URLs du Jour

2009-07-20

  • Wired has a great collection of Apollo 11 anniversary links.

    I'm repeating myself from a couple years ago, but still like what Ray Bradbury had to say back then:

    "Now look. Everyone shut up. You don't know a damned thing about what's going on here tonight, and that's why people like myself are needed in the world. I want to tell you what in hell it means. This is the greatest night you will ever know!

    "There are two nights the Western world will look back upon a million years from tonight. A million years! I'm not talking about a hundred or a thousand years. I'm talking about a million years from tonight.

    "The birth of Christ probably is a very important date that changed the world in many ways for the better and, in some ways, for not very much good at all.

    "But the second most important date is this night that we're going through right now. Because it's the night when we become immortal-when we begin the steps that will enable us to live forever. Now, if you don't know this, you don't know anything about space."

    Only 999,960 years to go to find out if Ray was right.

  • William Kristol looks at a Newsweek essay by Teddy Kennedy and Robert Shrum on health care "reform" and detects policy prescriptions that could be characterized as "rationing". From their godlike perch, Shrum and Kennedy detect "unnecessary" procedures that could easily be abolished by easy-peasy new regulations and payment schedules.

    Riiiiight. Sure they could.

    But, as Kristol notes, that alleged totally-sensible reform could happen with Medicare right now, without the the whole "universal coverage" thing. If it's such a great idea, why don't they do that first?

  • Drudge is all over the bizarre "stimulus" spending data posted at recovery.gov. My "favorite" so far: $1,444,100 to "REPAIR DOOR BLDG 5112" at Dyess AFB just outside Abilene, TX.

    That's a mighty fine door. (To be fair, it's probably a hangar door. But still… you feeling stimulated yet?

  • Dave Barry remembers his friend Frank McCourt. Funny and touching; read the whole thing.


Last Modified 2012-10-06 6:07 AM EDT