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An actual self-sufficient colony yes. We're not remotely close to that though, it'll be an outpost. Earth dies, it dies.

Sure, but that's going to be true no matter what. As human beings who evolved very specifically to live on Earth, we are 100% dependent on Earth's biosphere, and barring some unforeseen technological breakthroughs (nanotechnology, maybe?), we will be for a very long time.

We can't even construct a viable self-sustaining biosphere-replacement here on Earth, never mind trying to make one work inside the additional constraints imposed by space travel.

It's inherently and obviously risky

Which is why it's killed hundreds of thousands... Oh wait, it kills and injures fewer people per TWh than wind and rooftop solar?

Radioactive waste from fission accumulates a massive liability for future generations.

Mostly because we're not allowed to reprocess the waste to extract the medium level radioactive stuff that would still be useful in the reactor.

Nuclear energy is out of step with a world that is rapidly converting to clean, inexhaustible energy harnessed from the environment.

Actually, we've been converting to the 'better than coal' but still very much exhaustible natural gas.

According to a growing number of climatologists who are witnessing first-hand the unfolding climate disaster in the Arctic and Antarctic, our existing several hundred nuclear reactors could quite possibly be the direct cause of our extinction in the decades ahead,

The former doesn't lead to the latter. Hell, given that they're predicting apocalypse and the death of billions by starvation, they're end of the world nuts and don't know how nuclear power works.

Nuclear reactors can't be rapidly turned off and made non-radioactive --- the full process of decommissioning takes some 50 to 60 years as an industry average, and it takes a LOT of money.

That's only because of insane greenfield standards. Give them the same standards as shutting off a coal plant and it'd take them about a week.

There will be no money available under conditions of economic collapse, cooling will be interrupted, and many will go into meltdown.

Even countries under economic collapse have some money available, and avoiding meltdown is easy. Cooling even our old lousy reactors long enough to prevent a meltdown costs what amounts to a trivial sum. The times vary, but generally it's about 3 weeks from SCRAMing the reactor before it's generating so little heat that passive cooling would be enough to prevent a meltdown. Reactors that have melted down are more complex because they often have a critical mass that is still generating more heat and radioactive components.

In a condition of economic collapse, you simply mark the area off limits and go about your business. Windmills falling on people will be as large of a problem.

The whole idea of adding more nuclear power is hazardous and ill-considered, and it's also unnecessary.

Actually, adding more nuclear power gives us relatively cheap energy that we can use to stave off the burning more coal, natural gas, and otherwise control the effects of global warming.

Everybody always remembers the Kent State massacre because it was white middle class students.

The Jackson State massacre happened ten days later, but it was at a Black college, where they were protesting racism, not the Vietnam War.

Many people don't remember or even know about Jackson State.

But those nitpicking details could be crucial in real life.

Biosphere II's numerous points of failure proved that part. Materials used in construction, unanticipated environmental considerations like simple condensation problems or oxidation, and ecological relationships between competing organisms proved too much for the engineers and scientists to anticipate.

Sustainability is a popular subject taught in western public schools and based on similar assumptions to those of other Cartesian reductionist approaches to 'the sciences'. But as the climate skeptics argue, earth's ecology is not static, and it's rate of change fluctuates so that in human generational terms those fluctuations may seem irrelevant to us in the short term. Part of this myopic view is rooted in our relative ignorance and hubristic belief that 'We' can always bail ourselves out of whatever jam the world holds. The latest popular belief system has it that Science! will save us.

Until recently, our world has been large enough to allow us the freedom to splinter into various groups, traveling away from each other and establishing sociopolitical outposts and trying to develop different approaches to living, not that the basic parameters for living have varied all that much. But now that Homo sapiens numbers are (probably) approaching the carrying capacity of the earth and our ecological impact is actually effecting changes to the basic chemical and energetic makeup of the troposphere, we can actually see that ecological management and environmental responsibility are necessary to ensure a healthy relationship within our primary biosphere.

