Let’s say you’re a NASA engineer in the 1960s, wearing your snazzy black plastic glasses, thinking of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth. You start thinking navigation. Getting into the right orbits is going to take a fair bit of computation–plus some fine control of rocket engines and [...]

We’re well past the point of being able to consider only the most pleasant energy sources. Looking at the number of people on the planet, and the increasingly dire reports of damage caused by the burning of fossil fuels, we need to be realistic. These steps, by the scientific community and the Obama administration, are heartening steps in what seems the right direction.

What happens when a part of our body gets injured–or just wears out?
The ideal response would be to replace the tissue and cells lost with new, full-functional replacements–regeneration. For the parts of our body that are constantly turning over–skin, blood, and to a lesser extent bone for examples–this is exactly what happens. Since the cells [...]

Is reading The Stranger online actually any greener than reading the printed-in-Yakima hard copy? It was time to roll up my sleeves and do some real, primary, research on the question. Allow me to show my work.

In this month’s Esquire meet Mark Roth—certified genius, a fellow Seattleite and one of the more innovative scientists on the planet.
Back when I was a fresh and new graduate student, I took a course co-chaired by him and fellow Hutch professor Dan Gottschling—on the chromosome—that propelled me forward to my thesis project. At the time, [...]

General Motors is nearing death–a breathtaking fall in a dizzily short amount of time.
And here’s what might be most shocking–despite being saddled with the costs and responsibilities of being the largest private pension and health insurance provider in the world, GM has made clever and key investments that deserve fulfillment. Yes, I’m talking about an [...]

Well, that was a lot of money chasing nothing. A vast pool of money, and a growing list of problems–why wasn’t the connection ever made? Why didn’t at least some of this wealth go to solving even a few of these problems?

We need to try something new, to start a new engine behind our economy.

If you aren’t concerned about the massive bailout of Freddy Mac and Fannie Mae by the US taxpayers, you should be.

The next president, who in turn will set the regulatory environment, really matters.

McCain’s record is terrible.

Everything.

The bailout of Bear Stearns was a mere appetizer to the cliff we’re falling over now.

Market theory would tell us the government should not intervene–these institutions should be allowed to fail, the unwise investments allowed to collapse and the money to be lost. At the last height of Laissez-faire economic policy, in the 1920’s, that was the plan. The institutions were allowed to collapse one-by-one, causing the Great Depression.

That didn’t work out so well. In the 1930’s, sifting through the rubble of the US economy, the next plan was regulation.

We’re now left in the worst situation: Propping up failing deregulated markets with taxpayer dollars.