A week ago, the news broke of some brutal bullying at a school in Nova Scotia. The source of the bullying was reported as being the influx of “refugees,” ill-defined. The story would have made a slight kerfuffle and then blown over as these things do… but the newspaper that broke the story then decided to retract the story. Not, apparently, because the facts were in repute, but because the story was incomplete. Now, the story certainly had a whole lot of holes. The origin and nature of the “refugees” was left to the imagination; no names of perpetrators were given; no indication of legal actions were described.

The withdrawal of the story made the story bigger, as it was seen by many as curious, to say the least, if not outright self-censorship in the name of political correctness. And so now, this:

We have listened and will learn from this

The newspaper has issued a mea culpa. Is it for leaving out the afore-mentioned details? Is it for retracting the story, rather than updating it? Guess again, chumps:

We should have asked more questions to clarify what happened and to get broader, more balanced perspectives to ensure that refugee children in the school would not be negatively impacted.

We later removed parts of the story and then the entire piece from our website when we saw it was being shared and misused to attack refugees and immigrants and to malign their faith and culture.

Say, that’s neat. No reference to aiding the *Canadian* children who were being brutalized. Screw those hosers, eh.

More entertainingly is an “I’m quitting” message posted at the newspapers site by one of their columnists. Why’d she quit?

Its prevailing damage is social — it is outright, unchecked victimization of the already victimized.

Note: the victims she references aren’t the kids who were being brutalized at the school, but the ones reported to have done the brutalizing.

Nothing so far written indicates that the story was factually wrong. It is of course always possible that the stories of bullying were made up, that the initial reporters got suckered into writing fiction. But that’s not what the editorial complaint is. Their complaint is that, in essence, they cannot write a proper story about a rapist without explaining what unfortunate event in the rapists childhood made him that way. They cannot write about a cult that performs human sacrifice without extolling all the good that the cult does with their bake sales. They cannot describe a fatal hit-and-run accident until they can explain why the driver did what he did. It seems that they feel that they cannot describe bad events without adding enough fluff to bury the badness under an avalanche of feel-good political correctness.

Thanks to blog reader Herp McDerp for the heads up.

UPDATE: More reporters are getting in on the story and interviewing the people involved, from parents to the school administration spokepeople. Here is one such article. One of the more interesting bits:

“Some of the parents at the centre of this article, the school was speaking to just last week and will continue to speak with them,” Hadey admitted despite the fact he just claimed no student or parent had come forward about the refugee problem.

Additionally, it appears that the chain one student was reportedly choked with was a necklace.

Some interviews with people involved, including a schoolgirl who backs up the original allegations (I guess the narrative will be that she’s an actress or a liar) and the spokesman who says that no parents have contacted the school and then says that parents have contacted the school:

This is an older one, but still pretty fargin’ funny:

There are two very popular memes in political discourse regarding income and taxation:

Women get paid only 79 cent for every dollar a man makes
The rich aren’t paying their fair share of income taxes

It’s easy to understand why these are popular. They’re easy to express (and put on bumper stickers), they make lots of people feel like victims, and they are a great way to drive wedges between large segments of the population. So for authoritarians, fascists, Progressives and other forms of just plain awful people, these are great “facts” to spout as loudly and as often as possible. But are they true?

As to #1: do women on the whole earn less than men? Yes. Is it because of discrimination, that evil bosses simply pay women less than men Just Cuz? Not even close. Whose fault is it that a woman gets paid less than a man, then? Simply put… the womans fault. Because, generally speaking, the path these women have chosen is a path that *necessarily* leads to lower paying jobs. Harvard economist Claudia Goldin was on NPR a few days ago and made some important points:

Disproportionately, women, particularly those who are mothers or who are taking care of others, would like greater predictability in their hours. They would like less on-call hours. They would like fewer periods of long hours. Well, those jobs are often the jobs – the ones that have the longer hours, the less predictability – those are the ones that are often the higher income occupations.

