If the NASA Space Shuttle is able to reenter from the orbit of the Earth then the NASA Space Shuttle is able to reenter because of the heat of 1,500 °C.
The NASA Space Shuttle isn’t able to reenter because of the heat of 1,500 °C.
Hence, the NASA Space Shuttle isn’t able to reenter the orbit of the Earth.
If the NASA Space Shuttle is able to reenter from the orbit of Earth then the NASA Space Shuttle is in orbit.
The NASA Space Shuttle isn’t in orbit.
Therefore, the NASA Space Shuttle isn’t able to reenter from the orbit of Earth.
They “syllogism” format sure looks familiar from Loughner’s known rantings.
Not sure if this means anything, but given Loughner’s apparent personal obsession with Giffords and the fact that her husband is a Shuttle commander, there could be something there motivating his ranting about NASA.
This is old news, though. Even back in the 1960s there were Civil Defense debates on whether to give warning in case of an attack, based on studies that showed more people would be sheltered by where they happened to be than would benefit from a warning, since many people would immediately either try to flee, or to return to their homes, winding up in more exposed positions when the bomb went off. And although heavily mocked by antinuclear activists in the 1980s, the duck-and-cover advice from the 1950s was pretty good, considering, and would have saved many lives if it had been followed in the event of a nuclear attack.
I hadn’t thought of this before, but I wonder if this “fatalism” he refers to wasn’t intentional. If surviving a nuclear war is actually fairly straightforward, why cultivate such a deep sense of futility about even trying? Why cut funding for Civil Defense, why ridicule “duck and cover”, and why make demoralizing movies like Testament or The Day After?
Well, if you own a giant stockpile of nuclear weapons, whose effects (while horrible) could be mitigated to some useful degree by simple sheltering methods if those methods were widely known and ready-to-implement, wouldn’t you want to head-fake the enemy into not protecting themselves by convincing them of the uselessness of even minimal preparedness?
Once again, it would seem that the anti-nuclear and anti-war movements of the 1960s and 1970s may have been dupes.
It’s a windless morning at Steamboat Ski Resort, and Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’” pulses through a bright Gondola Square. Shuffling across the slushy snow, skiers line up to board the Steamboat Gondola, but first they must unzip, de-layer, and turn out their pockets. Like travelers at Denver International Airport, these would-be gondola riders must run through a gauntlet of security checkpoints before taking to the skies.
After ticket scanners confirm that skiers’ lift passes are legit, a panel of uniformed police officers pats everyone down and inspects backpacks for contraband such as alcohol. Refuse the search, and that $97 day-ticket becomes null and void. Still, on this bluebird day, one baby boomer flexes his ’60s-honed flower power and bucks the system. “You don’t have any right to search me!” he shouts. Throughout the loading zone, heads swivel toward the lone renegade. The cops try to respond to him in hushed tones. But he won’t be quieted. “You have no right!” he repeats.
This is one of those rare occasions where I agree with a hippie.
Of course, this isn’t TSA in action, so it’s not really about pantybombers or some illusion of security. Instead, the justification used is that it’s to maintain the family-friendly atmosphere of the ski resorts and to thwart theft. I wonder when malls will start implementing pat-downs and pocket searches under the same justifications — after all, there’s plenty of room for obnoxious behavior at malls, and an ever-present problem with theft.
With every day that passes, I’m more amazed at my virtually hall-monitor-free experience in Iceland. We laughed at the fact that the Land of the Vikings outlawed the sale and private ownership of souvenir swords, of all things, but at least they didn’t have security people on every corner looking for any reason to rifle through your belongings and clothes and feel you up with an invasive touch-search.
A simple illustration of the difference between old media and new media:
The camera on the left was used by C-SPAN to tape (on a separate tape deck and 8″ CRT) the appearance by Ambassador Paul Bremer at the recent Leadership Program of the Rockies annual retreat. In regular definition. For later uploading to the DC headquarters for editing and broadcast.
The camera on the right is a consumer camcorder, which we at People’s Press Collective use to broadcast events like last week’s Congressional District 4 Debate live to the internet. In high definition. And did I mention we do it live?
Master Thespian John Morse, Colorado Senate Majority Leader, goes off on a rant over Amazon.com’s small act of defiance against his tax increase and privacy invasion. This is so laughable it has to be seen to be believed/appreciated:
For those who don’t know, the Democrat-controlled Colorado legislature two weeks ago passed what have come to be called the “Dirty Dozen” tax increases – blatantly ignoring the Taxpayer Bill of Rights amendment to the state constitution by raising taxes without a vote of the citizens. Among the items subjected to new or increased taxes, including soda and (some, weirdly-defined) candy, doggie bags, software downloads, and bull semen (!), are all online sales.
