I’ve often made this argument, but never as concisely:
The Right believes in biology, but not in evolution; the Left believes in evolution, but not in biology.
It’s a little oversimplified (as is any statement about the “Right” or the “Left”), but a good generalization. Of course, when it comes to sexual orientation, the Right doesn’t believe in biology, either. But I think that the Left is much more prone to a belief in the Blank Slate myth.
The Dems are finally starting to come to their senses about energy production, but not quite:
One idea floated by Reid would require that whatever oil is drilled in newly opened areas would need to be sold in the United States.
This is pure, unadulterated economic ignorance. Senator Reid, go to the board and write one hundred times, “OIL IS FUNGIBLE.” WTF difference does it make where the oil is sold? The important thing is to get it on the market. If we are pulling new oil off the north slope, it might make sense to ship it to Japan, improving our balance of trade with them, and relieving them of the cost of shipping it all the way from the Persian Gulf. It might in fact make sense to simply ship new oil from the Gulf of Mexico to Gulf refineries, but that should be a market decision, not an arbitrary and idiotic political one. “Energy independence” is an economic myth.
And then, we have this:
Democrats also want any compromise plan to include investments in clean and renewable energies, a crackdown on oil speculators and proof that the oil and gas companies are fully utilizing land that is already leased for exploration.
What does a “crackdown on oil speculators” mean? It’s called a futures market, and a lot of people play. It serves a function of reducing risk for many in the industry. “Speculation” is simply a dirty word for “investment.” This new scheme where people can buy gasoline ahead of time at a fixed price? That’s speculation, folks.
And this:
“If they were showing in good faith that they were drilling on some of the 68 million acres they have now, it might change some of our attitudes,” said Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.).
So, in order to get access to leases with high potential, they have to waste their money drilling on leases with low potential? Brilliant.
The only way to change the attitudes of people like this is Economics 101. And I doubt if even that would help.
A rainbow hole? An African-American hole?
This is as ignorant and stupid as the complaints about the use of the word “niggardly.”
Actually, now that I think about it, it’s also as dumb as complaints about my proper use of the word “fascist.” A subject on which Jonah Goldberg has some further thoughts today:
People say fascism means brutality, therefore liberalism isn’t remotely fascist. It works as a debater’s trick, and it’s certainly a source of real opposition to some of my arguments, but it doesn’t work as an actual argument in the true sense of the word.
One can use the same “argument” about Communism. “Communism is about brutality. Liberals aren’t brutal. Therefore liberalism has nothing to do with Communism.” The only difference here is that for reasons discussed at length in this space and in my book, the man in the street doesn’t equate Communism with brutality to the same extent he equates fascism with brutality, even though Communism is just as brutal as Fascism. I think that’s a problem that needs to be combated rather than surrendered to.
I simply don’t think the woeful state of popular ignorance should be considered a powerful argument against the accuracy of historical truth.
Nope. As he says, if that makes the job harder, so be it.
Eric Raymond coins a useful word.
Ferris Valyn has some candidates. Most of them seem implausible to me. The only ones that I can imagine are at all realistic are Patti Grace Smith, Lori Garver and Pete Worden (the latter would certainly shake things up, which is one reason that he almost certainly won’t get the job). Certainly Hansen has nothing in his resume that would qualify him–he’s a scientist.
Of course, much depends on who the next president is. One likely name not on the list, assuming that McCain wins: Craig Steidle.
…and change. It looks like John McCain may have come to his senses, and dropped cap and trade. Let’s just hope that he doesn’t attempt to revive it after he wins.
There’s a piece over at the WaPo today by Marc Kaufman that lays out pretty well the problems that we face in civil space policy, though I think that the international competition aspects are overstated. The pace of all these other activities remains almost as glacial as our own, and until someone develops a transportation breakthrough (and by that I mean a high-flight-rate reusable system, not warp drive or space elevators) none of it presents a serious threat to us. But it points out that the policy apparatus, as I always says, doesn’t view space as very important. The beginning of the article, and first two pages, are all about budget constraints, and I was wondering if he would ever get around to mentioning ITAR. Toward the end of the piece, finally, he did. In terms of our losing our dominance in commercial space, this is the number one reasons. It’s really been a disaster, and a bi-partisan one.
