tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3656997045242077441Sun, 27 Nov 2011 23:25:20 +0000quoteshttp://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/7851925a-17a2-11de-8c9d-0000779fd2ac.html?nclick_check=1Some kind of high powered mutant never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live, and too rare to die.http://cmrem.blogspot.com/noreply@blogger.com (Roga)Blogger89125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3656997045242077441.post-1443671402334400709Fri, 09 Jul 2010 19:16:00 +00002010-07-09T21:40:27.102+02:00I am as much a Hayekian on depression matters as anyone, but I question the assertion that "uncertainty" explains all that is happening right now. While this particular administration appears to have less than the usual understanding or respect for unintended consequences, it is not as if they are massacring the Cossacks right now. If anything, big business has been overly well-treated by this http://cmrem.blogspot.com/2010/07/fdr-redux.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Roga)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3656997045242077441.post-4988337714326533897Sun, 06 Jun 2010 07:40:00 +00002010-06-06T09:45:44.015+02:00Futron did a great study in (I believe) 2003 that looked at the price elasticity for space launch, and all established markets had essentially none. The reason is that, for military payloads, telecom sats, etc, sticker price of the launch is 3-5% the total system cost (difficult to believe, but true). By comparison, things you could blow at launch up account for 6-10X the cost of the launch http://cmrem.blogspot.com/2010/06/space-launch-closing-business-case.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Roga)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3656997045242077441.post-798485162620042073Wed, 02 Jun 2010 04:45:00 +00002010-06-02T06:56:07.391+02:00But, what's 4 months without readers? Why? I went and got a full time job and I love it. I'm still building rockets, but much bigger ones. I'll keep the company name under wraps, but let's just say We're really excited about this upcoming week.I also moved to Hollywood, which is an experience in itself. Mojave was what it was, and in some ways the iso/desolation was breathtaking. I also http://cmrem.blogspot.com/2010/06/been-gone-for-while.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Roga)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3656997045242077441.post-4043827579399638850Wed, 02 Jun 2010 04:37:00 +00002010-06-02T06:39:04.402+02:00I saw a documentary about AIDS in Zambia last night – “The Lazarus Effect”, free on YouTube Red Channel. I was astounded by the way they talked about ARV’s (anti-retrovirals) – it was like they were just a given. As though, at some point in the early 2000’s, some beneficent hand (God, the Zambian government, Butros Butros Gali) sprinkled them across the land like manna. Not even a mention of the http://cmrem.blogspot.com/2010/06/aids-miracle-that-was-not_3365.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Roga)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3656997045242077441.post-7685929780308015581Wed, 27 Jan 2010 19:04:00 +00002010-01-27T20:16:00.255+01:00Libertyworks published a great collection of graphs showing plummeting tax revenues for corporate and personal income taxes. Keynesians like to talk about a downward spiral of deflation - money supply drops due to financial crisis, which causes prices to fall; but prices fall faster than wages so companies go out of business, which destroys more capital, which in turn shrinks the money supply, http://cmrem.blogspot.com/2010/01/true-downward-spiral.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Roga)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3656997045242077441.post-849790792049381867Thu, 21 Jan 2010 00:53:00 +00002010-01-21T09:48:48.881+01:00A long word that most people just take on faith. I get the concept of deficit spending, but I find a huge, glaring logical inconsistency. If you are not just printing money (which worked wonders for Zimbabwe and Argentina), you must borrow that money. By borrowing money, you are taking away cash that would otherwise be lent to businesses.We see this today - the stimulus and TARP funds are in bankhttp://cmrem.blogspot.com/2010/01/keynesianism.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Roga)2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3656997045242077441.post-1527165315908130058Tue, 05 Jan 2010 20:37:00 +00002010-01-05T21:38:54.308+01:00Matt Taibbi at TrueSlant posts a terrific article about the causes of the financial crisis. I like a lot of his points:“For what we’ve learned in the last few years as one scandal after another spilled onto the front pages is that the bubble economies of the last two decades were not merely monstrous Ponzi schemes that destroyed trillions in wealth while making a small handful of people rich. http://cmrem.blogspot.com/2010/01/difference-between-paying-and-forcing.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Roga)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3656997045242077441.post-625022321153546572Mon, 04 Jan 2010 20:17:00 +00002010-01-04T21:43:20.356+01:00Maybe twice a year I see a movie that is worth the money and the 2-3 hours. Usually such a movie has a great story line, but for the most part those are tapped out. What I really want from a movie is something that will put me in another world. It could be an understated character-and-atmosphere film like No Country for Old Men, or it could be a comedy or horror flick that suspends certain http://cmrem.blogspot.com/2010/01/blog-post.