Tuesday, July 7, 2026
Monday, July 6, 2026
The Simpsons vs nuclear power
It's a great show I immensely enjoyed as a kid. I do hate their anti-nuclear propaganda. Earth to morons, flower power will not solve America's energy problems. Also, France gets 70% of its energy from nuclear plants, and they haven't started glowing in the dark.
In real life, there are far more deaths from coal mining and coal power plants than nuclear energy.
Not convinced? Galen Winsor, a former nuclear weapons engineer, ate uranium on camera to prove it's not nearly as dangerous as Hollywood or the government would have us believe:
further reading:
You probably have a smoke detector in your house. Guess what? It has radioactive material in it.
Fun fact: radiation is probably beneficial in low doses because of hormesis. And food poisoning would barely exist if our food was irradiated.
education, immigration, or eugenics? - what brings in more smart people?
The scientific and technological achievements of the US are not because the US has the best educational system, but because it attracts smart people from all over the world. Nuclear weapons and the moon landings were made possible by foreign-born scientists who came to America for a better life (freedom and prosperity).
In that case, the US should be spending less on education and more on recruiting talented foreigners. Good education can make smart people even smarter, but it can't turn average joes into geniuses. Unfortunately, the best evidence is that intelligence is mostly genetic.
Eugenics gets a bad rap for many reasons, yet sperm bank customers consistently demand donors with high IQs. Paying high-IQ men to donate sperm would be an easy way to increase the number of smart people. Mensa already has a database of such people.
There are many existing incentives that reward smart Americans such as scholarships, but these do not lead to smart people having more children.
More smart people = a better life for everyone. If it's not possible to breed more of them, the ones we have need to be kept alive, happy, and working.
There is evidence that certain unorthodox educational approaches can be helpful with low-performing groups. This Texas math teacher managed to boost test scores with rap:
Well done, but the US Math Olympiad team remains heavily Asian. They don't train by singing songs about math.
Here is what US math teachers are up against:
And here is the best attempt to make math as interesting as Star Wars:
thoughts on the future of Israel
1. The Arabs only need to defeat Israel once. Israel has to beat them every time. No country goes undefeated forever. Even the mighty British lost to Afghanistan and the US, which lost to Vietnam and Afghanistan. China lost to many countries during the Boxer Rebellion and later lost to Vietnam. Russia lost to Japan, then Germany in WW1, and later Afghanistan. Likewise, France, Germany, and Japan have lost major wars.
2. US support for Israel with steadily wane as its demographics change and whites become a minority. American support for Israel mainly comes from American Jews and white evangelicals.
3. If Israel stops building settlements and lifts the blockade of Gaza, there is a chance for lasting peace, or at least a long lull in the fighting.
4. Israel will always be surrounded by enemies. Its only hope for survival is to be self-sufficient and turn itself into a fortress.
5. International pressure ended apartheid in South Africa, and it could lead to a radical change in Israel's government.
6. Israel can't get lasting peace by annihilating its enemies or even soundly defeating them. The only reason there has been peace between Israel and Egypt is because Egypt recaptured the Sinai and inflicted heavy losses on Israel in 1973.
7. If Israel gets invaded and occupied, they will have to fight their way out with guerilla warfare as Vietnam and Afghanistan have done multiple times.
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