Links and Minifeatures 11 29 Tuesday

This is, alas, par for the course: FAA calls for mediator in talks with air traffic controllers. FAA management is a sick, corrupt culture, and they have monopoly power over controllers. There are no other significant jobs in Air Traffic. ATC is pretty unique in the federal government. How many times does the average bureaucrat get to go home saying "I got all those planes down (or through my sector) and did so quickly, and managed to keep them all from crashing into each other and dying." Nobody else has dozens to hundreds of people's lives depending upon them making correct decisions right now, every minute of every day they are at work. Military officers do it in combat. Air Traffic's own lives are not on the line, but they are doing it constantly, every time they sign on a position, from the second they say "I got it," to the second their relief says, "I got it." Yes there are hours of boredom - and that's when you have to be constantly on guard against complacency. The man who first replied to "what could go wrong?" with "The mind boggles," was likely a controller.

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This is a good article to read: Social Security could be big chill for 50-somethings. The Donkeys derailed reform this year by saying Social Security is fine. It isn't. With every private insurance company revising their mortality tables upwards, to show people living longer, social security has yet to do so. Raising the age from 65 to 67 or 70 won't cut it. The retirement age of 65 that we had for such a long time is based upon the figure that Germany chose under Von Bismarck, when the average life expectancy was 48. Based upon current life expectancies, to get those same proportions today, we'd have to raise the retirement age to something like 96, and that's without disability figured in. Not many people are in shape to continue working at 96, or even 80.



The Donkeys also told scary stories about investing the trust fund (or a personal segment of it) in private capital markets, saying that it was too likely to lose money right when people can least afford it. Boys and girls, I would rather make an average of 9 to 10 percent per year for 20 years, and then lose half, then make 4 percent per year from the government for those twenty years. Here's the math: Option A (9.5% equity markets that suddenly lose 50% after 20 years), $1000 in the beginning turns into $3071. Option B (4% per year) turns $1000 into $2191. For a 20 year time frame, you would have had to have bought all your investments right at the top in 1929 to have done worse than Option A. Nothing else even comes close. With Dollar Cost Averaging over time, even somebody who started at the worst possible moment in history beats option A, the worst realistic case I can come up with.



So sorry, AARP and Donkey partisans. The facts just aren't on your side.



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And for our next trick, we're going to defuse this bomb twenty years after it goes off... France Tightens Controls on Immigration



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Jawa Report has hostage video and more.



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Congratulations and a heartfelt THANK YOU to Gunnery Sergeant Ismael Sagredo! Awarded the Silver Star!



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World According to Nick makes several very good points against a Sheboygan spaceport, as referenced in this article, but misses the biggest reason of them all. The reason that our primary spaceport is in Florida is because that's about as far south (i.e. close to the equator) as we could find a suitable site). Earth's rotational velocity. Cape Canaveral (28.43 N) gets us 916 miles per hour of rotational velocity. Sheboygan, WI (43.75 N) gets us only 753 miles per hour of rotational velocity. 916-753=163 mph, or about 239 feet per second or 72.86 meters per second. This is free velocity that the entire rocket is moving at before it burns one microgram of fuel. And because you have to gain 72.86 meters per second of velocity before you're even with where you would be sitting on the ground in Florida, this means it's more expensive - noticeably more expensive, as that's the first entire second free at 8 gs (7 net), almost three seconds at 4 gs (3 net) - to get to orbit from Wisconsin. Why would anybody want to do that when Canaveral has more capacity than the whole world can use any time soon? (Vandenberg, used for polar orbits, was the furthest south they could get something suitable on the west coast, where polar orbital insertions go out over the water almost immediately, much as the easterly launches off Canaveral do).



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HT to Inside Larry's Head for heads up on Mao debunkers defend their book; Critics call it effort to discredit communism. As if communism needs discrediting. Except for killing tens of millions of people, sending large portions of the world economy backwards, causing billions to live in crushing poverty, setting the cause of personal liberty and human rights back decades, enriching and rewarding tyrants who oppress the people worse than any capitalist ever thought about doing, causing multi-decade famines in areas that once were breadbaskets, failing to feed its people for decades at a time, expanding the system of gulags worldwide, causing deadly and widespread environmental damage, literally destroying the means of production it inheritied from its capitalist predecessors so nobody (except the rulers) got anything, stymying the contributions billions of people could have made to the world,and doing its best to cover all of this up, including habitual executions of innocent people who simply stumbled on the wrong piece of evidence, I guess communism wasn't so bad.



At least the nobles in feudalistic societies A) didn't know any better, and B) Come the war, had an obligation/reason to stand in the front lines.



"Joe the Georgian" by Al Stewart



Now I've got my payment

For the service that I gave

They've given me my ticket

To this place beyond the grave

I suppose it's kind of funny

I suppose it's kind of sad

Thinking back on all the times we had



But it's kind of hot and smoky

In this anteroom to Hell

And I won't make up a story

'Cause you know the truth so well

It's much too late to worry

That we never had a chance

And when Joe the Georgian gets here

We will dance, dance dance

When Joe the Georgian gets here

We will dance



We all set off together

On this sorry ship of state

When the captain took the fever

We were hijacked by the mate

And he steered us through the shadows

Upon an angry tide

And cast us one by one over the side



But it's kind of hot and smoky

In this anteroom to Hell

And I won't make up a story

'Cause you know the truth so well

It's much too late to worry

That we never had a chance

And when Joe the Georgian gets here

We will dance, dance dance

When Joe the Georgian gets here

We will dance



There's Kamenev, Zinoviev,

Bukharin and the rest

We're sharpening our pitchforks

And we're heating up the ends

We've got a few surprises

For the mate when he appears

I hope he likes the next few million years



And it's kind of hot and smoky

In this anteroom to Hell

And I won't make up a story

'Cause you know the truth so well

It's much too late to worry

That we never had a chance

And when Joe the Georgian gets here

We will dance, dance dance

When Joe the Georgian gets here

We will dance



(Me again) The problem is that they weren't exactly hijacked by the mate. Stalin didn't take them anywhere that Lenin didn't intend for them to go. Each and every time it's been tried, communism has ended up in the exact same place. It's time to stop pretending this is a freak occurence.



What's the definition of insanity again?



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Environmental Republican has quite a nice little article on Joe Lieberman, whom (thus far) is my favorite Donkey for 2008. He'd got integrity, he's got political cojones, he's willing to be villainized for doing the right and correct thing. No, I don't agree with him 100%, but I do admire him for attempting to lead the moonbats away from the cliffs. I'll take him over anyone else the Donkeys have on offer. Heck, I'll take his pet rock over anyone else the Donkeys have shown me.



Tinkerty Tonk has more.