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It would:

• Talk about the latest antics of religious extremists
• Stereotype religious people as being adherents of blind faith
• Deride any theory which goes against mainstream science and contains anything vaguely supernatural

A Google search will find a large number of athiest (and anti-athiest) websites such as The Athiest's Handbook.

Screw the X-prize, I want to see which corporation is first to get a billboard on the moon, and after that, which corporation is first to get to mars. That'll be some fun times, right there.

(Though I probably should have read a bit more)

$ mmsclient mms://wmt-vod.video.francetelecom.com/www2.francet elecom.com/ftrd_2004/image_portee-hd.wmv
$ mplayer image_portee-hd.wmv

Now stop complaining.

I agree -- I almost have everything on the web except for a Java IDE and an office suite. Most of my web data is in GMail and blogger. Here are the web services I use (as a Firefox sidebar, no less)

You talking about The Vulture?

Suborbital is space flight once it reaches 100 km. That's the legal definition.

When they manage to get to 3 times that altitude, then its time to be impressed.

How about to orbit?

Actually, 200 km is interesting because it requires a big improvement in launch systems over those that can get to 100 km. That's why Baldrson (who submitted the Scale Composites story) created a prize for this altitude (later to be copied by the CATS prize people).

Did you make the text-to-speech bookmarklets? They are cool, but it would be nice if they used location= with GET or an iframe instead of a new window.

P.S. I used edit styles and typed
a:not([href^="javascript:"]) { display: none }
to see just the bookmarklets on your bookmarks page ;)

I prefer bookmarklets to plugins where possible because I can simply add them to my bookmarks page, which I load as a Firefox sidebar. Thus my work Firefox and my home Firefox are always in sync. Thus, the only Firefox plugin I need to install is Tabbrowser Extensions. I've already got bookmarklets for searching on the selected text, finding the definition of the selected text, text-to-speeching the selected text(!), blogging the current page, dragging a rectangle and seeing its extent (!)

During the episode 2.2: Mars University courtesy of The Neutral Planet

[In another room two other fratbots sit at a table with a chessboard. The room is a mess, littered with empty pizza boxes, cans and books. A sock hangs over the moose head and there is a dartboard hanging on a door with darts jabbed in the wall around it. There is a pin-up of a Fembot and a Löbrau poster with a human woman on it on another wall. One of the other fratbots looks like he has glasses painted onto his face and the other one is very fat. The glasses one looks at the chessboard. The game hasn't begun.]

Fratbot #2: Mate in 143 moves.

Fratbot #3: Oh poo, you win again!

During the episode 2.2: Mars University courtesy of The Neutral Planet

[In another room two other fratbots sit at a table with a chessboard. The room is a mess, littered with empty pizza boxes, cans and books. A sock hangs over the moose head and there is a dartboard hanging on a door with darts jabbed in the wall around it. There is a pin-up of a Fembot and a Löbrau poster with a human woman on it on another wall. One of the other fratbots looks like he has glasses painted onto his face and the other one is very fat. The glasses one looks at the chessboard. The game hasn't begun.]

Fratbot #2: Mate in 143 moves.

Fratbot #3: Oh poo, you win again!

Eventually it becomes self-aware and launches the nukes.

Then it's all-out war: Man vs. Eclipse. (cue the music)

... containing bookmarks and *bookmarklets* (Click here) So select some text and click "Google". Or if you're in the Google search results, click the "@" beside Yahoo to change to the Yahoo search results. Or select some text then click "TTS" to get it read out to you. If you're a Blogger user, click "BlogPage" to create a blog entry for the current page. Click "ACF" to create a Usenet post for alt.comp.freeware. etc.

I don't think this one's a real support page at Microsoft. Look at the link - it points to some Geocities page....

You, sir, have watched Goldfinger one too many times... A single errant shot is not near big enough to depressurize a cabin. See here or here or here or... you get the point. Thanks for playing, try again.

But ,,,,,,

I've never had problems with Best Buy. They've always given me good CSR.. I guess since i don't take up every minute of a CSR's(customer service representative) time and i'm not a scam artist customer!! hehehehe

In fact, i remember an Airline episode (god I hate that show--just too many whiners!!) where it was a holiday and a girl with her boyfriend got to the airport (after calling the airport up and told their tickets were good) and were told their ticket was no good, so she started yelling and whining at the CSR and then got an idea to plead with the other passengers in line try to switch tickets with someone in the line. Nobody wanted to switch tickets with her except this one guy who wanted to see her i.d. and the ticket. She accused him of being a scammer while he accused her of being the one who was first accosting him for the ticket.