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Roga)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3656997045242077441.post-3535372901888337892Thu, 31 Dec 2009 05:04:00 +00002009-12-31T07:00:19.959+01:00In light of the recent underwear bomber episode, and the equally ridiculous and useless rules set up by our bureauverlords to protect their jobs (the answer to government failure is... more government!), I thought I would weigh in on how to really keep airplanes safe. Allow guns on board.I am quite certain that terrorist incidents would virtually disappear if we did this - just let anybody on a http://cmrem.blogspot.com/2009/12/how-to-actually-keep-airplanes-from.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Roga)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3656997045242077441.post-8506458474459690191Mon, 21 Dec 2009 04:25:00 +00002009-12-21T05:59:04.971+01:00Early signs point to the Obama administration taking the Augustine Commission's advice and turning astronaut launch to LEO over to contract bidders like ULA and SpaceX. I'm sure the sausage making will be ugly and the result will be less than ideally appetizing, but it is the first big-ticket sign of a slow, necessary change in NASA that has been happening at least since SpaceX was founded in http://cmrem.blogspot.com/2009/12/newer-americaner-space-program.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Roga)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3656997045242077441.post-918343386312854171Wed, 16 Dec 2009 20:17:00 +00002009-12-16T21:23:35.798+01:00Following up on two reality-TV stars crashing the state dinner a month ago, we now have a story of two tourists who showed up to the WH on the wrong day and were invited to join a Veterans Day breakfast. I for one don't see that this is an issue. I can't imagine how it could be. Are we really pissed off that ordinary Americans were able to get some candid face time with the President? Have wehttp://cmrem.blogspot.com/2009/12/little-people-in-white-house-noooooo.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Roga)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3656997045242077441.post-5801185423976801810Wed, 02 Dec 2009 20:33:00 +00002009-12-02T23:04:10.941+01:00Climategate, paradoxically, may lead to a renewed push and more money for climate science, and this is a good thing. Hear me out.Climate science relies on extremely nonlinear models. When you rely on extremely nonlinear models, the rules for statistical analysis change completely. In a linear model, you can expect a small change in inputs to result in a small change in output. In a nonlinear http://cmrem.blogspot.com/2009/12/truth-shall-set-you-free.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Roga)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3656997045242077441.post-2534540606107899993Fri, 27 Nov 2009 04:47:00 +00002009-11-27T06:23:41.732+01:00Powerline blog has a story about a recent Fed forecast of a slow recovery for the economy. Well... duh. Put me solidly among those who aren't convinced there is a recovery - the current bump is very likely the result of massive and unsustainable deficit spending. The reasoning behind the slowness is that banks aren't lending. Well... duh. Here's some of the things they are looking at:1. The http://cmrem.blogspot.com/2009/11/jobless.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Roga)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3656997045242077441.post-2699631023378393912Sun, 22 Nov 2009 02:34:00 +00002009-11-22T03:57:04.417+01:00Big news this week on the global warming front. A month or two ago, I said essentially that yes, we need to worry about global warming, eventually, but it is not an existential emergency and we don't know nearly the beginnings of enough yet to call it such. By contrast to, say, a 10,000 year meteor strike, of which we know most of the science yet spend pitifully little time, money, and http://cmrem.blogspot.com/2009/11/damaging-climate-science-by-defending.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Roga)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3656997045242077441.post-1685463954345314717Tue, 17 Nov 2009 06:10:00 +00002009-11-17T08:33:00.463+01:00Vision Restoration is a blog dedicated to... well, if I say it it will sound trite or corny or jargony. The "Vision" stands for W.'s Vision for Space Exploration, which was a very promising roadmap for building up the nation's civil spacefaring infrastructure in politically palatable chunks. The "Restoration" is because NASA lifers and congressrodents with NASA centers quickly gutted the http://cmrem.blogspot.com/2009/11/questions-from-hsf-committee-running.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Roga)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3656997045242077441.post-8815716083710897333Sun, 15 Nov 2009 04:09:00 +00002009-11-15T05:44:54.418+01:00The Orlando Sentinel has a piece on the breakdown of the ISS urine recycler, and how it might postpone a billion-dollar shuttle flight because it would mean bags of pee floating around. My first thought about this was how it points out everything that I hate about the Cult of Systems Engineering that rules American civil space exploration, and much of the space industry itself. Here is the http://cmrem.blogspot.com/2009/11/in-space-no-one-can-hear-you-pee.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Roga)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3656997045242077441.post-1653316115049396781Tue, 10 Nov 2009 18:52:00 +00002009-11-10T20:00:52.048+01:00I was told that the Obama administration would stop the abuses of civil liberties, the animosity toward the press, and the shady tracking of our email and web traffic. I personally chafed at the expansion of the Big Brother camera eye into our lives during the Bush administration, and I was definitely hopeful that Obama would move to repeal some of the vaguer parts of the PATRIOT Act. Or at http://cmrem.blogspot.com/2009/11/meet-new-boss-yep-another-one-of-these.