"It’s hard to know that there is something out there that could help but they’re saying you can’t have it because of cost,” said Ms. Hardy, who now speaks for her husband of 45 years. “What price is life?”

This is really, really naive. Society makes decisions every day that effectively value human life: e.g. 45k people die on roadways in the United States and we aren't really doing anything about it.

In this instance, it is a completely straightforward question of how to allocate a scarce resource. We simply cannot spend an unbounded amount of the GDP on medical care, especially on prescription drugs many of which are sold for obscene margins even after discovery and trials and all that.

The Evidence Gap - British Balance Gain Against the Cost of the Latest Drugs - NYTimes.com

NASA is officially moving forward on a mission to conduct an unprecedented, in-depth study of Jupiter.

Called Juno, the mission will be the first in which a spacecraft is placed in a highly elliptical polar orbit around the giant planet to understand its formation, evolution and structure. Underneath its dense cloud cover, Jupiter safeguards secrets to the fundamental processes and conditions that governed our early solar system.

NASA Prepares for New Juno Mission to Jupiter | SpaceRef - Your Space Reference

NASA is officially moving forward on a mission to conduct an unprecedented, in-depth study of Jupiter.

Called Juno, the mission will be the first in which a spacecraft is placed in a highly elliptical polar orbit around the giant planet to understand its formation, evolution and structure. Underneath its dense cloud cover, Jupiter safeguards secrets to the fundamental processes and conditions that governed our early solar system.

NASA Prepares for New Juno Mission to Jupiter | SpaceRef - Your Space Reference

After days of glitches and tweaks, a new recycling system designed to turn astronaut urine back into drinking water is apparently working well aboard the International Station.

The thing that really irritates me about the coverage of STS-126 is that noone can spare any opportunity to say the word "urine" like a bunch of 8 year-olds: "OMG, they're going to drink pee!!!"

SPACE.com -- Space Station's Urine Recycler Passes Key Test

Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) successfully conducted a full mission-length firing of its Falcon 9 launch vehicle's first stage at its McGregor Test Facility in Texas, on November 22. For the static test firing, the first stage remains firmly secured to the massive vertical test stand, where it fired for 178 seconds or nearly three minutes — simulating the climb of the giant rocket from the surface of the Earth towards orbit.

Space Exploration Technologies Corporation - Press

So is there another way to get to the same place? I think there is, but it will require the active involvement of both Congress and the new Obama administration. Think back to the Chrysler bailout in the 1980s. In return for legislation that gave the company a $1.5 billion federally guaranteed loan — the number seems so quaint now, like Dr. Evil demanding a $1 million ransom! — Chrysler had to obtain serious concessions from its union workers. The union had resisted Chrysler’s efforts to negotiate a new deal, but with the federal guarantee at stake, it relented.

There is no reason the government couldn’t do something similar now, though it would dangle a much larger loan agreement in return for much more radical changes. Someone in the Obama administration, with both business savvy and a suitably tough-minded approach, could bring together the parties, including the dealers, the union and the company. He (or she) could force the union and the company to renegotiate their contracts. With his input, Congress could perhaps pass a law that dealt with the state laws governing dealerships. (Or the government could pay off the dealers itself, instead of having G.M. do it.) He could sign off on plant closings. He could force the companies to come up with real plans that would return them to profitability. And in return, the government would make federal loans that would give them the breathing room they need.

Come to think of it, this would be a perfect first job for Lawrence Summers, who is expected to become an economic adviser to the president-elect. If he can’t knock these heads together, nobody can.

I'm in favor of helping Detroit "bridge the gap" but with conditions:

All of the current management is replaced.
All of the union contracts are broken.
They stop fighting CAFE and stop leaning on SUV sales to prop them up. GM actually has some really interesting r&d in this space (skateboard cars, etc), they just need to bring it to market!

Talking Business - Road Ahead Is Long for G.M. - NYTimes.com

British regulators rejected a plan on Friday to add locally focused video news to BBC Web sites in Britain, dealing a setback to the digital ambitions of the BBC, which has expanded aggressively on the Internet.

Regulators Reject BBC Plan on Web Video News - NYTimes.com

Appearing to cave to Hollywood demands, Apple has quietly added a restrictive copyright protection mechanism to its new MacBooks that is preventing customers from watching movies on external displays.

Apple Bends to Studios, Adds Copyright Protection to MacBooks | Gadget Lab from Wired.com

The Space Frontier Foundation today pointed out that NASA Administrator Dr. Michael Griffin, in an interview with CBS News published last Friday, publicly contradicted his own 2003 testimony to Congress about the safety of flying humans on America's Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicles (EELVs). "It's one thing for Mike to argue that EELVs can't send astronauts all the way to the Moon. But on Friday he claimed that EELVs are not safe enough, even for the easier job of launching astronauts to Earth orbit, and that's just not true," said Foundation Chairman Berin Szoka.

Will the Real Mike Griffin Please Stand Up? | SpaceRef - Your Space Reference

This might be the key passage of my interview with John Ziegler on Tuesday, for it is, in a nutshell, why conservatives don't win elections anymore. It is not that conservatism generally permits less nuance than liberalism (in terms of political messaging, that is probably one of conservatism's strengths). Rather, the key lies in the second passage that I highlighted. There are a certain segment of conservatives who literally cannot believe that anybody would see the world differently than the way they do. They have not just forgotten how to persuade; they have forgotten about the necessity of persuasion.

FiveThirtyEight.com: Politics Done Right: Did Talk Radio Kill Conservatism?