With NASA getting out of the way, free market heads to outer space

By David McElroy · April 27, 2012

Cleaning out the notebook again…

Is private industry ready to head into space to save humanity? It’s very possible. Less than a week after I wrote that I’m happy to see the space shuttle program go away, a group of impressive investors has announced a company called Planetary Resources, which plans to mine asteroids and finally bring real commerce to space.

This is the sort of venture that NASA would never have attempted. Although the comparison isn’t perfect, I’d say it’s reminiscent of the European trading companies that were set up to colonize and trade in the New World. It’s the brainchild of Peter Diamandis, the guy who created the X Prize Foundation. The star-studded list of investors includes both of Google’s founders, an early Google investor, a key early Microsoft employee and Ross Perot Jr. Their previous success doesn’t guarantee anything, but I wouldn’t bet against them.

The best things about the venture are that taxpayers aren’t footing the bill and that anyone else can choose to compete on a level playing field if he wants to. It’s great to see people step up to blast off into space with a motivation to make money.

The truth about George Zimmerman is a lot more complicated and nuanced than some people wanted us to see. Many people have already convicted him of murder and are convinced that it was nothing but a racially motivated killing. Reuter’s has a long and detailed story that paints a far more interesting picture of how we got to this point.

I still don’t claim to know the complete facts of what happened that night and I still think it’s a tragedy that Trayvon Martin died. But I’m more convinced than ever that this is something far more than racial bias. I think it’s a case of a neighborhood that had been terrorized by burglars who happened to be young black men. When Zimmerman and others had spotted some of the actual burglars, the criminals got away before police could get there. I assume Zimmerman thought he was likely seeing one of the burglars in the neighborhood again. He turned out to be wrong and Martin died. I still don’t think we’ll ever know who initiated the violent conflict they had.

One of Zimmerman’s black neighbors told Reuter’s the race of the burglars hasn’t been discussed enough:

“Let’s talk about the elephant in the room. I’m black, OK?” the woman said, declining to be identified because she anticipated backlash due to her race. She leaned in to look a reporter directly in the eyes. “There were black boys robbing houses in this neighborhood,” she said. “That’s why George was suspicious of Trayvon Martin.”

I don’t know exactly what Zimmerman should have done differently, partly because I don’t know exactly what triggered the shooting. But what’s becoming more obvious is that the situation was created by the fact that young burglars who happened to be black created an atmosphere of suspicion for other young blacks in the neighborhood. I’m not sure what the neighborhood was supposed to do — since police weren’t catching the burglars until then.

If we want to pin the blame for Martin’s death on someone, I would suggest that the criminals who created the climate of fear are good candidates for a very large share of blame. I highly recommend you read the Reuter’s story, no matter what you think about the Zimmerman case up until this point.

Have you ever paid attention to military advertising? There was an recruiting ad for the Marines that was shown during the previews before a movie I saw Wednesday. The pitch is brilliant. It’s a perfect mix of testosterone-fueled glory and high-minded appeals to idealism. It creates the impression that a young man can find glory for himself in the service of saving the world. Unfortunately, the reality of our modern wars doesn’t match the promise of the ads, so they’re ultimately lies. They’re just slick Hollywood productions. The killing and dying and broken lives are the reality, in far too many cases.

Does anybody know what news is these days? I’m not sure. Take a look at what a television station in Springfield, Mo., used as its lead story for a newscast recently. It was about a kindergarten child pooping in her pants because of a disagreement about when she should be allowed to go to the restroom. (No, I’m not making this up.) This is a very serious and important story for the girl’s family and maybe even for the teacher and principal. But this is not news. I’ve written before that I’m not entirely sure we know what news is now, but stories such as this one make me certain that the people making news decisions are even more clueless than I realized.

I’ve decided that I have to stop saying, “How stupid can you people be?” because some people have been taking this as a challenge.

