Thursday, March 27, 2008
LINK-O-RAMA
I've been preoccupied with non-bloggish things, so here's a big link-dump to clear the browser:
Space Cadets: Plucky little XCOR Aerospace has announced their first "consumer" commercial product, a 2-place rocketplane that will reach an altitude of 200,000 feet. The design is very cleverly modest. I'm sure they'll get this little guy off the ground quickly, since it represents only a slight scaling up of what they've been doing for years now. Meanwhile, Chair Force Engineer gives a slight compliment to NASA's bloated, under-ambitious Constellation program: It could always be worse. Finally, alt.space rocketeer Mark Whittington writes one more fond farewell to the Master, whose vision was never modest.
Imaginary Friends: Here's a brief article on what I call "the God Project," another modest undertaking, a 2 million Euro program to study the actual science of religious belief. But over here at the typically muddle-headed Guardian is yet another "backlash piece" against "the New Atheists." This one's noteworthy because it speaks from the stance of the utterly desolate and morally bankrupt postmodern point of view: "The problem with the secular narrative is not that it assumes progress is inevitable (in many versions, it does not). It is the belief that the sort of advance that has been achieved in science can be reproduced in ethics and politics. In fact, while scientific knowledge increases cumulatively, nothing of the kind happens in society." Since there's no such thing as moral progress, we might as well recline in the comforting fables of our species' childhood -- and none of those fables are any better than any other. [Cue spitting sound.]
Progress: But in the real world, here's a note on some insights into tissue regeneration.
OK, coffee break's over ... back on your heads!
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 8:15 AM
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