Wednesday, February 28, 2018

"A space engine that could make flying into orbit commonplace"

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Obviously, you can't compare a piece of technology in development to one that's up and working. The Falcon Heavy isn't a proposa...
Tuesday, February 27, 2018

Another one from the turn-of-the-century Scientific American – – I can't decide between the Far Side or the Planet of the Apes joke here

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This is an interesting piece from a 1907 issue of Scientific American, but what really caught my eye and the reason I'm sharing it with ...
Monday, February 26, 2018

Small improvements

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This is Joseph I hope that this argument is a straw man: Someone will say that mass shooting are rare. Moreover, if a future schoolyard ...
Friday, February 23, 2018

I just realized that we haven't made fun of Gwyneth Paltrow for a long time.

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Fortunately, Stephen Colbert's staff has been keeping up with goop for us.
Thursday, February 22, 2018

Non-sarcastic praise for Elon Musk (no, really)

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This is a big deal. Not as big as some of the hype would lead you to believe and not big in the way most people think, but it is a big ...
2 comments:
Wednesday, February 21, 2018

The stocks “couldn't be valued according to traditional methods because they represented a whole new era of the economy that was nothing like the past.” – Déjà vu all over again

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I just finished a recent post on how companies try to get some investor love by associating themselves with sexy, overhyped sectors of the ...
Tuesday, February 20, 2018

More memorable ads from the turn of the century Scientific American

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More on the medicinal powers of Coke. 1907 Electricity meant push button control which, if you think about it, was a pretty big deal. 1...
Monday, February 19, 2018

Profit laundering

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[I need to come back to this in more detail later, but just so it doesn't sit in the queue forever, here's a quick rundown of the co...
Friday, February 16, 2018

Alec Guinness was George Smiley

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If you can think of a piece of video, be it an old TV show, a musical performance, a stand-up routine, it's probably on YouTube. I'v...
2 comments:
Thursday, February 15, 2018

Of course, modern researchers tried talking to plants so who are we to judge?

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I'd never heard of electro-culture before coming across this article from a turn-of-the-century issue of Scientific American, but, based...

Tech Boosterism

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[More notes for the upcoming book] Journalists have a natural tendency to be supportive of efforts to serve some public good. There is und...
Wednesday, February 14, 2018

Keep in mind that back then $600 million was quite a bit of money

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To provide a bit of historical context for our recent posts on infrastructure costs (see here and here ), check out this piece from Scienti...
Tuesday, February 13, 2018

“I’m almost afraid not to take the chance,” – This is when it becomes a bubble.

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It's that moment when risk aversion flips and the thought of not making money starts to feel like losing it. I'm not talking about ...
Monday, February 12, 2018

Laws and markets

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This is Joseph This point, by James Joyner , is quite good: The taxi industry is a special case, though, in that cab and limousine owner...
Friday, February 9, 2018

The Snow Bicycle -- wonder why this never caught on

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People at the turn of the century were fascinated by the bicycle, both as a practical form of transportation and as a sport. Being an age of...