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Given that it's Imperial College and they're going to be teaching by hologram... I wonder if this ( http://www.oocities.org/~speci... ) might be one of the professors.

The U.S. version of Geocities is archived here. I'm sure some enterprising Japanese person will do the same:

http://www.oocities.org/

.

Jesux (pronounced Hay-sooks) to the rescue!

It's a drug called "Gundam Wing": http://www.oocities.org/televi...

Behold the wonder of Geocities!

Stalin had been trying to get an alliance with Britain and France in 1939

Citations?

Britain and France started WWII by forcing Stalin into a position where he thought he had to make a treaty with Germany

He made it not because he was forced, but because he was planning an attack himself. USSR's entire military posture was offensive — materiel dumps, artillery, bombers were located on the edge of the borders. Which is why they were overtaken by Germans so quickly leaving USSR nearly naked in 1941, when Hitler outplayed his pal. Whether Hitler actually knew of Stalin's designs or not remains subject of debate among historians, but it is quite common knowledge, that Stalin was preparing an attack.

By the time Soviet troops entered Poland, the war was well and truly on (and Poland had lost).

That's not true. Polish troops were retreating to reorganize, when they were attacked from the other direction by the Red Army — to this day Poland refers to the events as "Stab in the Back".

Instead of killing the Poles, Stalin could have helped them — but he and Hitler were allies and thus both share culpability for starting the WW2.

1. Nuclear devices are ineffective in space.

Not the case. See Project Orion.

will have to use them early to nudge the object onto a different path

This would be the case for any asteroid defense and we're already capable of detecting and track most objects large enough to cause serious concern. With more investment, we'll only be getting better and be able to detect smaller and smaller objects.

banned by multiple international agreements

Banned due to potential for a space arms race over a potential war. Doesn't apply in case of joint global asteroid defense.

We don't put nuclear power generators in space for a reason

We can and regularly do send nuclear power generators into space, including fully-featured nuclear reactors. In related the news, we haven't all died yet.

4. Nuclear devices are pretty fragile devices & 5. Nuclear fission devices require regular maintenance

Just send many smaller ones. Even if some don't work, all you want to achieve is deflection. Pro tip: when not required, don't park the things in space. Keep them on the ground and launch them should the need arise. Any asteroid early-detection program gives notice years in advance (e.g. we learned about the close pass of 99942 Apophis a good 2 decades in advance).

6. An accidental malfunction would be a SERIOUS problem for the near by earth

Same problem applies for weapons stored on Earth. Fix is simple: keep the device disarmed and design in fail-safes. This has already been done. I 7 decades of nuclear weaponry, number of inadvertent nuclear detonations, even in case of accidental weapons drops: zero.

Speaking as a 60 year old with a killer resume who has been programming for below minimum wage for the last 14 years, largely because of discrimination:

All discrimination should be legal in a truly free market. Unfair discrimination results in a competitive disadvantage that a free market will punish in exact proportion to the degree the discrimination is unfair.

However, we don't have a free market. We have a market that subsidizes wealth. The information technology sector -- in particular -- suffers from the free protection of network effect wealth such as that which built Bill Gates' operating system (hence tightly integrated applications) fortune and which is building Zuckerberg's. Network effect wealth is essentially wealth that accrues to the biggest regardless of whether they're the best or not.

There are those who claim this all evens out in the end due to the higher taxes paid on income, capital gains, value added, sales, etc.

Wrong.

The key to understanding the difference is in comparing the liquidation value of the wealth as opposed to the net present value of the projected profit stream. The liquidation value represents NPV of the projected profit stream adjusted for risk as perceived by risk averse financial institutions, such as pension funds, investment banks (that aren't socializing their risk), etc. On the other hand, that same profit stream, as perceived by gifted technologists and business leaders might be substantially higher because they understand best how to manage the inherent risks.

Where the network effect is the dominant factor in valuing an asset (as it was with MS-DOS the moment IBM started distributing it as the default OS on their 4.77MHz 8088 PC -- or as it is with Facebook as soon as the social status of Harvard was seen as driving the its growth to dominance over prior entrants such as MySpace) there is less difference between the risk averse valuation and the valuation placed on the asset by the "gifted". If, rather than taxing the profit stream, capital gains, value added, sales, etc. the liquidation value were the tax base for civilization, guys like Gates and Zuckerberg would be taxed out of their stranglehold _very_ rapidly, and more competition could enter the field.

Now, would that mean guys like me get to work for above minimum wage?

That I leave to the fair market.

Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to ... you know... feel superior on a message board and berate people for evidence, and then feel like an utter dick when someone produces it.

No, I'd never do it.... because you never know,.... they just might be able to produce it.

So perhaps then, I'd consider that the best thing to do - if I felt that more evidence would be required - would be to politely ask for it. That way if they had it, I'd be able to learn more about it, and if not, I would have made my point.
If, however, I was to be a complete douchebag and be insulting, I'd be betting on them not having a repsonse BUT *if it just so happened* that they could produce evidence.... you'd look like an utter asshole. So really there'd be nothing for you to gain from being a dick, and only self-respect to lose.

