Category Archives: Law

Health, Law, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

Closing Nature

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With all the March and April rain, I figured it would be a good year for poppies in the desert, but they closed the reserve on Wednesday. Anza Borrego is closed, too, except to residents of Borrego Springs.

We’d like to just go for a drive, to seen the green hills and flowers, but Patricia is afraid of getting pulled over. But I don’t think they’re doing that, and I don’t think they should even be discouraging driving. There is no risk of spread from it, other than the occasional need to get gas. It seems like they should be offering options for relief from cabin fever.

[Sunday-morning update]

We took a drive around Palos Verdes peninsula yesterday. Lovely drive as always, with mustard on the hillsides greening everything up.

Couldn’t pull over at view areas, trails closed, bike paths closed, beaches closed, Point Vicente (where we go to watch the whales migrating) closed. Drove past the hospital ship in San Pedro. The 710 and 405 were eerily empty, like it was 3 AM.

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

Gun-Control Backfire

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This is hilarious:

I was chatting with a friend of mine recently and the topic of gun sales came up. My friend’s father owns a gun range near me and she said he’s seen a huge amount of liberals coming in to purchase weapons in recent weeks.

How does he know they’re liberals?

“They’re shocked to discover they can’t just walk out of the store with a gun.”

We’ve all heard about gun sales skyrocketing recently, but I hadn’t considered some of the tangential effects of the phenomenon until I spoke to my friend. Not only are many liberals suddenly learning to love their Second Amendment rights, many of them are finding out that the gun control narrative in this country — as repeated loudly and often by Hollywood and the mainstream media — is a complete lie.

But they were told by all the smartest people how easy it was!

Business, Law, Political Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

Space Resources

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The White House just released an executive order that in effect repudiates the Moon Agreement. I’ve been urging them to do this for months. This could be a prelude to start to pressure Canberra to withdraw from it.

It also encourages the development of multilateral agreements, which I’ve also been promoting.

[Update a while later]

Glenn Reynolds has the full press release.

One of the significant things about this, that many won’t realize, is that it effectively bypasses COPUOS.

[Update Tuesday morning]

Here‘s Jeff Foust’s story.

[Update Wednesday morning]

Here’s the story from Mike Wall. I don’t think this is right, though:

The new executive order makes things even more official, stressing that the United States does not view space as a “global commons” and sees a clear path to off-Earth mining, without the need for further international treaty-level agreements.

It specifically says that it is seeking bilateral and/or multilateral agreements. What it doesn’t think is necessary is doing this through the UN, or COPUOS.

[Bumped]

[Update a while later]

TASS: “Privatizing” space is “unacceptable.”

Putin’s trying to eat his cake and have it, too. He wants us to abide by the Moon Agreement without Russia actually acceding to it. This sort of nonsense is one of the reasons I’d been pushing for what the White House did.

[Update a while later]

Here’s some nonsense from the Grauniad.

[Saturday-morning update]

A piece from Popular Mechanics. This isn’t quite right, though: “…the ESA plan describes an interest in regolith, which is lunar soil rich in specific elements.”

Regolith per se is not soil; soil implies a biome, or at least fertilizer. also, it does not need to be rich in any particular element or elements to be regolith. Regolith is simply dust or rocks on a planetary surface. The entire lunar surface is covered with it, and nothing else, other than our few artifacts in a few locations.

[Bumped]