Extreme weather often results in power loss to large numbers of people. I’ve experienced multi-day outages from thunderstorms, blizzards, and ice storms in the midwest and hurricanes in the southeast. Most Americans probably recall similar outages. That’s what happens when you string wires and transformers all over the place then pray nothing knocks them down or stresses them out.
Tag: libertarian
Entangling Alliances Make For Forever Wars
In March of 2018, US president Donald Trump promised “we’ll be coming out of Syria, like, very soon.” That December, he issued an order to begin withdrawing US troops. Apparently the order never got executed. Most of a year later, US forces remain.
Instead of Explaining Greta Thunberg, Debate Her Claims
Critics slam Thunberg as everything from “mentally ill” (a claim which got one Fox News guest blacklisted), to naive pawn in a well-funded propaganda operation, to just plain annoying teenager. I think those critics miss the point. If they disagree on the facts, they should dispute those facts rather than focus on Thunberg at all. But since the focus IS on her, let’s take a closer look.
Thomas DiLorenzo: Ten Things You Should Know about Socialism (50m)
This episode features a lecture by economics professor and Austro-libertarian Thomas DiLorenzo from 2016. He looks at the many aspects of socialism and why its a disastrous economic system for liberty and prosperity.
Want Lower Drug Prices? Make the FDA’s Authority Advisory, Not Regulatory
Lately, FDA seems more interested in feeding a moral panic over “e-cigarettes” to expand its power even further than in executing its supposed mission of “protecting the public health.”
Politicians: A Necessary Demystification
Politicians aren’t ethereal creatures of pure principle, operating on a higher moral plane than the rest of us. They’re people with jobs and with bosses, just LIKE the rest of us. And that’s more than sufficient reason to not give them much power OVER the rest of us.
Yep, These People are Stone Cold Crooked
Maybe Joe Biden was just worried about corruption in Ukraine and not throwing his vice-presidential weight around to protect his son. Maybe Donald Trump is just worried about corruption in Ukraine and self-dealing by American politicians, rather than cynically abusing his presidential power to have foreign governments torpedo his political opponents. OK, now let’s get back to the real world where, as Lord Acton wrote, “power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
E-Cigarettes: Media Bury the Lede, We Get to Bury the Bodies
Nearly every national headline on the story emphasizes “vaping-related” illnesses and deaths. Nearly every first paragraph associates Walmart’s decision with those illnesses and deaths. “Burying the lede” is the journalistic malpractice of failing to mention the most important facts of a story in the first (“lead” or “lede”) paragraph. That’s what’s going on here.
The US Navy’s Attitude About Releasing UFO Videos is More Disturbing Than the UFO Videos
I don’t know, and am not going to claim to know, whether we’re being visited by extraterrestrials and if so what they’re up to while they’re here. I don’t have strong opinions on which sighting and abduction stories are true and which aren’t. I’m just exactly smart enough to understand that I don’t have the information I’d need to reach such conclusions. What I do know is that it shouldn’t be the government’s prerogative to conceal such information from the rest of us indefinitely, tell us tall tales about weather balloons and swamp gas, and offer lame “national security” excuses when caught out.
Science + Politics = Crap
I like to listen to scientific lectures. Unfortunately, it’s becoming rare to be able to listen to an entire lecture without hearing an awkward jab at the anti-science mindset of the Republican Party. I don’t disagree, but it’s still the pot calling the kettle “black”.