I’d been wondering about this. We just bought one (small one, for a hundred bucks at Fry’s), and we certainly have no plans for it to go out of line of sight, or the neighborhood, but I need to look up whether it needs to be registered, legally.
Kevin Williamson
Has not been silenced:
I hear this line of criticism fairly often from people who are not very bright or well-informed; in truth, I have never complained of “being silenced.” As I have written and said probably 200 times, the mob-mentality culture of conformism and homogeneity is a relatively minor problem for people like me — people who are in the controversy business, for whom this sort of thing is only a vexing professional hazard — but it is a very large problem for people who are not employed in writing and speaking about public affairs but nonetheless threatened with educational or employment sanctions for holding unpopular views. You hear about people like me because we are media figures, but the people who really have to worry about this sort of thing are Starbucks managers in Philadelphia and Silicon Valley nerds who are dumb enough to believe that the bosses at Google mean it when they ask them for their opinions.
Which brings us to the problem of trying to have a productive conversation with people who are caught up in the vast sprawling electronic apparatus of self-moronization. It does not matter what anybody actually has said or written. The rage-monkeys have an idea about what it is they want you to have said, or what people like you are supposed to think about x or y. I cannot count how many times I have had some person respond to something critical I’ve written about some lefty fruitcake with “What about Trump, huh?” When I point out that, among other things, I wrote a little book called The Case against Trump, the response is: “Well, Republicans . . .” And then when I point out that I am not one of those, either, the retreat into ever-vaguer generality continues incrementally.
Yes, I get this sort of idiocy a lot, too. I’m always amused when morons assume that (a functional atheist) am a Young-Earth creationist, or a Christian, or Republican, because I’m skeptical about hyperbolic climate claims.
I should say, though, that at least when it comes to Professor Mann, I have in fact been somewhat silenced (which is ironic, given that prior to the time he sued me, I’d hardly ever discussed him).
Chris Kraft
We continue to lose the giants of that generation.
[Update Tuesday morning]
Heh. “Perhaps the New York Times’ obit for Kraft was already written, as it curiously fails to explore the seething hotbed of sexism and white supremacy that was the early NASA, according to the latest reporting by the New York Times.“
[Update a few minutes later]
Eric Berger remembers an inspirational friend.
Per a commenter there, I’ve also been wondering if he had been hanging on to see the 50th anniversary, and then let go.
The Ideological Divide
This is interesting (and partially confirms Haidt’s thesis).
The survey asked Democrats: “How many Republicans believe that racism is still a problem in America today?” Democrats guessed 50%. It’s actually 79%. The survey asked Republicans how many Democrats believe “most police are bad people”. Republicans estimated half; it’s really 15%.
The survey, published by the thinktank More in Common as part of its Hidden Tribes of America project, was based on a sample of more than 2,000 people. One of the study’s findings: the wilder a person’s guess as to what the other party is thinking, the more likely they are to also personally disparage members of the opposite party as mean, selfish or bad. Not only do the two parties diverge on a great many issues, they also disagree on what they disagree on.
This much we might guess. But what’s startling is the further finding that higher education does not improve a person’s perceptions – and sometimes even hurts it. In their survey answers, highly educated Republicans were no more accurate in their ideas about Democratic opinion than poorly educated Republicans. For Democrats, the education effect was even worse: the more educated a Democrat is, according to the study, the less he or she understands the Republican worldview.
“This effect,” the report says, “is so strong that Democrats without a high school diploma are three times more accurate than those with a postgraduate degree.” And the more politically engaged a person is, the greater the distortion.
This strengthens my long-standing thesis that either there is no strong correlation between “education” and knowledge, or that in many cases it’s negative. Non-STEM academia is a national disaster.
Puerto Rico
It strikes me that the fact that the asshat governor in San Juan is pro statehood is probably a big strike against the movement. I’ve long thought, since we lost the bases, that we should just give PR independence.
The Next Fifty Years On The Moon
An interesting essay, but it has a few problems. First…
And they repeatedly use the phrase “lunar soil.” In fact we just update Evoloterra this weekend to fix this ourselves.
Finally, we have this comment, which seems gratuitous and almost a non sequitur in the context of this article:
The NASA Moon Base
What might it look like?
Still not clear to me that NASA will be the one to do it.
Comey
As the Democrat operatives with bylines were wont to say about Trump for months, the “walls are closing in” on him. I hope that the Horowitz report is worth the wait. It was supposed to have been out by now, but Sperry is now saying September.
The Complete Descent
Apollo And The Treasure Fleets
Gary Oleson has a good op-ed over at Space News. A lot of space enthusiasts misinterpret the lesson of the Ming Dynasty. I wrote a similar piece seventeen years ago. As with most of my old space commentary, I’m always surprised at how well it holds up.
Speaking of old space commentary, I just read this for the first time, written by my former editor at The New Atlantis, in 2003. This was about the time that we first met, probably as a result of a comment I had at my blog about a post of his at National Review. I wrote my first essay for him about a year later.
[Update a few minutes later]
In searching for that blog post, I discovered something funny; it was based on that piece, so it wasn’t the first time I’d read it — I’d just forgotten, it was so long ago. I think what happened is that someone at The Corner commented about my blog post, which caused Adam to engage, and later call me to talk. The rest is history.
The original post, with comments, is here.