The prospect of attempting to establish and manage a sustainable effort off-planet may actually be more relevant to the long term survival challenges we face right here on good 'ol Terra firma. Let's hope that the lessons we leaned at Biosphere II and during our relatively brief history of experimentation with agriculture, engineering, chemistry and physics allow us the freedom to learn from the inevitable failures we'll encounter outside our own little spaceberg.

captcha=anarchy

Sorry for the delay, but I find angel to have a compelling argument - in order to grow cows need nutrients. It's not just 'grow fat' or 'heavier', if they simply weighed more because they had 100 pounds of feed stopped up in them, the meat packing industry would be pissed and start buying on the basis of gutted carcass weight or something. In order to get said nutrients they need their gut bacteria to break down their food, otherwise it'd inedible to them. In a sense Cows digest the bacteria, not the plant matter they consume.

If there are 'bucket loads' of scientific studies, it shouldn't be hard to give a reputable source. I'll admit that I haven't studied the issue. I know there's weight gain when growing animals are given antibiotics. I know they'll maintain weight/growth if given less food along with antibiotics. Why? That's trickier.

For example, this report shouldn't be taken to heart because it's by a student, not curated or peer reviewed, but it's at least simple and lists more references. It says that the growth isn't because food processing is being disrupted, but because the animal isn't spending resources developing immune responses it otherwise would and that most of the bacteria effected are in the large intestine, which provides minimal nutrition extraction as opposed to the bacteria in the stomach and small intestine.

Also, 16% more growth on 7% less feed is significant, which is why a lot of pig farmers today are perfectly willing to give up on routine antibiotic regimes for pigs in other stages where it's much less effective, but want to keep it during the starter/weanling stage.

With all that said, I really think Germany did the wrong thing with the whole anti-nuclear energy thing. To paraphrase that quote about democracy, nuclear is the most dangerous form of energy generation, except for all those other sources we've tried ( http://physics.kenyon.edu/peop... ).

Thanks for the paper. The problem with the death rate figures comes from the IAEA being able to interdict and censor the WHO's published papers and data. This is blatant politic interference that skews the data preventing the real figures from being exposed. In Chernobyl studies into the aftermath of the accident's effect on thyroid cancer in children, funding for data collection was stopped while the evidence for the true harm was still being collected.

The data that was collected clearly showed the gestation period of the cancer in children exposed to cesium radioisotopes (some 6 years) followed by a dramatic rise in cases (from memory, 25,000 were recorded) before the funding was stopped. This measures only one radioisotope (as a nutrient analogue) with a short half life and no data was collected on other ones like strontium 90, pu-239, cobalt 55 with longer half lives.

Nor does it measure the harm to future generations because, like present measurements, the data does not exist. This doesn't mean that nuclear power causes less deaths, it means the data on actual deaths hasn't been collected.

...pumped hydro...has an input-to-output efficiency of about 65 percent.

I think that's a pretty low number, perhaps typical of older designs. Newer designs can have efficiencies upwards of 80%: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...
http://people.duke.edu/~cy42/P...
http://www.colorado.edu/engine...

...and nuclear generation doesn't need storage to be useful and meet demand...

I believe nuclear tends to be quite bad at load following: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...

Of course, it is excellent for always-on power, but not ideal for surges or lulls. In certain cases -- L.A. in the summer, for instance -- solar power, although intermittent on the whole, is intermittent in the most useful way: on a nice clear hot day, there's the biggest demand for A/C and the best solar power production.

...but no-one ever adds the cost of storage to the cost of renewables when comparing prices.

Well...staunch proponents with an ax to grind may not include such costs, but then, staunch proponents of coal with an ax to grind will ignore any externalities related to airborne toxins. Any legitimate study of renewable energy should really include storage costs.

With all that said, I really think Germany did the wrong thing with the whole anti-nuclear energy thing. To paraphrase that quote about democracy, nuclear is the most dangerous form of energy generation, except for all those other sources we've tried ( http://physics.kenyon.edu/peop... ).

