August 2019 Archives

Just because a few dozen scientists in 2006 decreed that Pluto isn't a planet doesn't make it so.

Saturday 24 August 2019 marked a vexing anniversary for planetary scientists. It was 13 years to the day that Pluto's official definition changed - what was once numbered among the planets of the Solar System was now but a humble dwarf planet.

But not everyone agreed with the International Astronomical Union's ruling - and now NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine has added his voice to the chorus declaring support for Pluto's membership in the Solar System Planet Club.

"Just so you know, in my view, Pluto is a planet," he said during a tour of the Aerospace Engineering Sciences Building at the University of Colorado Boulder.

Scientists classify things in all sorts of ways for many different purposes -- and maybe it's useful to think of Pluto as a "dwarf planet" for some purposes. That's fine. But our planets are more than scientific curiosities, they're cultural, civilizational, and species-ational icons with tremendous legacy and substance. No small group of humans has the power or authority to strip Pluto of it's iconic status or dictate to humanity what label we must use for it.

Thomas Sowell is one of the smartest, most influential economists and philosophers of our time. Here he redirects two common lines of inquiry and asserts that we often ask the wrong questions.

Wrong Question No. 1: What is the cause, explanation, or origin of poverty?

It's not the origins of poverty that need to be explained. What requires explaining are the things that created and sustained higher standards of living [illustrated in the chart above]. There's no explanation needed for poverty. The species began in poverty. So what you really need to know is what are the things that enable some countries, and some groups within countries, to become prosperous."

Wrong Question #2: What's the reason for slavery and why did it exist in the US and elsewhere?

Of all the tragic facts about the history of slavery, the most astonishing to an American today is that, although slavery was a worldwide institution for thousands of years, nowhere in the world was slavery a controversial issue prior to the 18th century. People of every race and color were enslaved - and enslaved others. White people were still being bought and sold as slaves in the Ottoman Empire, decades after American blacks were freed. ...

Deciding that slavery was wrong was much easier than deciding what to do with millions of people from another continent, of another race, and without any historical preparation for living as free citizens in a society like that of the United States, where they were 20 percent of the population.

It is clear from the private correspondence of Washington, Jefferson, and many others that their moral rejection of slavery was unambiguous, but the practical question of what to do now had them baffled. That would remain so for more than half a century.

Psychologist Robert Epstein performed a study about how pro-Clinton bias at Google affects voting.

In his tweetstorm, Epstein clarified a few things: his study did not claim Google directly "manipulated" the election, only that pro-Clinton bias in Google search results could account for millions of votes for Clinton. Trump was also wrong about the high-end number. Google bias "was enough to convince between 2.6 & 10.4 million undecided voters to vote for Hillary."

Epstein has a history of admiration and support for Hillary Clinton, but now he feels compelled to announce that he isn't suicidal.

Okay, this is sort of funny.... It's been suggested that I remind people that I AM NOT SUICIDAL!!! I love my life, wife, 3 awesome sons, 2 awesome daughters, my research, etc. etc. Everyone got that??? Thanks to @Pumped_4_Trump for the suggestion.

I guess he's familiar with the latest data from the CDC: "CDC: People With Dirt On Clintons Have 843% Greater Risk Of Suicide".

I was hardly the only one to wonder when I posted about Epstein's mysterious attempted suicide in July, but now he's dead and "questions swirl" around the circumstances. Here are some of the questions, chopped out of the larger article.

One of Jeffrey Epstein's two guards the night he hanged himself in his federal jail cell wasn't a regular correctional officer, according to people familiar with the detention center, which is now under scrutiny for what Attorney General William Barr on Monday called "serious irregularities." ...

Epstein had been placed on suicide watch after he was found in his cell a little over two weeks ago with bruises on his neck. But he had been taken off that watch at the end of July and returned to the jail's special housing unit.

There, Epstein was supposed to have been checked on by a guard about every 30 minutes. But investigators have learned those checks weren't done for several hours before Epstein was found unresponsive, according to a person familiar with the episode. ...

A second person familiar with operations at the jail said Epstein was found with a bedsheet around his neck Saturday morning.

Bedsheets that are paper thin, and a bed so low that Epstein had to hold his feet up off the floor while he strangled.

Epstein, 66, was found with the sheet wrapped around his neck and secured to the top of a bunk bed, the New York Post reported Monday. He kneeled toward the floor and used the noose to strangle himself, the paper added, citing an unnamed law enforcement official.

Back to the original article...

An autopsy was performed Sunday, but New York City Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Barbara Sampson said investigators were awaiting further information.

What information are they waiting on, and from whom?

I think the Babylon Bee nails the zeitgeist: "CDC: People With Dirt On Clintons Have 843% Greater Risk Of Suicide".

Yet another college admissions scandal where the wealthy cheat, this time to steal money from taxpayers and the poor.

The Journal tells a story of a Chicago-area family whose household income is greater than $250,000. They live in a home valued at more than $1.2 million.

The mother transferred guardianship of her then-17-year-old daughter to her business partner last year.

She and her husband have already spent $600,000 sending their other children through college, the article said. There wasn't enough cash to send their youngest, so they reached into the loophole with the help of, no surprise here, a lawyer and an education consultant.

The daughter claimed only $4,200 in income that she earned from a summer job. The daughter was accepted into a private university, and received a $27,000 merit scholarship, and on top of that, $20,000 in need based financial aid, including a Pell grant that she'll never have to pay back.

What really needs to be said about this? If there are hand-outs paid for by taxpayers, then dishonest people will conspire to steal them.