It’s been rumored for several months that Burt Rutan has been under the weather. He certainly didn’t look great when I talked to him briefly in the hallway in Long Beach in September.
Without getting into details, I now have it on very good authority that he underwent (or is undergoing) surgery this morning in California. My understanding is that, if successful, the prognosis will be good, and he’ll be doing much better soon. If you’re the praying type, and think it does him any good, then you might want to do that. But if you do, it might be best not to tell him. Me, I’ll just hope for the best.
Here’s an interesting article on the economics of repugnance. As Sally Satel (and her donor, Virginia Postrel) have pointed out, an unwillingness to allow a market in kidneys is murdering thousands every year, to help ease the stomach of so-called biomedical “ethicists.”
Note to Leon Kass, and others: the “yuck” factor, like all emotions, should be viewed as suggestions, not commands.
Just when you think you have plumbed the darkest depths of the nation’s moral decline, someone comes up with something like this. I weep for my country.
Well, I’m not sure that it’s really unethical to not break up the pieces, but it certainly seems to miss the point, unless your only goal is simply to complete the puzzle as quickly as possible. And I’ve never seen a puzzle that was really worth the end result. With a jigsaw puzzle, isn’t the journey the destination?
Ilya Somin writes about the clash of values between those of us who want to live, and those who want us to die. And no, I’m not referring to Islamists.
Ron Bailey doesn’t think so. Neither do I. And I sure hope we don’t.
I’ve noticed this kind of “argument” a lot with people who want to hold back true progress (as opposed to the “progress” proposed by many “progressives”):
So what about the social consequences of radically longer and healthier lives? In that regard, Diana Schaub in her reaction essay raises many questions for reflection about those consequences, but curiously she fails to actually reflect on them. Schaub isn
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