I hadn’t realized that Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin were born on the same day, exactly two-hundred years ago today. Alan Boyle is covering the bicentennial Darwin week all week. And in honor of the event, Charles Johnson points out a story debunking one of the most common ignorant accusations against evolution — that there are no “transition” fossils.
Category Archives: Political Commentary
Letting Capitalism Out Of The Bag
I weep for the Republic when I consider the kinds of idiots that we elect, and how much power we give them.
Heterophobia
A young woman is suing Central Michigan University for being discriminated against as a heterosexual.
It was bound to happen eventually, such is the state of academia.
Space Is Really Big
But not quite big enough:
In an unprecedented space collision, a commercial Iridium communications satellite and a presumably defunct Russian Cosmos satellite ran into each other Tuesday above northern Siberia, creating a cloud of wreckage, officials said today.
What a mess. At that altitude, the pieces are going to be there a long time, and present a hazard to other LEO satellites. I hope that this isn’t the event that sets off a cascade. I don’t understand why NORAD didn’t predict this. I know they don’t have the elements to a precision necessary to know that they’ll collide, but I would think that they could propagate enough to see that they would come close. And if we had true operationally responsive space capability, we could have sent something up to change the orbit of one of them, if they couldn’t do it themselves. This is the price we pay for not being a truly spacefaring civilization, despite the billions wasted over the past decades.
[Update in the evening]
Clark Lindsey has more links, and thoughts.
[Thursday morning update]
The Orlando Sentinel was somewhat prescient about this story, having run a piece on space debris last weekend.
[Mid-morning update]
Clark Lindsey has several more links.
Anti-Recession Measures
Too much, too late. And why did everyone ignore the CBO, which said that the recession will be over later this year if we did nothing?
Stimulating SpaceX?
SpaceX is lobbying for COTS D funding to be included in the stimulus. It would be nice to see something worthwhile included in it, but it’s not enough to make it worth it to me. I’d rather have no stimulus and no COTS D.
Iowahawk On A Roll
He has the scoop on the Imaginary-American march on Washington, and the discovery of the largest number in the universe.
Goodie
Iran will have enough fuel for several Hiroshima-level bombs by the end of the year.
I should note that their ability to put a satellite into space isn’t quite as concerning to me as it has been portrayed by some in the news. Though we had ICBMs before we had launch vehicles, it doesn’t follow that having a launch vehicle implies ICBM capability. It’s actually a lot easier, from a guidance standpoint, to put an object into orbit than it is to hit a target precisely. Also, warhead and entry vehicle technology is a completely different beast than a launcher, so simply having throw capability doesn’t mean that you have all of the pieces in place. In addition, it’s one thing to build a bomb — it’s another to make it small enough to be able to loft it around the world.
Of course, none of this is of much consolation to Israel, because it’s a lot closer, and I would imagine that the Iranians are indifferent to how precisely they can kill hundreds of thousands of Jews.
The Party Of Death
“Reason” is concerned, legitimately I think, about potential opposition in our new ruling class to anti-aging research and treatment:
All rapid legislation turns into a wish-list for those closest to power: the faster it is enacted, the greater the scale of corruption, and the more you can be sure that your interests are being directly harmed. The legislation discussed above is a good example of the way in which the politics of central control turn what would be a golden opportunity for a free market in healthcare into the modern equivalent of putting the old people out into the snow.
I wish we’d had better choices last November.
Getting Ready For The Immediate Future
I would suggest that anyone who wants to understand the path we’re on should read this classic book
[Wednesday morning update]
Jonah Goldberg has some thoughts on “liberaltarianism,” and why it was always a pipe dream to think that the Democrats could pick up true libertarians. As Hayek makes clear, if we don’t defend the free market, the other freedoms will vanish as well.
[Update mid morning]
John Hood has further comments:
Cato’s own political analysis suggests that small-l libertarian voters were overwhelmingly Republican (like three-quarters) until 2006, when they became just a majority-Republican bloc. This seems primarily to be a consequence of disaffection with GOP spending profligacy, along with various other boneheaded policies and at least the conduct, if not the instigation, of the Iraq campaign. Republicans suffered when they lost these votes, some of which went to Dems and some of which simply went poof.
But that’s not the same as suggesting that there is at least as much of a natural affinity between libertarians and modern-day liberals as there is between libertarians and modern-day conservatives, if not more. This statement just isn’t true. The principles of liberty and virtue are certainly in tension within the broadly construed Right, but the principles of liberty and egalitarianism would be perpetually at war within a reconstructed Left. The current struggle against bailout/stimulus mania has been a clarifying moment, it seems to me. In the social-democrat future that the American Left wants, the private sphere must give way as costs are socialized and power is centralized. Virtually everything becomes the government’s business—including what you eat, drink, or smoke, not just where you bank.
Finally, Democratic flirtations with liberaltarianism were always about dividing their opponents and seizing power in Washington, not evidence of self-reflection about first principles or proof of interest in innovative applications. Don’t be so gullible, McFly.
I always thought it absurd for (example) Kos to claim he was a libertarian. And even more so for that moron Bill Maher.