Green notes that advances coming out of plasma physics could allow for the future development of inflatable structures that can generate a magnetic dipole of 1 or 2 tesla. That could [be] enough to shield Mars against the solar wind,…
Culture & Entertainment
Yearning for President Blog – OAG #9
The Tweet-storm, in the new era of President Tweet, remains a nostalgia-inducing afterimage of the blog and of the era of President Blog, but it may also portend a return or attempted return to coherent, accountable, and consequential civic discussion in a mass society, back from the Great Flood of clicks.
All the News that’s Fit to Kill (OAG #8)
The Post appears to be promising to narrate the death of democracy – or, if unconsciously, to be revealing an intention to embody it.
Stuff in Space – h/t @pbump
Stuff in Space is a realtime 3D map of objects in Earth orbit, visualized using WebGL. The website updates daily with orbit data from Space-Track.org and uses the excellent satellite.js Javascript library to calculate satellite positions. From: Stuff in Space
Michael Moreci: Starship Troopers: Paul Verhoeven’s Manic, Misunderstood Satire – Tor.com
Satirizing war—condemning war—is easy. What’s not easy is extending the tragedy of war beyond the politicians, beyond the world leaders, beyond those higher-ups that are typically held responsible and laying some of that blame on our shoulders—us watching at home—as…
Posted in Movies, Noted & Quoted
Christie Aschwanden: We Asked 8,500 Internet Commenters Why They Do What They Do – FiveThirtyEight
Comments often serve as identity badges, said Joseph Reagle, the author of “Reading the Comments: Likers, Haters, and Manipulators at the Bottom of the Web” and a professor of communication studies at Northeastern University. “You see this particularly on social…
Posted in Internet, Noted & Quoted
The Data That Turned the World Upside Down – Motherboard
Our smartphone, Kosinski concluded, is a vast psychological questionnaire that we are constantly filling out, both consciously and unconsciously. Above all, however—and this is key—it also works in reverse: not only can psychological profiles be created from your data, but…
Kim Stanley Robinson: Our Generation Ships Will Sink – Boing Boing
With the enormous successes of Star Trek and Star Wars, the idea was firmly planted in the popular imagination: if we survived as a species, we would be moving out into the galaxy. This awesome diaspora would mark our maturity…
Charlie Jane Anders: The Essential Difference Between Star Wars and Star Trek – io9
The later Star Trek series are frequently concerned with the wisdom of command—Picard, in particular, obsesses about choosing the wise path and being a responsible leader. Deep Space Nine and Voyager try to take away some of Starfleet’s awesome power…
Posted in Movies, Neo-Imperialism, Noted & Quoted, TV Tagged with: Science Fiction, Star Trek, Star Wars
Ken White: On Punching Nazis – Popehat
…We have social and legal norms, including “don’t punch people because their speech is evil, and don’t punish them legally.” Applying those norms is not a judgment that the speech in question is valuable, or decent, or morally acceptable. We…