Author: Jim

science

Technological decline

Konkvistador has drawn my attention to the Pu238 shortage. We stopped making Pu238 in 1988 You need Pu238 for nuclear batteries. The 2006 New Horizons mission to Pluto and the Kuiper belt was launched without enough Pu238 to keep all its equipment live during the Pluto flyby, and without enough Pu238 to do its Kuiper …

culture

Words that are lies

A word should refer to an essence, a natural kind, and normal words do. Suppose we had a word that referred to roast pork and fried chicken, but not to other foods. This would imply that roast pork and chicken were the same essence, the same natural kind, which of course they are not. So …

culture

falling testosterone

For the past thirty years, testosterone has been falling at about one percent a year. This is about the same rate of decline as that produced by aging after the age of forty. So a forty year old male today has about the same testosterone levels as a seventy year old male had in 1984. …

culture

Elliot Roger murders

The first time Elliot Rodger hit on a girl, she gave him a mighty harsh shit test, and he completely fell apart. From the fact that that his first shit test was the only one he complained about, I deduce he never exposed himself to the danger of a second one, that he was scarred for …

culture

Racism is an anti concept

We do not have a word “deskism” for someone who thinks differences between kinds of desk matter, and who has strong preferences in favor of some kinds of desks and against other kinds of desk. No one can be racist against white people, and all whites are racists. That is why it is not racism when …

culture

“the Snow Queen” and “Frozen”

Don’t worry.  This is not going to turn into a My Little Pony blog. A long time back I heard Disney people worrying aloud that they were having trouble making “the Snow Queen” acceptable to modern audiences.  So naturally I assumed they were making it revoltingly feminist and politically correct.  And in due course it …

culture

Why women need to kept on leashes

A software company just went bust.  Happens a lot.  That a woman happened to be running this company is not significant.  Lots of men have lost lots of other people’s money too.  What is significant is that she starts off her explanation of how she pissed away all her investor’s money by talking about her sex …