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Cracker Commentary
Not to know what has transacted in former times is to continue always a child.
-- Marcus Tullius Cicero
 Thursday, January 16, 2003Space Shuttle Columbia on the way
This was the view twenty minutes ago from my office parking lot in Orlando. It's about what you would see from Universal Sudios, across the street. Wednesday, December 11, 2002Order your clone now Stanford has announced it plans to pursue a human embryo clone project and the Corner’s Kathryn Jean Lopez wants Congress to outlaw it. I shudder. Human cloning is one of those many things that are going happen no matter how desirable or undesirable they may be, and banning it from legitimate investigation only makes certain that it will be done, unobserved, by less savory investigators who don’t care what is legal. Of course, funding will come from others of similar mind and they will be the ones who control the process for their own purposes. We learned this lesson pretty well when the subject was alcohol, although the left doesn’t get it on guns nor the right on abortion and most of us haven’t figured out it also applies to drugs, prostitution and pornography. This isn't saying the government should fund clone research. People with objections should not have to support it with their taxes. But we should allow such research to flourish visibly, with open discussion of its implications for science, ethics and economics. Prohibiting it will only eliminate the best possibilities while making a Dr. Moreau even more likely. Wednesday, December 04, 2002Eclipse Jay Manifold writes about the solar eclipse that you can see today, if you are in Australia or Southern Africa. I saw one once in Southern Georgia. A swamp is a great place to watch. The still, black water makes a perfect mirror and protects the eyes better than glass. In 1970, an eclipse crossed the Southeastern U.S., drawing a line of totality right up the Suwanee River into the Okefenokee, where Dad and I were waiting for it at Stephen Foster State Park. With us were about fifty other Astronomers for a Day and a camera crew from the Today Show who had never seen an alligator before. More... Tuesday, November 19, 2002Fireworks Okay. Had my nap and got up at 5AM to watch the Leonids put on quite a show. From 5:10 to 5:40 I counted 90 "shooting stars" and two satellites despite a full moon and city lights. My previous record was 30 in an hour during a Perseids shower when I was about ten years old. The high point came at 5:30 when my count went from 60 to 75 in just over a minute and included one bolide, or exploding meteor, that must have been three or four times brighter than Venus ever gets. Monday, November 04, 2002A cluster what?
Just heard Neal Boortz talking about this and had to see it for myself. It's called clusterballooning and was started, more or less accidentally, in 1982. See more about it here. I was thinking about riding in an open cockpit this weekend, but I may have to think about this.
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