Why do I need one when I have a smartphone?
Here’s one they missed. If you’re taking a picture of something of which the subject doesn’t want a picture taken, and he grabs or smashes your camera, at least you’ll still have your phone. You should probably carry a cheaper one for that sort of thing, though.
The latest issue of Space Safety Magazine is dedicated to it. I disagree with Andrea’s take here, though:
The focus of commercial space is very much on cost-cutting, while vague assurances are made about safer vehicles. Sometimes safety is even presented as a stubborn obstacle to industry development and progress [I plead guilty as charged – RS]. The commercial human spaceflight industry needs to remember that the primary goal of the Shuttle Program was cutting the cost of transportation to orbit by an order of magnitude, a goal at which it failed miserably. As with the supersonic Concorde, the Shuttle was doomed by being both expensive and unsafe. Being expensive made it in turn unaffordable to undertake any further development or safety modification. But even being expensive to operate did not stop either the Shuttle or Concorde from operating for about 30 years. What ultimately ended these programs was their inadequate safety.
Probably true for Concorde, but not for Shuttle. As I write in the book: Continue reading The Columbia Disaster
We never intended a fundamentalist Green movement that rejected all energy sources other than renewable, nor did we expect the Greens to cast aside our priceless ecological heritage because of their failure to understand that the needs of the Earth are not separable from human needs. We need take care that the spinning windmills do not become like the statues on Easter Island, monuments of a failed civilisation.
What he doesn’t (or at least didn’t) understand is that they want civilization, and humanity itself, to fail.
The Blue elites are wrong:
It is easy to see how rational people can conclude that the only hope of preserving mass prosperity in America comes from transfers and subsidies. If we add to this the belief that only a powerful and intrusive regulatory state can prevent destructive climate change, then the case for the blue utopia looks ironclad. To save the planet, save the middle class and provide American minorities and single mothers with the basic elements of an acceptable life, we must set up a far more powerful federal government than we have ever known, and give it sweeping powers over the production and distribution of wealth.
But what if this isn’t true? What if the shift from a late-stage industrial economy to an information economy has a different social effect? What if the information revolution continues and even accelerates the democratization of political, social and cultural life by empowering ordinary people? What if the information revolution, like the industrial revolution, ultimately leads to a radical improvement in the way ordinary people live and opens up vast new horizons of human potential and freedom?
Obviously nobody knows what the future holds, and anything anybody says about the social consequences of the information revolution is mostly conjecture; still, the elegantly paternalistic pessimism of our elites about the future of the masses seems both defeatist and overdone. The information revolution, one should never forget, may be disruptive but more fundamentally it is good news. Human productivity is rising dramatically. If the bad news is that fewer and fewer people will earn a living working in factories, the good news is that a smaller and smaller percentage of the time and energy of the human race must be devoted to the manufacture of the material objects we need for daily life. Just as it’s good news overall when agricultural productivity increases and the majority of the human race no longer has to spend its time providing food, it’s good news when we as a species can free ourselves from the drudgery and monotony of factory work.
Good news is bad news for people who don’t like (other people to have) freedom. They need a crisis to not waste.
Police stood in awe as gun enthusiasts and collectors waved wads of cash for the guns being held by those standing in line for the buyback program.
People that had arrived to trade in their weapons for $100 or $200 BuyBack gift cards($100 for handguns, shotguns and rifles, and $200 for assault weapons) soon realized that gun collectors were there and paying top dollar for collectible firearms. So, as the line for the chump cards got longer and longer people began to jump ship and head over to the dealers.
John Diaz, Seattle’s Police Chief, wasn’t pleased with the turn of events, stating “I’d prefer they wouldn’t sell them,” but admitted it’s perfectly legal for private individuals to buy and sell guns, FOR NOW.
For now.
Hilarious. And yes, I know that “idiotic gun buyback” is redundant.
[Update a couple minutes later]
Just to compound the idiocy, a commenter points out:
What a deal. Way better deal than the pawn shop. You can report your gun stolen. Then bring it in for buy back and get your gift card (no questions asked, right?). Then the police return it to you. What a brilliant use of Seattle’s money.
Brilliant indeed.
I’d pay money to watch this:
“If he is a skeet shooter, why have we not heard of this? Why have we not seen photos? Why hasn’t he referenced this at any point in time?” Blackburn said Monday on CNN’s “Erin Burnett OutFront.”
“I tell you what I do think,” she later added. “I think he should invite me to Camp David, and I’ll go skeet shooting with him and I bet I’ll beat him.”
Everyone out there who believes that Barack Obama shoots skeet, raise your hands.
Gee, I don’t feel much of a breeze from all the uplifted arms.
Bob Beckel asked a stupid (or misleading) question on The Five yesterday. “If the president wants to demonize gun owners, why is he saying he’s a likes to shoot guns?”
He wants to demonize people who use politically incorrect guns. You don’t shoot skeet with AR-15s (well, you could, but I don’t think it’s allowed in competition). He’s pretending he’s one of us (see, I like to shoot stuff, too!), while continuing the stupid attack on “assault weapons” (“I can have fund and, per Joe Biden, defend myself with a shotgun. That’s all that anyone should “need”).
Later, after we’re disarmed of the most militarily effective weapons, they’ll come after the shotguns. They play the long game.
[Update a while later]
Sadly, this seems relevant.
How our kids are being indoctrinated against the Constitution:
In a child’s imagination, a thumb and forefinger make a handy play gun. Some adults, however, see a fully cocked finger and their imaginations run wild. Maybe they imagine today’s finger-pointer coming back one day as a homicidal maniac and pointing a real gun at them. Maybe they see a future NRA member — another threat to their dream of a gun-free world. It’s obvious they don’t see a cop protecting them from robbers, or a soldier from our country’s enemies.
Punishing kids for finger guns has nothing to do with school safety; they know the difference between a finger and a gun as well as adults do. It has everything to do with “moral disarmament.”
What’s more, the idea of using schools as conditioning grounds is not new. Thomas Sowell discusses it at length in his 2009 book “Intellectuals and Society.” After the horrors of World War I, intellectuals of the time determined that “war” and “weapons,” not other nations, were the real enemies. They promoted both military disarmament and “disarming of the mind.”
And didn’t that work out well.
More and more, sending kids to public school seems to constitute child abuse.
…by an idiot “gender studies” professor. A male one.
These departments need to be the first to go when the academic bubble pops.
My petition is stuck at only forty-nine signatures. C’mon, folks, only three weeks or so left.
[Monday-morning update]
Wrong link. Fixed now, sorry.
Four rules. If you have time, watch the Ezra Levant clips.