Links for Monday, January 7, 2008
- James Kunstler: Forecast for 2008 – “I shudder to imagine how things will play out now as we turn the corner into 2008. Not to put too fine a point on it, but my little walnut brain can’t imagine any scenario in which the US economy doesn’t end up on a gurney in history’s emergency room.“
- Wired: NASA Dreams of an Interplanetary ‘Second Life’ for Mars Crew – “While aerospace engineers are designing the Ares rockets to be deployed in the Mars missions, a more starry-eyed contingent at NASA is testing networking and virtual reality technologies that they think will connect the first wave of Mars pioneers with their families, friends and colleagues back on Earth, in a 3-D virtual world cut from the mold of Second Life or World of Warcraft.“
- National Geographic News: Evolution Less Accepted in U.S. Than Other Western Countries, Study Finds – “A study of several such surveys taken since 1985 has found that the United States ranks next to last in acceptance of evolution theory among nations polled. Researchers point out that the number of Americans who are uncertain about the theory’s validity has increased over the past 20 years.” – Pathetic
- The Pirate’s Dilemma: The 3-D Printer That Can Print a 3-D Printer – “This is Dr. Adrian Bowyer, who alongside his team of engineers at the University of Bath in England, is working on a project called the RepRap; an open source 3-D printer – a self-replicating machine that will one day be able to print out all of its own parts.“
- Sprott Asset Management: Deriding Deriving: Theory versus Reality – “We think it’s a big joke. It appears that derivatives are like a treadmill. Once losses begin to manifest, more and more derivatives need to be written so that the models can once again say that everything is a-ok.Yes, we are cynical when it comes to derivatives. There are theories and models… then there is the real world. We believe there’s a huge disconnect developing between the two.“