Walking the Dog

 

Look Up!

 The weather reports show a good week for Albuquerque's annual Balloon Fiesta. 

It has been a long time since I felt tempted to brave the crowds and traffic at the event site.  My usual strategy is to keep a camera loaded with film and wait for some balloons to pass over my house.  The chances look a bit thin this year for that to work as the slight predicted winds are mostly pointing the wrong way.

The VP Debate

 I doubt anyone will claim that the needle was moved in either direction by the performance of the VP candidates in terms of the election outcome.  Vance may have earned himself a little less critical assessment by the "undecideds".  The thing is that he had a very low bar to clear.  All he had to do was not spout the wild lies about immigrants eating pets to look more like a normal person.  It was unsurprising that he also carried forward Trump's waffling about abortion, apparently betting on the idea that Americans' memory is already foggy about the fact that Trump packed the Supreme Court to undo women's right to chose.  He may be right with that assumption.

Friday Sunset

 

Cool Morning

A Platform for Democrats

 Bernie has fleshed out a platform for Kamala and the Democrats emphasizing urgent income and health care reforms.  See:

Kamala Harris was great in the debate. Will that be enough to win?

NOAH BERGER | Credit: AFP via Getty Images

On Solving the Wrong Problem

 I've long been opposed to the huge amounts of time, money an talent which are being proposed in support of the quest to take people to Mars.  It has always seemed to me that an equivalent amount of resources devoted to combating human-induced climate change might actually have a chance of success.

It is indisputable that space-directed technology has produced useful results in the fields of earth and climate sciences.  If science wants to lob some instruments at the moon or further that is likely also to produce something of value to humanity.  Such projects, however, get dicey when the rockets are loaded with weaponry or when humans are included in the cargo, which vastly complicates things and results in astronomical budgets, along with clear threats of the extinction of life on earth.  

The men-to-Mars proposal as envisioned by billionaires like Musk will result in more billions flowing into their accounts, but is unlikely to yield anything of value to all the rest of us.  All of this is explained at length in an excellent article at Defector by Albert Burneko, Neither Elon Musk Nor Anybody Else Will Ever Colonize Mars.