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Maybe these tiny people have some kind of sickness (or just look tiny), and were therefore exiled from the main(is)land?

Well, there has long been evidence of Pygmy Mammoths which evolved on isolated islands around the world. Some of these species stood only 3 feet tall! Isolation and inbreeding probably accounts for their small size, and it is not that unusual for sub-species to develop this way.

I am now finished with work.

I agree. But some of President Bush's programs seem more classically liberal in nature than following the ideal of "personal responsibility".

Hmm. Equality of opportunity. I found an interesting article that argues not for Equality of Opportunity, but for Freedom of Opportunity. By using the phrase Equality of Opportunity your are assuming that someone (the government, I presume?) will be defining what is "equal".

Even so, I can't just trust a random web site from someone who may be more libertarian than conservative. So, with some reservations, I'll give you the equality of opportunity line as a "conservative value".

And exactly how does that differ from what a "liberal" believes?

OK. But again, is that "conservative value"? That's just basic economics. It is accepted that small business provides most of the jobs in this country. How can that be a "conservative value"?

While there have been economic arguments in favor of tax cuts, I still do not understand how those tax cuts work in balance with huge budget deficits. Under budget deficits, someone has to pay, eventually. And, making our children pay is not a "conservative value".

I would disagree that is a conservative value. Why? here and here. Also, AFAIK, the first President to try to spend his way out of an economic downturn was FDR. Not exactly a conservative icon.

The first step in dealing with dyslexia is admitting that you have it.

Denial is not just a park in Alaska.

I was there last summer, 23 years since the 1980 eruption, and the power with which that thing erupted is still evident all over the area.

For instance:

• A picture from high on the flank of the mountain looking back down one of the lava flows from the 1980 eruption. Notice the green patch on the hill to the left, which was missed by the lava flow.
• Looking at the same spot, this time from below. You can really see the effects of that hill here -- it diverted the lava, and everything behind it is green, while everything else was destroyed.
• A panorama from the rim of the mountain, looking down into the crater. This should give you an idea of how big a crater the eruption left. The top of the mountain was simply blown away. Even while we were there, every few minutes we could here rock tumbling down into the crater, some of them huge boulders. The sides of the caldera still aren't stable, 23 years after the fact.
• Spirit Lake. All that gray stuff you see are trees. Thousands of them. They were all killed in 1980 eruption, and are now just floating on the lake. It's called the "floating forest" of Spirit Lake.
• This is a hillside about TEN MILES from the blast site. See how the trees were just blown right over? And no, this one isn't a clearcut. According to this page, most of the trees within a 600 square kilometer area were blown over by the blast.

I was thankful to have the net to plan my trip and get advice, permit info, etc. It is just a matter of there being a time and place for everything.

"We can not have free government without elections; and if the rebellion could force us to forego, or postpone a national election it might fairly claim to have already conquered and ruined us." -- Abraham Lincoln, 1864

> You're joking, right?

Ummm, I wasn't joking. There is are ecologies in deserts that can be wrecked. Here is an alternate definition for "desert", FWIW.

I'm not huge environmentalist myself, but I can see how changing the face of a desert would be politically difficult at best. Any time you take a pristine area and build on it there will be some outcry.

And if you look in a place like Phoenix where irrigation has increased the daytime humidity, you can see that there can be profound human impact on these areas. Whether it's worth it or not has to be decided on a case by case basis in my mind.

But why do it if you don't have to? That was my point. Plus you get the added bonus of reducing transmission line losses and "free" electricity if it's on your house...

I don't rememember Thomas Jefferson saying it was ok to take the war to the civilians back in Britan or France or kidnap Britsh merchants and cut thier heads off as a 'message to others.'

the last time I was inside a woman, I was visiting the Statue of Liberty.

(I think this move was coming from the National Park Service eventually anyway, regardless of 9/11. The last time I visited, in the summer of 2000, only the first ferry-load of visitors every day were actually allowed to climb inside the statue.)