In the case of the latter, the tax increase mandated onerous and privacy-invading reporting requirements onto online retailers. Amazon announced early on that they would suspend all affiliate accounts for Colorado residents if the measure passed, and over the weekend made good on that promise, sending cancellation letters to all of its Amazon Affiliates in the state.
In other words, a company had the guts to stand up in a small, symbolic way to the anti-constitutional taxation policy and invasive reporting requirements of the state of Colorado – and Senator Morse won’t stand for it. How dare Amazon not meekly accept the dictates of Senator Morse and his pals in the Colorado legislature? Who does Amazon think it is?
Me? I say “Hooray for Amazon!”
What amuses me is that he is now going to ditch his Kindle, boycott Amazon, and take his custom to more statism-friendly Apple. While I applaud Amazon’s actions, I firmly believe that they will lose far more business from people like me, who will no longer purchase anything online, from any retailer, so long as this taxation and reporting law is in effect. Indeed, even though I am a shareholder and the move would cost the company money, I would have preferred to see Amazon go all the way, and refuse to accept any orders for delivery to or with a billing address in Colorado (or at the very least the addresses of the governor and every legislator who voted for the bill).
What’s not funny about Senator Morse’s dramatic soliloquy, though, is the unquestioned assumptions that lie behind it. The notion that Amazon being a $900 million “corporate customer [sic]” is something shameful, a sin that requires the redistribution of their profits to assuage. Or the assumption that the targets of an objectionable piece of legislation ought to know their place, and accept the imposition humbly without uttering a word of protest. Or the apallingly ignorant assumption that he and his equally-economically-ignorant colleagues can blithely pass tax increases without altering economic behavior in the private sector whatsoever.
What’s even worse is Morse’s astonishing and hypocritical attack on Amazon as being a “bully” and engaging in “egregiousness” and ”tyranny”. Senator John Morse, Democrat of Colorado Springs, may want to look in the mirror – after all, it isn’t Amazon who is pitching an over-the-top emotional fit, it isn’t Amazon who is throwing its weight around to take something it shouldn’t have or forcing people to do business with it, and it isn’t Amazon who is acting in blatant violation of the state constitution and against the loudly expressed wishes of the citizens of Colorado.
ADDED: Senator Morse is getting called out on his BS in the comments at YouTube, and is (not at all surprisingly) responding with snippy and condescending remarks. How dare we proles question him! He’s a senator!
Despite my relief at the Scott Brown victory, I’m going to be a voice of sobriety here: important though it may prove to be, this is one victory.
One.
Brown’s win may or may not derail the nationalization of healthcare, depending on whether Obama, Pelosi, and Reid “double down” in an all-out push to ram through their abominable bill with procedural tricks, but it could very well do so. But keep in mind that first, it should never *ever* have gotten this close in Congress, and second, the future is still balanced on a knife’s edge, even with a 59-41 Senate.
I’ve heard today’s victory called “the Scott heard ’round the world” – but like the events of Lexington and Concord this needs to be the firststep towards reining in the statists and restoring our liberty, and not mistaken by those in the grassroots who helped to make it happen as the arrival at that still-distant destination. Much work remains, what with caucuses, primaries, and midterm elections coming up, and aside from boosting the confidence of the grassroots in its efficacy in influencing major elections, this victory in Massachusetts does nothing to change that fact in other states.
Republicans, too, should avoid drawing the wrong lessons from this win – it was not an embrace of Republican policies or Republican leadership, it was for many a rejection of creeping socialism, fiscal irresponsibility, and government power-grabs in favor of liberty, and a repudiation of arrogant but clueless elitists endowed with an sense of entitlement to political office…all of which the Republicans have themselves been guilty lately. The GOP still needs to acknowledge these failings and its responsbility if it expects to rebuild the public trust, and would be wise to articulate a positive, pro-liberty platform for rolling back the nanny state rather than simply restraining the pace of its growth.
It seems the Women in Black Silent Vigil For Peace (who I last observed observing something less than a moment of silence) have given up their first-Saturday protest outside Colorado Mills in Golden…
Did President Obama end the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and neglect to tell anyone (except the Women in Black, apparently)?
It looks like Al Gore, with his lucrative carbon offset schemes, isn’t the only one who may be benefitting from the “climate industry” – IPPC Chairman and former railway engineer Rajendra Pachauri (Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering and Economics) seems to have some interesting and potentially lucrative “climate industry” links of his own:
Today, in addition to his role as chairman of the IPCC, Dr Pachauri occupies more than a score of such posts, acting as director or adviser to many of the bodies which play a leading role in what has become known as the international ‘climate industry’.
