Slashdot Mirror
Kazakhstan's Spaceship Junkyard
Richard W.M. Jones writes "What happens to the booster stages of rockets?
They fall back to earth, and in most cases
into the oceans. But not in Baikonur, Kazakhstan,
where the first stages fall over populated
farmland. The locals have become rich
dealing in the titanium-rich scrap metal
as this
article and this
remarkable photo essay show.
So far the only casualties seem to have
been a few
dead cows."
...rocket falls on YOU!
So that's how cattle mutilations happen!
for weeks. Really, it is.
I predict that the server will go down like the boosters. First, heating up, then, burning up, and finally, nothing but scrap metal.
Sucks to be a cow ...
Supporting World Peace Through Nuclear Pacification
I hope this isnt the same server that is used to guide the rockets or theres gonna be a hell of a lot more dead cows
------
beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his mind he dreams himself your master
These farmers, rather than demand restitution from the government got off their asses and turned lemons into lemonade.
Of course, a certain government might turn their lemonade into military action when they decide they want a piece of the pie.
If spent stages from a US rocket hit some home in the US, it would be removed overnight, the family would be given a check for 20% of the value of what they lost, forced to sign an NDA, and no one would ever hear about it again.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
Wow... they can handle an assault from huge rockets upon their land, but they have no chance against a vicious /.ing...
But won't post a story on Chernobyl's mutant super-children?
On April 16, Russia announced that it would henceforth launch military satellites at the Pletsnesk cosmodrome in northern Russia, ending the practice of launching satellites from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. This shift will deprive Kazakh children of the chance to watch some satellites take off, though Baikonur will remain the launchpad for commercial "birds" and manned missions. As these photos show, it will also spare Kazakhs the fallout, literal and otherwise, that occurs in a launch's wake.
All space-bound rockets consist largely of fuel tanks and booster stages that fall back to earth when spent, never reaching orbit. In landlocked Baikonur, Russia's primary launching complex in Kazakhstan, these spaceships crash to earth. This photo essay visits the areas where the supporting rockets land, and shows the people living under the flight paths who contend with flaming spaceship wrecks several times each month.
Apart from the fear of having a spaceship crash through their roofs, residents in the area complain of the ill effects of leftover toxic rocket fuel. With the relocation of Russian military launches, more than half of which currently take off from Baikonur, these people may get some relief. However, one group of people is probably sorry to see Baikonur lose business; the region's scrap metal dealers are getting rich trading metal from the rockets' titanium alloy hulls.
damn, those russians are hardcore cow tippers. who'd have thought?
In Soviet Russia, people don't seek rocket; Rocket seek people.
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
The junkers from Asimov's stories =)
Slain by falling nerd news whore shrapnel
Since these parts start on earth, you're not going to catch anything that the flight control team doesn't already have. Frankly, Skylab fell on the aussies, and nobody there caught any extraterrestrial bug that anybody outside Oz noticed.
Since the article is slashdotted, I hope they at least take care to plot where the villages are, before letting parts fall everywhere.
I wonder what Borat has to say about this?
the more accurate the calculations became, the more the concepts tended to vanish into thin air. R. S. Mulliken
4 comments as I view, and it's down.
How's this for the ultimate conundrum: the combination of "Nobody RTFA here" and "the Slashdot Effect" taking down sites?
Maybe some people actually DO RTFA besides myself?
(sigh
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Needs about 1,668 degrees Celsius to melt. That's all they can do with it...sell it. I can vouch for one thing, more jewelry is being made of titanium. Strange choice, but consider that 1,000 years ago aluminum was a hundred times more valuable than gold. I melt aluminum into ingots to save when I complete a mold for a tool I need to build. That's the only way to be certain somthing is made in America today, it seems. More power to Our Kazakhstan neighbors.
without prejudice
7 replies and photo essay is already slow as hell...
Ex-Soviet Russia is famous for *not* managing its nuclear waste (hundreds of nuclear submarines slowly rotting away in Barents Sea, pissing off Finns and Swedes) ; nuclear weapons out of hand or simply "missing" ; some famous fuckups (Tchernobyl; that bio-warfare incident about 20 years ago, when a lab leaked a killer virus over a village) ; etc...
So nobody should be surprised that they let booster rockets fall on populated areas...
Hello! I'm a disaster waiting to happen!
