Cindy “Jihadi” Sheehan is going to take her US-bashing tour to the UK, so that she can provide aid and comfort to the enemy from there as well. This was the part I found hilarious, to show how out of touch many over there and in Europe are:
Despite the media battering she has received in the US, Sheehan has carried on with her campaign.
“Despite the media battering”? The media couldn’t get enough of her, until they got distracted by bad weather on the Gulf Coast. She got more than her fifteen minutes, because the media loved to cover someone “battering” George Bush on a daily basis, who could give them an excuse to cover her via her “absolute moral authority.” If it weren’t for the love-fest from the American media, she would have packed up her tent and shut down her Fabulous Flying Barking Moonbat Circus weeks ago.
The Washington Post has an editorial against the Vision for Space Exploration in general, and Mike Griffin’s implementation plans in particular. As usual, there are unstated assumptions built in:
…we believe that the needs of NASA — and the country — can, at this point, be better served by continuing and expanding robotic exploration.
But what are those needs? They don’t say. They think they know what they are, and assume that everyone agrees with them. But I can’t think of any needs of mine that are met by sending robots to other planets. NASA obviously has some need to do so, because they do so, but clearly that doesn’t satisfy the sum total of their needs either.
Once again, we have clueless pundits making policy pronouncements when we haven’t had a national discussion or debate about what the purpose is of having a national space program and policy. Until that happens, it will continue to be driven by the needs for pork in certain congressional districts.
OK, they pulled the game out in East Lansing, winning in OT. They did better than I thought they would, but there’s still a Jekyll/Hyde quality to the offense. But having gotten past the Spartan hurdle, they’ll probably have a winning season now. They could even still win the Big Ten, but it still seems unlikely to me.
I think that the latest William Bennett kerfuffle is a tempest in a teapot, but his response irritates me a little:
A thought experiment about public policy, on national radio, should not have received the condemnations it has. Anyone paying attention to this debate should be offended by those who have selectively quoted me, distorted my meaning, and taken out of context the dialogue I engaged in this week. Such distortions from ‘leaders’ of organizations and parties is a disgrace not only to the organizations and institutions they serve, but to the First Amendment.
Sorry, but this has nothing to do with the First Amendment. I get just as annoyed when people on the so-called right wrap themselves in the First Amendment as a rhetorical barrier against criticism as I do when people on the left do.
There is nothing in the First Amendment that protects anyone from having their speech criticized. Such criticism is itself protected by the First Amendment. All that the amendment says is that “Congress shall pass no law…” Unless there was a legislative move afoot today to outlaw Bill Bennett from putting his foot in his mouth of which I was previously unaware, I don’t know to what he’s referring here.
It just occurred to me that an iceberg placed in front of a hurricane could take the energy out of it. I just did a quick google, and came up with this guy, who thought it up ten years ago, but it’s not quantified in any way.
I don’t know how sensitive storms are to ocean surface temps, so you’d have to figure out how much you needed to lower the temperature, and over how wide an area, to see if it was in any way feasible. But I’d have to think that an iceberg in the tropics could do some pretty good cooling over a pretty broad area. Of course, getting it into position quickly could be a challenge. And around here, and in the Bahamas, the water is so shallow it would probably run aground.