Category Archives: Technology and Society
Stupidity
Are we going to run out of helium due to an economically ignorant law? This could affect the cost of spaceflight operations. It would be ironic if we end up going to the moon not for He3, but He4.
It seems to me that if they really wanted to privatize the federal reserve, they should have sold it off to a private bidder, rather than selling the helium at an arbitrary rate.
Singularity Summit Reportage
Phil Bowermaster attended and has lots of blog posts, starting with this one. Just keep clicking on the next post to see them all.
Personal Life Extension
A conference, in San Francisco in October. Could be interesting and useful.
Rocketry
…meet dentistry. What would we do without Youtube?
Remembering Vinyl
A non-political discussion over at Free Republic.
One of these days I’ll get a new tonearm and cartridge for my Rega Planar turntable and break out a collection that I haven’t listened to in over a decade. Of course, sometimes things that you put off till “one of these days” sometimes never happen.
Whose Choice?
This is a fascinating article. A few years ago, in the context of his concerns about the general ability to redesign ourselves, I had a question for Stanley Kurtz:
Suppose we find that there is something different about the brains of gay men and women (a proposition for which there’s already abundant and growing evidence). If we can come up with an affordable, painless therapy that “fixes” this and converts them from “gay” to “straight,” should we a) allow them to take advantage of it, or b) forbid them from doing so, or c) require them to? And should “straight” (i.e., exclusively heterosexual) people be allowed to become gay, or bi?
I have a lot of thoughts about this but (to paraphrase Pascal) insufficient time to write them down right now (meetings all day). I will say, though, that in this particular case, I think that many of the “bioethicists” in question are less concerned about the ability of parents to design their children to be “normal” than they are about stigmatizing homosexuality.
[Update a while later]
Sorry, link’s fixed now.
Singularity Summit
Glenn has links to the liveblogging.
The Bermuda Triangle
Oceanographic surveyors of the sea floor in the area of the Bermuda Triangle and the North Sea region between continental Europe and Great Britain have discovered significant quantities of methane hydrates and older eruption sites.
Because of the correlations and existing data, the two envisioned what would happen when gigantic methane bubbles explode from natural fissures on the seafloor.
Makes sense to me. There would be no warning, and nothing you could do. You might be able to set up a warning system for aircraft, though, perhaps with satellite monitoring. I don’t think that ships would have the ability to escape. Too slow and unmaneuverable. Better to avoid the area, or perhaps to better map the deposits, and put them on the charts like other hazards.
[Via Geekpress]
Amusing Suggestion
Facebook keeps suggesting that I add Michael D. Griffin as a friend.