Your definition is wrong. A religion is any belief based on faith. Atheism is a belief that no god exists, something that cannot be proven empirically, and thus Atheism is a religion. It's not an "absence of belief", that would be agnosticism.
Perhaps you should look up what atheisms means.
Atheism is no religion ... regardless how often you claim it is. Hint: I'm an theist, I should know.

Besides, Atheism clearly meets the "Seven Dimensions of Religion", defined by Ninian Smart (a framework accepted by anthropologists and historians): narrative, experiential, social, ethical, doctrinal, ritual and material.
What nonsense is that?
What do we atheists "narrative" about?
What "experiential", what "doctrine" do we have, what "rituals" or "socializing" do we do (ROFL!) and what materials do we warship?
Perhaps you should read stuff you like to put on us first? (With us here I mean the /. community not the atheists)
http://www2.kenyon.edu/Depts/Religion/Fac/Suydam/Reln101/Sevendi.htm

Anti-biotics don't "pump cattle up"

Yes they do:

The growth-promotic effects of antibiotics are undisputed, but the collateral and long-term effect are a cause for a heated debate and banning in the European Union in 2005

Our awareness of environmental triggering of epigenetic phenomena is actually quite older. Agriculture is full of examples of Lamarckian traits, such as resistance to drought or cold; plants switch on these attributes over successive generations as a form of memory, no DNA mutations required; it's all chromatin re-modelling. You're certainly right that it took us a while to accept that nearly everything in the Central Dogma has at least one counterexample.

A little note: obesity is actually an immune disorder and has nothing to do with epigenetics. You can read a pretty good explanation here. I think the real cause of the epidemic is unsanitary factory farming practices.

Also, the term "mRNA" is not generally used to refer to RNA molecules that hang around and perform other functions, even though they're all transcripts. The "messenger" moniker implies it's destined to be turned into a protein at a ribosome.

Aren't all viruses work by chaning genetic structure of a cell?

HIV is really good at its job. Check here.

Can it survive deeper than this?

Sure, at least a few km. (a link for you)

Newp, they most definitely mean, GPS. A compass will only provide limited directional data. GPS provides 3d data. Direction, intensity and polarity would suffice for 3d positioning, ala GPS.

Humans have long used a compass-like device called a "diping needle", "dip needle", or "dip circle" to get a reading of "magnetic latitude" by measuring the angle of the earth's field relative to a horizontal plane.

Inner ears have three-axis linear and three-axis rotational accelerometers. It would hardly be surprising if, should the have magneto-sensitive neurons, these would also be three-axis. This would give the full vector direction of the field. With the sight of the horizon for a horizontal reference (which it needs for flight anyhow) a bird could get a more-than-adequate approximation of latitude from the vertical angle of the magnetic field, suitable for use in long migrations.

Getting longitude would be the hard part.

It may be that "probability theory" tends to lead to assumptions that traditionally make the math more tractable -- independent events, not linked events, and assumptions about probability distributions (e.g., normal distributions). Those assumptions might not hold.

There was an article some years back in SIAM Review proposing that traditional structural analysis too often made the assumption of linearity -- literally, that you CAN push a rope. Suspension cables do not obey Hookes' law in compression, concrete does not in tension, and ships heaving all the way out of the water experience forces that are not linear with displacement. Modeling non-linear systems used to be impractical, so people would just assume linearity to make the math tractable.

"More still becomes grain feed for livestock, to satisfy our appetite for beef, milk, and cheese."

I agree with most of your rant. However, the types of corn used to feed people (sweet corn) and animals (field corn) are two different crops. See http://www2.kenyon.edu/projects/farmschool/food/corntyp.htm.

1. No evidence of birds?

http://www.icr.org/article/6398/
If dinosaurs evolved into birds, then protofeathers should be found on dinosaur fossils located below (and therefore dated before) fossils of birds, not above and after them. McKellar's fibers came from Cretaceous deposits, but true bird feathers have been found in fossil layers far below the Cretaceous. Why would feathers still be evolving long after they supposedly already existed?

