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Chinese Moon Base by 2012 - or 2006?
apsmith writes "Former congressman and House Science chairman Robert S. Walker has written some rather striking conclusions about Chinese intentions in space over the next few years, based on information received for the recent Commisison on the Future of Aerospace. Walker is convinced the Chinese are going all-out for a permanent settlement on the Moon within 10 years; apparently some closer to the situation in Japan think the first landing will be in only 3-4 years. Meanwhile the Economist says IT people are starting to focus on space as the next high-tech venue. Fortunately, despite NASA's neglect, we do have a few private missions to the Moon in the works."
The russians never pulled this off, but maybe a communist red flag next to the stars and stripes might knock the Americans off their high horse, or at least, wake them up. The Chinese are also willing to accept loss of life in this pursuit, so it wouldn't suprise me if they had something going bt 2010.
I'd just be happy to see Homo Sapiens someplace other than Earth.
2001 has come and gone. Still , watch out for large black rectangular prisms once you start building.
Or maybe they don't need to? I for one have no desire to live on the moon, or see the costs of getting there subsidized by my taxes.
Why should this be considered a problem if non-US people plan to get to the Moon ?
I thought this was like Antartic : a Free (as in... uh?) place.
Trolling using another account since 2005.
mining materials from the moon is going to be more expensive than raiding Western Russia and mining in Siberia then shipping it back to China.
It's expensive to live there, to ship people there, and to experiment there (what to experiment on I will never know).
I can't see a financial justification to use it as a start point for Mars missions when there is nothing of use on Mars (even if there is water and "life").
Let's have our people suffer and wither away in the wastelands of undeveloped China and build a moon base!
Somehow, everytime I see "China is going to the moon" I keep thinking they are just going to use the same strategy against us that we did to the U.S.S.R.
I wonder if our economy "could" withstand another race.
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
Why did we stop going to the moon?
.. huh?
I touched it, I'm done..
I've seen countless reasons on why we should base to the moon but have never understood the reasoning for manning to mars before we've settled our closest orbiter.
-M-
"Life is all about strategy, mathematics and psychological perceptiveness."
a good Chinese restaurant on the moon will fix that little no-food or water problem and make NASA's job so much easier....
You will have to pry my proprietary software $$$ from my cold dead hands!
I think this is great. Yes, I have the typical reservations many will have here (human rights, poverty in China, etc.). However, I support this 100%.
I really think space is not something that should be done alone by a nation, though. I think we should see how we can help or team up with China in some way. It could be the common bond that finally helps us get over this mini-me cold war that we have going on with them.
Space exploration should no longer exist as a competitive sport. Write your representatives and let them know that you support US cooperation with China in space.
"If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid." - Epictetus
Personally, I'm hoping that only #1 will happen. Competition is good. See what's happened since we lost an 'opponent' in the space race? We've grown complacent. Having another space will be good for just about everything (national pride, the tech sector, the economy in general, innovation, etc).
is Chinese???
--
All your space is belong to us...
Someone set up us the moon?
I could order food from their moonbase and it will still get to my house on earth faster than from the restaurant down the street.
Trolling is a art,
I don't care who goes to the moon, as long as someone does. People actually love this kind of stuff, but they're easily distracted. Having a human presence on the moon might get enough people interested again to kickstart the industry.
It is said that the Chinese take the long view of things. Perhaps it is true. Anyway, they still have an authoritarian govt, and as such probably still want to conquer the world. A moon base might let them try it -- recall Heinlein's "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress", and how "interesting" (per ancient Chinese curse) it might be to be able to throw rocks that can cause as much damage as A-bomb explosions, without the leftover radioactivity.
Anyone not familiar with this Heinlein tome, and who has an interest in the next century should read it.
/.ers just waiting to rebuke this claim, knock yourselves out. Democracy cannot fight gravity, nor stop a 1/2km bolder travelling at Mach 33 coming down through the atmosphere.
Whoever has the moon, has the Earth. If anyone is thinking of entering an expansionist phase, it would behoove them to set up shop there. They are at the top of the gravity well, we're at the bottom.
I am sure there are
I like to maintain a positive outlook, but that is much easier with hindsight rather than foresight.
]3
ps - I didn't have anyone in mind when I mentioned entering an expansionist era - if you associated the remark with any particular geopolitical entity, that was your own doing!
Does this remind anyone of a south park episode?
SL33ZE - Artificial Intelligence is No Match For Natural Stupidity -
We could have done that the technology we had 40 years ago.
Lookign at teh brighter side, it'll at least put the heat on NASA again. Seeing as how teh Space Program went downhill with teh fall of the USSR, not we have another comunist nation to go up against.
We can't let those Reds win now can we? (No offence to China)
Sometimes I wish I was a plumber, then I'd know how to deal with other people's shit.
I have to say I am attracted to the idea of an Orbital facility based upon (and hopefully governed by) high tech and ethical principles.
The idea of 'data haven' facilities is also one with which any reader of SF/Cyberpunk will be familiar, and one that could be very profitable.
The question of funding is of course the major sticking point.
An infinite number of monkeys will eventually come up with the complete works of
Great! This means "Rush Hour IX" with Chris Tucker and Jackie Chan, with low-gravity slow-mo hijinks involving drug smugglers on the moon.
I think china needs the moon to some of their billions of people!
While competition is good fun when it comes to sport, it is about time the West, in particular the USA stopped believing that every time another entity tries to do something newer, bigger or better that such a step is looked upon as a threat. China has never attacked a Western nation and is trying to open up - in particular since SARS. So, we should be supporting and encouraging them. We have worked pretty well with the Russians, that has paid off with their help since Columbia. So we have learned that if you corner the fox he will bite, but if you pamper him he will lick.
O'WONDERWe're working on it.
The reds are going for a permanent settlement on the moon? No problem. Reagan had it all worked out years ago. ;^)
If someone doesn't do something about that S.A.R.S thing in the next 10 years, I don't think there will be any chinese left to go to the moon. Or elseware for thet matter.
If life is like civilization, as soon as the Chinese make it, our entire society will crumble!
Since we have about 4 Future Technologies already, I beileve we should launch a full scale attack on China, take our scientific research down to 0% to collect as much gold as possible, and start building our own.
While we are at it, we probably shouldn't ask for a UN vote, we will surely fail, and lose there too.
What would be America's best way to win? We've already secured some oil resources, we need to build a harbor!
http://use.perl.org
Almost anyone who is a technophile was weaned on stories of colonies on the moon and mars by the new millenium. NASA, for better or for worse, never fullfilled those dreams. But now that some of those technophiles are all grown up and have a billion and a half dollars, it only makes sense that they would start to use their new-found power to realize the dreams of their youth.
As a fellow dreamer, I can't think of a better outcome to the dotcom-dotbomb cycle than the kick-off of a vibrant commercial space industry. (Well, maybe the immediate cessation of world poverty and the industrial destruction of the environment. But the chances of that happening even with a couple of motivated dotcom dreamers at the helm, are probably close to nil. At least space doesn't have too much in the way of entrenched powers that prefer the status quo.)
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
NASA stopped going to the moon because they were told to get off by the visiting races from somewhere else. I don't think the Chinese have idea what they're up against.
Why do you think the US gov is pushing so hard for SDI (Star Wars) technology? There isn't anyone with balistic nukes to worry about that much any more... They want to "protect" themselves against those who are not deemed worthy enough to discuss openly. If you can't read between the lines then I'll use the outdated term for you: UFOs
Would this have anything to do with the US claiming 'Negation' of space for other countries?
As we saw when the Europeans started work on their own GPS rival, the US Govt get quite tetchy when they see possible weakening of their influence in space.
If China do press ahead with this plan, we should expect tantrums from the US.
I do not think you understand! Firaxis is God, and God says that if the Chinese, or any other civ colonises the moon we are destroyed!
Or if we get to 2025. Either way, no more us!
http://use.perl.org
As a Westerner who sadly recognizes the fact that his society has abandoned space exploration and colonization, I'm more than happy for the Chinese lunar colonists. At least some members of homo sapiens will get to leave the rock.
But as a Westerner who's read Heinlein, I'm pretty sure that sooner or later, those guys are going to end up more free and more happy than their government could ever imagine possible, even in its worst nightmares.
You go, Chinese guys. More power to ya.
Heinlein was a starry-eyed optimist to think it could ever happen on Earth, but he had a valid point on Luna - any resource-rich, low-population, but otherwise harsh environment practically necessitates the development of certain cultural norms.
To the rest of the world, this is just one more triumph of the United States that nobody else has caught up to after 35 YEARS! The second country to land on the moon would still look big in the eyes of the rest of the world, and more-so if they build a moon base (something not even the USA has done).
On a different note, I'm going back to school for aerospace engineering. When touring the department, I found that they are having record enrollment in both their graduate and undergraduate programs. Kinda make's one wonder how many of them (like me) are switching from the computer industry...
science is a religion
One of the most interesting is: "Let's Challenge China to a Space Race"
http://spacepolicy.org/page_mw0100.html
But there are a ton of others, all very well written on many aspects of the space program's flaws, successes, interaction with congress, other countries' programs, etc.
Stop the Slashdot Effect! Don't read the articles!
Doesn't this whole conversation presuppose that someone has actually been to the moon in the first place? ;)
In all seriousness though, just think about how cheaply they could produce kung fu movies in space w/o having to spend all that extra money on wires and CGI for the Shaolin flying kicks and jumps! Err... that's reason enough to try isn't it?
i just find it funny that you're all going on about how bad china is, can`t feed its own people etc. when america has the highest rate of people below the poverty line in the world, yet spending billions on something as stupid as space is ok? maybe we should all fix up our own planet before trashing things external to it
WTF is a sig?
The Moon is also at the bottom of a Gravity Well, you could use an orbital based mass driver against both Terra and Luna - plus, there is plenty of raw ammunition just floating around the SolSys in the form of asteroids to do the job.
On a happier (and less paranoid) note, I don't suppose there might just be a chance for overall Human co-operation on getting us all into space would there? No? Too much to ask I supose.
An infinite number of monkeys will eventually come up with the complete works of
The comment about IT people gearing up for space as the next market was misleading. I don't consider engineering rockets to be information technology. I was expecting orbiting routers, server, and stuff.
Wee.... another article about a "evil country" and almost every american /. reader starts pulling threats like "They should abandon all nuclear weapons. They should stop to exist. They should become american." out of his ass.
America, stop being so pathetic!
(Probably in armed spaceships, but that's the way humans behave...)
I predict many replies to this post will be from people with inferiority complexes, including:
Jokes about SARS
Communism references
How we have to "beat 'em to it"
How they will fail or NASA will do it first
Pretty much sums up everything that is wrong with this planet and its self-imposed drunk policeman..
This will finally put to rest the fake moon landing theory/conspiracy.
Or will this be a fake moon base filmed in the deserts of China behind the Great Wall!?
--- I'm Green Hornet's sidekick not Inspector Clouseau's!
All your base are belong to us.
A-Bomb
BTW - it was no incident, for example more funds were spent on teaching maths in colleges and on science education in general.
blakespot
-- Heisenberg may have slept here.
iPod Hacks.com
One of the benefits of the Apollo program wasn't just the science done on the moon, but all of the technological innovations that had to be made in order for it to happen. Sure some of those innovations are relatively mundane (like Tempurpedic Mattresses). However, it also helps you build a huge amount of expertise in aerospace and electronics - industries that would help China both commercially and miliatarily.
I honestly can't tell if you're joking or not.
Learn to spell a three letter word you moron, it's THE.
1. Build a base on the moon
2. ???
3. ???
4. ???
5. profit!
Seriously, a moonbase is really tough to justify right now. There are all the enlightened arguments about science etc. but wouldn't it be much nicer if we first developed life support and automated mining/manufacturing technologies here on Earth, and then went up once it becomes economical to do so? We would even do more science that way in the long run.
This is a nation which still hasn't launched a person into space, let alone have the capacity to go to the moon soon. At the time of the Apollo missions, the US was spending 1% (http://members.aol.com/dsportree/VH04.htm) of the GNP on NASA. The Soviets were probably spending about the same amount of dough. That's was 6 billion in 1967 dollars, or about 32 billion dollars today. Can China afford this? I'm dubious, especially given the current world economy.
Tack on the expenses both nations had (US with Mercury & Gemini, USSR with the various Vostok missions), and the experience China will have to gain... I'd wager on a 2012 landing and 2020 at best for a permanent base. It will take many heavy-lifting flights to get stuff to the moon, and just one disaster to set back the whole timeframe.
Further, the natural Chinese economic advantage (lots of cheap labor), is of little value in the aerospace realm. Sure, you can have folks using picks and shovels on a dam along side modern construction equipment. But on a Saturn V/N-1 type rocket? Not likely.
Can they do it? Sure. So could ESA, Japan and probably a half dozen other nations like Australia, Brazil or India. Will they? Probably, they want the bragging rights. But by 2006? No way.
46. The Hobo smiles, his eyes glaze over, and he burps. "Beware the man who has lived longer than the Wasteland."
Then leave it for those guys to mass produce it.
Which makes it a fantastic troll.
If I had moderator points, it would've been for "funny", but hey, they took those away from me.
goes from Solar electric propulsion (16 month transfer)to "ISS assembly; ion-engine transfer" (30 - 45 days transfer).
So not only do we have to build the ISS, we also need to work out how build an Ion-engine too...
Thats a hell of a lot of progress,
/me looks forwards to day trips on the moon when I'm old and grey.
My internet connection is borked at the moment,
else I would provide google links.
"They locked up a man who wanted to rule the world, the fools, they locked up the wrong man! L.Cohen
It's hardly fair to blame NASA for "neglect." The nation was obsessed with a moon landing because we wanted to beat the Commies up there!
Despite a relatively large ad campaign back in the 80s, I think (celebs explaining the technology that had come out of space research), most people still don't get why we're sending scientific missions up there.
In closing, I'd like to say "flag on the moon... how did it get there?"
Please, O Educated One on China, tell us how much "yen" a Chinese farmer has to save to buy a tractor. While you're at it, could you tell us how many samurai warriors the Chinese Army is cranking out these days?
Idiot.
Are you related to McCarthy by any chance?
Do you want to live in a world where a single nation can ignore the global community because their army is so strong they dont have to care , accuse nations of perfidity but provide no proof, launch premptive military strikes as a means of achieving political agenda, subjugate nations by force under the guise of liberty?
I'm sure we all feel so much safer with the USA up there pulling the string than those nasty evil Chinese.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
I disagree with many, many aspects of modern Chinese life, but there are some factual errors in your post that need correcting.
Why not? When you're on top, everything is looked upon as a threat. I'm quite sure if China was in the position the US is, they would see it the same way.
Blar.
Gosh, free speech?
As long as you don't disagree with the Government too much
Freedom to assemble
Unless you're a protester
freedom to live where you want
Provided you're the right color
have as many kids as you want
As long as you're not poor
worship who you want?
As long as you're not an Atheist or a Muslim
China is not a shiny happy example of Utopia and it has lots of problems of its own. It is not some sort of grey distopian soviet nightmare that you paint it to be either.
The U.S is also not a utopia, and it too has a lot of problems to solve. Get over it.
Amen to that, brother. I'm glad I'm not the only one to spot the US lunacy.
Fortunately, there are a lot of Americans who don't share their governments views. We just have to spread their wisdom.
There are only a few reasons to go to the Moon that I can see.
1. Scientific. These are pretty weak. Some nice radio and optical telescopes could be set up on the dark side. However, the next Space Telescope will be placed at Lagrange Point 2. That's pretty clean from Earthly interference and cheaper than the Moon. Exploration? Really, what are we going to find that will be useful that can not be done robotically?
2. Commercial. The solar cell idea is just stupid. Stick with Nuclear here on earth. Cheap, clean, and practically infinite. Maybe, someday, fusion will displace it. If so, H3 mining might be a winner for being on the Moon. I'm sure that will drive the Moon environmentalists up a tree. (hee hee). I can just see the protestors and signs now, "Stop Strip Mining the Moon! It's destroying the view from the earth for Spotted Owls." If we could ever make the per pound (screw you metric guys) cost to high orbit cheap enough... vacations would be a good reason to put up a colony. Just look at Vegas and Cancun. There's some serious scratch.
3. Political. That's why we (the US) went the first time. That's what the Chinese are up too. The US may have to do it just to keep the Chinese from being the only ones there. National pride can be an odd thing.
But the biggest political reason will be to get the fuck off Earth. That may be a while. Or a well funded cult may be the first to go. Too bad the Hal Bop guys are gone. It's easier to catch a lift on a Comet from the low gee of the Moon.
www.bannination.com Two things float to the top he
Why would you think it's a joke? Have you already forgotten Tianeman square? Communist China is a brutal, repressive, murderous regime. If they get a lunar base, bank on it that it will be heavily militarized and its top priority will be to learn how to drop rocks on American cities.
You can tell a great deal about the character of a man by observing those who hate him.
I don't see how something like this is very practical, beyond the research involved to complete the mission. Mining would be too expensive, so there goes that idea. Last time I checked: there are still a few open spaces on Earth, so the moon isn't needed due to overcrowding. Finally, it has been proven over and over that making the trip into space is still quite dangerous so there's no reason to think there would be a high volume of missions taking place.
My opinion: All the US (or the UK, Japan, the EU, Australia, etc etc) needs to do right now is rig up a space elevator and an orbital solar/microwave power station. Whatever country or collection of countries pulls this off will be able to play in space all they want, sell the experience to others (step 3: profit) AND get awfully cheap power. Not an easy task, but certainly more practical and IMHO much more beneficial than a moon base.
Get this rolling along and pull off a moonbase with more ease and better resources. I mean, it would be a real kicker to conduct research (the moonbase) off a profitable operation (elevator and power) instead of dipping exclusively into taxes.
Yes, that's the problem isn't it? When they establish a base and promise it won't be used as a military asset...no one else will know if they're joking or not. No matter what the intention or purpose (or nationality), a moonbase must be recognized as a strategic position that influences balance of power. All it takes to change it from research station to attack platform is one payload flight with a nucelar device. I wonder if there was a secret deal between US and USSR not to make a moonbase because it would change the balance of power in a nuclear standoff?
In my opinion, this is a distinct possibility. If they have the willpower to do it, they WILL pull it off without US help or competition. Personally, I hope this or some collaborated(sp?) effort is the case because I really want to see more people in space and the expansion of the human race beyond the thin atmosphere between us and the rest of the universe. Granted the moon is just a baby step (and we're talking a baby atom here) on the cosmic scale of things, but we need to start somewhere, and if the currently most active space program on the planet will not do it, then let someone else. We ARE all human here anyway.
Along these lines, there have been some other posts to this story about the financial problems and the probable lack of commercial return from these ventures. I say to that, Who the hell CARES??? This is the future we are talking about here. This is the possible expansion of the human race. Personally, if I could be around in 20,000 years to see it, I would really like for the Galaxy to be much like Isaac Asimov wrote in his Robot Series and Foundation Series. There is still all of the good and bad of human nature, but we will be free of these earthly bounds and able to go just about anywhere we please.
Not to sound cheesy (and Trek-y) but Space really is the final frontier, and I think we (as a species) need to get off our lazy earth-bound asses and get out there to see what we can find. We really need to work harder to make science fiction into science reality, IMHO.
Of course, I really am just a clueless, idealistic dreamer, but perhaps if there were more people like me and less business-y, money grubbing, power hungry jerks in the world then perhaps we would already be out to Mars and on our way to Jupiter, Saturn, or even Proxima-Centauri...
Sorry for the huge digression and the rant, but whenever I see stories like this and people putting down those who try (not the parent post, but others in this story) it makes me a bit hot-headed (well...the beer helps too).
"Knowledge is power" - Sir Francis Bacon
"Imagination is more important than knowledge" - Albert Einstein
I think the human race needs to take those quotes a bit more to heart. We need both more "small steps for man" and more "giant leaps for mankind".
Again, sorry for the rant. Goodbye Karma.
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
That Chinese will be the official language of the moon? and can you image the extremely slo-mo ping pong games that would be played?
From excellent karma to terible karma with a single +5 funny post...
