For people interested in non-terrestrial life, this should be a higher priority than Europa. It’s farther away, but a much more benign radiation environment.
Category Archives: Technology and Society
Buzz
Emilee Speck got the court documents. As someone who’s known them all for years, this is very sad.
[Afternoon update]
Here’s a statement from Christina:
Personal Statement by Christina Korp @Buzzs_xtina regarding article about @TheRealBuzz lawsuit in the @WSJ pic.twitter.com/okyW8aztvY
— NASA Watch (@NASAWatch) June 25, 2018
[Wednesday-morning update]
Here’s the latest, from Chris Davenport.
[Bumped]
[Late-morning update]
Marina Koren has more at The Atlantic.
Off The Air
I just spent over two hours in a dentist’s chair, to prep a broken bicuspid for a crown. She’s meticulous, but tediously slow.
The Latest Bombshell
Well, now we know why the DoJ and FBI have been dragging their feet for so many months on those subpoenaed documents. I’m guessing we’ll soon be seeing a lot more, and worse.
And then there’s this:
One of the reasons they couldn't charge her for all the felonies she committed was that they couldn't do so without implicating Obama. https://t.co/iuPCxJuDIO
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) June 25, 2018
[Update a while later]
Not as much as he wanted to, but he did a lot of damage.
[Afternoon update]
Just got around to reading the whole thing at the first link:
On October 30, the Department of Justice finally got in gear to get a warrant — to include everything dealing during Mrs. Clinton’s tenure with the State Department and all devices — and especially the Comey-denominated “golden emails” from the BlackBerrys and all the messages sent to Abedin to be given to Mrs. Clinton, right?
Nope.
Shocker #1: Despite everyone’s recognition of the importance of the “explosive” “bomb,” and the “golden emails” on the Weiner laptop, the FBI never even sought to review the “golden” emails. FBI General Counsel Baker pushed hard to expand the application to include those, but Strzok and DOJ prosecutors shot it down.
Shocker #2: They deliberately ignored the emails between Huma Abedin and others — despite knowing she was a proxy for the Secretary and had lied to them in her interview.
Federal investigators knew people would email Abedin, and she would print things out for Clinton. Abedin admitted it was easier for her to print things from home in Brooklyn.
Logically then, it appears it was Abedin who deliberately stripped classified markings from emails to forward the information to Mrs. Clinton so she could then deny ever receiving anything marked classified. It’s called “plausible deniability,” and it was a deliberate and illegal scheme for handling classified information.
Shocker #3: Over analysts’ objections, the FBI never reviewed the Weiner laptop to determine if it had been compromised by foreign agents despite finding that Huma Abedin had forwarded classified information to it. Those were flagrant violations of 18 U.S.C. §793.
There are important conclusions from these facts in the inspector general’s report.
This is a much bigger cover up than Watergate, by orders of magnitude.
On Boundary Conditions And Initial Values
An interesting paper at Judith Curry’s site (which is a go-to place for people following the climate follies).
Once again, for the record, I find literally incredible the notion that we have either the understanding of the physical interactions or the computer power to predict future climate with any useful confidence.
Disrupting Education
Elon has started a private school. I like the name.
Space Force
There’s been a lot of stupid talk about Trump’s announcement at the Space Council meeting. Here’s some smarter discussion.
[Noon update]
Here’s Eric Berger’s take. The bureaucracy will fight it.
[Friday update late morning]
Here’s a pretty good history and context, for those unfamiliar.
[Bumped]
Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity
If this new paper is correct, we should be firing up our SUVs.
[Friday update]
Thirty years on, how do climate predictions hold up?
Not well. [paywall]
[Bumped]
The Risk Of Spaceflight
A new paper assessing spaceflight mortality. Not sure how useful it is, given the admitted paucity of data.
[Update a few minutes later]
When a Mars simulation goes wrong. Yes, we have a lot to learn before we go to other planets, and even then, people will die, often in terrible ways. Part of the answer is that we have to be more ambitious about how many we send. Six simply isn’t enough.
SpaceShipOne
It’s the fourteenth anniversary of its first space flight. Here’s a blog post I wrote in Mojave the evening before.
And fourteen years later, not a single passenger has flown in this flawed concept. https://t.co/fi4iBuTH7b
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) June 21, 2018
[Update a while later]
The future ain’t what it used to be: Space tourism edition.
I do think though, that with Blue Origin getting ready to start test-passenger flights, it’s finally arriving.