Utopia, you are standing in it!

This new video, narrated by former NASA astronaut (and Columbia professor) Mike Massimino, answers a lot of your pressing questions about how astronauts keep clean in space. His answers apply to the Space Shuttle and to the International Space Station, though procedures sometimes differ between them.  Here are some of the important issues addressed in the video.

How do you shower?
How do you pee and poo? And what happens to the feces and urine?
Can you shave in space?
How do you wash your hair or brush your teeth?
Can you wear contact lenses?
How can you do laundry?
What if you have to go to the bathroom during a space walk?
And does it get stinky up there? (Answer: yes indeed!)

In the end, Massimino speculates about future hygiene problems as we travel farther and longer from Earth.

Constitutions do many things. They distribute authority amongst public bodies, enshrine important points of substantive principle, and cement relationships between rulers and the ruled. However, in a more abstract and fundamental sense, constitutions also tell us something about ourselves as political collectives: they express the kind of polity we embody and the kind of people we have come to be.

Whether written or unwritten, constitutions establish the contours of our political communities. To use Hannah Arendt’s metaphor – borrowed from the Ancient Greek understanding of law as nomos – constitutions are the walls that encircle, define, and defend the everyday aspects of our political lives. It is against this normative backdrop that I want to reflect upon one element of what is expressed by the recent judgement of the United Kingdom Supreme Court in the cases of R (on the application of Miller) v The Prime Minister and Cherry and…

The chorus that the United Kingdom Supreme Court’s decision on prorogation (R. (on the application of Miller) v The Prime Minister; Cherry and others v. Advocate General for Scotland [2019] UKSC 41) has “nothing to do with Brexit” cannot withstand serious scrutiny. The British electorate’s decision to leave the European Union is the pivot around which contemporary politics revolves. There is no question to my mind that the aim of prorogation was to ease Britain’s withdrawal from the organisation, and thankfully the question of prime ministerial motivation was not a live issue in the Court’s judgment. This post argues that the Court acted in a partisan fashion as if it were the legal wing of Remain, and that as a result the judiciary now needs to have its wings clipped.

The political fundamentals against which the Miller-Cherry case fell to be decided are as follows: (1) a majority of…

By Bethany Mandel, September 24, 2019, National Review

Activists left and right are protesting an effort to close loopholes in a state law mandating vaccination for schoolchildren. Here’s why they’re wrong.

There aren’t many policy proposals or causes that unite Left and Right these days, but in California, one has emerged: opposition to Senate Bill 276, which aims to close loopholes in a state law mandating vaccination for schoolchildren. Liberal and conservative activists alike have protested the bill at the state capitol and demanded that state legislators scrap it.

Unfortunately, this particular bipartisan movement isn’t just wrong — it’s dangerously wrong.

California has been the epicenter for anti-vaccine sentiment, and measles outbreaks, for the last several years. That’s not a coincidence; the former fuels the latter. When “herd immunity” dips too low, the entire “herd” is placed at risk. Anti-vaccine activists often ask, “If vaccines work and you’re vaccinated, why…