Do you want to live in a world where a single nation can ignore the global community because their army is so strong they dont have to care , accuse nations of perfidity but provide no proof, launch premptive military strikes as a means of achieving political agenda, subjugate nations by force under the guise of liberty?
I know you think you are trolling about the US but if you look at China's history you will see that all but the liberty part will fit very well. To even compare the US to China is pretty much a sign of both your obvious youth and even more obvious lack of intelligence.
Pick up a history book and let mommy wipe your ass then come back and post intelligently.
Orbital bombardment from the moon, eh?
Trolling is a art,
Will they all soon say "Made on the Moon" ? ;p
We need a president who will lead America back into space. President Bush is not that guy. The massive tax cuts he is ramming through will bankrupt the Treasury and prevent us from competing with the Red Chinese as they take over space.
I agree that it's largely a boon for national prestige, but I wonder if there's some kind of strategic value to be the only campers on the moon.
I can see that making our US administration a bit nervous.
So long, michael. Don't let the door hit you...
I recommed the article U.S. 'negation' policy in space raises concerns abroad. Space is the next frontier for US military dominance. NASA may have been gutted, but now the government is realizing it can enhance its control over the world if it has space. This means denying everyone else access to space - so I won't be surprised if the US govt starts painting the Chinese (dirty commies! watch out! coughbullshitcough) space program as a serious military threat.
(Missile shield? Missile shield? Hell, son, we need orbital weapons platforms all around the world! We need to be able to shut down military operations by rogue states and terr'ists anywhere on the globe! Hot damn, we need nukes on the moon!)
Karma: T-rexcellent.
I guess that when they actually set themselves up, then the tied purse strings will be released and the western world can get back to evolving and expanding instead of just making a buck.
I imagine that the moon will become like antarctica, a collection of isolated bases, each witha political message sayign "this bit is ours, no you cannot have it all!"
Anyway, it will be good to see some serious space exploration on the go again.
Get it? U.S, us, it's a play on words! Funny stuff!
Have you already forgotten Tianeman square? Communist China is a brutal, repressive, murderous regime.
Ever been to China ? I worked there. The Chinese are doing what the Chinese have always done: been overwhelmed and absorbed the invader. Time after time, century after century.
Believe it or not there ARE problems with US and European "democracy"- like we don't have it.
Until you understand and see that nothing will change. No compulsion, just look at what folks like the EFF Amnesty and others are saying.
If they get a lunar base, bank on it that it will be heavily militarized and its top priority will be to learn how to drop rocks on American cities
How much notice would you get ? Quite long enough to launch a retaliatory strike before the rock even arrives. You read too much Heinlein.
On behalf of all Chinese people, I say to you racist "lan jiao" American....
"Kan ni na beh chao chi bye" which means "Fuck your mother's smelly vagina" in Hokkien dialect.
"Ler Peh bu ki ho gao kan" which means "Your parents go fuck by dogs" in Hokkien dialect.
P.S. Lan Jiao = Cock/Dick
I always considered the moon landing an achievement for the entire human race.
Acknowledged that Americans had the technology, supplied the funding, and risked their people in pursuit of the world-wide dream of getting to the moon.
Americans have been too the moon, but much more importantly humans have been to the moon.
Dragon Action Figures
They haven't made it yet.
You might not want to live on the moon. Your kids might not want to live on the moon. But if the human race doesn't get some skills in living away from this little blue bubble, we're not going to be able to:
We will need to be able to live away from the Earth at some point in the future. It's going to cost money sometime, but we have the technology to give it a try now. To learn from our mistakes and do better next time.
It shouldn't matter what country does it. However, if we're going down the "but that's my tax dollar" path, I'd rather my tax dollars went towards space exploration rather than some stupid war in Iraq.
it's not about the karma, it's about the whuffie
Err...that may well be how it was presented, but I think you'll find that the Russians had quite a lot to do with the defeat of Germany. Possibly more than any other nation (a hard thing for me to say, as I'm British), and they certainly earned their rest. And the scientists that helped with the American space programme were also captured German rocket scientists.
Cheers,
Ian
Yeah, show me the jails filled with political prisoners in America. Now go to China and say the government sucks.
Show me the tanks that rolled over the anti-war protestors in San Francisco. I want to see the footage. I have video clips of the massacre at Tianeman square. I want to compare the two.
Show me the forced segregation camps in America. I want to compare it with the planned cities in China where you are required to work, but not allowed to live.
Show me the forced sterilizations in America because you're poor. I want to compare it with the Amnesty International reports of forced abortions and sterilizations in China.
Show me the prisons filled with Atheists or Muslims in America. I want to compare it with the prisons in china filled with Fulan Gong.
It's really a shame there isn't a mod in slashdot for total idiot.
China IS a gray distopian soviet nightmare that murders its own people.
The United States has provided the greatest freedom and prosperity of its people than any other nation or civilization in the history of the planet. If it isn't utopia, it's as close as you're going to get on this world.
Get a dose of reality and understand that the culture and civilization embodied by the United States is the most morally superior culture and civilization in the history of the planet.
You can tell a great deal about the character of a man by observing those who hate him.
Good points, however:
1) We have more than one very technically feasible plan for a mass driver, including one that we (US Gov) built proof-of-concept large scale models of. I will have to look up the acronym. The technology is more on par with firearms rather than spaceflight. That, and the technology is six times more powerful on the moon. It would be arrogant to assume that no one else can come up with plans on their own, if not much better plans. And there is no shortage of rocks on the Moon to throw.
2) You only have Mutual Assured Destruction if the other party believes it. If you don't believe in it, then it won't stop you. Probability never stops the gambler, it just decreases their ante.
So who has more to gain?
I doubt it - they're probably deadly serious.
if( american.sense_of_irony() ) {
fatal_error;
}
Maybe this will start off a new space race and force the US government and NASA to finally commit to a manned mission to Mars. At least money spent on this would be better than having it spent on developing new weapons.
The American army is not invincible. Bush is pouring money down the toilet like it was going out of fashion. Look up the cost of each American cruise missile vs. the cost of Iraqi buildings. Look up the news item regarding how the Pentagon misplaced a trillion dollars. Look at the U.S. economy.
A person I know works with a major U.S. military contractor, on a vehicle project, in the 20 ton range. These things have huge pneumatic shocks; almost no natural force on Earth can touch 'em. And just the other day, they had to scrap a $2,000,000 vehicle because some asshole American grunts were joyriding the fucking thing off a cliff, for kicks. The troopers who pulled this stunt got off scot-free.
America is going to go down, hard, if they don't shape up. Their commanders don't understand cost-effective warfare. The Roman Empire fell because it alienated its satellite states, misused the legions, and because its leaders were mad with power and decadence. It can happen again.
I think I'd rather see my money wasted on something more useful. Like toothbrushes for the homeless.
I'd settle for toothbrushes for the British.
The United States Government's Department of Homeland Security has announced that Robert Heinlein is now wanted under the U.S. Patriot Act for sponsoring terrorism. His idea of using the moon as a base to attack Americans will not be tolerated.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
when they look at it.
they see a rabbit. no joke.
No nation has a clean past (or even a clean present for that matter).
Their power waxes and wanes as does the popularity of any given political and ideological system. Many go quietly (British Empire for example), but many don't (like the Romans). The question left to us is whether the American Empire is going to realise it's time has past and make way for the new contenders or whether they'll contest and drag the world down in a fit of childish spite.
It's not that I'm Anti-American - I'm Pro-Freedom
And you don't study enough history. The same was true with the Soviet Union as well. It was that insanity called MAD. But just having the potential gave Soviet Russia political and military influence far beyond what their anemic economy and technology would warrant.
All China has to do is be able to drop rocks on American cities. The threat will make us dance with them.
Why do you think we're treating North Korea with kid gloves when we pounded Iraq? Because North Korea, a little pimple of a country, has nukes, so they get to lead us about by the nose.
If having nukes gets you that much political clout, imagine what being able to drop rocks on a city would get you.
You can tell a great deal about the character of a man by observing those who hate him.
Now everything in WalMart will be "made on the Moon".
Before China takes over the moon, they should first practice in earth's polar regions. This has never been done before (successfully), and if one could do this to grow rice and live and work and not perish too early, then it would be one small proof that a permanent moon village is possible.
I suggest you read Slashdot
Hmm... interesting theory. So you're saying that the moon is a means for a Chineese attack on the U.S.?
You do realize that the Pacific ocean is easier to traverse than the distance between the earth and the moon?
You do also realize that the U.S. has demonstrated the effectiveness of nuclear submarines as a "last strike" deterrant?
Do you think it is possible that rather than nuking the U.S., the Chineese goverment wants to use this for genuine research, some nationalist bragging rights and as an asset to build or develop international relations?
Firefly was a series on fox that was cancled after one season. A sorta space fronteer western style show. One thing people asked, "what's with all the chinese people are speaking".
c hina_people.html. That is a a hell of alot of people even for something the size of china. To put into perspective, that's roughly 1 billion people more then america.
Not having much of a clue my self I had two possible answers.
1. The chinese influence on western expantion. Plenty of jobs on the railroad for people immigrating to america from china.
2. China has the greatest population in the world.
#2 I think is the important factor, the fact that china's population 1,284,303,705 people in 2002 according to http://www.greekorthodoxchurch.org/wfb2002/china/
It makes the most sence for china to explore a lunar program. Perhaps resources, perhaps testing the ground for habitations, or perhaps taking advantage of the fact that it indeed has a tremdious amount of manpower.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
generators or any people who live on the moon for a long period of time may not be able to visit the earth again. sure its cool to be able to have bases on the moon but what is their purpose? to alleviate chinas overpopulated cities?
I know you are psychotic, but please make an effort.
Show me the prisons filled with Atheists or Muslims in America
Duh. They're all in Cuba
they have strange ideas about how to fix the overpopulation problem..
So, will they also be the first country to violate human rights in space?
Great food, but no atmosphere.
(rimshot)
Thanks, I'll be here all week...
Weird. When the US government spends billions of dollars on a war to liberate the most oppressed and violently ravaged group of civilians in the postmodern era, everybody is critical and says it's stupid, a waste of money, bullshit, and a cover-up for Bush to award "huge" contracts to his buddies. But by god why AREN'T we pissing away billions and billions on landing on the moon!??!?!?!!?
Just shows that you people have no perspective.
Bravo!
All China has to do is be able to drop rocks on American cities. The threat will make us dance with them.
How is your concern any diferent to that of anyone else in the world whilst there is the current American administration with a view that the US can do what it wants, when it wants, to whomever it wants through the threat of military force?
Shouldn't we all be dancing together anyway? What has happened to diplomacy and negotiation in an attempt to improve everybody's lot?
It would mean more to the lives of their citizens and eventually the world if they spent the money on bioengineering, medicine, genetic modification of crops, training their people in science and engineering, IT, and such. Space is a less efficient expenditure of resources, despite how cool and prestigious it is.
For two /. peers: Imeperator, arvindn
And what could the moon possibly do for an expansionist nation?
1) Return on Investment (ROI)
For an amount of capital, X. You have a base, a mass driver(s), and a powerplant(s) on the moon. Then, you control the Earth. There are many natural phenomena that distort our perceptions of near Earth space. A nice big Coronal Mass Ejection one day, and when the protons clear, there are 30 giant bolders in orbit awaiting a nudge to start their 60 second descent to the surface. Would the last act of Washington be to destroy the US in order to maintain our principles, by slamming the agressor nation before we're crushed from orbit? I don't think so.
Until we have the technology to make transport to and from the moon cheap, it's a useless pile of rock.
We? We who? I hope you mean We as a species and aren't excluding anyone else's scientists from having a good idea first.
I'm not some paranoid recluse, BTW, think of this as one big game of Alpha Centauri, Axis&Allies, or whatever. It's perfectly good sense.
]3
Followed by:
2.1 China claims U.S. never went to Moon in 1969.
2.2 China is supported by moronic moon-landing denyers worldwide.
2.3 A century from now, history books say China landed on moon first in 21st century.
Scary enough for you?
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
Camp X-Ray. Oh wait - that's not actually in America is it, which allows you to circumvent your own rules.
Show me the prisons filled with Atheists or Muslims in America.
See above.
Actually, they can't. Their ICBM fleet has nowehre the range that the Soviet/US missiles have. The Chinese nuclear weapons were developed to deter their main ex-enemy, the Soviet Union. In fact, they almost came to a nuclear war in the late 1960's over some clashes on the Amur.
The Soviets also considered a nuclear pre-emptive strike on their nuclear weapons plant before their first test.
In the meantime the PLA's missiles have not been extended in range save for a very few missiles. They do have some Submarine base missiles but that would be tracked/destroyed by the vastly superior US Navy. They only have 3 or 4 subs.
The US government's assesment of Chinese nuclear capability is classified but there are lost of info on the net. They do pack a punch but their delivery range is very limited.
The dangers of excessive individualism are nothing compared to the oppressiveness of excessive collectivism
At my Washington office a few weeks ago, I met with a visiting Japanese parliamentarian who specializes in science and technology issues... In his view, the Chinese would be on the moon within three to four years.
parliamentarian
this is the only evidence he offers that China is even thinking of going to the moon. some random Chinese dude? well, I'm convinced, let's start a space race.
Bob Walker man must be a real patriot to be so concerned about the plight of America's space prestige. Who is this great thinker? oh wait... Bob Walker is a corporate lobbyist. For who? For these guys. Nice list of clientelle. I wonder if any of those people would benefit from increased public paranoia about a foreign space program?
-sweatyb
It breaks my pluginses, my precious!
What?! [Crazy stare] Are you threatening me?
...conjures up images of the Great Cornholio
Not noteable, IMO a rubbish article.
The most important thing to realise is that some food types (the delicate, the subtle and so on) are not going to be reproducable in orbital or Lunar facilities. Earth, as the only natural biosphere we have available will (hopefully) move towards an agricultural base, producing Luxuries (High grade alcohol, such as Whisky, will probably be very difficult to reproduce, due to the way it is made).
Meanwhile the Human race as a whole should shift all Heavy industry and as much Light Industry as possible to Low Earth Orbit at least as this is nearer to the Luna and asteroid belt resource sources.
Remember, crews of Asteroid miners would only have to boost a rock Earths way, let celestial mechanics take its course, and reap the benefits when it got here - you could probably clamp a drifting refinery onto such a boosted rock, so that by the time it got here, the rock has been chewed up into its component metals, water and carbon compounds.
Then the crew of the refinery take some well earned R&R, the metals go to the orbital factories to make stuff and the money brings Luxuries up from down side.
The Luxuries trade is especially good for planetside economics, because the items are usually low-mass, therefore requiring less fuel to lift to LEO.
And this has the added benefit of reducing pollution downside, maybe making Earth into the SolSys' relaxation and holiday centre - been out in the Asteroid belt mining for 5 years? Take a well earned break on Terra! See the wonders of New York, Moscow, Beijing and London! Experience the ancient home of Humanity!
Then money makes the Solar System go round.
An infinite number of monkeys will eventually come up with the complete works of
hehe, read your own quote...
my bad.
the source isn't even Chinese. He's Japanese. Damn. Even more convincing.
-sweatyb
It breaks my pluginses, my precious!
what orbital collisions? when have we had one orbital collision? Ever? There's a lot of space up there.
They'd better stay well fucking away from my piece of Lunar real estate! Or they can pay rent...
This was a red herring when it was first brought up, and it's a red herring now. The amount of money spent on space research and space flight is miniscule next to the amounts of money spent on social programs and "defense". It's a drop in the bucket, and tends to have quite an impressive return on investment. (All that R&D NASA did paid off here on earth too.)
There are reasons to support space flight, and reasons not to, but "stealing the bread from the mouths of hungry babes" ain't one of 'em.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Gosh, free speech?
As long as you don't disagree with the Government too much
Yes. This is a problem. Usually it's what people say in a very public forum that is watched, though. We aren't to the point that SS agents go from bar to bar listening for seditious talk to punish, but I'm not saying that can't possibly happen here. After all, people said it couldn't happen in Germany, and it did.
Freedom to assemble
Unless you're a protester
Actually, most protests I've ever seen go down fairly smoothly. Even when there's only like 4 people they get news coverage. I've seen several protests in large cities (Philly, new york city) where people were illegaly disrupting traffic by laying in the streets, and the cops weren't doing anything to them for fear of being vilified. It's really annoying not to be able to run over the dumbass who's laying in front of your car, keeping you from doing things you need to do, and while I know it's meant to change people's views, all it does is make people very mad. I saw people with 'no war in iraq' bumper stickers screaming at the stupid protestors. OTOH, I also saw a group of anti-war protestors attacking a group of pro-war protestors. I thought it was nicely ironic. "Violence is wrong, so I'm going to kick your ass for peace!"
freedom to live where you want
Provided you're the right color
You missed the correct response. It's no longer nearly as much about what color you are as about how much money you have. I'm not saying racism doesn't exist. I'm just saying that greed usually superceeds it.
have as many kids as you want
As long as you're not poor
Actually, people below the poverty line have a lot of kids. Also, people of certian religions have more kids than average, whatever their financial status is. Rich people tend to have smaller families. There are always exceptions, of course, but based on my own experience, a large number of the 'rich kids' that I envied in school were only children, while most of my friends, who were at or below the poverty line, as my family was, had several children in their family. Of course, my experience is biased by regional factors, and there are a lot of variables, but if I wasn't so lazy I could probably find data to support my case. Since I am, I'll just rely on my personal experience, since I trust it more than the Internet.
worship who you want?
As long as you're not an Atheist or a Muslim
This one's just silly. What law is there that forces you to go to church? What law forces you to worship anything? From what I've seen, it's not the fact that people are Muslim that is getting htem harrassed by idiots right now. It's because they appear middle eastern to bubba the drunk redneck. I've seen numerous accounts of Ganesh trying to explain on the news that when people were calling him a 'towelhead muslim' or whatever, that he's from egypt and isn't religious. Not to say that idiots messing with people because of their physical features isn't completely stupid, but to make it sound like there are laws in place to punish Muslims and force atheist people to worship whatever is also completely stupid. Sure, if we had *total* religious freedom, we'd let Rastas smoke weed and voodoo priests make zombies and whatever, but there aren't any laws in place to force you to believe or not believe in anything supernatural. There's no Church of America, and there never will be. Also, if you're an atheist, you don't worship anything supernatural. That's what atheist means. Atheism *is* a religion, sorta, only instead of being based on a shared belief, like every other religion out there, it's based on a shared *disbelief* which to me is amazing. I mean, I don't believe in ghosts, but that doesn't mean I organize my life around not believing in ghosts, or attacking/trying to convert those who do. I just don't care about ghosts. I don't call my self an 'aghostist' and have meetings about not believing in ghosts. If you
http://xkcd.com/386/
"Scary"? The tax money is gone anyways. So what scares you?
Bruce Sterling wrote an interesting Wired column about the budding Cold War between India and China. Sterling reminds us that India is also interested in a space program, largely for the same reasons America was: symbolism and prestige.
As Pakistan weakens, India is starting to view China as its principal rival for South Asian hegemony. "India and China are comers with a lot to prove to the world, and especially to each other," Sterling writes. "Nuclear India versus nuclear China is Kennedy versus Kruschev, and Reagan versus Gorbachev, all over again. Now, as then, a space race is a sexy alternative to nuclear annihilation.
"China has openly declared its desire to colonize the moon. The world's most populous nation is unlikely to build lunar settlements, but that's not the point. China's motive lies not in constructing a lunar Hong Kong, but rather in luring India into a loud public competition. Later this year, if all goes as planned, China will become the third country to send a citizen into space. An orbiting taikonaut will be even more impressive if American shuttles are stuck in their hangars while the misnamed International Space Station limps along with a skeleton crew."
Sterling's conclusion sent a shudder of surprising revulsion through me: "A decade after the end of the Cold War, good old-fashioned space programs still matter. Not for exploration's sake, but to settle new cold wars. If you doubt it, imagine this scenario: It's 2029, and a lunar mission lands at Tranquillity Base. A crew of heroic young Indians - or Chinese - quietly folds and puts away America's 60-year-old flag. If the world saw that on television, wouldn't the gesture be worth tens of billions of rupees or yuan? Of course it would."
