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Actually, this is no longer the case. You can get combo DVDs that have both the theatrical and the "special" versions. Here. Unfortunately, the theatrical is only in Dolby 2.0 and the video hasn't been remastered like the re-release, but it's certainly better than VHS.

I generally agree with the GP post's suggestions, aside from Ian Banks (many people like him, but he seems a bit flat to me.) Your suggestions also seem a bit flat to me, with the exception of Vernor Vinge, who I can't recommend highly enough.

Other greats who should be mentioned: Gene Wolfe and Jack Vance

On Gene Wolfe: "Award-winning science fiction author Michael Swanwick has said: 'Gene Wolfe is the greatest writer in the English language alive today. Let me repeat that: Gene Wolfe is the greatest writer in the English language alive today! I mean it.'" Similar statements are also made by many others, including the Washington Post, the New York Times, Ursula K. LeGuin, and Neil Gaiman. A good book to start is Shadow and Claw.

Jack Vance is Gene Wolfe's favorite writer, and Tales of the Dying Earth is his favorite book by Vance. (Vance has a near-religious following. Sets of his collected works (the 44 volume "Vance Integral Edition" of 2005) have more than doubled in price. - $3,500 and up.)

These two have written far better books than any mainstream modern author. It is no exaggeration to rate them with Tolkien, Melville, or Poe.

I generally agree with the GP post's suggestions, aside from Ian Banks (many people like him, but he seems a bit flat to me.) Your suggestions also seem a bit flat to me, with the exception of Vernor Vinge, who I can't recommend highly enough.

Other greats who should be mentioned: Gene Wolfe and Jack Vance

On Gene Wolfe: "Award-winning science fiction author Michael Swanwick has said: 'Gene Wolfe is the greatest writer in the English language alive today. Let me repeat that: Gene Wolfe is the greatest writer in the English language alive today! I mean it.'" Similar statements are also made by many others, including the Washington Post, the New York Times, Ursula K. LeGuin, and Neil Gaiman. A good book to start is Shadow and Claw.

Jack Vance is Gene Wolfe's favorite writer, and Tales of the Dying Earth is his favorite book by Vance. (Vance has a near-religious following. Sets of his collected works (the 44 volume "Vance Integral Edition" of 2005) have more than doubled in price. - $3,500 and up.)

These two have written far better books than any mainstream modern author. It is no exaggeration to rate them with Tolkien, Melville, or Poe.

But what Amazon doesn't do is provide Diet Mt. Dew at a reasonable price... http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=diet+mountain+dew&x=0&y=0 It's currently $5.99 at my local Harps for a case (24) 12oz cans. Why on earth would I pay Amazon 21$ for the same thing?

Amazon, of all companies, has been doing that for a while in Seattle.

I know I'm too naive and want to believe in people having common sense...

I doubt you have more then a passing interest in Canadian politics and Canadian/US relations. The liberals have been chipping away at Canadian social programs after Trudeau. The privatized national debt to foreign bond holders was the whole reason Bob Rae could not keep his promises regarding social spending (this is documented in the ohcanadamovie by elizabeth may on record but there are also other official sources besies may that also say the same thing).

A good place to keep up on the bs of the right.

http://pushedleft.blogspot.com/

Here is a history of the right in Canada and it's a long read...

http://harpercrusade.blogspot.com/

Another good book for you would be George Grant's lament of a nation.

http://www.amazon.com/Lament-Nation-Canadian-Nationalism-Anniversary/dp/0773530029/

Amazon is a personification of the spirit of the Internet, which is one of true democracy, access to the means of distribution, and rapid evolution

Spirit of the internet? Some on seeing Amazons' passing judgement on Wikileaks might think it more aligned with a certain corporate spirit than a spirit of the internet. If they're really support democracy, which can't function properly with a poorly informed public, maybe they shouldn't be the ones to decide whether or not someone is a journalist.

Hardware doesn't make spirit. What people are doing, and the thoughts that drive the choices made probably do.

