Saturday, August 29, 2009
THE THUNDERING SILENCE
One of the things that most repels me about the left's domination of our public culture is its refusal to address the harrowing, fundamental misogyny of the Islamic world. Start your consideration of this with a few minutes reading this woman's description of the lives women are forced to endure across the Muslim world. Make yourself do it. Then, spend a few minutes reading the comments to the article here to see the kind of apologetics engendered by the moral and cultural relativism into which our public culture has sunk.
Seventy years ago, leftists volunteered to fight the fascist Phalangists in the Spanish Civil War. American volunteers -- overwhelmingly from the leftist intelligentsia -- formed the "Abraham Lincoln Brigade" to fight the fascists there. Where is that kind of militant, transnational defense of liberty today when literally hundreds of millions of women in the Islamic world are denied the basic human rights that the left in the West claims to be fundamental to its identity? Why isn't there a "Susan B. Anthony Brigade" of Western feminists fighting alongside the Marines in Afghanistan?
Could it be that it is much much more important to be opposed to "American imperialism" than it is to have the slightest shred of moral and intellectual integrity and consistency?
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 10:57 AM
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
DEAD KENNEDY
It seems like whole political history of our time has been punctuated by dead Kennedies. Take just a minute to read the Wikipedia article about "the Chappaquiddick Incident" as you listen to the lionizing of "the Lion of the Senate" going on on the radio and TV.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 8:33 AM
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
RAPTOR BLUES
I don't know if it's a function of F-22 fans mobilizing to try to build support for reviving the Raptor production line, but there have been a number of items in the defense-tech world recently about the threat posed by the latest generation of Su-27 derivatives. Here's one, for instance, that talks about Russian efforts to "stealth up" the Sukhoi birds. And this overview of the current state-of-the-art Russian bird, the Su-35, makes the plane look pretty damned impressive.
I feel pretty sure the Su-35 would eat F-35s for breakfast, lunch and dinner. The only solutions would be to either give them indigestion by feeding them LOTS of JSFs, or to overpower them with Raptors. But 187 F-22s seem like pretty thin protection from the likes of this beast. If The Messiah is willing to waste TRILLIONS of dollars on absurd "stimuli," couldn't we afford just a few more Raptors?
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 8:03 AM
Sunday, August 23, 2009
THE ICY COMMANDER WAS RIGHT
For almost 40 years, lunar geologists had believed that Alan Shepherd, a/k/a "The Icy Commander," had cut the longest walk on Apollo14 short and missed taking samples from the target they had assigned him. Check out this item and the amazing attached image from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. It turns out Shepherd was right when he claimed they'd reached the objective -- and it wasn't a problem that he high-tailed it back to the lander to engage in his famous lunar golf swing. Shepherd's dead now, but you can still see his footprints on the Frau Mauro highlands of the moon.
GB
posted by Greg 6:37 PM
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
DISFAVORED TECHNOLOGIES
As long readers of this blog will know, I am a strong proponent of two technologies that have what I believe to be truly world-changing possibilities, nuclear power and "missile defense." Both are and have been strongly disfavored by the left, the deep "Green-Red Alliance" that preaches a broad anti-technology gospel. Each addresses a basic threat to the core vitality of our civilization posed by backward societies that have the potential to hold us hostage. Both technologies have to be supported by our political "leadership" in order to overcome an inertia against them that has been injected into our political culture by the left. Both are threatened by the fact that the left is currently in power in the nation that has, until now, led the free world. We live in a moment of great peril, but great promise, if only we can be shaken from our fears and embrace our potential. Will we awaken?
