…are threatened by a litigious climate. It’s almost as though some “scientists” would rather sue people than discuss science. [Paywalled]
[Update a couple minutes later]
Here‘s a non-paywalled link.
Category Archives: Technology and Society
Tech Leaders
How could such smart people be so stupid?
There are different kinds of “smart,” not to mention a lot of ignorance and maleducation.
[Update a while later]
As Glenn notes, this seems related: Thoughts on the arrogance of ignorance, and being “well educated.”
Progress At Exos
I keep forgetting about them. It looks like they’ll be a player in suborbital soon, just not for human spaceflight. I expect I’ll see Russ and others at the suborbital research conference in Broomfield in December.
SpaceX In 2018
Gwynne Shotwell provides a preview. The plan is to continue to pick up the pace. Note that now she’s saying 2024 for BFR debut. That seems conservative, and more realistic.
Thanksgiving Dinner Discussion
It’s a couple years old, but it’s that time of year again for instructions on how to discuss Star Wars over dinner with your ignorant rebellion-supporting uncle.
And speaking of Thanksgiving dinner, here is my recipe for cornbread, sausage, wild-mushroom and pomegranate dressing.
Fake Meat
As I tweeted to Ron (he hasn’t responded), my concern is that, being derived from soy, it won’t have the same nutritional value as actual beef.
Blast From The Past
RIP, Lutz Kayser.
I don’t know if anyone’s written a definitive history of OTRAG, but it did inspire (at least for a while) John Carmack and Armadillo.
Reversing Aging
A long but interesting interview with George Church:
Certainly if you could fix all nine hallmarks at once that would do well. Reversal of aging has been demonstrated in simple animals. Some people will dismiss those as too simple — because they have such a short life already, it’s not surprising you can make them live longer. But I think it’s quite clear that aging is programmed in some sense. It’s not like you’ve been programmed to die at some age, but the laziness of evolution has resulted in your program to not avoid dying.
Over evolutionary time, to use analogy, it was not cost effective to invest a lot of your precious food to live longer because you’re going to get eaten by a wolf anyway. Now we have plenty of excess food, and rather than becoming obese let’s spend that on living longer, by spending extra ATP on repair and rejuvenation. That’s something 20-year-olds do fine, but after 60 you stop investing quite as well.
Yes. There has been no evolutionary pressure for us to live longer, but it’s absurd to think it would violate any laws of physics (and ultimately, even biology comes down to physics) that prevent us from living indefinitely long lives. And how soon could it happen?
The simple answer is, I don’t know. Probably we’ll see the first dog trials in the next year or two. If that works, human trials are another two years away, and eight years before they’re done. Once you get a few going and succeeding it’s a positive feedback loop.
That’s pretty exciting, but still: faster, please.
But I did come across this:
If you find that in the western world we’re eating a lot of marbled cow that didn’t exist in the ancient days, all you have to do is get rid of the marbled cow and you’re all set.
Except I’m not aware of any scientific evidence that marbled cow is a problem. I wonder how up on nutrition he is?
Dreamchaser
Eric Berger has the video of the landing test.
The big deal about this is its potential for an ambulance from orbit, with its lower entry acceleration, and ability to land near a hospital. It will be a very useful capability.
Milspace
DARPA wants to disrupt it. It could certainly use it.