Tag: freedom

Yale students demand two administrators be fired for defending free speech

8:13 am

The coming dark age: Students at Yale University on Thursday demanded that two university administrators be fired because they refused to ban certain Halloween costumes that might offend some students.

On Thursday, the students surrounded Yale College Dean Jonathan Holloway—a black man—in an outdoor space and chided him for failing to take action against a fraternity that had allegedly prevented black women from attending its party. (It’s not at all clear the allegation is true, according to The Daily Beast)

After giving Holloway his comeuppance, they moved on to Nicholas Christakis, master of Silliman College. What was Christakis’s crime? His wife, an early childhood educator, had responded to a campus-wide email about offensive Halloween costumes by opining that it was inappropriate for the college to tell students how to dress.

There are videos also showing the students attacking Christakis. Watch them, and then weep for the fall of western civilization. Key quote, by one of the students:

It is not about creating an intellectual space! It is not! Do you understand that? It’s about creating a home here! You are not doing that. You’re going against that.

In other words, going to Yale is not about going to a place where intellectual ideas of all kinds can be expressed. You go to Yale to feel safe and unbothered.

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Noteworthy – Amazing Grace

6:01 pm

An evening pause: Normally I do not post music videos where the singers are lip-syncing so that they can stage some clever visuals, as is done in this video. However, the singing is so good, and the singers and song is filled with such joy, that it is worth listening and watching regardless. A good way to end the week.

Hat tip Tom Biggar.

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Crowded Mexico City and colonization of space

11:15 pm

This week Diane and I are in Mexico with friends doing some sightseeing. As is my habit, I can’t just enjoy the sights I have to ask a lot of questions while trying to get an impression of the place, its culture, its environment, its atmosphere, and its politics. Not surprisingly, the answers to some of those questions pointed me upward beyond the surface of the Earth. To understand why, read on.

Today we toured the inner parts of Mexico City, both on foot and by bus and subway (or the Metro as they call it here). I have spent considerable time in many of the world’s major cities, growing up in New York and visiting at length Moscow, Kiev, Prague, London, Chicago, Los Angeles and others. Mexico City has many of the same features you’d expect for this kind of big city, lots of people, lots of traffic, lots of buildings packed tight together, and lots of wealth and poverty sitting side-by-side.

Mexico City traffic

Mexico City however to me seemed to be most crowded and the most packed of any city I have ever visited or lived in. Its size and population probably rivals that of the entire New York metropolitan area, but somehow the traffic and crowds and architecture seemed more piled on top of each other with far less breathing room.

First was the traffic. Everywhere we went it was wall to wall vehicles. The major highways were never quiet, even at night. Nor could I see much difference between midday and rush hours. The picture on the right shows us heading from in from an outer neighborhood where we were staying to take the subway into the center of the city. Not only was it bumper-to-bumper, but if you look out in the distance the road is bumper-to-bumper as far as the eye can see. My host Alfonso added at one point that in order to avoid this traffic many people routinely leave for work before 5 am and come home after 8 pm. Schools have multiple shifts, including ones at night.

A side note: The tall rectangular structures in the foreground are not buildings. This is a work of art, five several hundred foot tall cinderblock structures supposedly forming a hand pointing up, with the thicker yellow tower in the front representing the thumb.
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Tomato harvesting

6:01 pm

An evening pause: Another video suggested by Phill Oltmann illustrating how engineering has revolutionized the agricultural field. In this case its tomatoes, which I think illustrates quite well why mass produced tomatoes are simply not as good as vine grown tomatoes from your garden. Assuming the tomatoes in this video are not intended for canning, they have to be tough to withstand the harvesting process so that they remain whole for the fruit stand.

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Update to commercial space law stalled in Senate

6:26 am

Surprise, surprise! It appears that several Senate Democrats and the trial lawyer organizations that back them are objecting to passage of an update to the 2004 Commercial Space Act that would extend the period that companies would be exempt from liability while they experiment with new spacecraft.

Some Democratic members of the House Science Committee opposed those provisions when the committee marked up a version of the bill in May. “This really is quite an indefensible provision,” said Rep. Donna Edwards (D-Md.) during discussion then regarding the federal jurisdiction clause of the House bill, arguing that the bill is “basically providing the launch industry with complete immunity from any civil action.”

The American Association for Justice, a legal organization formerly known as the Association of Trial Lawyers of America, also spoke out against those sections of the bill in May. “Industries that lobby for immunity from accountability might as well hang up a sign saying they don’t trust themselves to be safe,” Linda Lipsen, chief executive of the association, said in a May 13 statement.

I really hate saying “I told you so!” but more than a decade ago, when the 2004 Commercial Space Act was passed, I opposed it because it gave the federal government far too much regulatory control over this very new and very experimental industry. Many industry people attacked me for doing so, saying that they needed this regulatory framework to raise capital.

Now the industry finds those regulations burdensome and is trying to get them eased, or waived temporarily. Not unexpectedly, there are vested interests in and out of Congress who don’t want those regulations eased. So, instead of focusing their energies on developing new technologies, the industry must instead spend money on lobbying and political dealmaking, which might get them some of what they want but will certainly also come with some political price that will be even more burdensome.

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Kingston Trio – They’re rioting in Africa

6:01 pm

An evening pause: The amazing thing about this song is that it was written in the 1960s and does a good job of describing the insanity today. In the 60s it was actually exaggerating the chaos a bit. Today, it probably understates it. The only thing about the song that I objected to then, and now, is its eventual pessimistic view of humanity. We ain’t perfect, but we ain’t all bad either. In fact, I think there is probably more good than evil in most of us. We just need to listen, think, and choose. Chaos happens when we don’t, and instead act like mindless instinct-driven animals.

Hat tip Tom Biggar.

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Excommunication scene from Becket

6:01 pm

An evening pause: On the eve of this year’s election day, this scene from Becket (1964) expresses well what I wish the American voters would do to both the Democratic Party and the Republican leadership in Congress. They all need to go, for the health of the country and because of their repeated malfeasance in office.

Hat tip to Phil Berardelli, author of the new edition of Phil’s Favorite 500: Loves of a Moviegoing Lifetime.

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History: CNBC, the tea party, and this week’s debate

12:38 pm

Link here. The essay is a fascinating look back at the factors that generated the tea party movement in 2009, centered greatly on a single commentary that took place on CNBC at the time. The essay then notes how NBC then revamped CNBC’s lineup, making it far more liberal and Democratic, which is why we had what we had at the Republican Presidential debate this past week.

It is very much worth a read, as it gives some very important background to these events. It also makes this point, which I think is quite significant:

[I]t was Cruz’s defense of the entire field, and of all conservatives, that was like a game changing pick six in football. The debate was instantly different. That was the match and the gasoline to another conservative explosion. I contend nothing will be the same in debates any time soon, or in any liberal media interviews for that matter – and this is critical. [emphasis in original]

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Eutelsat signs a multi-launch Proton rocket deal

9:27 pm

The competition heats up: Satellite maker Eutelsat has signed a seven year multi-launch deal with International Launch Services (ILS) using the Proton rocket.

The ILS press release does not state how many launches this contract covers, which makes me suspect that ILS was forced due to competition with SpaceX to give Eutelsat a great deal of flexibility about which launcher it uses with each satellite down the road. The ILS release even admits this. ““With their selection of ILS Proton for this Multi-Launch Agreement Eutelsat has made a clear statement that flexibility and schedule assurance are key discriminators.”

This is still a good thing for the Russians, as it insures them a share in the launch market for almost the next decade.

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