No Longer by Thinking

Fusion Jazz: Why Fusion Power Is Doomed

2011-06-30T10:53:00.043-04:00

The National Ignition Facility (NIF) is a US-funded project to produce power from fusion, that is, by smacking together light atoms rather than busting up heavy atoms as in ordinary nuclear reactors. At the NIF, flashes of light from giant lasers zap tiny pellets of hydrogen, triggering fusion.A recent New York Times article on the $4-billion facility illustrates the difficulty of staying

My Fifteen Milliseconds of Fame

2010-11-25T12:38:00.014-05:00

A few weeks ago I posted an impulsive, long-winded comment about patterns of climate denialism on the website of Nature that said nothing which did not seem to me painfully obvious (comment #15330 here). I wondered if I was a time-wasting fool to write it at all, and blushed when I realized (too late, it is always too late) that I had repeatedly committed the awful typo “AWG

Dr. Strange Versus Global Cooling

2010-04-17T15:15:00.032-04:00

Global-warming denialists often proclaim that in the 1970s scientists predicted global cooling, then in the 1980s suddenly changed their minds to global warming. Implication: scientists are always changing their minds, so don’t take them seriously when they declare that the world has been warming for decades and is going to get a lot hotter before it’s through. What’ll the

A Factoid is Born

2010-03-25T10:25:00.028-04:00

A recent post by Nick Bilton of the New York Times, “Former Book Designer Says Good Riddance to Print,” claims that the day of the print book is finally fading. Most of Bilton’s blog post is about a blog post by the “former book designer,” Craig Mod, making these present remarks a blog post about a blog post about a blog post. Such is e-life.Bilton likes what Mod says. Paper books are, or

OK, I’m Compelled Already

2010-02-10T12:59:00.056-05:00

The New York Times just featured a clutch of invited essays on the question “Is Manned Spaceflight Obsolete?” First of all, the phrase is odd: obsolescence implies the appearance of a better alternative for something that was once adequate for some real purpose, and it’s not clear that “manned spaceflight” (why not the gender-neutral “human spaceflight”?) ever was a good or useful

All This Has Happened Before: The XMRV Imbroglio, Act II

2010-01-24T12:59:00.020-05:00

The now-famous 2009 Science paper by Lombardi and colleagues [1] showing a strong correlation between the human retrovirus XMRV and chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) did not parachute into the middle of nowhere. As Hilary Johnson’s Osler’s Web recounts, feelings have been running high on this subject since the 1980s. Careers have been devoted—especially, but not only, in the United Kingdom—to the

Night of the Living Benthamites

2009-10-23T12:53:00.108-04:00

A scientist friend has drawn my attention to an article on the moral uncertainties posed by climate change. In the article, “Anthropogenic climate change: Scientific uncertainties and moral dilemmas” (in Physica D 237;2008: 2132–2138), Rafaela Hillerbrand and Michael Ghil say they know “a way to correctly incorporate all the relevant uncertainties into the decision making process” (2133). Their

Striking Just the Right False Balance

2009-08-05T09:02:00.032-04:00

Over at the New York Times, climate blogger Andrew Revkin has just posted a response from scientist Michael Prather, who has done an astonishing pile of fine work for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate (IPCC) over the years. Prather takes issue with two statements from Revkin, the first of which reads: “Environmentalists assert that the reports by the panel are watered down by a requirement

The Stuff That’s Not Right

2009-07-27T17:25:00.027-04:00

A gusher of quasi-religious human spaceflight advocacy has erupted in predictable response to the 40th anniversary of the first human Moon landing (July 20, 1969). The commonest tack has been to bemoan our lack of progress and call for renewed dedication to human flight to the Moon and Mars. I didn’t even try to dip my cup in the torrent of exhortation, reading time being a finite resource and

Open Letter to Jim Hansen

2009-05-05T17:36:00.011-04:00

Following up on my previous post (below), I have accessed the actual video of the Hansen talk at Dartmouth and have written to Hansen himself with exact quotes in hand. The letter is as follows:April 28, 2009Dear Dr. Hansen,I had the pleasure of seeing you speak at Dartmouth College on April 2 (video here). I learned much, but was disconcerted by a couple of remarks you made during the