Then there's my brother who was a CSR in a major US bank who says some of the clients with the highest accounts use up the MOST CSR time and about stupid things like "how do you download the latest anti-viral patch?" and "what's a URL?"

Tom Petty, along with other artists like King Crimson and Bela Fleck & The Flecktones, have been responsible for many hours of zoned out internet surfing to some of my favorite sites. You've been there - putting on some tunes, firing up your browser, zoning out and surfing away...
Two minutes later, an hour has passed, the album has ended, and you've been around the world and back and hopefully learned something new.

That's just how I started off the other night. I popped Tom Petty's Wildflowers cd into the drive, cranked up the volume, and fired up the browser. I was immediately sucked in by the sweet acoutic guitar sounds of the title track. Click... Click... Click... You Don't Know How It Feels comes up, I hear the sentimental lyrics, and I drift back to my younger days... Click... Click... Click... Another 30 seconds rolls by and half the album's over... Cabin Down Below just nails me with the big fat Telecasters running through tube amps turned up to 11 sound... Click... Click... Click... I finally make it to Wake Up Time ... "Time to open your eyes... And rise and shine..." and...

I'm accosted by the stench of burning pl

To anyone considering futher commentary, stop it already. You have no chance. You're tangling with the coolest, smartest, most talented, and most beautiful person in the world.

You have no chance to survive make your time.

In context, that generates a number of ratios. One ratio is verbosity vs user-standpoint performance, or execution speed. Agreed, the JVM's may have come a long way in the last few years (or not) but first impressions stick and even though Java is a derivative of Objective-C, it is VM'ed rather than native-machine compiled so it has some inherent disadvantages. Perl, Python, Jython or even Javascript have better ratios, in this regard, even though they are all based on VMs. C++ is somewhat more extreme and in the case of C the performance penalty is even greater due to all the work that has gone into optimizing compilers for that langauge.

Learn ratios -- they're really useful. They can give you rationality.

Look at his acchievents milestones and also a site dedicated to him here

Even though the position is only decorational, it is good to know that a country recognizes its intellectual wealth and respects it.

It's 31 though; O and Q aren't used because they are too easily confused with 0, I is too easily confused with 1, U isn't used, Z isn't used. In addition, 1980 is given A, and the first year it was in use was '81.

description

The military went away from liquid fuel for logistical reasons and the Minuteman missle series, using solid boosters, were deployed. The Minuteman 3 evolved into the MX Missile aka Peacekeeper, which required only a small crew and was portable making it a "mobile missle" in some deployments.

This logistical advantage was the basis of was the basis of E'Prime Aerospace's proposed launch vehicle series in the late 1980s. Through an effort with the Reagan Administration they acquired rights to acquire the existing assembly lines, 2 of which were still packed up in crates, and managed to cut preliminary deals with the contractors for the parts. The design mods included stripping off the radiation hardening, saving substantial weight, and replacing the kevlar fiber with graphite fiber in the tankage windings, something the Air Force had already funded at about the time the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty put an end to their further development. The launch site preferred was Ascention Island due to its location near the equator, ease of access from Florida (where the production lines were to exist) and a landing strip there that could receive the stages of the rockets in separate shipping containers via DC-3 transport, and launch from a cliff to the east. There was also a problem with the upper stage of the MX containing nitroglycerine, and that stage was eliminated or modified in E'Prime's designs.

It was a good idea. Something not quite as radical was, later, picked up by Orbital Sciences Corporation in their Taurus launcher, which used some surplus MX segments. E'Prime didn't want to do that due to quality control problems on stages that had been stored -- and indeed I was told that when O.S. procured their first MX stage, it had already been rejected by E'Prime due to a huge occlusion in the X-Ray image. They obviously could never have flown stage in any mission and it is unclear why they procured it.

