We've got a house!

After a long and painful proces involving way too many banks and estate agents for my taste, we finally managed to get an offer accepted on a very nice house. If you want to have a look, check this link (hopefully the estate agents won't take it down just yet...). I'll put some pictures up later just in case. I'm off now, sorting some stuff out, I'll post a more in depth story later.

Commercial? How is this commercial?

While consuming my daily news feed for the day, my wrath was awakened by a tiny article on slashdot. For those not in the mood to click through and read, the article described how citizens in New Mexico had supported, and were now adopting, a new extra tax to allow them to build the first commercial spaceport.

I really don't get what's commercial about spaceport that is being paid for by taxpayers monies. If you ask me that makes it at least partly public. Obviously then, this is just a way to sugarcoat ripping of some poor taxpayers for the benefit of a few corporations that can't be arsed to make serious investments in their own future infrastructure. And if this new facility was in any way going to benefit the people that are now paying towards it, that would perhaps mitigate this atrocity, but with an intended price tag of $200,000 per flight ( the intended price for a short space hop with Virgin Galactic), this service is obviously not going to have any real meaning to 99% of the people paying for it.

Another fine example of the failures of democracy. The right marketing will have people vote in favour of the most stupendous ideas.