So far the only casualties seem to have been a few dead cows
Thank you SO MUCH. I have found my new background.
Rocket hitting your barn full of cows, sheep, and Soviet Bloc farm equipment - 677912345234621 Rubles (roughly $20 US). Reselling the rocket to random scrap metal dealers - priceless, or at least 76790823485724429234 rubles (roughly $45 US).
Coral cache due to /.ing:t s/culture/articles/photo_pages/essay_proj2.cfm?ser ies=sj&ID=1&max=12&ss=off
http://www.eurasianet.org.nyud.net:8090/departmen
I realize there are obvious answers (toxic fuel, fire, etc...) but I'm often surprised when asking these questions.
"Derp de derp."
First I cringed about locals harvesting space junk. Then I cringed at the words, " this remarkable photo essay show," knowing that meant I wouldn't get to see the photos, and there will be some server junk for the locals to harvest next.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
How's this for the ultimate conundrum: the combination of "Nobody RTFA here" and "the Slashdot Effect" taking down sites?
We don't read the articles, we look at the pretty pictures.
Incidentally, pictures use up way more bandwith than text.
You can't take the sky from me...
How about scraping dead cows off of rocket boosters for a living.
Reminds me of the scene in Farenheit 9/11 where the kid, shot with Walmart bullets still lodged in his body, gets Walmart to refund their purchase price when he shows up to turn them in.
--
make install -not war
So far the only casualties seem to have been a few dead cows.
And their server....
It's properties are no less difficult than aluminum, but it is being used much more. The medical industry uses it most for reinforcing the skeleton when there is a break; it isn't rejected as eagerly as say a steel plate in the head :D.
Honestly, I think silver and aluminum are the most amazing metals I have ever worked with. What with silver sitting in water, it cures. And aluminum being plentiful for sandcasting use.
Counting a nearby titanium purchaser and reseller, it looks as if the American steel industry disintegrated and was replaced by the only last prospect of more valuable metal arts. Ask any career steelmill worker that was layed off, to compare Chinese steel to American steel, and the first thing you'll hear is a French verb followed by "quality" and a sucking noise. Perhaps it is always meant to be; America can't be a leader in an industry for long and must pioneer ahead; now it's titanium, soon that'll move overseas and we'll know when to dump stock if somthing in the market starts to stink.
without prejudice
Yay for MirrorDot.
1000 years aluminum wasn't even heard of or dreamt of. I'm sure you meant 100 years ago, in which case you are more or less correct. Aluminum was used to make jewellry and high-end cutlery, and even bikes 100 years ago.
More power to Our Kazakhstan neighbors.
:-] And what's with capitalizing "Our"? Don't mean to troll, but you Americans are getting weirder by the minute.
Um, Kazakhstan is nowhere near USA... Oh wait, you're American so you probably wouldn't know that, sorry.
Whereever two or three gather in the name of the Lord, I will be there in the midst. -Jesus the Christ
I went to Almaty (aka "Alma Ata", the old capital of Kazakhstan) back in about 1994. I really enjoyed it and found the people to be very friendly and enthusiastic.
I did find the food to be somewhat unique. Breakfast was usually a kind of roll filled with either finely chopped vegetables and/or finely ground meat. I don't know what sort of meat it was and it wasn't even always clear which buns had meat as everything was so finely ground up. It was all tasty though.
Lunch was fairly straight forward but the dessert was a peculiar electric green sweet foam. I couldn't identify the flavor but it was also pretty good.
Supper was quite interesting as, although the menu had a variety of items, it turned out what was actually available was either steak or spaghetti. No worry though, both were quite good as was the company!
The architecture, furnishings, and decor of Almaty were very interesting. For me, it was like an instant trip to the 1950s but in a parallel universe where everything was slightly unfamiliar.
The name of the hotel I stayed at escapes me right now but it was something like "The Cosmo". I think it has been renamed "Kazakhstan Hotel" based on the pictures I can find. There was a very impressive and very large tapestry commemorating the Soviet space program in the lobby.
The main thing about my trip was my time in Kazakhstan was far too short. It took ~48 hours to get there, I had ~48 hours there, and then it was ~48 hours to come home. I wish I had time to visit Baikonur Cosmodrome (we were invited to visit by our hosts) but we didn't have time. I'll always regret that.
Anyway, if you get a chance to go to Kazakhstan, you really should take it.