They are still contented to profit from the sale of books about WikiLeaks.

http://www.amazon.com/Inside-WikiLeaks-Assange-Dangerous-Website/dp/030795191X

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/dec/11/wikileaks-amazon-denial-democracy-lieberman

Uhhh, actually, 200 bucks seems far to much for even a quality book. There are a few books for which I've paid ~100 dollars. Precious few. Wonder how much an entire set of Encyclopedia Brittanica costs today? Hmmmm - lemme google that: http://www.amazon.com/Encyclopaedia-Britannica-42711-Encyclopedia-Deluxe/dp/1615354379

Awesome. Now, there are better encyclopedia, I guess, and there are worse. But, that one is rather dear to me. My Grandma bought me the 1973 edition, because I was her favorite nerdy grandson. (She had a favorite jock grandson, a favorite motorhead grandson, a favorite redheaded granddaughter - etc) If I recall correctly, that set cost about $1200. And, I used the thing extensively. Great source of information, at the time.

Of course, today, one can use the internet to find everything that the Brittanica has, without ever looking at an encyclopedia.

I have never seen a textbook that was intrinsically worth more than the good old Brittanica.

Which is why some writers ( like Cormac McCarthy of "The Road") don't let their books be classified in the genre. Although it won the Pulitzer in it's day, and the winner this year Jennifer Egan's "A Visit From The Goon Squad" is also a genre novel.

That's exactly what SkyNet would say.

Great... another 'meme'. "That's exactly what _______ would say."

It's $29, and works with any camera. That's not expensive, nor is it hobbled to any but a small niche of geeks.

A USB SD card reader that reads SD/SDHC cards costs a dollar. Of course if you wanted to go with a brand name such as Sandisk for your reader that would set you back a whopping three dollars.

What a load of shit. You can also buy iPad SD adaptors from other companies if you want, but your comparison is irrational. The adaptors you are linking to don't have a dock connector, they don't include two adaptors, and they don't connect to an iPad. Also, you are not comparing the price of buying them in a store, which is usually about $20, you're comparing the cheapest price you can find straight off the docks (or even straight out of the factories in China). Few people buy their parts this way.

All of this, of course, ignores the original question of whether or not $29 is "expensive". It's not.

So Apple's dongle enjoys a mere 10 times more expensive that an equivalent reader that plugs into a USB port. And yes it is hobbled since SD cards work in a variety of roles, and in a variety of applications not just for pictures and not just in blessed apps e.g. transferring files like documents, videos & music between devices.

I'll just quote what I originally wrote, since you clearly didn't read it the first time through;

"nor is it hobbled to any but a small niche of geeks"

Congratulations on being in the small percentage of people for whom the port is "hobbled". Ironically, the micro SD slot in the Xoom is even more hobbled, but I'm sure you'll let that one slide.

There is no point trying to defend this practice, it's deliberately done to fleece and limit users, no other reason.

Neither, actually. It's not done to "limit users". By definition, it adds capabilities to the user. How ignorantly Orwellian of you. And $29 for two adaptors that let you connect a camera to your iPad is not "fleecing". If you think it is, buy one from someone else. Apple isn't forcing anyone to buy one of theirs.

It's $29, and works with any camera. That's not expensive, nor is it hobbled to any but a small niche of geeks.

A USB SD card reader that reads SD/SDHC cards costs a dollar. Of course if you wanted to go with a brand name such as Sandisk for your reader that would set you back a whopping three dollars.

What a load of shit. You can also buy iPad SD adaptors from other companies if you want, but your comparison is irrational. The adaptors you are linking to don't have a dock connector, they don't include two adaptors, and they don't connect to an iPad. Also, you are not comparing the price of buying them in a store, which is usually about $20, you're comparing the cheapest price you can find straight off the docks (or even straight out of the factories in China). Few people buy their parts this way.

All of this, of course, ignores the original question of whether or not $29 is "expensive". It's not.