They do have some Submarine base missiles but that would be tracked/destroyed by the vastly superior US Navy.
The subs would be destroyed, but they could get off a missile or two (MIRVed?) before then. Then it is goodbye New York/Washington/LA.
And of course, every day thousand of containers arrive in US ports from China. It would be trivial to deliver one that way, and difficult to track back after.
- Christiaan Huygens, The Celestial Worlds Discovered c. 1690
But now, the Red Chinese are racing to have the first permanent Moonbase, and if you don't know how dire that is, reread Heinlein's "The Moon is A Harsh Mistress". Do we want to live in a world that's under the constant menace of Commie rocks from the Moon, cracking down on our religion, way of life and democracy? Do you want to live ina world where you can have only one child, and have to worship Confucius? Do you want to have you one child taken away to a creche, and be forced to live on a communal farm? Maybe this can spur more people into the hard sciences, and fewer into business and law.
People always think that we *NEED* more scientists. We don't! There are simply not enough jobs to go around for all the scientists now, that's why so many work in a lab for X number of years, see that there is no opportunity for advancement within the organization (to earn more $$$), and go on into business and law. Just because you're a pencil-necked geek doesn't mean you don't want the *American Dream* - a nice house, a playboy babe for a wife, and two above average children living in rural/suburbia America, driving a Saab, BMW, or C-Class Mercedes Benz. The problem with science at most universities is that they are not rigorous enough to produce the *Best* scientists. Often, but not always, the *Best* scientists come from the Ivy Leagues and second tier schools, not your average [Insert City Here] State University or University of [Insert City Here] school. Science in the laboratory is now highly automated; we don't need chemists any more, we need technicians that make $12 to $14/hour. The hard and cool stuff has been solved, now we have stream-lined laboratories that push out products and analyses. Many of these jobs are leaving the US economy and relocating over seas. I wish the situation were different, but this is the ugly truth about science in this day and age.
<sarcasm>Quote from Bush: "Let them colonize the moon first, we'll declare them terrorists and invade them once they have finishted the hard stuff."</sarcasm>
I agree with your assessments.
The Chinese have only demonstrated they can put a man in orbit using what amounts to an updated Long March booster rocket and essentially a modernized version of the Soyuz spacecraft that was originally designed in the early 1960's! It's a major leap up to get to the Moon, that's to be sure.
Think about it: have the Chinese demonstrated the ability to build a MUCH larger rocket that will be needed for flights to the Moon and back? Have they demonstrated the ability to build a manned Moon lander? The Russians came close with their N-1 rocket and their lunar lander, but the lack of funds doomed that project. Maybe the Russians decided to sell their moon rocket plans to the Chinese and hope the Chinese will have better luck with the N-1 design using more modern rocket technology?
"Your kids might not want to live on the moon."
[The Moon] ain't the kind of place to raise your kids. In fact it's cold as hell. And there's no one there to raise them if you did...
+ G to tha Izzo, A to tha Tizee, Talking Giz-oat, Ya'll Bettah Feel Me... +
Are you aware that the US now has a larger percentage of its population in jail than any other nation including China? China was the largest percentage for decades, but just in the last couple years the US pulled ahead. We're currently neck-and-neck with the Chinese in the race to jail the largest percentage of our populations. I guess that's one race we're winning with the Chinese...
I did not design this game/I did not name the stakes/I just happen to like apples/And I am not afraid of snakes-AniD
Yeah, show me the jails filled with political prisoners in America
Camp X-Ray. Yes, this is on American soil.
Show me the tanks that rolled over the anti-war protestors in San Francisco.
I can show you the use of teargas and batton charges by riot police. Same effect.
Show me the forced segregation camps in America.
Which country was it that still had state mandated segregation only 40 years ago? Wether it is Government mandated or not, social segregation is still a very big issue.
Show me the forced sterilizations in America because you're poor.
You get that one. At least the U.S stopped sterilising people against their will in the 50's (Mental patients, mostly) Again the social stigma attached to being poor and having kids is a problem that still has to be takled.
Show me the prisons filled with Atheists or Muslims in America.
Camp X-Ray is full of Muslims. Atheists don't end up in prison but aparently they're still required to swear their allegence to their country and God though, which is an offensive and diliberate act.
The United States has provided the greatest freedom and prosperity of its people than any other nation or civilization in the history of the planet. If it isn't utopia, it's as close as you're going to get on this world.
No it isn't. The U.S is corrupt and morally bankrupt. It thinks it the biggest, baddest country in the world. It has become so introspective that it fails to even notice what is happening, as other countries overtake its economy and prosperity. The U.S started to slip in the 80's and its still got a way to go before it will hit bottom. At some point, you and your other "La la la everything is fine here!" cheerleaders will wake up one morning and realise that it isn't, that you're wrong, and that you've been srewed over. It won't happen for at least another decade, but it will happen. It always does.
the United States is the most morally superior culture and civilization in the history of the planet.
*sigh* Stop trying to tell everyone how moral you are. This is a country that is so moral that it spends more on its millitary than it does health care and education combined, that ignores international treaties, that pressures soveriegn nations with threats of force, that trains and arms disident groups across the world, that enacts a War on Drugs that doesn't work and overflows its prisons, that has the largest gap between lower and upper earnings limits, that has the most violent deaths per capita for a country in peace time, that..
I'm just gonna stop now. I don't see the need to list any more items because you just won't see it at all. Not for that decade I mentioned at least.
Most importantly, get over yourself. You are not a unique snowflake.
Try again. It's not NASA's neglect, it's your neglect. You that are US citizens... You told Congress that the money spent on NASA was better spent on social services and defense, among other things. If you want a strong space program, tell your congressmen!!!
You (Congress) funds big NASA programs, and NASA staffs up and leases/builds facilities to support it. Then Congress takes away half the annual funding, thinking they can push the costs out. In fact, the G&A costs (people, facilities) remain constant, so extending projects increases overall costs. Then Congress wails about cost over-runs. And don't get me started about the plethora of NASA facilities in powerful congressman's back yards that do nothing but generate local revenue.
Watching what's happened to NASA from the inside (Johnson Space Center in Houston and Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville), it's a sad site to see. Lots of really good people have left, fed up with the lack of mission and bureaucracy. Thank god there's still a dedicated few left.
A clever person solves a problem, A wise person avoids it. -Einstein
I'm glad to see some other country still has a vision of space exploration. You'd think in the 35 years since the US put someone on the moon, that technology could now do it for a billion or two. Nothing was more disappointing to watch "2001" in both 1968 and 2001 and see how how the US squandered its future.
The universe belongs to the bold!
Good to see that someone (government) still gazes at the stars and aspires to some day be there.
>Get a dose of reality and understand that the culture and civilization embodied by the United States is the most morally superior culture and civilization in the history of the planet. You MUST be kidding, right? What you're claiming is that the rest of the world is less moral than you guys??? I'm sorry, but your way of seeing things is just insulting for the rest of the world. I'm not going into politics here, but really, really, a lot of people are getting fed up with this kind of bragging, How're we supposed to look eachother in the eye, if one party is constantly screaming "I'm oh so superior, compared to you, it is my way or the highway..." et.c. I'm not anti-American, but sometimes this kind of rhetoric makes me really nervous.
I personally believe the whole reason we have fallen behind in the Space race is due to NASA and general government control over the whole space issue. The space industry revolves around NASA and thats bad.
/Tax breaks/Economic incentives
NASA should be gutted and turned into support mechanism for U.S. Companies who want to go to space by providing the following:
1) The technology and knowledge (what little is left)
2) Subsidies
3) Launch platforms
So long as we depend on NASA or the Govt. in general to get into space we will waste away on this rock.
I would have thought that people who posted on Slashdot would have a much better view of international relations and other cultures. I guess I was wrong. As someone who has spent a good part of his college life studying China and American Asian relations I find your comments to be very ignorant.
/. post, if you're smart enough and know it can be done, that it just takes a few skilled college students to make an H-Bomb. Its kind of like me watching my friend ride a bike, and than him claim that I learned how to ride because of him. The Russians would have built a bomb just as quickly anyhow, heck, the Germans were getting quite close to makeing a working H-Bomb at the end of WWII.
Sputnik was a wake up call for America that it should start thinking about Space. Yes, the Russians used ex-German scientists to build rockets, so did we. We also used Japanese scientists, who committed some of the worst biological warfare tests of WWII on the Chinese population, to further our biological weapons programs.
Yes, the Russian did steal some documents on how to make an H-Bomb, but if I recall from many a
So what if the Chinese wish to put a Man on the moon? Whoo dee. Sure they COULD drop a rock on us. Which would result in everyone else nuking the hell out of mainland China. I see it as no more a threat than China having nukes pointed at us right now. I do see it as a another wake up call for the American Space program.
Plus, if you look at Chinese economic reform, they're not a true "commie" state. China has always followed it's own path, which resulted in the tense relations between the USSR and China. China has a Socialist Market Economy. Most major industy is controled by the state, but a large portion is controled in a free market. As the Chinese people come to enjoy the freedoms of a market economy the government will ease restraints. We're more likly to see a reformed socialist state in China than we are ever to see an actual demoracy. (I just got done writeing a ten page paper on Chinese economic reform about a week ago).
The Chinese don't worship Confucius, they never have. Its a way of life, a mindset. Heck, if America worshiped Confucius we'd probably have some really interesting reforms. Like the confucian ideal that no man is bad, and that people can change other people by just acting good (the goodness of your acts will compell other people to be better). The idea that the government serves the people, and that serving is its own reward. Come on, the Chinese were living high while Europe was having fun in the mud. (Side note Chinese discovered America a long time before Europe, its just that they didn't find anything interesting, so they went back to China. Why move when you've got everything you need?)
Lastly the one child policy is in effect because the Chinese population was out of control. China is a country the size of the United States with less than a forth of the available farmland. The way the one child policy works is that after you have one child you sign an agreement not to have another child, and than your family gets lots of benifits from the state. If you don't sign the policy and have a second child you get docked some state benifits. If you sign the policy and have a second child you get docked a lot of benifits. Also, the one child policy is not enforced for minorities in China, and in the countryside there are a lot of extra births. China is teh only country to try this. India (which is a democracy)also tried this, except they couldn't inforce it. So they than tried to solve the problem by having military units in vans drive around, snatch boys off that street and than sterilize them. Randomly. But last I checked we still love India, and really disliked China (although India has nukes, and has been extreamly close to nuking its neighbors).
For the record, I'm not a commie. I love America, pie, and Apple Computer. I do have a problem with people who don't look outside their little box of a worl
The RIAA fined my dog for barking too much like the Back Street Boys. They later came back and shot my dog for looking
Yeah, show me the jails filled with political prisoners in America.
Camp X-Ray. Oh wait - that's not actually in America is it, which allows you to circumvent your own rules.
Were you born stupid, or have you just worked towards it all your life?
"Oh...those poor violent terrorist murderers in camp x-ray! they don't get cable tv or weapons! we're so mean to them!"
They were housed in conditions that beat a lot of prisons all over the world. They are NOT political prisoners, they are violent terrorists who have threatened guards on several occasions and attempted escape often. I suppose you'd like to see them freed, so they can attempt more terrorist actions against the U.S. There has been no torture, as even the BBC reported. They are given food, water, clothing, and shelter. They are given the same level of medical treatment as U.S. military personnel. (If you're in the U.S. military, insert joke here) Yes, the temporary cells were very hot. They were also temporary, and offered at least *some* shade. No prisoners have died. They are not entitled to Geneva Convention protection, because they are not uniformed soldiers, they are terrorists. *They* do not abide by the Geneva Convention, and they do not deserve its protection. They are allowed the koran and given the chance to pray at the proper times, and given a sign indicating the direction toward Mecca. Do you honestly believe that they are being treated worse than American prisoners would be in a similar camp in prewar Iraq? If so...I advise you to get arrested in America, and then go get arrested in the Middle East, and let us know which is worse. I don't know about you, but I'd go to camp x-ray long before I went to the Gulag in Russia or a chinese 'detention camp.'
But of course, as in everything, the U.S. must be evil, while the rest of the world is a snowy, virginal white. Nice dream world you're living in.
http://xkcd.com/386/
I think the poster makes actually as(s) much or more fun of america and americans as he/she does of China and the chinese.
"Mooning people" come on it's hilarious. It's a clever and funny comment. Of course one has to know what mooning is...
Also, if you're an atheist, you don't worship anything supernatural. That's what atheist means. Atheism *is* a religion, sorta, only instead of being based on a shared belief, like every other religion out there, it's based on a shared *disbelief* which to me is amazing. I mean, I don't believe in ghosts, but that doesn't mean I organize my life around not believing in ghosts, or attacking/trying to convert those who do. I just don't care about ghosts. I don't call my self an 'aghostist' and have meetings about not believing in ghosts. If you actually don't believe there is any sort of God, why do you care if other people do?
It appears that only in the U.S do Atheists actually bother to organise themselves. I have to admit that as an Atheist from outside of America, I find this bizzare.
Atheists do not "organise their lives" around Atheism. We just...don't think about it. Do I goto Church on a Sunday? Hell no, I sleep in! How is that organised?
I really don't care if you believe in God or not. My wife is Mormon for example. Thats upto her.
There is a small vocal minority who think they have to attack everyone and make them "see the light" as it were. They're no different to religious groups attempting to convert people though, and just as annoying. Ignore them, just as I ignore them and everyone else who tries to tell me I'm wrong.
The only reason there is a "name" for Atheism is because people need one in a world where not believing in God is an exception to the rule[1]. In the U.K nobody asks and nobody cares. Most people I meet I take for granted that they're likely Atheist or at least Agnostic. The thought doesn't even cross my mind about their religion or lack thereof.
[1]: Greek and Latin play a roll in giving Atheism a name here too of course..
... Roman Empire expands - becomes superpower - believes it can not be challenged ... 15th century AD....the earth is flat ... Columbus 'discovers americas' ... Countries that did not support him, now start colonizing 'America' ... British Empire is superpower - believes it can not be challenged. ... ... American colony becomes superpower - believes it can not be challenged. ... China colonizes the moon - becomes superpower - believes it can not be challenged. ... 'moonovians' colonize mars - become superpower - believe they can not be challenged...
AND THE WHEEL IN THE SKY KEEPS ON TURNING...
Yeah, show me the jails filled with political prisoners in America.
You do know that we have more people in prison than any other country in the world?
But please stop repeating the "small step for man" thing. Armstrong said it wrong, and there's no point in quoting his mistake.
It was supposed to be "small step for a man," and makes far more sense that way
Who? You haven't yet charged them, tried them, convicted them...
n/t
Let's assume that they've only got 3-4 subs running. If you're Chief of Naval Operations wouldn't you have four of your best hunter/killer drivers dogging them all the time? I don't think Chinese subs attacking the US mainland is something we have to worry about. More likely to get our attention over Japan, Korea or Taiwan.
On the other hand, containers appear to be a real problem. Way too few inspectors for all of the inbound traffic.
If you actually don't believe there is any sort of God, why do you care if other people do?
The same reason Jews cared about the Spanish Inquisition, and Christians cared about Muslim invaders. The ruling class will attempt to force its religion on all its subjects. The severity of the ruling class's reaction to refusal to believe is completely unpredictable, and in the case of the USA, becoming more severe every day. Our ATTORNEY GENERAL is so goddamn puritan that he couldn't stand to be pictured with a fucking STATUE of a woman with a naked breast. Yes, he's an idiot, but he could roll out the FBI and get all atheists arrested and systematically destroyed if he wanted.
THAT is why we care about other people believing in God - because they care about us NOT believing in it.
All I want to know is: which one will they moon?
"There may not be intelligent life on mars, but I can assure you that there is intelligent life in Beijing."
- Robert A. Heinlein, on the Chinese space program
The Chinese WILL take over space leadership.
I thought we already had.
Astonishing...
The chinese actually have a word for Fuck.
And all this time I thought it was just a slang term used to indicate copulation, derived from the word "Fekt" which in ancient germanic means "to stab at" with the contextual meaning of "To stab at with a spear".
So how bout you go hide and play "Kan" yourself. But whip me up a batch of pork fried rice first.
krystal_blade
It will be easy to motivate our fellow man; there is hardly anything people treasure more than not being annihilated.
Along these lines, SpaceDaily carries an excellent opinion piece today: "The Failure of NASA: And A Way Out"
Here's the theme: NASA's human space flight efforts have been going downhill since the end of the big Apollo budget bubble (1966) and need to be replaced by an agency that concentrates on enabling private sector human space flight.
Best quote: " After wasting three decades (and a perfectly good Cold War), frustrating the dreams of a whole generation of space enthusiasts, and spending hundreds of billions of dollars, NASA's net achievement is a space station that has no definable purpose except to serve as a destination for shuttle flights.
We would not need the shuttle missions if we did not have the station, and we would not need the station if we did not need something for the shuttles to do. The entire human spaceflight program has thus become an exercise in futility."
I take this with a grain of salt: There's money to be made, maybe, doing things in LEO and on the moon, but we'll still need someone to fund and operate the necessary but unprofitable initial human explorations of the planets. An analogy might be drawn to the efforts directed by Prince Henry the Navigator.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
The USA is acting likes it's on a caffine and sugar high at the moment.
As a US citizen, I think that if we focused our unbridled energy on something more constructive like a moon base it might be better for all involved.
Danke tres mucho, tovarishch.
that some other country wastes their money to figure out that the moon is one big rock that is pretty much as useless. we've already gone there.... we found rocks.... why waste more $$$ untill we actually have a USE for it beyond proving that we can go there. Sure, your average space geek will say that we should continue to explor space. But they forget that exploration costs $$$ that really should not be needlessly be throw at exploration when we have more than enough problems down here right now (did anyone happen to catch THIS which tends to overshadow the need for planting a flag on more planets. so yippie... the chinese want to go to the moon.... let em.... let them own the whole moon, let them put a big red star on it.
-Cnik
1. Give crazy man who thinks the Earth is round a bunch of ships.
2. ???
3. ???
4. ???
5. profit!
Seriously, a western route to the orient is really tough to justify right now...
My patience is infinite, my time is not.
It'll be interesting if they make it there... They can then confirm or deny, once and for all, the United States' landing on the moon. Find the rover, the other half of the Eagle... That'd be something to either reveal a gigantic cover-up (unlikely and inprobable) or to quiet down those conspiracy theorists once and for all. /. needs spellcheck. I can't spell anymore. I wonder if that's grounds for a lawsuit against Microsoft. Word's damn paperclip ruined my spelling ability. Oh, the trauma...
On a side note,
I haven't posted in so long, my sig is out of date.
And you don't study enough history. The same was true with the Soviet Union as well. It was that insanity called MAD. But just having the potential gave Soviet Russia political and military influence far beyond what their anemic economy and technology would warrant.
.
With MAD, you didn't get days of warning, just minutes. This isn't MAD, it would be totally stupid to launch an attack and know for certain you were going to lose
Just who has a "proper" space program still ? Oh yes, the Anaemic economy and technology place.
They also sit on more natural resources than the USA, oil, minerals, metals.
Their tech seriously threatened US tech for years. Oh sure it was rougher, but an awful lot of science went into the bits that needed to work. Remember the "flogger" fighter with the ha ha ha tube based radio ? Then everyone worked out that tube tech is EMP proof.....
Targeting big rocks would be a bit iffy too. Not much capital in hitting the Arizona desert.
I don't know why they treat Korea with kid gloves, they can't have enough nukes to worry the US if it really came to it.
scripsit Rxke:
I'm American and this kind of rhetoric makes me really nervous -- as does being told, for example, people who think like me (i.e., internationalist and pacifist) should be shot. The ultra-nationalists are no less scary seen from up close.
In principio creauit Linus Linucem.
...they'll have a rocket that can send a man to the moon, but not a nuke to NY?
Three words: Lunar solar power. From a long term perspective, lunar solar power is the only idea that makes sense. (It also has the virtue of being the only method we've yet discovered that would allow 1st world levels of energy consumption for everyone on Earth.)
