Author: Robert Zimmerman

Closing out debate on climate

10:35 pm

It appears that McCarthyism and the blacklist are both alive and well, thriving happily in the field of climate research. Key quote:

It is disturbing, to say the least, that organisations and persons who would be quick to claim professional status consider that it is their current duty to disparage, or to refuse to debate with, or to muzzle scientists whose views on climate change they apparently disagree with.

Read the whole article.

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Elites vs everyone else

10:18 am

War between the elites of our society and everyone else. Key quote:

If this election has a theme, it’s going to be the rejection of the elites and a return to a form of populism with a long streak in American history — the demand of citizens to their government to get the hell out of their lives.

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Burt Rutan on future of space

1:19 am

At an airshow on Thursday, July 29, in Oskosh, Wisconsin, Burt Rutan, designer of SpaceShipOne, made some interesting remarks about the past and future of private space flight. Key quote:

Rutan said NASA should give 10 to 15 percent of its budget to new space companies like Elon Musk’s SpaceX without regulating how to spend the money. “That would allow them to not (have to) beg for commercial investment, while still working in an entrepreneurial mode.”

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Poor leadership by Obama on NASA

12:33 am

Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit today said the following (in recognizing Jeff Foust’s op-ed for Technology Review):

CONGRESS BLOWS IT: Commercial Spaceflight, We Have A Problem. Congress will always choose short-term pork over long-term development unless there’s strong Presidential leadership. But while the Obama space policy is good, the White House hasn’t provided the kind of legislative push it takes to make it work. Without strong leadership, a good policy will always lose out to pork.

Didn’t someone say this already? In fact, didn’t that someone say this more than once?

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Your Show of Shows: the clock skit

8:05 pm

An evening pause: Yesterday we had a modern animation of a machine that made music. Tonight let’s watch a very different take on a vaguely similar idea, this time to produce comedy. This is a classic skit from Your Show of Shows, Sid Caesar’s variety show from early television. The four performers are, left to right, Sid Caesar, Imogene Coco, Carl Reiner, Howard Morris.

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