Category Archives: Business

Business, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Popular Culture, Social Commentary, Technology and Society

Facebook And Conservatives

6 Comments

Some interesting (and surprising) observations from Glenn Beck:

It was like affirmative action for conservatives. When did conservatives start demanding quotas AND diversity training AND less people from Ivy League Colleges.

I sat there, looking around the room at ‘our side’ wondering, ‘Who are we?’ Who am I? I want to be very clear — I am not referring to every person in the room. There were probably 25–30 people and a number of them, I believe, felt like I did. But the overall tenor, to me, felt like the Salem Witch Trial: ‘Facebook, you must admit that you are screwing us, because if not, it proves you are screwing us.’

What happened to us? When did we become them? When did we become the people who demand the Oscars add black actors based on race?

Good questions. I agree that Facebook should do whatever it wants to do, but that it should be transparent.

[Update a while later]

The real built-in bias at Facebook.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Popular Culture, Social Commentary

Trump’s Wealth

22 Comments

I’m sure that you’ll be as shocked as I was to learn that he probably greatly exaggerates it. This is a great end quote:

“A fellow asked me that once and I said, ‘I don’t know,” Nelson Bunker Hunt once told a congressional panel grilling him about his net worth. “But I do know people who know how much they are worth generally aren’t worth much.”

Similarly, people who are always bragging about how smart they are generally aren’t that bright.

Business, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

The Clinton Foundation Financial Records

8 Comments

I’m sure that you will be just as shocked as I was to discover that there are huge holes in them:

Hal Moroz, a private attorney and former Georgia judge, said he referred some of Ortel’s findings on the violations of the foundation to the state attorney general’s office.

“This is a matter of great public interest because we have a major party presidential candidate who has been greatly enriched by the questionable activities of a foundation that was meant to serve charitable public interests,” Moroz said.

You don’t say.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Popular Culture, Social Commentary, War Commentary

Trump Versus Clinton

94 Comments

Tim Carney: You don’t have to choose the lesser of two evils:

As a conservative, I weigh the candidates against each other by considering the worst-case scenarios. On that score, there’s an irony: Hillary’s time as secretary of state — especially her disastrous and illegal war in Libya — doesn’t suggest supreme competence; Trump’s rhetoric, meanwhile makes many people think of fascism. But the “fascism” threat (an overblown word, of course) is probably greater with Hillary, and the incompetence threat is far greater with Trump.

They’re both incompetent fascist wannabes.

Business, Economics, Health, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Social Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

Bill Nye

37 Comments

…the climate huckster guy:

Admittedly, climate science is complex. There might be perfectly reasonable scientific justifications for what’s happening on the tornado front. Although, surely, there are just as likely interesting scientific arguments that challenge The Science Guy’s chilling and reckless assertions meant only to scare you into adopting leftist economic policy, not to teach you anything. Nye’s “science” is, at the very least, arguable.

But that’s not the reason Nye is dishonest. Or, at least, not the only reason. His biggest lie—and he makes these sorts of claims all the time—is that people are increasingly suffering because of global warming, and thus by extension they are suffering because of the use of fossil fuels.

This is simply untrue. Life, by nearly any quantifiable measurement, is better today for more people than it has ever been. One of the externalities in the spike of comfort and health is that more people are emitting carbon into the air. Fewer people are suffering. On top of the huge, if inadvertent, moral benefits of oil, gas, and coal, we should add that far fewer people are dying from drastic weather events—or any weather, actually.

These charlatans shouldn’t be surprised that people don’t take them seriously.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

Dick Shelby

15 Comments

It is theoretically conceivable that there have been chairs of the Senate budget committee more damaging to the future of spaceflight than him, but I don’t want to do the necessary research to determine it, and the thought itself is pretty frightening.

Kudos to Eric Berger for continuing to cover this like almost no one else in the media.

[Late-evening update]

Bad link, fixed now. Sorry!

Business, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Popular Culture

Trump’s Tax Returns

34 Comments

Yes, this is an amazing story in an already amazing election season:

A friend of Donald Trump’s recently approached him to suggest that he will eventually have to release his tax returns, as every presidential nominee has for decades. The friend told Trump that he should do it before the GOP convention to ensure everyone can process what’s in the returns and help make any revelations “old news” by November. If Trump didn’t do that, he was warned, the odds of politicized leaks from his returns were high, citing several examples from the Obama era, including the illegal leaking of some of Romney’s tax information by the IRS in 2012.

“What will you do if the returns come out as part of an October surprise?” Trump was asked. Trump pondered the question and replied, “I’ll say they aren’t mine.” That stunning answer is the essence of Donald Trump. “It’s exactly what I’d expect him to say,” Fox Business’s Charlie Gasparino, who has known Trump for decades, told me. But while Donald Trump has made a life out of bluffing his way past problems and cavalier comments, it’s harder to succeed doing that at the presidential level.

Trump may be inching up in polls now, but one sharp wrong turn could send him spinning off the road. A political party that nominates Trump without seeing his tax returns could be committing political suicide and endangering dozens of down-ballot GOP candidates. Even Superman met his match with kryptonite.

People keep saying that, but…

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Space, Technology and Society

It’s Up To SpaceX Now

33 Comments

I’m as shocked as everyone else to see that Boeing’s first commercial crew flight to ISS has slipped to 2018.

OK, not really.

In sort of related news, this assessment of Falcon reusability is amusing:

It’s easy to see why there’s such excitement about Falcon 9 and reusable rockets then. Except, of course, Falcon 9 isn’t really a reusable rocket. It’s still a two-stage launcher designed to deliver SpaceX’s Dragon craft into space, and only one stage is designed to be recoverable (rather like the space shuttle, only commercial) – something that Sadlier says would reduce costs by around 30%, not 99%. ‘It’s an amazing innovation, but it’s kind of a baby step.’

It will reduce costs by much more than 30%. He apparently doesn’t understand the difference between cost and price. And then there’s this:

not everyone is convinced that any of the space players are going to revolutionise 21st century life. ‘Since I entered the space business in 1983, I’ve been hearing claims about big money to be made in space tourism, the space launch business, space mining, space manufacturing,’ says Billings, who served on the US National Commision [sic] on Space under Ronald Reagan. ‘The longer I’ve been listening the more sceptical I’ve become about the more extreme of these claims.’

Others remain optimistic, whether about the likes of Falcon 9 or indeed about Reaction Engine’s Skylon space plane, a revolutionary British technology that delights enthusiasts but never seems to have enough funding for a prototype. As with any other futuristic technology, we’re just going to have to wait and see.

Linda completely ignores SpaceX’s huge commercial backlog. And it’s amusing to see an actual flown recovered vehicle compared with a non-existent vehicle that is unlikely to ever exist.