News: May 2008 Archives
There was a funnel cloud in St. Louis yesterday but apparently it didn't touch down and become an official tornado.
Congratulations to NASA, Lockheed Martin, and their partners for the successful landing of the Phoenix spacecraft on Mars.
The probe is equipped with a robotic arm to dig for water-ice thought to be buried beneath the surface.It will begin examining the site for evidence of the building blocks of life in the next few days.
I bet it won't find much in the way of life, but I'm sure the lander in situ will one day be the centerpiece of a pretty cool museum. Maybe I'll get to visit someday!
What I'm really looking forward to visiting, though, are the future Voyager 1 and 2 museums that will be space stations positioned near the spacecraft and matched to the Voyagers' velocities.
Here's some footage from the air of the recent tornadoes in Kansas and Oklahoma. You can clearly see the twisters gobble up buildings from various angles, and even a pig farm. Unfortunately, I believe I read elsewhere that many of the pigs were killed.
(HT: Jessica.)
Paul Hsieh wonders which "universal health care" country Ted Kennedy will pick to treat his brain tumor. "Will it be Canada, the UK, or Cuba?"
I'm just glad Teddy wasn't driving a car on a bridge when he had his seizure this time.
Really though, I pray for the best for the Senator. Facing a brain tumor has got to be one of the scariest prospects any of us can imagine.
I smell a hoax, but Gokhan Mutlu is claiming that JetBlue forced him to sit in the bathroom after giving his seat to a stewardess.
Initially, Mutlu was told a flight attendant had taken the last seat on the plane, but then he was advised she would sit in the employee "jump seat," meaning he could have the last seat, the lawsuit said.The pilot told him 1½ hours into the five-hour flight that he would have to relinquish the seat to the flight attendant, court papers say. But the pilot said that Mutlu could not sit in the jump seat because only JetBlue employees were permitted to sit there, the lawsuit said.
When Mutlu expressed reluctance to go sit in the bathroom, the pilot, who was not named in the lawsuit, told him that "he was the pilot, that this was his plane, under his command that (Mutlu) should be grateful for being on board," the lawsuit said.
When the aircraft hit turbulence and passengers were directed to return to their seats, but "the plaintiff had no seat to return to, sitting on a toilet stool with no seat belts," court papers say.
It just sounds fishy. Maybe the stewardess had a medical problem? If the story is true, it's still hard to see why Mutlu would be entitled to any compensation other than a refund. He didn't suffer any injury, only discomfort, and he was flying for free using a "buddy pass" so even the refund would be pointless.
Hopefully no one will interpret my reluctance to support Mutlu's $2 million lawsuit as an endorsement of JetBlue's behavior. I've only flown them once, and had a fine trip, but I've read many negative stories about their customer service.
(HT: Neatorama.)
I was watching last night's results with as much nailbitingness as anyone, but what can I say that the numbers don't put more eloquently? Hillary Clinton's slight edge in Indiana doesn't look like much compared to Barack Obama's huge double-digit victory in larger North Carolina. Obama picks up a net 200,000+ votes and a handful of delegates. Hillary might stay in through next Tuesday's West Virginia primary, where she's expected to do well, but she probably realizes that there's no point now.
What's more, Clinton has been loaning her campaign millions of dollars a month, and there's at least one way she can get it back: agree to drop out of the race if the Obama campaign pays off her campaign debt. Paying off Clinton's campaign debts would be an indirect bribe since most of the debt is to Clinton herself, but at this stage who's counting? Hillary won't have any leverage for this sort of concession if she drags her campaign on much longer.
Update:
But maybe a few million dollars isn't much to risk when you're so close to the Presidency.
Look, everyone knows that the "gas tax holiday" proposed by Hillary Clinton and John McCain is a stupid idea. I'm all for cutting taxes, but this is one of the few taxes that actually goes towards something that the government is supposed to do: maintain our infrastructure. Why not cut some of the taxes that go towards some of the multitude of unConstitutional activities our politicians pursue so vigorously as they try to buy our votes with our own money?
More than 200 economists, including four Nobel prize winners, signed a letter rejecting proposals by presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and John McCain to offer a summertime gas-tax holiday. ...``Suspending the federal tax on gasoline this summer is a bad idea, and we oppose it,'' the letter says. Economist Henry Aaron of the Brookings Institution is among those circulating the letter. Aaron said that while he supports Obama, the list includes Republicans and Clinton supporters. ...
The gas-tax suspension has become a flashpoint in the race for the Democrat presidential nomination between New York Senator Clinton and Illinois Senator Barack Obama. Clinton and Republican McCain tout the proposal as an example of their concern for struggling middle-class families. Obama, who estimated it would save the average driver less than $30, calls the idea a ``gimmick,'' rejecting it on similar grounds as the economists.
It is a gimmick, just like the stupid "stimulus" checks that are being paid out right now. I dream of a day when "average" Americans are wise enough to see through this crap.
Hillary Clinton's response to these denunciations is also noteworthy, because she explicitly states what most leftists must think when they hear economic objections to their idiot policies:
Clinton said yesterday on ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos that ``I'm not going to put my lot in with economists'' because ``we would design it in such a way that it would be implemented effectively.''
Stupid economists! They haven't taken into account that the plan will be designed and implemented effectively! Well gosh, if that's suddenly with our politicians' capabilities then why don't they go back, redesign, and reimplement the rest of our bureaucracy so it works effectively too?
It looks like Newsweek has decided that Jeremiah Wright is intentionally hurting Barack Obama.
And while [Oprah] Winfrey, who has endorsed Obama and campaigned on his behalf, had long understood the perils of a close association with Wright, friends say she was blindsided by the pastor's personal assault on Obama. "She felt that Wright would never do anything to hurt a man who looked up to him as a father figure," said her [anonymous] close friend. "She also never thought he'd intentionally hurt someone trying to make history and change the lives of so many people.''
Unless I missed something, how has it been determined that Wright is intentionally hurting Obama, rather than only inadvertently hurting Obama while primarily focused on defending and aggrandizing himself? Seems like Newsweek is providing some helpful spin to the Obama campaign.
Everyone hates red-light traffic cameras, and someone in Arizona decided to do something about them by re-aiming cameras at the ground.
Someone in Tucson isn't happy about the city's red-light cameras.A vandal re-aimed most of the traffic cameras at collision-prone intersections over the weekend in an apparent attempt to keep them from snapping photos of speeders and red-light runners, an official said.
This doesn't strike me as "vandalism" since there was no damage or defacement. What this looks like to me is civil disobedience.
It would be more efficient, though, to use some sort of spraying device to shoot paint at the camera lens from the ground or from a car. Not that I'd advocate such a thing.
(HT: Instapundit.)
