Category Archives: Business

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

Space Mining

19 Comments

A good overview of the companies going after lunar and asteroidal resources. Expect to hear a lot more nonsense like this as the industry evolves, though:

Space exploration researcher Alice Gorman is based at Flinders University, Australia, and is an internationally recognised leader in the emerging field of space archaeology. Passionate about space, she believes both industry and academia underestimate the emotional investment people have in the night sky.

‘There is the view that it’s just unethical to destroy another celestial body… but then [people] also question if it is right for a profit-making company to make massive profits from this,’ she says. ‘Nobody doubts the investment will be monumental and some argue that those willing to take these risks deserve all the rewards as this isn’t for the faint-hearted.’

But, as Gorman also highlights, the world already has unequal distributions of wealth and some wonder if space-based industries could drive these disparities further apart. As she asks, could Earth one day comprise a terrestrial-based underclass looking up at the off-world wealthy.

We wasted six bucks Saturday night to watch Elysium on pay per view. It’s based on the same stupid socialistic fantasy premise.

Business, Economics, Education, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

More Concealed Carry

3 Comments

…fewer murders.

And this is one of the rhetorical games (i.e., lies) the Democrats always play that infuriate me:

A frequent claim by control advocates this year has been that 80 percent to 90 percent of Americans are in favor of expanded background-checks legislation. But the polls showing such overwhelming support really ask little more than whether people want to stop criminals from obtaining guns, not whether voters actually favor the legislation that the Senate was voting on.

The actual laws being discussed were much less popular.

For example, a mid-April poll by the Pew Research Center provides one such illustration when it asks voters whether they were happy that the Senate bill had been defeated. While 67 percent of Democrats were “disappointed” or “angry” about the defeat, more Republicans and independents were “ very happy” or “relieved” than upset by the defeat.

That’s an interesting conflation of objective and process – claiming support for what a public policy ostensibly seeks to achieve, rather than what it actually does. Needless to say, this tactic is hardly unique to gun control policy.

Yup. For instance, back when the economic ignorami, like Chuck Schumer, were pushing Porkulus, they said things like “almost every economist says that this is necessary,” when at best most economists only thought that some sort of stimulus was necessary. No economist with two brain cells to rub together thought that the Democrats’ payoff to public-employee unions would be helpful.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Also, remember this the next time someone talks about a “Republican” war on science. The Left clings to their gun-control dogma in the face of all empirical evidence. Because it’s not about controlling guns. It’s (as always) about controlling you.

[Update a few minutes later]

Detroit police chief: “Better start carrying.” When seconds count, the police are only minutes (or hours) away. A decade ago, when Michigan reformed its carry laws, the anti-gun nuts predicted blood in the streets. Just the opposite happened. But they remain firmly anti-science.

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

The Diane Rehm Space Discussion

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Marcia Smith has a good summary. This amused me:

Rehm exclaimed that she didn’t understand what Gold meant because the “language you’re using” sounds “proprietary” and one cannot own the Moon. Gold began answering, but apparently the show ran out of time for that segment (music began playing) and he was not able to fully respond. Rehm said it “sounds confusing to me,” and cut him off.

Diane Rehm always strikes me as someone who is easily confused. I’ve never understood her popularity, except that a lot of Beltway denizens share her propensity for confusion.

[Update a while later]

Monumental willful ignorance from Mark Whittington:

The cancellation of the SLS, unlikely in the current political climate, would mean the end of any hope of sending American astronauts beyond low Earth orbit for the foreseeable future.

If you can’t see beyond the next five years, perhaps. It’s the lack of propellant storage and transfer technologies, and landers, that is keeping bound to LEO, not lack of heavy life. Money wasted on SLS is trapping us there.

Expect him to show up shortly with his standard, foolish, “But you provide no alternative,” despite the fact that he’s been shown alternatives many times. We can explain it to you, Mark, but we can’t understand it for you.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Bill In A China Shop

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The de Blasio era begins in New York:

He then recited the key elements of his platform: affordable-housing projects, an end to hospital closures, reform of the “broken” stop-and-frisk policy, and a tax on upper-income earners. After each item, he would say, “We won’t wait, we’ll do it now.”

Not content with promoting his own agenda, he had to take swipes at something called the “far right,” which he zinged for its agenda of “trickle-down economics” and giving “more to the most fortunate.” Luckily, much of de Blasio’s fiscal program will need approval from New York governor Andrew Cuomo and state legislators — who, for all their faults, don’t appreciate the “Bill in the China Shop” approach of the new mayor.

Noah Rothman, a writer for Mediaite.com, was taken aback by the tone and tenor of the speeches. He tweeted that “MSNBC [is] really missing a branding opportunity here. . . . We’re swearing in a new prime time host.” Indeed, we can only thank the schedulers for at least sparing us from having MSNBC’s Al Sharpton at the podium.

This may very quickly provide an example of how disastrous leftist policies can be, leading up the mid-terms.