Rotundus.com

There seems to be quite a bit of truth in this piece:

If Orwell’s “1984” is a cautionary tale about what we in the capitalist West largely avoided, Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World” is largely about what we got — a consumerist, post-God happyland in which people readily stave off aging, jet away on exotic vacations and procreate via test tubes. They have access to “Feelies” similar to IMAX 3-D movies, no-strings-attached sex, anti-anxiety pills and abortion on demand. They also venerate a dead high-tech genius, saying “Ford help him” in honor of Henry Ford just as today we practically murmur “In Jobs We Trust.”

(HT: JT)

Soon every faculty member will have a personal senior manager: Is this a good way to spend money?

On management bloat in California's public universities: "Data available from the UC Office of the President shows that there were 2.5 faculty members for each senior manager in the UC system in 1993. Now there are as many senior managers as faculty."

The idea we can’t debate abortion is unworthy of a democratic country

"Yes, that Bertha Wilson: first woman on the Supreme Court, fearless advocate for women’s rights, feminist icon. Though she ruled with the majority of her colleagues that the 1969 abortion law was unconstitutional, it is as clear from her ruling as it is from the others’ that they never intended this to be the last word on the subject. Indeed, they practically begged Parliament to have another go at it."

Eggs unlimited: an extraordinary tale of scientific discovery

"Several research teams across the world have shown that the mammalian ovary is far more versatile than Zuckerman and his subsequent followers had ever thought possible. The core of this new thinking lies in the remarkable discovery of “oogonial stem cells” within the ovary that are capable of producing a constant supply of fresh eggs, or oocytes."

Keeping Secrets Can Make You Physically Weaker

"The research suggests that when you're holding onto a secret you can't judge spatial distance and you rate physical tasks more difficult than they really are."

Wind farms lift the temperature in their region

Thus saith the lead author of the study: "Our results show a significant warming trend of up to 0.72 degree per decade, particularly at night-time, over wind farms relative to nearby non-wind-farm regions"

French Kids Don’t Snack: Surprising Kids’ Food Habits From Abroad

Some interesting commentary on French eating habits and attitudes towards snacking

Women overestimate effectiveness of Pill, condoms

"With the Pill, the pregnancy rate with "typical use" is about nine per cent per year. With condoms, it's between 18 and 21 per cent."

I mentioned recently that a startup company is tackling lunar mining. Today the Globe and Mail published an article with a completely ludicrous way to estimate cost-effectiveness of this approach. How'd they do it?

Their calculations are based on Nasa’s forthcoming OSIRIS-REx mission, which aims to launch a probe in 2016 to pluck samples from an asteroid called 1999 RQ36 and bring them to Earth.
... Nasa hopes it will be home by 2023, with a couple of ounces of dirt. By then, the cost will have reached $1-billion - made up of $800-million for the vehicle, plus another $200-million for the rocket launch.

Some problems:

1. Exploratory missions aren't the same as mining missions.
2. It's probably a fair bit more expensive to build something like this the first time around rather than the Nth.
3. They neglected to actually read the business plan - which involves towing asteroids into lunar orbit (which apparently doesn't have massive fuel requirements) and then supplying NASA as a start. Apparently current costs to NASA are about $20,000 per litre of water brought up from earth.

There's an interesting study in which Planetary Resources participated a while back. Estimated cost to bring a 500,000 kg asteroid into lunar orbit was roughly $2.6 billion. $2.6 billion / 500,000 = $5200 / kg. Compare to $1 billion / 0.057 kg = $1.76E10 / kg (the figures used in this economic "analysis"). Notice any slight difference between the figures?

One cool potential application of (comparatively) cheap resources in orbit might be the construction of space-based solar power - here's one interesting study of the possibilities there that I managed to sneak into my Ph.D. candidacy proposal. (Not quite sure why I tend to be relatively cynical about a lot of current solar installations but relatively positive towards probably crazier ideas like space-based solar power or paving over the Sahara with solar panels).

If they manage to drag together resources in orbit, think also about what possibilities an automated orbital manufacturing facility might have. Could you build future asteroid collectors at lower cost in orbit using the resources from previously captured asteroids?

Often stereotypes have a tinge of reality to them. Here's an excerpt from a New York Times article on Southern Europeans coming to Germany to work:

Many of the Spaniards say the work environment in Germany takes getting used to, with Germans far more direct than Spanish people and much quieter. No one makes personal calls during business hours, for instance. But the work day is much shorter.

They were surprised that they were expected to greet co-workers each morning with formal handshakes and to call colleagues “Herr” and “Frau” (Mr. and Ms.). Impromptu hallway conversations over work issues were cut off by Germans suggesting it would be more appropriate to schedule a formal meeting.

The German fondness for order, often joked about, has proved true, said Carlos Baixeras, 30, an engineer who started working near Frankfurt 18 months ago. “There are rules for everything,” he said. “There’s a trash police.”

This article reminded me of something that I'd read before - that Germans work fewer hours than those in the more-economically-troubled European countries. Perhaps some of that might be due to the efficiency that some of these rules allow. (i.e. to a greater extent separating business and personal life).

The talk of the shortage of education labour in Germany reminded me of another thing that I discovered a while back - would you believe that, despite the talk of Europe's woes, the Netherlands and Germany both have lower unemployment rates than Canada and the United States?

(HT: MR)