Space exploration has languished without a raison d'etre for decades now. What better motivation could there be than eliminating the largest source of pollution on Earth, providing for the energy needs of the entire planet in the process? More info here, if you're interested.)
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
Amen.
Mad Software: Rantings on Developing So
Let's Help Them Out Yeah right. At the National Space Symposium in Colorado Springs in early April, Teets proposed that U.S. resources from military, civilian and commercial satellites be combined to provide "persistence in total situational awareness, for the benefit of this nation's war fighters." If allies don't like the new paradigm of space dominance, said Air Force secretary James Roche, they'll just have to learn to accept it. The allies, he told the symposium, will have "no veto power." http://www.eetimes.com/sys/news/OEG20030522S0050 The Chinese are not stupid. They're going after the high ground before the Pentagon can deny them access to it. If 9/11 was a wake up call for America, the unprovoked invasion of Iraq was the wake up call for everyone else. Thanks to Bush and his criminial disregard for international law, the world is a far less safe place for everyone.
Hey, the moon's in orbit, right?
"Our Population?"
My understanding is that an exceeding number of "American" inmates are actually somebody else's population, which is to say, illegal aliens.
Of course, we've got that whole tradition of opening our doors to "wretched refuse yearning to breathe free" thing going on, so I guess it's OK.
Which brings up the question: How many poor people fleeing oppression in their respective homelands have sought (and found) refuge in America versus China? How many people, citing oppression, have fled (or tried to flee) America versus China?
See, problem is, you and I sitting in our offices and tippy-tapping away on our computers know jack squat about oppression, only that talking about it passes time online and in coffee-houses.
25 years ago I thought like you did; heck, I even convinced myself that *I* was oppressed; it was all kinda sexy and cool and martyr-y and stuff. But I travelled a bit, met a bunch of different type of people, took on some large responsibilities, and came to the realization that America Ain't So Bad, and many's the place that's a Lot Worse. I felt lucky, and out of that grew thankful.
Still, it's fun to complain about stuff, ennit? Even more fun, bear in mind, to be able to complain about stuff...
If the US can't do it maybe they can. I vote goes with the Japanese. They always do stuff better than the yanks.
-- Karma Karma Karma Karma, Karma Chameleon - Boy George
I don't think that's as easy as you imagine. The moon is a fairly hefty gravity well in its own right, launching a big rock off it would be an incredibly difficult and expensive operation, and the chances are that in the time needed to do it your enemy would notice (because they'd be watching your every move very carefully), and be able to launch a nuke right back at your moon base before you'd finished.
You can't win Darth. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine
This is a matter of society's priorities. Give us a big enough external stimulus -- which I suspect a Chinese moon base would be -- and you'll see those priorities change damn fast. Right now people just can't be bothered.
BTW, the whole purpose of laboratory automation is to free scientists from having to spend endless hours at the lab bench so they can actually think about what they're doing. Yes, you still need technicians to run the machines -- but you can get many more hours of real science per scientist if you have a couple of technicians running machines on their own, instead of an army of techs doing complex experiments by hand with constant supervision from the scientists. That's the way it's supposed to work; that it does not is a result of the distortion of priorities I mentioned above.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
such as banners reading "750 hours free!"..or a device that rains AOL CDs..the possibilities are endless.
"The most looniest, zaniest, spontaneous, sporadic Impulsive thinker, compulsive drinker, addict"
But America is supposed to to be nearly perfect, or thats what all the "Patriots" on slashdot seem to believe, and perfect is not defined as being "better than that other lot". If you are going to hold yourself up as a shining beacon of freedom, you have to lead the way and pull everyone along with you, not merely turn around occasionally to check that your still a nose ahead. Thats the difference between leadership and just wanting the bragging rights.
You can't win Darth. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine
Landing Has been confirmed.
I don't recall the article but Scientists have measured precisely the distance of the moon to the earth by bouncing a laser beam of the reflectors left behind by the Apollo Astronauts this was a couple years ago.
There was another reason for the test but I don't recall.
I think we need a space race for the first WARP engine!! Let's get China to start it off, then the U.S. could get off thier lazy ass and get those scientists back to work doing something productive like building a WARP engine. Then, humanity will finally start to explorer the final frontier.
The United States has provided the greatest freedom and prosperity of its people than any other nation or civilization in the history of the planet
... and ...
It's really a shame there isn't a mod in slashdot for total idiot.
Agreed. You REALLY need to learn more about other countries. We laugh at your so called "freedom" which might exist on paper - but sure as hell not in your daily lives if you're not a white right-voting citizen.
it's in my head
Uh. Isn't that because the Chinese government just murders the dissadents? That seems to keep the "Imprisoned" column low.
I forgot to add that getting into the lead and then putting up barriers to maintain you position is also not leadership, just cheating.
You can't win Darth. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine
Or a lack of enthusiasm on the part of other country ? Remmember the space run was lost by US, depending on how you define it (first to go in space, Russian definition, or first on moon, US definition after they lost the "first in space by satellite and men" race, or first not to care at all, because it doesn't change jack to their hunting/gathering : world definition). In that case speaking of triumph is a bit ... Exagerated. But good technological feats, yes I agree. In other word, to speaks of race and triumph in this case is *PURELY* ideological politics.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
We can grow food on Mars. We can create high-quality manufactured goods on Mars. We can survive on Mars without any support from Earth. Let the Chinese have the Moon. I'll take living on Mars as a free man before living on the Moon as a slave to this planet.
Remember the chinese have lots and lots of manpower. I'm sure if they stood on each others shoulders they could reach the moon.
But seriously, they don't have the problem of people dying. Over there if someone dies in space, they would be declared heros of the revolution/people/etc and the missions would keep going. Remember this is the nation with 3,000,000 man army. THats lots of volunteers.
-- Karma Karma Karma Karma, Karma Chameleon - Boy George
Yes there are. But we don't run over protestors with tanks or shoot dissidents and bill their families for the bullets. There is no moral equivalence whatsoever.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
They are not entitled to Geneva Convention protection, because they are not uniformed soldiers, they are terrorists.
Not quite true - they are referred to as illegal combatants because they were soldiers in an army that represented a country not recognised by the US,i.e. many of them are just Taliban soldiers, including some teenage boys (i.e. 13, 14 years old).
They are NOT political prisoners, they are violent terrorists who have threatened guards on several occasions and attempted escape often.
As I understand it, during war it is a soldier's duty to attempt escape, even if it means (gasp) threatening military personel. Once the war is ended the soldiers must be repatriated.
I guess I'm the only one here that feels like Oliver whenever he sees news of Russia (or China in this case) beating the pants off the US in space.
For those who don't know, Oliver was a character in a comic that featured a Penguin as its star character back in the 80's. Oliver was super intelligent kid who would bang his head and scream stupidly whenever the newspaper or TV reported the Russians doing something in space while Sky Lab, or something similar of US origin, fell from the sky.
Let's see common themes
Americans are lazy, fat, in decline, greedy, oppressive, we build crappy technology, war mongers and we fabricated the whole moon landing.
People are ecstatic that a repressive regime is using it's 1 billion slave labor population to engage in something which will bring ZERO improvement to the peoples lives and is a last ditch attempt to prop up a dying regime.
Perhaps We fat lazy Americans should follow through on our imperialistic plans to stop import of all foreign goods. Take all the resources and money we give away to the countries of the world and build a giant rocket ship with our crappy technology to move our population and war weapons to the moon and mars. Then we can complete the destruction of the Earth and it's people..mwahaha
I am writing the proposal for my local congressman as you read this
Fuck it we'll nuke the moon then!
Oh, wait...
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
Unfortunately, possession is 9/10ths of the law. The only way to prevent someone else from establishing sovereignty onver something is to be there yourself.
Do you crazy americans never look back at the cold war and thing "oh, we were just paranoid fools" and perhaps actually learn something?
Not everyone is out to get you. It is not necessary to try to kill everyone in case they kill you.
Bush and Blair ate my sig!
they refute the green cheese theory, calling it Eurocentric. They say it is a giant wonton.
Table-ized A.I.
The reason we have not gone back to the moon is that most people in the US are not interested in it. If the people aren't interested in it, then the elected administration isn't going to be interested in it, the net result being that there is no support to fund that kind of undertaking. If you can somehow get the money to NASA to go back to the moon, you can bet there are people there that are ready and willing to take that project on.
What's really needed in the US is something that will once again spark a sense of urgency and wonder in the American public about space exploration again. In the sixties it was primarily competition with the Russians that sparked everyone's interest. Today we need something similar to get the people behind a new moon mission, otherwise it will almost certainly never happen. In fact, I think a manned mission to Mars probably has a better chance of getting funding today than a return to the moon (even though I personally think a moon base would be a much better use of funds...)
Shop Smart, Shop S-mart!
How do you know I'm not a lesbian immigrant asylee from Ethiopia who worked her way up thanks to hard work and scholarships, to graduate from college with massive amounts of debt but also with honors, to attend a graduate program at a Big Ten University? You know nothing of me, and my original post says nothing other than a fact, and yet you think you can tell condescend upon me with superior knowledge.
Don't take your cultural stereotypes and assume everybody fits into them.
I did not design this game/I did not name the stakes/I just happen to like apples/And I am not afraid of snakes-AniD
As a percentage, maybe. But they're druggies, not political prisoners. Not that the War on (Some) Drugs isn't immensely stupid, but it's not an indication of political repression.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
The old designs no longer exist -- the Saturn-V schematics were destroyed to 'encourage' Congressional acceptance of the Shuttle program. A fait accompli as it were.
"so they can attempt more terrorist actions against the U.S"
to attempt "more" they would have had to commit at least one first.
Bush and Blair ate my sig!
This'll be a wakeup call for the rest of the world if they pull this off. I think many people discount China as just another communist nation and forget how smart they really are (just think of all the inventions we have to thank China for).
My only hope is that they explore space in the same spirit the rest of the world does, for the improvement of mankind as a whole.
That's what we really need. Thousands of Chinese strip-mining the moon and leading us by the eyelashes to the brink of some epic, science-fiction-calamity.
Not that I don't like Chinese folks (me mum herself grew up in Manchuria), but seriously, considering the way they tolerate the "use" of their land, spotted by electronics reclamation ghettos with enough lead and mercury vapor in the air to kill half of the barefoot children that work for ten cents a day desoldering chips from the PCBs of our old fax machines, I'm not exactly confident that having a large Chinese colony on the moon is such a great idea.
Help them? Yes. Wonderful.
But it still worries me a bit.
Just hope the shuttles won't be provided by Microsoft. The shuttle would crash at the blastoff!!!
Cheers,
RoadkillBunny
... a splendid fusion of American money and Nazi German rocket techology!
Same here, I am a proud American.
Mainly I ignore conversations like this but I am going to chime in here. I do believe there is more freedoms here then anywhere else. But morally??? WTF do morals have to do with it ? The only institutions I mistrust more then governments are organized religions. Yes America has it's problems but show me a country that doesn't. Dude morals got shit to do with what makes this country great. Learn about mind police before you go spouting shit about morals... And that ladies and gentlemen is a prime example of things we still are working on.
You make the false assumption that the UN and Amnesty International are relevant.
The UN sure was relevant when the Bushies were running around and shrieking shrilly about how many UN resolutions that were being violated by Iraq. Amnesty International sure was relevant when President Reagan called it a "highly respected organization" and pointed to a report that they wrote about human rights violations stemming from the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Say what you mean: These groups are very relevant, but only when they say things you agree with; otherwise, they should be ignored. Well, you can't have it both ways.
And on the subject of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, do you honestly believe the US military would tip its hand as to what they've found until they're positive they've found all they will find?
Why wouldn't they? Kiddo, we (meaning the US) look like a bunch of buffoons right now. Bush was on television several times in near-hysterics, calling Iraq a "terrorist state with massive stockpiles of ultimate weapons." Ultimate weapons? Give me a break. Hundreds of civilians and US soldiers have died in the name of these non-existent weapons. I frankly can't believe that more people aren't up in arms about this. At least we've managed to capture lots of Iraqis with scary-sounding Pentagon nicknames (i.e., "Mrs. Anthrax", "Dr. Germ", etc.) Phew! What a relief!
We can console the mother and father in the Midwest that lost their son in Iraq by telling them that they can go to sleep at night without having to worry about "Chemical Ali."
The russians never pulled this off, but maybe a communist red flag next to the stars and stripes might knock the Americans off their high horse, or at least, wake them up.
No flag, but they did have the first landing, 2 rovers, and 24 unmanned probes which even returned samples.
In a lot of respects they beat us pretty well on the moon. I think the technical details of unmanned rovers and returning samples all remotely are very cool.
NASA, ESA and China and Russias efforts in space exploration are among the most amazing and uplifting events on Earth today. The Chinese are to be applauded, and this Georgia Redneck wishes them nothing but success. I expect the Chinese to be successful, and really, all this is old news if you have been following what the Chinese have been doing.
The Chinese have been improving their space technology steadily a long time now. They are to be applauded for the contributions they are making to expand the horizons of the human race. NASA is an amazing organization of great accomplishment, it is a pleasure to watch the Chinese join in on mankinds efforts to move beyond this little rock we know as the earth.
I firmly believe the historical significance of this era (post WWII -> next 100 years) is ---A. This is the era in which man was joined on earth by a second great intelligence, that of machines. ---B. This is the era when the little naked apes left this little rock called earth, some forever.
I would predict that the human race is right on the edge of a great evolutionary split, the result, the species that stayed on earth, and the species that left forever. Then, just for kicks, a third spinoff of intelligent machines of some sort.
HenryJamesFeltus.com
Really?
Earth first!
We'll strip-mine the other planets later!
Chinese Dr. Evil: "OK here's my plan, we build a base on the moon for my new generation of fanatical followers whom we will call 'Moonies', and then....why are you laughing?"
It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men. -Frederick Douglass
..becuase I am the proud owner of 2 whole acres of the moon.
What do you think taxes are going to be like....or am I behind already?
Succinct translation: "Watch Fox News."
I consider acts of terrorism and twenty something direct violations of international law and cease fire treaty reasonable fucking provocation.
Please list the "acts of terrorism" toward the US proven to have been committed by Iraq.
We're painfully aware of the Bush administration's attempts to link Al Quaeda to Saddam Hussein using the "intelligence sources" that are now under so much scrutiny in light of the puffed-up WMD argument. Our intelligence also told us Saddam was in that bunker on night one: yesterday the soldiers searching on the scene admitted they could find no evidence of a bunker at the site. Alas, the Ansar al Islam group is now completely off our radar as a result of the war, having scurried across the border to hide, so we can't question them about this subject... Leaving alone the 9/11 hints Condy Rice so quickly disavowed.
Please also contrast this policy toward Iraq's violations of international law with the US policy toward Israel, Pakistan, North Korea, and South Africa over the last 50 years.
FWIW, I agree with you that "without provocation" is an overstatement. The questions for me, and a lot of other people, are whether the war was justifiable and whether it's going to accomplish what it intended to. Right now we're taking it on the chin internationally for having "spun" our pretexts for going to war when we did. I see no evidence that the Bush administration is emerging from its determined solipsism with respect to international opinion; we keep right on acting like right-wing domestic supporters are the only audience for our policies. The jury is very much out on Iraq's reconstruction and the volatility of the middle east -- they're both supposed to become peaceful and stable as a result of this war and its aftermath, but that's a damn tall order, and this was an extremely high risk policy.
Oh, excuse me, I guess all those questions are just "ignorant," so why should we expect answers? You're brave, you're strong, and Fox is the only voice you want in your ear. Never mind.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
A place where they can't get their tanks should one of the colonists declare a democracy.
There seems to be two visions of Space exploration running through here.
1) The good old days were the Govt and the nation backs a space program that fires the world imagination and leads to the exploration of stars.
2) The ALIEN(Movie) vision were corporations develop and colonize space, via mining of resources, tourism, population growth.
Number 1 is history and we cant go back and we shouldn't go back. You need number 1 to get to Number 2. We have been so desperate to hold on to number 1 that we (U.S.) don't allow number 2 to develop. Continuing to expect NASA to deliver us the moon with less and less money.
China like always is about 70 years behind the rest of the world. They are at number 1. We (U.S./Free world) are on the brink of vision 2.
Mega-Corporation space battles and Alien artifacts that can destroy the Universe argument aside. Private industry as in the case of the Airline industry in the early 30's is what will make space travel available to all and will lead the colonization of space. Look at biomedical engineering the FDA doesn't lead expeditions to map the human genome or develop tools to discover new drugs. Medical companies and privately funded research bodies do this who are motivated by profit and the general good of man, the FDA is a regulatory body that provides support, guidance and funding at times, that's what NASA needs to be.
"Wernher Von Braun" by Tom Lehrer (as recorded in 1965):
(spoken introduction)
What is it that put America in the forefront of the nuclear nations? And
what is it that will make it possible to spend $20 billion of your money
to put some clown on the moon? Well, it was good old American know-how
that's what, as provided by good old Americans like Dr. Wernher Von
Braun.
(breaks into song)
Gather round while I sing you of Wernher Von Braun
A man whose allegiance is ruled by expedience.
Call him a Nazi, he won't even frown
"Ha, Nazi schmazi", says Wernher Von Braun.
Don't say that he's hypocritical
Say rather that he's apolitical.
"Once the rockets are up who cares where they come down,
That's not my department" says Wernher Von Braun.
Some have harsh words for this man of renown
But some think our attitude should be one of gratitude.
Like the widows & cripples in old London town
Who owe their large pensions to Wernher Von Braun.
You too may be a big hero
Once you've learnt to count backwards to zero.
"In German or English I know how to count down,
Und I'm learning Chinese" says Wernher Von Braun.
be for here or to go ?
Sig Heil: Scumerica - Land of the Free* (* 18+, valid papers, health insurance, some restrictions apply)
1. not too tall (1.74m or 5'10" for the metric-impaired folks)
2. not too white (native-south-american + black + italian + catalan)
3. not from US (being from Brasil)
I would, and probably will, sign up to colonize if the Chinese let me. Quiet place must be in the Moon.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
What about minerals in the moon? Isn't that of some value?
There's this unspoken assumption among Slashgeeks that spreading the human race throughout the observable universe is a Good Thing. What's with this?
The bottom line is that aside from the coolness factor, I just don't see a good reason to spend enormous amounts of money (and blood!) to get ourselves into space. If through some scientific advance, it becomes a lot cheaper to do space travel, I might think differently. But as long as we're dependent on chemical rockets to go anywhere, I think that space colonization is a non-starter.
I nominate your post for the first "total idiot" -1 mod.
Until you have been arrested and beaten by police at a peaceful rally, I bet you will continue to think you are free.
Until you are held prisoner in a Cuba death camp, I assume you will continue to believe your country respects human rights.
Until you are in a city that is leveled by a nuclear blast and your grandchild dies of radiation poisoning, I'm sure you will think we drop bombs to save lives.
Until you are enslaved and forced to live without basic human needs so the US can have cheap food, you will also surely believe that prosperity is not on the backs of the brown people you secretly hate.
Don't tell me you believe your own lies. See things from a broader point of view and think before you exploit your brother.
There haven't been any serious American proposals to go the moon in quite some time. I've never quite understood why the US manned space program has had so much focus on Mars as the next destination rather than the Moon.
The proposed Mars missions entail trip-times and ground stays of pretty long duration. The Mars-firsters advocate "living off the land" including cracking local water for fuel to return in order to make the trip affordable.
It is only 3 days to the moon, and if you spent the same time there as contemplated for a Mars mission, you'd pretty much consider it a 'moon colony'. T'would be a good place to debug all those technologies talked about for Mars; and much cheaper.
Although an unlikely scenario, imagine the mouth foam that would be generated in Washington as HDTV quality video shows a Chinese astronaut walking around Tranquility Base.
Personally, I don't care WHO goes into space as long as it happens. But, if nationalism is what kicks the space race back into high gear, why not?
It worked for the U.S. Moonshot. Maybe this will get us to Mars.
BBC interview with Ouyang Ziyuan, chief scientist of the Moon exploration programme.
