…for delivering so little and sending students into a lifetime of debt.
The Occumorons were protesting in the wrong places.
Category Archives: Media Criticism
The Constitution
A readable version, for the 21st century. I haven’t looked at it in detail, but it seems like an interest project, at least in theory. Maybe people like Ezra Klein should give it a whirl.
That Racist Tea Party
…goes wild over a black senator, the only one in the Senate. And he’s a Republican.
No one tell the (increasingly execrable) Colin Powell.
Snow-Melting Satellites
Patrick Collins, a PhD economist who lives in Japan, has been a long-time promoter of space tourism, but he has also been interested in solar-power satellites. Many have promoted them as a means to mitigate greenhouse gases, but three years ago, he presented a paper in Nagoya on their use in preventing the next glacial advance, which would be much more catastrophic than any of the climate frights conjured up by the warm mongers. He writes:
The webmaster of spacefuture.com [presumably, Peter Wainwright] refuses(!) to put this paper into the Space Future library which we founded together! Living and working in NYC seems to have made him “politically correct” (i.e. unscientific) – and also “warmist”! This despite the fact that any arguments that once existed for the theory that human emissions of CO2 could lead to catastrophic “global warming” (now morphed into “climate change”) have been totally destroyed by ever-growing scientific evidence – including notable work by Burt Rutan.
This evidence has grown by leaps and bounds in the three years since this paper was written. For a taste of the power of private citizens dedicated to scientific truth, and armed with the Internet and Freedom of Information laws, wattsupwiththat.com is hard to beat.
When we wrote this paper, neither of us had read Fallen Angels
, in which Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle and Michael Flynn – back in 1991 – prefigured both the key ideas: that the coming of the next Ice Age is a far greater threat than any possible warming, and that solar-generated microwave beams from orbiting satellites offer a unique means of combatting the spread of glaciers. NB it will require a massive “crash program” to ramp production up to a scale that could save western civilisation – a cool 1 million square kilometres of solar panels in various orbits! Sadly they were also prophetic about the degeneration of the US government. Perhaps holding back the glaciers could become the trigger to wake people up and develop space at last? Their book receives honourable mention in the follow-up paper being published soon.
I’ve uploaded the paper to my own site, for anyone interested, despite Peter’s truculence in that regard.
Climate Change
…doesn’t have to be all that bad.
Of course it does. How else can they justify their collectivist power grabs?
Affirmative Action
The sad irony:
The biggest change since Grutter, though, has nothing to do with Court membership. It is the mounting empirical evidence that race preferences are doing more harm than good — even for their supposed beneficiaries. If this evidence is correct, we now have fewer African-American physicians, scientists, and engineers than we would have had using race-neutral admissions policies. We have fewer college professors and lawyers, too. Put more bluntly, affirmative action has backfired.
As do many “progressive” policies. And it’s sometimes not clear what the real intentions were.
It Can’t Happen Here
It has happened here. People don’t understand that the purpose of the Constitution is not to empower government, but to confine and restrict its powers. And the Second Amendment is the ultimate enforcement mechanism.
Pretend Gun Control
Frank J. has a great idea that should make everyone happy, ignorant and knowledgeable alike:
…What we can do is pass a law banning a bunch of made-up things that sound scary, and many gun control proponents already have great ideas along this line. For instance, I read a column in which Howard Kurtz mentioned a ban on high-magazine clips — we can certainly do without something that nonsensical. And I’ve heard the press before mention armor-piercing hollow points and plastic guns (actually, I think we already banned that made-up weapon in the ’80s). And as long as the NRA and Wayne LaPierre go apoplectic about it (“This ban on sorcerer-enchanted guns is just a slippery slope toward eliminating all witch-hexed weaponry!”), gun control proponents won’t know the difference between this and actual gun control. And this will help protect our most vulnerable people out there: politicians. Because long after the gun control advocates move on to other things, like who they want to tax next, gun owners will still be annoyed by any actual gun control legislation. One of the greatest fears politicians have is seeing an angry guy with lots of guns charging down the street, because they know he’s probably on his way to commit an act of voting.
Of course, with this idea, absolutely nothing will be done to keep criminals and madmen from obtaining guns, but that’s the effect of every other gun control law, so we’re just reaching this end in a much cheaper and less messy fashion.
I think you could probably even get it through the House. And the enforcement costs would be zero.
Make The White House A Gun-Free Zone
Now here’s a petition I can get behind. After all, if no armed guards and gun-free zones are good enough for our kids, they’re good enough for the president’s. Right?
You Have To Break Eggs To Make An Omelette
Nurse Bloomberg says that people should have to suffer a bit.
…Mr. Bloomberg also argued the number of pain pills currently being prescribed had even contributed to an uptick in violent crimes outside of pharmacies from robbers looking to steal the drugs.
“You see there’s a lot more hold-ups of pharmacies, people getting held up as they walk out of pharmacies,” he explained. “What are they all about? They’re not trying to steal your shaving cream or toothpaste at the point of a gun. They want these drugs.”.
Yes, and you know what would reduce the number of hold ups? If they could get them legally.
You know who I’d like to see “suffer a bit”? This overprivileged midget fascist.