Some advice from The Oatmeal.
Category Archives: Social Commentary
Spacefaring
Is space more like seafaring or aviation? It started out like the latter, but the former is a better model once we actually get serious about it.
[Update a while later]
Meteor craters, dinosaurs and spacefaring.
Actually, while I do think it’s a federal responsibility to keep an eye out for impactors, it’s not clear that it’s NASA’s job. It’s one of the things we need a Space Guard for.
A Sharp Rise In Retractions
And they wonder why conservatives and other sensible people don’t have faith in scientific institutions. As Glenn notes, all the government funding leads to corruption, and not just in the climate-change industrial complex.
Who’d’ve Thunk It?
The Titanic was real? I never fail to be amazed at some peoples’ willingness to profess their ignorance in public.
Derb And Discourse
A long, but thoughtful post on the “racism” of John Derbyshire.
I continue to wonder if they cancer treatments have impaired his judgment.
Charles Stross On Amazon’s Business Model
In which he ignorantly bashes libertarians:
I’m not going to lecture you about Jeff Bezos either, although I do want to note that he came out of a hedge fund and he’s ostensibly a libertarian; these aspects of his background make me uneasy, because in my experience they tend to be found in conjunction with a social-darwinist ideology that has no time for social justice, compassion, or charity. (When you hear a libertarian talking about “disruption” and “innovation” what they usually mean is “opportunities to make a quick buck, however damaging the long-term side effects may be”. Watch for the self-serving cant and the shout-outs to abstractions framed in terms of market ideology.)
Emphasis mine. Jonah Goldberg, hit this guy with a cluebat.
Salvation
I just got an email from Kim Kardashian that her celebrity stylists are going to pick out my shoes for me. I’m so excited that I haven’t even responded to her email yet. I may remain in that state of excitement for quite a while.
The Old Left
…are the new squares.
Lessons Of The Titanic
We’re still learning them. A lot of this applies to NASA and its “safety culture” as well.
Vital Research On The ISS
The space station finally earns its keep:
Compounds of unmatured malt were sent to the station in an unmanned cargo spacecraft in October last year, along with particles of charred oak.
Scientists want to understand how they interact at close to zero gravity.
NanoRacks LLC, the US company behind the research, has said understanding the influence of gravity could help a number of industries, including the whisky industry, to develop new products in the future.
And those silly people say that space research is a waste of money.