Sadly, this reminds me of the saga of the M-16. Like NASA, the military can be as stupidly incompetent and politically driven as any other government bureaucracy. Unfortunately, we don’t have much of an alternative.
The Little Blue Book
Quotations from Chairman Lakoff:
Lakoff does something throughout the book which he must think is very clever, but which is completely transparent to the reader, making for a truly cringe-worthy experience. Lakoff has two public personas: First, he is a scientist; and second, he is a partisan political advocate. He understands that when he speaks as a partisan, we the readers necessarily take what he says with a grain of salt; but when he speaks as a scientist, we are expected to accept his statements as objective truth. Throughout the book, he constantly switches back and forth between the two personas: He’ll speak for a paragraph or two as a liberal activist advising Democratic candidates and pundits, then he’ll take off that hat and put on the linguist hat to say something “official”; then switch back to his liberal hat, and so on. I guess the temptation was too great to resist abusing this dual role, because he makes a habit — a career, actually — of putting on his scientist hat and then making partisan statements, which he passes off as impartial facts. I can only imagine that he thinks he’s getting away with it, but the gambit is so glaringly obvious that it makes you almost embarrassed for the guy.
Ignoring the ultimate intellectual and moral bankruptcy of their ideas, leftists’ biggest problem in convincing intelligent people is their utter lack of self awareness. Read the whole thing. It’s advice to double down on failure.
This Is What Pseudoscience Looks Like
My thoughts on the latest attempts of the warm mongers to hijack the weather to advance their political agenda, over at PJMedia.
[Update a few minutes later]
June 2012 temperatures are not that remarkable.
[Update a while later]
Well, this is disappointing. Joel Achenbach has fallen prey to the myth.
The Zimmerman Media Lynching
Political Particle Physics
Iowahawk reports on a new pseudoscientific breakthough:
The landmark experiment in Quantum Rhetoric began early this week after legal particle cosmologist John Roberts published a paper in the Quarterly Journal of Tortured Logic that solved the long-debated Pelosi’s Paradox in Universal Health Care Theory.
“Pelosi’s Paradox states that in order to find out what is in a health care bill, it would have to be passed,” explained physicist Steven Hawking. “But in order to be a law it would have to be constitutional, which means someone would have to know what was in it, which would mean it couldn’t have been a bill in the first place. Think of Schroedinger’s Cat, except with a lobotomy.”
Actually, I don’t think that Nancy Pelosi has the requisite equipment for a lobotomy.
Post-Credentialism
Some thoughts on the higher-education mess from Phil Bowermaster.
So Much For Peak Oil
This is an amazing chart. Not that it makes sense economically, but we can be “energy independent” any time we decide to be.
Judging A Book By Its Cover
How to attract teens to the classics.
XCOR’s Move To Texas
Jeff Foust reports that it’s not a move — it’s an expansion:
“XCOR sees this as an expansion opportunity,” a source familiar with the deal said in a phone interview today, emphasizing that XCOR would be expanding to Midland, not moving there entirely from Mojave. “They plan on maintaining a presence in Mojave. This is all about growth.”
More details are expected at a press conference Monday at 3 pm EDT in Midland featuring XCOR and local officials. Some open questions about the planned deal include the timing of XCOR’s arrival in Midland and whether Midland International Airport plans to seek a launch site operator’s license (aka spaceport license) from the FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation, which would be needed if XCOR planned to conduct test of operational Lynx flights from the airport. (There’s also the issue of integrating a flight test program into the normal operations of a commercial airport like Midland’s; one of Mojave’s strengths is that it is well-suited to experimental aircraft and spacecraft tests.)
So it sounds like they’ll keep Lynx development in Mojave, and not disrupt it with a move.
But still, if California wasn’t the worst place to do business in the country, they’d be happy to grow there instead. But until that changes, all of their growth is likely to be into other states. And California will continue to circle the drain economically.
Jobs Report Commentary
Twitchy is on the case.