Category Archives: Science And Society

Law, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Space, Technology and Society

Planetary Protection

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There may be some useful changes coming to NASA:

JPL has butted heads with the office over the next big mission, the Mars 2020 rover, which will gather rock samples for later retrieval to Earth. JPL is interesting in having the rover target areas with subsurface brines, an activity that would not be allowed with its planned level of cleanliness. Moreover, the planetary protection office has not yet agreed on the efficacy of the techniques JPL will use to sterilize the tubes in which the rover will cache rock cores. If the issues aren’t resolved, Rummel says, the rover could be headed for a bureaucratic “train wreck”.

The office, which has always been limited by a small budget and staff, continues to gauge a spacecraft’s “bioburden” based on a classic measure—the number of cultivable microbial spores it carries. “Some of the numbers we’ve been operating on date back decades, and it’d be great to revisit them,” says Sarah Johnson, a planetary scientist at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. She thinks the office should take advantage of two innovations: chemicals that can separate DNA from dead and living cells, and genomic sequencers that can classify the living ones by type. Scientists could then, for example, assess their individual likelihoods of surviving on Mars.

As a member of the Curiosity team, Johnson would like to see a change in policy that would allow the rover to sidle up to the wet streaks to give them a close look, even if the drill itself—currently on the fritz since December 2016—could not be used. In their op-ed, Fairén and his colleagues go further, saying NASA should slightly lower its sterilization standards so that robots as clean as Curiosity could explore special regions. Fairén says there is growing evidence that the harsh environment on the martian surface—a combination of frigid temperatures, caustic chemicals and deadly cosmic radiation—would kill Earth’s microbes quickly, especially in the limited numbers that ride along with robots. Even if some survive, he adds, future missions could distinguish between earthly and martian microbes by sequencing their genomes.

As the article notes, it’s inevitable that humans are going to go there. If they want to look for non-terrestrial life, they need to start doing it now.

Business, Economics, History, Political Commentary, Popular Culture, Science And Society, Space, Space History, Technology and Society, Weird

Lunar Cryonics

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I accidentally started a Twitter conversation with Sandy Mazza as a result of this nice piece on markets being enabled by lower-cost launch, including space burial. I noted to her that it made no sense for the California Department of Public Health to be regulating it, and then mentioned that they shouldn’t have anything to do with cryonics, either. In the course of the discussion, I dug up an old piece I wrote for Cryonics Magazine back in 1990 (ctrl-F “Simberg” to find it). Given that things are finally looking promising for reducing cost of access to space in general, and likely the moon as well, I decided I’d resurrect it here. Note that I’ve been talking about the need for markets to drive down launch costs for three decades. Note also that it’s somewhat dated, in terms of its discussion of the NASP and American Rocket.

Continue reading Lunar Cryonics →

Business, Culinary, Health, Media Criticism, Science And Society, Technology and Society

Vegan Diets

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…and the brain:

Removing refined carbohydrates, such as sugar, flours, fruit juice, and cereals, makes ANY diet healthier. This is the most likely reason why plant-based diets appear healthier than meat-based diets in some clinical studies. All of the studies I’m aware of claiming that plant-based diets are superior to omnivorous diets suffer from the same tragic flaw. Researchers conducting these studies NEVER simply ask people to remove animal foods from their diet. They always change more than just that single variable—such as lowering fat content or adding exercise—and they always instruct people in the plant-based group to eliminate refined carbohydrates and processed foods. In almost every case, these special “plant-based” diets are then compared to a junky omnivorous diet loaded with sweets, baked goods and manufactured foodstuffs.

This is not a fair fight. How do we know whether it was the removal of the meat, refined carbs, industrially-produced oils, or artificial additives that was responsible for the benefits? I’ve engaged in countless social media conversations with plant-based diet experts in which I politely ask for scientific evidence that simply removing animal foods from the diet—without making any other changes—results in health benefits. None of them have ever been able to cite a single article for me.

The amount of junk science in nutrition studies is just appalling.

Business, Culinary, Law, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Technology and Society

Saturated Fat

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No, American Heart Association, butter, steak, and coconut oil won’t kill you.

I consider this reckless disregard for the truth. Any lawyers out there who can tell me why they wouldn’t be subject to massive class action?

Related: Moving on from “Let’s Move”:

In 2010, Michelle Obama kicked off the “Let’s Move” campaign to help combat childhood obesity. This well-intentioned effort drew national attention to a serious topic that needed to be addressed.

Sadly, I knew the campaign was doomed to fail; because failure is easy to spot when you wage war against the wrong enemy.

Exercise and healthy eating were central themes of her effort. I am the first to admit that exercise is vital to maintaining overall health, considering that I made my living as a personal trainer. But as I explain to all of my clients, exercise is a lousy way to lose weight, in spite of its many benefits.

Every week, I interview doctors, scientists, and researchers who are on the front lines of combating obesity, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, and other metabolic syndrome conditions.

The fact is our diet is almost exclusively to blame for these issues. For years, we have been focusing on the wrong enemy, as healthcare professionals, encouraged by the federal government, told us that fat in our diet was the root cause of these diseases. The so-called ‘experts’, aided by activist front groups, demonized saturated fat, and advised us to eat ‘heart-healthy’ grains and lean proteins. It turns out that this was exactly the wrong strategy.

Yes. And yet they continue to recommend it, and commit massive physical child abuse in Michelle’s school-lunch program.