How they saved lives in Boston.
As the old expression goes, it’s an ill wind that blows no good.
Category Archives: Technology and Society
Mad Men
Ed Driscoll has some thoughts on 1968, the Year That Sucked, at least until almost the end. I remember waking up to my clock radio, announcing the assassination of Robert Kennedy.
And yes, for those who watched, last night’s episode was (predictably?) depressing.
Earth Day
German taxpayers have poured $130 billion into subsidizing solar panels, but ultimately by the end of the century, this will postpone global warming by a trivial 37 hours. The electric car is even less efficient. Its production consumes a vast amount of fossil fuels, and mostly it utilizes fossil fuel electricity to be recharged. Even if the U.S. did reach the lofty goal of 1 million electric cars by 2015 — costing taxpayers more than $7.5 billion — global warming would be postponed by only 60 minutes.
These beguiling policies cost a fortune but make little difference to the environment because the technologies are still not ready. That’s why we need to invest more in long-term research and development for green innovation. This would be much cheaper than current environmental policies and would end up doing more good for the climate.
But it wouldn’t pay off political cronies.
As he notes, it’s time to start having sensible, not economically stupid environmental policies.
[Update late morning]
The EU carbon market continues to collapse.
Good.
The FAA ATC Furloughs
It’s another Washington Monument attempt.
I think it’s a great opportunity to renew discussion of privatizing ATC. It works fine in other places, no reason it wouldn’t here.
Seven Rounds
You know what no one in Boston was saying, or even thinking last week? “I wish I had a smaller magazine.”
Shocking News From AP
Well, shocking to them, anyway: terrorists don’t seem to pay much attention to gun laws. Whoda thunk it?
The Frontier
Ross Douthat wonders what happened to it:
Go back and read the science fiction of the 1940s and ’50s, and you’ll be struck by the vaulting confidence that this expansion would continue upward and outward, and that a new age of exploration was just waiting to be born.
Today that confidence has vanished. Our Mars rovers are impressive and our billionaires keep pouring money into private spaceflight, but neither project captures the public’s imagination, and the very term “Space Age” seems antique. The Kepler 62 discovery might have earned more headlines at a less horrific moment, but it would have fallen out of the news soon enough.
It’s possible that we’re less interested in space travel because we feel that it’s a luxury good at a time when we have bigger problems here on Earth. But it’s also possible that we’ve gradually turned inward, to our smartphone screens and Facebook profiles, because we know that spaceflight isn’t going to get us to another world anytime soon.
Actually, if the latter is the case, “we” are too pessimistic, because we’re paying too much attention to NASA’s dysfunction, and not enough to what’s happening in the real world of spaceflight. I do think that the billionaires are capturing peoples’ attention, and as real things start to happen, they’ll do so much more.
SF On TV
Michael Stracynski explains why most of it is awful.
Life Extension And Entitlements
This is a serious issue about which most people, including most policy makers, are in denial:
Ultimately, the question is this: are Americans entitled to unlimited life expectancy? If so, perhaps we need to say goodbye to the notion of limited government as a greater share of wealth is devoted to the health and income needs of a much longer-lived population. From where I sit, unlimited life expectancy sounds appealing. Unlimited government? Not so much. Mr. Kurzweil’s vision greatly amplifies the urgency of our getting on with the task of fundamental entitlement reforms.
The Founders said that we had a right to the pursuit of happiness, which to me would include the pursuit of an indefinite lifespan, if our pursuit is generally successful, and we’re leading happy lives. But they granted no right to live off the labor of others.
A Space Hacker Workshop
I’m busy preparing my presentation for this afternoon at Space Access, but Ed Wright is announcing a space hacker workshop up at Ames Research Center in Mountain View on May 4-5 for people who want to learn how to build cubesats that can fly suborbitally on XCOR’s Lynx.
[Update Friday morning]
I originally wrote this post in Phoenix last Saturday, but didn’t actually publish it until yesterday, in case it had anyone scratching their heads.