It’s not really a new story, but things continue to advance, and it’s a useful reminder, to plan to live a long time. Unfortunately, it’s not something that most pension planners or entitlements reformers are taking into consideration. It implies that Social Security and Medicare are even more broke than we think.
Category Archives: Technology and Society
My Phone Bill
So, I’m paying twenty bucks a month to Verizon to be able to tether to my phone. Does this ruling apply to me? Or is it only for 4G users? Guess I’ll have to read it to see, and even then I still may not know (particularly since they may appeal it).
Back Home
We got in last night (did some hiking in Yosemite on Monday). Yes, I’m aware of the site issues. The problem seems to be intermittent, which makes it harder to troubleshoot (and I’m not that much of a PHP maven to do such troubleshooting). I suspect it has something to do with the template update I did a few weeks ago. Any suggestions are appreciated. But I’m also pretty busy getting a talk prepared for the Mars Society conference on Friday, and getting caught up from being gone for a week.
Technophobic Fearmongering
I love the picture in this story.
Beautiful Sky Monsters
Some amazing photos of super cells over the plains.
Drivers Ed
Four things you didn’t learn there. I hadn’t thought about the airbag and hand thing. One more reason to dislike airbags.
Naked-Eye 3-D
“The Worst Mistake Of The Human Race”
This essay by Jared Diamond is a quarter of a century old, but it’s still worth pondering, particularly as we now know much more about just how bad for our health grains are. I think, though, that he misses a key benefit of agriculture — the fact that it has allowed us to produce billions of people. Minds are a resource, even if we poorly utilize most of them. The more people we have, the likelier we are to come up with new true advances. I’m pretty sure that absent agriculture, technology would not have advanced much, and we’d be nowhere near the position we’re in now — about to finally expand off the planet, and attain the capability of preventing a species-destroying event.
Trains To Nowhere Over Rocket Ships
California expresses its preference. My thoughts on XCOR’s Texas move, over at PJMedia.
Telstar
Happy fiftieth anniversary to the very first communications satellite. Sadly, I’m old enough to remember the day it happened. That was an exciting year, between Glenn’s flight and it. The space age seemed so young and full of promise to a kid.
[Update a few minutes later]
Here’s the newsreel. That brings back memories.
[Update late morning]
Speaking of Glenn, Amy Shira Teitel has a story on the Atlas reliability prior to his flight. It was about fifty percent.