More importantly, fingerprint biometrics have a failure rate of about 2%. That means that if they have 1000 locker uses in a day, they should expect 20 failures. There were 3,240,307 visits in 2003. Lets say for the sake of argument that 10% use the lockers, or 324,000 people. That means roughly 6480 failures.

I wonder what the proceedure is for getting your stuff back should you be one of those 2%.

Olympic marmots, as well as a variety of other species, are only found on the Olympic peninsula. The peninsula at one point was completely separated from the mainland, so any species that were already there were not inter-breeding with animals from outside the peninsula. Even today, if you look at the peninsula on a map, it's really quite isolated, being surrounded mostly by water. Evidence of isolation is that a number of animals that are present elsewhere in Washington state are not found in Olympic: grizzly bears, wolverines, etc, despite the peninsula being a suitable habitat for them. Anyways, as a result of this isolation, there are a number of plants and animals that are endemic to the region, including the Olympic Marmot, which is related to but is a different species than the hoary and yellow-bellied marmots found elsewhere in Washington.

Similarly, the Vancouver Island Marmot is only found on (you guessed it) Vancouver Island, which is another very isolated part of the world.

I guess it makes more sense than re-enacting something that didn't happen.

They make movies about wars that actually happened...so why not games?

When they make movies/books/plays/games about wars that didn't happen, it is usually 'science fiction', which a large part of the population is not interested in. Personally, I'd rather watch 'Starship Troopers' than 'Glory' but that's me.

How far back into history would it be okay (ie: not to disturb our 'sensitivities') to portray a war in a video game?

Is WWII okay? That's fairly far back, and those old geezers are too busy signing up for Colonial Penn life insurance to play games.

World War I? Yes, it was the Great War...but fighting in trenches, funny looking tanks, and tossing grenades from bi-planes doesn't make for a lot of fun video games.

Have we had any games that were based on the Mexican-American war? Probably not, and we probably won't see too many...if for no other reason, the weapons were boring.

I think that the Vietnam war has a couple of things going for it that make it an interesting backdrop for a video game.

1- The entertainment industry has created a real mystique about the war. Movies like Apocolypse Now, Full Metal Jacket, Rambo, and anything with Chuck Norris ("fucking Chuck Norris") have brought it to our entertainment conciousness.

2- They had fairly cool weapons in Vietnam.

3- The tactics were different. It seems like the individual walking through the jungle made more of an impact than a faceless soldier standing in line during the Civil War. Once you've played a few games of Stratego, you've pretty much re-enacted the Civil War anyway.

REPORT FROM THE FIELD: THE USA PATRIOT ACT AT WORK

Evidently the Patriot Act is working on a scale not yet approaching:

~ 3000 murdered on 9-11

American Victims of Mideast Terrorist Attacks approximately 700 Americans have been killed and 1,600 wounded in terrorist attacks since 1970. This list also includes injured Americans since Oslo 1993

120,000 Americans of Japanese origin who were detained (not tortured a la Saddam, not abused a la frat party hijinks in Iraq) in American concentraion camps during WWII

'Johnny' Walker (the Marin County Jihad-dude) was actually charged with Federal crimes and did a plea bargin, currently serving ten-years. Was never charged under the "big bad scary evil" Patriot Act. If anything he was treated like a hostile nut case on the Afghan battle field prior to transport to US Federal prisons for trial ... did you see the video of him on CNN? A nut case who didn't get his Ritalin dose in high school

Basically your answer boils down to ... ZILCH ... no one ... nobody ... in short "no harm no foul" ... can we say this is a manufactured crisis?