So Apple's dongle enjoys a mere 10 times more expensive that an equivalent reader that plugs into a USB port. And yes it is hobbled since SD cards work in a variety of roles, and in a variety of applications not just for pictures and not just in blessed apps e.g. transferring files like documents, videos & music between devices.

I'll just quote what I originally wrote, since you clearly didn't read it the first time through;

"nor is it hobbled to any but a small niche of geeks"

Congratulations on being in the small percentage of people for whom the port is "hobbled". Ironically, the micro SD slot in the Xoom is even more hobbled, but I'm sure you'll let that one slide.

There is no point trying to defend this practice, it's deliberately done to fleece and limit users, no other reason.

Neither, actually. It's not done to "limit users". By definition, it adds capabilities to the user. How ignorantly Orwellian of you. And $29 for two adaptors that let you connect a camera to your iPad is not "fleecing". If you think it is, buy one from someone else. Apple isn't forcing anyone to buy one of theirs.

That's exactly what SkyNet would say.

It's amazing what people believe when machines begin to lie.

That's exactly what SkyNet would say.

It's $29, and works with any camera. That's not expensive, nor is it hobbled to any but a small niche of geeks.

A USB SD card reader that reads SD/SDHC cards costs a dollar. Of course if you wanted to go with a brand name such as Sandisk for your reader that would set you back a whopping three dollars.

So Apple's dongle enjoys a mere 10 times more expensive that an equivalent reader that plugs into a USB port. And yes it is hobbled since SD cards work in a variety of roles, and in a variety of applications not just for pictures and not just in blessed apps e.g. transferring files like documents, videos & music between devices.

There is no point trying to defend this practice, it's deliberately done to fleece and limit users, no other reason.

It's $29, and works with any camera. That's not expensive, nor is it hobbled to any but a small niche of geeks.

A USB SD card reader that reads SD/SDHC cards costs a dollar. Of course if you wanted to go with a brand name such as Sandisk for your reader that would set you back a whopping three dollars.

So Apple's dongle enjoys a mere 10 times more expensive that an equivalent reader that plugs into a USB port. And yes it is hobbled since SD cards work in a variety of roles, and in a variety of applications not just for pictures and not just in blessed apps e.g. transferring files like documents, videos & music between devices.

There is no point trying to defend this practice, it's deliberately done to fleece and limit users, no other reason.

Change.Org says that for the past several days the Chinese have been DDoSing it over a petition they are posting to gather support for Ai WeiWei.

http://blog.change.org/2011/04/chinese-hackers-attack-change-org-platform-in-reaction-to-ai-weiwei-campaign/

But if you go to the Change.Org site to sign the petition, you get a message saying that something is wrong with their servers, which are at Amazon.

http://www.change.org/petitions/call-for-the-release-of-ai-weiwei

http://status.aws.amazon.com/

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9216064/Amazon_gets_black_eye_from_cloud_outage

Could Amazon's outage be the result of Chinese hackers?

Muuu hahahahaha! https://forums.aws.amazon.com/message.jspa?messageID=238872#238872

Amazon's comments on the outage do not mention weather as a cause: http://status.aws.amazon.com/

"8:54 AM PDT We'd like to provide additional color on what were working on right now (please note that we always know more and understand issues better after we fully recover and dive deep into the post mortem). A networking event early this morning triggered a large amount of re-mirroring of EBS volumes in US-EAST-1. This re-mirroring created a shortage of capacity in one of the US-EAST-1 Availability Zones, which impacted new EBS volume creation as well as the pace with which we could re-mirror and recover affected EBS volumes. Additionally, one of our internal control planes for EBS has become inundated such that it's difficult to create new EBS volumes and EBS backed instances. We are working as quickly as possible to add capacity to that one Availability Zone to speed up the re-mirroring, and working to restore the control plane issue. We're starting to see progress on these efforts, but are not there yet. We will continue to provide updates when we have them. "

"Hey, Stephen Jay Gould, you there? Yeah, they're talking evolution on Slashdot. They seem to think organisms always adapt perfectly to their environments. Heh, yeah, I know, right? Okay, I'll tell 'em you said that."

