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Category Archives: Technology and Society
Dreamliner Electrical Issues
This has implications for space transports. Even during the Shuttle program, we were always trying to figure out how to upgrade to electromechanical actuators, not only to save weight, but to eliminate the Auxiliary Power Unit that drove the hydraulics, whose hypergolic propellants made it a pain to service between flights. Modern vehicles will want to go this route, with the advances in battery and actuator technology, but there will probably be lessons learned from Boeing’s 787 travails.
Clueless Greens
We’re betting that this news won’t dent greens’ self-confidence. They will still insist that unless they are put in charge of the entire world economy we face disaster. The sad truth is that the more power they get, the more damage they do.
They don’t care about poor people. They don’t care about people at all, except themselves.
When Seconds Count
The FBI is years away.
Well, the head of the agency doesn’t even know how to use a computer.
She Did Everything Right
…and he still drove away.
It is not the government’s decision how we should defend ourselves from criminals. There is no more fundamental human right than the right to self defense.
Top 2012 (Non)Science Achievements
These are all interesting stories, but articles like this contribute to public confusion about what is science and what is not. Curiosity landing on Mars was a great technological achievement, but it wasn’t science, though it may (in fact will, and already has) produce some. Even less science are the Dragon flights to the ISS — again, this is about engineering, not science. And ending invasive research on chimps is a moral breakthrough, perhaps, but it’s not science. In some sense, in fact, it’s anti-science, if one removes ethics from the definition of science.
Only The US Has A Shale Boom
…and only the US has decreased its carbon emissions over the past half decade. And without cap’n’tax or mandates, and despite efforts by the Left to curtail the boom.
Starships And Wormholes
There’s an interesting new book
The Left’s War On Science, Part …
It turns out that fracking is perfectly safe, and the New York state government tried to hide the evidence:
Greens are quick to defend their climate change position with scientific evidence and have positioned themselves as a movement wedded to science. But it is becoming increasingly apparent that evidence is a flag of convenience for a movement that is rooted in emotion and passion far more than it likes to admit.
Because it doesn’t like to admit it at all, even though it’s mostly that.
Cash For Clunkers
We knew (at least those of us not idiots) that it was criminally insane from an economic standpoint, but it also turns out that it was an environmental disaster.