Whoa, Jim

2009-04-19T14:15:00.003-04:00

On April 2, 2009, policy wonk Jason Grumet and climate scientist Jim Hansen spoke on climate change at Dartmouth College as part of the engineering school’s “Great Issues in Energy” series. The video of the happening can be found here. Because I am connected to the Internet through a satellite that has about much bandwidth as a tin can attached to a taut string, I cannot download that video

Consensus Conshmensus

2009-03-27T11:19:00.001-04:00

The Cato Institute is an intellectual stopped clock. When right thinking aligns with dislike for centralized authority, the one clear notion at the heart of its libertarian faith, Cato is right on. If the White House decreed tomorrow that we must all get the Number of the Beast tattooed on our foreheads, Cato would be there for us, man! But when reality doesn’t align with its fixed idea, Cato

If I Was Bogart

2009-03-13T17:36:00.002-04:00

If I was Bogart, I’d be reaching for my whiskey right now. Because they’re playing that song again. I’ve heard it so many times, so many damn times, and every time I hear it I want to reach for my whiskey. Not because I'm tortured by memories of love in Paris before the invasion, but because the song is so sadly, brightly, inanely, insanely dumb.It goes like this: space travel has made

Climate Creationism

2009-01-22T17:32:00.001-05:00

Recently I wrote a large number of subject-specific articles for a two-volume reference work entitled Climate Change: In Context. Somehow it fell into the hands of a climate-change “skeptic” for review. This person snarked to the publisher:Most interesting is that the atmosphere reached a peak in 1998 and has been cooling since 2002. I'd be interested in seeing one of your writers response to

Senator, Stand Up

2009-01-09T15:21:00.002-05:00

This is an open letter to Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont.Senator:Yesterday the Senate adopted by unanimous voice vote S. Res. 10, supporting Israel’s ongoing actions in Gaza. I called your office to find out if you voted Yea, remained silent, or were absent. Your staff directed me to your online statement on Res. 10. I read it, but remained puzzled: it does not say how, or even whether, you

Friends Don't Let Friends Drive Nukes

2008-11-23T07:06:00.002-05:00

November 21, 2008To:The Nature Conservancy 4245 North Fairfax DriveSuite 100 Arlington, VA 22203-1606Dear Nature Conservancy,I’m not mad. Really I’m not. I’m not canceling my subscription and I’m not swearing to never give another dime to the Nature Conservancy. You guys truly do rock and I love you forever. But it’s a great pity that Jimmie Powell, head of the Conservancy’s energy team, has

Puncturing the Puff

2008-10-04T10:20:00.002-04:00

The Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth College, where I got my Piled Higher and Deeper degree in Engineering Sciences in 1995, has published a pro-nuclear puff-piece titled "What About Nuclear?". The piece hits all the talking points of the new media discourse on nuclear power, where never is heard a discouraging word. The new nukes are going to be clean’n’green! Super-duper cheap! And

Oh, Thank You Google, Thank You

2008-09-27T09:50:00.001-04:00

I was amazed, delighted! Google wanted to hear from me, little nothing-nobody me! Normally, that omniscient entity can be addressed only through physical mail sent to its headquarters in Mountain View, California, but today, Google’s Project 10100 was inviting me to submit “a great idea for helping a lot of people.” Here’s what they asked and what I said:Your idea’s name (maximum 50 characters

The Perfect Shitstorm

2008-08-08T09:15:00.001-04:00

It’s perfect. It’s all there in one cute little graphic, the Google logo for August 8, 2008:Here Google, which has censored the Internet on behalf of the Chinese government since 2006, visually merges itself with the Olympics, which as I write are giving China’s totalitarian government its best chance ever to strut its ultramodern chops for the world. Rather than fertilizing democratization, as

Priorities

2008-06-11T14:41:00.001-04:00

The science section of the New York Times—paper of record, printer of all that is fit—is, as I’ve claimed before, essentially a P.R. wing of the aerospace industry. Proofs come so thick and fast that I can’t keep up with them; here is a particularly choice one. The arrangement of graphics and text in today’s online Science Times (June 11, 2008) is exquisite:Let’s take it from the top:(1) Today

Oh No!