We do not inhabit a perfected world where natural selection ruthlessly scrutinizes all organic structures and then molds them for optimal utility. Organisms inherit a body form and a style of embryonic development; these impose constraints upon future change and adaptation.

-- Hen's Teeth and Horses' Toes.

Organisms are always constrained in their evolution by the limits of their embryonic development, their biochemical systems, and by the fundamental laws of physics and chemistry. Plants evolving in a binary system with a broader spectrum than sunlight won't necessarily evolve a broad spectrum system of photosynthetic absorbers, and thus look "black". It can only happen if there exist possible transition metal complexes with the right absorption spectrum, if those complexes can be manufactured by the cell's chemical machinery, if those photo-active molecules can be linked into an existing metabolic pathway, if if if.

Hell, existing Earth plants don't even make very efficient use of the Sun's spectrum. Plants are green because they fail to absorb green light. Yellow is also poorly absorbed. But these are right at the peak of the solar spectrum! Why are plants letting all this good energy be wasted? Because despite billions of years of evolution, they haven't "figured out" a way to take advantage of it. Why should we expect different anywhere else?

$4000? The cheapest one I found is $11 with free Prime shipping on Amazon. Heck, a Sony Bloggie is like $250, and it shoots 3D *video*. I'd wager that the quality is at least on-par with some craptacular software for a fanboy cellphone. :)

Yes, I know this is different. I don't care.

$4000? The cheapest one I found is $11 with free Prime shipping on Amazon. Heck, a Sony Bloggie is like $250, and it shoots 3D *video*. I'd wager that the quality is at least on-par with some craptacular software for a fanboy cellphone. :)

Yes, I know this is different. I don't care.

Related book on why so many police officers take to planting evidence and forcing inaccurate confessions:
    "Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts"
    http://www.amazon.com/Mistakes-Were-Made-But-Not/dp/0151010986
"Why do people refuse to admit mistakes - so deeply that they transform their own brains? They're not kidding themselves: they really believe what they have to believe to justify their original thought.
    There are some pretty scary examples in this book. Psychologists who refuse to admit they'd bought into the false memory theories, causing enormous pain. Politicians. Authors. Doctors. Therapists. Alien abduction victims.
    Most terrifying: The justice system operates this way. Once someone is accused of a crime - even under the most bizarre circumstances - the police believe he's guilty of something. Even when the DNA shows someone is innocent, or new evidence reveals the true perpetrator, they hesitate to let the accused person go free. ,,,"

And progressively that can lead police officers down a route of progressive desensitization where they start planting evidence on more and more people until they plant evidence on anyone they have any suspicions about...

Seriously?
http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/ref=amb_link_85231331_8?ie=UTF8&docId=1000668461&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-6&pf_rd_r=0NPANR10CQAV41KXG8BK&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=1292763082&pf_rd_i=130

The top 25 of 2011 so far at Amazon. Some DVDs are only a dollar or two cheaper than their Blu-Ray version, some are ten, the Walking Dead is 17 dollars cheaper on DVD

How Numbers Lie: A Consumer's Guide to the Fine Art of Numerical Deception

You can buy a 3 ton press off amazon for about $100 us - free shipping even! Must supply own sharp penetrating object, however. I was shocked to see that the final hand powered device shown in the article (not the video) is essentially the 7 ton press my friend has in his garage for car bodywork/repair, and costs around $80 at harbor freight tools.
 
I'm not sure you even need a sharp penetrating object; simply warping the case/platters out of straight should be sufficient to destroy the data in most cases. Poking a hole in the platter is sure to impress your boss, but it seems overkill once you've already warped the disk.

