Gene Kaprowski from the Daily Caller interviewed me on Monday afternoon. This is the result.
[Update a few minutes later]
It’s both amusing and depressing to read through the post comments, and note that absolutely none of them have anything to do with space. It’s all about the election and the Tea Party. This doesn’t bode well for having a space-policy discussion this year.
…doubles down on his ignorance of history and the Constitution.
Gosh, I’m starting to think that this guy may not be the brilliant lightworker we were told he was four years ago. You’d think that at some point his defenders would get tired of trying to defend him. But I expect them to double down, too.
[Update a few minutes later]
A lot more related links from Instapundit.
[Wednesday morning update]
The man who knew too little.
That’s the wrong question. The question is, did they get anything right? And how long, if ever, will it take them to correct it?
OK, I give up, can someone tell me what would be “unprecedented” about SCOTUS striking down a law as unconstitutional? And I won’t hold my breath waiting for news organizations to point out in their reporting that it wouldn’t be.
Is there something admirable about it?
There must be — all those clueless college students can’t be wrong.
Other “admirable” people: Joseph Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao Tse Tung, and Adolf Hitler.
Why the Left is losing the argument:
In sum, the left systematically has dumbed its side down, to the point where supposedly well-educated elites are untrained and unaware of our country’s history and constitutional traditions. The left thinks words have no fixed meaning (health care and health insurance, are close enough, so they insist we can define the latter to be the former.) The liberal elites have a poor grounding in market economics so they swallow the idea that health-care insurance is “unique” because others’ purchases affect your cost of goods. (Surprise: all markets operate this way.) They advance illogical and counterfactual arguments (e.g., withdrawing a 100 percent subsidy for health care to seniors is a “mandate”) because they are unused to vigorous debate that upsets their preferences dressed up in a thin veil of factual distortion. (Sorry, taking away a freebie is not remotely the same in logic or in law as requiring you purchase something.)
Conservatives, well aware of the intellectual deterioration of liberal institutions, have spent decades pursing supplemental education in think tanks, the speeches and writings of public intellectuals (e.g., Irving Kristol, James Q. Wilson), professional organizations (e.g., the Federalist society) and classrooms of intellectually rigorous scholars (e.g., Robert P. George, Harvey Mansfield and Richard Epstein). In doing so, they sharpened their rhetorical kills, versed themselves in history and political philosophy, and prepared themselves for intellectual combat against those who had rejected the idea of objective meaning, be it in literature or the Constitution. In moments like the Supreme Court argument we see how vast is the gulf between conservative and liberal elites.
Just another example of Haidt’s thesis.
They reduce blood pressure and cholesterol. This kind of thing always makes me question such studies, though:
Chen and his colleagues turned to hamsters for the study, animals that serve as stand-ins for humans in research that cannot be done in people. They gave the hamsters high-cholesterol diets, divided them into groups, and supplemented each group’s food with either no capsaicinoids (the control group) or various amounts of capsaicinoids. The scientists then analyzed the effects.
In addition to reducing total cholesterol levels in the blood, capsaicinoids reduced levels of the so-called “bad” cholesterol (which deposits into blood vessels), but did not affect levels of so-called “good” cholesterol. The team found indications that capsaicinoids may reduce the size of deposits that already have formed in blood vessels, narrowing arteries in ways that can lead to heart attacks or strokes.
Capsaicinoids also blocked the activity of a gene that produces cyclooxygenase-2, a substance that makes the muscles around blood vessels constrict. By blocking it, muscles can relax and widen, allowing more blood to flow.
Emphasis mine. The assumption is that one gets high cholesterol from dietary cholesterol, when in fact there’s little evidence to substantiate that. But in this case, I don’t think it invalidates the research, fortunately.
Speaking of nutrition myths, here’s one that says bacon is good for you, but still gets it wrong:
Nutritionist Zoe Harcombe says: ‘Typically, about 45 per cent of the fat in pork is unsaturated. Most of that is oleic acid, the same healthy fat found in olive oil, which is known to help lower cholesterol levels.
‘Of course, the rest is unhealthy saturated fat, so moderation is key.’
Repeat after me: there is nothing wrong with saturated fat. In fact, it is much healthier than seed oils with their high omega 6s, which is where we got too much of our dietary fat. The key is to cut back on the high-glycemic carbs.
She’s owned on morning talk radio in LA, by Doug McIntyre.
It’s hard to believe that even the Stupid Party could lose to these people.
I hope that both Bob Zubrin and Barney Frank lose this pointless debate about Mars missions.
Hey, we can’t say he didn’t warn us.