Remembering Bob Barr

Ross Douthat is skeptical about Lou Dobbs' presidential chances: "Remember when Bob Barr was going to play a spoiler’s role in 2008?" Yes, Bob Barr...let him be a warning to Lou just how fast your political career can go downhill when you mess with the wrong person.

NASA debate

Mark your calendar:

Should We Abolish NASA?

This Wed., Dec. 2 (at 8pm) join us for a Debate at Lolita Bar on whether to get rid of our government-run space program:

•Greg Rehmke, lecturer and program director with the Economic Thinking project, argues yes.

•Ken Silber, writer, blogger, and Research editor — and very bitter survivor of Lou Dobbs’ Space.com — argues no.

•Michel Evanchik moderates and Todd Seavey hosts.

More info here. All are welcome, including Lou Dobbs.

Lou Dobbs and me

Over at FrumForum, I offer "President Dobbs: The First Tell-All Memoir." Excerpt:

Lou Dobbs is saying he might run for president in 2012. As one who worked for Dobbs a decade ago, when he was CEO of the Internet venture Space.com, I wish to point out that his management skills and style were unequal to running a web company with some 100 employees. As president of the United States, he would
be a disaster.

Whole thing here.

Space chair

Interesting, perplexing Toshiba ad.



Via Alan Boyle, who has more info about it.

From Poverty to Prosperity

Review copy requested: From Poverty to Prosperity: Intangible Assets, Hidden Liabilities and The Lasting Triumph over Scarcity, by Arnold Kling and Nick Schulz. Nick's an excellent editor (among other things) whom I worked with in writing dozens of articles at TCS Daily. Kling is someone whose ideas I've always found interesting and worth thinking about, though I've disagreed with him online now and then.

Cosmonaut blog

A Russian blog written from orbit. "Much funnier" than NASA.

Martian rock connoisseurs

A new NASA/Microsoft website Be a Martian offers the public a chance to help make sense of data from Mars.

The Beer Connoisseur

It's hard to start a magazine in this economy, but I definitely wish these people well.

Danger: radioactive

Every once in a while, there arises the arcane question of how to keep far-future people (robots? aliens?) away from radioactive waste dumps that will still be dangerous millennia hence. Juliet Lapidos at Slate discusses it here, and there are some glosses on it here and here. I've long been fascinated by this question, but in a minor irony something I once wrote about it (a review of Gregory Benford's Deep Time) is now lost, though perhaps retrievable in the Internet archives.

Based on my own experience with certain outdoor-adventure, rock-climbing people, I think it's going to be hard to prevent future explorers from getting into the fields of giant jagged spikes or other such features that are meant to send a universal message of Stay Away.

Ping pong diplomacy

I like this guy:

In Guangzhou last month, he visited a neighborhood center where physically handicapped students learn English. In the recreation room, he played table tennis with a female student. "I haven't done this for 10 years. I played ping pong as a young man but only began practicing again a few days ago. I'm rusty," he told his diminutive adversary. Then he added, "I will learn from you."

I also think he's going to be president of the United States one day.

Blogging notes

Interested in Brooklyn? My friend Amelia Blanquera now blogs about that borough for the New York Times.

Anthony Duignan-Cabrera, colleague from my Space.com days, has started a blog with the evocative title Jackknifed Juggernaut.

And Ross Douthat, whose book I reviewed but whose columns I've been less than consistent in reading, now has a blog called Evaluations.

Avatar watch

Over at NASA Watch, Keith Cowing thinks NASA's missing an opportunity for public outreach in connection with the upcoming movie Avatar. He does note some interesting questions that could be brought up (e.g. "On a world with lighter gravity than Earth what modes of movement would be more probable?"). But the trailer gives me the impression Avatar's going to mix clever visuals with a hackneyed plot ("those savages," grumbles some mining executive about the local aliens). We shall see (unless the reviews are so bad as to dissuade us from seeing it).

Health care disaster pamphlet

David Gratzer, a psychiatrist and analyst of health care policy (and fellow contributor to FrumForum), has a pamphlet out: Why Obama's Government Takeover of Health Care Will Be a Disaster. Excerpt here. Besides the content of this particular one, I'm interested in seeing how much impact pamphlets have; I suspect it could be quite a lot.

Red Book

By Dan Summer

At the Rubin museum there has been a great series of intellectuals, artists, and philosophers, chatting with Psychoanalysts. The release of C. G. Jungs Red Book after 100 years is a big deal in the Jungian Psychoanalyst world. Yesterday my wife and I saw Billy Corgan with Morgan Stebbins an analyst in NYC. The basis is these individuals look at a picture by Jung from this book and then free associate with the analyst, and take questions from the audience. Corgan, came across as slightly depressed, but at the same time honest, and insightful. He talked quite a bit about his "shadow" but also how sometimes people who get angry at him during concerts will throw bottles. Although it probably would have been more interesting to focus on the here and now, I definitely recommend checking it out. You could see who is coming up here.

Age 53

That's when financial decision-making ability peaks, according to a new study. Probably best to postpone some mortgage payments until then.