For Your Earth Hour Delectation

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In her book Empires of Light, Jill Jonnes writes: “The date, sometime during the late 1800s. The scene, a Westinghouse Electric factory complex in Pittsburgh, with an unpaved yard between buildings. A young laborer ~ a recent immigrant ~ is trundling a wheelbarrow, filled with heavy copper ingots, over an iron slab which serves as a track across the yard. The wheelbarrow goes off the track and into the mud. As the laborer struggles to get it back on the track, other workers begin mocking him. At that moment, a man in formal clothing is crossing the yard. It is George Westinghouse, founder and chief executive of the company. He wades into the mud and helps the man get the wheelbarrow back on the slab.”

For your Earth Hour delectation, The Middleton Family at the New York World’s Fair (1939) illustrates the contributions of free enterprise, technology, and Westinghouse products to our modern way of life. The Middleton Family at the New York World’s Fair pits an anti-capitalist bohemian artist against an all-American electrical engineer who believes in improving society by working through corporations. The Middletons experience Westinghouse‘s technological marvels at the Fair and win back their daughter from her leftist boyfriend.

While we’re on the subject, here’s Professor Hans Rosling’s latest TED
Talk: The Magic Washing Machine. You may recall Hans from our
previous coverage of his 2006 TED Talk and Gapminder Software.
The Magic Washing Machine&nbsp has an excellent ending.

Take Me, Obama

Media 28 Comments

Clean up in the panties aisle!

He, it’s true, looked tired. He’s cut back on the jokes now. He’s cut back on the smiles. But when he stepped out, in my hotel room, or perhaps I should say on the giant flat-screen telly in my hotel room, I felt a stirring that wasn’t like the flicker of excitement you have on an early date, when fantasies blaze, and hopes soar. What I felt was something calmer, but also stronger: the sense that I, or perhaps the 65 million Americans who voted on my behalf, had chosen well.

h/t Trent

“Earth Hour celebrates ignorance, poverty and backwardness.”

What He Said 59 Comments

Ross McKitrick;

By repudiating the greatest engine of liberation it becomes an hour devoted to anti-humanism. It encourages the sanctimonious gesture of turning off trivial appliances for a trivial amount of time, in deference to some ill-defined abstraction called “the Earth,” all the while hypocritically retaining the real benefits of continuous, reliable electricity. People who see virtue in doing without electricity should shut off their fridge, stove, microwave, computer, water heater, lights, TV and all other appliances for a month, not an hour. And pop down to the cardiac unit at the hospital and shut the power off there too.

Reader Tips

Reader Tips 52 Comments

Yesterday was May 24 will be Bob Dylan’s 70th birthday. I’d love to post something from his remarkable oeuvre, but his record label has recently taken to blocking videos in particular non-sanctioned regions, including Canada, apparently, and those that do make it through tend to get taken down quickly, so I’m going to present a cover version of one of his songs. Fortunately, it’s a very fine cover that artfully draws out the lyrical sense of weight and struggle that, admittedly, doesn’t always reveal itself to Bob-fans. Without further ado, here’s the late Nina Simone, gracing us with her solemn, reverential, and almost revelatory interpretation of Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues.
The comments are open for your Reader Tips.

Everything I Know About Genetics I Learned In Law School

Genetics 67 Comments

Associate law professor Nita A. Farahany describes her blog as “a daily digest of legal opinions featuring cognitive neuroscience and behavioral genetics”.

Sometimes, even judges suffer from the “CSI” effect. The district court judge in the case today may have missed a few important days of his genetics class in high school or in college. Perhaps they didn’t teach genetics in the late 1960′s?

This may make for good sarcasm, but it’s a stupid criticism. Much of what the average student learned about genetics in high school as recently as 20 years ago, (let alone the 60’s) has been modified or even overturned by recent discoveries in genetics – the field of epigenetics among them. Nita Farahany ought to know this. Unless of course, she doesn’t know this.

The Defendant in this case, convicted of possession of child pornography, was given an “unreasonable” sentence based on the judge’s invented genetic theory that the defendant’s incorrigible genes made him act the way he did, and that there was nothing he could do about it.

Am I the only one mystified by the legal and societal contradiction that while sexual attraction to persons of the same sex is “not a choice”, sexual attraction to pre-adolescents is?
Well, good luck with that. I predict that a “my genes made me do it” defense for pedophilia will eventually be legitimized by the courts – blog snark notwithstanding, and Judge Sharpe noted as “ahead of his time”. The societal ground work is already in place.
Via.

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