They are all bad.
Category Archives: Technology and Society
Credit Where It’s Due
Joe Biden does something right (which is huge news, because it is unprecedented).
He could be doing more, though, in terms of easing up on archaic NRC rules to allow the construction of more modern plant designs faster. And as is often noted, it’s hard to take seriously people who claim that we are in a climate “crisis” or “emergency” if they don’t support nuclear power.
[Update a few minutes later]
Sorry, I’ve provided the link this time.
Russia’s Arms
Why do they suck?
Note that all the problems of corruption described here for the military apply to Rogozin and space as well.
Footprints On The Moon
Why should we care about them?
Tunnels
Why do dudes dig them?
I personally have never had the urge (partly because I’m too lazy, and partly because I tend to be claustrophobic). Keith and Carolyn Henson, founders of the L-5 Society (and before they divorced) had tunnels under their house and lot in Tucson, which was quite a feat, considering the hardness of the caliche there.
The Increasing Military Threat In Space
Some useful thoughts from Peter Hague.
Defending Taiwan
How to make it into a porcupine.
The Latest SLS Travails
Every time I read a status on the thing, I’m struck by just how terrible a design this is. They couldn’t have come up with a better way of wasting money and time ad infinitum. And people in comments are rooting for a catastrophe. Hard to disagree with them.
What Was Old Is New Again
Will we return to privately funded exploration, for space?
It’s much more likely than NASA going anywhere.
Lucid Dreams
A chemical method of inducing them.
When I was younger, I rarely dreamt, period. (And yes, I get the bullshit that I was dreaming but I just didn’t know it. Sorry, if I don’t actually have any memory of experiencing it, it’s not dreaming — it’s just some weird and useless unrememorable mental state ).
But in my elder years, I dream quite a bit, and most of it is unpleasant (sort of a nightmare, in which things are continuously shifting, and where I am and what I have, or what I possess, or how I am being transported is inconstant).
But I have also started, on rare occasions, to have lucid dreams. I particularly remember one in which the cat started talking to me (in English), and I realized, “Gee, I’m pretty sure cats don’t do that. I must be dreaming.” And the dream was amazingly realistic, just like real life, so it was pretty cool. I’m not sure it’s useful, but it’s a lot better than the crap dreams I was having in which I didn’t understand that I was dreaming, until I finally realized (because everything was continually changing) that it was a dream, but at that point, I woke up.