I agree. I felt so sorry for Natalie Portman in Episode III. "Oh Ani! YOU'RE BREAKING MY HEART!" Seriously. I cringe. That is no one but the director.

Watch Natalie Portman in Black Swan. She is utterly brilliant.

Not that I hate Star Wars. Far from it. The broad story arcs echo many ancient myths and stories. George Lucas has said that he read Joseph Campbell's "Hero with a Thousand Faces" which surveys many ancient myths for commonality. The idea of a young boy escaping his mundane life to find his "hero's journey" is primal, as is the story of a son of facing the sins of his father. In my mind these things elevate Star Wars into the pantheon of cinema, in spite of the horrific dialog.

NO! In a democratic society, we should NEVER tolerate intolerance.

Fair enough, but what scares me is how many extremists are already in power, in Congress and in the Senate. And on the road to the White House. We as a society really do need to take a close look at what is known as the "christian dominionist movement". This movement seeks to establish an American theocracy with the rule of law given by the bible. We should think about what these people are actually proposing: the death penalty for abortion, both for doctor and mother. The death penalty for homosexuality. Here is an article to give you an idea of what I am talking about. A very good read on this subject is American Fascists.

It is easy to dismiss these people as being a crazy fringe. Indeed every society has its own lunatics. What is concerning is how this extreme form of christianity has infiltrated the main stream of christianity and what we commonly know as the christian right. What is extremely concerning is how many mainstream politicians share similar modes of thought to this movement. When I hear about laws such as what Tim Cook is writing about, I hear the clicking of a ratchet, bringing us a small step towards an American version of the taliban government.

Those of us with a sense of what is actually going on must work towards steering our society away from this cliff. Above all, we should promote the idea that although we live in a tolerant nation, we should never tolerate intolerance. The bastards who bring in laws like this should be run out of town.

Chris Christy scares the bejesus out of me. His personality is scary. He is the kind of guy who in my opinion you don't want to give too much power. The way he shouts down people who are weaker than him particularly concerns me. This article is a good summary of him.

Or she can sell off the US government's core technological assets and turn America into a hollow corporate brand name that creates almost nothing. Just like she did with HP when she sold off HP's advanced technology division as Agilent, and changed HP from a technological powerhouse into a brand-name for shitty computers and components.

Yeah well, I don't think that Bill Gates is a genius. According to this interesting perspective,

And Edison was rather similar. Edison used brute force discovery to solve the light-bulb filament problem, and used some, shall we say agressive business tactics to protect his business. In order to make people afraid of his competition (alternating current, Westinghouse), he used AC to electrocute animals such as elephants. He successfully campaigned to have AC used to execute death row prisoners (the electric chair). He was, IMHO not a genius.

Elon Musk is, in my opinion, a bona fide genius. With a bachelors degree in physics, he taught himself rocket science, and was the chief designer of an entire rocket, the Falcon I. This rocket managed to put two objects in orbit before being superceded by the Falcon 9. The amount of information he must have learned is astounding. Fluid dynamics, combustion, orbital dynamics and trajectory control, metallurgy, each in and of itself an entire field of study. He also has a solid background in computer science.

So, I will give what Musk says on the future of transport quite a bit of weight. He has earned it.

In some European cities, it is customary to leave your car parked in neutral and with no parking brake on (obviously on the flat). When someone wishes to park parallel park in a tight spot, they just nudge the cars in front or behind, causing them to roll, widening the spot. This allows cars to be parked "nose to tail".

I am really curious as to the talking points the climate deniers will come up with to defend a government banning the use of particular words. Has it really come to this?

What I notice in this photo (hi-res version) around the area of the shadow are the apparent shapes of the ice "boulders" that came together to form the comet in the first place. It reminds me of looking at chondrules in meteorites, that show the siliceous "hailstones" that formed as the planetary disc that would go on the form the planets cooled.

And his photography.

RIP. Sad sad sad.

...Fool me twice, shame on...uhhhh...we won't get fooled again.

You do know what cost-plus contracting is, don't you? In essence, the company says, the project will cost what we say. And then add 20% profit on top. The government will then put auditing systems to track almost every purchase. However, that doesn't stop the company over-designing the system, or choosing a design that costs far more than it should. Or hiring layers upon layers of middle managers who do next to nothing. It costs what it will cost. And then Lockmart gets 20% profit on their already inflated prices.

This is why aerospace is so expensive in America. Lockmart and Boeing both rely on cost-plus financing. SpaceX does not. They give price per performance. Price to launch. Price to design and build. They only get paid if they do what they say.

I agree that Mars One sounds fishy. The lack of technical details is suspicious.

I think we can go to Mars. I think we can build the technology. And I don't think that Lockmart and Boeing (through NASA) can do it, because their reflexive position is to magnify costs. I suspect that Elon Musk is the most likely force that will push us to Mars, if only because his obsessive motivation towards that goal causes him not to magnify costs, because he realizes that excessive costs will make his goal impossible. I think that the government would do well to divert some of the funds that were headed towards Lockmart/Boeing towards SpaceX instead. They will get better value for their investment.