Are they finally over, thanks to Apple?
I noted in an email to someone the other day that, just as young people have no concept of what quality phone service sounds like, many of them have never heard good music, either, due to the overcompression and crummmy digitalization over the past few decades. I hope that the article is right, and that we can get back to a good listening experience soon.
Some ruminations on technology and advertising.
Yeah, I’m getting caught up on my Lileks — had a busy week.
The latest installment. Lileks watches so you don’t have to. Also brings the funny.
A breakthrough in understanding of the process. This would be a huge boon to the military, but good for everyone, especially if it can be extended to organs.
Why aren’t we allowed to? It’s a misguided policy that kills many people every year.
How the DOE gave millions to a company with no business model.
In which I talk about the book, which should be for sale in the next week or so (I’ve been having a nightmare experience with the printer, which I hope is almost behind me).
…may be more common than we thought:
The scientific orthodoxy said that a Chelyabinsk-size event ought to happen every 140 years or so, but Brown saw several such events in the historical record.
Famously, a large object exploded over the Tunguska region of Siberia in 1908. But there have been less-heralded impacts, including one on Aug. 3, 1963, when an asteroid created a powerful airburst off the coast of South Africa.
“Any one of these taken separately I think you can dismiss as a one-off. But now when we look at it as a whole, over a hundred years, we see these large impactors more frequently than we would expect,” said Brown, whose paper appeared in Nature.
But our response, and actions to become a space-faring civilization, remains pathetic.
Fully maximizing the opportunities presented by the American energy revolution will require a concerted national effort that prioritizes investment in the development of advanced energy technologies—such as low-cost advanced batteries for electric vehicles and more-efficient home refueling units for natural gas vehicles—along with continued growth in domestic energy production. The volatility of oil prices, the presence of anticompetitive forces like OPEC, and the political and fiscal risks to significant and sustained energy-related research and development create an acute need for strong leadership from Washington if we are to capitalize on this moment.
Yet important philosophical differences now divide the major political parties on energy and environmental policies. Pretending such differences do not exist, or dismissing them as petty politics, defies reality and prevents progress on the pressing challenge of oil security.
To move forward, we suggest establishing oil displacement as a national goal. Such a target would advance the goals of robust economic growth, improved environmental protection and effective foreign policy. Best of all, a national consensus on reducing oil dependence should be possible without the resolution of the energy and environmental issues that will continue to be debated for some time.
It would be nice if we had people running the country who understood business. And technology.
I have a piece up on that subject over at Reason. It’s a reprise of some of the arguments I make in the book, which I now expect to be available next week (my printer screwed up). I’d hoped to have them available for SpaceUp LA this weekend, but that’s not going to happen.