Monday, May 31, 2021
Fighting Limited to Daylight Hours
The New York Post Editorial Board on Vice President Fweedom's speech at the Naval Academy:
Start with the pandering pronoun “joke.” Women have been members of the Navy and Marines for a century, and allowed to be in all combat units since 2016. Harris using a woman as her example was perfectly normal — but adding “and so would he” is just performance art for the woke. It isn’t a punchline, it’s a sneer.
Second, batteries. Solar panels collect energy, but it still needs to be stored for use at night. That Marine isn’t going to choose between a solar panel and a battery, she has to take both, and hopes the battery gets lighter.
And, from Paul Mirengoff:
On Twitter, critics observed that solar panels generally still require batteries to store energy collected from sunlight.
Most of the GND imbeciles really struggle with the concept of energy storage.
Via Glenn Reynolds.
Labels: party of science
Science is Back, Baby!
President Joe Biden has now taken the push for “diversity” in STEM to a new level. His candidate to head the Department of Energy’s Office of Science, the largest funder of the physical sciences in the U.S., is a soil geologist at the University of California, Merced. She has no background in physics, the science of energy, or the energy sector. She has never held a position as a scientific administrator. The typical head of DOE’s Office of Science in the past has had managerial authority in the nation’s major physics labs and has been a physicist himself, Science reports. The new nominee’s only managerial experience consists of serving since 2020 as an interim associate dean of UC Merced’s graduate division.John Tierney comments:
Asmeret Asefaw Berhe is, however, a black female who has won “accolades for her work to promote diversity in science,” as Science puts it. Berhe would be the first black woman to head the $7 billion office, and that is reason enough, according to the diversity mantra, why she should oversee X-ray synchrotrons, the development of nuclear weapons, and ongoing research on nuclear fusion. Her nomination requires Senate confirmation; if Berhe will not commit to hiring and grantmaking on the basis of scientific expertise alone, irrespective of race and sex, senators should vote her appointment down.
Previously, this office was typically headed by a physicist with managerial experience in a major physics lab. But then, none of her predecessors could boast of co-authoring an article titled, “A critical feminist approach to transforming workplace climate in the geosciences through community engagement and partnerships with societies.”
Labels: party of science
Unfalsifiable Garbage
Walz refers to “generations of systemic racism that have plagued our state.” Can he possibly be serious? What on Earth is he talking about? As recently as 1980, Minnesota’s population was barely 1 percent African-American. Since then the black population has grown somewhat, mostly as a result of lavish welfare benefits and the state’s welcoming attitude toward tens or hundreds of thousands of Somali refugees. What, exactly, did the generations of systemic racism consist of?
Presumably systemic racism has been manifested in the state’s public institutions. Tim Walz has been governor since 2019. Is he presiding over a systemically racist state government? If so, he should resign. Democrat Mark Dayton was governor for eight years preceding Walz. Is he a racist? Was his administration systemically racist? Come on, Tim, let’s name names.
Most African-Americans live in Minnesota’s cities. Is the administration of the City of Minneapolis systemically racist? Should Democrat Mayor Jacob Frey resign? There is not a single Republican on the Minneapolis City Council. Are the current Council members racists? Should they all resign?
Moreover, Minneapolis has not had a Republican Mayor since 1973, and the memory of man (or Google, anyway) does not record when Republicans last controlled the Minneapolis City Council. So the generations of racists in power in Minneapolis have all been Democrats. Maybe Tim Walz should switch parties.
In fact, Walz’s claim that Minnesota has been “plagued” by “generations of systemic racism” is ludicrous. I assume he doesn’t actually believe it, but rather is using “systemic” in the usual sense of non-existent. When it comes to race, Democratic politicians have taken leave of their senses. That is manifested, too, in the current paeans to George Floyd.
