Which says they're too proud for their own good: When State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley refused to tell reporters which countries have offered assistance to help respond to the BP oil spill, the State Department press corps was flabbergasted. "As a policy matter, we're not going to identify those offers of assistance until we are …
Robert Gibbs: When Conspiracy Theories Are Easier to Take Than the Truth
That's one way to deflect the sorry reality of the situation: "I would not be surprised if the White House said, you know, we might be able to, guess what, do what? Use this crisis to our advantage. Let this crisis get really bad, and then we will step in," Brown told Neil Cavuto. "We …
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Millions of Dead Fish
I've documented on this blog and related ones some of the "interesting" business trips I have taken, especially outside the US. One of those took place in 1980, when my brother and I, fresh from an offshore technology exhibit at Earl's Court, took a plane to Hamburg to meet with a prospective German representative for …
The day we cease to be explorers and revert to armchairs and joysticks is the day we begin to dwell on past achievements rather than future adventures.
True words, spoken by Aerospace Industries Association CEO Marion Blakey at the Forum Club of the Palm Beaches: “Let’s face it, it will be a long time — if ever — before a robot could repair the Hubble telescope or make the many adjustments needed to add modules to the International Space Station,” Blakey said. …
European Style Government Deserves European Style Offshore Oil Policy
If the Administration is serious about this, that's what it amounts to: The Obama administration is expected to announce by Wednesday its updated plan for oil and natural gas drilling in U.S. waters, including whether to allow exploration for the first time along the U.S. East Coast. The plan could pave the way for a …
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Government Policy: Giving Way to Bicycles and Pedestrians, and a Photo of the Future
That's what our Transportation Secretary said: Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has announced a “major policy revision” that aims to give bicycling and walking the same policy and economic consideration as driving. “Today I want to announce a sea change,” he wrote on his blog last week. “This is the end of favoring motorized transportation at …
Don't Want Higher Fuel Taxes? Be Seeing You!
Deputy Transportation Secretary John Porcari assures us that higher fuel taxes aren't in the cards: President Obama remains opposed to raising federal fuel taxes while the economy is trying to recover despite calls in Congress to increase those fees to fund new legislation, said Deputy Transportation Secretary John Porcari. The DOT’s second-highest official assured the …
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The Importance of Causality
In his book Introduction to the Differential Equations of Physics, German physicist Ludwig Hopf opens with the following statement: Any differential equation expresses a relation between derivatives or between derivatives and given functions of the variables. It thus establishes a relation between the increments of certain quantities and these quantities themselves. This property of a …
Offshore Wind Energy Makes a Splash
An interesting site called Offshore Wind shows the advances in wind technology and its application to power generation in the North Sea. It is a German effort, and it illustrates some major differences between Europe and the US in energy policy (or lack thereof.) Locating wind turbines offshore is a logical type of effort, especially …
The "Scientific" Administration Takes the Heat for NASA Cutbacks
It surely does: U.S. President Barack Obama is trying to tamp down an uprising in politically vital Florida against a new strategy for NASA that has rankled space veterans and lawmakers and sparked fears of job losses. Obama's decision to kill NASA's Constellation program to launch astronauts into orbit and return Americans to the moon …
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Positive Infinity 