Random Thoughts

Thoughts from the Frontline: "'A household may own a house worth $100,000 with no mortgage debt, and $100,000 in stocks, bonds and other financial assets. Even if both increased by 10% in value during one year, the amount of wealth-induced spending might differ.... The results indicate housing has a substantial impact on economic activity. For each dollar increase in real estate wealth less mortgage debt, consumers spend 8 cents in that year. By comparison, a one dollar increase in financial assets from stock and bond markets increases spending by 2 cents in the current year. The impact of housing is four times as large.... "

Thoughts from the Frontline: "The Cost of Renting versus Owning
From a consumer spending point of view, owning is actually cheaper than renting, a study from Harvard suggests. In every year since 1975 but the three recession years of 1980-81, it has been cheaper after-tax to buy a home than to rent. In many years, and especially recently, that difference has been quite large. For the last year studied, 2002, it cost a mere 18.9% of disposable income to won a home and 26.7% to rent. "

News: "Scientists find gene cure for cheating lover voles"

A Woman's Guide on How to Pee Standing Up
When the original Woman’s Guide on How to Pee Standing was first created in 1997, we only had the “finger-assist” method, listed halfway down this page. A lot of water has gone under the bridge since then. We’ve had over three million visitors to the Guide, and thousands of women from all walks of life, from doctors to forest firefighters, to policewomen have sent us encouraging e-mail, sharing their mostly positive thoughts on this very personal topic.

THE GRAY ZONE
by SEYMOUR M. HERSH

The roots of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal lie not in the criminal inclinations of a few Army reservists but in a decision, approved last year by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, to expand a highly secret operation, which had been focussed on the hunt for Al Qaeda, to the interrogation of prisoners in Iraq. Rumsfeld’s decision embittered the American intelligence community, damaged the effectiveness of élite combat units, and hurt America’s prospects in the war on terror.

152 rules for being an evil overlord: "Being an Evil Overlord seems to be a good career choice. It pays well, there are all sorts of perks and you can set your own hours. However every Evil Overlord I've read about in books or seen in movies invariably gets overthrown and destroyed in the end. I've noticed that no matter whether they are barbarian lords, deranged wizards, mad scientists or alien invaders, they always seem to make the same basic mistakes every single time. Therefore, if I ever happen to become an Evil Overlord: "

The Australian: US company offers moon delivery service [January 30, 2004]: "US company offers moon delivery service
From AFP
January 30, 2004
AS US President George W. Bush promises to expand the frontiers of space exploration, a US firm Thursday was offering to deposit business cards or even the ashes of loved ones on the moon."

DAVE BARRY: Going to Mars is out of this world: "Stage Four: They blast off again, and, after a difficult, tedious and extremely dangerous six-month space voyage, arrive -- if all goes well -- on Mars, where they find rocks.
So the benefits are obvious. But what about the costs? The Bush administration says the Mars mission can be accomplished for only 143.8 zillion dollars, but critics claim that the true cost is likely to be much more like 687 fillion dillion dollars. (These numbers are imaginary, but trust me, they're as accurate as any other cost estimates you see about the Mars mission.) "

American TV watchers to reap benefits of AMC-10
Starting this spring when U.S. cable television viewers flip on the Discovery Channel, MTV, Nickelodeon or Showtime, they will be watching the channels via a broadcasting satellite, AMC-10, built by Lockheed Martin and also successfully launched into space Thursday from Cape Canaveral by a Lockheed Martin Atlas IIAS rocket provided by International Launch Services (ILS).

The Atlas launcher delivered its payload into the proper orbit, increasing the rocket's remarkable string of consecutive successful flights to 69 dating back a decade. 'We are delighted to have had an enormously successful launch of AMC-10,' said Mark Albrecht, president of International Launch Services, which manages Atlas missions. 'Sixty-nine out of 69 launches since 1993 of all Atlas configurations -- a record that is absolutely unmatched in the launch business. The Atlas team is the gold standard of commercial space launch.'

Based on the award-winning A2100 satellite series manufactured by Lockheed Martin Commercial Space Systems, Newtown, Pa., AMC-10 has a predicted service life of 15 years and represents the 23rd straight successful launch of an A2100 spacecraft for customers worldwide.

Shotgun Defense

Although key technologies remain to be proven, the Pentagon's effort to develop a miniature kill vehicle (MKV) for its ballistic missile interceptors could provide the first significant enhancements to the U.S. ballistic missile defense system to counter advanced threats. The development of MKVs harks back to the Cold War, when MIRVing - placing multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles on ballistic missiles - was seen as shifting the ballistic missile strategic standoff in favor of an attacker.

With MKVs, the defense would receive a huge boost. The availability of large numbers of these kinetic energy kill vehicles should allow a single interceptor to engage multiple warheads or eliminate sophisticated decoys while still leaving sufficient numbers of MKVs to intercept real targets. The first application would be for the Pentagon's ground-based midcourse system, with several dozen kill vehicles slated to replace the single device now carried on the booster. However, the Pentagon has asked for a modular design so it can be applied to other systems, such as the Navy's Aegis ship-based missile defense efforts. For Lockheed Martin, the win has strategic significance in the missile defense arena, since it represents its first kill vehicle effort, notes Doug Graham, VP for Lockheed Martin Space Systems.

U.S. Navy MUOS Satellite Contract Now Slated for June Award
The contract award for the Navy¹s next-generation mobile communications satellite system, previously expected early in 2004, has been pushed back until June, according to the Navy official managing the effort. Two industry teams, one led by Lockheed Martin and the other by Raytheon, have been developing competing designs for the Mobile User Objective System under separate $40 million contracts that were slated to run out in November. The Navy has granted both teams contract extensions worth $4.25 million apiece to continue their efforts.


The Navy plans to begin launching the new satellites in 2009, more than a year later than previously planned. The initial prime contract for the four- to eight-satellite Mobile User Objective System will be worth in excess of $1 billion. The program is expected to cost about $6 billion through 2023, he said. Space News