With a simple Google search on China Space Moon you can find this article. I expected something better than this from Slashdot.
BBC Article:
"The United States has provided the greatest freedom and prosperity of its people than any other nation or civilization in the history of the planet. If it isn't utopia, it's as close as you're going to get on this world.
Get a dose of reality and understand that the culture and civilization embodied by the United States is the most morally superior culture and civilization in the history of the planet."
You have a very narrow outlook on the world.
I give them about 3 years before they've either made good on their threats and actualy seem to be going after this goal, or are shown to have simply issued another boast.
If in 3 years they have indeed begun the initiative to colonize the moon, you can be certain the US will get off it's collective ass and either infuse NASA with massive amounts of bucks and initiative, or simply kill them and replace them with a new goverment entity to acomplish the same goal.
there are two reasons for this.. A: if china sets up a weapons base on the moon we would be at a serious disadvantage the moment they develop anti-ICBM type defenses. Although this isnt near to happening now... it is an inevitability as far as the progression of tech in nearly all major societies.
The second reason... The US has one of the greatest attitudes possesed by man. Out right jealousy. If they do it, then we damn well WILL do it too AND better. Who cares about the expense... it's important simply because it is.
The reason NASA is grounded right now ISNT because they fucked up.... it's cause they fucked up and dont have much of a purpose thats beneficial to the miltary/social/economical intrests of the US corporations or populace. Put china upstairs.... and you can garentee our space program will geta shot in the arm well beyond anything we could imagine about the star wars project or otherwise.
nothing like good old economic/political rivalry to get the inovation engines running.
--Idiots, Every single one of YOU, A flaming mass of conglomerated morons, hey wait a second, isnt that how RAID works?
If anyone can do it, it will be the Chinese, but I doubt it will be that soon. I think rather that the time estimate is more of a way to spur the US into action.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
I don't think Chinese subs attacking the US mainland is something we have to worry about.
You don't, because you'd nuke Beijing and they know it.
Actually, when someone on this forum gets up over 150 posts as thoughtful as yours are, one can gleen a fairly good composite sketch of the poster. Of course, I never meant to offend you.
Of course, you did not address my point, which is that the great mass of inmates who have filled our jails to overflowing aren't Americans, they are people who came to live here because their homelands were more oppressive than ours.
American borders are sieves. I've always wondered, if we are so horrible a nation, why so many people keep coming here, and why so many people who hate it so don't just go someplace they like better?
Actually, I don't wonder. I know the answer, and so do you.
(Oops! There I go again, making assumptions...)
Comment peux tu parler français dans un site anglophone ? On ne te comprend pas !
Have you watched any news recently?! Think Iraq. Peaceful protesters are getting shot daily. And the Iraqi people are paying with "their" oil for the reconstruction of their own country. According to international law, that's the American's responsibility
Oh wait, you must watch FOX "News"...
If they get a lunar base, bank on it that it will be heavily militarized and its top priority will be to learn how to drop rocks on American cities.
Given the current size of the US military budget, and the prevailing governmental culture, would a US base be much different?
Disclaimer: I'm not an American. Dead Chinese, Iraqui or Afghan children sadden me just as dead American ones.
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
This Monday, FCC Chair Michael Powell will hold his vote on media
consolidation. There's nothing special about that date -- it's totally
arbitrary. The vote will conclude a process which has shown deliberate
disregard for the views and opinions of the American
people. Powell has refused to even release the actual language of
the rule change -- it won't be known until after the vote. And he's
only held a single meeting to hear the views of the public. Even when a
bipartisan group of Senators requested that he give Congress some time
to discuss the impact of this change, Powell brushed them off.
Chairman Powell still has the power to delay the rule change and allow
time to have a democratic debate about its consequences. Please call
him today and ask him to allow a real public debate on an issue of such
massive importance.
You can reach Powell's office at:
(202) 418-1000
Once you've made your call, please let us know at:
http://moveon.org/fcccall.html
"Moving through the masses like a fish through water." syrup
scripsit ReTay:
The problem is that the word `moral' has been hijacked by the extreme right and the fundamentalists. The French used to talk about republican `virtue' (I assume early American republicans did too) -- you could use the word `morals' in a similar way to refer to a sense of right and wrong in civic terms, not religious. Unfortunately, when most people in this country talk about morals they are obsessed with sex and making sure nobody has it or enjoys it. Strangely enough, though, when a man steals millions of dollars from his employees not a peep about morality is heard.
Social justice is a moral obligation; with whom I choose to enjoy physical intimacy and how has nothing to do with morality. Don't let the fundies abuse the concept of morality, but don't say that morality has no place in political discourse.
In principio creauit Linus Linucem.
Out of curiosity, where is your reference to the claim that "the great mass of inmates who have filled our jails to overflowing aren't Americans, they are people who came to live here because their homelands were more oppressive than ours." I was under the impression that a whacking great number of the US prisoners were incarcerated for drug crimes. If I'm wrong, I'd like to see the numbers, please.
Free as in "free to voice your opinion... as long is it is not a threat to The Party, in which case we'll kill you."
supply-side economics. Decrease taxes and allow more money to freely circulate. Each time it circulates it gets taxed again.
So long and thanks for all the fish . . . !!!
I will probably get a redundant score for this but screw it. America has done some good things with their space technology so far, and I hope despite our current leadership and their war-like ways that it will continue to be peaceful. But America if it is going to stay an economic power, and a world power can not ignore the possibility of being leap-frogged in space. The Russians weren't up to the challenge, and now others stand a good chance of proving that we are not. Space is a true testing ground of our engineering skills, and creativity.
America stunned the world by landing on the moon in the sixties. Think about that, in just the 1930's most Americans didn't have electricity or own a refrigerator, but in just about forty years we landed on the moon. We pushed our technology, and our engineering capabilities to reach out into space and touch something other than the earth. Now we can't even do that. Read Walker's statements in the above article and he confirms it. I can't help but think, how could we lose this capability in only 35 years, less than the time it took for us to go from a country without power to a world power?
Most of the technology in Sci-fi regarding the moon (2001 anyone?), we know to be possible in theory. If the Chinese get to the moon, and if they get their base built they will be the ones who either prove or disprove those theories. I can only hope they have the creativity to sustain their own research while there. I used to think if we got there we would start to find new ways to use or technology and develop more while we are there, now I am not so certain. But if NASA keeps going at things the way they are, then we will never know, but we will have more HBO's and MTV's than you can shake a stick at. As much as I love modern entertainment, it does not push our creativity.
Lastly, we need to have a presence there. As does the EU, Japan, India, Russia and China. It needs to be a free space, and be represented by all nations. It is the ultimate high ground. I saw someone else post about Heinlen, and quote Lazurus Long. I will now quote a different book, "What will they do? They have no weapons. Will they throw rocks at us?" (The Moon is a Harsh Mistress) Yes that is exactly what they could do, and probably would. I imagine the damage a four or five ton rock could do dropped from orbit as far out as the moon. Not the best of pictures right there.
Well that's the end of my rant. Basically I feel that damn it I want my country to be better than it is. And we keep giving up on that which could make us great, and maybe even memorable in history.
TANSTAAFL
Have you played Allegiance? There's an intro cut scene that you might want to see. It involves rocks, mass drivers, poor industrial process control and the pacific ocean.
When the solar system is your workplace, you'd better be sure that the forklift stays between the yellow lines.
Was the extreme paranoia of Mr Walker in the article. It is frightening he can't see other humans succeeeding as a good thing for all mankind. Instead, he has to twist it around in a perverted fashion that it is a threat to America if someone else does well. Very sad indeed.
HenryJamesFeltus.com
You're not neccessarily wrong; the drug/illegal alien population are overlapping sets.
Politically charged, but substantially footnoted overview with some numbers here.
Much more info available with a little googling.
Why is everyone saying - they may do this because they are willing to accept loss of life?
Does the majority think A: only US is able to do this without tragedies? and B: did everyone forget numerous losses US has suffered not only during moon program but over the entire nasa history including recently.........
Opinions like these are what fuels the arrogance of stars and stripes - as the saying goes - pride goeth before a fall...
And wasn't there a declaration proclaiming moon as the property of humanity and not any one country in particular?
Yes... I knew that. You are my new friend!!!
[FromTheMorning]
You are certainly correct that American citizens as a whole have a much better go of it than citizens of most other countries. I have no statistics on what percentage of our prison population are US citizens; if you have such information I would be interested.
However, I have three hangups at this point:
I suspect that if you look at those convicted of violent crimes (felony-1 and felony-2 convictions) you will find that asylees and refugees are extremely under-represented. However, you will probably also find that sentences to such people are longer than for natural-born (white) citizens. I do not have numbers to prove this but based on my own statistical research on other cultural trends when I was completing my PhD coursework, I am inclined to believe this.
By the way, I do appreciate the respectful debate.
I did not design this game/I did not name the stakes/I just happen to like apples/And I am not afraid of snakes-AniD
"Do you crazy americans never look back at the cold war and thing "oh, we were just paranoid fools""
Actually I look back at the Cold War and think: We Won! Thank God we were able to rid the world of an Evil empire and free its satellite nations. Yeah, Imagine that... I think of a government that slaughtered tens of millions of people and oppressed hundreds of millions to impose its will as "evil". I guess I'm just naïve for not seeing our slow and imperfect stumbling toward a freer and more decent world as morally equivalent to the Soviet Union's "noble" experiment in communism. I must have slept late the day during the Cold War when the United States killed everyone.
My lesson from the Cold War: "Better Dead than Red" might get you Dead, but if you are careful and patient enough it might get you None of the Above. "Better Red than Dead" gets you Red if you are lucky and Dead if you aren't. What lesson did you learn?
Although American bashing is just too fun for some people, I always wonder when it crosses logical limits. The last century can be completely summed up by western democracies vrs. totalitarian regimes. Bash all you will, but America spread freedom, prosperity, and stability to all it's allies. And the communist/dictators you so gleefully cheer? Ever seen the differences between East/West Germany? North/South Korea? This is not a pretty intellectual theory. This is the reality of people's lives being ruined by what you so cheer. So I ask, do you really want this, or do you just not understand and appreciate what you have?
My two cents, Iowa
"He who laughs last, didn't get the joke."-Cap
U.S. 'negation' policy raises concerns abroad
A snip from the start of it:
"The nation's largest intelligence agency by budget and in control of all U.S. spy satellites, NRO is talking openly with the U.S. Air Force Space Command about actively denying the use of space for intelligence purposes to any other nation at any time--not just adversaries, but even longtime allies, according to NRO director Peter Teets.
At the National Space Symposium in Colorado Springs in early April, Teets proposed that U.S. resources from military, civilian and commercial satellites be combined to provide "persistence in total situational awareness, for the benefit of this nation's war fighters." If allies don't like the new paradigm of space dominance, said Air Force secretary James Roche, they'll just have to learn to accept it. The allies, he told the symposium, will have "no veto power."
Beginning next year, NRO will be in charge of the new Offensive Counter-Space program, which will come up with plans to specifically deny the use of near-Earth space to other nations, said Teets.
The program will include two components: the Counter Communication System, designed to disrupt other nations' communication networks from space; and the Counter Surveillance Reconnaissance System, formed to prevent other countries from using advanced intelligence-gathering technology in air or space.
"Negation implies treating allies poorly," Robert Lawson, senior policy adviser for nonproliferation in the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs, said at a Toronto conference in late March. "It implies treaty busting."
Hints of such a policy showed up in the Rumsfeld Commission report of January 2001, which warned of a "space Pearl Harbor" if the United States did not dominate low-earth, geosynchronous and polar orbital planes, as well as all launch facilities and ground stations, to exploit space for battlefield advantage.
The European Union complained in no uncertain terms five years ago that the NRO and National Security Agency were using global electronic-snooping programs like Echelon outside the boundaries of mutual NATO advantage. The European Space Agency chimed in last fall, when the Defense Department tried to bully ESA into changing its design plans for a navigational-satellite system called Galileo.
In the aftermath of the successful Iraq campaign, concern goes much deeper and extends to the heart of NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defense Command inside Cheyenne Mountain near here. While Canada is supposed to be an equal member of NORAD, representatives of Canada's military and civilian establishment are complaining that they are not allowed to use space-based communications and intelligence in the same way the United States can."
To repeat, Rumsfeld "warned of a "space Pearl Harbor" if the United States did not dominate low-earth, geosynchronous and polar orbital planes, as well as all launch facilities and ground stations, to exploit space for battlefield advantage."
The current administration is completely out of fucking control.
"Gold still represents the ultimate form of payment in the world." - Alan Greenspan, 1999
You get that one. At least the U.S stopped sterilising people against their will in the 50's
He only gets that one because forced sterilisations in Peru don't count apparently.
Actually, the United States also has a number of notorious achievements. Like sending soldiers into Asian villages and brutally murdering women and children en masse Nazi-style. At least Russians never did that (they did their own share of atrocities, but nothing as disgusting as that). US also routinely kills thousands of people every now and then even in the 21st century (3000 in Afganistan - every ten thousandth person, several times more in Iraq), most of them civilians.
And a much more important thing to understand is that a significant share of Soviet atrocities can be attributed first to civil war and second to Stalin's paranoia. After Stalin's death the repressions ended very soon. On the other hand, American behaviour during Cold War and today does not depend that much on President's personality (although that is important too), but more on the system that you managed to build. Clinton attacked Yugoslavia, Bush attacked Afganistan and Iraq. I am sure that even if some Nader is elected next year, he will probably have to attack someone as well.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
If anybody thinks the US will sit idly by while other nations develop space technology they are dreaming. They will be knocked out.
War is necrophilia.
A permanent presence on the Moon would give the Chinese the ability to deny space access to any other nation or people. Self-deluding peaceniks aside, do you really think they would not?
Whiel I am an American and consider myself a true patriot, I am not a fan of current American Policy in every respect. That being said, I prefer it hands down over the mandarin style authoritarianism which has ruled China longer than the US has been a nation.
Allowing the Chinese unchallenged access to the moon is as terrible a mistake as allowing the Soviet Union the same, or for that matter, the United States. We as a nation had better get off our butts now or we will lose them later.
Don't forget: the also won WW2 on their own!
Give me an economic justification for war, then I might go along with your statement. The first casualties of war are usually not American economic thoerists, though this might be a good thing.
Bullshit to your economics. Give us an economic explanation of the pyramids all around the world or European middle age cathedrals.
There is every economic justification for non productive space exploration, it would employ millions and do no harm. Can we really justify our so called western lifestyle (I gag at the canned advertising word lifestyle). Al Gore was right. The biggest burden on our technical, social and economic advancement in the west is or obsession and the reliance on the personal auto-mobile.
The Chinese have been spared the obsession by economic necessity, and as they open their society and discover their true value as a people, they will over take the west in all fields of scientific human social endevour within the next decade.
As the first people to use fireworks in a non-destructive way maybe that is what they have in mind. When you set off a nuclear explosion 40 or 50 thousand miles out in space all you get is one hell of a big flash. It is the use of nuclear technology within our atmosphere that is the real cause for concern.
OH THE SHAME I fell off the wagon and use sigs again!
Let 'em. They'll waste their money on an incredibly uneconomic expense, and we'll meanwhile invest in ventures which will actually pay off. Really, think about it: outer space just doesn't make any sense at this point in time. What resources are there to be utilised? How can the expense be justified? It can't. Let them waste their resources; it can only make us better off in comparison.
Don't believe. Go out and check how much freedoms have been taken away from you since 9/11.
What do you think 9/11 was, asshole?
(Yes, this is flamebait. Boo-fucking-hoo.)
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
An aerospace industry commissioner recommends investing in developing aerospace technologies. Surprise surprise.
Couldn't resist!
But in the Bible doesn't it say that the moon will turn "Red" before the end of the world?????
Aaaaauuuuuggggghhhh!
Laugh now while you still have the chance.
Moo. Moo, moo-moo-moo, moo, moo-moo-moo.
Ok I'm supposed to jizz all over myself at the thought of humans (using super new TECHNOLOGY!) living on the moon. I think we should work on changing ourselves first, through transhumanism.
-Libertarian secular transhumanist
P.S. We plan on taking the SDI lasers and using them to burn large American advertisements on the moon...
We don't care about money, we just want our sci-fi novels to come true!
-Libertarian secular transhumanist
Total US Prison + Jail Population (2002): 2,000,000 (1) ..............Prison (2002): 1,355,748 (1) ...Local/County Jail (2002): 665,475 (1)
Regardless of the citizenship of the inmates, prison percentages have always been used as a strong indicator of the degree to which national laws are in tune with the beliefs and practices of that country's population.
Sure. Provided your federal government is not in the habit of executing dissidents. Comparing the US to a nation with a comparable record of offing trouble-makers, like, say, the UK, then we probably don't look so good. When comparing the US and China prison systems, you must admit the US percentage will be skewed.
Re: Population versus Citizenship. Again, you're going to see skewed numbers. Rightly or wrongly, US borders are porous. We're imprisoning born-here Bad Guys, and we are imprisoning a higher-than-fair percentage of other nation's Bad Guys, in part because those Bad Guys can come here and be reasonably certain they won't be shot (reference 1st paragraph, above). China does not have a history of reaching out to "wretched refuse;" the US does. It's reasonable to expect that our very generous immigration policies will result in fuller jails.
"America: Love It or Leave It" -- Never said that, never will, don't feel that way. My point was that people like to complain, it's part of human nature, and knows no geography. Whether our complaint is "Gosh, this caviar is too warm!" or "Please, officer, take your boot off my head," people are going to whine. The telling difference is that the people who get their heads kicked and such quite often, and wisely, get the hell out of the country that sanctions that kind of "enforcement" and "coercion." (Often they come here, reference paragraph two, above.) We Americans complain about our cops, our government, the weather, everything, but at the end of the day we're not crowding onto an overloaded boat to escape our homeland.
They are not entitled to Geneva Convention protection, because they are not uniformed soldiers, they are terrorists.
Not quite true - they are referred to as illegal combatants because they were soldiers in an army that represented a country not recognised by the US,i.e. many of them are just Taliban soldiers, including some teenage boys (i.e. 13, 14 years old).
They are NOT political prisoners, they are violent terrorists who have threatened guards on several occasions and attempted escape often.
As I understand it, during war it is a soldier's duty to attempt escape, even if it means (gasp) threatening military personel. Once the war is ended the soldiers must be repatriated.
Okay, explain to me again where illegal combatant (as would be all members of an *irregular* army, unless they carry arms publicly, wear a recognizable sigil or emblem, and conduct their operations in accord with the laws and customs or war) = uniformed soldier of a country in a delcared action?
Geneva Convention:
Article 4:
A. Prisoners of war, in the sense of the present Convention, are persons belonging to one of the following categories, who have fallen into the power of the enemy:
1. Members of the armed forces of a Party to the conflict as well as members of militias or volunteer corps forming part of such armed forces.
2. Members of other militias and members of other volunteer corps, including those of organized resistance movements, belonging to a Party to the conflict and operating in or outside their own territory, even if this territory is occupied, provided that such militias or volunteer corps, including such organized resistance movements, fulfil the following conditions:
(a) That of being commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates;
(b) That of having a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance;
(c) That of carrying arms openly;
(d) That of conducting their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war.
3. Members of regular armed forces who profess allegiance to a government or an authority not recognized by the Detaining Power.
-- snip --
The people in camp x-ray fail to fulfill the sections required by part 2 a-d of article 4.
Not only did they not operate openly, carrying arms openly with a recognizable sigil or emblem, but they're not part of any regular army, they did NOT conduct their actions in accordance with the laws and customs of war, which specifically prohibit terrorist actions. They operated outside of the Geneva Convention, some even acting under cover as civilians, and therefore ARE NOT prisoners of war, and ARE NOT required to be repatriated, nor treated as prisoners of war under the Geneva Convention
http://xkcd.com/386/
I was thinking of a different Heinlein book (The Moon is a Harsh Mistress?) in which the lunar workers successfully seceded from Earth by building a rail gun to drop large rocks on the planet.
