URLs du Jour

2020-05-04

  • I am liking these old Freedom Unlimited posts on Facebook way too much:

    That's from 2013, but it's really timeless, right?


  • In our "Couldn't Happen To a Nicer Guy" Department, Steven W. Mosher tells us in the NYPost just Why eco-leftists are suddenly turning on Michael Moore. It's about his latest movie, Planet of the Humans. Sample:

    We follow local environmentalists as they hike up a mountain where a site has been clear-cut for 21 mega wind turbines. They deplore the destruction of the natural beauty of the landscape and the scattering of the wildlife it once supported.

    The engineer in charge ticks off the hundreds of tons of concrete, steel, aluminum, carbon and other products that go into the construction of each and every mega wind turbine. Industry requires huge inputs of energy to produce such things, a total energy deficit that the spinning blades of the wind turbine will not begin to pay back over its projected lifetime.

    Moore ends the segment with a shot of broken and rusted wind turbines littering the landscape.

    And more. Moore blames "capitalism" for all the green nype, but that's pretty easy to refute.


  • Michael Huemer engages a topic that I've been thinking about myself for years: Risk Refutes Absolutism. His thought experiment:

    Say you’re considering some action that might produce some harm. Suppose it’s the sort of harm such that, if you were certain that the harm would occur, then the action would be a rights violation, and hence, according to absolutists, absolutely prohibited no matter what the consequences. Now, what should you say if the action only has some non-extreme probability (neither 0 nor 1) of causing the harm? Is it still prohibited?

    If you need a concrete example: your next-door neighbor has an Airstream in his driveway where he's experimenting with bat viruses, using his own funds, with no evil intent. He seems to be pretty diligent, but not super diligent. Any ideas?


  • Two professors at the University Near Here (Joshua Meyerowitz and Joseph Terry) are signatories to an open letter sent to the head honchos of ABC News, NBC News, CBS News, MSNBC, and WarnerMedia News (which includes CNN). Their demand: Halt live coverage of Trump’s COVID-19 briefings.

    We write to demand that the live, unedited airing of the Daily White House Task Force Briefings stop. Because Donald Trump uses them as a platform for misinformation and disinformation about COVID-19, they have become a serious public health hazard — a matter of life and death for viewers who cannot easily identify his falsehoods, lies and exaggerations. We ask that all cable channels, broadcast stations, and networks (with the exception of C-SPAN) stop airing these briefings live. Instead, they should first review the briefings and, after editing, present only that information that provides updates from health officials about the progress and ongoing mitigation of the disease.

    Let's jump right to a rebuttal from Mark Tapscott at the Oklahoma Council Of Public Affairs, who's not afraid to use the sneer quotes: ‘Journalism’ professors demand media censor Trump; show why public doesn’t trust journalists.

    Were it my decision, every one of these people now in positions of authority in the education and preparation of America’s journalists would be fired today. People who advocate censorship should be kept as far away as possible from journalism classrooms.

    Back in 2016, post-election, Prof Meyerowitz published Alternative Media for the Trump Era. Should you want the scoop from the Nation, Mother Jones, the Progressive.


  • Of course, some of us would prefer to get our Alternative information from folks like Alexander W. Salter at AIER, where he writes on Incompetent Experts and Bad Government. And he immediately invokes one of my idols:

    The late Richard Feynman, one of the 20th century’s eminent physicists, famously said, “Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.” Unfortunately, the response of experts to the coronavirus pandemic has vindicated Feynman’s claim. 

    Experts in the supposedly scientific fields of public health and economics have made a mess of things. Their failures would be comedic, were the consequences not so tragic. Instead of capable service for the public’s welfare, the American people have been made to suffer incompetence and malfeasance. Unless we critically examine the failure of experts, we invite similar blunders in the future. 

    The emperor has no clothes. But he is demanding that everyone else wear masks in public.