Bill Simon and I will be on The Space Show tomorrow morning/afternoon (depending on your time zone — it’s at 0930 PDT until 1100 PDT) to discuss our ceremony to commemorate the first landing on the moon (tomorrow will be the 43rd anniversary). As a special feature, Margaret Jordan, a friend of three decades and one of the authors, will also be on for the first time. This will be a special event, as she, Bill and I haven’t talked together in many years, not because we don’t like each other, but because that’s just how life works.
Listen in. Among other things, we’ll perform the ceremony on Internet radio.
Lakoff does something throughout the book which he must think is very clever, but which is completely transparent to the reader, making for a truly cringe-worthy experience. Lakoff has two public personas: First, he is a scientist; and second, he is a partisan political advocate. He understands that when he speaks as a partisan, we the readers necessarily take what he says with a grain of salt; but when he speaks as a scientist, we are expected to accept his statements as objective truth. Throughout the book, he constantly switches back and forth between the two personas: He’ll speak for a paragraph or two as a liberal activist advising Democratic candidates and pundits, then he’ll take off that hat and put on the linguist hat to say something “official”; then switch back to his liberal hat, and so on. I guess the temptation was too great to resist abusing this dual role, because he makes a habit — a career, actually — of putting on his scientist hat and then making partisan statements, which he passes off as impartial facts. I can only imagine that he thinks he’s getting away with it, but the gambit is so glaringly obvious that it makes you almost embarrassed for the guy.
Ignoring the ultimate intellectual and moral bankruptcy of their ideas, leftists’ biggest problem in convincing intelligent people is their utter lack of self awareness. Read the whole thing. It’s advice to double down on failure.
We went to see Marvel’s Avengers yesterday (great movie), and noticed that Prometheus was just starting in another theater as we were walking out of the one where it was playing, so we could have done it for nothing, but weren’t up for a double feature, particularly given what I’ve been reading about it.
Some thoughts on Planetary Resources and Peter Diamandis’ abundance thesis over at Zero Hedge. I need to give it some thought, but I think there is a definitional issue here of what constitutes a “resource.” It’s somewhat related to the question of whether gravity existed before Newton invented it, though a little less philosophical. I’m on a couple deadlines right now, but have at it in comments.