Give me a jingle when the "shitlist" number reaches the:

~ 3000 murdered on 9-11

American Victims of Mideast Terrorist Attacks approximately 700 Americans have been killed and 1,600 wounded in terrorist attacks since 1970. This list also includes injured Americans since Oslo 1993

120,000 Americans of Japanese origin who were detained (not tortured a la Saddam, not abused a la frat party hijinks in Iraq) in American concentraion camps during WWII

sent to "internal" exile (a la freezing starvation Soviet Gulag or Chinese Communist Laogai )

tortured a la Saddam's Iraq vice "abused"

deprived of their civil rights a la Manzanar

sent to "internal" exile (a la freezing starvation Soviet Gulag or Chinese Communist Laogai )

tortured a la Saddam's Iraq vice "abused"

deprived of their civil rights a la Manzanar

NEGATIVE NATIONALISM
(i) ANGLOPHOBIA. Within the
[pseudo?]intelligentsia, a derisive and mildly hostile attitude towards Britain
[United States?] is more or less compulsory, but it is an unfaked emotion in
many cases. During the war it was manifested in the defeatism of the
[pseudo?]intelligentsia, which persisted long after it had become clear that the
Axis [Islamo-fascist?] powers could not win. Many people were undisguisedly
pleased when Singapore fell ore when the British were driven out of Greece, and
there was a remarkable unwillingness to believe in good news, e.g. el Alamein
[Iraq? Afghanistan?], or the number of German planes shot down in the Battle of
Britain. English [Liberal Western Democracy?] left-wing
[pseudo?]intellectuals did not, of course, actually want the Germans or Japanese
[Islamo-fascist groups/countries?] to win the war, but many of them could not
help getting a certain kick out of seeing their own country humiliated, and
wanted to feel that the final victory would be due to Russia [UN?
'world-community'], or perhaps America, and not to Britain. In foreign politics
many [pseudo?]intellectuals follow the principle that any faction backed by
Britain [United States?] must be in the wrong. As a result, [pseudo?]
'enlightened' opinion is quite largely a mirror-image of Conservative policy.
Anglophobia is always liable to reversal, hence that fairly common spectacle,
the pacifist of one war who is a bellicist in the next.

sent to "internal" exile (a la freezing starvation Soviet Gulag or Chinese Communist Laogai )

tortured a la Saddam's Iraq vice "abused"

deprived of their civil rights a la Manzanar

Your perception is mostly incorrect, being colored by the media. Teddy Roosevelt and Eisenhower benefit from the haze of history

Let's see -- TR started the Forest Service and many national parks -- no Republican since has ever been so environmentally conscious. Your beloved Reagan said "If you've seen one Redwood, you've seen them all.".

Eisenhower, despite being a career soldier, was intelligent enough to realize the danger of the military industrial complex. Reagan just gave bottom-feeding scum corps like Lockheed and Northrop everything they asked for.

and left-wingers are still very angry that Reagan's policies ended the cold war and saved the U.S. economy.

Communism collapsed of its own accord, helped by the struggles of people behind the iron curtain, which the US never helped despite their desperate pleads (We also screwed over the Czechs and Hungarians by not lifting a finger when they rebelled in the 50's and '60s) Read up on East Germany's "Swords to Ploughshares" movement, for example. Without those protests, the Berlin Wall wouldn't have fell.

Try plowing over a portion of your local (unihabited) desert and see if people agree that no "harm" is occuring

The desert was a bad example. It's extremely fragile and you WOULD be disturbing many many living things you can't see, which would then echo to larger living things that you can see.
for more info

I think it would be interesting to see if any kind of weak ecosystem exists on mars below the surface...like say...a colony of people living 6 inches beneath the surface, all named Mortonson.

Actually, our national anthem was writting during a battle at Fort McHenry, which is closer to Baltimore than DC. Correct war, though :)

It may have been distributed by the Daughters of the American Revolution -- there were DAR members in my family -- who at the time served as a civilian women's mouthpiece for the Department of War, as it was then called. (The military were highly opposed to women voting.)

It never occurred to me before reading the grandparent post that the button might have been intended to confuse people who didn't understand the word.

