This isn’t particularly profound, but it’s interesting to see a growing awareness of transhumanism and its implications among the non-technical commentariat. Mona Charen on life extension:
Let’s stipulate that for those wealthy enough to take advantage of it (i.e., most Americans), science will make it possible for people
Most of the alternatives put forth against ESAS are different launch vehicle concepts, with no major changes to the nature of the lunar mission hardware or operations itself. Following up from his previous posts, Jon Goff has been exploring a different corner of the trade space, and has some interesting results. As a commenter points out there, he’s grossly overoptimistic on his vehicle weights, but it remains an interesting avenue to explore, regardless.
Thomas James notes something that I didn’t get around to noting yesterday–how limited in his thinking Stephen Hawking is:
If you’re going to have to terraform even barren worlds with Earth-like parameters, how is that so much different from developing Mars-like planets as well? Why be so picky?
In fact, there just happens to be a Mars-like planet nearby, which wouldn’t require anti-matter rockets or tens of thousands of years to reach…
And for that matter, there are plenty of asteroids and moons in the universe, not to mention the infinite possible variations on O’Neillian space settlements. Settling Earth-like planets isn’t the only way to preserve the species.
A coalition to save civilization. Count me in.
Speaking of not being impressed, Dean Barnett isn’t with James Baker and what is rumored to be his upcoming surrender plan. Me, neither.
There’s so much that James Baker doesn
Speaking of not being impressed, Dean Barnett isn’t with James Baker and what is rumored to be his upcoming surrender plan. Me, neither.
There’s so much that James Baker doesn
Speaking of not being impressed, Dean Barnett isn’t with James Baker and what is rumored to be his upcoming surrender plan. Me, neither.
There’s so much that James Baker doesn
That’s what Orson Scott Card is with Gary Trudeau and his comparisons between George Bush and Bill Clinton:
“The second president [Clinton] lies about hooking up with an intern.”
Aw, yeah, that’s nothing. Now, if Clinton had sent her dirty messages by IM or email, then he should have not just been impeached, but convicted and thrown out of office. But actually getting her to perform sexual acts on him, and then lying about it — heck, who doesn’t do that with underage sex partners who are in an almost infinitely subservient relationship with the most powerful man on earth?
And the lying — never mind that it was under oath in a court proceeding. Never mind that the lie was not to protect national security in any way, but merely to obstruct his opponent in a personal lawsuit based on previous sexual misconduct. It just doesn’t matter because it’s kind of charming that Clinton’s insatiable sexual appetite could not be controlled even when he was in the White House.
Because that just makes him a “babe hound,” to quote Trudeau’s comic strip. And the Left finds “babe hounds” rather charming. Unless they’re Republicans, in which case they must be hounded from office immediately.
This is the moral universe of Garry Trudeau — and of thousands, perhaps millions of others who subscribe to the Smarty-Pants school of moral reasoning. President Bush, whose actions have obviously been motivated solely by the desire to protect America from a genuine danger from bloodthirsty enemies, is worthy of impeachment for the crimes of (a) not always being right, (b) doing what other presidents have done, and (c) having national media figures hate him so badly that they will happily believe any vile rumor his enemies spread about.
And lest the lefty wingnuts howl about this last, they should read the whole thing, in which their hateful loony rants are preemptively demolished.
I haven’t read it yet, but Jack Schmitt’s new book
[Update a few minutes later]
Unfortunate typo of Dr./Senator Schmitt’s name has been fixed…
A conversation with Bjorn Lomborg.
DDT is not dangerous to humans, but it is dangerous to some animals. So if you’re in a rich country where you have malaria under control, clearly you should ban DDT or severely restrict its use.
But our concern about DDT in the early 70s basically meant that most of the developing world restricted their use as well. That was probably an immensely bad judgement because yes, it harms animals like birds, but it also saves human lives. These actions undoubtedly led to many millions of lives lost. So that is one example of where we need to be very careful about what we do.
But I think we are doing a little bit the same thing with climate change discussions right now. We have spent so much time over the last 10 years trying to do something about climate change. We have a treaty that will essentially do nothing whatsoever about climate change and it will still end up costing us quite a bit. And you’ve got to ask yourself, couldn’t we have spent that amount of time and effort and consideration on addressing some of the issues in the world where we could have done an enormous amount of good?