A new technique that reduces power consumption by five orders of magnitude.
This is the only down side:
Aside from saving battery life on today’s devices, wireless communication that uses almost no power will help enable an “Internet of Things” reality where household devices and wearable sensors can communicate using Wi-Fi without worrying about power.
Just what we need: More devices to become a part of DDOS botnets.
She’s probably the world’s most underestimated woman.
That’s the Republicans’ plan to undo the legislative atrocity that is ObamaCare.
[Update a few minutes later]
Democrats plan a fight to save ObamaCare. I agree with Stephen Green:
If you — or GOP lawmakers — aren’t mentally prepared for the howls, the accusations of racism/sexism/etc, the tales of woe, and the panic-mongering, then you don’t understand how Democrats play this game.
The ugliness hasn’t even begun to begin.
Sadly true.
Is it killing us?
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that some 75 million Americans now suffer from metabolic syndrome. If sugar consumption is the trigger, as 50 years of research suggests, then it might be as much of a direct cause of diabetes as smoking cigarettes is of lung cancer. Without sugar in our diets, diabetes might be an exceedingly rare disease—as it appears once to have been.
When Yudkin and others suggested as much in the 1970s, the consensus opinion among nutritionists and physicians was that dietary fat was the primary dietary evil; they considered sugar relatively benign. We have been living with the consequences ever since.
It’s worth noting this in the context that lifespan has fallen for the first time in decades: “If you like your longevity, you can keep your longevity“:
In story after story, we read about demographers and medical experts puzzling over what’s gone wrong. They point to heart disease, obesity, drug use, stroke, Alzheimer’s, suicide. The USA Today article notes that since World War II, it’s been rare to see a rise in U.S. mortality rates, and such spikes have usually been linked to highly specific events such as the spread of AIDS in the early 1990s, or a “nasty flu season” in 1980. By contrast, what we’re seeing now are rising mortality rates involving a broad range of causes, especially among middle-aged Americans.
Missing from all these accounts is a single word that ought to command unblinking attention: Obamacare.
While I agree that wrecking the medical-insurance industry is part of the problem, and may account for the most recent decline, it’s compounded by criminally awful nutrition advice from the FDA. One way or another, federal policies are killing us by the millions.
[Update early afternoon]
And it's going to keep getting worse if we don't fix it soon. https://t.co/pXRt3PAt4s
— Michael Eades, M.D. (@DrEades) December 9, 2016
…by moving its denizens out into the real country:
here’s my plan: During the next four years, the Trump Administration — and Congress — should plan to move at least 25% of the federal workforce located in the Washington, D.C. metro area to other locations around the country: Places that are economically suffering (which will have the advantage of making federal workers’ salaries go farther) and that need the business. Should Trump get another four years, he should do it all over again.
What’s interesting is that Vox (of all places) has a similar proposal, from Matt Yglesias:
The poorest places in the United States have been poor for a very long time and lack the basic infrastructure of prosperity. But that’s not true in the Midwest, where cities were thriving two generations ago and where an enormous amount of infrastructure is in place. Midwestern states have acclaimed public university systems, airports that are large enough to serve as major hubs, and cities whose cultural legacies include major league pro sports teams, acclaimed museums, symphonies, theaters, and other amenities of big-city living.
But industrial decline has left these cities overbuilt, with shrunken populations that struggle to support the legacy infrastructure, and the infrastructure’s decline tends to only beget further regional decline.
At the same time, America’s major coastal cities are overcrowded. They suffer from endemic housing scarcity, massive traffic congestion, and a profound small-c political conservatism that prevents them from making the kind of regulatory changes that would allow them to build the new housing and infrastructure they need. Excess population that can’t be absorbed by the coasts tends to bounce to the growth-friendly cities of the Sunbelt that need to build anew what Milwaukee, Detroit, and Cleveland already have in terms of infrastructure and amenities.
A sensible approach would be for the federal government to take the lead in rebalancing America’s allocation of population and resources by taking a good hard look at whether so much federal activity needs to be concentrated in Washington, DC, and its suburbs. Moving agencies out of the DC area to the Midwest would obviously cause some short-term disruptions. But in the long run, relocated agencies’ employees would enjoy cheaper houses, shorter commutes, and a higher standard of living, while Midwestern communities would see their population and tax base stabilized and gain new opportunities for complementary industries to grow.