The company had management as well as funding problems, and when I came on board in late 1991 as VP for Public Affairs, it was a few weeks from closing its doors. I really thought the idea of putting the MX into commercial production for satellite launches was a good one and hated to see it die, especially since I had just testified before Congress regarding commercialization of space technology on the day SALT was put into action. I was already broke due to the grassroots lobbying efforts but decided to go on my credit cards and take an unpaid job at E'Prime to help save the company. While there we managed to get the first Ka band license put through the FCC for one of E'Primes potential customers (Norris Communications' NORSTAR satellite), and as a result the stock, by then it was a pink sheet penny stock, had a rebound, going from a low of fractional cents per share to 30 cents a share. I had to leave E'Prime when after a few months they still were unable to pay a salary and I was at the end of my rope. The IRS had a lot of fun with me during a subsequent audit, and they're after me again subsequent to another effort of mine, but that's another story to be written. still being written. Suffice to say I'm getting really sick of the way the US government acts toward inventors and technologists -- most of whom need to be tax lawyers these days in order to avoid prisoner gang rape these days due to the incomprehensible statutes written by tax lawyers for the rest of us to follow.

PS: For more information you may be able to get the article I wrote for "Space Technology International" annual edition in 1992, from interlibrary loan.

I'm working on it ...

Natasha Henstridge: Too plasticky, tranny looking.
Pam Anderson: Good lord man, have you no taste? Do you know what has been plunging in and out of that? Hepatitis, man!
Carrie Anne-Moss: Good body; the face, no way. Michael Jackson's nose.
Now, Kathleen Robertson, I'd hit it.

Why not make it with as it has the best characteristics of concrete and ice, the materials would be readily abundant (sea water) and, in an arctic environment, would never melt. They could build new pykrete domes whenever they needed more space. They would just have to take wood pulp (sawdust) and sprayers and it can be formed/sprayed into final form.

More links:

Go Banana!

I don't see why some people dislike DOS.. Is it just because you teens have not ever used it, or your Linux/WinXP is so much cooler? Whatever, I don't care. You still have to use DOS to upgrade your motherboard/GPU BIOSes. You know what a BIOS is, do you.. I've even made one!

I just did a bootable 1.44MB FreeDOS floppy that plays mp3/ogg files with MPXplay, and then put it on to a bootable CD-ROM with all the music content I like. Voila, free, open source, standalone car/home/whatever music player which does not need a hard drive (for swapping). Just boot from ATAPI CD-drive and play some tunes, even at your friend's house!

Now try to do that with Linux/Windows/*BSD. I would have if I'd know how to do it. Preferably with a BSD system.

I was looking a player that could play tracker songs (you know, those before mp3s when 80386 and dinosaurs ruled the earth), mp3s and oggs, but no DOS player can do that as far as I know. XTC-Play could do tracker songs and mp3s, but not oggs.

I will eventually put a website of the bootable FreeDOS ogg/mp3 CD project. Maybe post it here..

In our country this is the way we say Hello. It is a diagram of movement between two points. It is a sweep on the dial. In our country this is also the way we say goodbye. Say Hello. In our country we send pictures of people using our sign language into outer space. Do you think that They will think his arm is permanently attached in this position? Or, do you think They will read our signs? Say Hello.

I described a general vision for this sort of formalism in a prior slahsdot post. Suffice to say some progress has been made since then -- and work in other areas is starting to converge. There is much yet to be done.

I don't know if this goes into Computer Science or Musicology, but people have tried composing music using mathematical equations for quite some time...

For example, I propose (also an example here

This site also gives fractal and algorithmic music to download while this one give you the opportunity to download a fractal music software (Windows, sorry)

Maybe we can get a computer to compose like Mozart and finish his symphonie ?

Something like these people do :
"We are a group of students and faculty members in the University of Wisconsin - Madison working on the exciting project of applying artificial intelligence in analyzing and composing music.

In this research, mathematical models will be developed to analyze a given collection of music pieces, represented in MIDI format. In particular, machine learning and artificial intelligence problem solving methods such as neural network, time series prediction, and statistical pattern classification will be used, and to simulate the process of music composition through the results of analysis. The overall objective is to analyze polyphonic music of certain composers, and create new pieces that retain stylistic details which distinguish composers from one another. "

You can even dowload some of their computer generated music...

As you yourself said, "individuals with a hobby that have brought formidable computing skills and analysis techniques from other fields" (really nice javadoc...) but I'm not sure they "are largely ignorant of the works within music departments", as they seem to take a nice approach on the subject...

I am waiting for Jesux: The Game!

"off the top of my head I can't think of any other comic books that were redone for a completely different culture. Anyone?"

• Spiderman (1966! welcome to the club india :)
  
• 3 Super Men(1973 featuring Spiderman(yet again), Captain America and El Santo)
  
• Batman (1973)
  
• Superman (1971,1972,1979)
  

• Plug at the back of the neck.
• A 'birth' scene.
• Armoured truck exploding/on fire.
• A bunch of soliders closing in on one location.

