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the junk science of "Avatar"

Posted by Far_view on Sunday, February 07, 2010 10:03:51 PM
Well, I finally broke down and went to watch Avatar today. Having read articles about how it is anti-military, anti-corporate, and how it pushes a pantheistic philosophy, I must say that while watching it, even above the latter criticisms, a two word phrase and a hyphenated phrase came to mind and those were: "junk science" and "anti-Darwinist". I'm surprised that I haven't read any critques of the movie that take it to task on the junk science in it.

With the disclaimer that I am not an expert in evolutionary biology, to the extent that I am familiar with it, I do know that it is based on Darwin's theory of natural selection. Natural selection is based on "the survival of the fittest"- well that doesn't seem to hold true on Avatar's world of Pandora. On Pandora, all the plants and critters are inter-connected so much so that when the Na'vi are threatened, all the critters come to their defense. I have to tell you, when I was watching that part of the movie, it seemed more like a Disney cartoon with all the forest critters coming to protect Bambi from the evil hunter.

I can see why this movie is so popular with the Libs who go on and on about how people are "destroying the planet". On Pandora, when you cut down a tree, you're literally putting a dagger in the heart of their planet's goddess. This is like fantasy wish fulfillment for the hard core environmentalists- their constructed vision of what we are doing to Earth made manifest in a planet with a fantasy ecosystem that is literally "all connected".

Don't even get me going on how stupid and utterly impossible anti-gravity floating mountains are...
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still more diverse opinions on Obama's new space policy

Posted by Far_view on Friday, February 05, 2010 7:46:22 PM
Buzz Aldrin has a column strongly supporting Obama's new space policy as does James Cameron. On the other hand, Paul Spudis makes some good points against it in this discussion thread. Spudis actually gets to the crux of my concern about the new policy with this statement:

"A plan to go anywhere and everywhere with this agency IS a plan to go nowhere.

Without the strategic direction provided by the Vision, the “new paradigm” will degenerate entirely into process, with hordes of bureaucratic committees engaged in “studies” and “roadmapping exercises'."
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Two takes on the new Obama space policy

Posted by Far_view on Thursday, February 04, 2010 6:28:07 PM
Here are two different takes on the Obama space policy. Rand Simberg argues that it is actually a conservative space policy. Tom Jones argues that it is an abandonment of human spaceflight.
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Reactions to the proposed NASA budget

Posted by Far_view on Monday, February 01, 2010 9:50:36 PM
There have been a lot of news stories about the official release of the proposed 2011 NASA budget in Obama's proposed budget. The LA Times has a good summary. Also MSNBC's Alan Boyle has a good review of the proposed change to commercial providers for getting humans to Low Earth Orbit.

There are a lot of negative reactions to the proposals... oddly enough a lot of them are coming from towns and states that will be adversely affected by the shut-down of the Constellation launch vehicle program.

There are positive reactions too. The Planetary Society came out in favor of it. Also Rand Simberg at Transterrestrial Musings thinks its the right way to go. The new direction is also applauded by the Space Frontier Foundation. I still think that the devil is in the details so we'll see how those details work out.
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amongst the Obama-noids

Posted by Far_view on Friday, January 29, 2010 8:32:57 PM
I work with a lot of people who are mostly Democrats and Obama supporters. I usually try to keep a low profile and just ignore some of their comments, but at lunch today one of them commented about Obama's State of the Union speech saying how "honest and straightforward" he was. My head just about exploded. I went on to say that Obama was anything but honest. I used his rhetoric about health care as an example. Obama kept on saying that people would be able to keep their own plans and that was an out and out lie. I have a HSA and I wouldn't be able to keep that under the House bill (I'm not sure about the Senate plan, but I'm sure ultimately it would go bye-bye). The argument about the public option gobbling up private health insurers was obviously something these guys had never heard. The fact that our HSAs would go away is something that was news to them. I guess I should be surprised, but I'm not.
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Obama to scrap the Return to the Moon initiative

Posted by Far_view on Wednesday, January 27, 2010 2:19:10 PM
Here is a LA Times story reporting that in Obama's FY 2011 budget he will zero out funding for the Constellation program that was developing the Ares I and Ares V launch vehicles. No word in the story on whether development of the Orion spacecraft would continue or not. It talks about providing more funding for climate change research (like we really need that) and has some encouraging bits about ultimate development of a heavy-lift launch vehicle and a program to "enable human exploration of asteroids and the inner solar system". I guess we'll wait and see what all the details are when the actual budget comes out.

Update: Rand Simberg has a great post here on this topic with several links to other stories.

While on the face of it this Obama decision is a retreat from going back to the Moon, by getting commercial firms to ferry astronauts to Low Earth Orbit and, if he follows through, getting a heavy-lift launch vehicle program going, we could be in good shape for getting to the Moon and a whole host of other inner solar system destinations.
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Obama administration to contract out rides to orbit for NASA astronauts

Posted by Far_view on Monday, January 25, 2010 8:09:45 PM
Apparently the Obama administration is going to plan to contract out to private companies in order to get NASA astronauts to Low Earth Orbit. There is a story on it here, and Rand Simberg of Transterrestrial Musings has comments on the commenters here.

