Steve Hoeser says that we’re not making progress in space because we refuse to treat it as a traditional frontier.
Category Archives: Philosophy
The Truth About Science
…is bad news for those seeking certainty. Nice to see articles like this at places like The Guardian.
Locked-In Patients
They’ve found a way to communicate with them, and their lives may not be the living nightmare we’ve imagined:
“One of the most surprising outcomes of this study is that these patients reported being ‘happy’ despite being physically locked-in and incapable of expressing themselves on a day-to-day basis, suggesting that our preconceived notions about what we might think if the worst was to happen are false. Indeed, previous research has shown that most locked-in patients are actually reasonably satisfied with their quality of life,” he added.
Two pieces of good news in one. The human brain is an amazing, almost incomprehensible thing.
Life In The Solar System
The top eight places to look for it. Not including earth, of course.
I think that Carolyn Porco thinks that Enceladus is a better candidate than Europa, but it’s a lot harder to get to.
The Uncanny Valley
…still has yet to be traversed.
The Philosophical Divide In Space
Go read this whole thread.
So Trump's science advisor says they are stripping NASA's earth sci division so they can focus on "exploration" ie colonization of space
— Dr. Chanda ?? (@IBJIYONGI) November 23, 2016
On record, @DNLee5 and I told y'all that white supremacist capitalists had a vision of "exploration" in mind and it was NOT Star Trek
— Dr. Chanda ?? (@IBJIYONGI) November 23, 2016
As I wrote a year and a half ago:
…we have to be ready for that debate. There is a moral case to be made for settling space by humanity, warts and all, and we have to be prepared to make it.
I think that many in the space community underestimate the depth of this cultural divide. And they’ve already deployed the race card against human expansion into the solar system.
Mars
Bob Zubrin reviews Ron Howard’s National Geographic series, and Elon Musk.
Patricia and I had dinner with Leonard and Barbara David Saturday night in Austin. He’s on a book tour for NatGeo for his new book that accompanies the series.
Arrival
This looks like an interesting movie.
Hillary Clinton
A liberal society is one in which everybody has free-speech rights. A society in which some people have free-speech rights and some do not, depending on the self-interested whim of people with political power, is a totalitarian society realized to a greater or lesser degree. Heinrich Heine’s advice on the connection between the treatment of books and the treatment of human beings is always and forever relevant.
As I wrote recently, Trump has never read the Constitution. She hates it.
The Ascent Of Populism
A long but useful history of the conservative intellectual, from Matthew Continetti.