2. Dino Feathers?

http://biology.kenyon.edu/courses/biol241/bird%20flight%202005%20Feduccia_Alan.pdf

[From the Abstract]
Our findings show no evidence for the existence of protofeathers and consequently no evidence in support of the follicular theory of the morpho- genesis of the feather. Rather, based on histological studies of the integument of modern reptiles, which show complex patterns of the collagen fibers of the dermis, we conclude that “protofeathers” are probably the remains of collagenous fiber “meshworks” that reinforced the dinosaur integument.

In the second part of the study we examine evidence relating to the most critical character thought to link birds to derived theropods, a tridactyl hand composed of digits 1-2-3. We maintain the evidence supports interpretation of bird wing digit identity as 2,3,4, which appears different from that in theropod dinosaurs. The phylogenetic significance of Chinese microraptors is also discussed, with respect to bird origins and flight origins. We suggest that a possible solution to the disparate data is that Aves plus bird-like maniraptoran theropods (e.g., microraptors and others) may be a separate clade, distinctive from the main lineage of Theropoda, a remnant of the early avian radiation, exhibiting all stages of flight and flightlessness.

Even without these points, the claim is circular - it would in time 'strengthens' the shaky 'fact' it depended on.

Note, I am not claiming a lack of integrity of the researcher - just that he has made an erroneous claim, based on what he believes to be true.

Hi... Gladly.

Please see my post above. Heres' the link to the paper quoted there.
http://biology.kenyon.edu/courses/biol241/bird%20flight%202005%20Feduccia_Alan.pdf

[From the main paper]
We examine the alleged support from the fossils Sinosauropteryx (Currie and Chen, 2001), Sinorni- thosaurus, an indeterminate theropod (Ji et al., 2001), and Caudipteryx (Qiang et al., 1998) with respect to the key features in stages 1–4 of Prum and Brush’s (2002) developmental theory on feather morphogenesis. ...

[From the Abstract]
Our findings show no evidence for the existence of protofeathers and consequently no evidence in support of the follicular theory of the morpho- genesis of the feather. Rather, based on histological studies of the integument of modern reptiles, which show complex patterns of the collagen fibers of the dermis, we conclude that “protofeathers” are probably the remains of collagenous fiber “meshworks” that reinforced the dinosaur integument.

I do believe what's written here:
http://www.icr.org/article/6398/

But the FPGA is not limited to the boolean world of digital technology when it wires itself; this is because the medium of silicon (which the FPGA is based on) is not limited between computing with the standard range of ones and zeros--it is also capable of producing an entire spectrum of values between the two values; in this way, the FPGA is not limited to the rules of digital design, but rather to the limits of natural physics. Adrian Thompson at the University of Sussex in the UK exploited this capability: he made a genetic algorithm which tested various configurations of the chip so that it would generate a 1 volt signal if it detected a 1-kilohertz audio tone and a 5 volt signal if it detected a 10-kilohertz audio tone. After a certain amount of evolution, the program worked brilliantly, but what is downright scary is this: the FPGA only used 32 of its 100 available logic gates to achieve its task, and when scientists attempted to back-engineer the algorithm of the circuit, they found that some of the working gates were not even connected to the rest through normal wiring. Yet these gates were still crucial to the functionality of the circuit. This means, according to Thompson, that either electromagnetic coupling or the radio waves between components made them affect each other in ways which the scientists could not discern (Taubes 1997). What this means for the world of artificial intelligence is that computers themselves can do things internally which even the human beings who designed them do not understand. Humans do not completely understand consciousness, and probably never will; but now who is to say that humans cannot design a self-evolving mesh of silicon which evolves into a self-conscious organism?

Because Halomonas species are typically halophiles, they are usually found in water sources with high salinity levels, such as the Dead Sea and even within the frigid waters of Antarctica.

In the paper you can see where this bug sits in the phylogenetic tree.

I'm guessing the Midway Atoll has warmer water but you might find different microbes. I guess I'm more curious if the researchers think this bug already existed or if it was a neighboring microbe in the phylogenetic tree that colonized titanic and prospered, mutating slowly to what it is today -- accustomed to the iron of the wreck? If you drop anything with high surface area into the ocean and check it out fifty years later, it might be the norm to find some microbe busily breaking it down with a slight twist ...

