Category: anonradio

ASFO 2023–02–04

Power outage? Power outrage! And just like that, I’m back to talking about the Regulated Utility Model for applying private enterprise to furnishing public goods, and trying to examine its potential uses in fields as disparate as pharmaceuticals and housing. With a bonus mention of Jimmy McMillan, the guy who says The Rent Is Too Damn’ High! Also Mail Call.

Supplementary Show

  • 2023–02–07 More from Interstellar Migration and the Human Experience (Finney and Jones, eds) : Introduction to Section II, Demography and Economics : Growth of the Human Tribe ; Comments on Hodges’ “The Division of Labor”, by the editors (with a very different view of “artificial intelligence” from that exhibited by, say, ChatGPT) ; Introduction to Section III, Migrating Societies ; Introduction to Section IV, Speciation ; and a part of the Introduction to Section V, Is Anybody Home? (stopping at the beginning of the section on the “Fermi paradox”).
  • 2023–02–10 Probably the last I’ll read out of Interstellar Migration and the Human Experience (but perhaps you’ll be interested enough to seek out the book for yourself). Fermi’s Question, the Epilogue, and the short biographies of authors.

They do not grow old, as we who are left grow old

I acquired what might have been, by that time, the last new, sealed copy of Challenger Memorial tape in the world at the Montreal Worldcon in 2009, and listened to it obsessively for two weeks when I got home.

“Recorded during a memorial presentation at Bayfilk III in San Jose, California, on March 9, 1986, before an audience of 200. The dream is, and must remain, alive.” (Archive recording)

Continue reading “They do not grow old, as we who are left grow old”

ASFO 2022–01–28

Graphite leads me to consider the problem of false mental world pictures, with a detour to boggle at the neologism elementeome. I interrogate just what it would mean for The Singularity to come in seven years. And, having considered “population control” from the standpoint of genocide last week, I look at it from the standpoint of eugenics ― which involves a closer examination of that concept. Also there may be just the slightest smidgeon of cult–starting.

ASFO 2022–01–21

In which I announce an Exciting New Initiative, although I’m not yet clear on how to pay for it, and consider non–existent remedies for non–existent maladies, and the question of whether you are really entitled to your own opinion, if you can’t be bothered to inform yourself about the topic. Also… yes, Virginia, reducing the human population of Earth to 2 billion by 2100 would in fact constitute genocide, even if you do it purely by limitation of births. Let’s spend more time on the happier business of the what and how of the Lunar Settlement, shall we?

Cover of a booklet entitled (in German) "Homeopathic Prescriptions for a Future with Radioactivity".
Non–existent remedies for non–existent maladies

Supplementary Shows

  • 2023–01–24 Probably the last reading from Man and the Moon. In addition to the notes by Richardson, I read the whole of Where to Land on the Moon by Wilkins, and the first part of Man on the Moon ― The Exploration by Whipple and von Braun (from the famous 1952 Man Will Conquer Space Soon series of illustrated articles in Collier’s). The idea behind this has been to get a feel for the way people were thinking when serious work on space travel began.
  • 2023–01–27 Interstellar Migration and the Human Experience (Finney and Jones, eds) is the proceedings of a conference held at Los Alamos in 1983. And a very interesting volume it is, too! I read the Table of Contents, Prologue, Introduction to Section I Resources : Human, Technological, and Cosmic, and the concluding summary to Solar System Industrialization : Implications for Interstellar Migrations by David Criswell.

ASFO 2023–01–14

Lützerath is a name the world would have been just as happy not knowing. And the insistence of the German people (the people of the world, really) at being upset when they get exactly what they have asked for in no uncertain terms continues to bother me. Instead of focusing on the primary role that fossil fuels continue to hold in world energy supply, with no real end in sight, I would much rather concentrate on the characteristics which I envision for the early lunar settlement. We need hope for the future, after all.

Political ad demanding the use of "Clean Coal" instead of nuclear energy in the German state of Nordrhein Westfälen, and condemning the advanced power reactor prototypes SNR-300 and THTR-300. Circa 1980.
German political ad circa 1980 (mentioned in the show) demanding the use of “ecological coal technologies” instead of atomic energy.
Australian political ad warning that "Nuclear Power Will Kill the Coal Industry" and demanding the use of "Clean Coal" to tackle climate change. Dated 2007-11-19.
Australian political ad from 2007 demanding the use of “clean coal”, not atomic energy, to “tackle” climate change.

Supplementary Shows

  • 2023–01–17 More from Man and the Moon : The Circular Maria by Ralph Baldwin, a description of the formation of Mare Imbrium which rewards dramatic reading ; and Observations of a Volcanic Process on the Moon by Nikolai Kozyrev, with a prefatory note longer than the article itself, and my own interpretation of the evidence.
  • 2023–01–20 Again from Man and the Moon : two pieces entitled The Other Side of the Moon, one from H Percy Wilkins writing in 1953, and one from Soviet News reporting on the photographs taken by the Luna 3 spacecraft.