Tobias S. Buckell's Blog, page 44
October 10, 2013
A lack of empathy
I keep thinking about the lack of empathy in a lot of modern conservative thought during this showdown. About Republican leaders who work hard to make life for people who are gay harder, and then only until someone in their family turns out to be gay, do they stop to reassess. The idea that children, who cannot just ‘go get a job’ to get healthcare or food, are being hurt by the slowdown.
It’s a lack of imagination to be unable to understand how horrible things might happen that are outside of...
Solar power cell cost graph is illuminating
Most people think solar power costs as much as it did in the 80s, when they formed their opinions about it.
Decisions are being made with those assumptions.
The right way to buy books, via Scott Lynch
Words of wisdom from Scott Lynch:
“Please don’t ever buy one of my books in a format you think will send me a maximal percentage of money. Please buy the format that is most desirable or convenient to you. Buy the format that will enable you to have the most enjoyable reading experience. After all, if I encourage you to buy an inconvenient or uncomfortable format for my own sake, I’m basically telling you to endure unnecessary bullshit for the sake of a few extra pennies or dimes in my pocket....
October 8, 2013
Interview about the viability of Germany’s Energiewende
A fascinating quick interview with Mark Jacobson about Germany’s Energiewende.
“In 2009, Jacobson caught people’s attention with his co-authored article A Plan To Power 100 Percent of the Planet With Renewables, which was the cover story of November’s Scientific American. In 2012, he partnered with The Avengers’ Hulk Mark Ruffalo to co-author The Tesseract Is Here!, a Huffington Post opinion piece likening the film’s Tesseract, a source of unlimited energy, to renewables. To cleantech and comi...
October 3, 2013
Help Fund John Joseph Adams’ Robot Army
John Joseph Adams is running a Kickstarter for an anthology of SF/F/improbably Kickstarter stories. It’s so deliciously meta I had trouble saying no, even though I’ve put a hold on saying yes to any new projects for a long, long time.
If you’re a regular Kickstarter backer, you’ve probably seen some unique Kickstarters in your time. But one thing all of those projects–boringly!–had in common was: They abided by the physical laws of the universe! If what you’ve always been looking for in a Kick...
Help Fund John Joseph Adam’s Robot Army
John Joseph Adams is running a Kickstarter for an anthology of SF/F/improbably Kickstarter stories. It’s so deliciously meta I had trouble saying no, even though I’ve put a hold on saying yes to any new projects for a long, long time.
If you’re a regular Kickstarter backer, you’ve probably seen some unique Kickstarters in your time. But one thing all of those projects–boringly!–had in common was: They abided by the physical laws of the universe! If what you’ve always been looking for in a Kick...
October 1, 2013
American healthcare was already socialized by Reagan, we’re just fighting about how to pay for it
Today the US government shut down. Ostensibly by Tea Party Republicans to try and stop socialized medicine from becoming a reality. In fact, false equivalence reporting has lent an air of respectability to the effort (they might be fighting a losing battle, and the polls are low for congress and Republicans, but they’re fighting for their minority opinion).
By the way, false equivalency is when you’re a news organization and someone says ‘our party believes the world is round’ and you have som...
September 24, 2013
DARPA’s space plane project
Interesting. DARPA projects have a way of coming true.
“Key XS-1 technical goals include flying 10 times in 10 days, achieving speeds of Mach 10+ at least once and launching a representative payload to orbit. The program also seeks to reduce the cost of access to space for small (3,000- to 5,000-pound) payloads by at least a factor of 10, to less than $5 million per flight. “
(Via DARPA trying to make a Mach 10+ unmanned spaceplane that can fly ten times in ten days.)
What is most intriguing to...
Popular science to turn off comments
Is this the start of a movement?
“Comments can be bad for science. That’s why, here at PopularScience.com, we’re shutting them off.
It wasn’t a decision we made lightly. As the news arm of a 141-year-old science and technology magazine, we are as committed to fostering lively, intellectual debate as we are to spreading the word of science far and wide. The problem is when trolls and spambots overwhelm the former, diminishing our ability to do the latter.
That is not to suggest that we are the on...
September 21, 2013
Solar Panels becoming a standard option on new home builds
It’s starting to get baked into new development moving forward. Interesting:
“Six of the 10 largest U.S. homebuilders say they now include solar panels in new construction, and consumer demand for them is expected to soar 56 percent nationwide this year, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association.
‘In the next six months, homebuilders in California and the expensive-energy states will be going solar as a standard and just incorporating it into the cost of the house like any other feat...
