The prologue to my book, over at PJMedia.
Actually, I’ll probably expand a little more in the book, though.
Category Archives: Technology and Society
After Ten Years
Enduring lessons from Wayne Hale.
Unfortunately, the NASA culture is ill suited to take many of them.
America 3.0
There’s a new book
Exploring The Earth
With Google Earth and Kim Komando. I wasn’t aware of the 5000-year-old impact crater. Or any of the other things, really.
Gun Control
Since when has that ever stopped them?
A Treadmill Desk
I’d like to try a standing desk, but I think a treadmill is overkill.
Al Gore’s New Book
A review:
Techno-enthusiast Al’s discussion is interesting, if occasionally heavy-handed in its erudition. With so many facts on display, errors inevitably creep in: Bronze wasn’t chosen over copper in ancient times because copper is too brittle (it isn’t brittle at all) but because bronze tools could hold an edge under hard use, as copper tools couldn’t. Even so, Mr. Gore’s fans will find the book a useful introduction to the future, if not to the past. Yes, he does go on about climate change at some length, but that is hardly news. There is much, much more to the book than a rehash of the global-warming debate.
But then Savonarola Al intervenes, his fondness for high-toned scolding coloring every topic. It’s a pretty monochromatic color. After reading Savonarola Al’s sermons, one might be excused for thinking that all of the evils in the world come from corporations. There is a lot about what Mr. Gore calls “the domineering crimes of the robber barons” and the evils of capitalism, but the actual “crimes” that Mr. Gore mentions, chiefly lobbying efforts that thwart regulation, don’t seem all that bad in comparison with the things that governments are capable of doing. In much of the Third World—think Zimbabwe or Iran—people have far more to fear from the despotic regimes that misrule them than they do from private enterprise. And even in the free world, governments have a coercive power that no corporation can rival. Hence the need for lobbyists as a check on wealth-destroying intrusions into markets and abridgments of commercial freedom.
Want to get money out of politics? Get politics out of money.
The First Bionic Eye
…is about to hit the U.S. market.
If ObamaCare doesn’t kill it off.
Digital Cameras
Why do I need one when I have a smartphone?
Here’s one they missed. If you’re taking a picture of something of which the subject doesn’t want a picture taken, and he grabs or smashes your camera, at least you’ll still have your phone. You should probably carry a cheaper one for that sort of thing, though.
The Columbia Disaster
The latest issue of Space Safety Magazine is dedicated to it. I disagree with Andrea’s take here, though:
The focus of commercial space is very much on cost-cutting, while vague assurances are made about safer vehicles. Sometimes safety is even presented as a stubborn obstacle to industry development and progress [I plead guilty as charged – RS]. The commercial human spaceflight industry needs to remember that the primary goal of the Shuttle Program was cutting the cost of transportation to orbit by an order of magnitude, a goal at which it failed miserably. As with the supersonic Concorde, the Shuttle was doomed by being both expensive and unsafe. Being expensive made it in turn unaffordable to undertake any further development or safety modification. But even being expensive to operate did not stop either the Shuttle or Concorde from operating for about 30 years. What ultimately ended these programs was their inadequate safety.
Probably true for Concorde, but not for Shuttle. As I write in the book: Continue reading The Columbia Disaster