In this context, it’s worth noting that LBJ treated NASA as a sort of “Marshall Plan” for the south, which persisted in its poverty after the Civil War. Only the Cape is really geographically needed; the other centers could have been elsewhere.
Of course, the down side for this proposal (for DC-area residents) would be a plunge in housing prices.
I hope that Kim Strassel is right:
President Obama never held much with laws, because he failed at making them. After his first two years in office, he never could convince the Congress to pass another signature initiative. His response—and the enduring theme of his presidency—was therefore to ignore Congress and statutes, go around the partnership framework, and give his agencies authority to dictate policy from Washington. The states were demoted from partners to indentured servants. So too were any rival federal agencies that got in the EPA’s way. Example: The EPA’s pre-emptive veto of Alaska’s proposed Pebble Mine, in which it usurped Army Corps of Engineers authority.
One revealing illustration from EPA world. Under the Clean Air Act, states are allowed to craft their own implementation plans. If the EPA disapproves of a state plan, it is empowered to impose a federal one—one of the most aggressive actions the agency can take against a state, since it is the equivalent of a seizure of authority. In the entirety of the presidencies of George H.W. Bush,Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, the EPA imposed five federal implementation plans on states. By last count, the Obama administration has imposed at least 56.
Much of Mr. Pruitt’s tenure as Oklahoma’s AG was about trying to stuff federal agencies back into their legal boxes. Most of the press either never understood this, or never wanted to. When the media wrote about state lawsuits against ObamaCare or the Clean Power Plan or the Water of the United States rule, the suggestion usually was that this litigation was ideologically motivated, and a naked attempt to do what a Republican Congress could not—tank the president’s agenda.
The basis of nearly every one of these lawsuits was in fact violations of states’ constitutional and statutory rights—and it is why so many of the cases were successful. It was all a valiant attempt to force the federal government to follow the law. And it has been a singular Pruitt pursuit.
It will be refreshing to have someone rein in the EPA by running it, instead of having to continually take it to court.
[Update a while later]
Will Trump finally provide an opportunity to sell “progressives” on the virtues of federalism?
“Turnabout is fair play” is a deeply human sentiment. In politics, it’s both tedious and fun, because while reciprocity is satisfying, hypocrisy is annoying.
For instance, when Republicans take control of the Senate, Democrats instantly become sticklers for procedure, precedent, and constitutionalism. When Republicans lose the Senate, it’s “Democrats, start your steamrollers.”
While “You did it, so now we can too” is a perfectly natural attitude, it encourages cynicism precisely because it renders principles into arguments of convenience. When President Obama was testing — and exceeding — the limits of his constitutional powers, liberals grabbed their pom-poms and cheered. Now that Donald Trump is in power, they’re rediscovering that constitutional safeguards are there for everybody.
When Obama grew the deficit, Republicans and tea partiers insisted there was a debt crisis. Now, the president-elect says we must “prime the pump” with up to $1 trillion in deficit spending, and the former deficit hawks slumber in their nests. Regardless, that excerpt from A Man for All Seasons is not intended to imply that Trump is the devil — or that Obama is. Suffice it to say that one partisan’s devil is another partisan’s angel. I’m more interested in breaking the cycle and seizing an opportunity.
I’m looking forward to it. Who knows, maybe even Trump can be convinced.
[Update a while later]
Trump is putting together the most business-friendly cabinet in decades:
Conservatives had expressed considerable reservations about Trump’s professions of conservatism, during both the primary and general-election campaigns. In the days after the election, Trump’s meetings with Obama on the ACA and with Al Gore on climate change prompted renewed concerns about Trump’s true direction. Even while the first few nominations got announced, some wondered whether they reflected vice-president-elect Mike Pence more than Trump, and when other shoes would begin to drop.
So far, though, Trump seems intent on creating the most conservative and business-oriented Cabinet in decades. If Horowitz was correct and “personnel is policy,” then conservatives should find themselves pleasantly surprised and encouraged thus far with a 180-degree change of direction these key appointments promise. The inauguration on January 20th marks the date in which conservatives might find their own version of hope and change.
Unfortunately, what we really need is a market-friendly one.
[Update a couple minutes later]
Trump’s selections indicate that massive deregulation moves are coming. Well, we need it, after all the unconstitutional and unlawful overreach of the past eight years.
