Category Archives: Technology and Society
Cuomo’s Ban Of Assault Weapons
…is just as stupid and pointless as the federal ban was:
This bill is ostensibly a response to last month’s massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, where the shooter used a Bushmaster rifle that was legal under Connecticut’s “assault weapon” ban, which uses the same criteria as New York’s current law. Therefore the legislation Cuomo supports presumably will cover that particular model and configuration. But since the features disfavored by these laws have little or no functional significance in the hands of mass murderers, why should that be considered an accomplishment? “Of 769 homicides in New York State in 2011,” the Times notes, “only five were committed with rifles of any kind.” Even if one or more of those rifles would qualify as an “assault weapon” under Cuomo’s new definition, so what? Any “assault weapon” ban that is even arguably consistent with the Second Amendment will leave people like Adam Lanza with plenty of equally deadly alternatives.
Here is how Cuomo explains the need for new gun control laws: “I think what the nation is saying now after Connecticut, what people in New York are saying, is ‘do something, please.'” There’s no denying this is something.
“Something must be done! This is something. Therefore, it must be done!”
Leftist logic.
A Giant Squid
The first live footage.
Dreamliner Electrical Issues
This has implications for space transports. Even during the Shuttle program, we were always trying to figure out how to upgrade to electromechanical actuators, not only to save weight, but to eliminate the Auxiliary Power Unit that drove the hydraulics, whose hypergolic propellants made it a pain to service between flights. Modern vehicles will want to go this route, with the advances in battery and actuator technology, but there will probably be lessons learned from Boeing’s 787 travails.
Clueless Greens
We’re betting that this news won’t dent greens’ self-confidence. They will still insist that unless they are put in charge of the entire world economy we face disaster. The sad truth is that the more power they get, the more damage they do.
They don’t care about poor people. They don’t care about people at all, except themselves.
When Seconds Count
The FBI is years away.
Well, the head of the agency doesn’t even know how to use a computer.
She Did Everything Right
…and he still drove away.
It is not the government’s decision how we should defend ourselves from criminals. There is no more fundamental human right than the right to self defense.
Top 2012 (Non)Science Achievements
These are all interesting stories, but articles like this contribute to public confusion about what is science and what is not. Curiosity landing on Mars was a great technological achievement, but it wasn’t science, though it may (in fact will, and already has) produce some. Even less science are the Dragon flights to the ISS — again, this is about engineering, not science. And ending invasive research on chimps is a moral breakthrough, perhaps, but it’s not science. In some sense, in fact, it’s anti-science, if one removes ethics from the definition of science.
Only The US Has A Shale Boom
…and only the US has decreased its carbon emissions over the past half decade. And without cap’n’tax or mandates, and despite efforts by the Left to curtail the boom.
Starships And Wormholes
There’s an interesting new book