No, but it helps.
Category Archives: Technology and Society
The Biggest Threat To Humanity’s Future Existence
The Singularity? As he notes, it’s also the biggest opportunity.
Old Dogs, New Tricks
I plead guilty to putting two spaces after a period. I learned it when I was in high school (not that I took typing in high school, but that’s when I taught myself from a book on a Selectric) and have been dong it for forty years. Of course, WordPress ignores them, so my blog posts come out single space anyway. But it makes a difference in Open Office or Word.
In Search Of A Conservative Space Policy
With the quarter-century anniversary of the Challenger loss coming up next week, my thoughts on where we’ve been, and where we go from here. Even though I’m not really a conservative, I hope that the essay will make sense to them. Because unlike many, I at least speak the language, particularly when properly edited.
[Tuesday morning update]
I would note that there are two companion pieces to this, by Jeff Foust and Bob Zubrin.
Real Health Care
Some thoughts from Jim Pinkerton:
…every billionaire eventually discovers that vast wealth is little better than health insurance when it comes to securing good health. Wealth and health insurance are both forms of finance, and whether the plan is deluxe or bare-bones, finance is retrospective — after you get sick, people get paid to treat you. And yet what plutocrats — and all of us — really need is prospective, even preemptive, medical science, the kind that produces not just wellness plans, but actual vaccines and cures. The rich can afford the best doctors, and the plushest hospital suites, but if that scientific spadework isn’t done in advance, if the right cure doesn’t exist when it’s needed, it can’t be bought on short notice at any price. The polio vaccine, for example, took 17 years; genuinely effective treatments for AIDS took 15 years. Cures cannot be impulse purchases. They can’t be bid for on eBay, or even at Sotheby’s.
And the Democrats’ preferred policies will only make things worse. It’s mass murder, really. Or at least manslaughter. If I can be so uncivil.
A Wikipedia War
If Aliens Exist
…they probably want to destroy us. As Glenn notes, it’s not a new thought. And it’s why we shouldn’t shout.
Creating A Concert Flute
On a 3-D printer.
This will be a very disruptive technology, with a lot of implications for space development.
They’re Not Light Bulbs
They’re highly efficient miniature heaters. And as a bonus, they give off some light.
How did we manage to have major industrial countries be run by idiots?
A New Transhumanism Blog
A skeptical one, over at The New Atlantis. Definitely worth a read to see what are probably the best arguments against. The latest current top post, on the racism of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, is thought provoking.