Certainly, without the speculation I tried to reference towards old-world chemists forging aluminum merchandise for a Royal prices, according to today's public records it may date to no less than 150 years of use; clearly a far contraction from the 900 more years I uncovered in a College Library's religious manuscripts.
without prejudice
One day a goldsmith in Rome was allowed to show the Emperor Tiberius a dinner plate of a new metal. The plate was very light, and almost as bright as silver. The goldsmith told the Emperor that he had made the metal from plain clay. He also assured the Emperor that only he, himself, and the Gods knew how to produce this metal from clay. The Emperor became very interested, and as a financial expert he was also a little concerned. The Emperor felt immediately, however, that all his treasures of gold and silver would fall in value if people started to produce this bright metal of clay. Therefore, instead of giving the goldsmith the regard expected, he ordered him to be beheaded.
From the wikipedia article
If it was aluminium, that is...
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
Kazaghawhatchimacallit?
At least they could sell them metals
If you didnt make that iron (in our backyards of course) back in China, youd be part of that iron slurry if you know what i mean.
and we couldnt even sell that crappy stuff =/
A couple friends recently got engaged, and they had an artisan who specialized in jewelry design and make her engagement ring.
Of all the exotic materials they can make rings out of, one thing she would not do was make rings out of titanium. The reason? In case of certain medical emergencies (snagged in a machine, or crashed car, or whatever), they'd need to cut the ring off to free the finger (and ultimately the entire person). But no paramedic or even hospital ward is routinely equipped with tools to cut through titanium. If they encountered a titanium ring in a time-critical emergency, they could well be forced to cut the finger off instead.
The object the woman's hiolding in photo essay pic #8 looks suspiciously like the things Arthur, Ford, & Zaphod were getting slapped in the face with enroute to rescue Trillian...
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
In my country there is problem. And that problem is transport...
They've got two cows!
This movie proves that people should be buying eachother body armor for their marriage bands. I mean, the man and woman in that movie were divorced, and still being partners he wore his ring anyway. And in that scene where the door was about to close, he stuck his hand in there between a rubber-less water seal and it kept the door from closing long enough for his co-worker to get a crow-bar in there and leverage the door open. Titanium jewelry saves the day! I met a woman that once had to use her diamond-studded wedding ring on a bulletproof window when she became trapped; she remembered her mentor, Mr. Miyagi, and with about 5,000 waves of the hand she carved a 1 inch depth oval cut large enough for her body to squeeze through! Hard stuff saves lives! I'm sure even a man would find a use for a diamond ring on a titanium band when he pulls out that disk-sander that son Jimmy gave him as a birthday present!
I suggest everyone to invest in Titanium(TM) wedding bands from ABC corporation. And coming soon to a child near you, from the re-hired makers of Log(TM) we have Tities(TM) the metal that makes you appear larger-chested. For men or women, Titanium Breasts (Titties) has helpded remove the gap between deformed pectoral muscles, removed silicone breast implants, removed cancers, and no less natural unfirmness from eating too much goddam chocolate! Titties(TM) is for you, buy now!
So far the only casualties seem to have been a few dead cows.
Thank god they were already dead!
And what about thair health, and their land? Aren't their some pretty bad chemicals involved with this?
...
http://www.eurasianet.org/departments/culture/imag es/sj2.jpg [eurasianet.org]
That's the second image, a smoking hunk of what must be a fallen rocket casing I guess.
There's 12 images in all, I've only seen the first two, but they seem to follow simple numeric order, so the others would end
and so on.
If anyone wants to send me a zip of the pictures if they can access them by email, I'll rehost and post the link. But as I say, right now I've only got two images.
I don't see what your point is. Steel is a "pain to weld or melt in the house" unless you know what you're doing. It's scrap metal. They sell it to scrap dealers.
Oh, and Titanium can be TIG welded. It's only a pain if you don't know what you're doing. Kind of like all welding really.
> I know CNN's taught you bad geography but... > Why make something in America if it can be made elsewhere better and cheaper?
http://matrix.netsoc.tcd.ie/~64ndhi/SlashdotKazakh stan/
It's not even wildly different from any other TIG welding process, it just has its quirks like any other metal. If you can TIG weld steel and have some cardboard to rig up extra argon shielding then you can do titanium.
