The Grey Lady discovers Mark Rippetoe.
It occurs to me that like diet (and climate change), the field of exercise is rife with junk science, because there’s a lot of money to be made on it.
Category Archives: Social Commentary
The Climate Debate
Over at First Things, John Murdock has some thoughts (including a discussion of me, Mark and the Mann suit), but there is also a howler:
Big decisions, whether in the life of a person or a nation often boil down to trust. America has been hemming and hawing for a while now, trying to decide if the 97 percent or so of climate scientists who say we have a big manmade problem are looking out for our best interest or are self-serving quacks.
Sorry, but this number has been debunked multiple times. It is simply false that 97% of scientists say that we have a “big manmade problem.” You can only get to such a ridiculous number by watering down what the “consensus” is about. Most scientists (including me) believe that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas. Period. Once you get beyond that, to whether or not we are causing a significant change in the climate with emissions, let alone whether or not the results will be catastrophic, and need to be addressed with immediate public policy, the “consensus” falls completely apart. Anyone who believes in that nonsensus needs to go read this.
On Memorial Day
Roger Simon says “Blame me for everything.”
I think he’s being a little too hard on himself. As he says, he was young.
The first (and last) year I was eligible for the draft, I had a high number. If I’d gotten a notice, I’d have likely joined the Air Force, though my vision would have prevented me from being a pilot.
Elliot Rodger
The Left politicizes him.
It’s what they do, it’s who they are. And as usual, the perp turns out to be one of them. And as a bonus, there’s this:
Beyond that, some might argue that Rodger was a prototypical liberal male, only carried to a pathological extreme. Consider the profile: socially awkward, convinced of his own brilliance but not notably successful in life, hungry for revenge against those who have done better despite their obvious inferiority, eager to gain power over others, but through political influence rather than firearms–is this not a typical liberal on Twitter, or elsewhere on the internet? Or, for that matter, in the Obama administration? Isn’t state power the legal path to the long-awaited revenge of the liberal nerds? This strikes me as a plausible suggestion.
Me, too.
I have to say, though, that it might help if we didn’t give him so much notoriety. In this case, though, it might not have mattered.
The Problem With Software
It’s quite the depressing read.
What To Do About The VA Scandal
I wrote in passing yesterday that if President Obama or the people of this country had any self-respect, he’d resign over the scandal of the Veterans Affairs hospitals, which needlessly sentenced an unknown number of American veterans to death through their combination of managerial incompetence, medical malpractice, and monstrously cruel indifference to their clients. Other heads of government have resigned for less. President Obama presented himself to the public as an authority in the field of health-care management and as an executive who not only would insist upon but also would in fact achieve the highest standards in transparent, honest, competent government. He has failed, comprehensively. An honest man acknowledges his failures.
We know from years of experience now that the president is the very antithesis of an honest man. And in his own self delusion, he considers himself indispensable.
[Update a couple minutes later]
The failure of socialized medicine:
Many have wondered about Barack Obama’s prolonged silence concerning the disastrous situation at the Veterans Administration hospitals and then his odd detached demeanor (well, maybe not that odd for him) when he finally did discuss it at a press conference.
The answer is simple. His lifetime dream of a free public (single payer) healthcare system for all just disintegrated in front of him. Forget the wildly ambitious and pervasive “Affordable Care Act,” the government couldn’t even handle the health of our wounded servicemen, acknowledged for years to be by far the group most deserving of medical attention in our country. With veterans dying while waiting lists are falsified, it’s hard to see government healthcare as anything but incompetent, disgraceful and quite possibly criminal.
Government has failed utterly. Does anyone have any doubt that Halliburton or even the dreaded Koch brothers could have better handled the health of our wounded warriors? Probably almost any business would have. There at least would have been some accountability. (It’s interesting to see the quaint Bernie Sanders, the one self-described socialist in the Congress, as opposed to the closeted ones, being the most outspoken defender of VA malfeasance and urging us not to “rush to judgement” on a three page bill.)
But it’s not just healthcare, although it’s certainly prominent, important and symbolic. The Obama administration has been the best advertisement for libertarianism across the board in recent memory.
Well, we’ll see what happens this fall.
Why Our Political System Is Screwed
…in one basic chart.
The voters no longer pick the politicians; the politicians pick the voters.
Of course, we also suffer from the “I hate Congress but I like my Congressperson” syndrome.
Killed By Safety
In the book, I describe how a launch abort system could end up killing the crew on an otherwise-nominal flight. Here’s a real-life example of someone who was killed by a safety device.
I recall that my late grandmother (she’d be almost a hundred and twenty now if she’d lived) refused to wear a seat belt, because she was afraid she’d end up being trapped in the car.
The Tree Rings Of Pyongyang
The latest from Mark Steyn.
Sexbots
Will they put human prostitutes out of business?
This sort of begs the question of what will be a sexbot and what will be a human in the future.