A Camp By Any Other Name Would Smell as Foul
I don’t want the extremely esoteric battle over what we call our immigration detention facilities to distract from what they are; a catastrophe, regardless of what you choose to call them.
Author: Michael Siegel
Thursday Throughput for June 20, 2019
I really hope to live long enough to discover that we aren’t completely alone, even if the neighbors are only one-celled organisms.
Tenshot: Chernobyl
As a scientist, I have always been intensely curious about what caused the Chernobyl explosion. The HBO series does an outstanding job of explaining.
Thursday Throughput for June 6, 2019
If Musk’s full system comes on line, the simple fact is that no one has done the kind of careful study needed to figure out the impact of this constellation.
Tenshot: I, Claudius
I, Claudius has everything Game of Thrones had. Granted, there’s a few more British actors and not quite as many dragons. But it all happened in real life.
Thursday Throughput for 5/23/19
When people’s children are more likely to survive, they have fewer of them. This is a great triumph of the modern era.
Roundup, Pseudoscience and the Need for Villains
Every moment of your life you roll dice against death. Certain things load the dice in death’s favor. Other things load them in yours. But the dice never stop rolling.
Thursday Throughput for 5/9/19
Even with three nuclear disasters, the number of casualties is tiny. And it is especially tiny when compared to the environmental and human cost associated with fossil fuels.
The Trouble With Incumbency
My point is that a Trump defeat would be the first time in modern American politics where a good economy wasn’t enough to keep an incumbent in office.
Thursday Throughput for 4/25/19
Scientists need our own version of Rule 34: if it exists, someone is studying it.
If Facebook Is The Problem, Is This The Solution?
I don’t think the idea of using anti-trust law to keep companies from monopolizing online sales is completely stupid. Not totally. Not 100%. But that is the last tool I would reach for, not the first.
Yes, Virginia, You (Probably) Got a “Tax Cut”
People want a simpler tax code … except for the mortgage interest deduction. And the charity deduction. And state local taxes, definitely. And daycare, obviously. And …
Thursday Throughput for 4/11/19
Black holes were first theorized in the 18th century. But because they are…you know…black…we couldn’t image them directly. Until now.
Thursday Throughput for 3/28/2019
This entire nontroversy is a result of two things colliding: one good and one bad. The bad part is that NASA’s spacesuits were built in 1978, The good part is that NASA has recruited more women.
Tenshot: Into the Spiderverse
For me, the sign of a great movie is when I’m both enjoying the current scene and giddy with anticipation for the scene to come.
Save Our English
The beautiful thing about English is that you don’t have to use such an awkward phrasing as “accused of having sex with an incapacitated woman against her will”. You can use only three words: “accused of rape.”
Not OK With Losing OK
The hacks and grifters were determined to make an innocent gesture into an evil one. And now they’ve succeeded. So … congratulations, I guess.
Thursday Throughput for 3/14
Here’s the thing though: even if vaccines did cause autism, even if they caused other injuries, it would still be worth it.
The Florida Story Teetering on the Edge
The Florida raids are becoming a textbook cases for how police and prosecutors overstate the problem of sex trafficking in this country. But even if further investigation does show that some of these women were being coerced, that only makes the case for decriminalization even stronger.
