…and it’s acting weird.
With modern technology, and a soft grid, another Carrington event would be a societal disaster.
Social Psychology
Is it biased against Republicans?
Of course it is.
Another Interstellar Review
This one has some spoilers.
“Wallops Island Is Burning”
Stephen Clark has an intense first-hand account over at Spaceflight Now.
The Eclipse Of Man
I just got a review copy of what appears to be an interesting new book
More Antares Coverage
Michael Belfiore has a piece at Popular Mechanics, quoting me, and over at The Atlantic is one by Michael Lemonick (I haven’t read the latter yet).
The Latest Attempt To Shame Men
I’ve never catcalled a woman, and I agree with Jon Gabriel; I refuse to be ashamed because some men are boors:
All gentlemen agree that catcalling is a bad thing. In fact patriarchal Victorians were so disgusted by such rudeness, they enforced an elaborate public morality that elevated women with a higher level of respect. Thank goodness feminism and secularism drove a stake through chivalry’s heart.
Today’s Victorianism comes from the left. They too have an elaborate public morality, but one that is untethered to tradition or religion. Their guiding scripture is whatever trendy philosophy is coming out of gender studies departments and mass media in a given month. Men leering at Beyoncé on an awards show is celebrated; similar behavior on the street is anathema.
For better or worse, I’ve never followed fashion. Not only have I never catcalled, I still open doors for women, surrender my seat on public transport, and ensure that I treat them with an extra measure of kindness. I was notified by several liberal men on Twitter that this is A Bad Thing.
You see, it’s good that I oppose catcalling, but bad that I don’t oppose it for the “proper” reasons. While my outward acts of kindness are nice, they arise from a belief that gender differences exist. To these critics, my actions are unimportant; my ideology must be condemned.
Pardon my language but eff these leftist totalitarian selective puritans.
[Update a while later]
Chivalry was a system, which imposed behavioral obligations on both women and men. Women found those obligations too onerous, but still expect men to shoulder them.
And let’s be honest. What makes these catcalls offensive isn’t that they come from men. It’s that they come from low-status men. Like an unconsented kiss from President Obama, if the catcalls came from George Clooney there’d be much less female outrage.
In fact, maybe these catcalls are a way of striking back at privilege. Any grievance-studies major should be able to flesh out this line of thought…
No doubt. Except it would be politically incorrect.
Krill Oil
The Important Subject You’re Not Being Taught In College
That’s OK, people only pay tens of thousands of dollars to attend Harvard.
Failure Is Always An Option
SciAm has a list of all the recent launch failures.
Note that for the past three and a half years, every single one (including last night’s) was built in Russia or the Ukraine. And the last two American ones (not counting last night’s) were both Orbital (separation problem on Taurus). Prior to that, the last American one was the Falcon 1 test program, which should really count, since it was in fact a test program. Orbital has no experience with liquid propulsion, which is why they outsourced it to Ukraine. That appears to have been a mistake.
[Update a while later]
Orbital’s stock is down 17% this morning.
[Update a while later, just before Atlas V launch]
Eric Berger’s thoughts on the implications. I agree that it’s not that big a deal, but I hope it accelerates and end to our reliance on Russian hardware.