With the Legal Subcommittee meeting of COPUOUS in Vienna a little over a week away (I’ll be attending this year), Laura Montgomery has a new paper out, and Christopher Johnson has some thoughts, too.
Category Archives: Technology and Society
Coffee
One of the reasons I drink it; it may reduce coronary artery disease.
Not reasons I drink it? The taste, the after taste, and its affect on my alertness or mood in general, which is zero.
It’s Always Something
I ran out of hot water yesterday. Checked the heater, and the pilot was out. Relit it (piezoelectric igniter), and it wouldn’t stay lit. So I went to Home Depot and got a new thermocouple. After I replaced it, now it won’t light. So, either igniter, or not getting gas (neither of which should be the result of changing a thermocouple).
Sigh…
[Update a couple minutes later]
OK, I’m seeing a spark when I hit the button. Hoping that maybe I just have to clear some air out of the pilot line from when I removed the assembly to replace the thermocouple.
[Update a few more minutes later]
Disconnected the pilot line, definitely gas coming out of the valve. All I can think is that I clogged it somehow when I changed out the thermocouple. I’ll try inspecting and cleaning it.
[Update a couple minutes later]
I can blow through the line, but there’s a lot of resistance. Don’t know if that’s normal, or if it’s too much for the gas pressure to overcome.
[Update a few minutes later]
When I hook the line back up, and open the pilot valve, I can faintly smell gas at the tip, but I don’t hear a flow. It’s more like seeping, and probably not enough to sustain a flame. Not sure where the problem is, though. Might see if I can just replace it.
[Update a while later]
Took it apart, put it back together, tested it outside the unit, and saw a pilot flame. Put it back in and didn’t see much, but there was a dim light in there. I turned the heater on, and apparently there was sufficient pilot to make it work. It was probably working before, and I just hadn’t realized it…
JWST And The Media
Thoughts from Bob Zimmerman on the latest overrun and schedule slip, and the shoddy reporting of it.
The JWST
It’s delayed again, and over budget. Again.
I would have canceled it years ago. It was a mistaken concept from the get go. For what we’ve spent on this program, we could have had orbital servicing capability, obviating the need for the origami, and even allowing servicing in situ.
The New National Space Strategy
Thoughts on it from Laura Montgomery, with its implications for Outer Space Treaty interpretation.
Vascular Health In Mice
Rejuvenation through dietary supplements.
I’m already taking NAD+.
Male Cyborgs
#ProTip: If you want to try one of these, you are not a male heterosexual. You are bisexual, and have been behaving as het to get along in society.
I don’t have zero interest in this. I have extreme negative interest in this.
[Update a while later]
No one who describes themselves as “bi-curious” is heterosexual, by definition. Articles like this annoy me in the extreme, because they promote the nonsense that everyone is gender and sexuality fluid.
[Monday-morning update]
The case of the missing link has been solved.
The Iran “Deal”
Goodbye, and good riddance.
If Obama was your defense attorney, he’d plead a life sentence for jaywalking, and call it a “deal.”
Doves worry that the elevation of Pompeo makes conflict between the United States and Iran more likely. They get it backward. We are already in a conflict with Iran, one that Iran has been winning. It was the Obama administration’s diplomacy with Iran that gave it the resources and opportunity to sow chaos and undermine American interests throughout Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, Bahrain, and elsewhere. What Pompeo can do is shift the conflict into terrain of our choosing and decide it on our terms.
Yup.
The Deep Space Network
Shannon Stirone has a nice essay on the history and state of affairs, and Congress’s skewed space-budget priorities.
I think the future of deep-space comm will be lasers, and it may be provided commercially.