As a nation, America's sins and flaws are openly debated as part of an effort to improve itself. Yet, some view this vehicle to bash and feel smug. What is sad is that when the tables are turned and those nations are coldly evaluated. More often than not, those sins are not talked about or just justified to death. In this case, I ask the question, when was the last time you heard a chinese admit we as a nation screwed up?
A view of recent history has shown that Chinese are not as peaceful as characterized in these forums. in the last 50 years, they have fought wars with the United States, The Soviet Union, and Veitnam among others. In the 1960's, the Sino-Soviet split began becauase Chairman Mao was pressuring Russia to use its nuclear weapons premptively because the communists at that time had a population advantage and would "win" the war. Tiawan and Tibet do not enjoy that warm feeling of security from invasion that Canada does. Should I go on?
The above Korean war history/rationalization is an interesting view, but not entirely acurate. Another view may be that a fledging nation was undergoing hard ship and starvation. What do you do when that happens? You find a scapegoat and wage a nationalistic war to distract. So, about a million mostly unarmed, hungry chinese poor over the border and the Korean war is prolonged. With the aid of Russian airforce and Chinese manpower, the war is fought to a stalemate. McArthur may have wanted to use nukes, but to the credit of America, the fact is The end result? The Chinese regime remained intact bringing sush joy as the cultural revolution to its citizens. North Korea suffers mass starvation as a brutal regime spens precious recources on weapons instead of food.
More could be said, but it's more fun to bash America and not examine other countries' sins, isn't it?
My two cents,
Iowa
"He who laughs last, didn't get the joke."-Cap
Oh sorry, I forgot about Kruschev emptying the gulags, disbanding the secret police, swearing off political murgers, ending show trials, and giving the Soviets freedom of speech, religion, etc.
And yes, you are correct. Everything the Soviets did from to Ukraine to Budapest to Chechnya pale in comparison to that "Nazi-style" My Lai incident.
Of course it should. Haven't you ever heard of colonisation? Do we want china to own the property on the moon? Of course we don't. The moon is as american as apple pie and by gum, it doesn't belong to no goddamned commies!
The twenty something direct violations of international law were the provocation, and, oh, btw, that made it completely internationally legal for the United States to attack Iraq. Their violoation of one of any of those parameters of ceasefire (from the first Gulf War) makes our attack legal.
Try ignoring all the players and looking at the issue without label. That is, without bias. Then reconsider your opinion based on only the facts, not the emotion please.
I haven't posted in so long, my sig is out of date.
That's the trouble: even a single nuke is enough to worry the US. Look at the impact Al Queda had on 9/11, and ask yourself what impact a single nuke, or even a "dirty bomb" would have.
MAD worked well against the USSR during the Cold War: the USSR's leaders knew they would lose WWIII (both sides would: as WOPR would put it, "the only winning move is not to play"). That deterrent doesn't work against suicide bombers...
If you don't want to see /. further ruled by the oppressive censors (negatively modding dissent) from leftist Europe and Canada mod the parent up. Yes, it's a shameless plug, but my karma is fine, I'm doing this for the love of things Right (get it, a pun) and reasonable. Or if you agree that it's off topic mod the parent of the parent down instead, as that's offtopic also!
I haven't posted in so long, my sig is out of date.
Why bother sending an astronaut? Just for laughs, why not send a robot? Even dear old UK Beagle type thing as is going to Mars could probably pull a flag down and stick up a Union Jack. Stuff that. Send a robot filled with fireworks and paint, could draw a Union Jack a mile across and simultaneously flatten Stars and Stripes, erase footprints.
You are incorrect in claiming legal justifications. The UN resolutions calling for the Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait territory specifically state that "Iraq withdraw immediately and unconditionally all its forces to the positions in which they were located on 1 August 1990".
There is specific wording in the document that asserts the soverignty of both Iraqi and Kuwaiti territory. Note that Resolution 678 grants ONLY the ability to enforce Resolution 680: "Authorizes Member States co-operating with the Government of Kuwait, unless Iraq on or before 15 January 1991 fully implements, as set forth in paragraph 1 above, the foregoing resolutions, to use all necessary means to uphold and implement resolution 660 (1990) and all subsequent relevant resolutions and to restore international peace and security in the area."
There is NOTHING in there that says the US or any international force will move into or occupy soverign Iraqi territory in the event of non-compliance. Note in resolution 687, which ended the war: "Demands that Iraq _and_Kuwait_ respect the inviolability of the international boundary and the allocation of islands" and that it "Declares that, upon official notification by Iraq to the Secretary-General and to the Security Council of its acceptance of the provisions above, a formal cease-fire is effective between Iraq and Kuwait and the Member States cooperating with Kuwait in accordance with resolution 678 (1990)"
UN resolution 1441 specifically states that in the event that Iraq is found in material breach of the final resolution "to convene immediately upon receipt of a report in accordance with paragraphs 4 or 11 above, in order to consider the situation and the need for full compliance with all of the relevant Council resolutions in order to secure international peace and security". There is NO WORDING in 1441 that says the UN or any other force will attack when faced with noncompliance.. only that the matter will be considered again. In fact, 1441 has wording specifically AGAINST an invasion: "Reaffirming the commitment of all Member States to the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Iraq, Kuwait, and the neighbouring States,".
There is no legal basis for the war - it simply happened, and everyone scrambled to get out of the way.
Sorry, hit submit instead of preview...
p .htmll ien.html
Total Prison + Jail Pop. (2002): approx. 2 million
Total Prison (2002): 1,355,748
Local + County Jails: 665,475 [1]
Federal Prison Citizenship (2003):
U.S 71%; Other 29% [2]
Prison Population:
State.......Year........Total........Alien
Florida.....2002........73,553.......4,526 [3]
Cali........2000........??????......24,310 (15.1%)[4]
Texas.......2000........??????......9,356 (7.0%)[4]
All 50 + Fed.'00........??????......98,027 (4.0%) [4]
I don't think aliens are "the great mass of inmates who have filled our jails." (N.B. Aliens are legal or illegal non-citizens, not illegal immigrants) Apologies for not knowing how to format.
[1]www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/press/pjim02pr.htm
[2]www.bop.gov/fact0598.html
[3]www.dc.state.fl.us/pub/annual/0102/stats/im_po
[3b]www.dc.state.fl.us/pub/annual/0102/stats/ip_a
[4]www.cji-inc.com/cyb/download/00over50.pdf
If you actually don't believe there is any sort of God, why do you care if other people do?
The same reason Jews cared about the Spanish Inquisition, and Christians cared about Muslim invaders. The ruling class will attempt to force its religion on all its subjects. The severity of the ruling class's reaction to refusal to believe is completely unpredictable, and in the case of the USA, becoming more severe every day. Our ATTORNEY GENERAL is so goddamn puritan that he couldn't stand to be pictured with a fucking STATUE of a woman with a naked breast. Yes, he's an idiot, but he could roll out the FBI and get all atheists arrested and systematically destroyed if he wanted.
THAT is why we care about other people believing in God - because they care about us NOT believing in it.
If you truly believe that all atheists could be rounded up and imprisoned, you're insane. That could no more happen than could a federal roundup of lutherans. If that happens, then people in this country will have much larger problems, as martial law + some sort of SS would be required.
Also, although I hear so much about evangelists being annoying and trying to force their beliefs on others, I've found that in my personal experience, it's far easier to get religious people to stop bugging me than it is to get atheists to go away. All I do is say 'I'm not interested, thank you.' I am agnostic, and no religion is going to change that, but neither is any athiest. I've been attacked far more, personally, by atheists than by religious people for what I believe. I've NEVER heard of any type of formalized government persecution of atheists. There's no Bureau of Religious Conformity. Maybe our attorney general is a puritan, but last I checked, that's his right. It would equally be his right to be Muslim, Hindu, Lutheran, atheist, agnostic, or undeclared. It's also his right to want others to convert to his cause. It's yours too. It's when you go from *wanting* others to convert into *forcing* people to convert that you've exceeded your rights. After all, isn't declaring someone an idiot because they don't share your beliefs what you are opposed to? Or is that only when others do it to you? (If you were basing his idiot-ness on something else, I apologize, but I'm going by the context of your post, where it seems that his religious views are what got him branded idiot.)
http://xkcd.com/386/
Does anyone else think it might not be a good idea to mine the moon.. I mean, we kinda need its gravity and stuff. In 50 years it'll be one of the many problems of Earth... Global Warming, Fossil Fuels, Lunar Gravitational Degradation, The Bush Regime's 14th consecutive presidency, Revolutionary Factions (Terrorists), etc..
My understanding is that an exceeding number of "American" inmates are actually somebody else's population, which is to say, illegal aliens.
Nope. The large majority of US prison inmates are US citizens. (800,000+ of them)
The government can incarcerate illegal aliens after convicting them of crimes, but it has little motivation to do this, unless they're guilty of something really major. Its already very expensive to maintain cells for all the US convicts- why strain the budget further by housing foreigners on 7 year "possesion with intent" sentences?
When illegal aliens are arrested, they often get deported before we bother to try them for the particular offense.
>The Chinese are doing what the Chinese have always done: been overwhelmed and absorbed the invader. Time after time, century after century.
That argument is fatally flawed: first there is no invader (unless you count Maoism): you answered with a non sequitur. Second, Chinese culture was able to assimilate several waves of Northern invaders because the Northern invaders moved in among them, and became them.
When the British, Germans, et cetera, WERE invaders in China, they didn't get assimilated. The reason was the steamship: they could send their young'uns home to be educated, and get a fresh crop of administrators from home every year. Even with sailing ships, the British managed to avoid assimilation in India for 300 years.
Believe it or not there ARE problems with US and European "democracy"- like we don't have it.
Actually, that's not a bug; that's a feature. Athens had democracy, all those thousands of years ago. That's how Socrates came to be murdered. Democracy, REAL democracy, the kind we definitely DON'T have, is mob rule, and has always ended in tyranny or anarchy followed by tyranny. Democracy is way harder on minorities than what we have.
What we have (in the US) is a representational republic. It is the worst form of government in the world, with the exception only of all other forms which have ever been tried. Our government looks AWFUL, if we compare it to the ideal. If we compare it to any other government, we laugh at the poor, benighted fools who admire that other government, and thank God that we're not that bad off.
You said that you've worked in China. My brother-in-law has worked in China for years. He's Taiwanese, so speaks the language almost like a native, and blends in pretty well. China and the Chinese are in a bad way, over all. They're dirt poor, and their government is trying to slaughter the unpopular folks just fast enough to keep the rest scared into submission. Right now, that's mostly Christians and the Falun Gong. The mandatory abortion laws have resulted in wide-spread infanticide, inside and outside of hospitals. But, I digress.
Just to get this rant back on topic, I'm sure that the Chinese could put several ships on the moon. After all, it can be done with 1960s technology. They'll bridge quite a bit of the distance with Chinese corpses.
The post you were replying to said:
If they get a lunar base, bank on it that it will be heavily militarized and its top priority will be to learn how to drop rocks on American cities
and you replied:
How much notice would you get ? Quite long enough to launch a retaliatory strike before the rock even arrives.
That's why I'm sure that the US would see a Chinese NEO station as a far greater threat than a moon base would be.
Chinese society is heavily militarized, in the sense that the People's Army is a large force in the power structure. We can be sure that any Chinese space program will mirror Chinese society. We can also be sure that China is an enemy country. No slave state can afford to have a free state nearby, and even with all our very real, very serious problems here in the US, the difference between mainland China and the US is the difference between Hell and Heaven. We may not know that, but I can assure you that the Chinese people, and their government, do know it. The people respond by trying to get here, and the government responds by stepping up the slaughter of their people, and by trying to harm us in any way they think they can.
See what I've been reading.
Some of this is a bit fuzzy as I haven't ready much on it recently, but China's longest reaching ICBM is the Dong Feng-5 (CSS-4) which is typically outfitted with a single 5Mt warhead and has a range of 13,000km. Estimates are that China currently has 20 of these ready to fly. With their range I can remember reading that they cannot yet hit targets in the eastern CONUS, however would be able to hit our bases in Japan, Hawaii, as well as anywhere on the west coast. As far as SLBM's we have one (possibly two) Xia class: SSBN (type 092, 8,000 tons), armed with 12 JL-1 (CSS-N-3) SLBMs (range 1,700km with a single 1.25MT nuclear warhead). A major update of the class started in 1995 to fit the new JL-2 SLBM system, with the upgrade expected to be completed in 1998. The JL-2 (CSS-NX-4) SLBMs is reported to carry 3 or 4 MIRV (90kT each) or a single 250kt warhead with a range of 8,000km. As to wether the upgrade took place or not remains uncertain. There is also uncertainty regarding the second hull which is believed lost in an accident in 1985. Hope this clears up some info on China's nuclear capability for people.
I try to make everyone's day a little more surreal.
I don't care who gets a moonbase first... I'm applying for a job! :)
It's hard to not see China as an entrenched power prefering the status quo. I can only hope we get enough people up there ourselves to form an independent community with it's OWN interests.
If you want to imagine the Chinese space effort, check out their navy. They kill loads of people through neglignece, cheapness and downright incompetence. They might get there, but they are going to kill many doing it. Space is even less tollerant of incompetence than the deep sea.
Hmmm, it's doubtful that China will let it's possesions have key technologies needed for self sufficiency. It will be interesting to see if the planned collonies will get that way despite their masters.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Yes, this more refined statement I think rings true. Most significantly, you are touching on the fact that China is a traditional sending country and the US is a traditional receiving country. I have discovered in research that in fact the percentage of long-term immigrants who come to America and then leave again is actually much higher than commonly thought - in some decades this number can account for well over half of all immigration - but the fact still remains that our net migration is significantly positive, and China's net migration is significantly negative. And yes, that says something very significant about the two countries. Government-sanctioned murder ("execution") is also orders of magnitude higher in China than the US and this also skews numbers.
Finally, if you're talking about intra-continental migration when you refer to the "porous" border, then I agree with you. This is *not* true however if you're talking about migration on the whole - it is actually surprisingly hard for Asian or African asylees, refugees, or migrants to get into the US, either legally or illegally, and those who do come are statistically much less likely to have any legal run-ins (excepting minor visa issues) than the native population. Illegals from Mexico and Central America of course have a significantly higher likelihood of legal trouble, but even there it's not enormously higher than among the native-born population.
But yeah, at this point I think we've essentially found a middle ground on the issue - I basically agree with your final post.
I did not design this game/I did not name the stakes/I just happen to like apples/And I am not afraid of snakes-AniD
The US flag is a monument and tearing it down is not necessary when you can simply eclipse it. The crew could simply placing the alternate nation's flag in front of the US flag from the TV camera's perspective.
This very image should be broadcast NOW.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Hmm
Why is it when I think of this all that comes to mind is a gigantic lunar concrete pad? (the "base", get it?) -Atleast most of the materials for that are already on the moon. (maybe)
I just don't think the timeframe is right. It took the US quite a while just to get someone to the moon at all.
Well I suppose you could send a pre-fab winnebago-style base, but that seems rather far fetched. It took a Saturn V to get 3 men to the moon, imagine what it will take to send prefab units of almost any kind.
See the Pictures of the Flood of '08
Here's the mindframe that's useful. Instead of sitting around on this rock, blowing up each other's sacred temples and fighting over petrified dino-shit, we should concentrate on exploiting the infinite riches of the Universe. Get out of the zero sum game. A power like China will never alow it's colonies anything aproaching self suficiency. It's up to free people to colinize space and liberate those who are oppressed by a shining example of prosperity.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
that jab got me thinking...
can we pollute the moon?
what are the side effects?
pollution is bad for the ecosystem and environment,
but the moon has none of these;
there isn't even an atmosphere to destory.
we could use the moon for all sorts of things;
factories, power generation, and trash dump.
perhaps the trash might contribute to an atmosphere and life.
taking this another step further,
we could have huge power plants on mars with natural cooling
and not need to regulate radiation or other harmful output.
Use my userscript to add story images to Slashdot. There's no going back.
Saturn V was a waste of money! If NASA had to move a barstool, they'd use a semi... What needs to be done is total and complete deregulation! Private companies could get us -- not the elite preppie-astronauts -- into space ten times better and cheaper than NASA!
The government needs to scrap NASA and get off the free-market's back.
So do I. It showed what free men can do when they co-operate. It shames me what has been lost since. DMCA, Homland Defense, TIA, barf, we shall soon be as bad as our idealogical rivals, as which point we shall simply be economic and military rivals.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
> The UN...is currently ignoring the deaths of 3,000,000 people in Congo
2 0030530.wcong0530/BNStory/International/) The reason there was a period of chaos before the UN acted is that thousands of Ugandan troops withdrew a few weeks ago as part of a complicated. locally-mediated peace accord. The UN gave local nations a chance to resolve the civil war themselves, and is stepping in now to protect civilians and help bring the peace process back on track. If the UN wasn't kept so weak and resource-starved by major nations refusing to pay their dues (US, among others), perhaps more humanitarian missions like this would be possible.
:)
Actually, they just decided to send in a a force. (http://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.
> The UN...instead sees itself solely as an method to counter the United States.
No, you just think the world revolves around you.
Seriously - the UN and the US have clashed recently because the US is ignoring long-standing international law. If any other nation were to launch an invasion with "trust me" as the rationale, the UN would hassle them, too.
> Let's see: 2 years ago Al Qaeda operatives (who were not Iraqi, but thrive in the environment of
> despotic regimes like the one that Iraq used to be) were crashing 757s into major American
> landmarks. Today Al Qaeda is reduced to blowing up fellow Arabs in their own backyard.
Interesting... So because a unique event - which had never happened before - has not happened again, the US has been successful?
- Despite how we've left Afghanistan in chaos, letting the Taliban regroup and providing ample motivation and opportunity for ultraradical Muslims to recruit?
- Despite how we're hurriedly throwing away our freedoms, which were long considered America's very soul?
- Despite the way we've squandered the strongest international support America's had since at least WWII, replacing it with an unprecedented level of international disgust?
- Despite the way we've galvanized potential enemies into racing hell-bent for WMD so they can deter us from attacking on a whim?
> Despite what the biased Amnesty International organization claims, I believe that the security of the United states has been increased
So I guess I, and everybody else I know in the US, are biased, too, then. Especially the guys who live and work around NYC, who are pretty convinced that the recent actions of the US have put them at greater risk of terrorist attack, as well as greater risk from questionable "Homeland Security" activities. Yeah, we're all biased.
Or, wait a moment - maybe it's just you.
Yes there are. But we don't run over protestors with tanks or shoot dissidents
Oh yes you do ! - Remember Kent State ? Or Iraq not a month ago....
Steve
Exactly. I count communism as an external invader - especially since Mao learned his while in Europe (France again....)
Britain, German invaders not assimilated ? True, but then how much influence did they leave. In India, many of the British were "assimilated", the "Raj". Also the Indians get there own back with the number of Indian words now in English English, together with the fact that Indian food is the most popular food in the country (Too much Star Trek methinks) We are the English of Borg, have a cup of tea and then be assimilated......
...for 1 MILLION DOLLARS!
A quick google search indicates that less than 100.000 of the 2 million US prisoners are illegal aliens, while to list a stunning example 4.8% of the overwhelmingly native population of black men are imprisoned by the government at any moment, with the number being 12.9% in the 25-29 age groupp.
> The brushfire conflicts of the Cold War were intractable to the UN, and those in the post-Cold
> War world have also proved intractable, save with US intervention, without exception!
The UN doesn't intervene to force a stop to these wars because that's not the job we've given it. UN Peacekeepers are meant to do just that - *keep* an already-existing peace, not militarily force one to appear - and they've got a pretty good track record doing so. We've given the UN neither the mandate nor the resources to undertake large-scale military operations, so faulting them for not doing so is absurd.
Should the UN force a peace on warring groups? Maybe, but you know large nations would never allow it unless it served their interests. Can you see Russia allowing a powerful UN force with a "by any means" mandate into Chechnya? Or China allowing one into Tibet? Or the USA allowing one into Palestine?
The UN is weak because we've kept it weak.
(Out of curiosity, which post-Cold War brushfires would you say US intervention has solved? The first Gulf War was UN-based, Yugoslavia was NATO-based, Somalia was a mess, and neither Afghanistan nor Iraq are close to resolved, given the chaos in both places.)
