“If you converted those craters’ water into rocket fuel, you’d have enough fuel to launch the equivalent of one space shuttle per day for more than 2000 years. But our observations are just a part of an even more tantalizing story about what’s going on up on the Moon.”

Via Science@NASA.

Via Dustbury.

“If you relied upon the government for your bread, you would accept what you were given, and you would be given what politicians think you were willing to accept. They would conceal the massive cost of its inefficient production by telling you it was free. Because this is a lie, you would soon find yourself staring at an empty shelf, remembering the days when you could choose between six different brands of honey wheat bread, while politicians explained why your nostalgia reflects a greedy and selfish desire to return to an impossible age.”

Via Doctor Zero.

MG hardly suffers from being so old that the humans employ slide rules and photographic film, and the author wisely continues it in the more recent SL. It’s also almost unnoticeable that there is, as other reviewers of his other books have pointed out, no sex and no violence—not even a sharp argument between the humans and the aliens.

Instead, the stories move along on resolving the inevitable hazards as the hydrogen-breathing Mesklinites (variously described as grotesque worms, caterpillars or centipedes about three feet long) explore their own high-gravity planet and, later, a similar one three parsecs away, as contract employees (and, simultaneously, students and respected friends) of the humans.

What makes it work is the interplay between the species and the way Clements’ aliens mimic human emotions and behavior, including occasional paranoia and deception, despite their significant physiological differences. I was sad to finish. It’s a pity the author is no longer alive to continue this rich story of human scientists, linguists and administrators hesitantly helping the Mesklinites gradually move from being sailors on methane seas in ammonia storms to pilots of interstellar spacecraft.

Via No Left Turns.

Not that we have anything against vegetarians. Just tell us how you’d like them prepared. Heh.

Now, ideally, education teaches you how to think. But if you haven’t picked that process up in twelve years, you’re not likely to do it in four more. Or five more, as is the average nowadays.

Why shouldn’t we, instead, I said the other day to Mrs. C., encourage Mr. B. to become, say, an electrician. Every time we’ve tried to get an electrician to come fix something, it’s been hard, they’re all so busy. Most people (including me, to a certain extent) are afraid of electricity and so will hire even the relatively simple installation of a ceiling fan, rather than try it themselves. So why not do it Ace’s way:

“…if a kid a started an electrician’s apprentice program at 18, he could get his full Electrician’s license within 5 years. And if his parents had saved even half the money that would have gone for tuition, they would have enough to bankroll the kid setting up his own electrical business. For a lot of kids that’s a much better start to life than getting a bachelors degree in sociology or art history and wondering what now.”

No kidding.

And, lo and behold, DST might even be bad for your health, as it is statistically related to increased heart attacks, male suicides and traffic accidents. Not that the feds would care. (Health care reform, for instance, is for the bureaucracy and the lobbyists, not the patients). The spring forward doesn’t bother me. It’s the fall back that’s a killer. The spring forward is semi-painful. The whole thing is a waste of time, like so many other government regulations. But, in this case, a literal waste of time.