2008-03-08T14:10:00.001-05:00

My old friend Dave, a remarkable combination of short-haired engineering wonk and drug-crazed teenager hopped on 70s glam-rock, recently sent me a Blue Öyster Cult sampler that included the song “Godzilla.” The lyrics are not only a hoot but hard to argue with: History shows again and again That Nature points out the folly of men Oh no Godzilla!. . . Godzilla, of course, being a product of

Little House on the Red Planet

2008-02-01T14:38:00.002-05:00

On January 14, 2004, the White House announced that Bush had “committed the United States to a long-term human and robotic program to explore the solar system, starting with a return to the Moon, that will ultimately enable future exploration of Mars and other destinations.” Space fans almost fainted en masse: the Moon, we’re going back to the Moon! Has the human spirit ever again soared so high

Look, Ma, No NOMA

2008-01-20T16:27:00.002-05:00

Stephen Jay Gould was a fine writer. He could also be a pompous ass, a quality that especially came out in the coining of rich, ringing, overblown phrases. One of his richest and ringingest and most overblown was “non-overlapping magisteria” (NOMA)—the one true key, Gould proclaimed in Rocks of Ages (1999), to peace in the evolution wars. Science and religion, he said, have disjoint areas of

Nature, Nurture, Literature

2007-09-16T14:48:00.002-04:00

Oh, the poor books. The poor novels, poems, and fairy tales, endlessly re-stuffed into the hopper of the career-scholarship machine and crapped out of the bottom as worms of pink ground meat. For decades we’ve suffered the exaggerated silliness of deconstruction and postmodernism, whose central doctrine is that “discourse” (cultural stuff) creates reality. Sooner or later it had to elicit a

Bleaching the Controversy

2007-07-26T14:56:00.001-04:00

Since The Chronicle of Higher Education was so unwise as to turn down the following, it appears here. The proof of its fit to the alleged theme of this blog is left as an exercise for the reader.------------------------------------------------------------------The third and last volume of The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis (HarperSanFrancisco) was released on January 9, 2007 after long delay.

Space Pioneers Wanted

2007-06-29T11:52:00.001-04:00

A curious item from Agence France-Presse, June 19, 2007: the European Space Agency is asking for six volunteers to live in a cramped spacecraft simulator for 17 months to gather information about the psychological stresses of flight to Mars. The volunteers will be sealed in, eat space rations, and communicate with the rest of the human race only by radio.Perks? All the Internet you want, I’m

Review:

2007-06-10T13:52:00.001-04:00

Carrying the Fire: An Astronaut’s Journeyby Michael CollinsBallantine Books, 1975Michael Collins, command module pilot for Apollo 11, produces better results than most professional nonfiction scribblers and does it without using a ghost writer. He’s likable, snarky, and honest; surely this is the best-written of all the astronaut books. Particularly relevant, over 30 years after the book’s

SAT Scores

2007-06-07T16:10:00.002-04:00

It’s SAT season. For the last week or so, all across this mighty land, millions of high-school kids who took the SATs in May have been getting their scores online. A young friend just e-mailed to tell me that she got 760 in critical reading, 640 in math, and 680 in writing.What do these numbers mean? Well, arguably, a lot. Most college admissions offices still look at them and get very yippy

Atheism Deserves Better

2007-05-28T11:31:00.001-04:00

I’m not an atheist, but I’m seriously tempted to send money to the American Atheists. Their ad is adorable: a happy nuclear family bathed by sunset light and accompanied by the story of how the good-looking daughter was persecuted by her high-school principle for not participating in pre-game school prayers. The AA went to court on her behalf and won. Good show!Happy atheists.Besides what they’