Try to get beyond biology 101 before trying to put other people down. http://biology.kenyon.edu/courses/biol114/Chap03/mobile_genes.html#bacteria

You mean that? If you mean sonograph as in spectrograph, then that's part of what Photosounder does. Why?

A simple Google search for "fpga genetic algorithm" shows up references quite quickly - e.g.

http://biology.kenyon.edu/slonc/bio3/AI/GEN_ALGO/gen_algo.html

The only part of the GP story I haven't seen before (and can't find a reference for) is the bit about the design not working on other FPGAs of the same specification. The closest story is that of Adrian Thompson at the University of Sussex who got a circuit with unconnected elements which nonetheless seem to be needed in order for the whole thing to achieve its goal. Nothing about the design only working on specific instances of the FPGA.

Actually, the bacteria they used has this aspect covered. From the MicrobeWiki (ridiculously informative, btw):

Thermotogales are thermophilic or hyperthermophilic, growing best around 80C and in the neutral pH range (R. Huber et al., 2004). The salt tolerance of Thermotoga species varies greatly; while some display an extremely high salt tolerance, others are restricted to low-salinity habitats. This aerobic gram-negative organism is typically nonsporeforming and metabolizes several carbohydrates, both simple and complex, including glucose, sucrose, starch, cellulose, and xylan (EBI, 2003).

(Bolding mine) So it eats cellulose and makes hydrogen. Mildly useful, I would say.

... Martian Dechloromonas overlords.
http://microbewiki.kenyon.edu/index.php/Dechloromonas_aromatica
http://jb.asm.org/cgi/content/abstract/187/15/5090

It's called Hero's Fountain. Suffice to say, the laws of thermodynamics are not impressed.

China and India pollute substantially less per person than any EU country or the US.

So? They're growing at a much, much faster rate. And the statement you chose - that it would be like saying, "We got to industrialization first, so we're the only ones who get to benefit! Oh and you have to clean up just as much as us even though we've made a bigger mess," - is telling, but it's actually the opposite of that: it's more like, "We got to industrialization, but we'll allow other developing economies to artificially pollute much more, leaving Western economies at an even greater disadvantage than they are now when competing."

One day, when India and China are serious polluters they will curb emissions.

Oh, they will? Really? Who's going to make China curb emissions? And China has plenty of problems now.

So yeah, it's not "fair" if China, especially considering the force it is already, isn't held to any standards at all; or, rather, would you find it surprising that there are other factors to consider in the US not simply wanting to happily allow a severe competitive disadvantage, and frames the discussions based on that? This isn't a "Republican" issue or a matter of "misuse" of scientific data. It's an issue of pure economics. Might it be treated more gingerly by more liberal politicians? Sure. But it wouldn't be a lot more than lip service, because no matter who is in office, the economic and other threats from China in particular are very real, and emissions are but small part of that equation.

At the very beginnings of electricity, it was stored in Leiden Jars, a form of capacitor. In the 1930's, the accumulator, a form of capacitor, was sometimes used to power early radios. Apparently, you used to carry these back to the shop to have them charged up.

They filed for a PATENT on this? Sticking a nail in a tree and a pipe in the ground? Aren't we a bit late for a patent on a voltaic pile? It's exactly the same thing as using a lemon or potato as a battery. I can get much better results from a stack of zinc and copper plates, some napkins, and a bunch of vinegar.

this has been done.. with mineral oil, sunflower oil..

but... no one has done this yet with your basic transformer coolant:
http://www.cooperpower.com/FR3/

or, you might be able to use an EDM oil.. head to:
http://www.edmzap.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Scree n=CTGY&Store_Code=f&Category_Code=edmsinkfluid

• EDM Clear-3 Dielectric Fluid, 5 gallon pail Code: CLEAR3-5 Price: $80.00
• EDM 30 Dielectric Fluid, 5 gallon pail Code: EDM30-5 Price: $50.00
• IonoPlus 3000 Synthetic EDM Fluid, 5 gallon pail Code: Ionoplus3000-5 Price: $120.00

