Education, General Science, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Social Commentary

Born That Way

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These kinds of “studies” drive me nuts:

“The idea there that sexual orientation is fluid, that people change as people grow,” Lawrence Mayer, a co-author of the report and a scholar-in-residence at Johns Hopkins University’s psychiatry department, as well as a professor of statistics and biostatistics at Arizona State University, told The Christian Post. “There are probably some people that identify as hetrosexual [sic] that then later on identified as homosexual, so it goes both ways. The importance there is the fluidity and flexibility that these things change in time.”

Of course there are many people for whom sexual orientation is “fluid.” They’re called (wait for it) “bi-sexuals.” They’re born that way. I was born straight, gays are born gay, and there are many people who are born “fluid.” It doesn’t mean that no one is born straight, or gay. I have no idea why this is such a hard concept for some people, including “scholars.”

[Wednesday-morning update]

I discussed this issue previously here:

My theory would explain why some of the most vociferous opponents of homosexuality often (more often than one might have guessed) turn out to be attracted to the same sex — they have a choice, and they feel morally superior to those upon whom they project their own bisexual orientation, and thus assume that people who don’t uphold their own standards of morality are merely weak-willed. These would also be the people who really could be counseled to go straight for religious reasons — they really had been influenced by their postbirth environment, and were capable of going the other way. So this might explain the twin conundrum as well. The twins who are both homosexual either were born homosexual or were born bi and both chose homosexuality. The ones where only one twin had that trait (as with the Collins brothers) were born bi, and made different choices. I know that if I were heterosexual with an identical twin, I would find it mind blowing to be told he was gay, because then I would be wondering why I wasn’t. But in Jason’s brother’s case, maybe he’s thinking: “Well, I decided to do the marriage-to-a-woman-and-have-kids thing, but I can see his point of view.”

I can’t see his point of view, but I’m willing to accept that it’s his point of view.

Business, General Science, Media Criticism, Philosophy, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Technology and Society

The Great Lakes

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Demonstrate the flaws in climate “science”:

…if the lakes’ huge fluctuations in the past weren’t caused by mankind’s burning fossil fuels, why are scientists so convinced that the far more minor changes happening today are? The reason is simple. Climate scientists can blame anything they want on global warming. The climate models are imprecise enough that no matter what is happening they can point to it as proof that man-made climate change is happening. Too much rain, too little rain, bitterly cold winters, mild winters, more snow, less snow, rising water levels, falling water levels — they can attribute “climate change” as a cause of it all.

A theory for which all evidence is evidence of it, and thus not falsifiable, is not science.

BTW, blogging has been light because I’ve been wiped out by the ISDC for the past five days, and this morning I was at a meeting at ISS Commercialization at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. More meetings tomorrow, then back to LA tomorrow night, where I hope things will get back to normal.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

Trump’s New Space Plan

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Bob Zimmerman writes that it won’t happen without cutting the pork.

In other words, it won’t happen.

(Friday-afternoon update)

Tweet from @realDonaldTrump: “For all of the money we are spending, NASA should NOT be talking about going to the Moon – We did that 50 years ago. They should be focused on the much bigger things we are doing, including Mars (of which the Moon is a part), Defense and Science!”

No comment, but there’s a lot of response on Twitter.

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Off The Air

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I flew into Detroit Friday evening, then drove up to Grayling in northern MI, stopping in Mount Pleasant to visit a niece who attends Central Michigan University. I got into my motel about 11 AM.

Then, yesterday morning, I make a one-hour drive to Traverse City, where I attended a Michigan Space Symposium. The founder of U.S. Robotics, who is from there, has been incubating space companies and encouraging them to set up shop there, in the hopes of making the state more prominent in the space industry. He has a 27,000 square-foot mansion on the west arm of Grand Traverse Bay, at which he hosted attendees Wednesday night, so I unfortunately was unable to attend. The hope is that they may even have a spaceport in the state.

It was an interesting line up, including retired General David Buck, formerly of Patrick AFB and the Cape, and retired General Wayne Monteith , the new head of the Office of Commercial Space Transportation. It was my first opportunity to meet him. The theme of the day was the need for both innovation, and acceptance of failure. I gave both a copy of the book.

There were also several people I knew there (some of them also from Michigan), including Chuck Lauer of Rocketplane, and Jim Ransom, with whom I had worked at Aerospace almost forty years ago, who is a Traverse City native, and has recently retired there.

I drove back down to the Flint area after the event, and today I’m attending a nephew’s high-school graduation in Linden, a small town south of there. Then off to DC tomorrow.

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!