Category Archives: Science And Society

Science And Society, Technology and Society

Rolling Back The Clock?

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I’ve always thought that progeria was sort of an existence proof that the aging process is a lot more amenable to external intervention than many want to believe. After all, if it can be accelerated on such a grand scale, why not be able to slow, or even reverse it? Yes, I know that some people think it’s a violation of the Third Law, but I don’t buy it. We do cellular repair perfectly well for years before it starts to decline, and if the repair mechanisms can be made to work again, there is no law of thermodynamics that says we can reduce the entropy again.

So this is a very exciting development, with profound societal implications if it pans out:

The drug rapamycin has been found to reverse the effects of Hutchinson-Gilford progeria syndrome, a fatal genetic disease that resembles rapid aging, in cells taken from patients with the disease. Rapamycin, an immunosuppressant drug used to prevent rejection of transplanted organs, has already been shown to extend life span in healthy mice. Researchers hope the findings will provide new insight into treating progeria as well as other age-related diseases.

As Glenn says, faster, please.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society

The Failure Of Al Gore

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More thoughts from Walter Russell Mead:

The global green strategy was a comprehensive, unified and coordinated one. Green activists around the world, in some countries empowered because proportional representation gives fringe groups disproportionate political influence, would unite around the push for a single global solution to climate change. The global solution involved a treaty to be negotiated under UN auspices that would be “legally binding” and subject the emission of greenhouse gasses to strict global controls. Developing countries would receive massive transfers of official aid ($100 billion or more a year) to compensate them for the costs they would incur in meeting carbon targets; developed countries like the United States would face stricter targets still. The target for the treaty was to cap global emissions at levels believed to keep the global temperature rise this century to two degrees centigrade.

To reach this Valhalla, a political strategy was put in place; it is the strategy that the former vice president is still gamely trying to push in his Rolling Stone article. It has failed.

Good. As with Obama, his failure is success for the rest of us.

[Update a few minutes later]

Well, a success for the rest of us who don’t live in California. Here, he succeeded, because the voters are idiots, and the ruinous law that the Democrats and Scharzenegger pushed (thanks, Maria!) will be just one more factor that irretrievably sinks the state’s economic prospects.

[Late morning update]

Al Gore — idiot Malthusian.

As bad as Bush was, we really dodged a bullet in 2000.

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

Former Astronaut Bernard Harris

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An interesting interview. He’s being a little too politically correct here, though:

…in the 21st century we need teachers who teach math and science to have expertise in math and science. So there needs to be an upgrade there, and refocus on how much we value those teachers. As you know, in this country, we don’t pay our teachers all that well. We need to rethink that.

The problem isn’t that we don’t pay teachers well, at least on average. The problem is that we don’t pay the valuable ones enough, and we pay the worthless ones far too much, thanks to the unions. We need to be able to adequately compensate the teachers who have actual useful knowledge to impart, and get rid of the ones who don’t. This would all start by eliminating the worthless, or to be more accurate, negative-value, “education” major.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society

A Shock To The Warm Mongers

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I’ll obviously have a lot more to say about this in the coming days, but it’s going to be a major battle of one “settled” science versus another:

The big consequences of a major solar calm spell…would be climatic. The next few generations of humanity might not find themselves trying to cope with global warming but rather with a significant cooling. This could overturn decades of received wisdom on such things as CO2 emissions, and lead to radical shifts in government policy worldwide.

We won’t just be firing up the SUVs. We’ll be burning fossil fuels for everything we’re worth, and not just for electricity–for heat. But unlike the watermelons who have been waging war against carbon, I don’t propose any massive government solutions, other than to get the hell out of the way, and let the market work. Oh, and I think I’d be shorting carbon-trading schemes. I wonder if Algore is?