Category Archives: Science And Society

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society

But Don’t Call Them Fascists

56 Comments

What were they thinking? It’s amazing to see them so willing to show their true totalitarian nature so blatantly. And it’s too late to pull it, despite the attempts. That’s the magic of the Internet.

[Update a few minutes later]

A comment that Iowahawk left at the Youtube page (and reposted on his FB page):

In order for your “No Pressure” advert to have been made, I am assuming several writers pitched a professionally-prepared storyboard to a committee, detailing shot-by-shot each second of …the film. The committee approved it, along with a minimum $250,000 budget to hire actors, director, & crew. Each scene probably took 3-10 takes, and weeks of post production by special effects wizards.

At no time did a single person involved in this clusterf**k say, “hey, maybe it isn’t the best PR to air our fantasies about detonating the people who don’t agree with us into a mist of blood meat and bone fragments.”

This has got to be the biggest FAIL in the entire history of the internet. Anyone remotely associated with the production of this film should forever be banished from any public institution in the English speaking world, and immediately referred for psychiatric evaluation.

I know what my evaluation would be.

[Update a while later]

More thoughts from a James Delingpole:

With No Pressure, the environmental movement has revealed the snarling, wicked, homicidal misanthropy beneath its cloak of gentle, bunny-hugging righteousness.

Again, what were they thinking?

They were thinking something like the things these people (who were finally brought to justice) were thinking. Because they’re all children of the first totalitarian, Rousseau. It’s what the left does.

[Update a few minutes later]

Spring time for Al Gore — the eco-Anschluss.

Philosophy, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Technology and Society

Old Age

7 Comments

…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).

Political Commentary, Science And Society, Social Commentary

Born Gay?

33 Comments

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.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society

Save The Planet

17 Comments

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.