The problem is that people say "ooooohhh! Look at the shiny flip phone with the COLOR screen. COLOR!!!!" Too bad that battery won't last you more than half an hour and the antenna can't get a good signal.

I've logged more than 125 hours of talk time (I'm probably getting brain cancer, but it's more likely to come from my CRT anyways) with nary a dropped call.

I guess good for me, but I guess I'm proof that cell phones can work reliably.

Get a sense of history and some perspective. Also use Google to both look up and READ the source documentation

When the 'big bad' PATRIOT Act gets as bad as FDR's
Executive Order 9066 which resulted in concentration camps on US Soil give me a ring. Just hope the ACLU took some time from there Brie & Strawberry party with MoveOn to defend our gun rights (The Second Amendment Defends The First Amendment)

When the 'big bad' PATRIOT Act gets as bad as The Holocaust give me a ring. Just hope the ACLU took some time from there Brie & Strawberry party with MoveOn to defend our gun rights (The Second Amendment Defends The First Amendment)

Sending my check(s) to The Electronic Frontier Foundation not the hypocritical ACLU.

Get a sense of history and some perspective. Also use Google to both look up and READ the source documentation

When the 'big bad' PATRIOT Act gets as bad as FDR's
Executive Order 9066 which resulted in concentration camps on US Soil give me a ring. Just hope the ACLU took some time from there Brie & Strawberry party with MoveOn to defend our gun rights (The Second Amendment Defends The First Amendment)

When the 'big bad' PATRIOT Act gets as bad as The Holocaust give me a ring. Just hope the ACLU took some time from there Brie & Strawberry party with MoveOn to defend our gun rights (The Second Amendment Defends The First Amendment)

Sending my check(s) to The Electronic Frontier Foundation not the hypocritical ACLU.

It looks like the line passes over Delaware Water Gap. There are three observation areas along route 80 on the New Jersey side - two on the westbound side, one on the eastbound side. They close after dusk officially, but I had no problems observing the last lunar eclipse from one of those areas. It slightly over an hour drive from NYC.

Finally somebody who gets it! Terrorism may be some threat, but a government saying "Boo" every day is a much bigger threat.

I live in the area of Huntsville, Alabama. This city besides being home to much of Uncle Sam's "Whizz Bang Gun" development and management is also home to a substantial part of the US Space Effort.

Huntsville, Alabama is the home to a monument that tells just how much a lie "Homeland Security" and all this secrecy stuff is. The monument one block east of Monroe and Green Street intersection is to the encampment of Andrew Jackson (US $20 Bill). There he camped on his way to Horseshoe Bend. There the followers of Manitu a extremist religious sect of American Indians doing exactly what happened with 9/11/2001 (except the aircraft) to US People were smashed by Andrew Jacksons small force and an 50,000 man Cherokee Army.

This war was so identical to the current one that it even had a mad one eyed prophet like Mullah Omar leading it and a charismatic leader like Osama Bin Ladin. The military defeats as important as the were were not the solution. The solution was not a CIA-FBI "connect a dot" either. It was the rise of an art falling into disrespect in the USA at this time. It was the rise of CITIZENSHIP.

The simple fact is that no level of secrets will protect the world from terrorists. The only thing that can protect from these awful people is the agressive deliberate pattern of watching out for and caring for your fellow man. Take the Madrid Train bombings for example. They would have been prevented by as simple an act as one person noting that another had dropped his bag and was leaving the train. The simple act of kindness of paying attention and saying "Excuse me you forgot your bag" would have made the whole situation much safer. The strange behavior of either picking it up and staying on the train or leaving it behind deliberately would have been the tip-off. This is Citizenship! Citizenship is also being armed and ready to oppose as well. But you see, that doesn't require shaking US Taxpayers down for a Trillion Dollars or make political leaders powerful does it?

The study is entirely correct. The data access is no problem. The problem is people not caring for each other.