• Remember the market place chase scene in the Matrix? Remember one of the Agents missing and hitting watermelons, causing them to explode? Guess what, same thing happened in GITS.
• Remember Motoko's head being clutched by a nasty looking robot? Remember Neo's birth scene? And guess what, they're both naked AND wet in both scenes. (No, not that kinda wet, you sicko)
• Pillar scene. Both movies have the character standing behind a pillar at one point where it gets shot to bits, and acrobatic moves exist in both movies.

Republished review of the original Ghost

Google is your friend.

http://www.familyeducation.com/article/0,1120,58-1 7910,00.html
http://learninfreedom.org/socialization.html
http://www.geocities.com/athens/oracle/4336/social .html
http://www.faqfarm.com/Parenting/Homeschooling/525

I know of no studies that show homeschooled kids are "socially inept" or otherwise have any social problems whatsoever. On the contrary, an awful lot of information exists that says otherwise.

Sure, but if the ratio is that much of a problem, then you are already into the "huge" catagory...

Just to be clear, the "problem" isn't the ratio... the ratio is close to "ideal" according to some people. The problem is that "average" people are not "ideal"... so, finding clothing is not easy if you are fit and closer to "ideal" than "average"... because the clothing is designed for the "average" person.

(man... that is a sh*tload of quotes...)

I hit that problem at 205 lbs... I didn't consider that "huge", even tho it was more muscular than virtually everyone I met (outside of the gym).

A normal suit is designed for an "8 inch drop" where the waist is 8 inches smaller than the chest. My chest was 46" and the waist was 32". The legs were even futher from "normal" because even the majority of gym rats don't work their lower body that much.

To me, "huge" is 280 lbs of raw muscle. Consider that Arnold's chest was 54" across... 46" is not close to the same category. Eight inches is a lot of beef in the chest area.

Anyways... I guess it is all a matter of perspective.

A console msn client, gtmess, for all of those friends who you can't convert to jabber ;-)

I have had great success running Debian on my laptop (Dell Inspiron 1100). The install process let me tasksel a bunch of laptop specific stuff which was nice since I didn't know what half of them were before that. The sarge installer has reached the test candidate stage and I've been very happy with it since beta 4. Though I'd suggest installing testing for any newbie. Also, this webpage was so remarkably helpful I archived it in my own doc collection.

I was under the impression that the use of the metric system was thriving in america?
----

Necessity and Incentives
Opening the Space Frontier

Testimony before the House Subcommittee on Space

by James Bowery, Chairman
Coalition for Science and Commerce

July 31, 1991

Mr. Chairman and Distinguished Members of the Subcommittee:

I am James Bowery, Chairman of the Coalition for Science and Commerce. We greatly appreciate the opportunity to address the subcommittee on the critical and historic topic of commercial incentives to open the space frontier.

The Coalition for Science and Commerce is a grassroots network of citizen activists supporting greater public funding for diversified scientific research and greater private funding for proprietary technology and services. We believe these are mutually reinforcing policies which have been violated to the detriment of civilization. We believe in the constitutional provision of patents of invention and that the principles of free enterprise pertain to intellectual property. We therefore see technology development as a private sector responsibility. We also recognize that scientific knowledge is our common heritage and is therefore a proper function of government. We oppose government programs that remove procurement authority from scientists, supposedly in service of them. Rather we support the inclusion, on a per-grant basis, of all funding needed to purchase the use of needed goods and services, thereby creating a scientist-driven market for commercial high technology and services. We also oppose government subsidy of technology development. Rather we support legislation and policies that motivate the intelligent investment of private risk capital in the creation of commercially viable intellectual property.

In 1990, after a 3 year effort with Congressman Ron Packard (CA) and a bipartisan team of Congressional leaders, we succeeded in passing the Launch Services Purchase Act of 1990, a law which requires NASA to procure launch services in a commercially reasonable manner from the private sector. The lobbying effort for this legislation came totally from taxpaying citizens acting in their home districts without a direct financial stake -- the kind of political intended by our country's founders, but now rarely seen in America.

