The man who has never been right about anything doesn’t like Mark Steyn’s new book.
[Via Ed Driscoll]
Category Archives: Technology and Society
The Next President And Space
Another piece at The Space Review I missed last week was Jeff Foust’s assessment of the presidential field in the context of space policy.
Bottom line: None of them are going to be a JFK. Which isn’t surprising, because even JFK wasn’t the JFK of space-advocate fantasies. We live in a democratic Republic, and we’re not going to do Apollo again, to Mars or anywhere else. The best we can hope for is a president who recognizes the value of high-leverage space technology needed to reduce costs, and will fund those things necessary to support it during his or her term.
The Martian And Real Mars Missions
I’m a little behind on my reading of The Space Review, but last week, Eric Sterner cautioned (as Keith Cowing has been doing repeatedly) space enthusiasts not to imagine that the movie will somehow sell NASA programs or budgets. Note the discussion about lack of redundancy in comments. Weir’s scenario assumes that NASA is going to do Apollo to Mars. The purpose of my Kickstarter project is to show why that shouldn’t and probably won’t ever happen. And there’s also this:
Do people who support NASA's fake #JourneyToMars realize how few astronaut opportunities it entails? https://t.co/n4mugagjsr
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) September 14, 2015
Hillary’s Email Gap
Nixon had eighteen minutes. Hillary has five months.
But I’m sure she discussed nothing in those five months except wedding planning and yoga classes.
[Update late morning]
Now-classified emails are sitting on Google and AOL servers.
It’s almost as though the federal government is massively incompetent.
Uploading Your Mind
An interesting article on both the physical and philosophical difficulties involved.
[Update a couple minutes later]
Related, and sad: A young neuroscientist’s bet on cryonics.
The Not-Wiped Server
“There is no indication of” does not mean that “it didn’t happen.” We just don’t know, though I suspect the FBI is finding out. But the epistomelogical problems with the reporting on this have been intense.
The Martian
Here’s the first review of the full movie I’ve seen, over at Mashable.
I’m not a big Damon fan, because his politics annoy me, but it sounds like he did a good job.
Mark Whittington
Isn’t this cute? He still imagines we can (or should) do Apollo again.
[Update a while later]
Interesting timing on that Whittington piece. I just got off the phone with David Livingston, and one of the things I told his listeners was to stop trying to do Apollo again. Particularly because the Apollo they imagined, in which the nation was united behind a big goal in space, never happened.
Space Show Reminder
I’m gong to be on it tomorrow morning, at 9:30 AM PDT, to talk about the Kickstarter project and other current space topics.
[Update late afternoon]
Related: I have an update on the Kickstarter project, for those interested.
More Nutritional Junk Science
Oh, FFS:
After a week of eating 6,200 calories a day — with a diet rich in carbohydrates and fat that included foods like hamburgers, pizza and cookies — the men gained nearly 8 lbs. (3.5 kilograms), on average. All of this added weight was fat.
Emphasis mine. Hey, guys (and/or gals). There are these things called “controls.” They’re all the rage among real scientists, I hear.