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Roga)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3656997045242077441.post-6444164972581651739Mon, 02 Nov 2009 22:29:00 +00002009-11-02T23:58:46.003+01:00William Voegeli's editorial in the LA Times takes a look at what, exactly, the state of California provides for it's tax largesse. The answer is that our services are actually significantly worse than lower-tax states all around. The extra money appears to be funneled into public employee unions and pensions, of which the Golden State has very lucrative ones indeed. I'm glad Voegeli found http://cmrem.blogspot.com/2009/11/high-prices-low-service.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Roga)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3656997045242077441.post-110155681314738244Mon, 19 Oct 2009 20:13:00 +00002009-11-27T00:50:32.718+01:00John Stossel is not the first, and will not be the last, to call out the inequities of letting different races into competitive colleges. "Diversity" is a positive feature, because it is not academic achievement alone that determines one's position later in life. Evolutionary biology teaches us that monocultures are extremely vulnerable to perturbance, and an all-asian-and-white, http://cmrem.blogspot.com/2009/10/affirmative-action-at-ivy-leagues-what.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Roga)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3656997045242077441.post-384429776060001292Mon, 19 Oct 2009 19:25:00 +00002009-10-19T21:44:00.294+02:00The White House released a memo to federal prosecutors and top DEA executives today that told them not to prosecute medical marijuana users so long as they were in full accordance with conflicting state laws. A breath of fresh air for marijuana activists, and one of the things I thought Obama could realistically do to make his presidency suck considerably less.But, similar to his empty words on http://cmrem.blogspot.com/2009/10/good-news-but-you-cant-put-it-in-your.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Roga)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3656997045242077441.post-6130939070953529397Fri, 16 Oct 2009 18:52:00 +00002009-10-16T21:06:30.643+02:00The WSJ has an article today about the origins of the housing bubble. The main point: so-called "predatory" lenders needed to sell their mortgages to someone. They did not hold them like normal banks, but instead securitized bundles of them and sold them to larger institutions."Mortgage brokers had to be able to sell their mortgages to someone. They could only produce what those above them in thehttp://cmrem.blogspot.com/2009/10/im-sick-of-being-right-all-time-no.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Roga)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3656997045242077441.post-6935631968982079564Tue, 13 Oct 2009 02:41:00 +00002009-10-13T05:08:02.143+02:00Exciting news comes from MIT via Next Big Future: a general algorithm for quantum computers which solves linear systems of equations. This is big news, since recent years have shown significant progress in overcoming technical challenges of quantum computing, but the lack of a general linear algorithm that was demonstrably faster than digital computers threatened to confine QC to a small set of http://cmrem.blogspot.com/2009/10/possible-general-algorithm-for-quantum.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Roga)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3656997045242077441.post-4262875864491765918Sun, 27 Sep 2009 19:29:00 +00002009-09-27T21:50:54.788+02:00An addendum to the unintended consequences post I wrote about Cash for Clunkers. Turns out, in addition to incentivizing low mpg cars, it also tanked home and durable goods sales!I am firing up the job search process. I hope for a job in an exciting engineering firm. I'm prepared to be waiting tables in 6 months. Apparently the unemployment rate for young people hit 50% after the minimum wagehttp://cmrem.blogspot.com/2009/09/sunday-sunday-sunday.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Roga)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3656997045242077441.post-4465811661049205970Thu, 17 Sep 2009 22:34:00 +00002009-09-18T00:44:37.725+02:00Well, I finally got around to watching the ACORN prostitution vids... okay, it was the Daily show version of them. I've got to say, until they went into the Salvadorean child prostitutes, I was totally with ACORN on this one. Prostitution should not be a crime in the first place, and bureaucracy is reprehensible in the second place; using one against the other strikes me a enormously http://cmrem.blogspot.com/2009/09/acorn-files.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Roga)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3656997045242077441.post-2857556647075215844Thu, 17 Sep 2009 22:31:00 +00002009-09-18T00:32:26.882+02:00I am a 20-something with several 20-something friends. Most of them want universal health care. So I asked them a question: do you expect to get more when you retire out of Social Security and Medicare than you put in in the 50 years until then? No, they said. Even if you are for the *concept* of universal coverage, if you don't see it realistically being solvent when you're over 50 and http://cmrem.blogspot.com/2009/09/young-people-health-care-reform.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Roga)0