We ask citizens who work with us for the most valuable thing they can contribute: The voluntary and targeted investment of time, energy and resources in specific issues and positions which they support as taxpaying citizens of the United States. There is no collective action, no slush-fund and no bureaucracy within the Coalition: Only citizens encouraging each other to make the necessary sacrifices to participate in the political process, which is their birthright and duty as Americans. We are working to give interested taxpayers a voice that can be heard above the din of lobbyists who seek ever increasing government funding for their clients.

Introduction

Americans need a frontier, not a program.

Incentives open frontiers, not plans.

If this Subcommittee hears no other message through the barrage of studies, projections and policy recommendations, it must hear this message. A reformed space policy focused on opening the space frontier through commercial incentives will make all the difference to our future as a world, a nation and as individuals.

Americans Need a Frontier

When Neil Armstrong stepped foot on the moon, we won the "space race" against the Soviets and entered two decades of diminished expectations.

The Apollo program elicited something deep within Americans. Something almost primal. Apollo was President Kennedy's "New Frontier." But when Americans found it was terminated as nothing more than a Cold War contest, we felt betrayed in ways we are still unable to articulate -- betrayed right down to our pioneering souls. The result

Well, I don't know your situation exactly, but I googled it a couple different ways and found quite a few links. Hopefully one of them can help you.

Needless to say, I've also seen you asking around on some forums which showed up in the search, so I know you're serious enough to have already tried all this. Hopefully there are some new pages that you haven't found yet. A couple of those links claim to have answers, but of course, YMMV.

Since I didn't help you much (probably at all), I'll just take a Lite Beer and an old uneaten crust somebody threw back in the pizza box.

Sorry I couldn't help more, but with Linux, I've found anything is possible if you dig long enough. Hopefully I've uncovered some new dirt for you. Good luck!

There's also something to be said for not having an aftermarket headunit in many neighborhoods (especially in a convertible).

he probably means pilot. a pilot episode is produced for a series to "test the waters" (to gauge the interest level by networks and focus groups etc.) and may or may not become the eventual first episode of the series. Here is some specifics about pilot episodes in Star Trek.

The big deal about the 100k altitude goal of the Ansari X-Prize is the space tourism potential. Space tourism is a great business to pursue for advancing the state of the art of rocketry because there are an increasing number of wealthy people who can afford this sort of luxury. The problem is that the real ultimate value of increasing the state of the art of rocketry is access to space, and while SC's and XCor's aerodynamic vehicle approach is a tremendous accomplishment -- it doesn't really give "access" to space without substantial redesign.

Carmack's vehicle does.

That's one reason I chose 200km rather than 100km for my amateur rocketry prize . I'm pretty sure SC's and XCor's aerodynamically-limited approach would both lose in a race to 200km because they aren't really "space" vehicles.

Carmack's vehicle is.

I'm tempted to change my prize award to be private rather than amateur so that I can give it to Carmack's team. The problem is that my goal was, and is, to make space accessible to much lower levels of capital than even Carmack's group has expended -- which is already phenomenally low by aerospace standards.

Carmack's accomplishment, with his simplified fuel and system, is more profound than anything that has come along from the aerospace business since the hybrid rocket motor back in the 60s. Sadly -- compared to the golden age of aviation -- that's still not saying much. Carmack is, howeer, bound to inspire teams capable of running a modern day "Wright's bike shop" -- and that is saying much.

Everywhere but the US / UK? Nice way to set a precident - act as though people outside US/UK don't count.

I'm sure that the Beastie Boys quitting EMI is slightly easier than a made man quitting the Mafia... but only slightly.

Oh! That reminds me of the Futurama episode, "Hell is Other Robots."

[Cut to: Robot Hell: Level 5. Bender lands in front of the Beastie Boys. The Robot Devil picks Bender up by the leg and shakes him. Hundred of CDs fall out of his chest cabinet.]

Robot Devil: (singing) Selling bootleg tapes is wrong, Musicians need that income to survive.

Beastie Boys: (singing) Hey Bender gonna make some noise, With your hard drive scratched by the Beastie Boys! That's whatcha whatcha whatcha get on Level 5!

--- 1.9: Hell Is Other Robots

Wow! Thanks for the reply!

Moving difficult-to-produce finished goods (like complicated machinery and semiconductor products and so forth) from Earth to the building site could be done with a space elevator or with mature chemical launchers. Most of the cost of current space launches is the cost of manufacture and infrastructure for spacecraft, not the cost of fuel. Once materials and techniques advance to the point where launch craft are mature commodity items, and fuel dominates launch cost, it becomes practical to lift machinery, people, and construction craft up.

