…has arrived.
Plus, Crashapalooza on the exchanges.
[Update a while later]
What ObamaCare and the debt limit have in common.
Category Archives: Technology and Society
#BreakingBad
I’m guessing it will be hard to have #Sex after the finale, unless you’re #Evil.
Yes, this was a post made for #Twitter.
Eight Minutes To Launch
Things are looking good for a Falcon-9R launch from Vandenberg. I’ll be watching for it from the balcony in Redondo Beach.
[Update a while later]
Looks like everything went perfectly. Just waiting to hear if they had a successful relight and splashdown of the first stage. We didn’t see it from our place, though. Not sure if the house next door was blocking, or what. Next time we’ll go to the beach.
NSA Spying
…is making us less safe.
And making the government too powerful. Lord Acton had it right.
[Sunday morning update]
Link is fixed now. Sorry!
Engineering Less-Than 101
This is dramatically oversimplified. It only works for mechanical engineering.
Blackberry
How the mighty have fallen. It’s game over.
I never used one myself.
Bill Gates’s Nuclear Ambitions
I’m not a huge Bill Gates fan, but he certainly gets this important issue. Cheap energy is the key to reducing poverty. As long as government policies aren’t insane, of course. And we need it for space as well. The lack of progress in space nuclear reactors for the past half century is appalling.
The Overview Effect
This is only a surprise to people who haven’t read Frank White’s book
But I’m always amused by people who think that there will be no demand, or insufficient demand, for space experiences.
Our (Near) Future Lifespan
I think it’s a mistake to call the fourth one “immortality.” A better phrase is “indefinite lifespan.” Unless our understanding of the universe is wrong, we’ll all die eventually, when it gets cold. And medical breakthroughs won’t save us from having an ACME anvil dropped on us.
Absent backups, that is. Which is philosophically unsatisfying, from the standpoint of identity.
But we need to start thinking about policy in terms of scenarios three and four, and ObamaCare is a disaster on that front (as is social security, lifetime tenure for academics and judges and popes, etc.). Plus, if people are going to continue to be born, and not die, we will eventually need other places to live than this planet.
Joss Whedon
The definitive interview.