Daily Archives: September 1, 2011

Living in sin in Florida?

Well, then not only are going to a) go to hell but also b) to jail if you get caught and c) Sunshine State Republicans want to make sure that does not change.

UPDATE: There’s a poll of sorts at the Sun Sentinel, here.

What do you think of the cohabitation law?. What do you think?

  • Heck yeah, we live in 2011. Who doesn’t co-habitate?
  • No way, there’s a reason this is the law.
  • I’m not sure.

As you can see, it is very well written and carefully thought out. Currently, “Heck” is winning.

Well, one Florida GOPer is trying to get this law and some other irrelevant legislation repealed. Like the law that says you must keep both hands on the handlebars when riding a bike. But the socially conservative wing of the party (i.e., almost all of them) are resisting.

The stupid laws, like the one against co-habitation and the one about how to ride a bike, should be enforced to the greatest extent possible, with the most stupid laws enforced first. It would not be long before they are repealed.

And I am not joking. In my home town, the county prosecutor ran for office on the promise that he’d get rid of the county wide blue laws. Of course, as a prosecutor, that was impossible (he does not make laws, only enforces them) but he kept his promise. Within days of being sworn into office he had sheriff’s deputies dragging people in for any violation of any of the blue laws, which were being ignored about half the time. The county legislative body repealed all of those laws very quickly.

So Florida Troopers need to put on their plain clothes and stand around waving at people going by on their bikes. Anybody waves back, and they’re BUSTED. Then, when you’ve got ’em in a choke hold and are slapping on the cuffs, ask them if they are cohabitating or not. And if they are, BUST ‘EM AGAIN.

Do this in a ‘nice’ neighborhood. Those laws will last two weeks, top.

Details here, at Think Progress.

By the way, the guy who is trying to get rid of these laws is Rep. Ritch Workman, R-Melbourne. His motivation is not social progressiveness, but rather, making government smaller, in part by getting rid of laws that make no sense. Of course, getting rid of laws that make so little sense that they are summarily ignored might not make much sense, but whatever…

Space Junk Is Getting Serious

Here is an extended quote from the Preface of a new publication you may find interesting. I thought it was fascinating:

In 1995, the National Research Council’s (NRC’s) Committee on Space Debris wrote,

The threat that orbital debris poses to international space activities is presently not large, but it may be on the verge of becoming significant. If and when it does, the consequences could be very costly–and extremely difficult to reverse. By contrast, the cost of reducing the growth of the hazard can be relatively low….The committee believes that spacefaring nations should take judicious, timely steps now to understand the risk and agree on ways to reduce it.

At that time, no destructive collisions between active spacecraft and debris or meteoroids2 had been recorded. In addition, the amount of debris in orbit did not include the aftermath of the 2009 Iridium-Cosmos collision and the 2007 on-orbit destruction by the Chinese of a weather satellite as part of an anti-satellite test. Both of those events greatly increased the amount of debris in the near-Earth space environment, thus pushing the threat posed by orbital debris even further toward what was described more than 15 years ago as “on the verge of becoming significant.”

You can get the report here.