Jeff Foust’s take. I’ll be talking about this on The Space Show on Sunday.
Category Archives: Technology and Society
Off The Air
For those wondering, I flew from LA to Dallas on Thursday, and drove down to Austin, to attend the New Worlds Conference. Patricia flew in to Austin on Saturday, and we’re spending a couple days in Texas Hill Country. I’m sitting in a little house we rented in Comfort, overlooking a creek and deer in a natural meadow across it. A couple of them came up to the window last night and looked in. Between funerals and family visits, and house renovation, it’s the first real vacation we’ve had in a while.
I should be back in the saddle (so to speak) on Wednesday, surveying the aftermath of the electoral disaster to come (regardless of the outcome).
Men And Women’s Brains
You’ll be as shocked as me to learn that they’re different.
What Kind Of Math Do You Need For Physics?
It depends. Some good advice for aspiring physicists.
I was thinking about this yesterday, because I got into a Twitter discussion about vector analysis and energy methods.
The War On Sat Fat
More and more people are starting to spread the word on how scientifically insane it is, including a physician who is a former vegan. Not that I care about Bill Clinton’s health, but it’s nice to see that he’s gotten off that idiotic low-fat diet. It was probably killing him and he didn’t even know it.
The B612 Foundation
Their annual report is out on progress toward private asteroid watching.
Whole-Fat Dairy
Five reasons you should be eating it. No one should be eating low-fat dairy, or low-fat food in general. It’s all an abomination based completely on junk nutritional science over decades.
I should note that Costco only sells zero-fat Fage yogurt (last I checked). They make a 2%, but not a whole-fat version. But Trader Joe’s has started to make a whole-milk version, and it tastes great, and is only two bucks, compared to $2.67 for lower-fat versions, and more than that for Fage.
Intruder Alert
It’s nice to see that NASA is taking the asteroid threat more seriously, but we’re still not doing enough to actually prevent them from hitting us. In fact, we’re doing almost nothing.
O’Neill Space Colonies
It’s seemed clear for a while, but Jeff Bezos has now said explicitly that that’s his vision for humanity’s future in space. While Elon remains a planetary chauvinist. Fortunately, there’s room for both visions.
SLS
Bob Zimmerman has some thoughts on potential upcoming (and unsurprising, since it doesn’t really matter whether or not it actually flies) schedule slips:
…it means that it will have literally taken NASA two decades to build and fly a single manned Orion capsule, beginning when George Bush ordered the construction of the Crew Exploration Vehicle in January 2004.
Plenty of time to take it behind the barn and put it out of its misery.