Why we should expect scientists to disagree. In general, science is much more complex than many people are comfortable with.
Category Archives: Technology and Society
Apple And Google
Is there a libertarian case for reining them in?
The Dozenth Flight
I’m not going up to Vandenberg for the Formosat launch, but I’ll probably go to the beach (I’m assuming the marine layer will clear by then). I’d like to see SpaceX get to twenty flights this year, but I’d like even more to see them finally launch the heavy.
[Update a while later]
This is interesting, if true: Space will lose millions on this mission. Of course, it would have probably cost them a lot more to continue with the Falcon 1e. This is also the first time I’ve ever seen the marginal launch costs stated, at $37M. Also interesting, if correct.
Accuweather
Still installing stuff on my new phone, but very carefully. I just started installing a voice recorder, but it insisted on having access to my pictures, the Internet, my location. Why? Nope.
[Update a few minutes later]
This seems sort of related: A statistics professor was banned from Google. It is looking more and more like the old libertarian argument that we have less to concern with private companies than government is getting a little threadbare when it comes to concentrations of power like this.
Trump Versus Bezos
Why does Trump hate him so much? Because, as Virginia Postrel points out, Bezos is the anti-Trump:
Trump, who likes his staff to have the right “look,” would never cast a wiry guy who doesn’t hide his lack of hair as a big-time businessman. How can someone only five-foot-nine intimidate people into submission? In Trumpworld, intimidation, not value-creation, is what business is all about.
Bezos also has a sense of humor, often at his own expense, and a famously raucous laugh. Trump is humorless. He certainly doesn’t laugh at himself.
Bezos speaks clearly and has amazing message discipline even by the standards of successful CEOs — something that struck me when I first interviewed him way back in 1996. Trump: not so much.
Trump grew up rich, went to private schools, and had an undistinguished college career. Bezos grew up middle-class, went to public schools, and knocked the top out of Princeton, graduating with highest honors and Phi Beta Kappa in electrical engineering and computer science. One had a rich father; the other has brains.
Ouch.
The US Navy
“Those sailors did not have the basic seamanship skills, but by God, they got their sensitivity, race relations and sexual harassment training,” said Peters, adding that sailors can’t fight without adequate navigational skills.
Plus, they may be exhausted.
Thanks, Barack!
Cancer, Herpes and Metformin
Another example of how our current drug-regulatory process may be killing people. I may start taking metformin. Since everyone has diabetes these days, I should be able to get a prescription for it.
Batteries
Has Bill Joy made a huge breakthrough?
We’ll see. I hope so.
Heinlein’s Crazy Years
Glenn Reynolds (and Sarah Hoyt, and others) writes that we’re living through them. Sure looks like it.
[Update a while later]
Our vague yet imminent malaise.
[Update late morning]
Speaking of Sarah Hoyt, from late last week, strange days in America.
Space And Religion
A brief history of their relationship. I infer that she thinks evangelicals not supporting spaceflight is a problem, because of concern that it could reduce public support for it. Apparently she doesn’t realize that public support is irrelevant to a space future that is funded not by the government, but by private interests, which is what our space future now is.
[Update a while later]
Related, sort of. Laura Seward Forczyk describes her eclipse experience.
[Update mid-afternoon]
Another account from Miri Kramer.
[Update Wednesday morning]
It’s good to be an earthling.