Hard to do, I know, but I think that it’s always prudent to take people with fascist tendencies seriously.
Why Libertarians Need Darwin
I haven’t had time to read the whole thing, but this looks like an interesting and provocative essay.
Light And Scattered Blogging
We’re having the house fumigated today and tomorrow, so I’ll be evacuating in a couple hours to a secret undisclosed location. Playing it by ear in terms of Internet access and time to post.
[Late evening update]
I am ensconced in my lair. Dick Cheney is nowhere to be seen.
Ten Technologies
…that should be obsolete, but aren’t.
I’ve previously discussed the landline fallacy. If you don’t understand why people like landlines, you probably haven’t used them much, and are clueless as to what good phone service is like.
With regard to the turntables, the digital-converting ones I’ve seen a) have a vinyl lathe for a cartridge and b) overcompress the music when they convert. Fortunately, there are still a few surviving manufacturers of quality cartridges, and my audio equipment still has audio inputs. And they’ll take away my Conrad Johnson tube preamp when they pry it from my cold dead stereo cabinet.
The Big Green Lie
Greens who feared and climate skeptics who hoped that the rash of investigations following Climategate and Glaciergate and all the other problems would reveal some gaping obvious flaws in the science of climate change were watching the wrong thing. The Big Green Lie (or Delusion, to be charitable) isn’t so much that climate change is happening and that it is very likely caused or at least exacerbated by human activity. The Big Lie is that the green movement is a source of coherent or responsible counsel about what to do.
The greens claim to be diagnosticians and therapists: that they can both name the disease and heal it. They are wrong. The attitudes and political vision of a group of NGO pressure groups may work when it comes to harassing Japanese whale ships in the Antarctic; this vision and these people come up short when set against the challenge of moderating the impact of human industrial activity on the earth’s climate system.
They come up short in many areas.
Yes, I Know, Thanks
A lot of people have been emailing me about problems loading the site. It’s getting hung up on a call to the server b.scorecardresearch.com, which I think is part of Google Analytics’ way of tracking my traffic. If anyone has any suggestions about what to do about this (up to and including disabling GA), I’m all ears.
Liz Kennick
Space fashion weightless supermodel. I suspect she’ll be showing it off at next week’s Space Frontier Society conference in Mountain View.
The Battle To Wreck The Gulf Economy
The new moratorium will last through Nov. 30. Unlike the last moratorium, which applied to waters of more than 500 feet, the new one applies to any deep-water floating facility with drilling activities.
I’m sure the basis for this one is no sounder than the last one. More of the Democrats’ war on science.
The Feds Gulf Spill Response
…remains stuck on stupid.
I’m shocked.
Fortunately, judging by the polls, folks are starting to notice.
Happy Birthday
I was thinking that this would be a good iPhone/iPad app, but apparently someone was way ahead of me.