Category: Uncategorized

Another place we ought to pave with glass, and finish with Windex.

Sorry for lack of postings…I’m down with bronchitis and I don’t really feel verbose. I’ll be back when I feel better.

South Korea Fears U.S. Is Emotional Over North Korea
Whereas South Korea is just stupid.

The Air Force reportedly got hi-res pictures of Columbia’s left wing just before the shuttle broke up.

Lt. Kelly Jeter, a spokeswoman for Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico, confirmed that the base had turned over photographs to NASA.
“One of our telescopes got some shots of it going over,” Jeter told The Associated Press late Thursday. She said NASA had instructed base officials not to comment further.
The base has a high-resolution Starfire telescope that photographs satellites orbiting earth. It can recognize features as small as a foot long on a satellite 600 miles away, base officials said.

Unfortunately they’re keeping the pictures under wraps for the moment.

…things to be protesting. Haven’t we taken all the Sixties’ trash out yet? I thought Dick Gregory was dead.
(Just kidding. I knew he was alive. Doesn’t make him any less Sixties’ trash.)

(the so-called White House “press gaggle“) from yesterday, and tell me that the Washington press corps aren’t just a bunch of nit-picking assholes.
What the fucking earthly difference does it make if W ever visited Johnson Space Center before yesterday or not? Jesus. I suspect that if a nuke went off in NYC, the press would want to know if W had ever eaten at Sardi’s, or some other damn stupid thing. They have absolutely no fucking sense of what is really important. None.

Lileks is in rare form this morning.

It is time instead to consistently support democracy. Perhaps it is unfair to expect George W. Bush to understand democracy, much less consistently promote it –
Ah yes. Selected, not elected. It rhymes, so it must be true. I’ll still take him over Clinton, whose impeachment trials could be described as ERECTED, NOT EJECTED. But tarry if you will over that line: Perhaps it is unfair to expect George W. Bush to understand democracy. The Greens have entered the territory previously occupied by the right-wing fringe who thought Clinton would use Y2K to suspend the Constitution and use FEMA to institute martial law.

Read the whole thing. I’m still guffawing over “ERECTED, NOT EJECTED”.

I’m surprised that nobody seems to have asked the obvious question: “Since you knew that there had been an incident at liftoff, why didn’t you have the shuttle stand off close to the ISS and have the ISS crew film and observe the underside of the shuttle?”

But they both suck.
Just rebuild the towers exactly as they were (with obvious structural enhancements, but externally identical). That would be the best FUCK YOU we could send to the enemies of freedom.

Via BOTW, this article is somewhat stunning.
Imaginative litigation on the part of the City of Detroit, but I’ll bet that goes to the state supreme court and gets overturned. If they had sued a car rental company it would be one thing. But for the purpose of everything but titling, at least in Indiana, that car belongs to the person who leased it. For instance, I lease a Dodge Intrepid. I have to pay for the insurance, repairs, license and registration (which is in MY name, not Chrysler Finance’s name). So for all intents and purposes, and as far as the State of Indiana is concerned, I own the car, and the leasing company is not responsible for anything I might do with the car during the period of the lease.
And that raises other concerns. If I commit a crime (like a bank robbery) and use my leased vehicle for a getaway car, is my leasing company going to be held partially responsible for the crime (like the gun manufacturers who are being held partially responsible for murders committed with their weapons)?
There’s a seriously slippery slope here, and I hope the Supreme Court of Michigan has enough sense to slap the shit out of the Court of Appeals on this.