..is a “Faustian bargain“?
Really?
This is ridiculous. The wealthy have always had more access to better medical treatment, and always will. That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t develop new medical treatments.
Category Archives: Technology and Society
The Right To Bear Arms
…is not up for debate:
When debating the wisdom of the Constitution’s Second Amendment, the media tends to start from the presumption that the question is purely scientific, and that the answers can — and should — be derived from statistical analyses and relentless experimentation. This approach is mistaken. The right of the people to keep and bear arms is not the product of the latest research fads or exquisitely tortured “data journalism,” but a natural extension of the Lockean principles on which this country was founded. It must be protected as such.
…Reacting to this argument, we often hear advocates of gun control propose that the Founders’ observations are irrelevant because they could “not have imagined the modern world.” I agree with the latter assertion: They couldn’t have. As well-read in world history as they were, there is no way that they could have foreseen just how prescient they were in insisting on harsh limitations of government power. In their time, “tyranny” was comparatively soft — their complaints focused on under-representation and the capricious restriction of ancient rights. In the past century, by contrast, tyranny involved the systematic execution of entire groups and the enslavement of whole countries. The notion that if James Madison had foreseen the 20th century he would have concluded that the Bill of Rights was too generous is laughable.
Nor could the Founders have imagined the entrenched tyranny that would arise in their own country. Washington, Jefferson, Madison and Company were hypocrites, certainly — like so many at the time they spoke of equality and liberty while indulging slavery — but the generation that met at Philadelphia did at least consider that the institution would die out peacefully. Instead, it was abolished only by bloody force, and then transmuted into something almost as abhorrent.
And as he notes, proposals for gun control have always been profoundly racist, and remain so.
[Update a while later]
Related: The historical African-American tradition of firearms.
[Afternoon update]
No, the right to bear arms isn’t absolute. So what?
My “New Job”
Thanks for the congratulations, but despite what LinkedIn is telling you, I don’t have one. I just updated my profile to reflect the LLC I set up a couple years ago. LinkedIn isn’t smart enough to figure out that when I add something I’ve been doing for a couple years, it’s not something new.
Mark Steyn’s Testimony
There will probably be some reportage of yesterday’s hearing, but Anthony Watts has his written testimony.
[Update a while later]
Bishop Hill has the video of Mark shredding the climate fascists on the committee.
[Update a couple minutes later]
Here is the video: A State Ideology.
[Update a few minutes later]
Here’s the story from Michael Bastasch.
[Late-morning update]
Here’s some whining at The Hill by some idiot from Texas, who thinks that Judith Curry is a “denier.”
The Future Of Commercial Spaceflight
An interview with Jeff Greason, at Space.com.
Peer Review
(From a surprising source) let’s stop pretending that it works.
They can’t do that. It cuts the legs from under one of the primary weapons they use against critics of catastrophic anthropogenic climate change.
[Update a few minutes later]
Related: Senator Cruz’s climate hearing with Judith Curry, John Christie, Mark Steyn et all is today at noon PST. Get out the popcorn.
Crybullies
…are narcissistic, and mostly female.
But wait! I thought feminists told us that it’s women who are oppressed!
San Bernardino Could Have Been Prevented
…but at what cost? My thoughts on the latest battle in Islam’s war with us.
How To Get Excommunicated In Climate Science
Thoughts on Judith Curry, from Matthias Shapiro.
[Friday-morning update]
The post seems to have disappeared. I’ll ask him what the deal is.
NASA And LEO
NASA Watch has a draft of the NAC statement on LEO operations and ISS transition. It’s as though it’s posted from an alternate reality:
Even after a shift of focus to cis-lunar space and beyond has occurred, NASA may need to maintain some capability to get astronauts into low Earth orbit. If the Agency concludes that such a capability is necessary, it would be unwise to assume the existence of commercial demand for human access to LEO that may or may not materialize. Taking steps to encourage commercial activity in LEO may not be adequate to guarantee a successful transition.
So WTF is this supposed to mean? By NASA “maintaining some capability,” do they mean on a NASA owned/operated rocket? When Commercial Crew is operational (and there is zero reason to believe that won’t happen, regardless of how much Congress attempts to delay it with budget cuts), that will be how NASA gets its astronauts into LEO. Even in the very unlikely event that no commercial demand emerges, that capability will remain in place for as long as NASA wants to use it, at a much lower cost than NASA has ever gotten anyone into space. So can someone on the NAC explain to me what this word salad means? What are they proposing? Because if they’re proposing SLS/Orion, that’s economically insane.