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It was an acronym frenzy  at Libery on the Rocks – DTC tonight. The PPC reportage was done by El Presidente, mostly via the People’s Press Twitter feed.

As with the big healthcare speech back in September (the occasion of the NPR incident), my commentary was delivered in the more transitory medium of live heckling of the teevee screen. This time around there wasn’t a neighboring table of kool-aid-guzzling Obama worshippers hissing and whining back at me, unfortunately, which took a bit of the fun out of it.

Apart from Fox’s amusing Drudge-like juxtapositions of lines from the speech with camera shots of topically-relevant politicians, there was only one thing that I liked about this SOTU: Mr. Obama’s promise to push for next-generation nuclear power in the U.S.. Of course, just like his promises to freeze (parts of) federal spending, expand government transparency, and usher in a new bipartisan civility, I realize that we are as likely to see any action on that promise as we are to see the National Mall host unicorn chariot races.

The rest of the speech was a nauseating stew of all-things-to-all-people statism and incongruous attempts to steal the fiscal responsibility and small government themes the Republicans are gearing up to campaign on in the fall, seasoned with the usual Democrat pathos and anger and garnished liberally with Mr. Obama’s trademark nose-high smugness. Noticeably absent yet again was any mention of NASA or space policy in general. “So what’s new?”, one might ask. Amid all the yammering about green energy trendy greenwashing scams and investment in taxpayer subsidization of (politcally sexy) science and technology, it’s still a little surprising that federal space policy didn’t merit a mention this time around, especially if the rumors are true that a change in that policy towards more climate monitoring (green!) and commercial services (jobs!) is imminent.

Posted on January 28th, 2010 under Constellation, Moon-Mars Plan, Orion, Space Commerce, Space Policy. Tags: Constellation, LOTR, nasa, NPR, Obama, PPC, SOTU, state of the union, TOTUS. Comments: 1

Last night, I finally got around to watching the pilot episode for SciFi’s* new series Caprica. For those who don’t know, it’s a prequel to the recently (and horribly) ended Battlestar Galactica, set 58 years before the events of that series in the titular city.

So far, so good. After being grievously disappointed with the “reimagined” V  and the unconscionable audience betrayal that was BSG’s deus-ex-machina series finale,  let’s just say my hopes weren’t all that high for the show, but I was still pretty impressed.

The feel of the show was entirely different from BSG, but yet reminiscent of the feel of the flashbacks to pre-apocalypse Caprica in the last year of the show. At the same time, Caprica isn’t exactly what one might have imagined from the early scenes and flashbacks in the prior series – it’s bigger and a bit more fleshed-out now than in those glimpses. The mechanical cylon (there’s only one so far) is quite retro, yet with all the familiar elements in place – given what I already knew of the plot, I was concerned that the cylon would be a human-form one, which would have made for a very contrived explanation given the known backstory of the humanoid versions. We once again see the inexplicably octagonal sheets of paper, but this time with a twist: some of them are paper-thin computers which appear to fill a similar niche to netbooks. The settings are also familiar – though the skyline is different, the Greystone home appears to intentionally recall the similarly-sited home of Gaius Baltar in the BSG pilot miniseries. Likewise, there were a few familiar musical cues, particularly near the end when Adama’s character theme appears as the background music to the reconciliation between the young William Adama and his father, and a familiar martial theme accompanies the successful demonstration of the cylon prototype.

And like good science fiction does, it tackles some intriguing questions regarding the consequences of speculative technology. The virtual reality element is cleverly done, showing how the simple knowledge that one can do anything in the virtual world (including virgin sacrifices for entertainment) and get away with it has a corrosive effect on the outside world in unexpected ways. The metaphysical status of one of the characters is also the subject of some debate among the other characters, applying the Turing Test concept to the identity and “soul” of an artificial intelligence.

The most interesting detail, though, was suddenly grasping during one scene the delicious weirdness of two characters having an earnest religious discussion in which classical monotheism polytheism was the common cultural point of reference and monotheism was something strange and even dangerous.

So, even though it is entirely bereft of killer supermodel fembots with an anthrocidal agenda (thus far, anyway), it has promise.

* – I refuse to use their corny new spelling. It’s embarrassing.

Posted on January 26th, 2010 under Uncategorized. Tags: Battlestar Galactica, Caprica, Cylon, Entertainment, Killer Fembot. Comments: 2

Since Keith put up his post last week announcing the imminent (and long anticipated) death of Ares I, I’ve been waiting for the obituaries to appear.

So far nothing official, although his subsequent Kremlin-watching post suggests the Congressional supporters of the Stick are getting out the paddles and adrenaline for heroic measures.

Reports suggest that the new NASA budget could cancel elements of Constellation and replace the ISS crew ferry missions with commercial vehicles, accelerated to flight by government funding.  Which is excellent news, overall, though it could make things very interesting on the job front in the near future should Orion be one of those elements.

While I’d much rather see commercial space services develop organically, to the extent that the new policy resembles the “Air Mail” scenario promoted by many commercial space advocates it’s at least a sizeable improvement over the NASA-centric program of record.

Posted on January 25th, 2010 under Constellation, Moon-Mars Plan, Orion, Space Policy. Tags: ares, budget, congress, Constellation, nasa, Orion. Comments: 2

Yeah, I know I said I was going to be posting more frequently. Unfortunately for my vow, I got caught up in the long-delayed overhaul of People’s Press Collective for most of the past two weeks. Now that it’s nearly finished (which, websites being what they are, is a Xeno’s Paradox-based perpetual condition), I’m back again.

