WELCOME
Thanks for coming to visit my website. I write about science, technology, foreign affairs, and other subjects.
Follow me on Twitter: @kkakaesDrones and Aerial Observation
I edited and wrote part of a short book published by New America in July 2015 and freely available online, about how drones are being used in new ways around the world. It's meant to be useful to people who want to fly drones.The Pioneer Detectives
I published a short book with The Millions.
It's the story of the Pioneer Anomaly, a long-standing mystery. The book is short and fun—the length of a novella—but also, in the words of Amazon's reviewer, "powerful and sad". If you've got any curiosity about how NASA works behind the scenes or why scientists believe what they do, I think you'll enjoy the book.
It is available on Amazon as a Kindle Single and also on Apple's iBooks.Drone Wars
I wrote a chapter on the long history of drone technology going back to the early 20th century in this edited Cambridge University Press volume.
Phobos-Grunt, grunt.
11 January 2012
The U.S. Didn’t Shoot Down Russia’s Mars Probe. But It Could Have.
Strange accusations from the head of Russia’s space programme, and why they matter.
[Slate]
String theory
5 January 2012
The art and science of making violins
I spent some time with Tom King, a violinmaker in Fayetteville, Arkansas. He uses a combination of craftsmanship and technical analysis to make great-sounding, and beautiful, instruments. He once took several million dollars worth of violins to the hospital to get CAT-scanned.
[Stanford Magazine]
Chronicle of a War Foretold
5 January 2012
Violence Begets Violence in Mexico
How nobody understands what spurred 45,000 drug-related murders in Mexico, though Ioan Grillo’s new book El Narco does a good job of trying to.
[Zocalo Public Square]
The 40-year itch
5 October 2011
How to build a really awesome spaceship, maybe
Would-be space explorers, scientists, and a couple of crackpots gather at DARPA’s 100-Year Starship Symposium to try to get interstellar travel unstuck.
[Slate]
clips, Physics, Astronomy and Space, Science and Technology, Science Policy and Technological Culture, Technology
tags: 100 year straship, DARPA, exotic propulsion, gravity drives, interstellar travel, NASA, nuclear rockets, quantum vacuum fluctuation, Slate, solar sails, space travel, zero point energy
Atomic Dogs
28 September 2011
Why can’t the world’s nuclear energy watchdog do anything about Fukushima or Iran’s weapons program?
A report from Vienna
[Foreign Policy]
The Philosopher-Fisticuffers
14 September 2011
A review of Enrique Krauze’s new book Redeemers
Which consists of 12 profiles of Latin American figures, and is a good read.
[Zocalo Public Square]
Salvaging space
1 September 2011
Cleaning up low-Earth-orbit debris might lead to new space technologies.
Why problems are sometimes useful to have.
[Slate]
Weapons in space
16 August 2011
The future (and past) of weapons in space–the vulnerabilities of satellites and the difficulty of banning weapons
An in-depth report, for purchase or subscribers.
[CQ Global Researcher]
China’s innovation policy is all wrong
21 July 2011
But can the Chinese government come up with a new one?
Why China’s current innovation policy does not promote innovation
[CNN Global Innovation Showcase]
Ranking Countries on Innovation
4 July 2011
Why it doesn’t work very well
The flaws in a recent INSEAD study
[CNN Global Innovation Showcase]
If Mexico Were a Movie
1 June 2011
Uncle Sam Would be the Villain
How the US has undermined Mexico’s development
[Zocalo Public Square]
Mexico
tags: mexico, Zocalo Public Square
Found in translation
22 February 2011
Translation by the numbers
How statistical machine translation evolved to work as well as it does
[Washington Post]
Looking for ET
25 February 2010
Signs of life
As the search for alien life turns 50, its practitioners find new methods
The Last Days of Bank Secrecy?
1 September 2009
An article I wrote for Poder, a magazine about business in Latin America, that describes the crumbling of bank secrecy and what it means for the region.
The Caribbean
tags: Banking, Poder, Switzerland, Wealth
Shelter from the Storm
15 May 2009
An article for Poder, a Latin American business magazine, about the impact of the economic crisis on the Caribbean.
Rebuilding Haiti
12 February 2009
Weighed down by disasters
A modest success for the United Nations is threatened by nature and lassitude
The Caribbean
tags: Gonaives, Haiti, hurricanes, United Nations
Haiti
12 February 2009
The island and the outside world
Being in Haiti without being in Haiti
The Caribbean
tags: Gonaives, Haiti, Labadee, United Nations