Side Note: In Iraq the USA cannot win. It is impossible. ONLY IRAQ can win or lose in Iraq. If they do not develop the serious caring for each other and this art of Citizenship, they can only hope for destruction. The USA may defeat their terrorists and make the country momentarily "peaceful" but until Iraqi people develop "Citizenship" they are doomed. In developing Citizenship, the victory of the Iraqi's will also be a US Victory. Their failure will not represent a defeat of the USA. On the contrary it will represent a normal condition outside the USA and just a continuation of danger for the USA. In the History of Mankind this victory of Iraq is critical for the safety of mankind. These lessons from the back woods of Alabama and Indiana are PROFOUNDLY IMPORTANT!

If you watch the ISS pass overhead, or any other satellite, imagine that you have no idea what it is. Look for signs of unusual movements... see how it wiggles around in its path? You can really tell if you're in a moving vehicle -- it chases after you, and then suddenly it's gone!

GOTCHA!

When we went to White Sands, New Mexico, they had a guide show off the excellent view of the stars. He explained some basic astronomy, talked about relative distances and such, and then someone said, "what's that?"

It was a satellite, of course, and he played the trick above on the folks who hadn't watched one go across the sky before. He really had some of them going, too... I heard a few "hmmm!"s from the group as he described the light's perceived non-linear motion.

It gave him a great chance to explain why satellites get reported as UFOs, complete with unusual movements and sudden disappearances. The satellite is moving in a nearly perfect curve across the sky, but your head isn't a very steady viewing platform. And when a light in the sky (distance = way far) gets close to a tree or something (distance = well known), your brain perceives the motion as changing.

Hopefully, he gave the eastbound tourists something to think about on their way to Roswell.

we do have a lot of sand-dunes, on the west side, though...

Lat/Long is obsolete - I find it much easier to use a more modern system like Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM). I consider it to be the metric equivalent of lat and long. Where in lat/long you have subdivisions of 60, UTM is all divisible by 10, has grid lines drawn on all maps (at least on those produced by the USGS and the Canadian equivalent), and is very easy to work with at widely different scales. For more of an explanation see http://www.nps.gov/prwi/readutm.htm

I wish instead of engineering this grass, they would instead engineer people to stop trying to grow lawns in places like this. What is wrong with a naturally landscaped yard that doesn't waste tons of water and pour tons of chemicals into the environment? Then again, if the grass takes over like the green fuzz that came out of the meteorite in Creep Show, it might be worth it.

I am really surprised in some ways, and not at all in others that there are groups of people who want to leave the rest of the universe in pristine condition as it currently is.

Of course, I also believe that those same people would prefer a mass genocide of all of mankind (excepting themselves and a very small group of like-minded people). Some even plan for it and hope the rest of us kill each other.

I would have to agree that ownership of the territory is going to be a huge issue. There are folks that I consider to be on par with the name-a-star-after-your-loved-ones who are selling square mile parcels on planetary bodies throughout the solar system. That is at least the first wave of ownership that is currently happening.

Ownership of any rock that is outside of the earth is still up for debate. I think D. Delos Harriman (from Heinlein's "The Man Who Sold the Moon") probabally has the best approach if it really needs to come down to it, by trying to buy the property rights for celestial bodies from all nations that lie below the orbit of the planets (or the moon) but this is something that is going to get ugly before it gets better. Try to park a geosync satellite above Equador and find out just how valuable celestial real estate really is. Equador claims that spot directly above their country as soverign territory (really, look it up).

A pro-active approach from the UN might help in trying to distribute celestial territory, but their current efforts are more along the lines of the Moon Treaty and the Outer Space Treaty are, IMHO examples of those UN member nations who don't have spaceflight capability from legally keeping those who have it from doing anything with spaceflight. That and they are also diplomats and lobbiest who endorse mass genocide of most of mankind at heart. They really don't want anybody to go anywhere else beside staying on the earth. Oh, maybe send a few robots to check out some cool places, and keep the scientist in their ivory towers to keep writing cool proposals and professional research publications. Keep the teeming hoards of ordinary people from ever getting to the rest of those places.

