Light/non-existing posting because since boarding red eye to DC Tuesday night, I’ve been attending the Space Enterprise Summit at the State Department.
Category Archives: Technology and Society
The Current Space Race
Why it’s better than Apollo.
For one thing, it’s more sustainable. And it will accomplish much more. Whenever kids (i.e., people less than 50) tell me they envy me that I saw men walk on the moon, I tell them that I envy them for all the much more exciting things in space they’ll see (assuming that we don’t get life extension).
Toy Story 4
A review. It’s apparently a meditation on consciousness and sentience.
[Wednesday-morning update]
Kyle Smith isn’t impressed.
[Bumped]
[Friday update at noon]
Peter Suderman disagrees, and thinks it’s one of the best franchises of all time.
[Update Sunday evening]
Wow, this movie is certainly getting mixed reviews.
[Bumped]
Lesson For Trump From Media Attacks
Yes, continue to focus on the flawed climate science:
The CNN video ridicules Trump for saying that global warming is “an expensive hoax.” We should respond by outlining the costs involved. Over one billion dollars a day worldwide is now spent on “climate finance,” according to the San Francisco-based Climate Policy Initiative, yet we see no impact on climate. In 2017, Dr. Bjorn Lomborg, president of the Copenhagen Consensus Center, explained that if the UN Paris Agreement targets for 2030 were met and sustained through the rest of the century, there would be 0.3 degrees Fahrenheit less warming in 2100, if the models relied upon by the UN were correct. He explains that the cost of the Paris pact would be $1 – 2 trillion every year. So clearly, CNN’s criticism tells Trump that he should continue calling it “an expensive hoax,” and cite the cost estimates and forecast results to illustrate his point.
Yup.
Those “Impossible” Burgers
It may be a surprise to some, but not to me, that they are neither healthier for the eater or for the environment.
I’d like to eat actual lab-grown meat, but it has to be cost effective, and nutritionally equivalent to the stuff on the hoof (or claw).
[Update a couple minutes later]
In reading, as is often the case, part of the health claim derives from the false notion that eating “red meat,” and particularly saturated fat, is unhealthy. There is zero scientific evidence for either. So they’re basically proposing to replace something humans have been eating since the dawn of humanity with some lab-produced glop about which we are completely ignorant of its nutritional effects.
Boeing CEO
…admits that putting an automatic self-destruct system in the 737 MAX was a mistake.
Yes, it’s The Onion, but is it really?
Space Policy
Clark Lindsey has quite a round up of links from this week.
[Update at noon]
What is the role of the Space Force? A long essay from (USAF Colonel — ret) Peter Garretson.
The “Republican” Brain
A refutation of a stupid thesis (including a dumb book by Chris Mooney). If I had time, I’d write a book called “The Democrats’ War On Science.” It would have a more solid basis than Mooney’s.
Oh, and this once again puts paid to the notion of “peer review” as having any value.
[Update a few minutes later]
“Consensus,” and politics disguised as science.
The Moral Case For Capitalism
It’s tragic that we have to reteach this lesson, that these children in adult bodies should have learned in school and college.
Space Settlements
Clark Lindsey has a news roundup.