My Writings. My Thoughts.
Big Government says no walking or biking for you
Posted on October 1st, 2009 — Filed under Politics
Government big enough to give you everything you need is big enough to take everything you have.
According to http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=847190 school officials “will not tolerate” kids walking or biking to school:
The 12-year-old and his mother, Janette Kaddo Marino, are defying Saratoga Springs school policy by biking to Maple Avenue Middle School
[...]But on the night before classes started, school authorities called parents to say that walking and biking to school would not be tolerated.[...]When the pair stuck with their plan, they were met by school administrators and a state trooper
Socialized Medicine and the Cross-Border Incident
Posted on June 30th, 2009 — Filed under Politics
Socialized Medicine:
Somewhere in America Alone, I cite an example of the logical reduction of socialized health care: “the ten-month wait for the maternity ward.” I’ve been adding to the file ever since. Here’s the latest entry, from Hamilton, Ontario:
Hamilton’s neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) was full when Ava Isabella Stinson was born 14 weeks premature at St. Joseph’s Hospital Thursday at 12:24 p.m. A provincewide search for an open NICU bed came up empty, leaving no choice but to send the two-pound, four-ounce preemie to Buffalo that evening.
Well, it would be unreasonable to expect Hamilton, a city of half-a-million people just down the road from Canada’s largest city (Greater Toronto Area, five-and-a-half million) in the most densely populated part of Canada’s most populous province (Ontario, 13 million people) to be able to offer the same level of neonatal care as Buffalo, a post-industrial ruin in steep population decline for half-a-century.
But wait! The fun and games are only just beginning. When a decrepit and incompetent Canadian health bureaucracy meets a boneheaded and inhuman American border “security” bureaucracy, you’ll be getting a birth experience you’ll treasure forever:
Her parents, Natalie Paquette and Richard Stinson, couldn’t follow their baby because as of June 1, a passport is required to cross the border into the United States. They’re having to approve medical procedures over the phone and are terrified something will happen to their baby before they get there.
Once Buffalo enjoys the benefits of Hamilton-level health care, I wonder where Ontario will be shipping the preemies to. Costa Rica?
We now return you to your 24/7 Michael Jackson coverage…
From Mark Steyn
Does Macroevolution Work?
Posted on March 5th, 2009 — Filed under News and Science
An interesting article on why macroevolution doesn’t work.
A major problem for evolutionists is how could partially-evolved plant and animal species survive over, supposedly, millions of years if their vital organs and tissues were still in the process of evolving?
tagged with: evolution, science
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Very Cool Creation
Posted on March 5th, 2009 — Filed under News and Science
The heavens declare the glory of God:
tagged with: God, images, science
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Drug to increase muscle mass 20% with no side effects
Posted on November 19th, 2008 — Filed under News and Science
Researchers at the University of Virginia Health System report that a daily single oral dose of an “investigational drug, MK-677, increased muscle mass in the arms and legs of healthy older adults without serious side effects, suggesting that it may prove safe and effective in reducing age-related frailty.
tagged with: health, science
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Secrets to avoiding the future robot rebellion
Posted on September 14th, 2007 — Filed under News and Science
An excellent article in Reason Magazine on the psychosocial implications of artificial intelligence. Here’s a particularly interesting part (emphasis mine).
Hall suggested that instead of fixed moral rules (which a super smart AI with access to its own source code could change later anyway) progenitors should try to inculcate something like a conscience into the AIs they foster. A conscience allows humans to extend and apply moral rules flexibly in new and different contexts. One rule of thumb that Hall would like to see implemented in AIs is: “Ideas should compete; bodies should cooperate.” He also suggested that AIs (robots) should be open source. Hall said that his friend economist Robin Hanson pointed out to him that we already live with superhuman psychopaths—modern corporations—and we’re not all dead. Part of what reins in corporations is transparency, e.g., the requirement that outsiders audit their books. Indeed, governments are also superhuman psychopaths, and generally the less transparent a government the more likely it is to commit atrocities. So the idea here is that more AI source code is inspected, the more likely we are to trust them. Finally, Hall also suggested that AIs also be instilled with the Boy Scout Law.
tagged with: artificial intelligence, science
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Physicists have ’solved’ mystery of levitation
Posted on August 17th, 2007 — Filed under News and Science
The University of St Andrews team has created an ‘incredible levitation effects’ by reversing the “Casimir force” which normally causes objects to stick together, so that it repels instead of attracts.
The force is due to neither electrical charge or gravity, but rather the fluctuations in all-pervasive energy fields in the intervening empty space between the objects and is one reason atoms stick together.
Now, using a special lens of a kind that has already been built, Prof Ulf Leonhardt and Dr Thomas Philbin report in the New Journal of Physics they can engineer the Casimir force to repel, rather than attract.
This potentially opens the way for near-frictionless nanotechnology.
Read the full story.
tagged with: science
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Faster-than-light travel demonstrated in Germany
Posted on August 17th, 2007 — Filed under News and Science
‘We have broken speed of light’ – Telegraph:
A pair of German physicists claim to have broken the speed of light – an achievement that would undermine our entire understanding of space and time.
The pair say they have conducted an experiment in which microwave photons – energetic packets of light – traveled “instantaneously” between a pair of prisms that had been moved up to 3ft apart.
Being able to travel faster than the speed of light would lead to a wide variety of bizarre consequences. For instance, an astronaut moving faster than it would theoretically arrive at a destination before leaving.
The scientists were investigating a phenomenon called quantum tunneling, which allows sub-atomic particles to break apparently unbreakable laws.
tagged with: science
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It’s Raining Irony!
Posted on February 26th, 2007 — Filed under News and Science
Here are two blasts of irony on the global warming front, both courtesy of Drudge:
First, the House Energy and Commerce Committee Subcommittee on Energy and Air Quality has canceled its hearing set for today entitled, “Climate Change: Are Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Human Activities Contributing to a Warming of the Planet?” due to freezing rain and snow here in Washington. Apparently, it just ain’t warming fast enough.
In a similar vein, a showing of Al Gore’s movie on the campus of Maryville University in St Louis set for last night was also canceled for the same reason.
Remember, when it’s hot it’s climate, when it’s cold, it’s weather.
tagged with: global warming
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