If the UN get into the business of realistically dealing with outer space, it would have to be more along the lines of the Homestead Act and the Northwest Territories Ordinance passed by the United States congress, which specifically acknowledged that the new territories are going to be settled, provided a way for individuals to get involved in the process, and established governing principles for the creation of new governments for the people going into those territories. It would be cool to see the UN coming up with a plan that would allow sections of the Moon, for instance, be able to achieve the status as a UN member nation in the General Assembly.

(BTW, the Northwest of the Northwest Ordinance was the northwestern portion of the USA after the Revolution: Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, and a part of Minnesota. This was one of the only comprehensive pieces of legislation passed under the U.S. Articles of Confederation before the current U.S. Constitution. This also established the pattern for making most of the western USA as well, in addition to current governing principles for American territory that is not currently in a state. I'm sure this would apply to soverign American territory in space as well.)

I seriously doubt that will ever happen.

Instead, I think what is probabally going to happen is a reenactment of the territory grab for the Americas (and most of the rest of the world as well) that happened between the 15th and 18th Centuries. That the players are going to be a little bit different (Europe will be a united voice, but India, China, and Japan w

I am sorry, but broadband in the household is not like FDR's Public Works Proejcts of the 1930's. Roosevelt used such initiatives to give work to those hammered by the Great Depression while simultaneously modernizing the US infrastructure - electricity for rural communities and the like.

I agree people should have broadband, but Bush needs to let ECONOMICS drive that, not legislation. When demand is high enough, providers will answer. Until then, there are plenty of other issues our government needs to take a look at.

Here's a hint, turn your head East.

So we should carry Microsoft into it's nearby Cracks of Doom and throw them in? Woohoo! On the count of three, lift!

Found the below comment on Fark. Somehow I doubt this is what she had in mind though.

Perhaps Jessica Simpson was referring to the role the Department of Interior's National Park Service plays in maintaining the grounds and structure of the White House, in its conducting of public tours of the White House, or the role it played in establishing the White House Historical Association, the organization which is responsible for decorating the White House.

The National Park Service seems to have it's stuff up still. as does the USGS

• Electronic Library of Interior Policies
• US Geological Survey
• National Park Service

It looks like the Park Service, USGS , and Office of Aircraft Services are still online. Yet there are some seemingly unrelated divisions offline that probably shouldn't be. I don't see why the National Interagency Fire Center is offline. It seems somewhat important!

The most extensive Nike bases I've seen: SF-88 and one of its sister sites in the Presidio of SF, had an above-ground radome or two, an above-ground launching area, and a small below-ground bunker - more of a garage, really - for storing the Nike missiles. The bunkers were not hardened; their purpose was to protect the surrounding area if one of the missiles exploded in storage.

--Pat / zippy@cs.brandeis.edu

photo 1

photo 2

More on the Great Salt Lake Brine Shrimp ecology can be found here:

Link 1

Link 2

Soil Crust Analogs on Earth???
Likewise a USA Today article Imprint shows Mars craft landed in 'weird stuff' describes "The soil was stripped up and folded in an interesting way," said Jim Bell, who designed the panoramic camera that Spirit used to photograph the "mud-like" patch. "It has quite alien textures."

Might this soil crust on Mars be same/similar to the biological soil crust found at Arches National Park (Moab, Utah)?

Additional details regarding biological soil crusts maybe are to found here:

intermediate details

advanced details

> In fact it has been ruled (by SCOTUS) that police have no
> responsibility to protect the lives or property of citizens. ...
> They can stand by idly while you are murdered and do nothing.

I have heard this before elsewhere, but do you have a link handy please?

If this outrage is true, remember that SCOTUS, in a 7/9 decision including Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, was the institution responsible for the wrong Dred Scott decision.

