I’m having trouble uploading the video to the Kickstarter page (they’re figuring out what the problem is, hopefully), but meanwhile, here’s a higher-quality version of it on Youtube. I’m not thrilled with audio quality (it sounds sort of like I’m in an echoey lecture hall), but I don’t have a sound studio, just a Sennheiser headset.
[Update a few minutes later]
Oops. Just noticed, it looks like I lost the end credits. Have to look into what happened there.
[Update a while later]
For some reason, I hadn’t included the final credits in the build. Here’s the new version.
[Update a while later]
Sorry transitions are so choppy. I’m sure it has something to do with Youtube’s post-processing.
Discusses his new novel, and the role of science fiction.
He is one of the few authors whose books I always look forward to reading, though I was a little disappointed with Anathem. But this looks like a fun read.
I should also note that one of the points I make in my book (and in op-eds) since, is that our unwillingness to use the hardware we have on hand to get into space is an indicator of how utterly unimportant human spaceflight is (a point that is accentuated by the relatively poor sales of a well-reviewed book). Stephenson describes a scenario in which it suddenly becomes very important to become as spacefaring as possible, as soon as possible, and how society reacts.
Let’s force doctors to spend a lot of money to become technology dependent and adopt electronic health records when the old way of doing things was working just fine. And hey–as a bonus, our health information is now more vulnerable to hacking and we can lose some privacy along the way! Electronic health records haven’t saved a single life or a single dollar, but they have created a lot of expense, confusion, and tremendous demoralization for our health care providers. It wasn’t broken, and it shouldn’t have been “fixed.” If the Republican Congress was smart, it would repeal this onerous, useless provision of Obamacare.
There are a lot of things the Republicans would do if they were smart. On the other hand, I can understand why they don’t want to repeal this abomination piece meal. They need to scrap the whole thing and start over, but it won’t happen until we get someone in the White House who actually understands markets and actually gives a damn about others.
The House has sent a letter to the new Attorney General:
Specifically, the committee provided documents that show three acts by Ms. Lerner that may have violated criminal statutes. One, she helped to target only conservative organizations, thereby robbing them of equal protection and due process. Two, she may have impeded the Treasury inspector general’s investigation of the matter by giving misleading statements. Three, she risked exposing (and may have exposed) confidential taxpayer information by using her personal email address to conduct official business.
And that’s only what we know so far. Congress’s problem is that the IRS has stonewalled it at every turn. The Treasury inspector general, J. Russell George, has become tentative after all the Democratic criticism of his probe. It seems the Justice Department is the only body with the powers to shake loose some answers about what happened.
The Ryan letter asks Ms. Lynch to tell him the status of that referral, and Speaker Boehner chimed in with a statement calling for the new attorney general to prove to Americans that “justice will be served.”
Ms. Lynch’s response will be enormously telling about her view of her job.
I wonder how much this (I assume, cost-plus contract) is costing compared to what Blue is spending on the BE-4? I predict that this LOX/kerosene engine will never fly.
I think it’s pretty stupid to demagogue people over statements like this, honestly. I know where Sanders go this from: He got it from Nancy Friday’s My Secret Garden, supposedly a book containing all of women’s private fantasies (she says she surveyed women), and rape was indeed a major part of the female sexual imagination, she was surprised to find. (Psychologically, it has been explained to me that women feel guilty about sex, but still enjoy sex; the fantasy of being under someone else’s sexual control allows the woman, in fantasy, to enjoy sex, because she’s not making any of the decisions that she would otherwise feel guilty about.)
I don’t know if I buy any of that; I’m just remarking that this isn’t the first time I’ve heard this.
I do know that if I wrote that paragraph not in response to Bernie Sanders, there’s a pretty good chance that the left would demagogue me and Speechcraft Trial me as a Thought Rapist.
And that’s why we must do the same to Bernie Sanders, and make him defend these So Problematic You Guys words.
The left has drawn us all into its insecure, neurotic, grasping, wanting, stupid, paranoid darkness. They have effectively criminalized it to say anything other than “Women are just terrific” and “everything is awesome!”
They are broken, warped people inflicting their psychic tumult on the rest of society.
Yes, tit for tat is exactly the right strategy. Except maybe we need to (in someone’s words) punch back twice as hard. But they won’t stop this Alinskyite BS until it causes them sufficient pain.