In California, you’ll be able to have a car in any color you want, as long as it’s not black.
I should note that we’re shopping for another car, and we are trying to avoid a dark color in south Florida. But it should be our choice, not that of the State.
I’m going to turn on extra lights tomorrow night at 8:30. I hope that many of my readers will join me. Hell, I might even turn on the air, though we won’t need it. I’ll just run it with the windows open.
I wonder what these people think when they look at a picture of the Korean peninsula at night? Who do they consider more virtuous, those in the light, or those in the dark?
Call it a vote for sanity and freedom.
[Later afternoon update]
Here are some more suggestions:
Our press release described ways people might celebrate the achievements of humanity such as eating diner, seeing a film, driving around, keeping the heat on in your home — all things that Earth Hour celebrators, presumably, should be refraining from. In the cheekiest manner, we claimed that anyone not foregoing the use of electricity in that hour is, by default, celebrating the achievements of human beings. Needless to say, the enviros in the blogosphere didn’t take to kindly to our announcement.
Needless to say.
If our Human Achievement Hour is at all a dig against Earth Hour, it is so only by the fact that we are pointing out what Earth Hour truly is about: It isn’t pro-Earth, it is anti-man and anti-innovation.
Got it in one.
[Update a couple minutes later]
Here’s the web site for Human Achievement Hour.
There’s a very interesting (and long) profile over at New York Times magazine:
Dyson is well aware that “most consider me wrong about global warming.” That educated Americans tend to agree with the conclusion about global warming reached earlier this month at the International Scientific Conference on Climate Change in Copenhagen (“inaction is inexcusable”) only increases Dyson’s resistance. Dyson may be an Obama-loving, Bush-loathing liberal who has spent his life opposing American wars and fighting for the protection of natural resources, but he brooks no ideology and has a withering aversion to scientific consensus. The Nobel physics laureate Steven Weinberg admires Dyson’s physics — he says he thinks the Nobel committee fleeced him by not awarding his work on quantum electrodynamics with the prize — but Weinberg parts ways with his sensibility: “I have the sense that when consensus is forming like ice hardening on a lake, Dyson will do his best to chip at the ice.”
Dyson says he doesn’t want his legacy to be defined by climate change, but his dissension from the orthodoxy of global warming is significant because of his stature and his devotion to the integrity of science. Dyson has said he believes that the truths of science are so profoundly concealed that the only thing we can really be sure of is that much of what we expect to happen won’t come to pass. In “Infinite in All Directions,” he writes that nature’s laws “make the universe as interesting as possible.” This also happens to be a fine description of Dyson’s own relationship to science. In the words of Avishai Margalit, a philosopher at the Institute for Advanced Study, “He’s a consistent reminder of another possibility.” When Dyson joins the public conversation about climate change by expressing concern about the “enormous gaps in our knowledge, the sparseness of our observations and the superficiality of our theories,” these reservations come from a place of experience. Whatever else he is, Dyson is the good scientist; he asks the hard questions. He could also be a lonely prophet. Or, as he acknowledges, he could be dead wrong.
But he’s got a pretty good track record.
“Reason” has a link roundup of Russian coverage of an Aubrey de Grey visit, and some thoughts on cryonics from Robin Hanson. It’s encouraging to hear from de Grey that the first man who will live to a hundred and fifty is probably alive, and sixty today. And that people currently living will hit a thousand, if they wish (though I think it would be tough to go that long without some non-aging cause of death).
New “cold fusion” results. It’s hard to believe that it’s been twenty years since Pons’ and Fleischmann’s original claims.
Why bad jokes are easier to remember than good ones.
Fresh from his brutal but well deserved fisking by Lileks, old Amitai is at it again. This time, he wants NASA to forget about this space stuff and explore the oceans.
Leaving aside his historical ignorance (it was Copernicus, not Kepler who posited that the earth went around the sun), really, what part of National Aeronautics and Space Administration do these morons who want to repurpose the agency not understand?
We have an agency that studies the oceans — it’s called the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. We also have an agency that deals with energy issues. It’s called the Department of Energy. Can you say “Department of Energy,” boys and girls?
If we don’t want to have a federal space program, then disband the agency, and shift its funds to the things we do want to do. If there are NASA employees who know how to and want to study the ocean and energy, they can transfer to the places where those things are done. But enough with these stupid attempts to make NASA something that it is not.
An interesting interview by Alan Boyle. I too find it annoying that people not only believe that a human body will explode in vacuum because they saw Outland or Total Recall, but will ignorantly argue the point with those of us who know better.
This one tickled my funny bone.
I am not qualified to render an opinion on this subject:
The idea that birth can be orgasmic isn’t new. The British birth guru Sheila Kitzinger says that she has met “hundreds” of women during the course of her career who report experiencing orgasm during labour – some were hoping for it, others were taken completely by surprise. She herself has experienced it during three of her four labours (she has five daughters: one birth was twins). “It is difficult for a man to understand,” she says “hard, too, for any woman who has had an average hospital birth. But it can be one of the most profound psychosexual experiences in a woman’s life. Each contraction may bring a rush of joy so overwhelming that the pain recedes into the background.” She puts this partly down to simple biology. “The pressure of the baby’s head against the walls of the vagina and the fanning out of the tissues as the head descends bring for some women an unexpected sensation of sexual arousal, even of ecstasy.” But is this really an orgasm? Or just a very unusual sensation? “It can be orgasmic. People recognise it as an orgasm. And it can be a multiple orgasm, one with each push.”
Well, there can be a fine line between pain and pleasure, particularly when it comes to this sort of pain and pleasure.