Category Archives: Social Commentary
A Deadly Accident In Space
There will be one:
You might depart the theater after Gravity with mixed emotions about going to space yourself. Cuaron’s tracking shots and sweeping vistas of the blue marble below evoke a sort of spiritual response, especially in the spaces between suspense when the movie gets quiet. Of course, the Bullock and Clooney spend much of the film spinning and flailing in mortal danger, dodging hunks of metal that become ballistic missiles at orbital speed. Jones sees Gravity as appearing amid a rising wave of interest in space brought on by the emerging private space industry, and that’s a hopeful trend. But humanity has to be realistic about risk assessment, and ready for the high drama of trying to rescue space travelers after a disaster in orbit. Perhaps when space travel becomes common, and not simply the domain of professional astronauts, we’ll treat space disasters like plane crashes—tragedies that can be made extremely uncommon, but never eliminated. And that will be a good thing.
Yes. That’s the fundamental premise of my book.
Manual Transmissions
Cars that only come with them. They aren’t dead yet.
Peer Review
“…is sick and collapsing under its own weight.”
The biggest problem, he says, is the anonymity granted to reviewers, who are often competing fiercely for priority with authors they are reviewing. “What would be their reason to do it quickly?” Tracz asks. “Why would they not steal” ideas or data?
Anonymous review, Tracz notes, is the primary reason why months pass between submission and publication of findings. “Delayed publishing is criminal; it’s nonsensical,” he says. “It’s an artifact from an irrational, almost religious belief” in the peer-review system.
Climaquiddick was a particularly egregious case of it, but the whole system is broken. And this is what leads to so much crap science, not just in climate, but in nutrition and other areas. It doesn’t get properly reviewed or argued.
The Low-Info Voters
…finally find out about ObamaCare.
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
The Range-Rover-Chasing Bikers
Why they look like idiots.
I think it’s because they are idiots. And as Glenn notes, if they tried this some place where guns were legal, they’d have likely been shot, with full justification. Which might have a tendency to discourage this kind of idiocy.
America’s Greatest Days Lie Ahead
.Seventies Television And Hairstyles
I’d forgotten how awful they were. Lileks reminds us.
Unhappy Anniversary
A hundred years of the federal income tax. One of the most disastrous fruits of the “Progressive” era. We got rid of Prohibition (at least for alcohol, but then replaced it with other drugs), but we still have that one.
[Update a while later after the Instatweet]
Link was missing before. Sorry!
More thoughts from Dan Mitchell, who thinks that this may be the anniversary of the worst day in American history.
Shutdown Fascism Wins In The Smokies
A first-hand report from Bob Zimmerman:
…we still plan to hike in Great Smoky National Park, but we have chosen a trail where we can park outside the park on private land and then hike into the park. We intend to defy any ranger we meet who tries to stop us, but by not putting a vehicle in a vulnerable position under their control, we give them less power over us in such circumstances.
Finally, I want to make one more point. This is the United States of America, supposedly “the land of the free and the home of the brave.” Yet, in my essay above I describe how American citizens are either hiding from or protecting themselves from agents of our government, even though they have done nothing wrong. When I was growing up such behavior was unthinkable. Not only was no one afraid of the federal government, if a federal agent or federal elected official tried to impose such restrictions on Americans they knew they would be in big trouble, almost instantly. Thus, they were very careful to respect the rights of the citizens, and such oppressive behavior was rare.
Today, however, such behavior is becoming common. And it carries no bad consequences for the government and officials who do it. One would think this was the Soviet Union, not America.
People have to understand that they have elected people who don’t like America. They want to “fundamentally transform it.” And we’ve been letting them.
More at The American Thinker.
[Update a few minutes later]
Scott Walker is pushing back against this fascist idiocy.