Patrick Chiles's Blog, page 15

Creepy Crawly Critters

Because I’m about to embark on a ten-day backpacking trip in the high country, outdoorsy stuff has been on my mind a lot. Then this little tidbit from Field & Steam shows up in my email: If you would like to see mosquitoes at their most impressive, visit the Arctic or Subarctic in summer. There […]

Bureaucrats Behaving Badly

Of course it’s more than just your appointed, unaccountable time-servers we’re talking about here. The fish rots from the head, as they say: IRS senior managers like acting Commissioner Steven Miller insist that the illicit behavior was the work of a handful of rogue employees. The trouble is that even though we are starting to […]

“Ameritopia”

I may have to finally pick up a copy of Levin’s book, though it looks like we’re already there: The National Security Agency is currently collecting the telephone records of millions of US customers of Verizon, one of America’s largest telecoms providers, under a top secret court order issued in April. The order, a copy […]

Creeping Tyranny…Again

It’s getting harder and harder to ignore an out-of-control Federal government. Robert Goyer at Flying magazine has apparently had enough: As far as the pseudo detention program is concerned — nobody at TSA or Homeland Security will even confirm the existence of any such program — my best guess is that there’s some kind of […]

Getting There From Here

Private missions to Mars are attracting more and more attention from the serious press. Here’s a clip from a piece today in The Economist discussing Dennis Tito’s Inspiration Mars project: Even if everything does go according to plan, though, cynics might question the value of a billion-dollar, one-and-a-half year trip that comes within spitting distance […]

Critical Mach

Yet another entry in the next-gen supersonic sweepstakes, but you’ve got to admit this looks sweet: The market for civil aircraft – both airliners and private – seems pretty full to me. If a Japanese manufacturer wanted to shake up the competition, this would be the way to do it. Unfortunately I’ve not been able […]

Sunday Crazy

It’s entirely too quiet around here, so let’s do something about that: I’ve finally got Red Bull’s marketing strategy figured out: hire crazy people to jump off of really high stuff. Or high people to jump off crazy stuff – might not make much difference. Not that I’d do anything that nuts, but if I […]

Old Engineers Never Die

…they just unbalance to infinity. That’s a geek joke. The latest issue of Air & Space (which still has yet to run the article they paid me for!) follows up on the post-shuttle careers of a few NASA engineers. Ordinarily of interest to me, but not compelling, until I came to this guy’s story: Perry […]

Remember

Soldier, rest! Thy warfare o’er, Sleep the sleep that knows not breaking, Dream of battled fields no more. Days of danger, nights of waking. -Sir Walter Scott “It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather, we should thank God that such men lived.” -Gen. George S. Patton

Into Darkness: A Short Review

KHAAANNNN!!!!! This ends my Short Review. Carry on.