Netizen: Neil Armstrong

Showing posts with label Neil Armstrong. Show all posts

Wednesday, May 27, 2015

Space Travel And Showing Skin

Planets of the Solar System (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Space travel damages skin but makes hair grow FASTER: 'Astromice' study discovers the lesser-known impacts on astronauts

some astronauts experience skin dryness and itching after spending time in space - making them more vulnerable to scratches and irritation...... the astronaut underwent an accelerated skin ageing process in space...... ‘Weightlessness as experienced by astronauts during space flights affects physiological functions of the human organism that has evolved, like other organisms living on Earth, through continuous adaptation to the permanent gravitational field.’ ...... a study on 19 crew members of six Nasa-Mir missions from 1995 to 1998 indicated small skin injuries were the most frequent medical incidents including dryness and itching. ..... several cutaneous physiological changes were recorded after the mission such as coarsening and decreased skin elasticity ....... there might be more detrimental effects than thought on missions into deep space, such as to Mars

I have known this all along. We are not supposed to travel vast distances. We are supposed to take good care of earth. Maybe moon, maybe Mars. But there is nothing much going on either on Moon or Mars. Other than having a backup plan that might be needed a million years from now, I don't see the point. What would it take to recreate Tribeca or Chinatown on the moon or Mars? A lot. You will probably ended up creating a parking lot up there.

There is a reason why everything out there is measured in light years. We are supposed to stay back and measure, use telescopes and things, take in the incoming information if we ever got so curious. We are not supposed to go there. We are supposed to stay put.

I get the impression we experimented on people before we experimented on mice. Beware, time travels faster for the skin out there.

But if this is only about gravity, Mars has gravity. As long as you can survive the journey and make it fast, you should be okay. Right?

Sunday, October 19, 2014

Immersion

This is an interesting tool I just came across: https://immersion.media.mit.edu

This took me to this took me to this.

This is what I got for me. But I routinely delete most of my emails. As in, once every few months. Does this show I am a person who knows a lot of people who don't know each other? And that there are very few people who get a ton of emails from me? This obviously is not counting all the other ways you can get in touch with people. Email is only one way of many ways.

Friday, July 16, 2010

Tech, Women, Diversity

Stained glass at St John the Baptist's Anglica...

Image via Wikipedia

Often when Fred Wilson puts out a blog post where he links to about four different blog posts, I know it is one of those posts that is asking for a reply blog post, sometimes to echo the sentiment, sometimes to express a disagreement, often just to give further momentum to a great topic. Today is the turn of women in technology.

This whole debate reminds me of the creationism debate. My take has been religion and science deal with two different levels of reality. Religion is a belief system. Those beliefs do not have to follow the laws of physics, and many of them don't. Jesus walking on water makes sense in religion, does not make sense in science. I am not going to think you are a prude for believing that.

Religion has to be looked at in the religious realm. Science inhabits the scientific realm. And there are intersection points, like when Galileo was harassed. When Neil Armstrong landed on the moon, many people in Nepal did not believe. The moon is a god. The guy probably climbed some hill, and thinks he is on the moon, that was the sentiment.

Gender is as big a topic in sociology as gravity is in physics. It is big. It is all pervasive. Just because we don't think about it much does not mean gravity is not active every waking hour, and while we are down.

There are many - they tend to be white men for some reason - who argue technology is neutral to your background. You can be any gender, any cultural background, it does not matter. They are lying. Or they are ignorant. Some of them are evil. They are invested in persisting the status quo.

Even where meritocracy can be shown to exist, those with the merits and the skills and the intellect stand on centuries of favoring one kind of people over another kind of people. And that is when there are not outright sexist informal and formal structures in place.

Gender and technology: there are many intersection points.

Equality is something that has to be proactively sought. I don't think sexism is in the interests of men. A healthy male female ratio in the workplace and at the various leadership levels has to be attempted. This is not a male versus female issue. There are those - men and women - who are on the right side of history, and there are those who are on the wrong side. We should get more people to come over on to the right side. We have to constantly be evangelizing.

Fred Wilson: XX Combinator
Tereza Nemessanyi: XX Combinator
Brad Feld: The Discussion About The Lack Of Women In Tech
Eric Ries: Why Diversity Matters (The Meritocracy Business)

When you visit Fred's blog post, make sure you don't miss out on the action in the comments section.

Pages