You gotta find first gear in your giant robot car
Myth. See "Ancient aluminum? Flexible glass?: looking for the real heart of a legend", Skeptical Inquirer, May-June, 1995 by Gerhard Eggert
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2843/i
Russia and Kazakhstan are set to complete construction on a new unmanned spacecraft launch complex by 2008-2009.link.
It is highly unlikely that the Tiberius plate was aluminum, given the enormous temperatures required for reducing aluminum ore in the absence of electricity. We have no idea what this metal might have been -- perhaps tin?
With great power comes great fan noise.
Counter we contacted our local hospital emergency room and asked if they were equipped to cut off a titanium ring in an emergency. Most hospital emergency rooms are prepared to handle almost anything, and ours assured us that it would be no problem for them. During our 30+ years of jewelry repair experience, we've only seen a dozen or so rings that have been cut off in hospital emergency rooms, and in most of those cases the rings had been bent out-of-round and were putting painful pressure on the finger. Titanium rings are less likely to crush or bend out-of-round, so if you shut your hand in a car door or drop a heavy object on it, it might be safer to be wearing a titanium ring than a precious metal band!
Counter 2 In case of an emergency, such as an injured finger, Emergency Medical Technicians, Fire Departments, and Hospital Emergency Rooms can quickly remove titanium rings. Several non-destructive methods for ring removal are available before resorting to cutting a ring. In the rare event it becomes necessary to cut off a titanium ring, emergency medical professionals carry ring cutters or rotary cut-off tools that cut through metals, including our CP and Aerospace Grade Titanium. In our testing, we found that tools that will cut through steel will also cut through titanium rings.
Counter 3 Titanium rings are created with safety in mind, as there is always the possibility that a ring will need to be removed in an emergency. Tests by various manufacturers have shown that titanium rings can be manually cut with a ring cutter within a matter of minutes, and much faster using an electric ring cutting device, such as those that many paramedics use.
Counter 4 I had heard that there is a "medical emergency" issue (i.e. they can't cut the ring off of your finger with regular ring snippers) but my friend's hubby, who is an EMT, assured me that this isn't something to be concerned about, since they have different types of cutters they can use should the need arise.
If the g'vt kept the data on you that google does you'd better believe you'd be calling it "doing evil"
Those cows are just sleeping soundly.
Sovereign immunity applies to suits against the US as well. It also applies to suits against the states, for that matter.
People do in fact sue the US all the time, but that suit will only be successful if the US has waived its sovereign immunity in that area.
Bikes are still made out of it, at least as of 10 years ago. I have one. Sturdy because it's hollow, which also helps make it very light. That's why it was used in the first place.
I recall one time I saw AC/DC, a fellow next to me in front of the stage (read mosh pit) lost his glasses. Normally, one would be concerned - but not this guy. "My glasses have titanium frames, they will be fine!" We found them at the end of the show.
I still remember the look on his face when we found them - he just stared slack-jawed at the twisted ball of metal in his palm.
A slashdot article that includes a link labled "this remarkable photo essay."
Ah, well.
grammar-lesson free since 1999. (rescinded - 2005)
(I always call them that)
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
I wonder when they started substituting it for use in tin-foil hats?
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Counter 5 Heat the ring up to 1338 degrees so that it can then be easily worked off the finger without needing to worry about injuring the finger with ungainly 'ring cutters'.
Alright!!!
My dream has come true. A direct link on slashdot to a picture of dead cows against a beutiful backdrop.
Now I can die happy! Wait... Those cows look very peaceful. Maybe they're just resting.
"I used to have that really cool,funny sig
I was just curious, I was only able to see a few of the photos before the server got too bogged down..., but from the looks of the one where the guy is standing on the "space junk", I was shocked by the shear size of that thing!
:)
Does anyone have a rough guess about how much metal is in one of those things? Also, what do you think THEY get in Kazakhstan for the Ti? compared to what we could get here in the US??? Last I checked, Ti was going for around $1 or $1.25 / lb and that is IF you can find a buyer. Acording to RecyclyingToday.com there seems to be a surplus...
Just wondering if anyone has a rough idea for us scrap geeks
I'd hate to have one of those puppies fall in my back yard and have to say, "Yeah, I know I didn't get the best price on my scrap booster rocket, but AT LEAST I GOT A GREAT PRICE ON CAR INSURANCE!"