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If you have problems with high blood pressure, I’d like to encourage you to consider making serious changes to your diet. There might be some people who don’t have any choice but to start taking prescription medications for high blood pressure, but I’d like to tell you that I have completely eliminated my issue by eliminating all sugar and almost all carbohydrates. (A couple of months ago, my blood pressure hit 185/144, which was dangerously high — considered stage 3 hypertension.) By completely changing my eating habits, I’m down 22 pounds and my blood pressure is now in the “ideal” range — without taking any medication. In addition, I sleep better and I have more energy. Getting away from the sugar-laden mess that we generally refer to as “highly processed food” has been a life-changer for me. Now my challenge is to avoid slipping back into old habits — by eating in the dangerous ways that almost everyone in our society has come to see as normal.

When I first heard about this, I thought it must be satire. When I discovered it was real, I was appalled, but I still thought it must be a one-time thing from some nutty activist. But it turns out it’s the latest bit of pandering to a bunch of far-left activists who believe that a man can become a woman if he decides to claim he’s a woman. As everybody knows, men have prostate glands. Women do not. Period. End of story. Men can get prostate cancer. Women cannot. But political activists are so eager to pretend that a man claiming to be a “trans woman” is really a woman that they are insisting that “women” be included in public health messages about the issue. This is nothing but political virtue-signaling. If you’re a man, you know which parts you have. You know that you ought to be screened. Nobody is made any safer by dragging far-left gender ideology into simple medical reality.

Every time someone tries to tighten requirements around the use of absentee ballots, I hear screams from Democrats and others on the political left that such efforts are nothing but “suppression of black voters.” These protests have never made sense to me, especially because it’s never been a secret that absentee ballot fraud goes on all the time in certain areas. (Everybody knew it when I worked in politics.) The people who engage in such fraud are rarely caught — often because the local political establishment approves of the crime — but a Democrat who won a primary election in Clay County, Alabama, last year has pleaded guilty to this sort of cheating. Terry Andrew Heflin was running for a place on the Clay County Commission. He was caught ordering seven absentee ballots in the names of various voters and sending them to his post office box — after which he used the ballots to vote absentee for himself seven time. Did he have other people cast additional fraudulent ballots? We’ll never know. But in a primary in which he was able to win with only 141 votes, it wouldn’t take many fraudulent votes to change the election. The next time you hear “civil rights activists” claim that it’s just “voter suppression” to hurt blacks which is at the root of efforts to stop this fraud, remember Terry Heflin. If you care about fair and honest elections, ballot security and voter identity should matter to you.

A state legislator in Maine has been stripped of the ability to speak in the state Legislature — and her votes are not being counted on legislative issues — all because she made a truthful social media post. Rep. Laurel Libby (R-Auburn, Maine) opposes allowing boys to compete against girls’ teams in school athletics and she’s become known for making an issue of it. On Feb. 17, she posted on Facebook about a recent example that she found outrageous. She posted side-by-side photos of a boy named John who competed last year in a state track event and won fifth place against other boys two years ago — and a photo of the same boy (now called Katie) who won first place in the same event this year against girls. Whether you find this outrageous or not, Libby is clearly being honest and truthful about the objective facts of an issue of public importance. But the state Legislature censured her. Democrats decreed that she could not speak in the House and that her votes would not count on legislation — until she apologized for the outrage of telling the truth. She refused and her constituents have been unrepresented in the state House since then. The people who promote this ideology are out of touch with reality and won’t rest until they force the rest of us to join them in this delusion. But even if you agree with “trans” ideology, you should be appalled at this heavy-handed attack on political speech.

The late Steve Jobs was at the center of our culture’s transition from analog to digital. He co-founded Apple Computer. He led the team that revolutionized personal computing with the first Macintosh. As CEO of Apple, he led the development of the iPhone and later the iPad. You would think the children of such a man would be surrounded by technology. But Jobs and his wife Laureen didn’t let their children use iPads. Their home had few screens of any kind. Even though Jobs spent most of his time developing and selling Macs and iPhones and iPads, he was home with his wife and children for dinner when he was in town. The family ate together at a simple wooden table in their kitchen — and there were no digital devices or focus on popular culture. Instead, he’s said to have guided his family toward deep discussions of art, philosophy and education — with no iPads to be found. If the man who guided the development of such products chose a different path for his own children, does that suggest that his digital experience taught him that children need human connection, not screens? And does it suggest the possibility that we might be better off if we made the same choice for our families?

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