Astronaut Edgar Mitchell believes that nuclear war was averted by peace-loving aliens. (Also, Buzz Aldrin, nailing it.)
Sarah Kliff of Vox watched all of the Planned Parenthood videos (up through 8/13) and put together a surprisingly fair report. I hope she does so again after they were all released.
Chris Cuomo put his finger on the real problem with the ISIS/sex slavery story… it feeds negative stereotypes.
The EPA holds polluters accountable, but who holds the EPA accountable?
I tend to assume those politicians that talk about keeping Chick-Fil-E and such out of their town are chest-pounding for the cameras. Turns out, looks like they mean it.
I will absolutely watch Dante’s Devine Comedy film(s), but I will absolutely go into it with low expectations.
“Unless the doctor’s pay is somehow linked to performance, there is a good chance that the quality of care in the public sector would be worse than in the private sector.”
This makes sense: Vox reports that during recessions, college students pick money-making majors.
A look at data and elections, from Texas.
If you’re worried about political self-segregation online, it’s apparently nothing compared to real life.
An all-important question has been answered: On Friends, how much does Joey owe Chandler.
Well, I suppose bribery may indeed be an inelastic good.
Tina Rosenberg looks at the kidney market in Iran.
Razib Khan looks at the history of the British and the Caste System of India.
Meet Moore’s Law’s evil twin.
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6 Responses to Linkluster Three-Ninety-Nine
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I want to be a snarky devils advocate for that EPA story, but I just can’t.
I though Moore’s Law’s evil twin was Rock’s Law, which says that the cost of a leading-edge fab doubles every four years. In terms of shrinking geometries, the smaller foundry companies have pretty much reached the end of the line for what they can afford. Intel and Samsung probably have about one generation left before they can’t afford to go smaller. China (the country) might decide to finance one generation beyond that.
Because I’m too busy to research it myself, but what drives the cost increases in IC fab?
Everything gets harder and harder to do. Consider the problem of wafer positioning for photolithography (closet mechanical engineer, here).
The wafer stage holding 300 mm wafers (something over twelve inches square, tens of pounds) is levitated on either an air bearing or, for vacuum operations, magnetically. For 20 nm features, the stage must be positioned to about plus-or-minus 3.5 nm, which requires sensor accuracy of about 1 nm (ie, accurate to about 12 silicon atoms). It’s a six degrees of freedom control feedback problem — algorithm research is still active. Time is money, many move-settle-expose steps are required for each mask (and there may be >60 masks in total), so the ideal is high acceleration, gross movements happening in at least cm/sec, quick final positioning and active vibration damping. Current limiting factor appears to be sensor accuracy.
Now add similarly difficult problems in at least a half-dozen other engineering specialties…
Something tells me we are going to have to come up with a different way to manufacture chips soon, or we are going to need a whole new way to design/paradigm for computing processors.
I wonder if Chris Cuomo is concerned that media coverage of Kim Davis feeds negative stereotypes of Christians?
Actually, I wonder how in the hell people in Western media still seem to think Muslims are some oppressed & persecuted minority*?
*Well, they are, but mostly by other Muslims.