The top eight places to look for it. Not including earth, of course.
I think that Carolyn Porco thinks that Enceladus is a better candidate than Europa, but it’s a lot harder to get to.
Category Archives: Science And Society
The Uncanny Valley
…still has yet to be traversed.
Statins
“No scientific evidence for their use.”
It’s not just nutrition that’s a scientific Charlie Foxtrot. I had a cardiologist in Florida try to put me on Lipitor a few years ago. I told her, “there’s no scientific evidence that it reduces heart risk in people like me,” I told her. “Where did you hear that?” she demanded. “The Pfizer web site,” I replied. She was flabbergasted.
Elon Musk And “Space Exploration”
Here‘s kind of a typically dumb piece, which reeks of Apolloism:
I am a big fan of space exploration and I think that Elon Musk’s SpaceX is a visionary company that is trying to conduct meaningful space exploration. Yet, Congress might want to take a hard look at the ticket price for Musk’s latest endeavor before spending $10 billion to populate Mars.
First, SpaceX is not “trying to conduct meaningful space exploration.” It is trying to establish human settlements on Mars. And if it could really be done for as little as $10B, that would be an incredible bargain to the taxpayer, compared to (say) spending that same amount on SLS/Orion in the next three years, as NASA currently proposes.
I am a limited government conservative, yet I fully support government funded space travel. But it must be smart and it can’t fund risky adventures. The one concern I have about SpaceX’s plan to travel to Mars is that, on its face, the plan seems more like a for-profit enterprise than true space exploration. I would support pure exploration of Mars and a project that has a stated goal of forwarding humanity. Musk’s idea seems like he is more in it for profit than science.
#ProTip: “Limited-government conservatives” do not spurn profit. And even if making a profit on “science” was really a bad thing, settling Mars has nothing to do with “science.”
According to the Los Angeles Times, Musk has received about $4.9 billion already in government subsidies for his three companies. Now he comes to the federal government wanting more. And he has been the beneficiary of many contracts to put satellites into space that run in the billions.
#ProTip: Tesla and Solar City get subsidies. SpaceX gets contracts. One is nothing like the other two, other than federal dollars are involved.
This is a laudable idea and Elon Musk should be celebrated as one of the great innovators of our time, yet the taxpayers should not be funding for profit space exploration and may want to find another contractor who wants to go to space for purely scientific space exploration.
This is a perfect example of the mental confusion that occurs when (as many ignorantly did with Apollo) we conflate “exploration” with “science” with space development and settlement. Mr. Woodson needs to go read my recent screed.
[Update a couple minutes later]
As usual, the comments over there are idiotic, including a couple appearances of the ignorant “NASA’s Muslim outreach.”
The Common Cold
Are we on the verge of a cure? That would be nice.
My Defamation Lawsuit
It is now the second anniversary of arguments before the DC Court of Appeals. Jonathan Adler has some thoughts.
The Real War On Science
Yes, it comes from the Left and (as with racism) always has. And when they accuse the Republicans of it, it’s simply the usual projection from them. I’ve offered to debate Chris Mooney, too, but I suspect he knows he wouldn’t do well.
[Update a while later]
More thoughts from Judith Curry. And I agree with her that Mooney’s Storm World was (surprising to me, after the polemical Republican War On Science) a good book.
[Update a while later]
This seems sort of related: The global warming “consensus” falls strongly on the side of skeptics:
Taken together, these four skeptical groups numerically blow away the 36 percent of scientists who believe global warming is human caused and a serious concern.
One interesting aspect of this new survey is the unmistakably alarmist bent of the survey takers. They frequently use terms such as “denier” to describe scientists who are skeptical of an asserted global warming crisis, and they refer to skeptical scientists as “speaking against climate science” rather than “speaking against asserted climate projections.” Accordingly, alarmists will have a hard time arguing the survey is biased or somehow connected to the ‘vast right-wing climate denial machine.’
I’ve often written this, but anyone still using the “97%” number is either a demagogue, or ignorant. And when they use it, it’s a strong signal that their opinions can be safely ignored.
[Early afternoon update]
Thoughts from John Tierney himself, where he briefly discusses the unwillingness of the Left to debate him.
Animals Living In Our Houses
As that great philosopher Homer J. Simpson once said, “Animals are crapping in our houses, and we’re cleaning it up. That’s not America! It’s not even Mexico!”
Seriously I’d say that we domesticated dogs, but cats (along with grass) domesticated us. And it’s worth noting, which the article doesn’t, that cat’s haven’t really been domesticated; they too have been tamed, and generally require taming from birth. Feral cats, after a certain age, regardless of their ancestry, will generally remain wild.
Science’s Broken Rewards System
A a look into the math and sociology of it.
Counting Calories
These may be the stupidest people in the world:
Based on its menu board, Desmond bought a chorizo burrito at the Chipotle restaurant on San Vicente Boulevard in Los Angeles on Nov. 3 believing that it contained 300 calories, the suit states. But after consuming the product, Desmond “felt excessively full and realized that the burrito couldn’t have been just 300 calories,” according to the complaint.
Two days later, Gurevich bought a chorizo burrito at the Chipotle location on Riverside Drive in Toluca Lake and similarly realized after eating it that had more than the 300 calories advertised, the suit says.
You can’t tell how many calories are in food by how “full” you feel after eating it. Nutritional labeling is part of the general public-health disaster that has been nutrition “science” for decades.
And speaking of which, “researchers” are shocked to discover that kids are healthier, with lower body fat and higher vitamin D levels, on whole milk.
No one should be consuming low-fat dairy products, which are a nutritional abomination. Michelle’s school-lunch program literally constitutes physical child abuse.