These thoughts are prompted by two items that have come to my attention in the last day. The first is the blog Atomic Insights, a good addition to any reading list devoted to the subject of nuclear power. The second is this retrospective at AvLeak about the history and current state of missile defense. Check 'em out and consider how close we are to solving huge problems that plague our society, if only we could have decent leadership.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 7:52 AM
Sunday, August 16, 2009
IMMORAL
We're fighting a war in Afghanistan. Or so I hear. When you read things like this, it's pretty hard to tell what we're fighting for:An Afghan bill allowing a husband to starve his wife if she refuses to have sex has been published in the official gazette and become law. It allows a man to withhold food from his wife if she refuses his sexual demands; a woman must get her husband's permission to work; and fathers and grandfathers are given exclusive custody of children.What's the point? Americans are dying so these people can have a "democracy." Democracy is the big value here, right? Democracy -- not liberty. As a civilization, we've become so castrated that we can't stand up and say that this is wrong.
Since that's the case, we have no business reorganizing things so that one group of oppressive savages can be in charge instead of another.
Meanwhile, to the extent that it's even possible to say who the enemy in the war is (given the brutality of the natives on our side), the Guardian is reliably on the side of whoever is killing our troops.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 11:33 AM
Saturday, August 15, 2009
HOPE?
I haven't kept up with blogging since the Apollo 11 anniversary. As usual, both too much and too little going on is the reason. In the meantime, out in the so-called "real world," the United States has gone a little crazy over the chance to have some actual input into the collection of train wrecks that has been the Democratic Party "salvation plan" for America. Who could have guessed that the Democrats would be so inefficient that they would let slip away the opportunity to cram it all down our throats in one choking shove? But here it is -- one chance to put on the brakes before we dive head-first down the rat hole. And the only thing the Democrats seem to be able to do is forget the monstrous rhetoric they encouraged for eight years and act shocked -- shocked! -- at the nastiness that's been unleashed when they messed up and let us have a chance to have a say. For the first time in months and months, I feel hopeful.
And for those who need a reminder of why this matters, here's a view from someone in England who lives where we've been heading.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 5:09 PM
Monday, August 03, 2009
1 + 1
An item linked at Drudge:Higher oil prices brought on by a rapid increase in demand and a stagnation, or even decline, in supply could blow any recovery off course, said Dr Fatih Birol, the chief economist at the respected International Energy Agency (IEA) in Paris, which is charged with the task of assessing future energy supplies by OECD countries.In an interview with The Independent, Dr Birol said that the public and many governments appeared to be oblivious to the fact that the oil on which modern civilisation depends is running out far faster than previously predicted and that global production is likely to peak in about 10 years – at least a decade earlier than most governments had estimated.
But the first detailed assessment of more than 800 oil fields in the world, covering three quarters of global reserves, has found that most of the biggest fields have already peaked and that the rate of decline in oil production is now running at nearly twice the pace as calculated just two years ago. On top of this, there is a problem of chronic under-investment by oil-producing countries, a feature that is set to result in an "oil crunch" within the next five years which will jeopardise any hope of a recovery from the present global economic recession, he said.
And then, this, at the Washington Post:
"Everyone knows nuclear plants run on uranium, right?" Grae continues, and then launches into a litany of uranium's persistent problems. Nuclear plants in service today run on a fuel mix that generates enough spent uranium and plutonium to build dozens of nuclear weapons each year in the United States alone. That waste will remain highly radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years. It already adds up to more than 78,000 metric tons, with highly uncertain prospects for safe, long-term storage.
But what if these very same nuclear power plants were able to run on a different fuel mix? A mix that: first, would generate only a minor amount of waste, if any, that could be used to build a nuclear weapon. Second, could destroy tons of plutonium instead of generating it. Third, would produce less than half the volume of current fuel waste, which would remain radioactive for only a few hundred years. And, fourth, is made from an element far more abundant, less radioactive and cheaper than uranium: thorium.
And what if the technology had already gotten positive reviews from the American Nuclear Society, the World Nuclear Association and, in particular, from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the world's nuclear watchdog, which, in a 2005 report titled Thorium Fuel Cycle -- Potential Benefits and Challenges, called it "an attractive way to produce long-term nuclear energy with low radiotoxicity waste?"
The answer is available. Now. But, really, by all means, let's run around like chickens with our heads cut off, and do, for all practical purposes ... nothing. OK?
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 5:52 AM
