Posted 8/29/2003 06:40:00 PM by Douglas

The definitive list of beer, and their caloric as well as alcoholic content. Makes you wonder why anyone in their right mind would drink Bud Lite.

Posted 8/29/2003 01:35:00 PM by Douglas

Speaking of worthless R&D, take a look at these guys. How these guys talked investors into giving them money for this thing is totally beyond me.

As Tina Fey said on SNL, "It will completely revolutionize the way people get hit by cars."

Posted 8/29/2003 01:31:00 PM by Douglas

OK, about the previous post: Maybe it was a bit reactive, but this is the feeling I get from Rand.
You can bitch all you want about NASA, and much of it is deserved. But to keep on whining like he does about all the money they waste is like bitching about your taxes.

No one is prohibiting aerospace R&D from occurring, and for a self proclaimed "recovering aerospace engineer" to be the mouth piece for such complaints, it just seems like he's jealous of the money that NASA is getting, and nothing more. Like a spoiled child, he can't stand the fact that they get so much money while, presumably, geniuses like him don't get squat.

Posted 8/29/2003 12:35:00 PM by Douglas

I've disagreed with Rand Simberg before, most notable about his glib comments about the loss of STS-107 on February 1, but his latest rounds of dissent after the CAIB report was released this week was a bit too much.

There's really not much to debate as to whether or not NASA has lots its direction, or if there is any meaningful science to be gained from low-Earth orbit. He's been parroting that in almost everything he writes, but I don't think that's the point. You just can't compare NASA today with the same agency that brought us Apollo, and comparing it to commercial aviation is even farther off the mark.

Monocultures are fragile. Launch systems designed for the government, of the government and by the government will be doomed to the same failure and fragility as shuttle. We have to have a diversity of means of getting people into orbit, and we have to expand the market beyond NASA in order to get the economies of scale without which we will never get low costs or reliability.

NASA may have a strangle-hold on U.S. manned spaceflight, but it certainly doesn't have one on the heavens. Nor did the Wright brothers monopolize aviation. Anyone with ambition and the ability to secure funding was, and still is, perfectly capable to try their hand at anything they wanted to put in the sky. As the X-Prize clearly demonstrates, this holds true today as well.

So maybe instead of focusing so much energy on where less than 1% of our federal budget is allocated, Mr. Simberg could take the genius of his vast "recovering aerospace engineering" experience and secure private investors to develop his own personal vision of what manned spaceflight should be.

The sky's the limit. Literally.

Posted 8/24/2003 02:41:00 PM by Douglas

Driving south into Austin on I-35, I always wondered why the Austin City Limit sign was about a mile and a half from the Austin 32 Miles sign. Now I know why. Funny that nobody know what the buildings of prominence are anymore.

Posted 8/24/2003 02:35:00 PM by Douglas

These guys must have been really bored. But you gotta admit, it takes a deftly skilled hunter to shoot a cow.

Posted 8/20/2003 10:48:00 PM by Douglas

Connie Reeves, Rest in Peace.

Posted 8/20/2003 10:22:00 PM by Douglas

Connie Reeves, Rest in Peace.

What a sad story, but I can't think of a better way to go. [Here's a shot from The Kerrville Daily Times and here's one from CNN, and here's just the Yahoo photo.]

I can think of no better way to go: 101 years old, doing what you love to do. Plus, the name of your favourite horse was Dr Pepper. How can you beat that?

"Leave the wide open spaces and free fresh air to the West, where one can take an early morning gallop across dew-drenched fields, lie down to sleep beneath the star-twinkling sky, only to be awakened by the crowing of a lone rooster in the far distance"

I couldn't agree more.

I bet she saddled her own horse.

Posted 8/19/2003 06:22:00 PM by Douglas

The complete list of California candidates. What a bunch.

Posted 8/19/2003 06:19:00 PM by Douglas

This defies all logic. 23 people die in a decade, and you think it's time for a mandate from the masses because one of the people happen to look like you? No wonder there's a billion lawyers in this country. What's next the guy that choked on a fish is going to lobby Red Lobster to have safer fishes? What about elevators? Surely this guy wasn't the first to be killed in an elevator, right?

I guess crying at a press conference about how GM killed your baby is a lot easier than actually parenting it and not leaving it unattended with the power on.