Randall Parker writes about the biggest barrier to medical advances:

If you read the full article above you’ll learn that the first experimental subjects for a Novato California company were in Argentina – not exactly close by. I suspect this says something about medical regulation in America today. The Argentines were on hemodialysis for kidney failure and had what the report below characterized as “typical risk factors for end-stage renal disease”. You might expect regulatory agencies to grant greater freedom of action to try out new treatments on people who are looking death in face. But this company used subjects from another country. I fear excessive regulatory obstacles in the way of new treatment development are costing lots of lives.

I suspect that the FDA probably kills more people by delaying the introduction of new drugs and procedures than it saves. But it’s like protectionist policies and other interferences with the market–the jobs and businesses that aren’t created are an invisible consequence compared to existing jobs that are lost, and a bureaucrat is much more concerned about being blamed for a death that results from a new drug than one that results from its delay, because the latter is just a maintenance of the status quo.

Randall also has bad news about avian flu. It may be easier for it to mutate to affect humans than we thought.

I can’t find any web confirmation of this on a quick search, but I am reliably informed that Bob Bussard died yesterday. I didn’t know that he was ill. I may have more thoughts later.

[Update a couple minutes later]

This isn’t my (direct) source, but this is the news from Jerry Pournelle.

[Tuesday morning update]

Well, there are certainly a lot of encomia in comments. I didn’t really know the man, myself. I met him once, a quarter of a century ago, at a monthly OASIS meeting in LA, where he gave a talk on his “fusion lightbulb” concept, and several of us had dinner with him afterward. Prior to that, I had only known him as the man after whom the interstellar ramjet was (appropriately, since he invented the concept) named. My brief experience matches that of commenters, though. He was an interesting, friendly man, who seemed to be attempting to accomplish great things for humanity.

And it’s sad that people don’t realize what humanitarians technologists can be. Most people think that humanitarians are only social-worker types. But whatever you think of him personally, Henry Ford revolutionized America, and gave mobility to the masses. Edison brought them light. Sam Walton (who was not a technologist, but a businessman), for all of the unfair demonization of his store chain, has helped the poor more than any social program, by making relatively high-quality (by the standards of a century ago) goods much more affordable to them.

More humanitarian technologists should be recognized as Norman Borlaug was. Perhaps, if polywell fusion pans out (and I have no opinion on the probability of that), Dr. Bussard will be as well, but it will be a shame that if so, it will be posthumously.

As they become more plentiful, Linux boxes are becoming more attractive targets for rootkits.

Alan Boyle has an interview with James Watson. This exchange reminded me of Arthur Clarke’s First Law of Prediction:

Q: There

On Friday, Russell Prechtl and George Whitesides respond to Steven Weinberg’s dissing of spaceflight in pursuit of science.

To sum up: Space settlement for species preservation, spinoffs, human spirit and human nature.

What are these worth? Depending on how long before the extinction event it could be anywhere from all of Earth’s discounted GDP to nearly nothing for species preservation assurance. If an extinction event is 1 in 26 million per year we can take our chances and still have an expectation of 99.99999% of our GDP next year. Spinoffs is weak. Human spirit is hard to quantify. How is ISS doing more for human spirit than Skylab or Mir? Human nature is more of a restatement of the human spirit argument that it is human nature to seek to raise the human spirit. But how? It’s not enough when someone says “ISS is worthless” to say “but if we don’t learn to live in space we’ll die!” We can learn to live in space with or without the ISS; what’s the difference?

I’m planning to take Steven Weinberg to lunch and see what he says to these arguments later this week. Let me know if there’s anything else I should ask him.

Let’s hope this works in humans: cancer-curing mouse blood.

Ron Bailey has a report on last weekend’s Singularity Summit.

Not quite, but perhaps in a few years. It’s had a pretty good run. I still think I’m going to CAT6 the house.

I suspect so, and I think that this will also create some interesting markets for affordable space transportation. It’s a lot more economically plausible scenario than restricting carbon emissions.

Some interesting thoughts from the Singularity Summit this past weekend.

Speaking of which, Phil Bowermaster was in attendance, and blogging about it. Just keep scrolling.