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Archive for January 27th, 2010

Quote of the Day

Wednesday, January 27th, 2010

“I’m betting the Apple product announcement today will have a more positive effect on the economy than Obama’s attempt to rebrand himself on national TV tonight.”

Source: Me.

It’s called the iPad and Apple is announcing their own bookstore, in direct competition with Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Update: Here are some details on the iPad.  Pundits were wrong on the pricing. They were talking $1000.

The intro price is $499.  That’s for 16 Gig and WiFi. The iPad comes in two basic flavors: WiFi & WiFi+3G.

Both models comes in 16, 32 and 64 Gig models.  So here is the pricing

WiFi only: 16: $499  32: $599  64: $699

WiFi+3G: 16: $629 32: $729 64: $829

The announcement said that the iPad will run iPhone/iTouch apps, so you can load the Amazon Kindle app and read books from Amazon, as well as e-reader apps like Stanza and Bookshelf.

So it looks like that the tech rumor that there will be a lot of Kindles on e-Bay once these start shipping is probably on target.

The iPad won’t start shipping for 60 days, another 30 days after that for the 3G models.

More details at Urbin Technology.

Obama: Billions for ACORN, but not for the Exploration of Space!

Wednesday, January 27th, 2010

This isn’t new news, I ran the same headline back in September.

Well it’s back in the news, including a link at Instapundit.

When the White House releases his budget proposal Monday, there will be no money for the Constellation program that was supposed to return humans to the moon by 2020. The troubled and expensive Ares I rocket that was to replace the space shuttle to ferry humans to space will be gone, along with money for its bigger brother, the Ares V cargo rocket that was to launch the fuel and supplies needed to take humans back to the moon.

There will be no lunar landers, no moon bases, no Constellation program at all.

So no money for the exploration of space, but our Dear Leader still wants to give billions of tax payers dollars to the crooks at ACORN.

This is yet another really bad move on the part of Team Lightbringer. As I said in back in September.

One thing that is clear from the American space program is that it created high paying, high tech jobs that contributed to the health of the American economy and spin off technology that has not just benefited America, but humanity as a whole. I’m not talking just Tang and Velcro here folks. The GPS system and satellite TV just two examples of space program spin off technologies that are still driving growth industries today. The weather satellite system that makes it possible to produce enough food to make famine obsolete is also a product of the US space program.

Ya, I said enough food to make famine obsolete. Let’s be honest here people, any wide spread famine on this planet in the last couple of decades has been the result of politics and not the lack of ability to produce or deliver the food.

To recap, an additional $3 billion a year to NASA would once again put Americans on the Moon. It would also be highly beneficial to the US economy by fueling the high tech industry, putting skilled American engineers back to work and producing a very noticable “trickle down” (more like a monsoon) effect on the industries that support that high tech economy. It would also spark an renewed interest in the sciences in American schools and universities, and promote a sense of adventure in America in a positive and constructive endeavor.

Instead, our Dear Leader and the s0-called democrat “leadership” in Congress would rather pour that tax payer money down the drain by giving it to their political allies who are under investigation for massive vote fraud in multiple states.

Is this the “Hope and Change” you were expecting?

Mr. Reynolds points out that he spoke to “some folks at the International Space Development Conference a couple of years ago who were really high on Obama — they thought he’d emulate JFK when it came to space policy.”  Smart folks, but clearly delusional when it comes to politics.  There is nothing in our Dear Leader‘s thin resume that suggests the he is pro-science in general, and he certainly has never been pro-space exploration. The worst part is that these same people would probably vote for Obama and his Socialist policies again, much like a battered wife with a black eye telling a police officer that her abusive husband “really loves her.”  Pathetic.