Places we've talked about this before:

http://www.markusleonhardt.de/en/oelbilder.html
http://www.markusleonhardt.de/en/oelrechner.html
"OilComputer.com - These are the pictures of my oilcomputer"

http://www.hwspirit.com/reviews.php?read=16
"Sunflower Oil cooled PC (stage 1)"

http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/05/ 11/1756259&from=rss
"Aquarium Full of Oil For PC Cooling"

History's REAL solution to this problem:
http://physics.kenyon.edu/coolphys/thrmcmp/newcomp .htm
"Some of the latest supercomputers actually have their working parts immersed in a liquid fluorocarbon coolant to improve the efficiency of waste heat removal."

http://www.invent.org/hall_of_fame/35.html
"The amount of silicon chips used in CRAY-2 caused a problem because they overheated so intensely during use. By immersing CRAY-2 in a cooling bath of liquid fluorocarbon, Cray kept the chips from melting. Cray's theory for success with the CRAY-3 was to substitute revolutionary new gallium arsenide integrated circuits for the traditional silicon ones."

Jacques D'Arsonval (1851-1940) is far better known for designing the analog electrical meter movement (galvanometer) that bears his name. Nearly all DC voltmeters (and ammeters) you are likely to see (well, okay, largely--but not entirely--relegated to museums nowadays) are of the D'Arsonval type.

We have a passel of state Reps I'd describe as "social right wingers" who put up stuff like death penalty legislation every term. They were behind the weapons bill: it was touted as making the law fairer by not leaving it up to individual sheriffs, but really it aimed at allowing more people to carry concealed guns. The bills these folks turn out seem to have been written by 10th graders who were unfamiliar with anything but the skeleton of the issue they're talking about, and they often have unintended consequences.

So, who is this guy?

Senator Larry A. Mumper, Ohio Senate Republican.

He's listed there as primary sponsor of a couple of other bills, including one that was presented as an "academic bill of rights for higher education." This bill was partly prompted by a story about a kid who wrote a "pro-America" paper and got a bad grade from his teacher... Oops, except the kid's paper was crap; he'd written a 1-page "report" that wasn't up-to-snuff, got a bad grade, and decided it was because he was patriotic that he'd been silenced. The bill itself reads like a wolf in sheep's clothing aimed at "protecting a plurality of opinion" by remaining neutral about crap like "intelligent design." It doesn't spell out how you'd decide when a topic was "controversial" -- gee, an ambiguity that could lead to unintended consequences.

Does this sound like exactly the sort of wingnut I'm seeing in Minnesota? I mean, this is a guy who says his law "might apply to anyone who sells a lot" and "If someone buys and sells on eBay on a regular basis as a type of business, then there is a need for regulation." "As a type of business"? No ambiguity there, is there?

We have both the knowledge and the tools to be a lot greener than any non-nomadic culture you can name from 300-500 years ago.

There's a couple of big problems with hydro, by the way - they're not as green as you'd think, and eventually dams silt in, making them far from long-term. And however contained the waste from a nuclear reactor is right now, the problem nobody's solved yet is how to keep it contained on time scales far longer than the history of human civilization.

Wireless technology uses capacitors, the modern descendants of the device known as a Leiden jar, invented two and a half centuries ago.

Liquid hydrogen is actually lighter than air...
No it's not, "Liquid hydrogen has a density of 0.07 grams per cubic centimeter" (quoted from) while "The density of air under standard conditions is only 1.239 milligrams per cubic centimeter under standard conditions." (quoted from)

I thought that Bush invented the mouse http://www2.kenyon.edu/people/adamsal/gui/bush_eng elbart.htm

which would make sense, since while Gore invented the Internet, Bush invented the mouse...

http://www2.kenyon.edu/people/shankb/samba/

Apple may not be on the ball with SMB intergrated support but the admins understand the importance of keeping all of our users happy.

And all you MacOS X needs on http://www.stepwise.com/