David Brin is remembering Arthur C. Clarke.
Category Archives: Popular Culture
“The 1%” “Escaping” To Mars
A dumb piece at Newsweek.
On the other hand, here’s a smart piece from Eric Berger: We’re going back to the moon, with or without NASA. Absent a major change of attitude in Congress, probably without.
About Donald Trump
Mollie Hemingway hates everybody. I agree.
[Update a while later]
“Choose the form of your destructor“:
People who are unhappy with the things Trump is saying need to understand that he’s only getting so much traction because he’s filling a void. If the responsible people would talk about these issues, and take action, Trump wouldn’t take up so much space.
And there’s a lesson for our ruling class there: Calling Trump a fascist is a bit much (fascism, as Tom Wolfe once reported, is forever descending upon the United States, but somehow it always lands on Europe), but movements like fascism and communism get their start because the mechanisms of liberal democracy seem weak and ineffectual and dishonest. If you don’t want Trump — or, perhaps, some post-Trump figure who really is a fascist — to dominate things, you need to stop being weak and ineffectual and dishonest.
They can’t help it. It’s who they are. It’s what they do.
Heading Back To LA
Had a nice visit with former roommates from Ann Arbor and their wives in Stinson Beach. It was like The Big Chill, except without the Michigan football game, the sixties music, the funeral, and the introspection.
Also, no adultery. As far as I know.
Social Justice In Gaming
“Oops, I joined a cult.”
The Low-Fat Diet
…will be viewed by history as the worst fad diet ever. And yet Michelle’s school-lunch program continues to abuse millions of children.
Giving Thanks For Private Spaceflight
Thoughts on Monday’s flight from Instapundit, with an appreciated plug for the book.
Thanksgiving For Kids
Neil DeGrasse Tyson
…flaunts his ignorance (again) of both the history of exploration and the economics of spaceflight.
I do agree with him about the Apollo delusion, though.
The Transatlantic Accent
How it was created, and why it essentially died.
Interesting. I’d always wondered why Cary Grant talked like that, and where his accent was from. Boarding schools, apparently.