NASA and DARPA are starting to get serious about it. I’ll probably try to join the consortium, for some business plans I have.
Category Archives: Business
Thiel Versus Sessions
They’re battling over the future of NASA.
Thiel is pushing for a 21st-century space policy. Sessions represents the past, Apolloism, space socialism, and pork. He should stick to being AG.
[Update a few minutes later]
@Rand_Simberg Yes. THE "A" in #MAGA does not stand for Alabama.
— Michael Hendrickson (@theendofself) December 21, 2016
[Update a few more minutes later]
Not sure what “commercial space trade association” Tim Fernholz thinks that Alan Stern leads.
[Update a few more minutes later]
Tim pointed out to me that he’s chairman of the board of CSF, which I hadn’t known, or had forgotten. But I pointed out to him that Eric Stallmer is really the person who “leads” it, which he agreed was fair.
More on this topic from Eric Berger.
[Update a while later]
Not exactly space related, but sort of, in the sense that indefinite lifespan will help with opening the universe, an interesting description of what else Thiel is up to.
Obsolete Climate Science
An important essay from Richard Epstein:
The worst way to get a full exchange of views on the complex matter of global warming is to pack the IWG entirely with members from the Obama administration, all surely preselected in part because they share the president’s exaggerated concerns with the problem of global warming. The only way to get a full and accurate picture of the situation is to listen to dissenters on global warming as well as advocates, which was never done. After all, who should listen to a “denier”?
This dismissive attitude is fatal to independent inquiry. No matter how many times the president claims the science is rock-solid, the wealth of recent evidence gives rise to a very different picture that undercuts the inordinate pessimism about climate change that was in vogue about 10 years ago. The group convened in the Obama administration never examined, let alone refuted, the accumulation of evidence on the other side. Indeed, virtually all of its reports are remarkable for the refusal to address any of the data at all. Instead, the common theme is to refer to models developed by others as the solid foundation for the group’s own work, without questioning a word of what those models say.
The second major mistake in the government studies is the way in which they frame the social costs of carbon. As all champions of cost/benefit analysis understand, it is a mistake to look at costs in isolation from benefits, or benefits apart from costs. Yet that appears to be the approach taken in these reports. In dealing with various objections to its reports, the IWG noted in its July 2015 response that “some commenters felt that the SCC estimates should include the value to society of the goods and services whose production is associated with CO2 emissions.” Their evasive response has to be quoted in full to be believed: “Rigorous evaluation of benefits and costs is a core tenet of the rulemaking process. The IWG agrees that these are important issues that may be relevant to assessing the impacts of policies that reduce CO2 emissions. However, these issues are not relevant to the SCC itself. The SCC is an estimate of the net economic damages resulting from CO2 emissions, and therefore is used to estimate the benefit of reducing those emissions.”
In essence, the benefits from present or future CO2 emissions are not part of the story. Yet a truly neutral account of the problem must be prepared to come to the conclusion that increased levels of CO2 emissions could be, as the Carbon Dioxide Coalition has argued, a net benefit to society when a more comprehensive investigation is made. The entire process of expanding EPA regulations and other Obama administration actions feeds off this incorrect base assumption. The most striking admission of the folly of the entire EPA project comes from EPA Chief Gina McCarthy, who has stated that she would regard a decrease of one one-hundredth of a degree as enormously beneficial, notwithstanding its major cost, because its symbolism would “trigger global action.” No cost/benefit analysis would justify wasted expenditures solely on symbolic grounds. After all, human progress on global warming will only suffer if other nations follow our false siren on CO2 emissions, while ignoring the huge pollution that envelops major population centers like Delhi and Beijing.
It’s both junk science, and junk economics.
[Update a few minutes later]
[Update a couple minutes later]
Bob Zimmerman has thoughts on the upcoming squealing of the climate pigs.
