…but are losing at home.
Category Archives: Economics
The Gods Of The Copybook Headings
…are back.
Every generation must relearn the lessons. Unfortunately, it’s even harder to teach them when people who find them personally inconvenient to their agendas are in charge of the educational system.
Peter Thiel And Global Warming
“Whenever you can’t have a debate, I often think that’s evidence that there’s a problem,” Thiel said on The Glenn Beck Program. “When people use the word ‘science,’ it’s often a tell, like in poker, that you’re bluffing. It’s like we have ‘social science’ and we have ‘political science,’ [but] we don’t call it ‘physical science’ or ‘chemical science.’ We just call them physics and chemistry because we know they’re right.”
Thiel said no one will be upset if you ask questions about the periodic table, because it is actually science. But referring to man-made climate change as “science” tells you “that people are exaggerating and they’re bluffing a little bit,” Thiel said.
“The weather has not been getting warmer for the last 15 years. The hockey stick that Al Gore predicted in the early 2000s on the climate has not happened,” he remarked. “And I think as this monolithic culture breaks down, you can have more debates.”
Yes.
Republican Crony Capitalism
…in Michigan. This is shameful, but Snyder probably did stand a good chance of losing his reelection if he hadn’t supported it.
South California
Last but far from least, we conclude our tour of the new Californias with the one furthest south, shown as orange on the map.
The Welfare State Of West California
Moving on in our examination of Tim Draper’s six Californias, from Nuevo Colorado (aka Central California), we come to the new state of West California. It’s ironic that it’s shown as green on the map, considering that it will be born into pension and welfare poverty.
Breaking Up Is Hard To Do
First California, and now some people in south Florida want to split with Tallahassee. The reason is sort of hilariously stupid, though:
Harris told the commission that Tallahassee isn’t providing South Florida with proper representation or addressing its concerns when it comes to sea-level rising.
“We have to be able to deal directly with this environmental concern and we can’t really get it done in Tallahassee,” Harris said. “I don’t care what people think — it’s not a matter of electing the right people.”
Mayor Philip Stoddard agreed with Harris’ reasoning, saying he’s advocated for secession for the past 15 years but never penned a resolution.
“It’s very apparent that the attitude of the northern part of the state is that they would just love to saw the state in half and just let us float off into the Caribbean,” Stoddard said. “They’ve made that abundantly clear every possible opportunity and I would love to give them the opportunity to do that.”
If there weren’t enough reasons for me to leave Boca, living in a state dominated by south Floridians would seal the deal.
Bootstrapping A Solar-System Civilization
There was an interesting blog post at OSTP last week:
Have ideas for massless exploration and bootstrapping a Solar System civilization? Send your ideas for how the Administration, the private sector, philanthropists, the research community, and storytellers can further these goals at massless@ostp.gov.
Needless to say, I don’t expect this to go anywhere with the current Congressional committees.
A History Of SpaceX
There’s a good article over at Quartz about the company and Elon. It had a few errors, though.
@qz You don't need to reach escape velocity to get into earth orbit. You only need about 71% of it.
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) October 21, 2014
@qz Also, the Merlin isn't the first US liquid rocket engine since the 70s. The RS-68 was developed in the 90s. But good article overall.
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) October 21, 2014
@qz Oops, another error. First stage doesn't get it into orbit, it just gives it a head start. Second stage generally needed for orbit.
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) October 21, 2014
@qz Oops, Senator *Bill* Nelson, not Ben. Ben was in Nebraska, and didn't give a hoot about space. Still reading…
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) October 21, 2014
And the response?
@Rand_Simberg @qz thanks for noting these for us, we've corrected http://t.co/9fuM6UrbHg
— Tim Fernholz (@TimFernholz) October 21, 2014
That’s exactly how it should work.
Nuevo Colorado
Continuing our tour of the six new Californias proposed by Tim Draper, this new state would be the only one with no Pacific coastline. Nonetheless, it has tremendous potential that is currently being hamstrung by Sacramento (or rather, the coastal voters who dominate the legislature). It would have a population of a little over four million, equivalent to Kentucky, and about a million fewer than Colorado. But as I’ll explain, its red depiction on the map below is appropriate, because it could be viewed as another Colorado in the making, except one only a couple-hour drive from the ocean.