Working in both academia and government, it feels like I’m exposed to the maximum possible amount of face-palm-inducing bureaucratic shenanigans.  I’ve collected some good quotes that hopefully illustrate why bloated edifices of red tape and generalized rules fill me with alternating rage and despair:  Teacher incentives: "If a student does... [Read More]

In this week’s EconTalk podcast  (around minute 55,) Russ Roberts reiterates an interesting idea: that economists should film a constant video feed of themselves and their computer screen while they’re doing research. That way, all the discarded dead ends and fruitless attempts are documented along with the brilliant paper-worthy successes. The reason... [Read More]

Saturday Space Stories! Submarines in spaaaaace Earth Looking and Space Looking smallsats are awesome, especially privately funded ones. But at some point I really want less looking and more GOING But speaking of looking, this is still pretty sweet The personal opinions of government officials about things completely unrelated to... [Read More]

Every day I bike past an intersection with a gas station on three of the four corners.  The nice thing about biking is that my speed gives me time to pay attention to the prices at each place each day.  This leads (as is wont to happen while biking) to... [Read More]

A busy day at Ames continued to drive home the point that NASA has too many random cool projects for anybody to actually keep track of.  Did you know that there are people working on: Bacteria that can extract resources from lunar regolith? Self-diagnostic spacecraft systems? Self-flying helicopters? Actually easy-to-use... [Read More]