An interesting post over at Selenian Boondocks.
I’m heading to the airport in a while to head back to Florida, but this time to Orlando for the annual AIAA space conference (which it looks like will not be wiped out by a hurricane as it was by Irma a year ago).
Low-carb should be the first approach in treating diabetes and obesity.
[Update a few minutes later]
Meanwhile, “Big Pasta” Barilla has been meddling in nutrition science.
[Sunday-morning update]
No, despite the headline, there is zero scientific evidence that listing calories on menus is helping people lose weight, and this article provides none. This “study” is nonsense. First, it’s self reporting. Second, it’s premised on the assumption, for which there is zero evidence, that counting calories is helpful, when calorie counting is a scientifically bogus concept, that assumes all calories are equal in their effects on metabolism. The kind of calories matter, and the way they measure calories, by literally burning food, is not how your body metabolizes calories, so it doesn’t even make sense thermodynamically.
It’s about to make its last flight. Most of the media won’t realize how historical this event, or that rocket is. Somewhere, Max Hunter is smiling.
Read a bunch of them talking about how much they love it. This is one of the best arguments I’ve seen that they were leftists. To deny it is to deny history, but much of academia has been rewriting that history for decades.
Apparently the Hulu feature series about a mission to Mars fails to lift off. I’ve never been a Sean Penn fan.
Among other things, its fins are growing. This happened with X-33, too. Hope BFR has a better fate.
In terms of the passenger announcement, it’s worth noting how different this trip will be from Apollo 8 (whose fiftieth anniversary comes in December), in terms of how spacious the accommodations will be. This is not your grandfather’s moon voyage.
[Update a while later]
Tim Fernholz has some questions. I have one for him: What does “certifying the Falcon Heavy to carry people” mean? Or look like?
[Update late morning]
Scott Manley analyzes.
The New York Times (shockingly!) gets it wrong. (Again)
[Update a while later]
And then there’s this misleading hed. You have to get deep into the story to find out that this decision was made during the Obama administration, and had nothing to do with Haley. Unless the headline is “Ambassador Haley’s Quarters Have $52,000 Curtains Ordered By The Obama Administration,” what is even the point of this story? Other than, of course, to make the Trump administration look bad.
[Noon update]
With regard to the latter story:
Wow.
"The article should not have focused on Ms. Haley, nor should a picture of her have been used. The article and headline have now been edited to reflect those concerns, and the picture has been removed." https://t.co/WTKrwMFYkN
— Oliver Darcy (@oliverdarcy) September 14, 2018
IOW, there was no point to the story. I wonder if the Public Editor will have anything to say about this?
It’s the highest in the country. I like the unironic use of the word “despite.” I think they misspelled “because of.”
I flew from PBI to LAX last night, partly because I needed a break and wanted to be home, but mostly because corporate taxes are due on Monday. And I’m going to Orlando Sunday for the AIAA meeting, then back down to south Florida, hopefully to finish things up at the house, and finally (a year after we started, and were interrupted by Hurricane Irma) get it on the market and sold.
There seems to be a lot of concern in the science journalism community about Bridenstine’s potential proposal to allow sponsorship of missions:
Bridenstine’s proposal would set a dangerous precedent for NASA’s future. By suggesting that commercial partnerships could help fund NASA’s missions, it implies that the agency is not worth funding through the usual means—annual budgets carefully negotiated and ironed out by lawmakers. And their constituents believe that the space program is important; according to a study from the Pew Research Center in June, 72 percent of Americans say it’s essential for the United States to continue to be a world leader in space exploration. If Nike is ready and willing to drop millions of dollars to sponsor the next mission to Mars, why should lawmakers bother spending any taxpayer money on it? The world’s premier space agency shouldn’t have to resort to brand sponsorships in the absence of political will. And even if brands could float the first few years of a mission, they might not have the stomach for the years, or even decades it sometimes takes for NASA’s most ambitious missions to come to fruition. [Emphasis added]
There is a false assumption here that a) the purpose of NASA spending is “space exploration,” and that the negotiations and “ironing out” have much to do with “space exploration” as opposed to zip-code engineering. The sooner that we recognize that there is in fact an absence of political will, and accept that space exploration should be privatized, the way it was until the end of WW II, the sooner we’ll start to make more progress.
[Update a few minutes later]
More from Ken Chang.