And ye gods, I hate it when people write blog posts promising that they’ll write more blog posts. Well, other people…

Posted on January 25th, 2010 under Meta. Tags: People's Press Collective. Comments: 1

Despite my relief at the Scott Brown victory, I’m going to be a voice of sobriety here: important though it may prove to be, this is one victory.

One.

Brown’s win may or may not derail the nationalization of healthcare, depending on whether Obama, Pelosi, and Reid “double down” in an all-out push to ram through their abominable bill with procedural tricks, but it could very well do so. But keep in mind that first, it should never *ever* have gotten this close in Congress, and second, the future is still balanced on a knife’s edge, even with a 59-41 Senate.

I’ve heard today’s victory called “the Scott heard ’round the world” – but like the events of Lexington and Concord this needs to be the first step towards reining in the statists and restoring our liberty, and not mistaken by those in the grassroots who helped to make it happen as the arrival at that still-distant destination. Much work remains, what with caucuses, primaries, and midterm elections coming up, and aside from boosting the confidence of the grassroots in its efficacy in influencing major elections, this victory in Massachusetts does nothing to change that fact in other states.

Republicans, too, should avoid drawing the wrong lessons from this win – it was not an embrace of Republican policies or Republican leadership, it was for many a rejection of creeping socialism, fiscal irresponsibility, and government power-grabs in favor of liberty, and a repudiation of arrogant but clueless elitists endowed with an sense of entitlement to political office…all of which the Republicans have themselves been guilty lately. The GOP still needs to acknowledge these failings and its responsbility if it expects to rebuild the public trust, and would be wise to articulate a positive, pro-liberty platform for rolling back the nanny state rather than simply restraining the pace of its growth.

Posted on January 19th, 2010 under Economics, Miscellaneous, PPC. Tags: double down, Grassroots, health care reform, health reform, Martha Coakley, Massachusetts, Scott Brown, Senate, Ted Kennedy. Comments: 2

After spending most of last week running a working group tasked with re-configuring the forward (parachute) bay, I really have to wonder how the Apollo guys did it. Especially without the convenience (in a manner of speaking) of CAD models.

I wish I could have seen the Apollo configuration team at work.

Posted on January 17th, 2010 under Constellation, Orion, Rocket Science, Space Technology. Tags: Apollo, configuration, design, engineering, Orion. Comments: 2

It seems the Women in Black Silent Vigil For Peace (who I last observed observing something less than a moment of silence) have given up their first-Saturday protest outside Colorado Mills in Golden…

Did President Obama end the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and neglect to tell anyone (except the Women in Black, apparently)? 

(The local chapter appears to have folded.)

Posted on January 9th, 2010 under democratic national convention, Miscellaneous, PPC. Tags: colorado, moonbats, protest. Comments Off

It looks like Al Gore, with his lucrative carbon offset schemes, isn’t the only one who may be benefitting from the “climate industry” – IPPC Chairman and former railway engineer Rajendra Pachauri (Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering and Economics) seems to have some interesting and potentially lucrative “climate industry” links of his own:

Today, in addition to his role as chairman of the IPCC, Dr Pachauri occupies more than a score of such posts, acting as director or adviser to many of the bodies which play a leading role in what has become known as the international ‘climate industry’.

It is remarkable how only very recently has the staggering scale of Dr Pachauri’s links to so many of these concerns come to light, inevitably raising questions as to how the world’s leading ‘climate official’ can also be personally involved in so many organisations which stand to benefit from the IPCC’s recommendations…

Initially, when Dr Pachauri took over the running of TERI in the 1980s, his interests centred on the oil and coal industries, which may now seem odd for a man who has since become best known for his opposition to fossil fuels. He was, for instance, a director until 2003 of India Oil, the country’s largest commercial enterprise, and until this year remained as a director of the National Thermal Power Generating Corporation, its largest electricity producer.

In 2005, he set up GloriOil, a Texas firm specialising in technology which allows the last remaining reserves to be extracted from oilfields otherwise at the end of their useful life.

However, since Pachauri became a vice-chairman of the IPCC in 1997, TERI has vastly expanded its interest in every kind of renewable or sustainable technology, in many of which the various divisions of the Tata Group have also become heavily involved, such as its project to invest $1.5 billion (£930 million) in vast wind farms.

Dr Pachauri’s TERI empire has also extended worldwide, with branches in the US, the EU and several countries in Asia. TERI Europe, based in London, of which he is a trustee (along with Sir John Houghton, one of the key players in the early days of the IPCC and formerly head of the UK Met Office) is currently running a project on bio-energy, financed by the EU.

Another project, co-financed by our own Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the German insurance firm Munich Re, is studying how India’s insurance industry, including Tata, can benefit from exploiting the supposed risks of exposure to climate change. Quite why Defra and UK taxpayers should fund a project to increase the profits of Indian insurance firms is not explained.

Follow the money.  On the other hand, at least Mr. Pachauri didn’t take any money from Exxon – that might have called into question his scientific objectivity and the purity of his motives.

Posted on January 3rd, 2010 under Economics, PPC. Tags: climate industry, global warming, gore, IPCC, pachauri. Comments: 1