Category Archives: Science And Society

Business, Economics, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Social Commentary, Technology and Society

Direct Air Capture

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An interesting technical development on the CO2 front. But this response from “environmentalists” is telling:

Some climate campaigners are positive about the development of direct air capture technology, but others are worried that it will be used to prolong the fossil fuel era.

“It’s a huge concern,” Tzeporah Berman, international programme director for Stand dot earth, told BBC News.

“We need to be working together to figure out how we move away completely from fossil fuel – that’s our moral and economic challenge but these technologies provide a false hope that we can continue to depend on fossil fuels and produce and burn them, and technology will fix it – we are way past that point!”

Others are concerned that the development of direct air capture devices may just encourage some people to think that they don’t have to personally reduce their carbon footprint.

“I think there’s a real danger that people will see this technology as a magic bullet and not cut back their carbon,” said Shakti Ramkumar, a student at the University of British Columbia (UBC), who is active in climate change protests.

“We have a moral responsibility to reduce our consumption on a large scale. We need to reflect deeply on how we live our lives and whether everyone can have access to the things we have, and fairness, so we can all live a good life.”

Why, it’s almost as though they hate cheap energy, and want to run others’ lives, and don’t really care about carbon dioxide.

Business, Education, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Social Commentary

The Equality Act

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I think that Trump should declare himself the first female black lesbian president. I would if I were him, just to mock this insanity.

[Update a few minutes later]

Do sexual identity and gender laws violate the First Amendment?

And a woman whose family, and even her ex, are being persecuted and “investigated” because she “misgendered.”

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Space, Technology and Society

The Trump-Pence Moon Plan

59 Comments

Thoughts from Newt. I would note that Boeing would never do SLS on a fixed-price basis.

[Monday-morning update]

Bob Zubrin’s thoughts (tl;dr: Can SLS and the Gateway). (And yes, the URL is misleading.)

[Monday-afternoon update]

The NASA administrator is openly considering going to the moon with a Falcon Heavy and ICPS.

Dick Shelby was unavailable for comment, though I’m sure he will. I’m also sure he’s regretting confirming Bridenstine.

[Bumped]

Culinary, Economics, Health, History, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Technology and Society

How Americans Used To Eat

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Hint: It wasn’t plants:

Early Americans settlers were “indifferent” farmers, according to many accounts. They were fairly lazy in their efforts at both animal husbandry and agriculture, with “the grain fields, the meadows, the forests, the cattle, etc, treated with equal carelessness,” as one 18th-century Swedish visitor described—and there was little point in farming since meat was so readily available.

Settlers recorded the extraordinary abundance of wild turkeys, ducks, grouse, pheasant, and more. Migrating flocks of birds would darken the skies for days. The tasty Eskimo curlew was apparently so fat that it would burst upon falling to the earth, covering the ground with a sort of fatty meat paste. (New Englanders called this now-extinct species the “doughbird.”)

In the woods, there were bears (prized for their fat), raccoons, bobo­links, opossums, hares, and virtual thickets of deer—so much that the colo­nists didn’t even bother hunting elk, moose, or bison, since hauling and conserving so much meat was considered too great an effort. A European traveler describing his visit to a Southern plantation noted that the food included beef, veal, mutton, venison, turkeys, and geese, but he does not mention a single vegetable.

Infants were fed beef even before their teeth had grown in. The English novelist Anthony Trollope reported, during a trip to the United States in 1861, that Americans ate twice as much beef as did Englishmen. Charles Dickens, when he visited, wrote that “no breakfast was breakfast” without a T-bone steak. Apparently, starting a day on puffed wheat and low-fat milk—our “Breakfast of Champions!”—would not have been considered adequate even for a servant.

Indeed, for the first 250 years of American history, even the poor in the United States could afford meat or fish for every meal. The fact that the workers had so much access to meat was precisely why observers regarded the diet of the New World to be superior to that of the Old.

Lobster used to be fed to prisoners, because it was considered inferior to other meats. The notion that we ate plants is all part of the junk science of nutrition.