Now they’re trying to pretend that the Democrats weren’t totally on board with the Occupoopers.
[Update mid morning]
Obama’s coming Occupy nightmare.
Willpower
An interesting excerpt from a new book on Henry Morton Stanley. There are some lessons in here that will be valuable to space colonists.
Ethernet Wiring Bleg
What’s the chance that I have a bad RJ-45 jack? What’s the QC like on them? The one I’m using is similar to the one described here. I just put in a CAT-5e run, and can’t get it to work (about sixty-five feet). All the wires have continuity, and there don’t appear to be any shorts, but there’s no signal through the cable. Any ideas what the problem might be or how to troubleshoot?
Good News For Space Startups
And not just space startups: the House passed a bill to allow non-accredited investors to invest up to ten grand in startups. This would undo some of the damage caused by Sarbanes-Oxley, though that still needs to be repealed as well (one of the many disasters of the Bush administration). It would also be a huge improvement over decades-long SEC rules that have prevented space entrepreneurs from easily raising funds. And yes, of course, there will be some bad deals. Caveat emptor.
And of course, it isn’t law yet. It still has to get through the Senate and signed by the president. I won’t hold my breath.
Changing The Conversation
I agree with Stephen Hawking that it is important to expand humanity into the universe, but…:
Stephen Hawking says the colonization of outer space is key to the survival of humankind, predicting it will be difficult for the world’s inhabitants “to avoid disaster in the next hundred years.”
The renowned astrophysicist explores some of the most remarkable advancements in technology and health with the new U.K.-Canadian series “Brave New World With Stephen Hawking,” debuting Saturday on Discovery World HD.
Before its premiere, he discussed the earth’s most pressing concerns in an email interview with The Canadian Press from Cambridge, England, declaring space exploration to be humankind’s most urgent mission.
“We are entering an increasingly dangerous period of our history,” said Hawking, who has Lou Gehrig’s disease, leaving him almost completely paralyzed and unable to speak.
Please stop using the E-word as though it’s synonymous with space settlement. It is not. It is a means to an end, and as long as the focus stays on “exploration,” it is easy for opponents of sending humans into space to say, “it’s cheaper with robots.” Unless you believe that robots will be our mind children (as some do), humanity is not going to settle space with robots. Every time you are about to say the phrase “space exploration,” stop yourself, and replace it with “space settlement.”
As an aside, for those who followed the link to Wikipedia, Jimmie Wales is not Hans Moravec. He’s not a douche, either. Or maybe he is. That one’s a matter of opinion, I guess. Anyway, as The Oatmeal points out, you get some pretty hilarious Wikipedia pages when Wales is doing a fundraiser. He should move his face over to the right side of the page, or something.
What The Occupiers Believe And Why They Believe It
It’s indoctrination:
During the 2008 campaign, Obama’s critics often called him a “radical,” a “socialist” or even a “Marxist” and were either dismissed as hysterics or condemned for “McCarthyism.” It was not widely noted that, for those too young to remember America’s Cold War struggle against Soviet tyranny, the accusation of “Marxism” doesn’t carry much weight, while “McCarthyism” is at most something they’ve read about in books. (Stan Evans’s Blacklisted by History probably isn’t on the collegiate reading list.) Voters who were 25 in 2008 were in first grade when the Berlin Wall came down. If they have some idea that the Soviet empire was a bad thing, they have little idea of why it was bad. And this ignorance is no accident.
To explain why the Bolshevik experiment failed so spectacularly would require that students be taught the errors of socialism, which would necessarily require an explanation of the superiority of the market economy to the socialist planned economy. And the left-wing orientation of today’s academic establishment — “Down With Capitalist Education!” to quote a sign in a protest today by Cal State university faculty — pretty much prohibits any such explanation.
Seventeen-year-olds taught that they are “the 99 percent” and that advocates of economic freedom are “f–king up our future” have not been merely miseducated, but have been quite literally indoctrinated. But as Buckley said, they would be “outraged by the suggestion” that they have not arrived at their beliefs “by independent intellectual exertion.”
These young people have not been taught Marx and Lenin. Rather, they have had their heads stuffed with nebulous ideas about “equality,” “rights” and “social justice” by teachers (and journalists and movie producers) who cherish romantic mythology about the righteous glories of Sixties radical movements.
The other problem is that Marxism is an emotionally appealing argument, to those who have never been taught how to actually think.
[Update a while later]
“The putrid stench of a century of folk Marxism.”
Rick Perry Is An Idiot
At least based on his interview with O’Reilly.
No, the Occupy Wall Streeters are not looking for jobs, Rick. They’re looking for a big paycheck to cash in on their worthless college degrees, if they even have them.
But even worse, knowing that you were going into that interview that you would be asked about the president’s comments about “Americans being lazy” and knowing that your commercial had taken him out of context, in that he was talking about us bringing in foreign investment, did you point out that in fact that the president was wrong, and that there has been abundant foreign investment in the US because much of the money has nowhere else to go?
No, you just double down on the stupid.
Here’s some advice Rick Perry. Either listen to your political advisers, or fire them. Because this was a huge blown opportunity.
Since Carl Pham Abandoned Us
George Turner has become my favorite commenter:
I’ve been amused by all the liberals who keep pining away for OWS to become a real force for social[ist] change. They keep writing articles and posts saying “Let’s hope the OWS leadership is wise enough to do X and Y and then perhaps even Z,” giving advice about how they would run the movement and imagining a scenario in which the OWS folks aren’t a dysfunctional group of morons.
I’m tempted to comment “and if only monkeys would get organized and build a banana farm! It’s nice to dream about a world where chimps were smart and could accomplish anything, with of course you as their leader, but sorry, they’re chimps, OWS is chumps, and neither will accomplish anything more than screeching, flinging poo, raiding piles of food, causing local chaos, and picking lice out of each other’s hair. The most we can hope is that some budding Jane Goodall will study their behavior and explain up-twinkles to the rest of us.”
He should start a blog. Or join mine #EmailMe
The Regressive Green Movement
The Downside Of Market Share
Goody. Malware developers have abandoned the Symbian and Windows Mobile platforms and started to go after Android.