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Oct 272017
 

Recently there’s been news of efforts to raise admissions prices to some of the more popular National Parks such as Yellowstone and Yosemite, due to increasing costs. Often left unsaid is that these parks tend to be *packed* with visitors. The sheer numbers are enough to ruin the experience; then factor in the physical damage that is done and it’s easy to see that it would be a good idea to cut down on the number of visitors. So, how to go about that? The current suggestion of simply raising the admissions prices to, say $70 per vehicle would help raise funds, but I have doubts about whether that’s enough to cut the number of visitors… $70 is a tiny fraction of the cost involved for most vacationers.

There is also the fact that National Parks are supposed to be available to all the people. Jacking up the cost has already been portrayed as an Evil Scheme to punish poor people. So, what alternatives do we have?

1: Jack the per-vehicle prices *way* up, say, $500 per car. But also institute an annual lottery available to all US citizens. A certain number of people are randomly selected to receive a free entry pass. They can sell it if they like.

2: Keep the current entry price the same for US citizens, but raise it through the roof for foreigners. This would necessitate that everyone’s IDs would be checked, adding a level of TSA-madness to the entry process. A car load of US citizens would pay $40 or whatever to gain entry; but if they have, say, one of their British buddies with them, the buddy has to pay an additional, oh, $200 to gain entry. A busload of Japanese tourists would raise a substantial mount of scratch to help offset the damage they might do by chasing the wildlife all over.

3: Stop allowing cars and buses in *at* *all.* Run a thorough shuttle bus service… at a substantial ticket price.

Any other ideas?

 Posted by at 1:09 am
Oct 242017
 

I await the day that these sort of reports include information that these people have cured a disease, or launched a satellite, or discovered a new planet, or generated a watt of usable power.

Feminist prof says ‘traditional science’ is rooted in racism

Read the paper written by the professor. It is remarkable. In that “I don’t know if this is a joke or not” sense. I think this kinda sums it up:

Just as feminists may question the political utility of arguing that women are as smart as men, instead of challenging the idea of intelligence itself, I argue here that we as feminists may have fallen into the same trap with passion for science.

One wonders: if the idea of differences in intelligence offends to the point where “scientists” such as this are willing to challenge the idea that intelligence actually exists, does the fact tat some people weight more or less than others mean that weight and mass don’t exist?

and then there’s this:

Hammonds retells the story of how during what was supposed to be a “fun” summer math program, she and the two other black students were not having fun because they were not able to keep up due to differences in previous education compared to the white students. This is an example of how passion and exhibiting a desire to do science cannot be considered separate from the ways racism, sexism, and other systems of power differently educate and expose people to what are considered the proper objects and backgrounds in science.

In other words: science is bad because some people are better at it than others. Guess what: someone with n interest in music might find that they are not as good at it as the other people at Band Camp because the other people got an earlier start. Doesn’t mean that music is inherently bad. of course, that particular argument is promptly followed up with:

Ruth Hubbard further points out that taking pleasure in observing our “natural world” is class- and race-based, as many people grow up without “nature” around them

You’ll be shocked that the author is enamored of Marxism, dislikes capitalism, and thinks that being willfully ignorant and disdainful of science and the scientific method is a good, “revolutionary”approach to dealing with the problems of the world.

Mostly this seems to boil down to a realization the author has that science does not support her notion of what feminism is (not “women are legally the equal of men, with all the same human rights,” but “men suck, capitalism sucks, white people suck, feels before reals, magick is Teh Awesome, gimme stuff for free”). Since her form of feminism cannot be scientifically validated, and in fact is scientifically invalidated, it must be because science itself is wrong.

Related:

Prof: Algebra, geometry perpetuate white privilege

It is every bit as stupid as you’d expect.

“Things cannot be known objectively; they must be known subjectively.”

Bite my shiny subjective ass.

These idiots would merrily lead us into a new dark age.

 Posted by at 10:58 am
Oct 222017
 

Twenty six years ago, in 1991, the USAF ended the long practice of keeping nuclear armed B-52s on 24 hour standby ready to launch at a moments notice. The practice ended because the Soviet Union had collapses and the Cold War was finally over; at last there was no more threat of being nuked into oblivion by power-mad socialists.

Ah, good times.

US Preparing to Put Nuclear Bombers Back on 24-Hour Alert

 

 

 Posted by at 9:45 pm
Oct 222017
 

A rare piece of color art depicting an early Dyna Soar being dropped from a B-52. The Dyna Soar is equipped with two rocket engines used to boost it to higher altitude and higher speed (supersonic, though not very supersonic… think the test flights of the M2-F3 and the HL-10). Note that this shows the Dyna Soar having been tucked into a modified bomb bay in the B-52’s fuselage; planning would soon move the Dyna Soar to under the wing, using the same attachment point used by the B-52 to carry the X-15 and the lifting bodies.

 

 Posted by at 7:22 pm
Oct 202017
 

Archaeologists find gates of Hell in Saudi Arabia

Lovecraft warned us. But did we listen? Noooooo.

Using satellite imagery, archaeologists have claimed to have found hundreds of artificial structures in the Middle Of Nowhere, Arabia, that they estimate are about 9,000 years old. The structures are in ancient lava domes, vary in size up to 1,700 feet in length, are assembled crudely from rocks, and in some cases were covered over by lava flows meaning that whoever built these things built them on *active* lava domes.

Looking at the site on Google Maps, there are a lot of roads and whatnot in the area, so the locals must’ve known about this place all along.

 

 Posted by at 12:43 pm