This is good social advice, I think, particularly for people on the spectrum.
Category Archives: Social Commentary
Why Fiorina Outrages The Left
She has “exposed another socialist bone heap.” They don’t take well to having their mass murder exposed.
And the comparison with Solzhenitsyn is quite apt.
[Wednesday-morning update]
Remember that time the Left said that Fiorina lied about the video? I know you’ll find this shocking, but they lied.
[Bumped]
[Update mid-afternoon]
Thoughts on Planned Parenthood: Our summer of Omelas:
In 1973, award-winning science fiction author Ursula Le Guin published a very short story-essay titled “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas.” It described a dreamlike summer festival in Omelas, a beautiful city that embodies everyone’s utopia, a magical place where everyone was joyful, a place where sorrow never touched the citizens or guests. But beneath that city lay a secret: all its joy and pleasure depended on the suffering and misery of a single lonely, abused child living in a filthy basement. If that child were saved, all of Omelas would fall, its beauty and perfection lost.
The citizens of Omelas, when they reached a certain age, were taken below to view the child so that they might understand their civilization. Most rationalized the suffering, as was encouraged: the child was mentally defective anyway, it could never be happy now if taken out, it was incapable of appreciating the beauty of the world like others. Only a few could not bear the truth, but instead of removing the child and Omelas be damned, they walked away, leaving for parts unknown.
America has had a summer of Omelas.
[Update a few minutes later[
Democrats: The party of abortion, not the party of women.
That link via Elizabeth Price Foley, who adds:
Moreover, never mind that Republicans are spearheading the effort to make birth control pills more widely available by classifying them as over-the-counter–something the Democrats and Planned Parenthood vehemently oppose. And never mind that Republicans wish to expand access to all kinds of women’s medical care–not just abortion and contraception–by expanding funding for community health centers. None of that fits with the Democrats’ “war on women” label, so it can’t be too widely discussed.
If the Republicans in Congress were smart (a big if, I know), they would start talking about the Democrats’ “war on birth control” and “war on women’s health.”
Don’t hold your breath. They’re stupid.
Filthy Meatbag Bodies On Mars
As Keith Cowing points out, the Planetary Society is in no hurry to put anyone on the surface of the Red Planet. They want to do Apollo to Mars, but take almost three and a half decades before the first boots on Mars, and almost four decades before long-term habitation. Though Firouz Naderi claims that keeping it under the cost limit makes it more likely, I’d say that it is doomed to failure. Something that takes that long, accomplishes so little, for so much money, is unsustainable in a democratic Republic. This is why Apollo to Mars is doomed in general. I’m discussing this in the Kickstarter project. We need to have a different approach, starting with an end to the phrase “space exploration” as the reason we send humans into space.
[Update a couple minutes later]
Here’s the link to the report. I’m reading it now, hoping it will have some useful cost data from Aerospace.
[Update a while later]
Even Chris Carberry recognizes that we won’t ever get another “Kennedy moment.” I’m not sure, though, how one “stays the course” to Mars, when there is no course.
[Late-morning update]
Over at Sarah Hoyt’s place NASA employee Les Johnson proposes (wait for it) Apollo to Mars.
It is not going to happen, and it should not happen.
What You’re Doing Wrong On The Highway
I’ve seen many people do many stupid things around trucks.
Coffee
…is turning out to be an unlikely elixir.
It’s the only reason I choke down the swill every morning.
And please, no recommendations about how I’m just not making it properly. I’ve had lots of coffee from people who assure me that it is how coffee should taste. It always tastes like coffee to me (i.e., terrible).
Bill De Blasio
Richard Gere: “He doesn’t appear to have the solutions that everyone thought.”
Not everyone, Richard. Only fools like you.
Trump Versus Fiorina
Who is the better businessperson?
I don’t really care, but it’s pretty clear to me that Fiorina would be a much better president. She’s at least willing to do her homework. And she’s not a boor with the mentality of a grade-school kid.
[Update a few minutes later]
It won’t change my vote, but this is the first coherent (and apparently long standing) position that Trump has taken with which I agree: A nationwide-ban on gun-ownership restrictions.
Yes, its a fundamental human and civil right.
[Tuesday-morning update]
I’m not generally a big Vox fan, but Timothy Lee has some interesting facts about Fiorina and her career.
[Bumped]
[Late Wednesday-morning update]
Defining Fiorina. Interesting discussion in comments.
[Bumped]
How To Become Less Racist
I honestly couldn’t tell whether or not this was satire until I looked at some of their other articles. I could easily imagine such a theory coming out of our vaunted “studies” departments.
The Lamentations Of The SJWs
What miserable lives these people must lead.
Hiatus Revisionism
Judith Curry: “I have been expecting to start seeing papers on the ‘hiatus is over.’ Instead I am seeing papers on ‘the hiatus never happened.’ Here is a collection of new papers on the hiatus, ranging from sense to nonsense.”