The Economist has a lengthy story on what’s going on in the space industry up there.
Depressed Obama?
I don’t know if this is true, but if so, that sound you hear from me is the world’s tiniest violin.
Ender’s Game
Jon Goff has some gripes (with spoilers) about the movie.
I haven’t read the book in a third of a century, so I wasn’t as bothered by some of those things as he was. As he notes, in retrospect, it’s probably a mistake to read the book just before seeing the movie. If you haven’t read it, it would probably be better to watch the movie first.
The Pump-Repair EVAs
For the record, I want to commend NASA on its willingness to send astronauts out when they still have an unknown problem with the EMU. Fixing the ISS justifies the risk.
Is Safety Stifling Space Development?
In which I’m interviewed by Popular Mechanics about the book. Which can be purchased on the button over to the leftright.
[Update a few minutes later]
I’d forgotten that it was on the right in the new template.
Coal Versus Eco-Bullies
It has to engage in an all-out, unapologetic war.
Yes, call them out for the unscientific ideologues that they are.
The EPA On Trial
An amicus brief has been filed against the agency. Bottom line: the purpose of the Clean Air Act was to deal with local air-quality issues, not mythical global ones. The SCOTUS’s previous ruling was a terrible one, based on what can now be seen to be junk science.
Stifling Climate Dissent
How Reddit has discredited itself with censorship.
Fighting A Fire With Kerosene
Somehow, this situation seems like a metaphor for Democrat policies.
The “Benefits” Of ObamaCare
The U.S. Supreme Court held that the Congress exceeded its authority by “mandating” the purchase of health insurance, but it saved the law by construing the mandate as a tax on being uninsured. Being surprised that the uninsured would object to such a tax is like being surprised that yacht owners would object to George H.W. Bush’s luxury tax on yachts.
In short, what ObamaCare means to the uninsured who were not uninsurable is higher prices for a product they already were disinclined to buy, along with a punitive tax on not buying it. That seems more like a mugging than a benefit.
How many of the uninsured lack insurance because of pre-existing conditions? It’s hard to know, but it would appear the proportion is not high. A September Kaiser Family Foundation study reported that “the high cost of insurance is the main reason why people go without coverage.” It includes a pie chart with the following breakdown of reasons for lacking insurance: Insurance not affordable, 31.6%; lost job, 29.4%; other, 17.4%; no offer, 11.2%; aged out/left school, 8.8%; no need, 1.5%.
Arguably the problem of the uninsurable was a market failure that justified government intervention of some sort. If ObamaCare’s architects had approached the matter intelligently, they would have conducted research to identify the extent of that precise problem and carefully targeted their response. Government is quite capable of implementing even modest programs disastrously, but the hubris of demanding “comprehensive reform” gave us a law that had to be marketed via massive consumer fraud, and that harms almost everyone it affects.
The next time this clown circus approaches any policy issue intelligently will be the first.