At this point, colonization of space will begin.

This is a very good point, i.e., that we will start to colonize space once the way to get into space becomes "a commodity," which it arguably is not at the moment.

Why rockets? Are space elevators the only alternative?

Good point about launchers not being to the point that fuel is the critical cost element. I would be interested in more details on the engineering and economics of space elevators, too, by the way.

It seems to me that there is not much attention being given to the idea of large, flying disk/wing aircraft that could fly up to high altitudes and then switch to rocket propulsion as a means for lifting large payloads on a reliable, safe, and regular schedule. The commercial aerospace industry is pretty close to the "fuel as the primary cost" situation which you mention.

Is this notion fundamentally flawed in some way; is there something I'm not seeing?

Popular Mechanics did a cover story about lenticular aircraft, and there are lots of other articles there, too. Apparently the Nazis did a lot of work on this, and after WWII the Air Force got all the technology and has been secretly working on it ever since. The point being that these things can be very big, and the whole fuselage is a lift-providing surface, so they could potentially carry a lot of material and still be able to stay aloft in the upper atmosphere. I wrote a little blurb about the space shuttle, winged vs. lenticular aircraft, etc., which might elicit some comment, by the way.

I assume that getting out of the atmosphere is not a problem as far as frictional heating of the outer skin of the craft goes, but getting back in would be an issue since it would be slowing down from orbital velocities to upper-atmospheric cruising speeds, so part or all of the skin of the craft would have to be covered with some kind of heat-management material (like the tiles on the space shuttle) or some kind of "active" heat evacuation system.

"In the future, it will take two hours to get anywhere on the planet -- one hour to get there, and one hour to get to the airport." -- Robert McNamarra

In this vein, can we imagine trans-atmospheric aircraft taking off from airports on Earth, flying out of the atmosphere into orbit, and then returning to Earth at another airport? Or, even better, in some cases rendez-vousing with an orbiting airport-spacestation, disembarking and picking up transit passengers, and then returning to Earth? It currently takes 18 hours just to fly from LAX to New Zealand, and many people take much longer flights -- that's plenty of time to get into orbit, dock with an orbiting spaceport/hotel, maybe sta

Robby the Robot not only showed up in Forbidden Planet but he also put in an appearance in several other films and TV Shows. He showed up in "Lost in Space" (TV), and "Back to the Future" (Movie - in the museum).

The other robot from "Lost in Space" (TV) should also go into the museum.

Androids should probably get their own museum as they are a bit different from plain robots. My favorite to go into an Android museum would be BladeRunner's Roy.

There have been so many robots used (both good and badly designed) in movies - it is probably really hard to decide just whom should go into the hall of fame.

Vega from StarTrek-the Movie would be another good one. Only, they would have to build an entire planet to accommodate it. :-)

Carmack's vehicle does.

That's one reason I chose 200km rather than 100km for my amateur rocketry prize. I'm pretty sure SC's and XCor's aerodynamically-limited approach would both lose in a race to 200km because they aren't really "space" vehicles.

Carmack's vehicle is.

I'm tempted to change my prize award to be private rather than amateur so that I can give it to Carmack's team. The problem is that my goal was, and is, to make space accessible to much lower levels of capital than even Carmack's group has expended -- which is already phenomenally low by aerospace standards.

Carmack's accomplishment, with his simplified fuel and system, is more profound than anything that has come along from the aerospace business since the hybrid rocket motor back in the 60s. Sadly -- compared to the golden age of aviation -- that's still not saying much. Carmack is, howeer, bound to inspire teams capable of running a modern day "Wright's bike shop" -- and that is saying much.

The Nazis gave us a warning from history about the potentially lethal power of the spoken word. one of the most technically advanced and civilised nations on Earth was whipped into a frenzy of mass hysteria by the power of words. The holocaust should never have happened, it should never be forgotten, and it must never happen again.

The right to free speech is not absolute, nor should it be. There are more pressing rights such as the right to life. Where one conflicts with the other, it is the right to life that must prevail.

Hohmann transfers are a typical low-energy trajectory used when going to Mars. See this site for an easy tool to generate a time-table for leaving from Earth and arriving at Mars. The next good time for departure is July 9th, 2005, and you arrive on March 25th, 2006, taking approximately 6 and a half months. Of course, then you'd have to stay on Mars for the next window if you really wanted to be thrifty.

There are other faster alternatives that use more energy, and not all of these are prohibitively expensive.