Holy crap! Are you telling me I don't have to rewind DVDs!! I have been using one of these for years! http://www.amazon.com/DVD-Rewinder/dp/B000NK7E7Y

Right there on NewEgg.

Which is really talking about computer-backed burners, which is what I assume the OP was referring to. If you're looking for a standalone component, it might run a little more.

Forget the chisel, get an Estwing rock pick. These suckers can rain destruction upon almost any man made or natural object. Depending on how violent you are feeling, you can punch a dozen holes in something in seconds. Then flip it over and smash it flat.

Mine has been hammering rock, concrete, and metal for over 30 years and works as well as the day I got it. My great-grandkids will be beating the crap out of stuff with it long after I'm dead.

http://www.amazon.com/Estwing-E3-22P-22-Ounce-Rock-Pick/dp/B0002OVCMO/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1303226325&sr=8-2

Gary Taubes' carb hypothesis requires that obese individuals are capable of violating the laws of thermodynamics and the laws of conservation of mass so he's just reaching for something, anything that can vaguely support his bullshit claims.

That's not what he's saying at all. He saying that eating carbs causes an insulin response, and increased insulin levels cause a body's fat cells to take in calories; to get fat.

You can read it in his book Why We Get Fat. http://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Get-Fat-About/dp/0307272702/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1303174076&sr=8-1

There hasn't really been anything like it, since then.

"A Bit of Frye and Laurie" comes close.

"In a visit to Ethiopia in 2009, I talked to more than one citizen there who said that the arability of the land wasn't so much the problem as not having the machines to farm the land productively. "

This is completely ignorant. Read here:

"In the late 1970s Ethiopia's communist regime nationalised all land, and private ownership remains outlawed. The millions of small-scale farmers work under licence from the state, and most plots are one hectare or less, which has hampered efforts to improve food security."

Now the Ethiopian government is leasing out large scale plots of land to foreign farm companies, which will certainly produce some work for Ethiopians, but your typical Ethiopian still has no ownership of the land and thus no ability to use that capital to get loans for farm equipment, fertilizer, and seed.

As Hernando DeSoto pointed out in "The Mystery of Capital", every developed nation in the world at one time went through the transformation from predominantly informal, extralegal land ownership to a formal, unified legal property system that allowed people to leverage property into wealth. This has not been done in countries such as Ethiopia (Egypt is another country with little rural private land ownership).

Lack of private property rights and over-regulation and government ownership of business causes poverty. Enhancing private property rights and freedom to participate in commerce cause wealth. Even the Chinese have realized this (belatedly, after starving tens of millions of people to death with collective farming during the Great Leap Forward).

Poor people around the world are not too stupid, too lazy, or too ignorant to be entrepreneurs and productive farmers. They are simply kept from becoming rich by government. They can solve their own problems if they are allowed to.

Your post was thoughtful, unlike TFA. The only thing you missed was the perfect opportunity to recommend that all Slashdot overlords, submitters, moderators, and participants equip themselves with the following ignorance reduction module (aka an excellent book):

Innumeracy - Mathematical Illiteracy Consequences by John Allen Paulos .

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001BK9SMY

In truth, you can self-publish on paper as well today, so if a bad writer is particularly delusional about his importance, he can still get at you. E.g. check out this (and read the 1&2-star reviews).

If you are not an expert but would like more understanding on this topic, then I'd recommend Steven Pinker's, The Language Instinct.

http://www.amazon.com/Language-Instinct-How-Mind-Creates/dp/0060976519

One of his books discusses a series of experiments where babies were shown to be able to understand all phonemes but by the age of six-months only the phonemes of the parent's language are available. They did experiments with both adults and babies.

Also, Pinker talks about a group of people with no history that linguists have posited to once exist based upon common roots in modern languages that trace back to a period in history and then stop. Kind of a missing language link of people if you will. Not sure how that fits in here.

And if you have a Kindle, Amazon has a collection of free classics.

