Thursday Throughput: Boeing Edition
Various grifters have rushed to blame this on “DEI” policies at Boeing. But the problems are more conventional: corporate greed, regulatory capture and a culture of cutting corners.
Category: Science and Technology
Mini-Throughput: The Moon Is Further Away This Week
If they keep going like this, I fear the Artemis program will be cancelled before anyone touches lunar soil
Thursday Throughput: Schooling Edition
A bevy of results have emerged that have shown, pretty conclusively, that the last few years saw the biggest drop in learning ever measured
Throughput: Worlds Collide Edition
The collision hypothesis: that the early Earth collided with a Mars-sized object. This week, we got a big hint that this theory is right.
Throughput: Leaky International Space Station Edition
Earlier this week, the International Space Station sprung a leak. The leak was not life-threatening, but was concerning.
Mini Video Throughput: Emergency Zombies, Neuralink and iPhones
So was there a reason to fear that the test of the Emergency Alert System earlier this week? No. Glad we could have this conversation.
Thursday Throughput: Decongestant Edition
And so here we are, 16 years later, a nation of 330 million people sniffing, snarking and snarling because a drug that has never demonstrated efficacy beyond placebo was foisted upon us as a replacement for a drug that actually, you know worked.
Mini-Throughput: Masks, Redux
I don’t like masks but the hysteria over them seems fantastically out of proportion. I’m also not sure that we need to bring back mask mandates under the present circumstances.
Video Throughput: Lunar Excursion Module
Time to talk about one of the most amazing real-life spaceships ever built — the Lunar Excursion Model. With LEGO.
Thursday Throughput: HELA Edition
There are more HeLa cells out there than there were in Lacks entire body. The problem is that none of this was consented to by Lacks or her family and they never received a dime from it.
Mini-Throughput: Floaty Rock Edition
So my response to LK-99 is a shrug emoji. It could be the most important discovery in our lifetimes. It could be nothing. It could be anywhere in between.
Mini-Throughput: Einstein’s Greatest Mistake Edition
Einstein’s greatest mistake may not have been his greatest mistake. It may have been his most spectacular and enduring insight.
Thursday Throughput: Aspartame Edition
Aspartame is one of the most studied food additives in the human food supply. FDA scientists do not have safety concerns when aspartame is used under the approved conditions.
Video Throughput: The Wandering Earth
The Chinese blockbuster “The Wandering Earth” which is about … uh … a wandering Earth. Could the Sun actually become dangerous to our survival? Could you really push Earth out of its orbit?
Ripples in the Galaxy
By studying many pulsars all over the sky, you can see those ripples propagate across the galaxy, like measuring a tsunami wave from orbit.
The Unforgiving Sea: OceanGate, Titan, and Unforgiven Hubris
The thing about exploring the depths of the ocean is that it is a lot like exploring space: the environment is brutally unforgiving of error and hubris.
Mini-Throughput: Debate Me, Bro Edition
In order for a scientific debate to work, it needs honest brokers, willing to admit when they’re wrong. Not “debate me, bro” gish gallopers.
Thursday Throughput: Chat GPT Is Not Your Research Assistant
A running theme with Chat GPT: It has a tendency to very confidently say things that are not true and cite sources that are fictional.
Video Thoughput: Don’t Beam Me Up
In this episode, I take my first look at the classic Star Trek TV series. In particular, would it be possible to beam people through space?
