Quotulatiousness

November 22, 2016

Franz Joseph I – The Father of Austria-Hungary I WHO DID WHAT IN WW1?

Filed under: Europe, History, Military, WW1 — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Published on 21 Nov 2016

On this day 100 years ago, Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria-Hungary died after 66 years on the thrown. He became emperor in a turbulent time and some say that only his reign held the empire together when the minorities demanded more and more independence.

ESR – “What if we had a culture war and the other side finally showed up?”

Filed under: Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

ESR posted this on Google+:

Mike Pence gets lectured from on stage at a Hamilton performance on Friday. This [a Trump supporter disrupting a Chicago performance of Hamilton] happens on Monday.

For decades the Left has been routinely trashing the rules of public decorum in in the name of political theater. Because “woke”, and stuff – anything goes to shatter bourgeois complacency.

Welcome to payback time. Me, I would much rather nobody was doing this kind of public disruption. But if it’s going to happen at all, I’d prefer it to be sufficiently universal and obnoxious that we are all incentivized to rediscover a good old-fashioned principle.

That is this: when you’re in a public space, at an event that isn’t explicitly about politics, keep a lid on yours. You’re not special; neither are the Hamilton cast members, or BLM protesters or any other of the Left’s myrmidons.

Until today I wouldn’t have had to say this sort of thing to conservatives, because conservatives didn’t do things like barging en masse into restaurants yelling political slogans. Now that invisible restraint has been broken. There’ll be more of this, much more, before we find a new social equilibrium.

In the meantime…excuse me, I’ll be over here, laughing my ass off at all the leftists who wax indignant at being given a taste of their own medicine.

Several of my friends on the left posted Facebook updates cheering the Hamilton cast and jeering at Pence. A few of them also posted criticism of the Trump supporter’s actions in Chicago. Once you’ve deliberately broken down the etiquette of public performance, you have no right to decry when your opponents also choose to violate decorum and drag politics into your safe spaces. I agree with ESR that both the Hamilton cast and the Trump guy were wrong to do this, and we’d all be better off if both sides agreed to avoid any further disruptions of this kind … but I don’t expect that to happen.

Science, technology, and Il Donalduce

Filed under: Politics, Science, Technology, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

John Tierney on the President-elect’s stated views on science:

What will a Trump administration mean for scientific research and technology?

The good news is that the next president doesn’t seem all that interested in science, judging from the little he said about it during the campaign. That makes a welcome contrast with Barack Obama, who cared far too much — in the wrong way. He politicized science to advance his agenda. His scientific appointees in the White House, the Centers for Disease Control, and the Food and Drug Administration were distinguished by their progressive ideology, not the quality of their research. They used junk science — or no science — to justify misbegotten crusades against dietary salt, trans fats, and electronic cigarettes. They cited phony statistics to spread myths about a gender pay gap and a rape crisis on college campuses. Ignoring mainstream climate scientists, they blamed droughts and storms on global warming and then tried to silence critics who pointed out their mistakes.

Trump has vaguely expressed support for federal funding of R&D in science, medicine, and energy, but he has stressed encouraging innovation in the private sector. His election has left the science establishment aghast. Its members were mostly behind Hillary Clinton, both because they share her politics and because she would continue the programs funded by Obama. Their fears of losing funding are probably overblown — there’s strong support in Congress for R&D — but some of the priorities could change.

Trump has vowed to ignore the Paris international climate agreement that committed the U.S. to reduce greenhouse emissions. That prospect appalls environmentalists but cheers those of us who consider the agreement an enormously expensive way to achieve very little. Trump’s position poses a financial threat to wind-power producers and other green-energy companies that rely on federal subsidies to survive.

QotD: Balloons

Filed under: Humour, Quotations — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 01:00

“AAaargwannawannaaaagongongonaargggaaaaBLOON!” which is the traditional sound of a very small child learning that with balloons, as with life itself, it is important to know when not to let go of the string. The whole point of balloons is to teach small children this.

Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky, 2004.

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