Rational Conservatism from the Rocky Mountains
Money, that is. A few months ago I dove into the deep end of the economics pool along with a group of highly intelligent folks on a Dean’s World thread about the likely consequences of Obama’s frenetic and profligate spending policies. I learned a lot about macro-economics at that time.
Since then the debate has shifted [...]
Yeah, so this should be a big surprise to nobody:
Consumer research firm MyType conducted the study, in which opinions of 20,000 people were analyzed between March and May. The firm’s conclusion was that iPad owners tend to be wealthy, sophisticated, highly educated and disproportionately interested in business and finance, while they scored terribly in the [...]
Scientists celebrated Sunday after finding more than 700 suspected new planets — including up to 140 similar in size to Earth — in just six weeks of using a powerful new space observatory.
Early results from NASA’s Kepler Mission, a small satellite observing deep space, suggested planets like Earth were far more common than previously thought.
via [...]
So, July 20, 1969…
I can’t remember if my family was still in Guam on this date, or if we had already moved to Louisiana. And most of my memories prior to, say, 1974, are pretty suspect anyway. On July 20, 1969 I would have been 9 years old. By then I had discovered science fiction, [...]
No, I’m not talking about this summer’s crop of vacationing flatlanders…
THE US military’s uncrewed aerial vehicles are a critical component of its search-and-destroy missions in warring regions. But could UAVs instead be used to save lives by flying search-and-rescue (SAR) missions in the nation’s large national parks?
Michael Goodrich, Lanny Lin and colleagues at Brigham Young [...]
So… some of you no doubt thought my post earlier today was too optimistic about what machines will be able to do in 100 years….
Scientists discover the secret of the Atreides sonic guns.
The simple set up belies the power of the new metamaterial. Not only did the scientists focus all of the sound waves onto one specific area; they also amplified those waves more than 100 times than what any other metamaterial had previously produced. Those numbers could easily [...]
One of the goals of the Obama administration and the environmentalist lobby is what is called the “smart grid.” This is a shorthand description for an electrical delivery system that includes individual usage monitoring devices installed at each home which feed information back to power monitoring and control stations which would use this information to [...]
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Space shuttle Endeavour rocketed toward the international space station Thursday as engineers on Earth pored over launch pictures that showed debris breaking off the fuel tank and striking the craft. Mission Control told the astronauts late Wednesday that the damage looked less extensive at first glance than what occurred on the last [...]
Not exactly what I’d have done, but a pretty decent job of it.
From the Christian Science Monitor…
The coming evangelical collapse | csmonitor.com Oneida, Ky. – We are on the verge – within 10 years – of a major collapse of evangelical Christianity. This breakdown will follow the deterioration of the mainline Protestant world and it will fundamentally alter the religious and cultural environment in the West.
Within two generations, [...]
I once met with a group of Google developers. This was probably five years ago, I’m not sure. What I do remember from that meeting is that every Google person in the meeting agreed with the statement that “Content is everything.” Google “got it” even back then. That’s why Google went after the market to [...]
I blame Dr. Spock.
Seriously.
Back when I was a kid, my parents’ generation evaluated the youth of the day, those kids born after WWII and before 1960, commonly called “Baby Boomers” and their evaluation was not generous.
“Bunch of whiny, priviliged spoiled brats who never had to deal with reality in their lives” was a fairly common [...]
Freeman Dyson is one of the great thinkers of our time, his contributions to physics and to futurism itself are legend. Dyson’s most famous futuristic “prediction” was that an advanced enough society would enclose their entire sun in a spherical shell to capture and utilize for their own purposes every erg of that star’s energy. [...]
This is one of the things I’ve been predicting for a long time as a means to deal with the problems of mass transit in cities. I like this, which is why I’ve been predicting it. The idea of a personal, private “pod” that zips you along computer-controlled tracks and which can be programmed to [...]
The day this becomes a reality is the day women’s locker rooms all over the world will be forced to hire around-the-clock security…
TIMESONLINE.COM – Science close to unveiling invisible man Invisibility devices, long the realm of science fiction and fantasy, have moved closer after scientists engineered a material that can bend visible light around objects.
The [...]
Maybe a bit early to tell, and beware of the “houses can become their own power supply” hype. Someone needs to calculate how much raw sunlight “power” an average sized house receives, and compare that to what an average sized house USES. I think you’ll find that there is not any left over to run [...]
Biggest news of the day here…
NASA – NASA Spacecraft Confirms Martian Water, Mission Extended TUCSON, Ariz. — Laboratory tests aboard NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander have identified water in a soil sample. The lander’s robotic arm delivered the sample Wednesday to an instrument that identifies vapors produced by the heating of samples.
“We have water,” said William Boynton [...]
So, just a bit more than a month left before the Large Hadron Collider opens up and starts trying to dig a tiny bit deeper into the bottomless pit of the underlying physical laws of the universe. Of course since this is “big science” it’s got lots of panties all wadded up.
Some fear debut of [...]
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