Here’s an excellent example of the lack of self-awareness or irony on the part of social scientists. Unfortunately, too many in the climate “science” community are more social scientists than real ones.
All posts by Rand Simberg
Light Blogging
I can’t really sit up very well, so any computer work I do is lying on a couch with a laptop. I’m watching football and poking away at my space safety paper.
But I will note an amusing spam. It was from “Cancer.” Yeah, that’s just who I want to open emails from. One of the generally bizarre things about spam is that the spammers make no distinction between “From” and “Subject” headers. You’ll find anything in either one, and often the same thing in both.
The Republican Space Policy
My thoughts on it or, rather, the lack of it, over at PJMedia.
Back In The Saddle
Well, everything went according to plan. Though from a pain standpoint, it’s likely to get worse before it gets better, because they shot up the area with a local, and I’ll probably be unhappy when it wears off (I do have decent meds, though). But at least for now, I’m ambulatory, up and down stairs, and can sit at the computer.
It was probably good to get this out of the way in front of a three-day weekend…
[Friday mid-morning update]
Just to end all the speculation in comments, it was not an “@n@l spelunking” (not that there’s anything wrong with that). I had to patch up (literally) an inguinal hernia on the right side. I was trying to avoid TMI, but…
My Upcoming Blogging Hiatus
I’m going under the knife tomorrow, for some long-overdue minor (or perhaps more than minor, but routine) surgery. Not sure how long it will be until I’m at the computer again, but if you don’t hear from me for a few days, that’s why.
[Update a few minutes later]
For those concerned, it really is routine. Nothing life threatening — just some repair to the structure. I am very fortunate that this is the most major medical situation with which I’ve had to deal in my life. For instance, I’m sure that childbirth would be much worse. One of the reasons I so admire women.
How Long Do You Want To Live?
I think that this guy is asking the wrong question. “Forever” isn’t the option, it’s “indefinitely,” or “as long as I want to live.” No one is going to live forever, unless you think we’ll get around the heat death of the universe somehow, and there will always be accidents, regardless of how advanced biomedical technology becomes. But ignoring that issue, given my experience with cryonics, the numbers don’t surprise me at all. Of course, it’s one thing to say you only want to live to be eighty when it’s a theoretical issue, decades from now. A lot of those people change their minds when the time actually approaches.
“Worse Than Katrina”
Some devastating pictures from Plaquemines Parish, where the levees are being overtopped. All while the president is on a fund-raising trip. By Bush-hater logic, he must hate black people.
The Road To Serfdom
The Readers Digest condensed version. No, really.
Maybe even the president could get through that version, though it would probably still make no sense to him.
Missile History
Here’s what I have for my space safety paper:
ICBMs were never designed to be highly reliable, because to do so would have dramatically increased their costs (many hundreds of them were built), and it wasn’t necessary for their mission. They were designed to be launched in massive numbers, and if a few out of a hundred didn’t make it through, that was all right, because they were often redundant in their targeting (that is, more than one missile would be aimed at a key target). Some estimates at the time of the reliability of the Titan II was only 80% or so (that is, one in five would not deliver its payload to the designated target), based on the fact that eight of its initial thirty-three test launches were failures. The early manned spaceflights were performed on modified versions of them (specifically, the Redstone and Atlas for Mercury and Titan II for Gemini). But what was good enough for a weapon as part of a fusillade of dozens or hundreds wasn’t perceived to be for a single flight carrying a human, particularly with recent memories of nationally televised ignominious failures of rockets on the launch pad. Thus was born the pernicious (and now obsolete) concept of “man rating,” which confuses the space industry and obfuscates policy down to this very day.
Is there anything inaccurate in that?