The IRS
No, this isn’t about their war on conservatives. I got a shocking notice in the mail for my Subchapter S that said I owed three thousand dollars, even though there were no taxes due. It was a late-filing penalty. I had requested an extension in March, and filed in October, as I’d done for the past couple years, since I started the new company, and passed all the profit through to myself as sole owner. But they claimed that I hadn’t filed for the extension, so it was six months late (they counted the four days from when I mailed on October 15th as another month) and they charged me $195 per month times two, claiming that there were two shareholders, even though it was addressed to me as sole owner. I looked into my options, and while there are ways out for individuals, they’re a lot harder on S corps.
Fortunately, the woman I talked to on the phone was reasonable, and I managed to get her to accept that I had filed for the extension (she recognized that my actions would have made no sense if I hadn’t, and my past history was to do so), and convinced her that I was the only shareholder (which they should have known by looking at my K-1), so she knocked it down to two months from when I was supposed to file in September (yes, I did screw that up) for one shareholder, to get the bill down to $390. But it’s still annoying to be fined for a late filing in which no taxes were owed. Clearly, they want to be harsh on late filers regardless.
Obama’s Versus Trump’s Economy
I distinctly recall in the fall of 2008, as an Obama win seemed likely, if not inevitable, that there was a lot of talk about small-business people planning to end investment, pull in their horns, and wait for the coming economic storm to blow over, which greatly contributed to the contraction, and the worst recovery since the end of the war. But I’m having trouble finding anything on line about it. Do others remember that, and have any links to anything?
I ask, because I suspect that the promise of an end to many of the punishing regulations is going to pull a lot of that money back into the economy (particularly if it can be repatriated without being confiscated).
Fixing My Own Stuff
I think that this comment on my furnace problems is worth elaborating on:
If you blow yourself up trying to save a few bucks by not hiring someone to do this for you, I don’t want to hear any complaints! Good luck.
It’s not (just) about “saving a few bucks.”
I come from a line of people on my mother’s side who would never think to call someone to fix something that had an obvious solution, and the tools/knowledge to do it. In fact, during the Depression, my grandfather was the guy who got called, doing auto repairs. But he also built his own cabin in northern Michigan on the Muskegon River, and built by hand inboard-motor boats to put in the river, by steaming and bending mahogany, and adapting Chrysler drive trains to put in them, including dashboard instruments. He built them in the basement in northern Flint, and knocked out the wall to get them out when they were complete and ready to be trailered Up North.
My uncle (his son) followed in his footsteps, except that he actually got a college degree (ME from Michigan), and he always (at least until late in life), though he was a well-paid engineering manager at AC Spark Plug, rebuilt his own car engines (back in the days when this had to be done every hundred-thousand miles or so), and his own plumbing and electrical work and drywall (at least after he retired).
My first car, at sixteen, was a used MGA. That summer, I tore it apart and put it back together, to improve the performance and end the blue smoke of the burning oil coming out of the tailpipe, and get smoother gear shifting with new synchros. Before I went to college, I was a professional VW mechanic. I’m just not by nature someone who likes to pay people (and in many cases, trust them) to do things that I think I can do better and cheaper myself. When I was in Florida in May, starting to prepare the house to sell, I got a quote of $500 to replace a leaking hose bib, which involved opening up a block wall, sweating in new copper pipe, then resealing and repainting it. I did the whole job in a couple hours after fifty bucks in tools and parts at Home Depot.
A few weeks ago we had a water leak in the main supply line coming into the house that had the meter swirling like a dervish. We did call a plumber, but a thousand dollars later, while they did a good job (I watched), I regretted not doing it myself. All it would have taken was renting a jack hammer to open up the sidewalk, digging some dirt, cutting out the bad pipe and replacing it, reburying, and replacing the pavement.
Anyway, I assumed that when a furnace failed suddenly, it was likely something simple. I read the service manual, tracked down the problem to an obviously failed igniter, and changed it myself. I have pride in my own ability, and a larger bank account.
Government Nutrition Guidelines
Did they cause the obesity epidemic?
I’d say yes; he seems to miss some key issues, as many point out in comments there.
McDowell County, WV
That question is actually surprisingly easy to answer: They did. After all, 80 percent of McDowell’s population, including my grandparents, cleared out of the county to seek opportunities elsewhere during the last half-century.
