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I thought this was supposed to be a safer alternative?

Here's one:

http://www.academia.edu/542384/A_Review_on_Impacts_of_Genetically_Modified_Food_on_Human_Health

Skip down to "GM DIET SHOWS TOXIC REACTIONS IN THEDIGESTIVE TRACT"

Have you got any good readings you can recommend on the subject =)?

Registration and Purchase required? PDFs from the New Cambridge History of Islam. There's an amazing maritime section here:
http://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/histories/ebook.jsf?bid=CBO9781139056137

Blow your mind, with the journal of the travels of 14th Century adventurer, Ibn Batutta. He makes Marco Polo look like a homebody.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_Battuta

1929 abridged translation of Ibn Batutta's journals:
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=zKqn_CWTxYEC

More books? Warwick Ball is an accessible archaeologist and historian, who effectively destroys the case for "Clash of Civilizations", and the entire dubious taxonomy of "east and west".
http://www.amazon.com/Rome-East-Transformation-Warwick-Ball/dp/0415243572/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1382201303&sr=1-1
http://www.amazon.com/Out-Arabia-Phoenicians-Discovery-Europe/dp/1566568013/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1382201303&sr=1-5
http://www.amazon.com/Towards-One-World-Ancient-Persia/dp/1566568226/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1382201303&sr=1-3

Nice, "pro-Nabatean" writeup on the late-antique origin of Arab maritime trade, after the breakup of Alexandrian east. You will have to go farther back, to the Phoenicians of Tyre and Carthage, 'tho! This author begins with Nabatean emergence. There are many links on this site... Quite fascinating.
http://nabataea.net/who1.html

Oman and maritime history. Nice to overlay this with the Nabateans. These things met and mingled - especially out in the Indian ocean, away from home:
http://www.maritime.om/Oman-Maritime-History

The sections on Ancient Indian and Chinese maritime development is slim, but worthwhile:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_maritime_history#Indian_subcontinent

An Indo-centric, but factual and entertaining page:
http://www.aseanindia.com/navy/maritime-history

Summary of "silk-routes":
http://www.silkroutes.net/SilkSpiceIncenseRoutes.htm

Genoa in the Crimea:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genoese_colonies

Technology of early Islamic ship-building - mostly focused on Mediterranean, not Indo-Persian
http://www.academia.edu/1596791/Early_Islamic_Maritime_Technology

The problem with searching the web for existence (or lack thereof) of a subject is that if the community has changed to a different synonym for the topic, you might end up misled by the dearth of recent results from searching on the term that is no longer in fashion. What used to be "Doom clones" are now first-person shooters, "DOTA clones" are now MOBAs, and "text adventures" are now interactive fiction. The synonym problem is the web's version of guess the verb.

If we ask "What kinds of freedom in space does the skepticism of Arendt and Ballard place in question?" the answer would seem to be "Any conception of freedom which undermines our shared sense of vulnerability." What they point to is an appreciation that our human vulnerabilities are among those things which help to bind us together with others who share "a life like our own". Their kind of skepticism cannot then be answered by appeal to the removal of vulnerabilities but the latter is precisely what they find threatening. Any promise of freedoms which encroaches too far upon our shared vulnerabilities, which promises too much, will then also risk removing the basis for a specifically human sense of community.

This is from page 10. He's discussing ideas from a couple of philosophers (one, Hannah Arendt gets mentioned favorably in his Moon mining ethics paper) shared vulnerability yields a basis for a "specifically human sense of community". While he yearns for a better basis, he states that he thinks no "viable substitute" exists.

Well, let's look at historical examples of this in application. The German Nazis of the late 1930s were experts at this task, creating shared threats against mostly imaginary dangers such as Jews or Communists, which they used to build said "specifically human sense of community" and start a world war and various democide programs that killed many tens of millions of people.

So I'm not very impressed by such an ethics concern given how it's been used in the past. Maybe shared vulnerability is not that viable after all? I would suggest that if there really needs to be anything shared (and I don't see that there does), then shared goals are more worthy and ennobling than shared vulnerabilities.

But this is the sort of argument from the person who thinks they have ethical arguments against non-existing stripping mining of the Moon.

Ah, so the classic "we should all live in the dark and grow our own food" argument. Beautiful. Give King Ludd my warmest regards.

This guy is basically arguing (among other things) that because 100% of the energy from He-3 mining would not be used to directly power "a great life-enhancing project" - it is all bad and it should not be done.

Furthermore, in the absence of a radical alteration in patterns of human behaviour, a good deal of energy from He-3 mining is unlikely to go towards a great life-enhancing project. It is likely to be used for comparatively trivial purposes such as advertising, waste and the enhancement of prestige.
This is part and parcel of living in a society where choice is valued. However, there are some choices (the choice to be cruel, aggressive, destructive or wasteful) which may not be worth having and which, in some cases, we ought not to have.

