Category Archives: Technology and Society

General Science, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Space, Space Science, Technology and Society

I Wish Congress Wouldn’t Make NASA Waste So Much Money

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So they could afford to do things more like this.

It’s always a little unnerving to me to see them fly through the ring plane. It makes you realize that as striking they are in appearance, the mass density is very slight, and there’s plenty of open space in there. Not that they couldn’t have had a collision, but they haven’t.

OK, I know, even if they weren’t being forced to waste money, they’d still have trouble getting more funding for more planetary missions.

Technology and Society

Nuclear Triage?

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This is pretty grim news, if true.

Even still, in the context of the major catastrophe there, it’s small potatoes. It’s going to cost billions to reclaim much of the land just from the seawater inundation (perhaps including dikes, with some advice from the Dutch). This just may mean that there will be a small part of it that will never be reclaimable in the foreseeable future.

On the other hand, they can console themselves with the thought that this probably won’t happen again for a few hundred years.

Business, Economics, Political Commentary, Social Commentary, Technology and Society

The Fragility Of Complex Societies

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Thoughts from Victor Davis Hanson:

I don’t know quite why many of our environmentalists and urban planners wish to emulate such patterns of settlement (OK, I do know), since for us in America it would be a matter of choice, rather than, as in a highly congested Japan, one of necessity. Putting us in apartments and high rises, reliant on buses and trains, and dependent on huge centralized power, water, and sewage grids are recipes not for ecological utopia, but for a level of dependence and vulnerability that could only lead to disaster. Again, I understand that in terms of efficiency of resource utilization, such densities make sense and I grant that culture sparks where people are, but in times of calamity these regimens prove enormously fragile and a fool’s bargain.

Actually, many of them do favor decentralization and “appropriate” technology. But most of them also favor depopulation. And some of those favor it by whatever means are necessary.

Business, Economics, Political Commentary, Technology and Society

Better Late Than Never

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Steven Chu finally steps forward:

The Obama administration’s most vocal advocate for nuclear power said Tuesday that the nuclear disaster unfolding in Japan will eventually help the United States strengthen safety at its 104 reactors.

Energy Secretary Steven Chu told a House panel that “the American people should have full confidence that the United States has rigorous safety regulations in place to ensure that our nuclear power is generated safely and responsibly.” But he said that the administration “is committed to learning from Japan’s experience.”

It’s not just about improving existing reactors, but in designing the many new ones we will need. But I’m glad they’re not using this as an excuse to pander to their technophobic base, as they did in the Gulf mess with the moratorium.