Category Archives: Political Commentary

Political Commentary, Science And Society

Hard Wired

14 Comments

There seems to be a clear link between brain structure and sexual orientation. This should put to rest any notion that it’s a “choice” for anyone but bi-sexuals (and this might imply that there are quite a few, since there could be a continuous variation between symmetric and how asymmetric one’s brain is). As I’ve long said, there are those who are clearly irretrievably heterosexual (like me) and homosexual, but the debate rages on among the bis, who assume that everyone is like them.

[Via Geek Press]

Political Commentary, Technology and Society

Guilt-Free Petroleum

11 Comments

Some thoughts from Thomas James:

…the amusing part is that it is theoretically a carbon-negative fuel source — the microbes take more carbon out of the atmosphere than what they excrete as a useable oil (if that doesn’t seem to make sense, recall that the microbes themselves require carbon for their own structure).

On the other hand, since this approach requires genetic engineering, the watermelons and luddites will no doubt put the kibosh on it regardless of its benefits — the only thing more intolerable than the idea of environmental-guilt-free petroleum sustaining the Western lifestyle of individuality, independence, and material happiness is the knowledge that that guilt-free petroleum comes from “frankenbacteria.”

They’ll hate it even without the bioengineering. As noted, it doesn’t require us to tighten our hair shirts, or depopulate the planet.

Political Commentary, Science And Society, Technology and Society

Seek, And Ye Shall Find

32 Comments

Another huge oil discovery in Brazil.

What’s amazing is not so much that Congress won’t allow us to pump oil, which we badly need to do. They won’t even allow us to look for it, especially if it’s in a “pristine” (aka barren coastal plain, frozen in the winter and a mosquito-infested bog in the summer) region, at least according to Senator McCain.

What are they afraid we might find?

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, War Commentary

The George Romney Democrats

9 Comments

James Kirchick writes that the Democrats are trying to lie their party to victory, and the country to defeat in Iraq:

In 2004, the Senate Intelligence Committee unanimously approved a report acknowledging that it “did not find any evidence that administration officials attempted to coerce, influence or pressure analysts to change their judgments.” The following year, the bipartisan Robb-Silberman report similarly found “no indication that the intelligence community distorted the evidence regarding Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.”

Contrast those conclusions with the Senate Intelligence Committee report issued June 5, the production of which excluded Republican staffers and which only two GOP senators endorsed. In a news release announcing the report, committee Chairman John D. Rockefeller IV got in this familiar shot: “Sadly, the Bush administration led the nation into war under false pretenses.”

Yet Rockefeller’s highly partisan report does not substantiate its most explosive claims. Rockefeller, for instance, charges that “top administration officials made repeated statements that falsely linked Iraq and Al Qaeda as a single threat and insinuated that Iraq played a role in 9/11.” Yet what did his report actually find? That Iraq-Al Qaeda links were “substantiated by intelligence information.” The same goes for claims about Hussein’s possession of biological and chemical weapons, as well as his alleged operation of a nuclear weapons program.

Four years on from the first Senate Intelligence Committee report, war critics, old and newfangled, still don’t get that a lie is an act of deliberate, not unwitting, deception. If Democrats wish to contend they were “misled” into war, they should vent their spleen at the CIA.

Yes. Bill Clinton’s CIA, since George Bush foolishly left George Tenant in charge of it, even after 911, and never even seriously attempted to clean house, other than the failed attempt by Porter Goss. The president got bad intelligence. But the Democrats are being mendacious in their selective memory and rewriting of history.

I loved this:

A journalist who accompanied Romney on his 1965 foray to Vietnam remarked that if the governor had indeed been brainwashed, it was not because of American propaganda but because he had “brought so light a load to the laundromat.” Given the similarity between Romney’s explanation and the protestations of Democrats 40 years later, one wonders why the news media aren’t saying the same thing today.

I assume that the last phrase is simply a rhetorical flourish. There’s no reason to wonder at all.

Political Commentary, Space, Space and Campaign 2008

The Way Forward

8 Comments

Very little in this essay is new to people who have been following the arguments in space policy circles for years, but it’s useful to pull it all together into one place, and bring it up to date. I and many others have long advocated that we need to resurrect NACA (which was absorbed into NASA half a century ago) and start developing technology that can support private industry, as we did for aviation. With the new private space passenger vehicles now starting to be developed, the time is ripe for it, and Jeff Foust and Charles Miller have made a very powerful case. This should be must reading for both presidential campaigns.

[Update mid morning]

This piece I wrote a few years ago on the centennial of flight seems pertinent.

[Mid-afternoon update]

More commentary over at Jeff’s site, Space Politics.

Political Commentary

You Have A Right To Vote

6 Comments

…but only as long as you vote the right way:

“We’re told we can vote no, that the system requires unanimity. But when (a `no’ vote) actually happens, every time, the EU tells us: You really only have a right to vote yes,” said Dublin travel agent Paul Brady, who voted against the treaty. “You know, I love traveling through Europe, but I don’t really want to live there all the time. I’d like to stay as close to America as Europe.”

Perhaps the Irish have saved western civilization again. But only until the next attempt to undemocratically foist it on European citizens.

Political Commentary, Space

Ceding The High Ground

6 Comments

Jeff Krukin writes that Europe is leaving NewSpace to the US, out of (among other things) foolish class envy:

the views expressed by European Commission Vice President Guenter Verheugen speak volumes about the attitudes of the European political establishment toward entrepreneurial space activity (NewSpace). Referring to public remarks by Guenter, Astrium Chief Executive Francois Auque said, “I was even told that this project was morally blameworthy because it targets an audience of the rich people.”

Well, that’s why many of our ancestors left Europe.