Meanwhile, people obsess about carbon on the basis of junk science.
Category Archives: Media Criticism
The Anti-Science of Jenny McCarthy
Julia Ioffe is righteously pissed off:
At this writing, I have been coughing for 72 days. Not on and off coughing, but continuously, every day and every night, for two and a half months. And not just coughing, but whooping: doubled over, body clenched, sucking violently for air, my face reddening and my eyes watering. Sometimes, I cough so hard, I vomit. Other times, I pee myself. Both of these symptoms have become blessedly less frequent, and I have yet to break a rib coughing—also a common side effect. Nor do I still have the fatigue that felled me, often, at my desk and made me sleep for 16 hours a night on the weekends. Now I rarely choke on things like water, though it turns out laughing, which I do a lot of, is an easy trigger for a violent, paralyzing cough that doctors refer to not as a cough, but a paroxysm.
Somehow, I doubt that most of these people are Republicans.
ObamaCare Explained
Questions and answers from Holman Jenkins and Stephen Green
The Real Anti-Science Party
No, @ChrisMooney, it’s not the Republicans.
[Update a few minutes later]
Whoops. Just read more of it. This is a little out to lunch:
Take the NASA portfolio, for example, where the president unceremoniously cancelled the Constellation plan over the objections of both parties and both chambers of Congress. Astronauts Neil Armstrong and Gene Cernan, hardly partisan bomb throwers, highlighted this in testimony before the House Science Committee on multiple occasions, pleading, “now is the time to overrule this Administration’s pledge to mediocrity.”
Constellation had absolutely nothing to do with science, and both Armstrong and Cernan were notoriously uninformed about it, relying on nonsense fed them by friends in Houston and Huntsville. Things like this damage the credibility of the rest of the piece in the minds of people who understand space policy.
The Common-Sense Resistance
Non-video thoughts from Bill Whittle.
Medicaid
And its devastating impact on the poor.
Like ObamaCare, this all comes back to the (deliberate) confusion between health care and health insurance.
We have a food-stamp program for those unable to (in theory) afford food. Why not a similar one for health care? Let the market work.
By Any Other Name
OK, so what’s to keep someone, or multiple someones (competition!) from setting up off-shore gambling sites where, based on their age, gender, medical and family history, people can make bets on whether or not their annual medical expenses will exceed some selected amount? Currency controls?
The fact that the federal government would fight this is a stark testament to what a huge encroachment on liberty this monstrosity is.
ObamaCare Penalty Avoidance
So all you have to do is get a utility canceled? That will seem pretty cheap compared to out-year penalties. After all, you can always reinstate with a deposit.
I wonder if that’s a changeable HHS rule, or in the law itself?
No, Veronique
The moon is not Antarctica.
Many of the “rocks have rights” crowd would like it to be, though. One of the problems with the Outer Space Treaty was that it was modeled on the Antarctic Treaty.
[Update a few minutes later]
Oh, Paul, please:
With launch costs of thousands of dollars per pound (and unlikely to come down significantly for the foreseeable future)
They are likely to come down to hundreds, or tens of dollars per pound within a decade, now that we have some actual competition and innovation happening in the industry.
Chris Christie Versus The Tea Party
Who’s better at getting Republicans elected?
Christie would be a disastrous nominee.