No, it’s not a myth.
Category Archives: Social Commentary
Gamergate
The SJWs have lost the moral high ground, and are on the run.
And of course, this is one of the ways of bypassing the Leftist gatekeepers.
Joe Biden
…his serious problem.
J. D. Tuccille isn’t impressed, either.
What amazes me is that there are non-lobotomized (AFAIK) people who seriously talk about Biden as a prez candidate. http://t.co/j80AEQVzNm
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) February 18, 2015
Tragedy In New Hampshire
What in the world were they thinking?
Climate Skeptics
How and when did you become one?
A lot of interesting responses.
As some note there, to me the biggest deal with the release of the CRU data five years ago wasn’t (just) the duplicity and unscientific behavior revealed in the emails, but the utter crap that was the source code of the computer models. It was clear that it was not done by anyone familiar with computer science, numerical methods, or modeling, and the notion that we should have any confidence whatsoever in their output was societally insane. In terms of Matthews’ paper, I’d put myself somewhere between “lukewarmer” and “moderate skeptic.”
[Update a couple minutes later]
Starting to read through the comments. Here’s just one horror story:
Most of the claims being made by climate change advocates appear to run contrary to basic meteorology. As I’ve been attacked personally and professionally for offering contrary views, I decided to leave the field. I will defend my Atmospheric Science PhD thesis and walk away. It’s become clear to me that it is not possible to undertake independent research in any area that touches upon climate change if you have to make your living as a professional scientist on government grant money or have to rely on getting tenure at a university. The massive group think that I have encountered on this topic has cost me my career, many colleagues and has damaged my reputation among the few people I know in the field. I’m leaving to work in the financial industry. It’s a sad day when you feel that you have to leave a field that you are passionately interested in because you fear that you won’t be able to find a job once your views become widely known. Until free thought is allowed in the climate sciences, I will consider myself a skeptic of catastrophic human induced global warming.
Yup. Totally, totally politicized. It’s not a science any more. Unless you think that Lysenko was a scientist.
Scott Walker
…could usefully break the national myth about our “Ivy League elites.”
Actually, it’s only a myth among the self-proclaimed “elites.” I don’t think the country at large has ever bought into it.
Jon Stewart
Kyle Smith isn’t as impressed with him as we’re supposed to be:
Though Stewart has often claimed he does a “fake news show,” “The Daily Show” isn’t that. It’s a real news show punctuated with puns, jokes, asides and the occasional moment of staged sanctimony.
It contains real, unstaged sound bites about the days’ events and interviews about important policy matters.
Stewart is a journalist: an irresponsible and unprofessional one.
Yes, as Jim Treacher put it, the “clown nose off, clown nose on” schtick got pretty tiresome. The tears of all those bewailing his departure are delicious.
A Hate Crime In Wisconsin
…that police can’t figure out whether it’s a “hate crime.”
But remember, Islamaphobia is always about to break out any minute.
The Tulsa Totalitarians
This is outrageous:
Without affording him the hearing he was entitled to under TU’s University Student Conduct Policies & Procedures, and despite his husband’s affidavit, Tanaka found Barnett responsible for “harassment.” Tanaka also found Barnett guilty of retaliation and violating confidentiality requirements for speaking about the disciplinary charges with his husband—who was also his exculpatory witness.
Less than two months before Barnett was set to graduate, Tanaka not only suspended him until at least 2016 but also permanently banned him from receiving a degree in his major even upon his re-enrollment. Barnett was forced to wait two months for TU to respond to his appeal, which the university summarily denied on January 9 without explanation—leaving Barnett unable to earn his theater degree as planned.
I don’t think a theater degree is worth all that much, but he probably paid a lot for it, and he should at a minimum be reimbursed (though one can’t give him back the lost years of his life). But actually, as Glenn notes, this insanity won’t end until universities suffer legal and financial severe pain for it.
The Sunk-Cost Fallacy
…in love, and automobile manufacturing.
This is a big problem for space enthusiasts. “Oh, we can’t cancel SLS/Orion! We’ve already spent so much on them, all that money would just go to waste!”
Well, since the purpose was really never anything except to maintain the work force, it wouldn’t really have gone to waste, and continuing them would waste even more, if our actual goal is to do useful things in space. We need to cut our losses as soon as politically possible.