Gongol.com Archives: December 2015
December 21, 2015
Grand jury says the jailers didn't commit a felony against Sandra Bland
Another grand jury will consider next month whether to charge the arresting officer. It is extremely hard to believe that no crime was committed at some point in her handling and treatment. The video of her arrest is outrageous, and the thought that she spent days in jail before dying -- over a trumped-up traffic stop -- suggests that something is very, very wrong with the system.
Sen. Lindsey Graham drops out of the 2016 Presidential race
Graham wasn't right about everything (nobody is), but he brought a lot of sense to the discussion amid a lot of quackery from some of the other candidates. He may not have been destined for the Oval Office, but we do need voices like his in the public debate.
SpaceX launched and landed a reusable rocket
After three failures, this is a great success. And it looks pretty awesome, too. As the company said back in June, "airlines don't junk a plane after a one-way trip from LA to New York".
Adele stayed off social media to concentrate on her latest album
Putting the important before the immediate -- that takes discipline.
More legal marijuana means more electricity demand
It's not so green after all. The law of unintended consequences strikes again. But let's get one thing straight: Finding sources of non-polluting, ultra-low-cost power would be about the best thing that technology could do for humanity. Not for growing pot, necessarily, but for growing nutritious foods and preparing and distributing safe drinking water. Clean, cheap energy is in fact the single most valuable thing we could get from science and technology right now.
