The Pueblo apparently weren’t as peaceful as the multi-cultis want us to believe. One of the many annoying things about political correctness is its whitewashing of the brutality of many aboriginal American cultures, and false history of their supposed environmental sensitivity.
Category Archives: Science And Society
Attitudes And Regulations
…that hold back progress in aging and health breakthroughs.
Worshipping Gaia
Joel Garreau, on environmentalism as religion. It has all the earmarks, and it’s the only one that’s allowed to be taught in the public schools. In fact, with so many adherents in government (and particularly among Democrats) you could even say that it’s a state-sponsored violation of the First Amendment.
Old Age
…is it a cause of death?
There will be unintended consequences (good ones, in my opinion) of making it one. It implies that aging is itself a disease, and one that should be fought directly, rather than coming up with palliatives for individual symptoms of it (e.g., hypertension, muscle degeneration, senility, etc.), which would mean that the medical establishment would have to take gerontological research a lot more seriously than it currently does, both in terms of interest and resources. It also flies in the face of the deathist belief that we shouldn’t seek longer life, because it’s not “natural” (the naturalistic fallacy).
Why We Should Read Science Fiction
Thoughts from Walter Russell Mead. I disagree with his opinion on Clarke’s writing quality, though.
Born Gay?
Here’s an interesting discussion on forecasting sexual orientation:
We all know the stereotypes: an unusually light, delicate, effeminate air in a little boy’s step, often coupled with solitary bookishness, or a limp wrist, an interest in dolls, makeup, princesses, dresses and a staunch distaste for rough play with other boys; in little girls, there is the outwardly boyish stance, perhaps a penchant for tools, a lumbering gait, a square-jawed readiness for physical tussles with boys, an aversion to all the perfumed, delicate, laced trappings of femininity.
I’m sure that my parents thought, or at least worried, that I was going to be homosexual. I was a bookworm, and didn’t enjoy roughhousing or sports. On the other hand, I never had an interest in girlish things, and was more into pirates and cowboys. In any event, I’ve never had the slightest interest in the same sex, sexually speaking — I’m as heterosexual as they come (so to speak). But I think you have to be in abject denial to think that sexual orientation is a “choice.” The only people for whom that’s the case are bisexuals.
Save The Planet
Shop Walmart:
you, and everyone else trying to sell to Walmart, have to spend all your time figuring out how to produce the same product with less. Walmart’s ruthless focus on reducing prices is driving producers everywhere to cut the costs of production: to switch to cheaper materials, use less packaging, cut down on waste of all kinds and to consolidate and rationalize both production and distribution. The result is a steady and inexorable decline in humanity’s impact on the environment for every unit of GDP.
The Green Police couldn’t do it any better. In fact, given the political cluelessness, uncertain signals (is nuclear energy a good thing or a bad thing?), and anti-scientific knuckle dragging from environmentalists on subjects like the use of GMOs in agriculture, it’s likely that a world run by Walmart would be both richer and cleaner than a world run by Greenpeace. Not that I want Walmart (or Greenpeace) to run the world, bu at the end of the day, being ruthlessly cheap is the most important way of being green. To cut out waste, to use methods of production that cut the energy consumed at every stage in the process, to strip packaging to the barest minimum, to reduce the amount of raw materials in every product: this is the mother lode of green. This is how a growing human population limits its impact on the earth. This is where Walmart and green are as one.
I still say that Sam Walton was a greater humanitarian, and did more to improve the lives of the poor, than any politician ever born.
Earth Abides
…and it doesn’t care what we do to it. Thoughts from George Will.
Everything You Know About Studying
…is wrong.
The Green Shirts
Some thoughts on the new green fascists and mass murderer wannabes, from Glenn Reynolds:
In contemporary America, no respectable person would advocate, say, the involuntary sterilization of blacks or Jews. Why, then, should it be any more respectable to advocate the involuntary sterilization of everyone? Or even of those who cause “social deterioration?”
Likewise, references to particular ethnic or religious groups as “viruses” or “cancers” in need of extirpation are socially unacceptable, triggering immediate thoughts of genocide and mass murder.
Why, then, should it be acceptable to refer to all humanity in this fashion? Does widening the circle of eliminationist rhetoric somehow make it better?
I don’t see why it should, and I don’t see why we should pretend — or allow others to pretend — that hate-filled rhetoric is somehow more acceptable when it’s delivered by those wearing green shirts instead of brown.
It’s a fetish of the left. It’s like the eighties, when they feigned outrage at the way the South Africans treated blacks, and were indifferent to the fact that places like the Soviet Union treated everyone that badly, or worse. If you’re a leftist, it’s perfectly OK to oppress people, as long as you’re an equal-opportunity oppressor.
Also, Jim Bennett emails:
Actually, Tom Clancy wrote a novel about a rich eco-nut who funds the clandestine development of a plague that will wipe out all of humanity, except for a small group who will have the antidote.
Highly improbable, of course. Almost as improbable as the one he wrote about the fanatic who crashes a fully-fueled airliner into a major US government building.
Not just improbable — unthinkable. At least if you’re Condi Rice. But perhaps not if you’re John Holdren.