Category Archives: Business

Business, Space, Technology and Society

SpaceX

28 Comments

They got the go-ahead a while ago to start fueling. Things are on schedule, as far as I know.

[Update a little over an hour before launch]

Everything still progressing nominally.

Here’s some good technical background on SpaceX’s quest for reusability. Assuming it’s accurate (and I didn’t see any obvious problems), that is a great, detailed description of the Falcon 9 (and its history).

[Update after scrub]

They scrubbed, primarily (it seems) due to a range radar problem.

No, I don’t have strong opinions about this at all…

Business, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

On The Radio

OK, actually, on the telephone. I’ll be having a Ricochet discussion with John Walker in half an hour to talk space stuff (probably including today’s Falcon fly-back attempt, and the ASAP report).

To participate, call +1 712 432 0375, then enter the access code 139584# and confirm by pressing 1. To enter the access code, you may have to put your phone into tone dialing mode, which may not be the default if you’re on ISDN.


Here’s the link for Ricochet members (it’s behind the paywall).

[Update a couple hours later]

Here’s the audio, for those interested.

Business, Education, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Popular Culture, Social Commentary, Technology and Society

The Hugo Wars

13 Comments

On the sad state of science fiction:

Wherever they emerge, social-justice warriors claim to be champions of diversity. But they always reveal themselves to be relentlessly hostile to it: they applaud people of different genders, races, and cultures just so long as those people all think the same way. Theirs is a diversity of the trivial; a diversity of skin-deep, ephemeral affiliations.

This is one of the reasons I haven’t read as much as I did when I was younger. And sadly, the situation is similar on many college campuses.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

The Auto Bail Out

41 Comments

It’s official, the taxpayers took a $17B bath on it:

It did not have to be this way. Obama violated numerous bankruptcy laws when he strong-armed GM and Chrysler through bankruptcy, all to the benefit of United Auto Workers members. Non-union employees of the firms got screwed. And so did taxpayers.

That “every penny was paid back” was just another lie from the guy who said you can keep your doctor and your plan.

Business, Economics, Mathematics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Technology and Society

The Climate-Modeling Paradigm

6 Comments

How robust is it?

Not very. Certainly nowhere near enough to base policy on it.

I was very impressed by Bakker’s intellectual integrity and courage in tackling this topic in the 11th hour of completing his Ph.D. thesis. I am further impressed by his thesis advisors and committee members for allowing/supporting this. Bakker notes many critical comments from his committee members. I checked the list of committee members, one name jumped out at me – Arthur Petersen – who is a philosopher of science that has written about climate models. I suspect that the criticisms were more focused on strengthening the arguments, rather than ‘alarm’ over an essay that criticizes climate models. Kudos to the KNMI.

I seriously doubt that such a thesis would be possible in an atmospheric/oceanic/climate science department in the U.S. – whether the student would dare to tackle this, whether a faculty member would agree to supervise this, and whether a committee would ‘pass’ the thesis.

Epistemic closure.

[Update a few minutes later]

The alarming thing about climate alarmism:

In short, climate change is not worse than we thought. Some indicators are worse, but some are better. That doesn’t mean global warming is not a reality or not a problem. It definitely is. But the narrative that the world’s climate is changing from bad to worse is unhelpful alarmism, which prevents us from focusing on smart solutions.

A well-meaning environmentalist might argue that, because climate change is a reality, why not ramp up the rhetoric and focus on the bad news to make sure the public understands its importance. But isn’t that what has been done for the past 20 years? The public has been bombarded with dramatic headlines and apocalyptic photos of climate change and its consequences. Yet despite endless successions of climate summits, carbon emissions continue to rise, especially in rapidly developing countries like India, China and many African nations.

Because all of the hysteria, name calling and outright lies have appropriately destroyed their credibility.

Business, Economics, Education, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

Grubby Jobs

10 Comments

Every teenager should work one.

Yup. I was a service-station attendant/mechanic (among other things). Between all the work rules and minimum wage, a lot of teens aren’t getting started on the first rung of the employment ladder. They’re not being properly taught in school, and they’re not being allowed to learn in the school of hard knocks. This won’t end well.

[Update a while later]

As noted in comments, working jobs like that teaches you the value of an education. I wasn’t that motivated about college after high school until I had a job as a VW mechanic at the local dealership, then got laid off in the recession of 1973 (it was a recession for the country, it was a depression for Flint and Detroit). I went to community college, took pre-engineering courses, then transferred them to Ann Arbor a couple years later.