What this basically means is if you want to get paid the big bucks, you have to work the crap jobs. Sure, doctors get paid more than septic tank techs. But the doctors who are on call 24/7 get paid more than those who keep normal business hours; the ones who put in 60 hours a week get more than those who put in 40. The same goes for the septic tank techs. If you need to have predictable hours to take care of the rugrats… you get paid less. If you simply *want* predictable hours just because you don’t want to be on call 24/7, you get paid less. And it appears that women are more interested in more stable hours… and less of ’em.

Additionally: If you have two employees, A and B, who start at the same time, with the same skill set and work experience, you will probably pay them the same. If, two years in, A decides to take a year off… when A comes back, B will have put in one more year of work than A has. It doesn’t matter if A left to raise a baby, take care of a dying parent, study abroad, study a broad, hike the Appalachian Trail or follow Phish on tour, the simple fact is… A wasn’t at work for a year, while B was. B’s getting a raise that A’s not getting. B has not only put in more hours, B is more up-to-date on what’s going on. B has demonstrated more utility to the company than A has. And as it turns out, women are more likely to be “A” than “B,” generally due to the whole “raising offspring” thing.

When all that gets factored in, the “wage gap” shrinks substantially, to the point where economist Goldin said:

On average, when we measure these differences, we do find a residual gap. And in certain cases, we would feel very comfortable as researchers in saying this is discrimination. But it’s very, very hard to do that because it’s hard to find the smoking guns.

I’m a historian as well as an economist. And in the past, we really could find smoking guns. People would actually say, I pay women less than men. We don’t find that anymore. So we have to really search for the smoking guns. I know they’re there. I know that there is discrimination. How much is there – probably not that much.

So… sure, there’s some discrimination. But where? It does not seem to be readily findable.

OK, so on to Number 2, those dastardly richies not paying their fair share. Ummmm… well, the facts don’t seem to support that:

…after all federal taxes are factored in, the U.S. tax system as a whole is progressive. The top 0.1% of families pay the equivalent of 39.2% and the bottom 20% have negative tax rates (that is, they get more money back from the government in the form of refundable tax credits than they pay in taxes).

The squawking for a “basic income,” where people – all people – would get paid some amount of money annually simply because they’re alive (and if they are Democrats in Illinois, being alive probably won’t be a requirement) gets louder every year. As robots and illegal aliens make more and more of the minwage workers obsolete, you can bet that this call will only get *painfully* loud. Now, we already have lots and lots of people who are negative taxpayers, as described above, and the highest tax rates are paid by those who make the most. So how are the rich not paying their fair share? Should more people at the bottom be cut off from the responsibility of funding the government that takes care of them, while those at the top should be squeezed for more? If you do that, and many want to, you put the burden of taxation on a smaller and smaller group of people. And the smaller the group of people, the more influence they have… by pulling up stakes and moving elsewhere, by dying, by simply stopping. Remember, a lot of the people who want to tax the rich often say stuff like “aren’t you rich enough” or similar. So, let’s say the really high earners suddenly agreed with them and decided to retire. Then… this:

In 2014, people with adjusted gross income, or AGI, above $250,000 paid just over half (51.6%) of all individual income taxes

It wouldn’t take too many durned rich bastiches to decide to retire and live the easy life before the federal budget revenues implode.

Has your religion grown old and stale? Are you looking for a new way to view the universe that doesn’t require you to make hard choices based on hard facts, but instead just based on whatever makes you feel good at the time? Then I’d like to introduce you to Jibbers Crabst.

Now, I ask you: do you have any proof that a giant fire breathing lobster *doesn’t* live beyond the rings of Saturn? Huh? No? Well, there ya go.