[Update a while later]
Getting back to the original post topic, Trump has nominated a powerful defender of states rights.
Farewell to a war hero, and hero of the early space age. The last of the Mercury Seven has gone to the stars. In the interest of de mortuis nil nisi bonum, I’ll ignore his political career for now.
[Update Friday morning]
One of John Glenn’s last acts was to praise reusable rockets.
[Update a while later]
A few @airandspace visitors have left flowers beside John Glenn's Friendship 7 capsule. pic.twitter.com/g8cgNLwEuq
— Andrés Almeida (@andresdavid) December 9, 2016
[Update late morning]
My tribute to John Glenn. pic.twitter.com/0jJkcQb96m
— GeneFangirl? (@GeneFangirl) December 9, 2016
I said in my book that the theory was they died of lead poisoning (canning food, which had been invented by Napoleon, was in a primitive state of development).
Well, some interesting research shows that it was actually zinc deficiency.
Anatoly Zak has a report on Gerstenmeier’s recent announcement.
I’d say it’s more a delusional long-term vision than a plan. As I quoted Dale Skran in my anti-Apolloist screed from last summer:
…the NRC report is based on the unstated assumption that over the entire period considered, all the way out to 2054, there will be essentially no progress in rocketry other than that funded by NASA exploration programs, and that for the entire period the SLS as currently envisioned will remain the preferred method for Americans to reach space. It is difficult to imagine a more unlikely foundation for the planning of future space efforts than this. [Emphasis added]
And yet NASA continues to do so, because it has no choice, because Congress refuses to let it do it sensibly.
They are proposing a 20+ year plan. As I’ve noted in the past, even Mao never tried for more than five. Think back to 1996. Who would have predicted that, twenty years later, we’d have Internet billionaires building and flying vertical reusable launch systems? Or plans for private space facilities? Or the beginning of assembly of large structures in space? The notion that any plan for human exploration of the solar system that NASA has will survive contact with technical and budgetary reality of the next twenty years is ludicrous. But Apolloism marches on.
…that cost Democrats the presidency:
At oral argument in the Obergefell same-sex marriage case, there was the following colloquy:
Justice Samuel Alito: Well, in the Bob Jones case, the Court held that a college was not entitled to tax-exempt status if it opposed interracial marriage or interracial dating. So would the same apply to a university or a college if it opposed same-sex marriage?
Solicitor General Verrilli: You know, I, I don’t think I can answer that question without knowing more specifics, but it’s certainly going to be an issue. I don’t deny that. I don’t deny that, Justice Alito. It is it is going to be an issue.
With the mainstream media busy celebrating the Supreme Court’s ultimate recognition of a right to same-sex marriage, this didn’t get that much attention in mainstream news outlets. But in the course of researching my book, “Lawless,” I noticed that Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr.’s answer was big news in both the conservative blogosphere and in publications catering to religiously traditionalist audiences. The idea that Regent University or Brigham Young University or the local Catholic university or the many hundreds of other religious schools — and potentially other religious organizations — could be put at a severe competitive disadvantage if they refused on theological grounds to extend the same recognition to same-sex couples as to opposite-sex couples struck many as a direct and serious assault on religious liberty.
In short, many religious Christians of a traditionalist bent believed that liberals not only reduce their deeply held beliefs to bigotry, but want to run them out of their jobs, close down their stores and undermine their institutions. When I first posted about this on Facebook, I wrote that I hope liberals really enjoyed running Brendan Eich out of his job and closing down the Sweet Cakes bakery, because it cost them the Supreme Court. I’ll add now that I hope Verrilli enjoyed putting the fear of government into the God-fearing because it cost his party the election.
Yes, and it’s why evangelicals were willing to support Trump, despite his boorishness and obvious lack of religious belief. They knew that she would continue the culture war on them, and that with him, they at least had a chance.
[Update a few minutes later]
This seems related: Trump won because of the overblown reactions from the Left to actual (as opposed to nonsensical, like new gun laws) common-sense proposals from the sane.
[Update a few more minutes later]
#WhyTrumpWon
Abortion Activists to Send Bloody Tampons to Texas Gov to Protest Requiring Burial for Aborted Babies https://t.co/1cAzII6Djq #tcot #MAGA pic.twitter.com/xlrJn01dXV
— LifeNews.com (@LifeNewsHQ) December 8, 2016