China was never the largest percentage - the USSR/Russia held that dubious honor until the US took over a few years ago.
An interesting factoid: studies (undertaken by Illinios, IIRC) suggest that perhaps 25% of death row inmates are actually innocent. If that fraction holds for the general prison population, the USA has more _innocent_ people in prison than the similarly-sized European Union has _total_ people in prison.
Land of the Free?
> Uh. Isn't that because the Chinese government just murders the dissadents?
3 .html). Even if we assume there were ten times as many killings, and figure the average sentence is 4 years, that would mean killing someone instead of incarcerating them would lower the number of inmates by 100,000/yr.
Not in large enough numbers to make a real difference. Amnesty International reported 2500 executions in 2001 (http://www.amnestyusa.org/news/2003/china0110200
The USA has 0.7% of its population - 2,000,000 people - in jail (not counting some jails), whereas China has only 0.1% of its population - 1,400,000 people - in jail. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/2925973.stm)
To "catch up" with the US's prisons, China would have to imprison over 9 million more people, execute 2 million more per year, or some combination of the two.
There's no way to spin it so we look good - the US imprisons *vastly* more of its citizens than China, by all measures.
2006? Maybe they're using the chinese calendar or something.
- shazow
The Chinese are happy to lull you into your Western arrogance of superior technology. They are technologically modernizing at a blistering rate, thanks to Taiwan and Western companies relocating their high tech factories into China. They are one of the few countries in the world still generating a large increase in GNP per year. Any capital they can keep from going into populace maintenance is going to their military. They are making/buying modern tanks, fighter planes, ships, and other weapons. God forbid the Israelis start selling them cutting edge military technology. Even if Israel stays under the US's economic thumb, and the US keeps them on a tight leash, China will be able to generate capital to buy weapon systems outright from the French. In five years, their military will be unrecognizable from their status. And trust me, their ICBMs will hit any place in the world they want it to. In ten years (at their current economic pace), they will probably be able to go head to head against the US. Oh sure, our weapons will be able to hit theirs at a farther distance, our tanks will be nicer, and our airplanes will have doodads theirs won't. But 1.5 billion vs 300 million. You do the math. Oh, I forgot, the US kids aren't so good with it anymore.
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
The United States has provided the greatest freedom and prosperity of its people than any other nation or civilization in the history of the planet.
This isn't actually true (the U.S. is only about in tenth place overall), but the U.S. has provided the greatest freedom and prosperity to people outside of its borders than any other nation or civilization in the history of the planet.
One of the reasons for open jury trials and the rule of law is to make sure you convict the right people of the right laws. This has not happened. To date, have seen little or no evidence to link these people to the WTC. By "evidence" I mean in the strict legal sense of that which is "seen" (this is the latin root of the word) and is subject to informed hostile questioning to establish its validity. What we outside the intelligence community have is only hearsay (again, in the legal sense of the word) - good enough to warrant an investigation, but we have no idea if there is enough to put guilt beyond reasonable doubt.
I am greatly cynical of any regime which so distrusts that its citizens will reach the "right" verdict that it bypasses the rule of law. It is always too easy to find reasons for the current situation being a special case. There are no special cases. If the benefit and the weight of law does not apply to all people, it has little worth.
I'm not insane and I have the papers to prove it :)
I think this current administration is quite capable of systematically persecuting atheists in a "roundup" scenario, and I believe that they would love to. The only thing that keeps them from it is the fact that most people in the country are more tolerant than they are, and they would lose too many votes by "rounding up" and brainwashing/executing/imprisoning non-Christians.
Ashcroft is entitled to his religious views, but I'm also entitled to think people that are that uptight are insane idiots.
Besides, the statue is government property, and thus, at least on paper, owned by the people of the USA and subject to the Constitution. If it offends his morals, tough shit.
The Bureau of Religious Conformity is called the Supreme Court, if you haven't heard. The justices appointed by republicans don't vote with the law, they vote with their bibles. God himself votes republican, at least, that's what every preacher in the USA would have you think.
....Uh, 'cause you're posting on Slashdot? What else would you be besides a fat, sheltered cracker?
One of the other 435464643543242 forms of lowlife that reads and posts on slashdot?
I mean, yeah we're all useless, but we're not all fat, sheltered, or crackers. We do, however, all suck.
http://xkcd.com/386/
Yeah, should be called "MIR - II" instead. American contribution so far was more of a setback than help. Now we're building extra spacecraft because of their screwup and they refuse to pay up. I'm wondering why don't we just push the whole thing out of their reach? Shuttles, even if they are to fly again (hihgly questionable), can never reach orbits at 320-360 kms above the surface. Our Soyuz can easily. Time to act, I say. They looted half of our country when it was up for grabs...
like those slanty eyed little fuckas could figga it out...
Yes, peaceful protesters shooting guns from inside mosques at occupying soldiers under martial law.
Poor, poor protesters.
1.5 billion people don't count for diddly squat if all their troop transports sink to the bottom of the ocean. So the US and Taiwan don't have much to worry about.
And in 10 years they'll be well on their way down the slippery slope to democracy.
Well, not really, but I'm really not worried about China. As much as some people dislike Bush, he came within inches of naming China part of the "Axis of Evil". Something tells me he's not going to sit idlely by and watch China build a strategic weapons plat--er, moon base over his very without some sort of counter-balance. Since this is slashdot, I know some people have misgivings about the US, but do you really trust China to just build a moon base? From the very same people who won't run down their citizens with tanks anymore, wheee!
You need a FREE iPod Nano
Err...that may well be how it was presented, but I think you'll find that the Russians had quite a lot to do with the defeat of Germany. Possibly more than any other nation (a hard thing for me to say, as I'm British), and they certainly earned their rest. And the scientists that helped with the American space programme were also captured German rocket scientists.
I think its pretty safe to say that without US support of Russia , the easern front would have collapsed far more easily. The Russians had no way of countering the German industrial machine, absolutely none. If the US had not supplied the Russians with critical supplies and weaponry, Germany would have easily captured all the major cities and the communists would have been pushed back to Siberia for the duration of the war.
I don't read or respond to AC posts
"apples to oranges" comparison here.
If China (re?)annexes Taiwan will the Taiwanese have more or less control over their destiny? Would China "pull out" after a few years leaving Taiwan freer than before?
You can attribute the Iraq war to all kinds of reasons (oil,terrorism, WMD, lousy women's fashions,etc) but only the most historically ignorant would believe "annexation" is the reason.
The record is plain: the US has (multiple times over the last 50 years) not only withdrawn after victory but spent billions of dollars rebuilding the "conquered". If America is an oppressive, heinous bitch, why are there millions standing in line to get in? I don't believe you will find a waiting line for China, North Korea and their ilk. To give China/Iran/Syria/etc moral equvalency with the US in light of America's past actions is, at best, intellectually dishonest.
- Remember that in 1940 Japan, under the guise of being neutral to China, fought their way up the Korean peninsula all the while constantly telling the Chinese to relax because all they wanted was Korea.
- But when the 38th parallel was reached, the American troops kept rolling in a fashion reminiscent to 1940. They kept moving, and they were quickly approaching the top of the peninsula. Again, China said that they would not intervene so long as the US did not enter the mainland, and the US agreed. So when American troops reached the top of the peninsula and kept on rolling, pardon the Chinese for thinking this looked a bit too much like the last time it had been invaded.
And why did, and do, the Chinese prop up North Korea? Was it so the Chinese could prevent North Koreans from fleeing North Korea?Let's see. The Marco Polo Bridge Incident of July 1937 took place on the outskirts of Beijing where the Japanese Army clashed with the Chinese. The Rape of Nanking started in December of 1937. The Japanese were all over China by the time 1940 came around.
The Americans didn't cross into mainland China. China said she would enter the war if we crossed the 38th. The 38th is halfway up the peninsula - nowhere near mainland China.
Like you, I don't mind the idea of the Chinese trying for the moon but, unlike you, I do mind attempting to revise history. Your attempt to paint the Americans as the agressors in the Korean War is pathetic.
The circulation of money is irrelevant. In the end, there is a certain amount of goods and services that can be produced by the resources (labor & capital) of the U.S. That (GNP/GDP) is the size of the economy. Taxation determines how much of that is ultimately used in ways that the government decides upon, either directly (by spending) or indirectly (by causing money to change hands, so that, for instance a working person's labor pays for a senior citizen's consumption.)
There isn't any magic by which the money can be made to go around more often and cause more stuff to be produced. Just that the choices of consumption vs. investment (capital investment) might be made differently with changes in tax policy. That is a long term view. When you take this longer term (dynamic scoring) into effect, you get *at most* about 25% of the tax cut being "paid for" by economic growth.
What you're really saying is that some people, perhaps by their actions, can rightfully be detained with no charges, no lawyers, no rights of any sort, except at the whim and grace of their captor. Oh, by the way, this is unprecendented, so even if the detainees in question were educated, they had no way of knowing this is how they'd be treated if they surrendered or were captured. Are you so sure of this right?
If so, are you aware that some of the detainees in question are there by mistake? The government makes mistakes. That's why there's something called "due process". That's why we give even the really bad people the benefit of the doubt, until convicted.
Read the article I linked to. The process involves determining whether the detainees can provide intelligence information, then whether they are criminals or "should be kept off the street". Are you really comfortable with your government - the same one that you trust so little that you reserve the right to bear arms to protect yourself against - to make all these determinations?
without air? prepared to breath vacuum?
http://www.livejournal.com/users/cixel
It's not clear whever you are trying to be ironic, or honestly admitting your mistake. Khruschev indeed gradually emptied the camps (which, BTW lead to increase in crime, because many criminals were freed too), reformed the NKVD secret police (which was renamed to KGB and became much more benign), stopped political murders (there are no high-profile cases known, although there have likely been isolated incidents), ended show trials (again, some isolated cases, usually in the form of (sometimes ugly) "black PR" campaigns (as we would call them now) and gave relative freedoms of speech, religion, etc.
For all these reasons (and many others), the period from second half of 1950s to the first part of 1960s is called ottepel (a thaw). There have been several cases when military suppressed demonstrations (nothing as bad as Tiananmen Square, though), Soviet army intervened into Hungary, there have been Berlin and Caribean crises, but overall it was pretty ok. Yes, there have been several thousands people killed in Hungary, which is bad, but that's practically the only such example (Czechoslovakia was a minor incident). US, on the other hand, has killed a lot of people in Vietnam, Korea and practically everywhere else in the world (usually in acts of completely unprovoked aggression).
I am not sure I know what so terrible happened in Ukraine after Stalin. And Chechnya is different, because it actually was a terrorist state (which the US refused to acknowledge for political reasons). And while Russian army obviosuly fucked up countless times there (since our politicians are a bunch of theives, the army was funded/supplied very badly if at all), it's not really comparable to My Lai. The worst things that happen are cases like officer killing a female Chechen sniper instead of following the proper procedure and passing her to law enforcement (and, of course, occasional looting, selling weapons to terrorists, etc.). Chechen terrorists, on the other hand, practice slavery, rape/robbery/murders, kidnapping (as a business, with thousands of people kidnapped every year), torture and other nasty things.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
It amazes me that we have so many people in jail, but everytime I go out, there are STILL jerks everywhere...
Jeez, some of the black guys I work with disagree w/ you but what would they know? They only actually live right fucking here in the US and enjoy their freedom instead of getting all of their knowledge on America from US-bashing sites. I'm still waiting for you to do something besides run your bitchass mouth on Slashdot, Troed. By the way, my little brother was there when the statue came down in Baghdad. He didn't see a conspiracy or anything of the sort, just a lot of happy people w/ some confusion on what to do now that Saddam was gone. Of course, you'd probably say anything he says is either propaganda or brainwashing, right? Even though he was actually there, I'm sure he doesn't have the info you get by reading your favorite websites, right?
You know, you're an even bigger jackass than I took you for and I took you for a very big jackass. Reach behind you, grab your ears, and pull your head out of your ass. You're never going to do anything except bitch and whine on the Internet and you will never get over that fact. If it wasn't the US, you'd be bashing the Soviet Union or whatever superpower it's fashionable to bash nowadays. What about North Korea? I guess you're cool w/ them, right? I wouldn't punch you if I met you in person, don't worry. I'd just slap you like the little bitch you are.
This guy is way out there
Too easy...but, I'll bite.
It isn't arrogant to state that at the current time, the U.S. is technologically ahead. It is stupid to think we aren't spending money to stay there.
When the Chinese become militarily equal to the U.S., we will be in a very familiar situation: a Cold War. What's really funny is the same people who deride Bush for being stupid for developing an anti-missile shield("terrorists don't use missiles...gawd...he's sooo stupid") are the exact same people who don't catch whom this shield is supposed to stop. The U.S. and China will reach a point of not being able to consider each other viable targets. Good.
You're a fucking idiot if you think that China having more human targets makes them a more viable threat. Once they have enough nukes to destroy the U.S. in a counterstrike, the race is over.
They better go for 2006. 2012 might be a bit too late.
So, ask your brother - how many Iraqis were active in pulling down the Saddam statue. Let's compare his answer, proxied through you, with the PICTURES taken by the television crews.
it's in my head
A substantial number of north koreans flee to China every year. In fact, so many that China works hard to capture and repatriat them, often to face execution by north korea.
Until we have a cost effective launch process to get things in orbit and beyond the moon will only be a place to visit and plant a flag. Notions of Moon bases are very premature. The Chinese have yet to get a man in orbit using 30 year old tech. They might get to the moon in 10 years or so but they don't have the tech prowess to do it in a cost effective manner. I predict they go for 1 or 2 moon shots then realize what a waste of money it is using current chemical fuel rockets and drop it.
Their ICBM fleet has nowehre the range that the Soviet/US missiles have.
True -- and what's more, NYC is considerably closer to Russia than it is to China. I think the China's longest range (publicly known) ICBMs can basically hit the west coast, and not the east coast.
Since they are able to design and build multistage rockets, presumably it would not be hard for them to make very long range ICBMs. But if they have done so, it is not publicly known.
it seems you stopped at thankful, in other words "thanks, i got mine". how have you progressed beyond that?
I highly encourage China to buy miliatary technology and technical expertise from the French. That should keep the US safe for several decades.
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
If the CHinese are intent on landing on the moon in three or four years, they'll have to put their first taikonaut into orbit around, oh, say, three years ago. About the only way the PRC could accomplish that is if they more or less outright purchase Rosaviakosmos from Russia. And even then, the N1 had an 0/5 success rate...
2012 I could believe. Maybe. But not 2007.
The US Navy is the undisputed king of the seas and the master of underwater warfare. The subs in question would be destroyed as soon as they opened their missle doors.
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
This is a great thing, and I hope China does it sooner rather than later, because maybe it would be another "Sputnik" event which would jolt America into getting serious about space and not twiddling around with a useless space station.
China is clever: they clearly want to not compete with us in "traditional" tech stuff but leapfrog into the Next Big Thing right away so they are well established when the rest of the world ctaches up. Maybe theyre' working just as hard on Nanotech.
"Are you aware that the US now has a larger percentage of its population in jail than any other nation including China?"
Why should the People's Republic jail them when they can just have them shot instead?
Perhaps you should note that the US isn't happy with the rest of the world either. We don't like the idea of someone flying our airplanes into our buildings. We don't like the idea of someone attacking our friends. We don't like those who behind our backs cheer on those who do the above. You can claim a moral high ground all you want, but I won't belive your claim when you ignore all the above abuses.
There is a movement in the US right now to drop out of the UN completely. I see no reason for it. When they don't do anything useful (They refused to deal with Iraq, which was clearly in violation of the spirt of the rules put down after the '91 gulf war), and then try to tell us how to run our country, what good are they again?
A the missle shield was never designed to protect us from an all out ICBM strike from a modernized China, all it was supposed to do is protect us from a limited strike from a rouge nation like north korea. A missle shield can easily be defeated, no missle shield is 100% effective and all an opposing nation would need to do is build more re-entry vehicles on their ICBMs than we have ABMs to shoot them down. Once they have more warheads than we have the ability to shoot down we start loosing people in a big way (but so will they in a mutually assured distruction responce model, but the point is the missle shield doesn't do much to help us)
What, Dude, you want a ledger sheet tallying my debts and credits to Society? Happy -- proud, actually -- to do it, but it won't be at the behest of an Anonymous Coward on SlashDot. Get real.
Seriously, a moonbase is really tough to justify right now.
Seriously, a western route to the orient is really tough to justify right now...
Damn, you mean we're all going to spend the next hundred years trying to find a moonbase, only to realize there isn't one, and then wait another hundred years for the French to start a Nigerian Moonbase scam and then sell the infastructure to our irritating president who will build us a moonbase to piss off the Columbians?
And who, pray tell, will get us our moon-cocaine if not the Columbians? Answer me that!
Seriously, have you ever SEEN Dr. Strangeglove????
.... It's all explained there.
Space-Gap, Missle-Gap, The-Gap
Check you later P.O.E.
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
It isn't arrogant to state that at the current time, the U.S. is technologically ahead. It is stupid to think we aren't spending money to stay there.
No it is not arrogant to say the US is technologically ahead of the Chinese. Its pretty fucking stupid to think the Chinese are sitting still technologically, just as it would be stupid to think the US isn't spending the money to keep technologically ahead.
But is the US spending that money to stay ahead? Doesn't look like it to me. Most US corporations are starving or scrapping their R&D departments. Everytime we have a military excursion in the Middle East, that's billions of dollars that is not going to improving infrastructure or R&D. Then look at our demographics in the next 20 years. What ever money we have then will be put into paying off social security, and not enough young bodies to stick into warmachines. The US will not be able throw around their weight like they do today. Tragically, I think its going to take an egregious military fiasco before America learns some restraint.
But getting back to maintenance of technological advantage, look at the weapon systems the US are researching today. Where is the milestone shattering technological improvements? For example, the F-22 may be harder to find on radar, but its not much more capable than an F-15. The best dogfighter in the world is still probably the F-16. There's no way of improving the turn radius performance of a future fighter (the pilot blacks out when it goes beyond 9G turns). Technology will not be able to improve a plane beyond what the plane is currently capable of performing. Linear expenditure or even exponential expenditure in research does not necessarily result in a corresponding increase in performance improvement. The Chinese does not need to surpass the US in technological achievement. They can merely steal them. They will achieve a form of technological parity with the West, and it will not take decades to do it. Or you can think like Wang in the '80s, and believe those pathetic PCs will never replace a SOTA wordprocessing system.
Finally, its foolish to think the new cold war will work the same as the previous cold war. War is merely a matter of the population's will. The Chinese will attack Taiwan if they don't think reunification will occur quickly enough. Is the US citizen willing to live in a radioactive crater to prevent it?
You're a fucking idiot if you think that China having more human targets makes them a more viable threat. Once they have enough nukes to destroy the U.S. in a counterstrike, the race is over.
You're a fucking idiot if you think numbers are irrelevant. During WWII, the Germans were a superb fighting force able to inflict serious casualties against the Russians, the numerically superior and tactically inferior opponent. Who won that theatre of war?
There is nothing stopping the Chinese from building ICBMs, and once they change their strategic thinking, they will be able to reach that goal in less than a decade.
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
But it must be a 4 for 1nsightful?
Whats the big hangup with drugs, I found them fun!
Wanna tax me? wanna tax me a lot? Banned slavery! ha, hey I got an idea...
If we were to start shooting down Chinese spacecraft--especially manned spacecraft--you can bet that they would respond in kind. If they don't have the capability yet, they could get it pretty fast, and I'm sure the rest of the world wouldn't give a damn if our shuttles started exploding 10, 15, 20 miles up every time we tried a launch. Most of them already hate our guts. And I wouldn't bet on China backing down either--the current leadership can read history as well as the next person, and can see what happened to Khrushchev after he was forced to back down to Kennedy over Cuba.
