Category Archives: Social Commentary

Open Access

…and its importance to the integrity and public trust in scientific institutions:

If scientists are reluctant to share their data with other scientists it’s very difficult to believe they will be happy to put it all in the public domain. But I think they should. And I don’t mean just chucking terabytes of uncalibrated raw data onto a website in such a way that it’s impossible to use for any practical purpose. I mean fully documented, carefully maintained databases containing raw data, analysis tools and processed data products.

You might think this is all a bit Utopian, but the practice of sharing data is already widespread in my own field, astrophysics, and there are already many public databases of the type I’ve described. An exemplar is the excellent LAMBDA site which is a repository for data arising from research into the cosmic microwave background. Most astrophysical research publications from all around the world are also available, free of charge, at the arXiv.

So astrophysics is already much more open than most other fields, to the extent that it has already made the traditional model of publication and dissemination virtually redundant. I hope other disciplines follow this lead, because if researchers can’t find a way to break free from the shackles placed on them by the current system, the fragile relationship between science and society – already frayed by episodes like the University of East Anglia email scandal – may disintegrate entirely.

The problem is that astrophysics, unlike climate “science,” doesn’t have a political agenda, so he’s obviously making an unreasonable request.

Screw The Earth

…and screw Earth Day:

Once you realize this, everything changes. You no longer worry about the earth running out of energy resources, because you realize there are no energy resources — there never were — there are only various forms of matter that our minds, the mind of man, transformed into energy resources for our pleasure and convenience. These will never run out as long as we’re here because the mind is limitless and will invent more.

You no longer worry about pollution, because you know that once free people become annoyed by it, other free people will fix it with cleaner fuel-burning methods and filters. Where are the pea soups of London? Where are the smogs of Los Angeles? Where are the snows of yesteryear? All right, I was just curious about that last one.

You no longer worry about the earth, because the earth is here for us, not the other way around. The earth is just our living space — for now. We should keep it reasonably clean and pleasant. But a carping obsession with spotless housekeeping turns you into a scolding fishwife — or an environmentalist — and makes life less comfortable for man, not more.

I’m a lifelong outdoorsman. I hike. I fish. I run through the woods acting out scenes from Lady Chatterly’s Lover. Or I did before the restraining order. I understand that a reasonable caution for the good of the environment should balance the profit motive of those excellent people who provide us with all the wonderful energy we need. I believe we can begin to achieve that reasonable caution by burying every environmentalist we can find up to his neck and then pouring honey on his head to attract the ants. You like ants, don’t you? So there’s a good way to celebrate Earth Day!

I love ants. And the “environmentalists” don’t love the earth as much as they hate humanity.

I celebrate Earth Day by working hard to spread humanity beyond it.

Colombian Prostitutes

Gee, I would have expected them to be much more attractive. They wouldn’t be worth the money or risk to me. Now I think even less of those secret service agents.

[Update a while later]

Mark Steyn has some caustic and appropriately snarky thoughts:

Cartagena’s most famous “escort” costs $800. For purposes of comparison, you can book Eliot Spitzer’s “escort” for $300. Yet, on the cold grey fiscally conservative morning after the wild socially liberal night before, Dania’s Secret Service agent offered her a mere $28.

Twenty-eight bucks! What a remarkably precise sum. Thirty dollars less a federal handling fee? Why isn’t this guy Obama’s treasury secretary or budget director? Or, at the very least, the head honcho of the General Services Administration, whose previous director has sadly had to step down after the agency’s taxpayer-funded public-servants-gone-wild Bacchanal in Vegas.

All over this dying republic, you couldn’t find a single solitary $28 item that doesn’t wind up costing at least 800 bucks by the time it’s been sluiced through the federal budgeting process. Yet, in one plucky little corner of the Secret Service, supervisor David Chaney, dog-handler Greg Stokes, or one of the other nine agents managed to turn the principles of government procurement on their head. If the same fiscal prudence were applied to the 2011 Obama budget, the $3.598 trillion splurge would have cost just shy of $126 billion. The feds’ half a billion to Solyndra would have been a mere $18 million. The 823-grand GSA conference on government efficiency at the M Resort Spa & Casino would have come in at $28,805.

Chaney-Stokes 2012! Grope . . . and Change! Red lights, not red ink.

Go read the whole thing.

Random Thoughts

“Obama ate a dog” edition. This is like a permanent employment act for people like Jim Treacher and Frank J. And of course, the inevitable Dogs Against Obama web site.

[Late morning update]

Just when did the presidents stop eating dogs? Treacher’s having way too much fun with this.

[Update a few minutes later]

Why Barack Obama identifies with the dog eaters. The rest of us are just bitter, clinging to our provincial American cuisine.

Spacefaring

Is space more like seafaring or aviation? It started out like the latter, but the former is a better model once we actually get serious about it.

[Update a while later]

Meteor craters, dinosaurs and spacefaring.

Actually, while I do think it’s a federal responsibility to keep an eye out for impactors, it’s not clear that it’s NASA’s job. It’s one of the things we need a Space Guard for.