You know... kinda the way paper and pens should not be produced because not all of them are used to create works of Shakespeare or Michelangelo.

Anyone willing to dig for more pearls of wisdom, here is his academia.edu page with his other works.

This(ignore the facebook bullshit, not needed to just read it online) offers some interesting theoretical tidbits.

The UN explains the financial side.

"Peacekeeping soldiers are paid by their own Governments according to their own national rank and salary scale. Countries volunteering uniformed personnel to peacekeeping operations are reimbursed by the UN at a standard rate, approved by the General Assembly, of a little over US$1,028 per soldier per month."(Some countries pay an additional stipend to soldiers on peacekeeping operations, large enough to be significant in areas with low salaries)

I'd imagine that it's partly that Nepal is one of the countries poor enough that they can deploy peacekeepers for profit(the UN standard rate, per soldier, is paid in USD and identical across contributing nations, so it goes a hell of a lot further in some countries than in others, depending on local pay scales and willingness to accept casualties) and partly Nepal's history of fielding soldiers as part of (English speaking, which is convenient for international peacekeeping missions) British colonial activities.

It is a bad thing because almost all conspiracies are false. Pointing at the exception that really is a conspiracy and saying "See? See!" is a great way to show a lack of discernment. You may very well have good reasons to believe a very specific conspiracy theory, but it is absolutely a bad thing to sound like somebody who believes conspiracies in general.

A brainwashed idiot is somebody who accepts anything in a class of things that sounds vaguely true without critical skepticism. Conspiracy theories are one such class.

One study showed that people who believe in a couple conspiracy theories tend to believe just about any conspiracy theory, including simultaneous stated belief in contradictory conspiracy theories.

http://www.academia.edu/1207098/Dead_and_alive_Beliefs_in_contradictory_conspiracy_theories

"In Study 1(n = 137), the more participants believed that Princess Diana faked her own death, the more they believed that she was murdered. In Study 2 (n = 102), the more participants believed that Osama Bin Laden was already dead when U.S. special forces raided his compound in Pakistan, the morethey believed he is still alive."

don't worry about unbalancing the "krill biomass" by killing whales: we do a great job of harvesting Krill already. when we talk about overfishing, we are observing a trend of moving south as northern hemisphere fisheries are depleted. we are also observing a trend of moving up the food web to procecute the primary producers. We are literally fishing as south as we can go, and we are now harvesting the source of food for the larger animals we fish for in the ocean. There's no where else to go, and there's nothing left to fish.

Dr. Daniel Pauly from the UBC Fisheries Centre states that fisheries are a gigantic Ponzi Scheme. We also don't even know what the pre-fishery populations were, so there is no initial baseline to base your advocacy on. To think we can change the krill biomass and put the ocean back into balance by modifying whale populations is rearranging deck chairs on the Hindenberg.

Actually, self-constructing buildings are a reality, even without 3D printers.

Some reasons why:

Leaky geopolitics the ruptures and transgressions of WikiLeaks

The Contributions Of Julian Assange To The Debate On Intellectual Property

Good point. I think the post was saying two things: 1) radiation shielding & repair strategies are not a big deal (we already use Fail-in-place to not touch systems for X year life cycles, for things like containerized data centres, or supercomputers.) 2) the unique environment allows some new choices...

I think 1) is pretty solid. 2) is more admittedly quite a bit more speculative... why bother with 2? well according to this: http://www.academia.edu/1328244/SuperGreen_Computing_Superconducting_Computers_as_Green_Technology

the article says it is reasonable to expect such computers to run one hundred times faster, and/or consume 100x less power than conventional systems. We are talking about supercomputers, so those order of magnitude turn into large numbers, in watts, in tonnes. Considering launch costs, it might be worthwhile to incur the technical risk. So yeah, it harder, but if you are going to go to the trouble of putting it on the moon, wouldn't you want one that went 100x faster for the same power envelope?

It would be ad-hominem ("about the man"), but not the Ad-Hominem Fallacy if you demonstrated his previous perfidiousness. There's an interesting paper regarding when ad-hominem arguments are not fallacious here.

And they are making millions doing it. You really should try it instead of breaking the internet.

Pffbtt... Typical astroturfing I'd expect from a PRMan. No really, you can't break the internet, but you can break a monolithic business model. Pirating isn't the cause of the artists getting the short end of the stick anymore than the consumer getting it. It's the fault of all the board members, middle management, lawyers, and promoters that take a majority of the artists' profits while reducing consumer choice and the quality of the product. Downhill Battle has been faithfully uncovering the egregious excesses of the corporate owners and used to have some nice infographics breaking up the profits by percentages (I tried to find some as they don't appear to be hosted on their site, anymore). I don't know how many studies I've seen that show pirating causes more purchases and how many years, end-to-end, the music and movie industry have made record profits. Do they really expect me to believe that pirating a movie takes away from the profits (read: wages) that the set employees make? Hell no, because set employees (makeup, special effects, lighting, sound) don't get royalties! It's the worst junk propaganda I've seen in years. I find it ironic, yet fitting, that a Youtube user was blocked from displaying a MPAA Public Service Announcement on the grounds that NBC/U owns the copyright.