It is remarkable how only very recently has the staggering scale of Dr Pachauri’s links to so many of these concerns come to light, inevitably raising questions as to how the world’s leading ‘climate official’ can also be personally involved in so many organisations which stand to benefit from the IPCC’s recommendations…
Initially, when Dr Pachauri took over the running of TERI in the 1980s, his interests centred on the oil and coal industries, which may now seem odd for a man who has since become best known for his opposition to fossil fuels. He was, for instance, a director until 2003 of India Oil, the country’s largest commercial enterprise, and until this year remained as a director of the National Thermal Power Generating Corporation, its largest electricity producer.
In 2005, he set up GloriOil, a Texas firm specialising in technology which allows the last remaining reserves to be extracted from oilfields otherwise at the end of their useful life.
However, since Pachauri became a vice-chairman of the IPCC in 1997, TERI has vastly expanded its interest in every kind of renewable or sustainable technology, in many of which the various divisions of the Tata Group have also become heavily involved, such as its project to invest $1.5 billion (£930 million) in vast wind farms.
Dr Pachauri’s TERI empire has also extended worldwide, with branches in the US, the EU and several countries in Asia. TERI Europe, based in London, of which he is a trustee (along with Sir John Houghton, one of the key players in the early days of the IPCC and formerly head of the UK Met Office) is currently running a project on bio-energy, financed by the EU.
Another project, co-financed by our own Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the German insurance firm Munich Re, is studying how India’s insurance industry, including Tata, can benefit from exploiting the supposed risks of exposure to climate change. Quite why Defra and UK taxpayers should fund a project to increase the profits of Indian insurance firms is not explained.
Follow the money. On the other hand, at least Mr. Pachauri didn’t take any money from Exxon – that might have called into question his scientific objectivity and the purity of his motives.
[O]ne day about a year and a half ago, [investment manager John Hantz] had a revelation. “We need scarcity,” he thought to himself as he drove past block after unoccupied block. “We can’t create opportunities, but we can create scarcity.” And that, he says one afternoon in his living room between puffs on an expensive cigar, “is how I got onto this idea of the farm.”
Yes, a farm. A large-scale, for-profit agricultural enterprise, wholly contained within the city limits of Detroit. Hantz thinksfarming could do his city a lot of good: restore big chunks of tax-delinquent, resource-draining urban blight to pastoral productivity; provide decent jobs with benefits; supply local markets and restaurants with fresh produce; attract tourists from all over the world; and — most important of all — stimulate development around the edges as the local land market tilts from stultifying abundance to something more like scarcity and investors move in. Hantz is willing to commit $30 million to the project. He’ll start with a pilot program this spring involving up to 50 acres on Detroit’s east side. “Out of the gates,” he says, “it’ll be the largest urban farm in the world.”
The original article at CNN Money features a graphic that shows these urban farms won’t just be rows of crops, oh nosirree…they’ll be something special…something cutting edge…like a cross between an O’Neill colony and a baseball stadium:
To increase the odds that they will, Hantz plans on making his farms both visually stunning and technologically cutting edge. Where there are row crops, Hantz says, they’ll be neatly organized, planted in “dead-straight lines — they may even be in a design.” But the plan isn’t to make Detroit look like Iowa. “Don’t think a farm with tractors,” says Hantz. “That’s old.”
In fact, Hantz’s operation will bear little resemblance to a traditional farm. Mike Score, who recently left Michigan State’s agricultural extension program to join Hantz Farms as president, has written a business plan that calls for the deployment of the latest in farm technology, from compost-heated greenhouses to hydroponic (water only, no soil) and aeroponic (air only) growing systems designed to maximize productivity in cramped settings. [emphasis mine]
He’s really excited about apples. Hantz Farms will use a trellised system that’s compact, highly efficient, and tourist-friendly. It won’t be like apple picking in Massachusetts, and that’s the point. Score wants visitors to Hantz Farms to see that agriculture is not just something that takes place in the countryside. They will be able to “walk down the row pushing a baby stroller,” he promises.
Which all sounds pretty silly to me, an unnecessarily capital-intensive way to accomplish the stated goal of making the land productive through agriculture – and a ridiculous exercise in subsidy seeking, as Dan notes. But on the other hand, this is not unlike what will be needed for farms on the Moon and Mars, so even if it fails (as, being in Detroit, it is foredoomed to do), it may be a valuable learning experience for future space settlement efforts.
A young girl sets out to prove herself by resolving a long-forgotten mystery. But when she gets close to the truth, what she thought was a harmless adventure becomes a threat to the future of the independent commercial settlements on Mars.
