It must be true, it’s on the Internet.
No, I don’t know whether or not they’re serious either.
[Via Jeff Foust]
[Update a few minutes later]
Thomas James has further commentary.
The Cowboy War
Armed Liberal has a good post on the fantasy world of perfectionist war critics:
…in the reality-based America where I live, we do bad things all the time. The good news is that we tend to do a far better job of self-correcting (note that the Abu Ghraib folks were already or about to be indicted when the story broke – the military justice folks had received the info, acted, and were busting the perps – one of whose lawyers released the imagery as a negotiating tactic) than, for example, the Greenpeace-killing French DSGE do…
…All actions and systems involve mistakes, are imperfect, have undesirable unforeseen consequences. We’re human, and fallible. We have imperfect information, we often act out of fear or prejudice or laziness or greed. This has been a part of the human condition as long as there has been a human condition to have. It is the root of tragedy, the most human of art forms…
In an imaginary world in which we were omnipotent, yes, none of this would happen. We could identify our opponents with perfect accuracy, and disarm and restrain them without harming anyone. Once restrained, our procedures would be firm, gentle, and correct in every degree.
It’s funny, but I pretty much think that’s what we’re doing now, with a massively narrow span of error.
How Long Should A Life Sentence Be?
I have some thoughts today, over at TechCentralStation.
A Heart Breaker
It looks like the private solar sail mission may have gone in the drink.
This just points up how ridiculous our space transportation situation is. There is no other field in which we would accept the horrifically low reliability of vehicles, and the only reason for it is that we’ve historically simply come to accept it, and won’t demand better.
[Update on Wednesday morning]
Good news. Or at least better news. They seem to have found it. It’s not in the right orbit, but it’s in an orbit. Let’s hope it’s in an orbit that will last long enough to get it on its sunshiny way.
[Another update at 9:20 AM]
Emily Lakdawalla is blogging the progress.
[Update at 1:20 PM EDT]
Looks like the mission is history.
OK, He’s Apologized
That’s a good thing, though as I recall, it wasn’t enough for Trent Lott.
More when I see an actual transcript of his lachrymose blatherings.
I will say, snarkily, that I assume that this apology is now (in the famous words of Ron Ziegler) inoperative?
[Update at 8 PM EDT]
OK, it’s a non-apology apology.
Here are the key words:
OK, He’s Apologized
That’s a good thing, though as I recall, it wasn’t enough for Trent Lott.
More when I see an actual transcript of his lachrymose blatherings.
I will say, snarkily, that I assume that this apology is now (in the famous words of Ron Ziegler) inoperative?
[Update at 8 PM EDT]
OK, it’s a non-apology apology.
Here are the key words:
OK, He’s Apologized
That’s a good thing, though as I recall, it wasn’t enough for Trent Lott.
More when I see an actual transcript of his lachrymose blatherings.
I will say, snarkily, that I assume that this apology is now (in the famous words of Ron Ziegler) inoperative?
[Update at 8 PM EDT]
OK, it’s a non-apology apology.
Here are the key words:
He Changed The World
Jack Kilby has died. Without him (or at least without the work that he did–someone else surely would have if not him) there would be no desktop computers on which to type brief obituaries like this, or an Internet to communicate them.
What A Difference A Year Makes
Last summer solstice, a year ago today, I was in Mojave, California, watching SpaceShipOne go into space for the first time. Tariq Malik describes all of the activity since then that bodes well for private space passenger travel.
What Am I Doing Wrong?
I’ve downloaded the ISO for disk 1 of Fedora Core 4 several times now. Each time, the file size is the same, but each time, I get a different sha1sum, and it never matches the one listed in the directory.