You can do it with no more than USD 10.00 in materials cost; charcoal briquettes, an old coffee can (crucible), a coat-hangar, a sack of stomped aluminum soda cans, fire logs, fire kindling to get it going, and a reversed cannister vacuum machine or leif blower. Aluminum is quite an amazing metal; it's only disability is being brittle. Aeroplane engines are the first ever to use aluminum, obviously because it is strong enough and lightweight; but consider the first predicament whereas the combustion is a thousand or so degrees greater than the melting point of the aluminum block! It's all in the cooling design. Most cars use aluminum engine blocks now, although ask anyone and they'll prefer steel engine blocks any day for reliability purposes.
To the sandcasting! First, it is good to decide what you may want to sandcast with your aluminum soda cans; let's make a coin! You will enjoy the feeling of a coin, whereas should be worth no less than the soda cans redemption value; a 26 cent peice? Carve an indentation into a small peice of wood, or make a mold from ceramic. It is easire to just get a peice of wood, a drill, a 1-inch wide drill bit, and just drill a cigar shape deep enough into the wood block. You can cut your coins on a metal saw; aluminum slugs, as some food vending machine personell fear.
First, lay a foundation of charcoal briquettes covering the surface area of the bottom of the tin coffee can (we'll call it a crucible). I suggest you make the foundation of two layers of charcoal briquettes. Second, put a hole in the lip of the crucible that can be used to hold with a coat-hanger; put the crucible ontop the briquettes. Third, stack the fire wood logs around the crucible so also to help guid and support the can when it is being tampered with. Fourth, momentarily lift the crucible up to throw the lit fire kindling in there and then replace the crucible; get the briquettes burning; billow with your lungs or somthing at the heap just to give enough air movement to get the fire going. Fourth, put crushed can in there and point the reversed vacuum or blower at the base of the fire; it must get about 2500 degrees Fahrenheit to easily poor; keep an eye on that first soda can that if it deforms into a puddle you can add as much to the matter as you need. Fifth, when you are ready to poor into your mold, attach the coat hanger carefully to the lip and direct the pooring action with a nearby stick or somthing other than your bare hands.
There you have it. Just don't earn yourself a Darwin award. When I was up at Yosemit last year in the eighth Month of the Year of Our Lord two-thousand-and-four, I had done all this without a reverse vacuum/blower and using storage lids in the hands of three slave children; they were shortly liberated by their mothers when they returned to see a glowing red fireball in a firepit that couldn't be approached within three feet. Just one note: keep foreign matter like marshmallows out of the crucible or you'll be liable to splatter.
without prejudice
That's okay, I bought my wife a brass ring to avoid all those problems. Just hope she doesn't find out...
Table-ized A.I.
And that's perfectly fine for doing aluminum casting; now let's see you get aluminum from clay with it. Nobody was saying that you can't work aluminum with normal heats; it's quite a bit easier to heat than steel is, and that's perfectly doable with a little bit of air and some chunk charcoal.
BTW, the whole setup would function better if you had something like a brake drum from a car (or just about any other sort of fire-resistant pot with a hole in the bottom) and some piping to get the air coming up through the hole in the bottom. It's actually fairly easy to soften, melt, and burn steel in such an arrangement, using either chunk charcoal or coal. (real charcoal burns quite noticeably hotter, albeit faster, than briquettes.)
But anyways, enough of me ranting about the forge in my backyard.
Yek She Mesh!
I am Borat and I come from Kazshakstan. I have beeg hhhram, it is beeg like ze booster rockets. Do you want to touch my hhhram? It izsh naice.
No? Can I touch youaz?
--
Registered .sig quotient : 1337
Welcome our new scrap metal overlords.
Come on guys, it was obvious.
... a booster rocket fell on the server.
A couple of things came to mind reading the parent.
I'd have to say welding titanium is no more difficult than welding aluminum or stainless steel. They're all tricky and it takes practice.
Titanium can be difficult to work with (especially if you're not set up to do so) but you'll notice that most titanium jewelry is either formed (from wire, rod or sheet) or machined. Titanium rings/bands are machined- not cast.
Because Ti rings are machined, your local jeweler is likely unable to resize your ring. You can't size it down the way you would common alloy rings (which are cut and soldered to make smaller, stretched to make bigger) so you've got to either go back to the retailer or in some cases the manufacturer.