Ok...I get what he's trying to do now. Xanadu is essentially taking a book like The Second World War: A Complete History, just as an example, and go through it pulling out all the books referred to in its bibliography and opening those books to the referenced pages, then as you read the first book, as you reach footnotes you go to the referenced book to read the excerpt in its original context. It's a way to extrapolate bias, especially on something with controversial viewpoints. It's not a bad system in actuality. Research papers can consist of more sources, if properly set up it can be a way to track documentation of corporate memos... but there's also a greater chance for larger more complex projects to become unruly and nearly non-manageable.

Actually Angry Bird's Rio was not exclusive to Amazon. You can get it on the Android Market, you can get it from iTunes. So it clearly isn't an exclusive in any possible sense of the word.

Amazon AppStore
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004SBS8LA/ref=bt_atcg_mine_img_0?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_r=0PHR5R090MXJ5QMY29TC&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=1293151222&pf_rd_i=2478844011
Android Market
https://market.android.com/details?id=com.rovio.angrybirdsrio&feature=search_result
iTunes
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/angry-birds-rio/id420635506?mt=8

Clearly you can see it is available in two places for Android and also for the iPhone. So clearly not an exclusive to anyone.

If you don't take your store online that's your fault. Amazon helps you sell online. As does eBay. A couple of weeks ago I placed an order with Amazon, and will place another in the next couple of days, and the items come from other businesses. J&R Music and Computer World is one of Amazon's stores. Etsy is a community and market place for artists, deviantART is another. And obviously the net makes it easier to find jobs whether permanent full-time employment or short term contract work.

Pretty soon, brick n mortar stores will die off and you'll never be able to see an item before you order it, and/or you'll be complaining about the walmartization of cities that destroy local mom n pop stores. I know way to many people who complain about $4.50 cables costing $40 at brick n mortar and buying online, and then complain about lack of good jobs locally.

Actually the net levels the playing field. Brick and mortar stores can only sell locally but open an online store and you can sell anywhere. Partner with an big online seller and marketing will be easier.

Falcon

Kewl story on the Lost Cosmonauts, thanks for posting.. See also this recent news blurb (and book) about the cosmonaut Vladimir Kamarov, allegedly the cosmonaut that Robert Heinlein heard about during his visit to the USSRin 1960.

Sergei was offered the Nobel prize for Sputnik and Gagarin's flight. Nobel committee only knew of him as "Chief Designer" but USSR says these accomplishments are of "all people." They don't give the Nobel prize posthumously. What is amazing is he managed to stay alive from the gulags! An excellent book, "Korolev: How One Man Masterminded the Soviet Drive to Beat America to the Moon" by James Harford, http://www.amazon.com/Korolev-Masterminded-Soviet-Drive-America/dp/0471327212/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top

Book has many interviews with several of Sergei's colleagues. One of them mentioned when Kennedy said America is going to race USSR to the moon. Russians could either compete in the race or not. They did neither (kind of like what America is doing now).

What if Korolev had died in the gulags? What if there were other "greats" who perished under Stalin's rule, and which certain things that could have been did not happen?

Amazon Link

The ads are actually pretty unobtrusive. You can see them at the link above, about half way down the page.
They do have the ads on the hibernation screen (which are most likely 'un-clickable'), as well as ads on your homepage (which are probably clickable). I agree that $25 does seem a bit slim for the discount, but still worth it, after all how long will it be until a few clever people will probably figure out how to re-write the memory so that you have the full version.

I has a kindle.It can see books about linux , I like my kindle.

We have the technology. It is just impossible to send humans and their living quarters and their supplies and a research station and a return vehicle and return trip supplies on a SINGLE chemical rocket. Once you start using more than one chemical rocket for this list, even at just two, it becomes possible. .

