Potholes are huge and everywhere citywide...calling 386-1218 several times per week and reporting them to a real live person has been met with pretty good response and follow-through. As for McGinn and cars, Pontiac had a slew of similar models in 1969 including Le Mans, Custom S, GTO, and Tempest. Grand Prix and Firebird also existed in the good old days of the Jim Rockford era.

Newt has Gynecomastia! Who knew?

Actually the winter snow storm showed that McGinn is way better than his predecessor Nickels at managing the city. Also bicyclists vote, and the current crop of possible candidates from the city council have all the same problems as the Mayor, in that they are also responsible for the current crime mess, and lack of control over the police. Avoiding that tar will be hard for any of them.

Interesting to learn from posts here that the only way to judge a Mayor's abilities is via how snow storms are managed...and that any problems with crime are the complete fault of the Mayor and the City Council...so much great information available on the Internet!!

Newt reminds me of previous Seattle mayor who tended to think out loud. Both are ex professors, albeit from different ends of the political spectrum. Behavior which may be useful in Academe may be damaging to a political career.

But I would expect better of Seattle & Crosscut regarding science, and in this instance, the Moon. I recently rented a movie of the same title. I do not have a science background, and generally do not care for sci-fi but I found the plot intriguing. Then I caught a show on the Science channel describing some kind of material found on the Moon which facilitates fusion. It is not found on earth due to the filtering effects of our atmosphere. We learned of this element from the rock samples we brought back (and gave away) decades ago. Now, again according to this special, other countries are seriously considering going back for this reason, but we are not.

Political one-liners may be useful in winning elections but in this case might be damaging to both Academe and commerce. Maybe going back to the moon is too expensive, but is the science at least worthy of consideration? If the Tech capitol of the universe cannot collectively explain this to the rest of us, what hope is there of knowing whether this intellectual exercise is simply that -- or something more?

"I caught a show on the Science channel describing some kind of material found on the Moon which facilitates fusion." Helium 3, and the science is OK if you're looking 50 years out maybe, but the technology is sci-fi and rubbish on any time frame we should be thinking about. Please don't post vague allusions to subjects about which you have not done the most basic research.

Aren't you being a little hard on "uncle Paul?" Who else is out there calling for an end to rule by the Military Industrial complex? I'll admit some of what he says is disturbing, but he is the only candidate to even mention the central issues of our times.

What did Gil Scott Heron say, "a rat just bit my sister Nel, but whitey's on the moon". Let's see, Gingrich the Machiavellian wordsmith, Romney the money making automatron, or crazy Ron. I'll take crazy Ron any day. Maybe Paul is a racist, I really have no idea, but one could make the argument that with his antiwar stance he embodies the philosophy of Martin Luther King more so than Obama.

A moon base as an end in itself, like our current space station built as an end in itself, does little to expand exploration. The recommendation made by Buzz Aldrin that we focus on non-landing missions to comets, asteroids, the Lagrangian points and a moon of Mars (from which surface rovers can be directed in real time) makes a lot of sense both scientifically and economically. But America needs a spacecraft, and hopefully a President Romney (as his space backers suggest) would put us back on track to getting one.

As far as Gingrich's plan is concerned, it makes sense in the long run but not in the short. Mankind is going to need to colonize other worlds eventually because this solar system is going away. The fact that we may have thousands of years (or millions if we're lucky) in which to do it is no reason why we shouldn't start making some steps in this direction now (as in the Aldrin plan). Won't we feel dumb if in only 300-400 years from now, a dinosaur-killing-sized asteroid comes our way and leaves us unprepared? Mankind, and everything we know, would be doomed. But at least we'd die with government-subsidized bullet trains to Chicago.

@dbreneman, perhaps you'd care to join me in asking the folks at the Museum of Flight why it lacks a Dyna-Soar exhibit, plaque, anything at all- whenever you visit, as I do. The local engineers who could help with their stories and artifacts won't be around forever, if they're still around at all.
But if you're going to try and pin the lack of support of NASA because the D's want to spend increasingly scarce tax dollars on infrastructure, go fish. The debate on which form of transit (the current oil, trucks, defense of oil, planes, oil, and cars, vs a wider array of choices) should be subsidized needn't impinge on space research and development. Closing down some overseas bases, mothballing a CVN task group or two or maybe a couple of Ohios at PSNS, simply cutting back on the DoD budget by 10% would free up money for both and more. Or roll back the Bush tax cuts, which would help in many other ways at the same time. Let's do both. Or is complaining about us silly dirty hippies its own reward?

As far as the Museum of Flight goes, we have donated my father's collection of WWII aviation memorabilia to them, so there will probably be some display or other that will benefit from my family's contribution, if not our hectoring. But a Dyna-Soar exhibit would definitely be nice. Maybe Lee Majors could cut the ribbon.