Category Archives: Science And Society

The Power Habit

Can politicians quit it?

When the history of the Covid-19 pandemic is written, the names of many drugs — Paxlovid, fluvoxamine, sotrovimab — will be mentioned. But the account will be incomplete if the distorting effect of the most powerful and addictive drug of all, political power, is omitted. The public, out of fear, gave politicians enormous power. What we’re about to see, the world over, is whether they can take it back.

We are in dangerous times.

Physical Child Abuse

in NYC public schools:

Adams’s gag-inducing new policy of swapping out food for colon-blow roughage and mashed yeast is a declaration of food war. As if we didn’t have enough wars going on— the woke wars, the COVID wars, the language wars and the info wars and the streaming wars. The hell with peas, give peace a chance.

It’s also a religious war: Eric (like Bill Clinton, another member of the militant vegan brigades) used to be fat, got thin, and is now an evangelist for the cause. Good for you, Eric! But don’t force your cauliflower patties and cheese-less tacos on the kids. It’s been a horrible two years for them: haven’t they suffered enough?

Or is this just a back door way of ensuring they don’t take their masks off even at lunch, because no one wants to eat yam stew?

I wonder how many New Yorkers are fine with this? Or if it will result in more emigration to Florida?

To Mars Or Not To Mars?

That is the question at this Oxford debate this evening (in a couple hours, sorry about the short notice).

[Update toward the end of the debate]

As I’ve noted in the past, debates like this are pointless, because they are a false choice based on a false premise. We don’t have to choose between populating Mars and saving the planet; we have abundant resources for both. The false premise is that this is going to be a collective decision whose outcome will be determined by an Oxford debate. People who go to Mars will be doing so with their own money, so people on Earth who oppose it are going to have to make it illegal to prevent it. There is a word for people like that: jailers.