Sometimes I don't need to justify space exploration - space will just speak for itself (with a little help from NASA) http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=Jl_qA5I_ycA In a similar vein, I also highly recommend the Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD) if you haven't seen it before. The daily pictures motivate me each morning... [Read More]

On space.com today, one of these reports is not like the others: http://www.space.com/20449-swiss-private-rocket-plane-2017.html http://www.space.com/20461-russia-moon-robots-missions.html http://www.space.com/20452-scotland-first-satellite-launching-soon.html The first two are articles describing a space mission or technology concept accompanied by a slew of excellent computer-generated graphics, an impressive description and an ambitious timeline. These hyped-up but meat-lacking reports are a strong... [Read More]

If you’ll bear with me, I’ll wrap up my rant about changing the grant system in this post.  Picking up where we left off, here are two more changes that could improve government research funding: a)    Fund the researcher/lab, not the project This change has the same intention as a)... [Read More]

This post is a follow-up to points I made about the absurd inefficiency of the grant system that funds most public research. While there is some value in just shedding light on a problem, it is far more valuable to point out the problem and propose some solutions.  Most of... [Read More]

This week, the journal Nature published a short article with the headline: “Funding: Australia’s grant system wastes time.” Here is a link for those with access. Scientific journals aren’t known for their sense of humor, but the understatement of the title is so extreme that it must be an attempt at a... [Read More]