THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING PRESIDENT

Chris Wallace (Fox News Sunday: “These guys, everything is personal. I gotta tell you, everything. They are the biggest bunch of crybabies I have dealt with in my 30 years in Washington.”

Read through the comments for the post title.

FLEAS, AD INFINITUM

I’ve always been enamored of the couplet that contains the words “little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum.” I always thought the author was Ogden Nash, or perhaps Lewis Carroll (“mimsy were the borogroves”) and was surprised to find the couplet has a
much longer history.

The couplet is from the great British mathematician Augustus De Morgan (1806-1871), who adapted it from the Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist and author Jonathan Swift (1667-1745).

De Morgan:

Great fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite 'em,
And little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum.
And the great fleas themselves, in turn, have greater fleas to go on;
While these again have greater still, and greater still, and so on.

Swift:

So, naturalists observe, a flea
Has smaller fleas that on him prey;
And these have smaller still to bite ’em;
And so proceed ad infinitum

[Added Note]: The phrase “mimsy were the borogroves” is from Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwocky. It’s also the title of a science fiction book written by Lewis Padgett (aka Henry Kuttner and Catherine L. Moore), published in 1943, which I read - and enjoyed - as a teen sci-fi addict.

NASA WATCH

Norm Augustine, chairman of the U.S. Human Space Flight Plans Committee (Augustine Commission) testimony to the House Science and Technology Committee (15 Sept 2009):

The Committee concludes that no rational exploratory program can be funded under the existing funding constraint and that plans for America's space exploration program would de facto be halted and human operations limited to low earth orbit.... The reason ... is, simplistically stated, that for sixty percent of the needed funds, one cannot go sixty percent of the way to Mars.

Given the proclivities of the current Administration, this doesn’t look good.

INSURANCE EXCHANGE RISKS

In an earlier post, I suggested that the health insurance exchanges proposed by President Obama which I agreed could be a good idea if the government would limit its role to writing the law allowing them to be created.

Regina Herzlinger, a professor at the Harvard Business School, adds detail to my concern, using the Massachusetts government exchange, the Connector, as Exhibit A.

I’d like to believe that the health insurance exchange concept would work, provided that exchanges are entirely private, have national reach, and enjoy the same tax status as employer-sponsored plans.

P*SS ON EARTH

Everything you didn’t need to know.



Over Hungary, by the Ruins of Essegvar. Last Wednesday, several skygazers scratched their heads when they saw this mysterious glow in the sky. To anyone who's ever pondered what urine looks like in space -- c'mon, don't be shy -- we say: wonder no more, because photos of the phenomenon have finally hit the internet.

Via Instapundit.