Category Archives: Technology and Society

Light Blogging

I am in the last throes of getting the house on the market. Tomorrow is my last day in Florida (I hope), at least in terms of getting this house sold (I will come back for launches, but if I never go to south Florida again, I will have no regrets). Tomorrow night we fly to Denver, and back to LA on Tuesday. Then after a couple days of catching up at home I’m in Santa Monica for the Space Settlement Summit on Friday and Saturday, then on a plane to DC all week for COMSTAC and satellite servicing conference. So, probably still not a lot of blogging.

Things may be more lively after I get back from DC for a couple weeks, but then I’m off to Europe for a couple weeks. Anyway, life is not boring.

{Update late evening]

What the hell, let’s make this an open thread. Just be good.

Fauxcahontas’s DNA

It shows that she’s heap big authentic.

[Update Wednesday afternoon]

Warren’s Clintonian smoke signals.

It’s worth noting that Warren brought on a lot of these tropes about Siberian Americans with her “Powwow Chow.”

[Update a few minutes later]

Actual descendant of Pocahontas to Warren: Apologize.

I suspect that the fraud will keep doubling down.

[Update a couple more minutes later]

Cherokee Nation to Elizabeth Warren: Drop dead.

Unlikely she’ll do that, either, but rarely has someone so publicly pwned themselves.

[Saturday morning]

Blackface America:

America is a wonderfully mixed-up place. You meet somebody named Qiáng MacFarland Lopez and the safe bet is that he’s an American. And many of us have had the peculiar experience of feeling a strong sense of kinship with a culture that is not our own. (That’s me in a Swiss train station.) “Multiculturalism” is an intellectual dead end, but culture is not, and there is much to be said for learning Chinese or Hebrew or Nahuatl, reading the great Spanish novels, or coming to understand Buddhism as something more than a feel-good corporate trend.

To consider oneself fixed within the bounds of one’s own specific patrimony is an intellectual poverty. But Senator Warren has not dug into Cherokee history, language, or culture. She simply used the fiction of her Cherokee identity to get something she wanted — a little political leg up on the rest of the sanctimonious white ladies. That’s cheap, vulgar, and wrong — and the Cherokee are right to be annoyed by it. And if Texas Democrats really want a Hispanic name on the ballot to put up against Senator Cruz, then they might consider — here’s a radical thought! — nominating someone of Hispanic heritage as their candidate. As for Rachel Dolezal — my best guess is that being Rachel Dolezal is its own punishment.

I don’t think the Democrats understand how sane people view all this stuff (not to mention all the gender insanity).

[Bumped]

Space Access

Henry Vanderbilt will be on the show on Friday with a “mystery guest.” Hope this is good news about a resurrection of the conference.

I’ll miss it because I’ll be attending this event in DC. Flying up from Orlando this afternoon.

[Afternoon update, from MCO]

[Friday-afternoon update]

Here’s the official press release:

We are very pleased to announce that there will be a Space Access Conference next spring, April 18th-21st 2019, in California’s Bay Area at the Fremont Marriott Silicon Valley.

Space Access 2019 will be run by a team from the Experimental Rocket Propulsion Society with advice & support from us. The SA2019 Conference Chair will be ERPS’ Michael Wallis, with much relevant experience with both space and conference running. Proceeds (if any) will benefit both ERPS and SAS.

We expect the conference style will evolve – that’s one of the benefits of bringing in a new crew with fresh perspectives. But the essence of Space Access will remain the same: Three intensive days focusing on the technology, business, and politics of radically cheaper space transportation, discussed in depth by a cross-section of the people making it happen.

We will post occasional pointers to updated conference information on the space-access.org website, but the primary web page for SA2019 information will be https://sa2019.erps.org/. Check it out for conference hotel and registration information, and for the conference program as it evolves.

See you all there in six months!

About the same in terms of distance from LA, maybe a little further. But I look forward to it.

[Bumped]

Paul Allen

Rest in peace.

I’m happy that he invested in space, I guess, but there is a long history of wealthy people doing that to little effect, because they didn’t understand either the technology or the business, and they either thought they were smarter than everyone else (because, you know they were rich), or listened to the wrong people. The big difference with Elon and Jeff Bezos is that they were technically competent and quick studies.

I’m a little depressed that so many people my age are dropping like flies.

[Update a few minutes later]

I wonder what this means for Stratolaunch? It never made business sense to me. Will it survive without him?

[Tuesday-evening update]

Bill Gates remembers his business partner, without whom Microsoft would have not existed (for better or worse).

I think history will record him as more of a computer pioneer than a space one.

First Man

Eric Berger liked the movie.

[Afternoon update]
Thoughts from Marina Koren. Despite Gosling’s stupid statement, “it’s not an unpatriotic movie.”

[Late-afternoon update]
Here is Alan Boyle’s review.

[Saturday-morning update]

For those saying they’ll watch it at home, I rarely go to the theater, but this is the sort of film that deserves a big screen.

[Friday-afternoon update]

John Podhoretz hated it.