Aluminum was more expensive than gold, but its value is subjective, gold has been desired more than any other metal since its discovery. Side note- aluminum used to cost more because until relatively recently it was extremely expensive to extract from bauxite. (If you're interested, it's called the Bayer Process)
Unlike gold and other precious metals and alloys, I don't think titanium and other industrial metals are sold on market exchanges. There's no spot or fix for the industrial metals (that I know of.)
And lastly, my local scrap metal dealer buys Ti at $.18/pound and sells at $.24/pound. I think this is much lower than it's market value, but even o it's no wonder these farmer guys are making $$$- they have tonnage. Well, and, it's probably hard to find in that market.
R(k)
Well, first you coat the finger in oil to make it all slippery, THEN you heat the ring.
94% of Repubs and 21% of Dems voted to renew the Patriot Act
I'm one of the first to have posted saying this, and I'm marked as "Redundant"?
That word, I do not think it means what you think it means.
As for the dead cows, I bet they ate grass contaminated with rocket fuel - it can be very poisonous. I am not sure what they use, but hydrazine, for instance, is very poisonous.
Hmmm, given your name any recommendations on what oil to use? I don't have an automobile at the moment (though I plan to get better!) so I'm thinking a light oil suitable for oiling door latches or cooking or a very heavy oil which could double as roofing tar.
The photographer has a few more photos online as well as captions to all of them. The cows apparently die due to rocket fuel poisoned soil, not by being hit by the spent booster stages.
Money for nothing, pix for free
I come from Kyrgyzstan (just south of Kazakhstan) and why couldn't have some cool stuff like this fall on my cow?
but consider that 1,000 years ago aluminum was a hundred times more valuable than gold
Aluminum was not known as a metal 1,000 years ago, having been discovered in 1825 and purified enough to really test its properties in 1827. But yes, until the electolytic process was developed in 1886, it was quite vaulable because it was so hard to purify.
(There were, in fact, only seven pure metals known a thousand years ago -- iron, copper, tin, gold, silver, lead, and mercury. The isolation of zinc and its recognition as a metal dates to c.1200 AD in India, and arsenic was isolated around that time in Europe.)
You're off by 1 degree.
No, were're perfectly normal, everyone else is wierd, or just stupid, we haven't decided yet. Bitch some more and we'll stick an Aircraft Carrier, and a Marine division off your coast, then we'll see how your socialist/ communist/ terrorist government capitulates then. Either lead or get the hell outta the way. This America bashing shit was mildly funny at first, kinda like watching your kids. Europeans seem to forget the rouglhly 1 million Americans that died saving you from yourselves. We fought your asses outta a hole for 4 years first, we even did this twice in 20 years, then finished another war in the Pacific. If we had kept our same policy of isolationism most of Europe would be speaking German as their primary language, and saying heil Hitler. How about after WW2? Let's see Berlin Airlift, maybe? How many Americans died so that West Berliners could stay warm and eat? How much did that cost, who did we bill? NOBODY, we footed the bill, along with billions used to rebuild European cities. Have we ever been paid back? Hell no, especailly the French, who kindly asked us to leave during the 50's and defaulted on their payments. Who had the balls and determination to face down Soviet Russia? What if we said FU during the 60's,70's, 80's and 90's, we are tired of paying and left Europe? Would Europe be speaking Rusky? Waht about the numerous technological inovations we have developed and dispensed thoughout the world. We have done all of this through hard work, blood sweat and tears. Who is the first to offer assistance when disasters happen throughout the world? Yeah, we have made mistakes, but name one country that hasn't. I believe that we have done more good than bad, our record stands on it's own. Sorry if we offend you so much, maybe next time we'll let you all handle the next one by yourselves.
If Kerry was the answer, it must have been a stupid question.
The UN - The largest "political" cause of death.
http://www.eurasianet.org.nyud.net:8090/department s/culture/articles/photo_pages/essay_proj2.cfm?ser ies=sj&ID=3&max=12&ss=off
Titan was just another material.
An airplane factory didn't have orders for planes. But the production must go on, and order sizes for materials should be preserved, otherwise the supply will be cut and renewing the supply channel for given material will be very hard. So they produced shovels. Of titan. For sale, for common people. Costing about as much as a common shovel (and being "common goods", not "luxury", pennies by American standards.) Lighter, a bit more durable, but just a normal shovel. A friend visiting Soviet Union bought one.
