THOUGHTS ON FREELOADING AND FAIRNESS, from Eric Scheie.

SO I’M SITTING IN THE PLANETARY PROTECTION / Asteroid impact discussion, and it’s quite good. I also recommend this article by Gregg Easterbrook in the latest Atlantic and there’s a video too. I do think that Easterbrook is perhaps a bit hard on NASA for not paying enough attention to this issue. There’s not a huge political sentiment in favor of it, there’s not a lot of money. The panel certainly is making clear that NASA is paying attention to the topic.

One risk that’s worth more attention, though, is that a relatively small asteroid impact would look enough like a nuclear explosion that if it happened in the wrong place or time it might trigger a nuclear war. Imagine such an event in India or Pakistan at a time of tension, with no warning. And there might well be no warning.

UPDATE: Comments on Easterbrook, from Rand Simberg.

JAPANESE WOMAN CAUGHT LIVING IN MAN’S CLOSET:

A homeless woman who sneaked into a man’s house and lived undetected in his closet for a year was arrested in Japan after he became suspicious when food mysteriously began disappearing. . . . The woman told police she had no place to live and first sneaked into the man’s house about a year ago when he left it unlocked.

She had moved a mattress into the small closet space and even took showers, Itakura said, calling the woman “neat and clean.”

I’m trying to put a housing crisis spin on this, but . . . .

OUCH: Via Andrew Bolt.

ROBERT X. CRINGELY IS down on the Google Lunar X Prize. “It is hard enough to land on the Moon and drive around without someone setting additional administrative obstacles in the way. The X Prize Foundation should WANT a winner for this prize, but they don’t act that way.” He’s still planning to go to the Moon, though.

MICKEY KAUS on “Obamagoguery.” Ouch. The suggestion earlier about Obama’s staff needing to factcheck his statements seems to be a good one.

DIGITAL NOMADS: High gas prices promote telecommuting. “One thing leads to another. High gas prices prompt employers (including the federal government) to allow employees to work from home once a week. Once that’s accepted culturally, an elephant appears in the boardroom: If it’s OK once a week, why isn’t it OK five times a week? (This is what happened with ‘casual Friday’ — its once-a-week acceptance lead to the current trend of casual wear every day.) Once telecommuting is accepted, ‘extreme telecommuting’ — working from the Bahamas or Paris or an internet-connected shack on the Australian Outback — becomes acceptable, too. After all, once you’re out of the office and connecting to the company over the Internet, it doesn’t really matter where you are, does it?”

All is proceeding exactly as I have foreseen. Related thoughts here.

CAN WE PANDER? Yes we can!

ANN ALTHOUSE: Real men don’t use semicolons.

WELL, DUH: Consumers pick home over flying: “Consumers chose not to take 41 million trips over the last 12 months because flying is too much of a hassle, according to a new Travel Industry Association study.” Make something miserable, and people will be less inclined to do it. Go figure. But they were warned.

I MISSED THE “GALA DINNER” but Hugh Downs — who was in on the founding of the National Space Institute, one of the National Space Society’s predecessor organizations, back in 1973, got a lifetime achievement award.

SEX AND THE CITY: It’s not just for women! “If you’re a red-blooded American male, what’s not to like in a movie about four good looking women running around New York City indulging their libidos?”

A contrary view here.

“TEAM UTOPIA,” the winners of NASA’s space settlement design competition. They’re from a boys’ high school in India.

A LOOK AT TODAY’S New York crane collapse.

THE TELEGRAPH ON AMERICAN ACTIONS and European anti-Americanism. Europeans have been anti-American pretty consistently since America began, except for brief intervals where they needed us enough to (mostly) pretend otherwise. While politics and state-controlled media certainly play a role, it’s mostly about moral preening and justification for low defense spending. Ultimately, this kind of thinking hurts Europe far more than America — and will hurt Europe even more if America responds with isolationism.

OKAY, THE RECIPE SOUNDS YUMMY, but how many times do I have to explain that “barbecue” is not a synonym for “cooking out.”

HERE’S A REPORT from my space media panel yesterday.

IT’S NOT A SPACE CONFERENCE, unless there’s somebody walking around in a spacesuit.

CHINA’S SPACE PROGRAM: I’ve got a report from the ISDC up over at Popular Mechanics.

JOHNATHAN PEARCE: “Boris Johnson, the new London mayor, has already decided it is time for some R&R and has gone on a yachting holiday in Turkey. Good for him. . . . In an ideal world, politicians would be on holiday 12 months a year.”

THIS IS WHAT WE WANTED TO HAPPEN, RIGHT: People moving out of high-risk hurricane areas. It’s not much of a change, though.

BAD TIMING? “America’s presidential hopefuls are pushing government-heavy approaches to climate change — just as the rest of the world is rebelling against them.”

HOW TO MAKE grilled pizza.

THE GENDER RATIO at these things is far more even than it was a decade or two ago.

I’M SITTING AT A PANEL ON SPACE AND THE CANDIDATES, AND MILES O’BRIEN OF CNN is doing an absolutely terrific job of moderating a session with representatives of the Clinton (Lori Garver) McCain (Floyd Deschamps) and Obama (Steve Robinson) campaigns. (L-R). Details later, but O’Brien’s been great, really drilling down on the questions.