The Copyfight has reached a point where I only want to pay the artist, directly. I loved the idea Radiohead used for "In Rainbows" as they received all the money donated (minus PayPal or the credit gateway fees). I'd like to just give bands cash, from my hand, so they get it all..... no middle-man making money, even if it's just 2-5 percent. If anything, maybe Flattr can start gaining traction as a way to say 'thanks' to all the wonderful artists who give their work away on YouTube and Vimeo for free. Hopefully musicians aren't constrained from putting some sort of donation/appreciation link on their websites by a contract; and without giving a dime back to their publisher (of whom should be so grateful they are representing such talent!). When it comes down to it, I want to really own the music or media I purchase. I don't want to wake up to find out Amazon or Apple has deleted something from one of many devices I own (e.g., Amazon: George Orwell's "1984"; Apple: Siri app pre 4s).

I found a study ("Meh. The Irrelevance of Copyright in the Public Mind" by Brett Lunceford & Shane Lunceford) about the public's seeming irreverence to copyright (I have a feeling there are segments of the population that pirate music just to spite the corporate oligarchy). They think this indifference has existed since recording instruments were mass-produced. It's not as if people were even consciously aware they were breaking any laws back then. If anything, I bet more than a few musicians and would-be corporate overlords that had a reel-to-reel back in the 50s made illegal recordings to share with their friends. I remember a friend of my father who made copies of Laserdiscs onto VCR tapes and gave them to his friends --and he even made simple short movies taking choice scenes from movies much like I added Simpsons or Ren and Stimpy soundclips between songs on my mix-tapes. I think it's simple.... reducing the choice of the consumer to use the media they purchase reduces creativity (and commerce), overall. Until then, people will always find a way to circumvent any roadblocks; real or perceived.

At what point will the technology provide more useful energy output than is required to manufacture and maintain the system? Will it substantially reduce fossil fuel usage, or is it another ruse, like the wind farms?

Oh dear, a Slashdot poster has made what appears to be a false claim about the EROI of wind farms.

Time to google around a bit and see if there's anything to it....

This analysis reviews and synthesizes the literature on net energy return for electric power generation by wind turbines. Energy return on investment (EROI) is the ratio of energy delivered to energy costs. [...] Our survey shows an average EROI for just the operational studies is 19.8 (n=60; std. dev=13.7) This places wind in a favorable position relative to fossil fuels, nuclear, and solar power generation technologies in terms of EROI."

So, to sum up the above summary -- parent poster is wrong. As a matter of historical record, the average wind farm produces about 20 times more much energy than it expends on construction and maintenance.

Oh dear, a Slashdot poster appears to share the same opinions as the Big Energy Companies. Please google a little further and take a look at http://www.wind-watch.org/ for a different point of view. BTW - I live in West Texas - we're surrounded by these beasts. It's all a scam foisted on us by companies like (early adopter) Enron. The winners are the developers, the losers are the customers neighbors, and wildlife. Ask the folks in North Texas, who had to deal with a brownout a few years ago when the winds died. Ask Big Energy why they must build more conventional plants when they add wind to the grid, and why those conventional plants have to be running while the wind farms are generating. Ask the residents of Great Britain and Europe how wonderful wind is. Ask how much carbon does wind energy eliminate from overall emissions. (/soapbox)

At what point will the technology provide more useful energy output than is required to manufacture and maintain the system? Will it substantially reduce fossil fuel usage, or is it another ruse, like the wind farms?

Oh dear, a Slashdot poster has made what appears to be a false claim about the EROI of wind farms.

Time to google around a bit and see if there's anything to it....

This analysis reviews and synthesizes the literature on net energy return for electric power generation by wind turbines. Energy return on investment (EROI) is the ratio of energy delivered to energy costs. [...] Our survey shows an average EROI for just the operational studies is 19.8 (n=60; std. dev=13.7) This places wind in a favorable position relative to fossil fuels, nuclear, and solar power generation technologies in terms of EROI."

So, to sum up the above summary -- parent poster is wrong. As a matter of historical record, the average wind farm produces about 20 times more much energy than it expends on construction and maintenance.

Here is an Interview and Transcript with Duane Hamacher, the astroarcheologist who wrote his thesis "On the Cultural Astronomy of Aboriginal Australia".