Nope. Not a smart move.

http://www.oocities.org/protop...

Not to mention the fact that it is, to my way of thinking, stunningly gorgeous: http://www.oocities.org/capeca... http://www.oocities.org/capeca...

Something about the way the jet intakes are integrated into the wing. Very pretty!

Not to mention the fact that it is, to my way of thinking, stunningly gorgeous: http://www.oocities.org/capeca... http://www.oocities.org/capeca...

Something about the way the jet intakes are integrated into the wing. Very pretty!

Shimizu Corporation intersects with Dr. Criswell in another way that I just discovered today after searching for his more recent patents.

We've got to attract technological civilization's population away from natural ecosystems into idealized artificial environments such as Shimizu Corporation's design for what it calls the "Green Float". You can house the entire population of civilization in beach-front property on the boundary of a tropical rain forest where people can swim, fish, hunt and gather recreationally, as well as access the height of urban lifestyle. From there space habitats are likely to emerge so that the natural propensity of these "cells" to replicate endlessly needn't destroy Earth's biosphere. Interestingly, I came up with a geometry that looks very similar to that years ago, with the Solar Updraft Tower Algae Biosphere proforma and, over the subsequent years, I found a floating photobioreactor technology that requires little more than 2 layers of polyfilm that has demonstrated production per cost figures far in excess of what I projected in that proforma. Before I ran across Shimizu Corp's Green Float I had further refined the idea based on the Atmospheric Vortex Engine, which, like Shimizu's "Green Float", is ideally sited in the equatorial doldrums and could make use of the central tower of the Green Float. I posted some preliminary thoughts over at the Seastead Institute's blog.

A key problem I attempted to address in my preliminary thoughts was the early market for energy from the Atmospheric Vortex Engines that would form the nuclei for Shimizu's Green Floats. A big problem was the fact that the electric power markets are thousands of miles away from the floating AVEs even if you could build on the order of a terawatt of oceanic power transmission lines thousands of miles long. Early markets are critical for attracting capital -- the lack of which renders such grandiose ideas "non-starters".

I had thought it would be very nice to have a microwave transmission technology that could dynamically switch the power distribution to achieve the holy grail of "dispatchable" power generation for peak loads, but wasn't aware, until just now, that Dr. Criswell's recent revision of his patent serves precisely that purpose.

Space science should be like underwater expeditions: Relatively cheap and largely pursued by commerce, philanthropy and adventure seekers, because there is an industrial base in the oceans, such as oil rigs, shipping, etc. The problem is the absence of commercial space -- and -- no -- planetary science with robotic probes don't really do much to advance space utilization.

As someone who was seriously involved in getting NASA out of competition with commercial launch services the main reason government can justify civilian space programs is that the government subsidizes wealth accumulation by taxing economic activity rather than assets. This creates a mentality among capitalists that they can sit on their capital assets rather than selling to someone who will put it to productive use. It also makes it harder to become rich since your income and capital gains are being taxed away before you can reinvest them in your manifestly productive enterprise (otherwise you wouldn't have income and capital gains).

It was during my work on getting commercial launch companies capitalized that I came to my realization that this capital market failure was at the root of what I have called "technosocialism" (think Shuttle and Tokamak). As a result I wrote down my thoughts on a net asset tax in 1992 -- which was a long time ago so I have put some thought into how to improve and simplify the proposal in a mode that it can be adopted as a county-level political economy in the event that the Federal government defaults on obligations such as Social Security (perhaps through inflation).

Sure, we do have Elon and Jeff but what it took to make that happen was the DotCon bubble which freed up enough capital in a general technological milieu that some true, dyed-in-the-wool technologists got sufficiently rich to pursue the bottle neck to all space activities: launch costs.

If the Feds stopped taxing economic activity and started taxing assets there would be 20 if not 100 guys like Elon and Jeff.

"You were not created for a life of idleness. You cannot eat from sunrise to sunset or drink or play or make love. Work is not your enemy but your friend. If all manners of labor were forbidden to thee you would fall to your knees and beg an early death." http://www.oocities.org/hazelleglen/success.html, ("The Greatest Success in the World", page 11, http://www.amazon.com/The-Greatest-Success-World-Mandino/dp/0553278258) From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Og_Mandino

One of several cartoons titled "Great moments in evolution"

Wherever he is these days, I hope Gary Larson sees this story and smiles.

The only thing reversing the polarity ever did was to allow unlicensed NES games to freeze the console's lockout chip so that the power light wouldn't blink.

In 1995, Robert W. Bussard submitted this legislation to all relevant Congressional committees, copying all US plasma physics laboratories.

Needless to say, the legislation wasn't passed.

Do you think the time is right?