The other thing is to exploit the resources at your destination. This is basically the approach advocated by Robert Zubrin in his Mars Direct mission design. The basic scenario is:

• Send an (unmanned) return rocket to Mars. It lands with empty fuel tanks.
• On board is a small amount of hydrogen, a nuclear power source, and a chemical processing plant. This is used in combination with CO2 from the Martian atmosphere to manufacture methane and oxygen to fuel the rocket for the return trip.
• Next launch opportunity (26 months later), send a manned crew vehicle. This lands next to the return vehicle waiting on the Martian surface.
• Crew explore Mars, perform research etc, and at the end of their mission hop in the return rocket and head home.

By manufacturing fuel on Mars for the return trip, most of the objections in the original article are dispensed with.

Much more detail is given in the Wikipedia article, and also in Zubrin's book, The Case for Mars (available here). Excellent book.

This summary is such FUD, and the article is nearly so. The author is a Medical Doctor, and if Doctor's had their say humans would have never gone to low orbit in the first place! Physics tells us Moore's Law is not a Law, but rather an idiom that expresses human ingenuity in the field of electronics. Moore's Law does not say transistors can get indefinitely small, it says people can build cheaper and cheaper transistors on larger and larger circuits. I can double the payload capacity of LEO vehicles tomorrow. Give me a 747 at 40,000ft and a rocket, and I'll put up twice the cargo for half the cost of a conventional rocket launched from sea level. Physics says I can do that. I'm not sure what point the author is trying to make with Moore's law, but the comparison between human ingenuity in spaceflight and electronics, and the laws of nature, is mute. Just because it hasn't happened, doesn't mean it is impossible.

Mistaking a large Keynesian space program that explicitly prohibits large leaps in engineering is a common mistake people make when it comes to the impossibilities of space travel. The space station was built, in part, because NASA and Congress didn't know what to do with the large 'space truck.' What do you do when you've got giant reusable vehicles with a HUGE cargo hold? Apparently, you build a space station with it!

We have been living continuously in low orbit for decades without a single fatality. The only Americans who have ever died in space died coming and going, but once you’re up there it has been statistically much safer. One would think moving a group of humans 60-100M km over 9-15 months would be quite possible. We've been living in hostile environments here on Earth for almost a century now with submarines, where a person can't exactly go out for a walk 600ft under water. And in the last 40 years or so, the crews of big submarines have continuously lived underwater for months on end. We know how live in enclosed environments for long periods. If 200 men can go months on end without killing each other, I think a dozen over the hill astronauts might be able to do the same.

The hard part of going to Mars is leaving Earth and then landing safely, landing being the most difficult but NOT impossible feat. Physics tells us that all the elements needed to create breathable air, fuel, water and return fuel for indefinite exploration of Mars can be found on Mars. Physics tells us the power needed to make these compounds can be made on Mars as well. All with ‘current’ technology despite the "low grade" resources, as claimed by the author!

Physics tells us all the hazards of interplanetary travel can be reduced or mitigated. Physics tells us radiation can be reduced with shielding, as can micro meteorite impact dangers.

If you want to really learn what Physics says we Can and Can't do, I'd suggest checking out on of the all time greatest book on the subject, "Spacetime Physics" by Taylor and Wheeler from you public library.

You think that's science fiction? How about this. Physics tells us it's possible to put all the DNA of earth on a tiny little probe the size of a dime, complete with tiny robots, that can be quickly accelerated to large fractions of c and travel between stars in decades. These probes can smash into planets and build life for us. Why send our descendants in large cumbersome bodies when you can send the information needed to create them. The technology to do this doesn't exist yet, but we are developing it Now. And physics doesn't say anything here is impossible.

I did think it looked very well typeset for something that old. I have some textbooks which honestly don't look that good. They're still in print, though they were written some time ago -- this one is particularly ugly (you can do the "look inside" thing to see).

http://www.amazon.com/Climbing-Parnassus-Apologia-Greek-Latin/dp/1882926730 Anyone with any doubts to the importance of Greek, Latin, and the classics in modern day life should read this book.

There is a book that presents this as an excellent fiction(?). Spoiler: US decision makers let the Russians win to ensure support for the space program