All About Labor Unions

It has been a while since I spoke up about politics. The politics part of my brain got kinda numb after the elections, and I haven't really felt like writing about it for some time. Time's up.

My good friend Geoff recently wrote a post on his website about labor unions, and I wrote him a response that is just awesome enough to repeat here. So here is what I think about unions:

On one hand, I'm generally in favor of unions. I would likely be in one if I could, but they don't really exist in my line of work, which is kind of sad considering how poorly we've been treated over the past six months or so. However, I don’t by any means see unions as bastions of awesomeness. On the contrary, many of them are led by bloodsucking crooks. However, I would rather have a bloodsucking crook on my side and a bloodsucking crook on the other side than just one on the other side.

On the flip side of the coin, part of what gives unions so much excessive political power is the fact that they have agreements with some employers requiring that low level workers be members of the union. This should be illegal. It can dissolve quickly to having two bloodsucking crooks against you. This happened to another friend of mine. One crook was keeping his wages low, and the other was demanding excessive membership dues and not really using it for any benefit to him. Just as I would be likely to join a union right now if I could, I would think twice about working anywhere that required me to be a member of a union.

What I’m getting at here is the legal framework surrounding unions needs to be changed. It should be easy for someone to join a union no matter where they work, but just as easy for someone to refuse union membership no matter where they work. If people could join or drop out on a whim, unions would have a lot more incentive to help members out and keep them paying dues. Also employers would have more incentive to treat people well and stave off their feeling of a need to organize. Maybe I'm being a bit simplistic here, but I think lot of this crap would change for the better on all sides, except maybe for the bloodsucking crooks, wherein lies the problem.

And yes, I'm totally allowed to profusely plagiarize myself.

Progress: 3.93%  Flight Time: 0:05:54

Russia Announces No Joint Tourism After 2009

It seems they have made it official. The Russian Space Agency has announced that after 2009, they will not transport any more tourists to the International Space Station during their missions.

This is of no surprise, though, because the ISS will soon be operating with a crew of 6 instead of the current crew of 3. With the space shuttle out of service, the Russians are going to need all of the seating they can get to being up fresh crew members.

So what will this mean for Space Adventures, who has been arranging these visits? They will only be able to take two more tourists up before the deadline, but they have already planned for this. They arranged months ago for a private launch of a dedicated Soyuz vehicle after their usual access to the Soyuz missions has been terminated. So this is not the end of ISS tourism yet!

Progress: 3.93%  Flight Time: 0:05:54

XCOR Tests Lynx Rocket

ROCKETS! Yeah!

No, seriously, ROCKETS!

XCOR is testing theirs! They have announced that they have completed construction on the rocket engine that will take XCOR's Lynx craft to the brink of space. The rocket is currently undergoing its testing at the Mojave Air and Space Port, where several space tourism companies have worked to develop their technology. No word on when the testing will be complete and construction of the craft will continue, but they were helpful enough to provide a picture.

Progress: 3.93%  Flight Time: 0:05:54

Falcon 9 Goes Vertical!

In another milestone for Spacex's Falcon 9 heavy lift spacecraft, the first model has been lifted vertically at Cape Canaveral.

This is quite a sight. And why? Well, It is a craft like this, launched from this location, that is likely to lift the Sundancer space hotel prototype from Bigelow Aerospace into orbit.

There are a few other launches to go before that happens, though, and this one will launch soon. A flight window has not yet been given, but it will likely be within the next few weeks.

And here's a picture! Credit SpaceX.
And no, this image has not been edited in any way. It just happens to be particularly awesome.

Progress: 3.93%  Flight Time: 0:05:54

The Economy is Falling! The Economy is Falling!

...Or so says Chicken Destitute. But the point was recently nailed home to me when I received my quarterly investment summary.

The first thing I noticed was they helpfully put it in yearly format instead of their usual quarterly format. "See? You still made money! Since 2007."

But yes, it turns out that even with my monthly contributions, my trip-to-space fund has been losing money. I'm going to have to shrink that little purple bar a bit. I'm not too concerned, though, because I'm still really just starting out, and this just means that I'm now buying stocks cheap.

Optimism!

Progress: 3.93%  Flight Time: 0:05:54

Domain Name and Stupid Votes

A couple of pieces of website news today:

The first bit of news is I finally forked over the $10 to buy http://www.joespacetourist.com/! joespacetourist.blogspot.com will remain valid, but joespacetourist.com will be the primary website from here on out.

The second is that I've started up a whole new website to rant about politics! Remember my list of things I would do if I were president? Item number 4 on that list went sometiung like this:

4. I would urge congresspeople to abstain on ridiculous frivolous votes like what to rename this federal building and should we have a National Orphaned Amputee Leper Day. Do you realize that this kind of crap makes up 3/4 of what congress does these days? Those who do abstain will get to have lunch with me frequently, because they're my kind of people.

Well, I've been following the issue of frivolous votes more and more since I wrote that, and it's horrendous how much nothing these people do! So I'm starting a website about it. http://www.stupidvotes.com/ will document as many of these stupid resolutions and hearings that I can find, and I'll be encouraging members of our government to abstain from such things. The website isn't quite up yet, but it will show itself any time now. I'm 80% sure that all I'll accomplish with the site is getting all this off my chest, but that's good enough for me. And who knows? Maybe someone will take notice.

That's it for now!

Progress: 4.03%  Flight Time: 0:06:05

2008 Word Cloud

Well, I was dinking around on the internet (when I should have been working) when I found wordle.net. It's a neat site where you can make a word cloud out of any entered text. So of course, I made one out of all of my 2008 posts. I'm easily amused, so it's no surprise that a lot of this amused me. Space and Time are (appropriately) the biggest words. Years and Days are next to each other, with days (of course) being the smaller of the two. God is in there, but it's one of the teeniest tiniest words. NASA is bigger than God. People are bigger than God. Voting is bigger than God. Not sure what all that means. My political leanings come out, as Obama is much bigger than McCain. Also, some of my writing habits come out, such as my frequent use of the words Yeah and Well, which I have been trying to curb lately. And finally, the economic crisis makes an appearance. 0:05:35 and 0:06:05 are there. These were the listed flight times under the purple bar beneath my posts for much of the year. The fact that they appear here means they didn't change much, and therefore my investments didn't do well enough for me to warrant changing them frequently. Take a look!

Progress: 4.03%  Flight Time: 0:06:05