Mark Steyn, on the new fashionable anti-semitism.
Recommendations For The Academies
Paul Spudis provides us with his thoughts for the goals of future space policy. I pretty much agree with it. In fact, it seems as though it should be obvious that we should be working to develop the resources off planet, but you’d never know it from NASA’s current plans.
Villains And Victims
Abraham Miller says that Tocqueville would have recognized what is going on in Gaza quite well:
…there is the constituency comprised of those groups who are so wedded to the embrace of victims — real and imaginary — that the most despicable violence is not an act of evil, but a cause for investigation; a statement written in desperate measures by desperate people. Once a group such as Hamas has been defined as a victim, then its acts have to be explored, dissected, explained, rationalized, put into a context, but never condemned. Victims are, by such groups’ definitions, incapable of evil.
For four decades I have been attending forums on the Middle East conducted by liberal church congregations, colleges and universities, self-anointed peace and justice groups, and the usual gaggle of what are referred to as “the good people.” These people and their groups are intrinsic to the terrorists’ strategy. Their rationales for terrorist violence are vital to the continued use of violence. These so-called “good people” are the conduit to evil, and they are invariably self-proclaimed “progressives” or “liberals.”
All terrorist groups want people who will ask, “Why?” They want people who have long ago forsaken moral judgments for moral relativism. They want the guy who will stand up at the PTA meeting and say, “9/11 is the result of our foreign policy,” and not conceive of the possibility that he is uttering a cliché he could not intellectually defend, but think he is being profound.
It is not just that such people, by justifying violence, contribute to the continued perpetuation of violence, but also by being partisans for evil, they have given up the claim to be honest brokers for peace. In the case of liberal church groups, they have become so supportive of Palestinian terrorism that they would be incapable of being a broker for serious engagements or dialogues for peace. Does anyone think that the leadership of the Presbyterian Church, for example, exudes any moral authority when it comes to the Middle East? They are simply another militia, albeit one that justifies other people doing the killing they tacitly support.
They’re not anti-war. They’re just on the other side.
From Fiction To Reality
Steve Moore says that we are fulfilling Ayn Rand’s dystopian prediction:
In the book, these relentless wealth redistributionists and their programs are disparaged as “the looters and their laws.” Every new act of government futility and stupidity carries with it a benevolent-sounding title. These include the “Anti-Greed Act” to redistribute income (sounds like Charlie Rangel’s promises soak-the-rich tax bill) and the “Equalization of Opportunity Act” to prevent people from starting more than one business (to give other people a chance). My personal favorite, the “Anti Dog-Eat-Dog Act,” aims to restrict cut-throat competition between firms and thus slow the wave of business bankruptcies. Why didn’t Hank Paulson think of that?
These acts and edicts sound farcical, yes, but no more so than the actual events in Washington, circa 2008. We already have been served up the $700 billion “Emergency Economic Stabilization Act” and the “Auto Industry Financing and Restructuring Act.” Now that Barack Obama is in town, he will soon sign into law with great urgency the “American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan.” This latest Hail Mary pass will increase the federal budget (which has already expanded by $1.5 trillion in eight years under George Bush) by an additional $1 trillion — in roughly his first 100 days in office.
The current economic strategy is right out of “Atlas Shrugged”: The more incompetent you are in business, the more handouts the politicians will bestow on you. That’s the justification for the $2 trillion of subsidies doled out already to keep afloat distressed insurance companies, banks, Wall Street investment houses, and auto companies — while standing next in line for their share of the booty are real-estate developers, the steel industry, chemical companies, airlines, ethanol producers, construction firms and even catfish farmers. With each successive bailout to “calm the markets,” another trillion of national wealth is subsequently lost. Yet, as “Atlas” grimly foretold, we now treat the incompetent who wreck their companies as victims, while those resourceful business owners who manage to make a profit are portrayed as recipients of illegitimate “windfalls.”
She was far ahead of her time.
“Audacious”
That’s one word for this plan, that Tariq Malik uses, presumably to be polite:
The co-founder of a rocket launch firm has proposed an audacious plan to send astronauts on a one-way trek to Mars using a pair of tethered U.S. space shuttles that would parachute to the Martian surface.
Inventor Eric Knight, a co-founder of the rocket firm UP Aerospace, detailed the plan – which he’s billed “Mars on a Shoestring” – in a thought exercise designed to encourage unconventional thinking for future human spaceflight.
“My thought paper is a mental exercise to encourage new ideas,” Knight told SPACE.com in an e-mail interview. “I also hope it spurs a re-evaluation of the timeline for human exploration of Mars. Twenty years seems like an eternity, given that we were able to get to the moon in less than 10 years – and we were essentially doing so ‘from scratch.'”
I’m less polite, so I’ll just call it what it is — insane. I don’t have time to detail all of the things that are wrong with it, but have at it in comments.
The New Army Air Corps
Joe Katzman writes about new developments in UAVs.
My Brain Hurts
Living in a city apparently dulls the mind:
…scientists have begun to examine how the city affects the brain, and the results are chastening. Just being in an urban environment, they have found, impairs our basic mental processes. After spending a few minutes on a crowded city street, the brain is less able to hold things in memory, and suffers from reduced self-control. While it’s long been recognized that city life is exhausting — that’s why Picasso left Paris — this new research suggests that cities actually dull our thinking, sometimes dramatically so.
Could this explain why they vote Democrat?
Kermit Feels Their Pain
It’s not easy being green:
The unexpected discovery of a nest of red-cheeked squirrels amidst the huge, partially constructed MegaPyre Solar Power plant has halted construction, casting doubt on the viability of what has been considered to be the environmentalist’s crown jewel of renewable power facilities.
The 20 gigawatt plant was expected to provide electricity to much of southern California, and was only 6 months away from completion when the nest of squirrels, which are on the endangered species list, was found. Due to federal regulations regarding endangered species, moving the nest to another location is not permitted.
The situation has confounded local environmentalists, who are now evenly divided on whether the solar power plant or the nest of squirrels is more important to their cause.
Hear that little sound? That’s the sound of the world’s tiniest violin.
[Yes, I know it’s a joke. The twenty gigawatts, if nothing else, is a dead giveaway.]
Vote For Administrator
Here’s a web site where you can weigh in. Pete Worden is currently in the lead by a large amount.
[Update a few minutes later]
Heh. You get a choice of two Wesleys — Huntress and Crusher.
[Update late afternoon]
Neil H. has set up a betting pool on who it will be.
The Stimulus And The Somme
Arnold Kling makes the analogy. A few weeks ago, Instapundit either quoted an email, or linked to someone who said that the government stimulus package was like an ugly, clumsy person performing a lewd dance. The intent is to stimulate, but the effect is the opposite.