Who knows how this will actually work; however, it has the potential to be very good to build up a more robust private sector in space transportation.
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IPCC global warming fraud is now linked to insider corruption

Posted by Far_view on Monday, January 25, 2010 4:53:40 PM
Last week the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) admitted that a statement in their alarmist 2007 report linking humans to global warming had no foundation in actual scientific research. That report indicated that mountain glaciers in the Himalayas could disappear by 2035. That claim came from a scientist who is now working for IPCC chairman Dr. Rajendra Pachauri's own institute. The claim about the glaciers was not made on the basis of any actual peer-reviewed research but just on the basis of a magazine interview with Pachauri's now employee. Moreover, Pechauri's institute won a big grant on the strength of that claim...

So we have not just junk science, but potential collusion leading to monetary gain... no wonder Pechauri and Al Gore are such big buddies.

You can read about the whole story in a story from the UK Telegraph here.
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The insularity of the Left

Posted by Far_view on Wednesday, January 20, 2010 11:30:30 PM
There's a really interesting column here  from Forbes.com about how the Left lives in their own bubble and is ignorant of the Right, but that Conservatives generally do have more of a sense of what the Liberals are about. Here's a good paragraph from the column:

"The real problem for American liberals is that they don't know how insular they've become. Thus their late response to Brown's insurrection. Thus, also, their claim that Americans still favor (by 80%!) a "public option" in ObamaCare--as a poster on Daily Kos absurdly asserted last night. Thus the left's stubborn insistence that all reputable scientists agree on human-caused global warming and its likely catastrophic consequences."
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Rich Lowry summarizes Brown's win

Posted by Far_view on Wednesday, January 20, 2010 11:45:44 AM
Rich Lowry has a good column on Scott Brown's win in Massachusetts. He has a great first paragraph:

" Behold the marvel of American democracy: A truck, a Twitter account and an unassuming guy can move the world."

and a funny and succinct account of what would happen if Nancy Pelosi persists in pushing health care "reform":

" If Speaker Nancy Pelosi persists in the House, she might as well repeat for her members the order that Gen. Kemal Ataturk gave at Gallipoli: "I don't order you to attack. I order you to die.""
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The Uprising!

Posted by Far_view on Tuesday, January 19, 2010 10:06:00 PM
Hurray for Senator Scott Brown!  What a great victory in Massachusetts... Massachusetts!  I'll tell you, Brown's win restores my faith in the American people.  It tells me that even the people of Massachusetts don't want the type of socialist agenda that Obama, Reid and Pelosi have been pushing. 

Brown's victory makes me think of one of my favorite new songs "Uprising" by Muse.  To quote some of the lyrics from that song:

"They will not force us.
They will stop degrading us.
The will not control us.
We will be victorious."



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Krauthammer on Obama's declining poll number

Posted by Far_view on Friday, January 15, 2010 1:57:03 PM
Charles Krauthammer always writes a good column and today he examines Obama's declining poll numbers. I find his take on the health care bill, which he just kind of casually tosses into the mix of his column, to be really inciteful:

"Then, the keystone: a health care revolution in which the federal government will regulate in crushing detail one-sixth of the U.S. economy. By essentially abolishing medical underwriting (actuarially based risk assessment) and replacing it with government fiat, Obamacare turns the health insurance companies into utilities, their every significant move dictated by government regulators. The public option was a sideshow. As many on the right have long been arguing, and as the more astute on the left (such as The New Yorker's James Surowiecki) understand, Obamacare is government health care by proxy, single-payer through a facade of nominally "private" insurers."
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Weekly Standard reporter shoved to curb by Coakley campaign

Posted by Far_view on Wednesday, January 13, 2010 2:21:49 PM
This is a pretty amazing story (with associated video) wherein Weekly Standard reporter John McCormack got shoved to the sidewalk by a thug after McCormack asked Coakley a question she didn't like (about her assertion in a debate that there were no terrorists in Afghanistan). This is the modern Democrat party.
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OMG! I'm recommending another Maureen Dowd column

Posted by Far_view on Sunday, January 10, 2010 10:44:46 AM
I can't believe that I'm recommending another Maureen Dowd column, but I am. Dowd takes apart Obama's response to the "underwear bomber". Pretty devastating. Of course she has to take the obligatory dig at the Republicans, but disregarding that you have to love that even big Libs like Dowd are criticizing Obama.
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NASA Administrator Bolden speaks to the AAS

Posted by Far_view on Saturday, January 09, 2010 10:55:05 AM
NASA Administrator Charles Bolden spoke to the big meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) this past week. There's a good report on his speech and lots of comments posted here at spacepolitics.com. Interesting stuff. I've been listening to podcasts of the John Bachelor show from WABC in NYC. He is apparently a bit of a space buff and has guests on about space periodically. He had Bob Zimmerman on and Zimmerman was saying that Obama might have a big announcement about the space program soon. We'll see.
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