Jeff Foust reviews an overpriced and inaccurate space book, based on a flawed premise.
[Update a few minutes later]
A long essay on the purpose of deep “space exploration.” Lord I hate that phrase.
[Afternoon update]
Second link was wrong, but fixed now. Sorry!
He wants to tunnel from his office at Hawthorne Airport to LAX.
Just when they finally seem to be almost ubiquitous on American, the airline is starting to phase them out:
“More than 90 percent of our passengers already bring a device or screen with them when they fly,” American told workers Tuesday in a message. “Those phones and tablets are continually upgraded, they’re easy to use and, most importantly, they are the technology our customers have chosen.”
The move marks a reversal for Chief Executive Officer Doug Parker, who said less than a year ago that American would have seat-back screens on all of its planes to remain competitive. The carrier this year will receive the first four of its 100 Max aircraft. A decision hasn’t been made on whether to extend the policy to other new planes.
What I hate about them is that it’s almost become a crime on the planes to have a window open in daylight. Being able to look out the window is one of the main reasons I prefer window seats. I hope that bandwidth and cost improve on the in-flight Internet, because I hate Gogo.
…with pancreases grown in rats:
“These results demonstrate not only that the rat-grown mouse pancreas is functional, but also that it is readily accepted by the immune system of the genetically matched recipient,” said Nakauchi. “In the future, any human organs generated in this way may also be functional and accepted by the immune system of the patient who donated the pluripotent stem cells.”
These results are exciting, but it’s ultimately a proof of concept if you look at what scientists hope to accomplish in the long term. “Their study is well executed and we’re happy to see the result,” Jun Wu, a research associate at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in California who was not involved in the study, told Gizmodo. “But that’s rats and mice. To move to humans you have to take another step forward.” Rats and mice are much closer on an evolutionary scale than say, rats and people, or people and sheep, though scientists are working on growing human cells inside pigs as we speak.
Faster, please.
We need an FDA commissioner who sees it. That also would apply to criminally terrible government dietary advice.
Gee, so it turns out that it won’t kill you after all:
Even short-term consumption of a Paleolithic-type diet improved glucose control and lipid profiles in people with type 2 diabetes compared with a conventional diet containing moderate salt intake, low-fat dairy, whole grains and legumes.
The biggest nightmare for Big Pharma is that we can treat Type 2 diabetes (which seems to be a diet-related “disease”) with an improved diet.
Tomorrow is the deadline for filing amicus briefs on our behalf. Judith Curry has filed another one. I haven’t read it yet, but I expect it to be good.
[Update a while later]
Reading through it, it would seem to make a strong case for her own defamation, though she’s above that.
[Update late morning]
Some thoughts on “alternate facts” in the climate debate:
My tweet asked the climate scientists on my feed whether they agreed with the statement specifically the use of the word “all”. My expectation was that a reasonable core of climate scientists would agree that Dr. Mann had overstepped the science. This was not the case. Instead, what I got was overwhelming support for Dr. Mann with not a single non-skeptic initially commenting negatively. It was as if Dr. Mann was the pope and the climate community his congregation. Nothing he said could be considered to be anything less than the truth, even if it took huge convolutions of logic to make it true. In the last couple weeks the term “alternative facts” has entered our lexicon. Well in the next few paragraphs I want to unpack Dr. Mann’s “alternative fact” and see if it is indeed defensible. Then I will go into what I feel this means for the climate change debate.
RTWT.
..of public employees: A quick cheat sheet.
What I found amusing about the tweets from Badlands National Park yesterday (which were cheered by the supposed fans of “science”) were how either they weren’t “scientific facts” (no, it is an opinion, not a fact, that last year was the “hottest on record”) or trivial and irrelevant chemistry (“A gallon of gasoline puts X pounds of carbon into the atmosphere when burned). But I was also amused at the concern that the employees who had done so had probably been fired.
One of the many reasons federal employee unions are terrible. It's almost impossible to discipline people. https://t.co/quxjqIG9t6
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) January 24, 2017
@michelelfrost A high-level friend of mine tells stories about how he couldn't get rid of bad secretaries, except to promote them.
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) January 24, 2017
Badlands National Park, fully sentient now, lumbers towards Washington, DC to exact its revenge. pic.twitter.com/ZLoL6ajq6t
— pourmecoffee (@pourmecoffee) January 24, 2017
[Update a few minutes later]
Here’s the story for those who don’t know what I’m talking about.
I wonder if this, combined with recent problems with their space systems, are an indication of a much deeper systemic rot?
Unlike the California plan, this might make sense. No serious mountains between Dallas and Houston.