kernelbob
- Website: kernelbob.wordpress.com/
Recent Actions
-
Commented on Covid on Mars
Maybe the Martian canals are collapsed subway tunnels from an ancient civilization. Really wide tunnels, if they're visible from space. (Yes, I know the canal theory has been thoroughly debunked.) As for the pandemic problem, I suspect that in 40...
Comment Threads
-
JohnS commented on
Covid on Mars
Pigeon @ 1259: Carousel! I'm guessing this is not a reference to the 1945 Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II Broadway musical?...
-
wroehl commented on
Covid on Mars
"In 1935, when FDR signed the Social Security Act which set the retirement age at 65, average life expectancy was 60.7 years (that's why they chose 65, because most working people wouldn't live long enough to collect)." That's not how life expectancy works, exactly. Lower values of life expectancy are associated with mortality at both ends of the age distribution. So high levels of child mortality pull the expected value downwards. Once a person survives childhood their life expectancy is now more than the average for the population because they did not die at childbirth, or at age 2, etc....
-
Robert Prior commented on
Covid on Mars
Logan's Run The film isn't bad, the books are better....
-
JohnS commented on
Covid on Mars
wroehl @ 1264: "In 1935, when FDR signed the Social Security Act which set the retirement age at 65, average life expectancy was 60.7 years (that's why they chose 65, because most working people wouldn't live long enough to collect)." That's not how life expectancy works, exactly. Lower values of life expectancy are associated with mortality at both ends of the age distribution. So high levels of child mortality pull the expected value downwards. Once a person survives childhood their life expectancy is now more than the average for the population because they did not die at childbirth, or at...
-
LAvery commented on
Covid on Mars
Interesting article about how SARS-Cov2 variants were observed to arise in a persistent infection in an immunocompromised patient. This is not about "long Covid". In typical long Covid, an acute SARS-Cov2 infection ends fairly quickly, but produces damage that has long-term consequences, causing chronic disease. Rather, in this immunocompromised patient an active SARS-Cov2 infection persisted for five months (then he died). He remained infectious throughout that time. What's remarkable about this case is that the doctors took samples throughout the course of the disease. And they saw the virus evolve in real time. This patient suggests the problematic variants we're...
Following
Not following anyone
Buy my Books
Quick Stuff
Specials
- Common Misconceptions About Publishing—a series of essays about the industry I work in.
- How I Got Here In The End —my non-writing autobiography, or what I did before becoming a full-time writer.
- Unwirer—an experiment in weblog mediated collaborative fiction.
- Shaping the Future—a talk I gave on the social implications of Moore's Law.
- Japan: first impressions — or, what I did on my holidays
- Inside the MIT Media Lab—what it’s like to spend a day wandering around the Media Lab.
- The High Frontier, Redux — space colonization: feasible or futile?
- “Nothing like this will be built again”—inside a nuclear reactor complex.
- Old blog—2003-2006 (RIP)
Merchandise
About This Page
Find recent content on the main index or look in the archives to find all content.