Up for auction:

#6226 – Lunar Rover Prototype

An original mid-1960s lunar rover prototype, or Local Scientific Survey Module, developed for NASA by Brown Engineering and known as the ‘Brown LSSM.’ Development of the prototype took place in 1965–1966, and it was used for lunar rover mobility tests and to conduct human factors studies and mobility evaluations. This vehicle was actually driven by the great rocket scientist Wernher von Braun and he can be seen with it in photographs. Otha Vaughan, a member of von Braun’s team, has examined the vehicle and identified it as authentic. It had been disposed of and long ago ended up in the hands of by a scrap metal dealer, who preserved it in his scrapyard. The rediscovery of this ‘lost lunar rover’ was the subject of several news stories in late October 2015.

It’s in kinda rough shape. But hey… you’ll probably be the only kid on your block with one.

Here’s your “WTF Am I Watching” video for today. This is *far* funnier that it aught to be.

And then there’s this: I’ve roughly finished another Pax Orionis yarn: “Birth of the Bomb.” It’s a greatly expanded, completely re-written version of a snippet I have previously posted and, perhaps shockingly, it’s not grimdark but rather the opposite (in a way). This one deals not with war but exploration. It’s somewhat longer than “The Deadliest Catch,” so it’ll be in two parts.

I’m currently going over it, tinkering. I need to add the Technical Diagram (a helicopter is mentioned in the story, and I’ve been tempted to draw *that,* but I’ve decided to stick with more Orion-based diagrams for the time being) and a few other bits, but I should have Part One available for Pax Orionis patrons in a week or two. So if you are interested, take a look at the Pax Orionis Patreon page.

A Visionary Project Aims for Alpha Centauri, a Star 4.37 Light-Years Away

A just-announced proposal for a $10 billion program to develop laser-propelled interstellar probes. The idea is to have a mile-wide ground-based array of lasers generate a whopping 100 gigawatts for two minutes to push tiny solar sails with a payload massing about a gram (comparable to the innards of an Iphone). In those two minutes the probe would be accelerated to 20% lightspeed, shooting past Alpha Centauri in about 20 years. It is estimated that Starshot would take 20 years to get going, so, when you factor in the time it takes for the message to get back to Earth, the first photos of A. Cent. from close-up won’t be available until 2060 or so.

The basic idea is not new. Lasers and microwaves have been suggested as “pushers” for sails for decades. Starting in the 1980s, engineers and scientists such as Robert L. Forward have suggested that advances in computer technology were such that probes could be made trivially small, meaning that it was possible to start considering power systems capable of sending probes to stars at good fractions of lightspeed.

The real trick would be developing a molecule-thick sail that won’t promptly vaporize when hit with a 100 gigawatt laser. This, to me, seems the most difficult part of the project. Next up would making a one-gram payload transmit useful data across the lightyears.

While not mentioned in the article, it seems to me that this vast laser array could, when not shooting microprobes to the stars, be used to power vastly larger launch vehicles into orbit, or perhaps “solar thermal” rockets leaving Earth orbit for, say, Mars.

So far no decent technical details, but the website for the project will supposedly eventually have tech reports.

A French company claims to have developed a practical turbine-based “flying platform.” It’s like a combination of the old Hiller VZ-1 with a modern jetpack… the pilot stands on a compact device with the jet engines, and wears a backpack full of fuel. Flight time is said to be ten minutes, which, unlike the 30 seconds you get out of a rocket-pack, is actually useful. They have released a video of the first test flight. It looks good… but it also raises some flags. You never actually see it either take off or land. While it really does look like it’s flying and really running jet engines (due to the obvious hot exhaust), I wouldn’t exactly be stunned to find out that the guy is actually suspended under a helicopter, and they’ve digitally removed the wires. More evidence needed…

Now, *if* this is on the up-and-up, it might have some practical real-world applications. The first thought is soldiering, but it’d be so freakin’ LOUD that the pilot would be deeef and the enemy would be utterly aware. Firefighting, perhaps? Need to get some rescue professionals up to the 100th story of the towering inferno? Here ya go, no helicopter needed. Fire spotting in forests? I suppose a drone with an IR camera would probably be better, but what the heck.

Mostly, though, this thing – if it works – would probably be sold to adrenaline junkies.