Those Space Mice

Eric Berger has the story, including the fact that we’ve done absolutely no research in partial gravity, which will be necessary if people want to procreate on Mars.

I’d note that while it’s never officially been confirmed, it seems unlikely, given the nature of astronauts, that no one has ever done it in space.

“Denialism”

Does it exist? It’s hard to say:

It’s possible that with a lot of work, some extreme corner of the behavior spectrum could be isolated via specific criteria, which then merits labeling as ‘denialist’. But in truth the characteristics of our ‘proto-denialists’ above are radically different to expectations from the current framing, a framing which may have tainted the term beyond redemption. Nor is this approach a great plan even without that taint, because it tends to mask uncomfortable yet crucial truths, especially those in f) and g). So along with other errors we may end up fooling ourselves that there’s a nice clinical division between skeptics and ‘denialists’. Via naïve assumption of cause from a basic categorization of rhetoric, this is exactly the trap I believe Diethelm and McKee have fallen into. Hoofnagle goes further, dishing out labels of ‘dishonest’ and ‘crank’ yet without proper theoretical grounds; despite his noble motives many of these are bound to stick onto the wrong people. Some dishonesty and crankiness will ride any cultural wave, or backlash to such a wave, or backlash to an evidential cause that is perceived as cultural encroachment. But this does not mean that cranks and liars drive the main action; they do not. Nor can the touted methods reliably distinguish crankiness from cultural influence, or skepticism from either.

I would note (as always) that “denial,” and “denialism,” and “denialist” are not scientific terms. They’re religious ones.

[Update a while later]

Bill Nye epitomizes the Left’s authority complex.

Trump’s Empire State Victory

changes nothing.

It’s still going to be very hard for that Democrat to win the Republican nomination.

[Update a few minutes later]

Don’t confuse primary success with general success:

Now, there’s no reason in principle why a candidate who wins “only” 12 or 13 million votes in the primaries (or even just five or six or seven million) could not win a general election. That depends entirely on the candidate and his campaign. But the point here is that even a terrific primary performance offers zero evidence that a candidate actually can win a general election. As all of the head-to-head polling illustrates, it isn’t even a sign that that said candidate would perform better in a general election than other candidates who got fewer votes in the primaries.

This is especially true in Trump’s case. His hard-core supporters fail to comprehend just how deeply unpopular he is with everybody else outside their relatively small group. According to the last eight polls taken on the question, Trump has an unfavorable rating of between 60 and 70 percent among the general population that will vote in the 2016 election. He is not that much more popular than the ebola virus. (Although no virus has ever tried to run for president, so we cannot be sure.)

Trump supporters seem to be quite delusional about this. There is no one who doesn’t have an opinion about him at this point — he has no up side. When someone as well known as him can’t beat someone as unpopular as Hillary Clinton, it would be insane to make him the nominee (particularly when it would be one Democrat versus another).

[Afternoon update]

Classless Crybaby Wants To Be America’s Complainer-in-Chief.

Rick Wilson is a cruel man, but fair.

[Thursday-morning update]

GOP delegates: Trump’s attacks may backfire on him.

You don’t say.

[Bumped]

[Update a while later]

D. C. McAllister agrees with me; Trump and his supporters don’t understand our system of government.

Hamilton Stays

…and Andy Jackson is replaced by Harriet Tubman. I’m actually surprised. This makes too much sense for this administration.

[Afternoon update]

Oh, good lord, Ben Carson is an historical idiot:

Ben Carson criticized the decision to replace former President Andrew Jackson with Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill on Wednesday, saying Jackson was a “tremendous president.”

“I love Harriet Tubman. I love what she did. But we can find another way to honor her,” the former presidential candidate and retired neurosurgeon said. “Maybe a $2 bill.”

What part of Jackson’s presidency does Carson like the best? The hogs in the White House? The slave owning? The ethnic cleansing of the southeast? The founding of the racist Democrat Party?

ObamaCare

We told you so:

Obamacare, as constructed, attempted to fix a dysfunctional health care payment system by creating an even more complicated system on top of it, filled with subsidies, coverage mandates, and other artificial government incentives. But its result has been a system that plucked Americans out of coverage they like and forced them to pay more for less.

Now the insurers are beginning to realize that in spite of all the subsidies and mandates working in their favor, and despite all of the cost-cutting they have had to do at the expense of consumers, they just can’t make money in this system.

Of course, it was designed to fail, to provide a political glide path to single payer.

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!