Ian Murray (who seems to be having spam problems) should find this one fascinating. There’s a brief, but interesting article in this week’s Economist about the disturbing prevalance of shaky statistics in peer-reviewed scientific papers.
…If a set of data are
An emailer points out a local NPR show airing at 1 PM Pacific today in Seattle, with Charlie Vick and Gregg Maryniak (of the X-Prize Foundation).
Here’s the promo:
The Conversation
Guy Nelson, in for Ross Reynolds
1 pm Pacific KUOW 94.9 fm
Listen to past shows in The Conversation archive
Call-in numbers 206 543 5869, toll free long distance 1-800-289-5869
The first space launch by a private investor will happen this month. The man behind the project: Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. His rocket, called SpaceShip One, is designed for short visits to space, and does not travel fast enough to be put into orbit. What do you think of space travel moving into the private sector? What can they accomplish that NASA can’t? What questions do you have for the designers of these new rockets? Would you like to travel to space on a vacation? On The Conversation today, we’ll discuss the future of space travel, the Ansari X prize competition and find out what Allen hopes to accomplish.
Join us at 1:00 on KUOW. Call in your thoughts before the show to The Conversation feedback line, 206 221 3663 or send e-mail to conversation@kuow.org.
Join us on the air by calling 206 543 KUOW or 1
800 289 KUOW.GUESTS: (as of 12:00pm PACIFIC)
Dr. Charles Vick: Senior Fellow on Space Policy with GlobalSecurity.org with more than 40 years of experience
Gregg Maryniak: the executive director of Ansari X prize
The show should be available on the archive shortly after it ends, for those who aren’t local. I hope that this month’s event, and the eventual winning of the prize, causes a lot more public discussion of this topic.
Over at RLV News Clark Lindsey writes:
Rand Simberg has been after to me to change the name of this page from RLV News to Space Transport News. Not quite ready to do that but I will promise to refer to the SS1 missions as “flights” rather than “launches”. I suggest that all you alt.spacers out there take the pledge as well. Time that we transition out of thinking of spaceflight as a series of one-offs and start thinking in terms of spaceship departures and arrivals instead.
Sounds good to me. Now that I’m done posting, I think I’ll shut down my reusable computation machine, get into my reusable wheeled transportation device, and head back to my reusable dwelling unit 🙂
Several years too late, George Tenet has resigned. Now, can we please get rid of Norm Mineta?
There’s a piece up on Spaceref on the lessons from the Columbia accident. I don’t think there’s anything really new there, but it’s worth a read anyway.
One thing that stands out is this quote, from Aristotle: We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.
The folks over at The Corner are debating the merits of phasing out the penny (there are several posts–just scroll down or control-F for “penn”).
Most seem to favor keeping it, and make all kinds of arguments for it, few of which I find compelling, and most of which are, in my humble opinion, at base a simple conservative resistance to change, them being conservatives and all. One last holdout was Peter Robinson, who was swayed to the pro-penny side by the following flawed argument:
A penny is to money as entropy is to thermodynamics. When you spend money, you get some useful work (the stuff you bought), some useful left over energy (large change), and some energy lost to entropy (pennies). Sure, if you get enough pennies together, you can make most of them useful, but some will always be lost to the pavement, cracks between the cushions, and not having quite enough to fill a roll of pennies.
Just as you can’t get rid of entropy in thermodynamics, I don’t think you’ll ever be able to get rid of fiscal entropy; the most you can do is turn nickels into the new unit of entropy.
Sorry, I don’t find the “entropy” argument compelling. If it were true, then if a hundred to the dollar is good, a thousand to the dollar would be better. Why stop there?
Face it, any choice of the smallest denomination of currency is going to be arbitrary. While it would be nice to see some deflation a la Ramesh, it’s a dangerous path to get there, and at the current valuation of the dollar, pennies really are useless.
I’d say that a reasonable criterion for when a coin has too small a value is when it’s not possible to purchase anything with a single one of it. A penny may still buy thoughts, but there’s nothing else that it can purchase in today’s society, since the demise of the penny gumball machine.
Away with it.
The folks over at The Corner are debating the merits of phasing out the penny (there are several posts–just scroll down or control-F for “penn”).
Most seem to favor keeping it, and make all kinds of arguments for it, few of which I find compelling, and most of which are, in my humble opinion, at base a simple conservative resistance to change, them being conservatives and all. One last holdout was Peter Robinson, who was swayed to the pro-penny side by the following flawed argument:
A penny is to money as entropy is to thermodynamics. When you spend money, you get some useful work (the stuff you bought), some useful left over energy (large change), and some energy lost to entropy (pennies). Sure, if you get enough pennies together, you can make most of them useful, but some will always be lost to the pavement, cracks between the cushions, and not having quite enough to fill a roll of pennies.
Just as you can’t get rid of entropy in thermodynamics, I don’t think you’ll ever be able to get rid of fiscal entropy; the most you can do is turn nickels into the new unit of entropy.
Sorry, I don’t find the “entropy” argument compelling. If it were true, then if a hundred to the dollar is good, a thousand to the dollar would be better. Why stop there?
Face it, any choice of the smallest denomination of currency is going to be arbitrary. While it would be nice to see some deflation a la Ramesh, it’s a dangerous path to get there, and at the current valuation of the dollar, pennies really are useless.
I’d say that a reasonable criterion for when a coin has too small a value is when it’s not possible to purchase anything with a single one of it. A penny may still buy thoughts, but there’s nothing else that it can purchase in today’s society, since the demise of the penny gumball machine.
Away with it.
The folks over at The Corner are debating the merits of phasing out the penny (there are several posts–just scroll down or control-F for “penn”).
Most seem to favor keeping it, and make all kinds of arguments for it, few of which I find compelling, and most of which are, in my humble opinion, at base a simple conservative resistance to change, them being conservatives and all. One last holdout was Peter Robinson, who was swayed to the pro-penny side by the following flawed argument:
A penny is to money as entropy is to thermodynamics. When you spend money, you get some useful work (the stuff you bought), some useful left over energy (large change), and some energy lost to entropy (pennies). Sure, if you get enough pennies together, you can make most of them useful, but some will always be lost to the pavement, cracks between the cushions, and not having quite enough to fill a roll of pennies.
Just as you can’t get rid of entropy in thermodynamics, I don’t think you’ll ever be able to get rid of fiscal entropy; the most you can do is turn nickels into the new unit of entropy.
Sorry, I don’t find the “entropy” argument compelling. If it were true, then if a hundred to the dollar is good, a thousand to the dollar would be better. Why stop there?
Face it, any choice of the smallest denomination of currency is going to be arbitrary. While it would be nice to see some deflation a la Ramesh, it’s a dangerous path to get there, and at the current valuation of the dollar, pennies really are useless.
I’d say that a reasonable criterion for when a coin has too small a value is when it’s not possible to purchase anything with a single one of it. A penny may still buy thoughts, but there’s nothing else that it can purchase in today’s society, since the demise of the penny gumball machine.
Away with it.
Now that a county can no longer have a cross as part of its official seal, it’s clearly just a matter of time before cities (and counties) like “El Pueblo de Nuestra Se
Apparently the building that houses the UN is as decrepit as the institution itself.
Sounds like a good excuse to give it a new HQ.
Perhaps in Paris, or Brussels.
With someone else’s money.