for everyone. But why would I ask for an aisle seat when I don’t like aisle seats? I prefer windows, a word that doesn’t appear in the article. I actually almost prefer a middle seat to an aisle, because there is one less person to have to let out during the flight, and I’m not constantly getting jostled by passengers or flight attendants walking up and down the aisle. The only reason, to me, to prefer aisle is for safety (get out a little faster, unless you’re in an exit row), or a desire to get up occasionally and walk around (either for leg stretching or nature calls). My preference is to just cocoon at the window, where I can look out, and not be bothered by anyone else’s needs.
Yes, obviously, if you like aisles, then a two-aisle airplane is preferable. But if you prefer windows, wide-bodies suck, because they provide the lowest window-seat/seat ratio in the sky. My favorite plane, actually, is any variation on the old DC-9 (nowadays B-717 or S-80), because with only five seats per row, forty percent of them are windows.
I don’t have a problem with the sailing attempt — I think that today’s children are far too coddled and infantilized (all the way to age 26, thanks to ObamaCare). I don’t see anything particularly magic about eighteen, either. Different people mature at different rates. There are many people who would never be able to do this at any age (most people, I’d say). What I’m looking forward to is the youngest (or even first) person to sail around the moon.
Thoughts from Lileks on the KeisterKicker-in-Chief:
“He didn’t mean donkey,” she said, this being the only possible explanation. I shook my head. It will now be difficult to tell her not to use that word; it will now be a matter of time before my wife says, “Well, your daughter was sounding presidential today,” and it won’t be a reference to mankind’s universal aspirations. Unless you include the desire to kick BP’s tuckus, which seems fairly widespread.
I don’t know if I’ve written this, but I’ve certainly thought it. When I heard the president, my first response was, “Who is he kidding?” My second one was, “Gee, and here I thought that the purpose of getting people together to assay the facts was to determine what effective action to take. How Chicago of him to think that the only effective action is to take one’s boot off the throat of the country long enough to bury it in the appropriate fundament.”
And I, for one, haven’t been complaining about the president not emoting enough. I’ve never been interested in a president that “felt my pain.” All I’ve ever wanted is one that isn’t the cause of it.
No, my complaint is that he’s incompetent. So the all the talk about the asskickery isn’t very impressive to me. Usually, I’m glad that he’s incompetent, because most of the things he wants to do are awful, and I want them to fail at them, but this is a case where I wish that he could actually get it right.
“He’s so dorky, when he gets angry he convenes a panel of experts to tell him whose ass to kick.”
And speaking of The Tonight Show, let me reassure both editors and readers of family newspapers everywhere about my use of the word “ass.” Historian Steven Hayward reminds me that in 1979, Jimmy Carter responded to Ted Kennedy’s primary challenge by declaring he would “whip his ass.” It was one of those moments of presidential lameness that conjures the same bile of pity, schadenfreude, and heebie-jeebies one feels upon seeing a middle-aged balding dude with a long gray ponytail dancing at a rave.
As John Stewart said, the president is going to have to kick himself. In fact, if he had sufficient self awareness, he’d know that there are many reasons to do so.
We stopped clicking for a few minutes and found a show that looked interesting, and watched it for a few minutes. Then we discovered it was about vampires.
Click.
What is it with modern culture (or even popular culture going back decades, or centuries) that is so fascinated by immortal blood suckers? I know there are lots of pseudopsychological explanations for it, but they just leave me cold. I have zero interest.
Kind of like Barack Obama, now that I think about it. And I wouldn’t deny a relationship.