It’s a little out of date, since it mentions that Mike Griffin claims that additional funding could accelerate Constellation by two years, to 2013, because Griffin’s own program manager now says that it probably wouldn’t.
I disagree with Mike Griffin’s comment here:
“We spent many tens of billions of dollars during the Apollo era to purchase a commanding lead in space over all nations on Earth,” said NASA Administrator Michael D. Griffin, who said his agency’s budget is down by 20 percent in inflation-adjusted terms since 1992.
“We’ve been living off the fruit of that purchase for 40 years and have not . . . chosen to invest at a level that would preserve that commanding lead.”
We have spent hundreds of billions of dollars on human spaceflight over the past four decades, more than enough to have developed a robust transportation and in-space infrastructure that would have kept us well in the lead. The problem was not how much was spent, but in how it was spent. Jobs were more important than progress. That sadly remains the case today.
It’s a wondrous age in which we live in (to paraphrase Paul McCartney), that has underpants for squirrels.
Get with the program!
“When people look at glaciers around the world, the majority of them are shrinking,” said Slawek Tulaczyk, an assistant professor of earth sciences at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who led a team studying Shasta’s glaciers. “These glaciers seem to be benefiting from the warming ocean.”
Except the ocean seems to be cooling, at least lately.
One of the signs of a conspiracy theorist is that every bit of evidence, even counterevidence, is spun to support the theory.
Clark Lindsey has some space-related thoughts in response to T. Boone Pickens’ solar energy proposal:
…one major hurdle, among several, with the plan would be the need to build more long distance electric power transmission lines to reach the more populated and more industrialized areas. This will be difficult since people all along the routes will fight having the lines and towers in their backyards.
Occasionally in discussions of Space Based Solar Power, the topic of microwave relay satellites comes up as a way to move power around. For example, in this paper, Reinventing the Solar Power Satellite (2004) Geoffrey Landis talks about using relay sats for distributing power to different parts of the globe from a single Solarsat. So it should be similarly possible for relay satellites to move power from the Midwest to where it’s needed.
Yes, this is one of the “tiers” that Peter Glaser proposed in the development of powersats when he first came up with the idea forty (geez, has it really been that long?) years ago. He envisioned that before energy was produced in space, it might be relayed from energy-rich areas that didn’t have local demand (such as a large dam in Venezuela or Brazil). He envisioned such relays as passive microwave reflectors, which are currently a major structural challenge in terms of keeping the surface the right shape within a fraction of a wavelength. But at least at GEO, they wouldn’t have to move much.
Rather than giant relay sats in GEO, it might be preferable to place a constellation of relatively small ones in LEO since this would allow the beams to be much more narrow. Perhaps the switching techniques developed for Iridium/Globalstar could be built upon. Smaller beams might also lessen NIMBY resistance to transmitter/receiving sites.
Perhaps, but now you have high slew rates on the reflectors, which makes for even more of a challenge. An active phased array system can be steered electronically as it switches from rectenna to rectenna as it orbits. A reflector has to rapidly move the entire structure while maintaining its shape. The higher the orbit the better in this regard, because it won’t have to slew as fast. Also, it would make LEO pretty crowded. A medium orbit (a couple kilocklicks) would probably be better, both because it would require slower motion, and would allow more ground rectennas to be seen at a time, while not cluttering up LEO. The slewing problem could be ameliorated by going to an active system, but that means that the satellite must now not only receive and convert the power, but reconvert and rebeam it to the ground, with all the attendant efficiency issues.
Anyway, I suspect that, regardless of size, NIMBY resistance to rectennas will dwarf that of resistance to transmission lines and towers, given that it’s a devil they don’t know.