Some thoughts on the false history of its evils.
Category Archives: Technology and Society
Half-Price Gasoline
Manufactured from cheap natural gas?
That would be a huge breakthrough.
XCOR
An interesting interview about spaceflight regulation with COO Andrew Nelson.
[Update a couple minutes later]
I should note that much of this is ground that I cover and justify in the book.
Time Travelers
A search of the Internet for them comes up empty.
Remember, though, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
[Update a few minutes later]
Related: If a time traveler encountered a smart phone.
The Peter Principle
Could it explain the Fermi paradox?
Bob Sackheim
…has died.
I met him a couple times, but didn’t really know him well. But the man is a propulsion legend.
WW II In Europe
Sneering Anti-Technologists
Lileks is unimpressed:
Honestly: would you rather they hadn’t invented clothes-washing machines? Radio? Would you rather that one member of a household spend their entire day over a washtub with nothing but the sound from the street through the screen window for company?
It’s comforting for some, apparently, to think that people in the past just stared slack-jawed at flickering images and rose like zombies when the Consumption Instructions were finished, and spent their life in agitated dissatisfaction until the useless, needless object was acquired and installed. I’d like to know if these people have microwave ovens.
I’m thinking they write their ignorant snark on computers that they don’t really need.
A “Zero-Gravity Space Chamber”
No, New York Post, there’s no such thing. If they shot her b00bs in weightlessness, it was probably in a parabolic aircraft.
Cancer Deaths
A new protein that could prevent 90% of them?
“We’ve found a way to dispatch an army of killer white blood cells that cause apoptosis — the cancer cell’s own death — obliterating them from the bloodstream. When surrounded by these guys, it becomes nearly impossible for the cancer cell to escape,” said King.
Faster, please.