Category Archives: Technology and Society

Business, History, Space, Technology and Society

115 Years Of Powered, Controlled Flight

10 Comments

Fifteen years ago, on the centennial anniversary of the Wright’s first flight, I wrote three separate essays on it. One was at National Review, a second was at Fox News (though I can’t find it; the original blog post can be found here), I think, and a third was at what was then TechCentralStation, but that one seems to have succumbed to link rot. If anyone can find it, I’d appreciate it (I think the title was “Airplane Scientists”).

It’s also the fifteenth anniversary of the first time that SpaceShipOne went supersonic. Burt liked to do things on anniversaries.

[Afternoon update]

John Breen found it.

[Update a while later]

Humor, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Satire, Social Commentary, Technology and Society

Titania McGrath

5 Comments

Godfrey Elfwick (who was banned from Twitter) welcomes her back. (I suspect that the same person is behind both satire accounts.)

[Saturday update]

Reflections from Titania xirself:

Indeed, Twitter’s modus operandi appears to involve routinely silencing those who defend social justice and enabling those who spread hate. In my short time on the platform, I have regularly come across hate speech from the sort of unreconstructed bigots who believe that there are only two genders, or that Islam is not a race. It’s got to the point where if someone doesn’t have “anti-fascist” in their bio, it’s safest to assume that they’re a fascist.

The permanent suspension only lasted for a day, but the experience was traumatic and lasting. I now understand how Nelson Mandela felt. If anything, my ordeal was even more damaging. Mandela may have had to endure 27 years of incarceration, but at least his male privilege protected him from ever having to put up with mansplaining, or being subject to wolf-whistling by grubby proles on a building site.

She is a true martyr.

[Bumped]

Health, Science And Society, Technology and Society

Azithromycin

3 Comments

Maybe I should start taking it:

“If we consider our results and then we also consider what results have been achieved in clinical trials with cystic fibrosis patients, we are probably looking at the same mechanism(s), whereby antibiotics are removing inflammatory senescent cells and boosting healthy ones.

“Undoubtedly, our results have significant implications for potentially alleviating or reversing tissue dysfunction and slowing the development of many ageing-associated diseases,” explains Professor Federica Sotgia, a co-lead of this study.

Yes, undoubtedly.

Business, Science And Society, Space, Technology and Society

Back To Space

8 Comments

Virgin Galactic just completed the first flight of SpaceShipTwo to space, if one considers the boundary to be 80 kilometers (it reportedly got to 82). At the Galloway Symposium last week, Jonathan McDowell made a good case that this, not the traditional Karman line of 100 km, is the right altitude. If one accepts that, it is the first flight of humans to space from American soil since the Shuttle retired over seven years ago. Here’s hoping that Blue Origin does the same thing next year (except they’re designed to get to 100 km).

[Update a few minutes later]

Here‘s Emilee Speck’s story.

[Update a while later]

Link to the McDowell paper should be working now, sorry.

[Update a while later]

Tim Fernholz has a story up now.

[Update a few minutes later]

And here’s a story from CNN‘s Jackie Wattles.