But as the mines mechanized and closed down, why didn’t the rest go, too? Reed, Whitt, and Slagle all more or less agree that many folks in McDowell are being bribed by government handouts to stay put and to stay poor. Drug use is the result of the demoralization that follows.
In a Fall 2014 National Affairs article called “Moving to Work,” R Street Institute analysts Eli Lehrer and Lori Sanders asked, “What is keeping the poor from moving their families to new places to take advantage of better opportunities?” They argue that “the answer lies primarily in the structure of poverty-relief programs.” In other words, the government is paying people to be poor.
Yes.
Swiss Space Systems
They’ve gone belly up, but this is bizarre:
The news comes at the end of a difficult year for S3.
In August its founder and CEO, Pascal Jaussi, was left seriously injured after being beaten up and set on fire by two attackers in a forest.
The media reported at the time that Jaussi was forced to drive his car into a forest, where he was doused in petrol and set on fire. He managed to get himself out of the vehicle and call a friend, who alerted emergency services.
The investigation is ongoing.
The space business can be dangerous, but I’d sure like to know the back story here.
Macbook And IPhone Upgrades
For the first time in my life, I decided to sit out an upgrade cycle and buy the older model, now being sold at a discount like day-old bread.
I won’t say that the discount played no role in my decision. But in previous years, I’d have swallowed hard and handed over the money, because I am, in the laptop world, a hardcore power user. I game on my laptop. I frequently have a dozen or so applications open, two or three of which are browsers with many tabs open. Faster processors, more memory — these things are sufficiently valuable that I’m willing to pay for them, because they make me more productive.
The trouble is, the upgrade cycle is no longer delivering those things. The processors in the latest model were marginally faster than in the previous one, but you couldn’t add memory, which I needed more. Instead, Apple is focusing on things I care about a lot less, like making the laptop thin — even though that meant losing USB and SD card ports that I still use, and losing a lot of “play” from the keyboard. As a friend pointed out to me, Apple has become obsessed with thinness to the point of anorexia.
But my decision is not primarily evidence of Apple making poor design decisions. Instead, it’s a lesson in the limits of the form — and the way that’s affecting upgrade cycles, and very probably, Apple’s future revenue.
…My 4.5 years is actually on the low side for replacing a computer; the average now is nearly six years, which of course means that a substantial number of users are waiting longer than that. For replacing mobile devices, too, consumers are waiting longer, in part because phone companies are no longer subsidizing the phones to get you to invest in a contract, but also, I suspect, because devices are just not getting better as fast as they once were. We used to upgrade our phones every two years because the new operating systems ran on old phones as if they’d been given high doses of valium. Now we’ll wait until the batteries won’t hold a charge — and if it were possible to replace the batteries, we might wait even longer than that, because I’m not willing to pay hundreds of dollars to get a better camera while losing my headphone jack.
I replaced my slider Droid 2 Global a couple years ago, when it started to flake out, with a used Droid 4, because it was the newest phone in which I could still get a mechanical keyboard. The Droid 2 could do a battery swap in ten seconds; Motorola says not to replace the battery in the 4, but it was on its last legs when I bought it, and they could be purchased at Amazon, and didn’t really require any special tools other than a #5 Torx driver, so now the battery is fine. I don’t know when I’ll upgrade the phone, but then, I only use it when traveling, because I hate cell phones in general, and work at home with a land line, that they’ll take away from my cold dead fingers.
And I’ll stick to my desktop for now as well. I buy a cheap laptop for traveling, but to the degree I’m a power user, I prefer to have something easy/cheap to upgrade (I’ll probably double my RAM to 32G for Christmas). My next laptop, which may come soon, because mine is starting to have problems (occasional non-responsive keys, and lines in the display) will probably be a foldable two in one, that will be much easier to use on a plane.
As she says, it is a problem with marginal utility as we approach the end of Moore’s law, and the limits of the physical human interface.
But it’s not just that. I’ve never used Apple products, and things like this insane obsession with “thin” to the exclusion of all else is one of the reasons. My sense is that Apple’s response to consumer demand is similar to Twitter’s:
“Hey, we’re going to improve the product!”
“Great, want to know what we want?”
“Absolutely not.”