“After 30 years of waiting, the fact that this committee is addressing sustainability issues brings me a lot of pleasure,” she began. Clancy went on to advocate that Americans should become vegetarians in order to achieve sustainability in the face of “climate change.”
“What pattern of eating best contributes to food security and the sustainability of land air and water?” Clancy asked. “The simple answer is a plant-based diet.”
“Now, this is not new, this idea of how important plant-based diets are has been around for, gosh, 30-40 years,” she said. “Before that for people who long ago were eating vegetarian.”
Clancy said plant-based diets lower the risk of cardiovascular disease and have a “smaller ecological impact” on “drought, climate change, soil erosion, pesticides and antibiotics in water supplies.”
There is zero scientific evidence of cardiovascular disease being caused by eating animals, per se (though corn-fed beef and chicken might be problematic due to omega 6).
There is no nice, clean line between private “buck making” and high-minded government exploration just for the sake of it. From the Wright Brothers making the key advances in aviation to IBM funded Nobel Prize winning basic research, innumerable breakthroughs in science and technology have been led by private non-governmental ventures.
Yes. It’s the post-war government funding that’s been an anomaly, historically. Fortunately, when it comes to spaceflight, that era is ending.
Sorry, this seems like a ridiculous way to do subtraction (particularly for that problem which is trivially easy). And I can’t imagine how I’d do it in my head. Borrowing seems a lot easier to me.
Some thoughts on their foolish political tendencies. And as noted, this Sagan quote is crucial in the “settled climate science” debate:
Science is more than a body of knowledge, it’s a way of thinking. A way of skeptically interrogating the universe with a fine understanding of human fallibility. If we are not able to ask skeptical questions, to interrogate those that tell us that something is true, to be skeptical of those in authority, then we’re up for grabs for the next charlatan, political or religious who comes ambling along.
“Scientist” isn’t a profession. We are all scientists to one degree or another, if we are successful at every-day living.
Launches of NASA cargo to the International Space Station, including one planned early Sunday, don’t guarantee SpaceX is ready to launch military satellites, the head of Air Force Space Command said Tuesday in Cape Canaveral.
If a rocket failed, the loss of a national security satellite potentially worth more than $1.5 billion would be a bigger setback than losing food, clothing and other station supplies, Gen. William Shelton told the National Space Club Florida Committee.
“So there’s a big difference,” he said.
This is one reason that talk about “human rating” an Atlas (or Delta) is silly. If it’s reliable enough for a $1.5B satellite, it’s reliable enough to carry crew. All it ever needed was failure onset detection. And when SpaceX starts flying crew, the general’s argument will be much less strong.
Lerner is, so far, the face of this use of government to punish political adversaries. She knows what her IRS unit did and how it intersects with the law, and for a second time she has exercised her constitutional right to remain silent rather than risk self-incrimination. The public has a right to make reasonable inferences from her behavior.
And from Obama’s. After calling the IRS behavior “outrageous,” he now says there is not a “smidgen” of evidence of anything to be outraged about. He knows this even though the supposed investigation of the IRS behavior has not been completed, or perhaps even begun. The person he chose to investigate his administration is an administration employee and a generous donor to his campaigns. . . .
Speaking of questions: Can anyone identify a Democratic Senate candidate whose tax records were leaked, as Christine O’Donnell’s were when she was the Republican candidate in Delaware in 2010? Is it a coincidence that in January 2011, after Catherine Engelbrecht requested tax-exempt status for two conservative groups she founded in Texas — King Street Patriots and True the Vote — the Engelbrecht family business was notified of its first IRS audit? Does James Comey wonder why (this was before he became FBI director), five months after Engelbrecht’s tax-exemption request, FBI agents appeared seeking information about attendees at the King Street Patriots meetings? Were five subsequent FBI contacts “checking in” for “updates” on the group’s activities really necessary? Why did the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives show a sudden intrusive interest in the Engelbrechts’ business, which has nothing to do with alcohol or tobacco or firearms or explosives?
These simple questions – each based on indisputable facts – establish that somebody outside of the IRS told her they wanted the tax agency to “fix” something involving groups seeking 501(c)(4) tax status, that she directed subordinates to begin a (c)(4) project she feared could be seen as “political,” that she viewed Tea Party groups as “dangerous,” and that she ordered that such groups be subjected to “multi-level review.” Those are the four essential points of the IRS scandal: Who ordered the tax agency to get involved, who in the tax agency responded, who they targeted and what actions they took. She cannot answer these questions because, as she herself has claimed, that would be incriminating. Lerner and others must hope Issa doesn’t already have the answers.
Gee, I kind of hope he does. I’m guessing White House counsel’s office, myself.