Elect politicians that can appoint you the judiciary you deserve!

It shows mostly sand-sized particles, but with a large number of apparently hollow spheres or tubes. The image resolution is about 30 microns per pixel - about the width of a human hair.

Such grains were completely unexpected. But John Grotzinger, a geologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, says they closely resemble formations he has seen in soils in the southwestern deserts of the US [rm3friskerFTN - perhaps lending some weight to my earlier analogy to Arches National Park @ Moab, Utah, USA]. "There are little tubes that build up by capillary action," he told New Scientist, as salty water evaporates from the nearly-dry soil.

photo 1

photo 2

More on the Great Salt Lake Brine Shrimp ecology can be found here:

Link 1

Link 2

Soil Crust Analogs on Earth???
Likewise a USA Today article Imprint shows Mars craft landed in 'weird stuff' describes "The soil was stripped up and folded in an interesting way," said Jim Bell, who designed the panoramic camera that Spirit used to photograph the "mud-like" patch. "It has quite alien textures."

Might this soil crust on Mars be same/similar to the biological soil crust found at Arches National Park (Moab, Utah)?

Additional details regarding biological soil crusts maybe are to found here:

intermediate details

advanced details

Might this soil crust on Mars be same/similar to the LIVING biological soil crust found at Arches National Park (Moab, Utah)?

Additional details regarding biological soil crusts maybe are to found here:

intermediate details

advanced details

Hello NASA JPL ... Hello? ... Hello? Have you considered that you have perhaps seen evidence of life on Mars? Hello? Hello?

Earth-to-NASA JPL

Hello?

Looking at this picture(small) (Large), I see what looks to be 3 high areas that seem to have their tops sliced off. They look to be flat, almost like what you'd see here on Earth, like Devil's Tower.

I'm wondering if these features were caused by similiar forces. Given the apparent size of the features on Mars, I'm thinking that whatever happened, it must've been big. Or maybe it was just gravity, given that these features are part of the canyon wall.

I'm no geologist, or rocket scientist by any means. However it looks pretty interesting to me.

wbs.

Of course the accidental picture was the one that became famous.

For those that aren't making the connection, the famous photo and a number of others taken at the time are here. There was a stamp made of it too. And it was made into a statue for the Marine Corps War Memorial.

Might this soil crust on Mars be same/similar to the biological soil crust found at Arches National Park (Moab, Utah)?

Additional details regarding biological soil crusts maybe are to found here:

intermediate details

advanced details

One of the largest man-made lakes in the world is right outside of Vegas. It would make for a wonderful place to dispose of bodies in the game, just as the mob has done for years.

Maybe throw in a little desert driving and I'd be one happy camper, wreaking havoc upon my home town!

Might this soil crust on Mars be same/similar to the biological soil crust found at Arches National Park (Moab, Utah)?

Additional details regarding biological soil crusts maybe are to found here:

intermediate details

advanced details

In general, one would think that introducing a GM freshwater fish in Australia would be a safe bet for containment. However...

There is NO WAY that this gene could be contained in the small "backwater basin" in Australia. There are enough other locales in the world (the majority of the US, and its Great Lakes for one) in which carp are despised, and enough motivated people with mobility, that there would quickly spring up a "black market" in these GM carp for export to ponds, lakes, and rivers abroad.

One of the central tenents of all good engineering is "As complex as is needed, and NO MORE." Any more you add after that point is just "more to go wrong".

Eight wheels, eight suspension systems, eight control systems. True, perhaps the system is designed with failure in mind, but think about owning this as a vehicle for normal use - how often will you be taking in to be fixed, because one or more wheels have broken?

It's just like the fools who buy 4 wheel drive SUVs when what they need is a minivan - now they have what amounts to a whole extra powertrain to go wrong.

Now, if the intent was for this to be used in unusual circumstances (forestry work, extreme rough road work or the like) I could believe this was "as complex as needed but no more".