Domain: ancient.eu
Stories and comments across the archive that link to ancient.eu.
Comments · 6
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Re:Why spray them?
"Kale is a vegetable"
So you say. I'm pretty sure Kale is actually an Indian goddess with too many arms and serious anger management issues.
The purported vegetable that some people call kale is actually a failed US government attempt to develop a packing material so flavorless and devoid of nutiritive value that even bacteria can't (or don't want to) attack it.
You're thinking of Kali -- next time, RTFM - i.e. do a bit of basic research, see https://www.ancient.eu/Kali/
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Re:It figures
Ha, ancient political slogans, fun.
Church in danger!
All the worshippers of Isis call for Cn. Helvius Sabinus as aedile. -
The Problem is Special Relativistic Time Dilation
Any ship embarking on interstellar travel in the near future using any of the first two methods (a generation ship using conventional propulsion or a hyper speed ship using fuel, thrust or time improvements) is likely to be beaten to the destination by a explorers leaving earth hundreds of years later using superior interstellar travel technology.
Although a generation ship carrying massive amounts of fuel and a gigantic solar sail could boost up to speeds of hundreds of km/s, it could still be thousands of years before such a ship reached even the nearest star system... and then it would have to expend vast amounts of stored fuel to slow down, slip into a suitable orbit around the local sun and commence a search for potentially habitable planetary bodies, with no hope of ever being able to generate sufficient thrust to move on to a further star system, should the first prove to have no suitable planets to settle on.
Consider the rate of communications, propulsion, etc. advancement that would have taken place in the intervening 5000- odd years between the departure of interstellar explorers leaving earth over the next 100 years and those leaving earth, say, 2-3000 years from today. How would our present day explorers even communicate with earth using 5000 year old communication technology - heck, it would be tough to communicate with just 100 year old technology, let alone 5000 year old relics. And suppose the mission was successful... later and technologically more advanced departures travelling in the same direction would have to make first contact decisions not too dissimilar to the ones we make today about isolated peoples such as isolated tribes in the Amazon rain forest - only it would be more similar to travelling back 5000 years to the bronze age - round about the time when Stonehenge was built and Papyrus invented.
Future propulsion technologies, would not fare much better. The more efficient the propulsion technology, the faster the rate of travel. This might appear to be the answer, except that special relativity would mean that while time slowed down for the travelling explorers, hundreds or even thousands of years could pass here on Earth for a few years of time for our hyper-speed interstellar travellers. So, while interstellar travellers travelling at hyper-speed could reach their destination in a single life time, they too could be beaten to the punch by a later departure hundreds of years later (or just a months days later in time passed aboard the interstellar ship).
That special relativistic time dilation thingamajig can be a bitch!
Just my thoughts and observation
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Re: Liberals and willful ignorance
they have been recognized as mass goods that benefit everyone in the area
This shows a terrible misreading of history at best and complete ignorance of history at worst. Throughout almost all of history, armies and courts/tribunals have been the tools of far flung rulers rather than "recognized as mass goods that benefit everyone in the area." If the Assyrian Empire's troops were in your city, you were not a happy camper. Likewise with the Northern European tribes with respect to Roman Legions. All the way up to North Vietnamese troops taking Saigon or ISIS troops in Mosul. But even courts are hardly welcome a "benefiting everyone." One of the major points of the Magna Carta was to change the unfairness of the courts of the day.
And one needs only look at the major stories of the year to see how much police forces are welcomed into communities, even in American cities. Just because the ruler might speak the same language as you doesn't mean that his armies, police officers, or courts are looking out for you, or that you are happy under their rule. -
Re:Wow
Vulcan wouldn't care, but Mars might...
Then again, she really got around.
http://www.ancient.eu/venus/ -
Re:And what if he's right?
The fix is for people to deal with it, like grown-ups. Office romances happen across the entire working population. If people are idiots there's fallout. So far the world has survived, and nothing needs to be done to fix this.
Significant enough numbers of grown-ups are sufficiently unable to act like grownups that yeah, the rest of us really do need to fix it.
More importantly, this is not new. Interpersonal struggles and conflict are as old as humanity itself, and we've discovered, as a species, that we really do benefit from having rules, laws, guidelines, and social norms to help us navigate these choppy waters.
"Just deal with it like grownups" is a cop-out philosophy of managers not wanting to do their jobs and employees not wanting to grow beyond what they already are. "Just deal with it like grownups" means nothing more than "I don't like dealing with the strife and drama that is the human condition, therefore I'll pretend that MY employees/co-workers are somehow magically above all that."
Lastly, if you think that the world has survived without people having done anything to fix this, well, you haven't been paying any attention at all.