When I read the comments on /. or Verge or Giz or some other site [1], there’s always someone piping up about how real techies use Android or Linux and only fanboys, poseurs, and weak-minded sheeple confused by marketing would buy an Apple. Only marketing sells Apple, not technical proficiency or good value [2]. SJ […]
Tagged apple, workThe Voyager Gold Record (now being overcelebrated for its Nth anniversary) attached to a spacecraft is a bit incongruous. Not because of the somewhat tweeness of it – I think all spacecraft not destined to be crashed into a planet or sun ought to have some artistic/sociological document stuck to the side. It’s just the […]
at 1700: “Gamma ray testing is commencing in Building 233. All personnel should clear the area. Gamma ray testing is commencing in Building 233. All personnel should clear the area.” Five-hours-too-late ObArcher: “Do you want giant ants? Because this is how you get giant ants.” Five-hours-too-late career realization: There went my chance to […]
Tagged Hulk, PSACongratulations, LIGO! Gravitational waves have been directly detected for the first time. Hulse and Taylor won a deserved Nobel for indirect detection, a measurement 13 years in the making. LIGO was longer in the making than that. This is such an impressive measurement! The first experiment I've worked on with a non-null result. I […]
the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually […]
Warning: spoiler. Matt Damon doesn’t die. My small contribution to the scientific errors of The Martian that took me out of the movie: duct tape just doesn’t work in those temps. Unless there’s some special NASA-grade low temperature duct tape that isn’t available in the 171 stockroom [1]. There is tape that’s good to -4 […]
Christ, what an asshole.
It's remarkable that it seems the same people who hold the view that, on Earth, self-driving cars will make the human driver obsolete are largely the same people who claim that, on Mars, self-driving science robots are so much worse than humans.
R.I.P. Val Fitch
Science giveth, and science taketh away. Kepler finds a ancient twin of the solar system, and gives us η = 0.1 [0], but (maybe) gamma-ray bursts sweep most galaxies clean of advanced life [1]. Also explaining the Fermi Paradox [2]. On the same /. page, no less. [0] Which coincidentally is what we used to […]
Working fewer hours correlates with higher productivity. Who knew the Germans were such slackers compared with the Greeks? Working fewer hours correlates with a longer lifespan. Put that right next to the research that shows that cubicles and open plan offices decrease productivity, and that offices with doors increase same (in the round filing cabinet). […]
Astrophysics takes a $63M cut, but there's $133M for the literally insane idea of bringing an asteroid back to earth.
Climbing: El Chontacoatlan, Taxco del Alarcon, Guerrero, Mexico, Thanksgiving. I sent Mantis, the first pitch of Mala Fama, and Procopio, all third try. Great climbing, fun partners, one of the best trips ever. This is my favorite kind of climbing. Close second: Maple, May and September. Sent ZT and 49, several one-fall burns on Dry […]
Aside from the minor orbital mechanics impossibilities and the Spielbergian dead kid tear-jerking, why did she keep taking off her helmet? If you were entering a spacecraft you had never been inside in the middle of a debris storm that had caused every one else to abandon ship, would you take your helmet off? I […]
40 hours
“A fracture occurred” is how the powerpoint read. Meaning that working alone on a Sunday afternoon, the contractor broke the glass, leading to another check for $500k to the contractor – cost-plus, don’t you know. Proof again, that will be totally ignored, that working more hours doesn’t save you money – it costs you money. […]
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