After we’ve collapsed our civilization and made huge swaths of the planet uninhabitable, it’s just going to open up new opportunities for others. They won’t be others that are interesting, in the sense that we are (in the sense that we mine oil and burn it and fly through the air and argue about going to Mars) but life’s going to be hard to completely eradicate.
Not that we aren’t trying.
The coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan is scary and, having been in the path of a near-lethal coronavirus, one of the worst parts is wondering, “how much worse can this get?” and suspecting that the answer is “a whole lot.”
Fortunately, the coronavirus is not as bad as it could be; certainly it’s nowhere in the league of SARS or the 1911 swine flu. Which is a good thing, because it does not seem as though humanity’s response to the virus has been super effective.
When I was in high school, we were assigned to read One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and we also watched the movie so we could discuss the relationship between movie versions and books; it was a great class.
This is a really fascinating, if highly specialized, book about an important topic.
One of the other attendees of Tomcon was ‘Q’, who is currently working at an undisclosed media company, doing undisclosed stuff. I had brought my gaming computer and HTC Vive VR headset because, if you haven’t seen Google Maps VR you really should, if you can.
Trips to Tom L.’s are always interesting. If you recall 2 years ago, at the last TomCon, we did an evening trip to Yerkes Observatory, after stuffing ourselves with a massive amount of deep-dish pizza. [stderr]
This is one picture from the Saturn-V that I forgot to post. It’s worth it in its own right, in my opinion.
NASA’s done a good job producing a sort of “space disneyland” – probably for the usual reasons: it’s necessary to attract kids’ attention. It drives me a bit nuts when I see things being dumbed down for kids because their parents can’t handle it.
One of my favorite podcasts is the In Our Time BBC podcast. It’s Melvyn Bragg questioning a truly amazing collection of experts on a very wide range of topics, and having tea.