I really hate to be the one to say it, but a policy such as this "Negation" crap will only make the next 9-11 MORE likely to happen, not less. Too many people hate us already, and if we star--continue to act as though we own the whole of creation we make it almost certain that more and more people will be after us, and that they will "up the ante" just as the USA has "upped the ante." Next time it won't be planes crashing into buildings, it will be a nuclear bomb in one of our cities, or some kind of plague virus. And the worst part about it is that few outside of the US will care. In fact many will mutter that "it serves 'em right."
I fear for my country.
Comparing the US to a nation with a comparable record of offing trouble-makers, like, say, the UK, then we probably don't look so good.
Umm...I really hope you're just trolling and can actually provide some evidence that the UK just 'offs' its trouble makers. We don't.
Unlike a big friendly nation like the US where they execute teenagers. Oh, and weren't the US and Iran the only two countries not to ratify that little UN convention on *not* executing children?
You wonderfully narrow minded, arrogant fool.
-Nano.
Alright, as the submitter on this story I just have to respond that I actually did grow up in Newfoundland... :-)
Energy: time to change the picture.
The DF-5A can hit almost any landmass in the world except South America and little bits of Africa. Not all of China's missiles are upgraded to the new standard, but the definitely have at least a few that are capable of hitting anywhere in the U.S. If they can wipe out 4-5 eastern cities and more western ones, that is enough of a deterrent.
More importantly, I would avoid my argument being based upon a popularity contest since our (Human) history has shown that popularity contests are more often won by the corrupt and manipulative than the righteous. Hitler did not overthrow the German government... he was elected and had an ability to turn those who seemed to detest him into a staunch ally after hearing just 1 or 2 of his impassioned speeches. Sheep differ from thinking humans in that the human would choose to always be skeptical and not simply be a nonconforming-conformist (anti everything establishment). What we need are principles and those who abide by them, not name calling and hypocritical mud slinging.
It must be great to live in a nation that still has dreams of accomplishing something great. Things are too easy right now and without a challege or challenger the US is aimless. Like NASA once they reached the moon - ok now what. Having an idiot at the helm doesn't help much either, but at least there is no way he'll be in office after next year.
I'm all for it. Being king of the hill is no fun when no one else plays. I hope NASA isn't too out of shape and can get their act together when they are called on again.
All of which are sent to WalMarts throughout the US each year, right before Christmastime.
(why do you think those WalMart managers wear those little RED vests, eh? REAL patriots shop at K-Mart!)
"He who throws mud, loses ground." - proverb
the headline
"Lunar scientists discover origin of SARS virus - from Earth!"
I can see it now... no, in all seriousness, I don't think the chinese should be considering this, or allowed to consider this. Not trying to be racist, but these guys should take care of business on the homeland before moving to a possible new homeland. No I am not a troll, this is a valid point.
Great, China will be spreading SARS to the moon and the rest of the galaxy.
Do you know where does the word 'slave' come from?
It was the way of calling the slavish people (Russians) during the middle ages, because they were made slaves very frequently by invaders...
Now, how come that these 'slaves' became what they are today in such a small ammount of time?
Rwe obliged 2 save our future by choosing:O3 hole-greenhouse effect instead of accepting everydays gossip-nonsense chat?
But is the US spending that money to stay ahead? Doesn't look like it to me. Most US corporations are starving or scrapping their R&D departments. Everytime we have a military excursion in the Middle East, that's billions of dollars that is not going to improving infrastructure or R&D. Then look at our demographics in the next 20 years. What ever money we have then will be put into paying off social security, and not enough young bodies to stick into warmachines. The US will not be able throw around their weight like they do today. Tragically, I think its going to take an egregious military fiasco before America learns some restraint.
The US and China are the world's #1 and #2 spenders on defense respectively. The US spends more on military research than most of the other countries in the world combined, not to mention all of the private sector research that has military applications as well. Yes the Chinese are trying to rapidly improve their capablities, but the US has a lead and isn't sitting still either.
As for "not having enough bodies" one of the results of technological advancement is not requiring nearly the manpower of the past. A single soldier able to call in an accurate artilery or air strike on an enemy position can be far more effective than an entire WWII division.
But getting back to maintenance of technological advantage, look at the weapon systems the US are researching today. Where is the milestone shattering technological improvements? For example, the F-22 may be harder to find on radar, but its not much more capable than an F-15. The best dogfighter in the world is still probably the F-16. There's no way of improving the turn radius performance of a future fighter (the pilot blacks out when it goes beyond 9G turns). Technology will not be able to improve a plane beyond what the plane is currently capable of performing. Linear expenditure or even exponential expenditure in research does not necessarily result in a corresponding increase in performance improvement. The Chinese does not need to surpass the US in technological achievement. They can merely steal them. They will achieve a form of technological parity with the West, and it will not take decades to do it. Or you can think like Wang in the '80s, and believe those pathetic PCs will never replace a SOTA wordprocessing system.
You are overlooking entirely the promise of UACV's. Some advocate that the F-22 be cancelled and the money be spent on developing UCAV weapons. There isn't the problem of the pilot blacking out as there is no pilot on the plane.
While it is possible to "steal" technology from others it doesn't give you the industrial base necessary to build it, nor the experience and doctrine necessary to deploy it effectively. Look at large aircraft carriers, even the French had difficulty duplicating a US nuclear carrier.
Finally, its foolish to think the new cold war will work the same as the previous cold war. War is merely a matter of the population's will. The Chinese will attack Taiwan if they don't think reunification will occur quickly enough. Is the US citizen willing to live in a radioactive crater to prevent it?
The Chinese aren't willing to turn most of their cities into radioactive craters in order to get Taiwan back. Deterrance worked against Stalin, there is no reason to belive it wouldn't work against the far more rational leadership of China.
You're a fucking idiot if you think numbers are irrelevant. During WWII, the Germans were a superb fighting force able to inflict serious casualties against the Russians, the numerically superior and tactically inferior opponent. Who won that theatre of war?
Russian equipment and tactics weren't much inferior to the Germans. In the later stages of the war the equipment and tactics of the Russians were arguably better. While the Germans had some very advanced weapons they didn't have many of them and much of the fighting they did later in the war was with older equipmen
Happy Fun Ball is for external use only.
China and Japan fought a war in Korea in 1894-1895. The resulting Japanese victory eventually led to the annexation of Korea by Japan in 1910. Japan invaded northeastern China (Manchuria) in 1931 and other parts of China in 1937. Your story about China and Japan in 1940 is completely inaccurate. However, the Chinese does view Korea as a buffer state. Throughout Chinese history, foreign powers invaded Korea as a precursor to invading China. The Mongols, Khitans, Jurchens, Manchus, Japanese, etc have all followed this pattern. In 1951, the Chinese communists were suspicious of US intentions, especially since the US armed and financed the Republic of China (ROC) forces that fought against the Chinese communists during the Chinese civil war. In fact, the US even sent the 7th fleet into the Taiwan strait to prevent the Chinese communists from capturing the last ROC stronghold of Taiwan (Taiwan to this day calls itself the Republic of China and still officially claims to be the rightful government of all of China). The US did not recognize the Chinese communists as a legitmate government at the time and the Chinese communists were fearful that the US will attempt to subvert them once the US controlled Korea (As MacArthur publicly called for numerous times). So from the view of the Chinese communists, the US had already intervened in the Chinese civil war on the behalf of their mortal enemies the ROC, and now they are about to gain total control of Korea, a traditional launch pad for invasions of China. This, combined with the aggessive rhetoric coming from MacArthur, led to the Chinese communists' decision to intervene in Korea.
Yeah, show me the jails filled with political prisoners in America. Now go to China and say the government sucks.
ANSWER: Guantanamo base. Etc.
Show me the tanks that rolled over the anti-war protestors in San Francisco. I want to see the footage. I have video clips of the massacre at Tianeman square. I want to compare the two.
ANSWER: The killings of student protesters in the 60's/70's. The killing and torturing of black people since the slave era into today.
Show me the forced segregation camps in America. I want to compare it with the planned cities in China where you are required to work, but not allowed to live.
ANSWER: Todays jailing whitout any information, any court order, any rights whatever in concentration camps in the name of "Terrorist" threat. The treatment of any people that may look or have a name that could be from Middle East.
Show me the forced sterilizations in America because you're poor. I want to compare it with the Amnesty International reports of forced abortions and sterilizations in China.
ANSWER: The using of innocent people in tests with radioactive contamination (plutonium etc.).
Show me the prisons filled with Atheists or Muslims in America. I want to compare it with the prisons in china filled with Fulan Gong.
ANSWER: Again se above. And not to mention the black people in jail that thought that they have the same rights as white people.
It's really a shame there isn't a mod in slashdot for total idiot.
ANSWER: In only this I totally agreed.
China IS a gray distopian soviet nightmare that murders its own people.
ANSWER: US also murders its own people. They - like China - call this "death penalty".
The United States has provided the greatest freedom and prosperity of its people than any other nation or civilization in the history of the planet. If it isn't utopia, it's as close as you're going to get on this world.
ANSWER: There is much I could say, but let's mention the laws that forbid people to live together whitout beeing married, that forbid people oral sex, that forbid people publish or talk about their science work etc.
Get a dose of reality and understand that the culture and civilization embodied by the United States is the most morally superior culture and civilization in the history of the planet.
ANSWER: Now I'm wondering if You rather are sarcastic that anything else !?
Mundus Vult Decipi
Mundus Vult Decipi
This is the part where you explain how the UK "offs" its troublemakers.
OH!!! DARN!!! I had some mod points just a couple of days ago. This was a pretty funny comment :).
we launch nukes at the moon to release water vapor?
This is the part where you explain how the UK "offs" its troublemakers
I'm writing in English; what language are you reading in?
The UK does not "off" its dissidents, and so is comparable in its justice to the US. China is a different matter.
You forgot to mention the prologue:
... should be ...
USA (evil diabolical scheming session): Hmmm, I'm big, fat, and rich, but no one likes me. What can I do to get richer, and win me back the popularity I had when everyone thought I actually won the election. Hmmm, I know! This Iraq fellow! I'll tell everyone what I bad guy he is and get him arrested. That'll get me back my popularity. Then I'll sell all of his stuff, that'll line my pockets and make me richer. Haha! And no one will ever know of my plan!
And that bit that goes: "... guys, let's collect some dough, don't be stingy here, help the poor people out! Seems like I forgot my checkbook, but, hey, that's what friends are for right?"
"Ahhh. Oops! I guess I had better fix things up around here. But no one help me! I don't want anyone else making any money from selling off his stuff. Nor do I want anyone else watching me very closely so that they might figure out what I'm really up to!"
K-mart workers wear red vests, Walmart workers wear blue, at least your general store type person, i dont know about the managers.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
Have I made my point, or do you want some extra, more esoteric reasons? (-:
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
It is not very clear which side of the argument you are on. It appears that you are arguing that the numbers are not important, but the evidence you give says exactly the opposite. You are basically saying that the Germans lost because they ran out of the good stuff. Why did they run out? The simplest explanation would be because, even though the technology was superior, they were outnumbered and were worn down. If you can think of another reason this was the case, I would like to hear it.
Is your nation proud of using legal loopholes to sidestep the Geneva convention? Is it really ok to keep people in concentration camps indefenietly just because taliban failed to provide them with western styled uniforms? What happened to the presumption of innocense and the right to speedy trial? Think about it even the worst Nazi criminals got a trial, aand ccess to lawers.
US-UK-Israel: The real Axis of Evil
Management at WalMart wears red vests; plebes wear blue, but they aren't part of the PLA Inner Circle.
"He who throws mud, loses ground." - proverb
The US got about half of the German rocket men, the Russians the other half. We, the US, got Wernher von Braun, a man that had been heading for space all of this life and was willing to do anything to further the technology needed.
For the past three decades, the US has been losing the engineering experience and knowledge to replicate the space program of the 60s. The result is that the US must rely on other countries for our commercial space equipment needs. And now the US is dependent on the bankrupt Russians to access space because NASA has adopted the Microsoft quality mantra: "you can't prove it will crash if we don't fix that problem".
The American attitude the past few decades has been, "I don't need no education", cause we can import some people who know math, chemistry, physics, from India or China. Of course we don't need to import them because they know that the won't face much competition at US universities from Americans.
I was fortunate to grow up in the 50s and 60s when a lot of people worried about real education and kids dreamed of being a scientist or engineer and making the forecasts of popular science come true. Today the only motivated people seem to be those who want to do a startup, go public, and then retire at 40 as a multi-billionaire. Or be a pop star getting rich doing music videos. (Don't get me wrong, I love rock and roll and wasn't just part of the woodstock generation, I was there.)
But its really discouraging to see all the people here who seem to think that America did all sorts of neat stuff on its own. America's strength has been the synergy of millions of people from a hundred countries.
Even more discouraging is to see American's criticising the work done by other countries who followed the advice of some American's who really did understand the process of progress. American's wouldn't pay attention to Demming, but Asia did, and for that reason Asia leads America in most types of manufacturing.
America has some things to be proud of:
- cars with fins
- enron
- dot bomb
It would really be nice if the US were educating one million scientists and engineers to fill 1000 jobs in the space program to match the 10 million scientist and engineers China will be educating in the next decade to fill 10,000 jobs in the space program. Then we'd have a million engineers to invent stuff before the 10 million in china do. America still have the advantage of many cultures all mixed together.
While there may be no way of improving the turn radius at a given speed by altering the control surfaces, that is not the only option.
The Canadian Defence Research Establishment, as well as several other countries have developed G-suits that add increased air pressure inside and outside the abdomen, as well as on the legs, allowing a gain of a few G's. In the 1980's and early 1990's the US was experimenting with post-stall manouvering that would allow a fighter jet to use thrust vectoring to flip around and bring it's weapons to bear on a target while still travelling in annother direction. Granted, this is not really turning in the traditional sense, and is probably a really bad idea at low altitude. It would allow a pilot to target an enemy much faster than would be possible by turning.
Most fighters still in use have the pilot sitting bolt upright in the same position as WW-I era pilots. By laying the pilot down (say at a 30 angle) you could greatly reduce the height difference between the feet and the heart, and the heart and the brain. This would probably greatly improve the pilot's G tolerance. How to do this while still having an ejection seat, I don't know. Perhaps a F-111 style ejection capsule instead.
Also the DRE has developed flight control software for the CF-18 that can adapt to the malfuntioning or complete removal in flight of some of the control surfaces.
Add a radar-controlled cannon and naval CIWS style software and there's no reason why you couldn't build a plane the size of an F-16 that can pull 14 G or more turns, flip around post stall to shoot down incoming AA missiles, and keep flying with one or more flight surfaces blown off.
Or not use ICBMs...
like say a whole hoard of Ship launched cruise missiles coming from what was thought to be a fishing fleet or a few cargo ships... Intermodal containers with 4-16 SLCMs each lining the whole outside row of an open sided cargo ship... launched simultaneously like an MLRS
Or say sending fifth columnists in to construct crude fuel-air explosive or ANFO weapons and detonate them near strategic targets or very crowded areas (concerts or sports events, or political conventions)
Or say training People to dress up like the target nation's soldiers and massacre civilians in the target nation, and pay them with drug money, undermining trust in the government... Oh wait, the US already did that... in Nicaragua... and Guatamala... and...
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered *BSD community when IDC confirmed that *BSD market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time FreeBSD developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeBSD is dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.
Fact: *BSD is dying
But see, Israel and everyone else buys all its military technology from us. Their leading fighter plane? The F-16, developed in the US in the 1970s (look it up). I am NOT trying to arrogant, but your point that we should fear Israel selling tech to the Chinese is a joke. The one time Israel decided to develop a fighter (to be called "The Lion") was a massive and complete failure (look it up).
And truly, what have the French produced? This is not flamebait, I am trying to be sincere: Mirage vs. F-22? Does any other country have real functional stealth technology? Can any other country function militarily without using the US' GPS? I am not proud of America's military prowess, I am rather ashamed of it on the level of bragging about how many beers you drank last night, but truth be told, fearing that Israeli technology is sold to the Chinese is laughable considering what our government has unfortunately spent perfecting the art of war.
Yes, we suck in terms of promoting education, in terms of celebrating culture, in terms of being addicted to a consumeristic lifestyle. But we are the preeminent military power bar none, I regret to say.
"Stop throwing the Constitution in my face, it's just a goddamned piece of paper!" - George W. Bush Nov. 2005
Your (slashdot_commentator (444053)) post should be modded -1: Flamebait. Jabs at entire cultures ("Oh, I forgot, the US kids aren't so good with it [math]") might seem cool to you, and apparently they are even to the /. moderators who gave you +5, but it won't get the human race anywhere. Shame on you.
"Stop throwing the Constitution in my face, it's just a goddamned piece of paper!" - George W. Bush Nov. 2005
...welcome our new Chinese cosmonaut masters!
You have no clue. The Lavi was an extremely capable fighter. The only reason the program was shutdown was that it was not a cheap plane, and Israel's air force is paid for by the USA. US defense contractors shut the program down. The Israeli defense industry has access to our cutting edge military technology (stealth, anti-missle, radars, awacs, satellite), and would readily sell it to the Chinese to make a buck.
Who cares if the Mirage can't go toe to toe with the F-22? Its better than anything the Chinese currently possess. That's the point. Stealth technology doesn't mean its invisible to radars. It means you have to replace your obsolete air wing with radars & tactics to fight them. (Example: Stealth don't mean crap if you have enough satellites spotting them, and enough computers to coordinate intercept missions.) For most countries, its a prohibitive cost. To the Chinese, its something to do with their money.
Much of US military strategy is already outdated. A simple tactical nuke can take out an entire carrier group. So can a simultaneous attack from a couple thousand cruise missles. They're all working to do that. Its going to happen.
The US also suffers from a lack of critical thinking ability from its citizenry. That's why it can invade a country over WMD, and not be perturbed when they don't find any. Military power is a reflection of economic power, and sadly, it looks like its on the wane.
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
Actually, the list of military expenditures is quite surprising (and now what one expects). Hre it is, pasted from www.geographyiq.com (interesting site, that):
1. United States 276,700,000,000 $
2. France 46,500,000,000 $
3. Japan 40,774,300,000 $
4. Germany 38,800,000,000 $
5. United Kingdom 31,700,000,000 $
6. Italy 20,200,000,000 $
7. China 20,048,000,000 $
Chinese military percentage per percent of GDP is 1.60, which is 99th place in the world (North Korea is at the top with over 30% of the GDP, followed by Angola, Eritrea and Ethiopa. Israel is 8th).
Interestingly, Japan is higher on the list.
Now, military expenditure only (I think) accounts for state budget allocated to the military. In China, however, many, many, many factories (that manufacture anything from toys to soap to clothes) are owned by the PLA (the military) and all profits are spent on them. If this is included in the lists above, I don't know. For instance, the US military does not own toy factorys and buy weapons with the proceeds. The PLA does.
The Chinese GDP is now at 6 Trillion US$ (the US is at 10 Trillion) and its growing. Another country to start watching which will be doing fine in 10 years is India, btw.
The dangers of excessive individualism are nothing compared to the oppressiveness of excessive collectivism
Build technology to shoot down their moon rockets.
-Nuke the moon
On the political front, I'd say most politicians aren't really all that interested in supporting such long term goals, especially when they go beyond their own terms.
Finally, there is also a certain amount of resistance to the idea from within the scientific community itself. It is orders of magnitude cheaper to send out probes to the moon or Mars, than it is to send a human with life support and all the risks associated with it.
Couple that with the number of black-eyes NASA has gotten over the last couple of decades both with failed probes and shuttle accidents and you have a system that isn't going to get the funding or support it needs to accomplish the really big things.
Shop Smart, Shop S-mart!
Most of the lists of world military budgets and defense spending mention that getting an accurate figure for China is somewhat difficult.
For example here is what the CIA world fact book has to say:
This gives a low of $96 billion using the official Chinese figures (based on $6 trillion in GDP), and a high of somewhere between $210 billion and $300 billion using the US government estimates.
The figure for Japan isn't all that supprising given that they are allowed to spend up to 1% of GDP and that they have a $4 trillion dollar economy.
Happy Fun Ball is for external use only.
A Nuclear Bomb!
Picked up the book a few days ago at my local used book store. So far a good read. Thanks for the tip.
UNIX/Linux Consulting