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
You need Olive Oil:
Hmm... ohh I know! There where Gentoo's Larry the Cow comes from! :-)
Am I the only one who is really very dissapointed by that? I was really looking forward to some pics of some very flat cows.
I find your ideas intriguing and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
ThereIsNoCowLevel
"If a psycho stabs me, is the knife's manufacturer or seller to blame?"
Probably not, but let's try the opposite extreme: If I sell nukes to Iran do I bear some responsibility for what they do with them? If the Pentagon or IDF caught me in the act what would be my defense against being executed as an "obvious terrorist"?
A knife has many uses and can be easily made with stuff lying around the average garden shed. Guns, (the non-hunting variety), and nukes are designed with the sole purpose of killing people from a safe distance. To make either requires stuff not generally found in the average garden shed.
Dafur is a glaring example of how much arms dealers care about people killed by thier products. Convincing the security council members to put an arms embargo on Sudan would go a long way towards curtailing the violence but this will not happen because at least one of the veto wielding members also happens to be the main arms supplier. I thought continuing to sell arms to people who are known to be actively involved in genocide would make the sellers accessories to genocide. Apparently it has nothing to do it, they are just honest bussiness men trying to make a buck.
IIRC: In Bowling for Columbine, (I know the GPP said F.9/11), K-Mart pledged to stop selling munitions. I don't live in the US but would be interested to know if they kept thier pledge, anyone?
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
if memory serves, aluminium was isolated in the 1850's only and not a thousand year ago. You are right however to point out that it was expensive at the time, since it was extracted by chemical means and not electrical as later on, from 1880. Napoleon III had aluminium "silverware" for instance.
Google passes Turing test : see my journal
Thanks for the input, but we're already aware of the Whitehouse's response to Mr. Moore.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Another mirror (just in case ;)
http://www.worldwindcentral.com/ksjpe/page.html
The actor who posed as an Indian, and claimed to be of Cree/Cherokee descent, was in reality a Sicilian. And the tears were fake.
-cp-
It's actually a myth that servers overheat & melt down - the most that can happen is they get so overwhelmed with request they end up timing out far after an original request for page has occured, and are unable to serve current requests.
/. mythology; they'll burn you at the stake for talk like that.
... get away from me. No... No! NOOOOOOOO!
HERETIC! You'll be telling us that Cowboy Neal isn't Cmdr Taco's earthly incarnation next, or that the "Natalie Portman covered in hot grits" meme wasn't originally carved into the face of the earth by divine lightning. Or that the original 3 Star Wars films are no more than entertaining space flicks. (*)
Do NOT mess with
(*) Oh no! I think I already said that elsewhere... err, no I didn't, only, uh.. kidding
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
it was quite vaulable because it was so hard to purify
I believe the queen of England has various pieces of aluminium jewelery in the crown jewels...
What he can't kill, he has sex on. Trent.
Aren't their some pretty bad chemicals involved with this?
Yes there is. I remember an article about this is National Geographic, I think, which put this in a much darker light - the space junk fell on farmlands, ruining crops, and leaked fuel and other chemicals, polluting their water and making people sick.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
... welcome our rapidly descending, titanium shell, cow-smashing overlords.
another mirror up at
www.sixflagsneworleans.com
I was thinking about this the other day and I would postulate that slashdot has reached critical nerd acquisition mass, where the rate at which slashdot acquires new readers/moderators is high enough that new members haven't spent enough time on the site to be bored with the same jokes...
Of course your ID number has 4 digits so you think they're really unfunny now but these newbies probably have only seen 4 identical posts as of yet.
Gravity Sucks
more likely she just didn't have the capability to work the titanium herself. titanium has a very high melting point, and is extremely difficult to machine safely. the place i bought my wife's and my wedding bands offered titanium rings, but unlike the rest of the rings they sold, which they custom made themselves, the titanium rings were ordered from another manufacturer, and the selection was specifically limited to the designs they had in the catalog- no custom modifications were possible.
most likely the artisan just didn't want to sell something she couldn't make herself, or was ill-informed. i've heard this claim from a variety of places (always second or third hand) but if you actually bother to do even the smallest bit of research, it's pretty easy to show that it's false.
one interesting comment i found when looking for information on this myself (i have a titanium wedding band):
During our 30+ years of jewelry repair experience, we've only seen a dozen or so rings that have been cut off in hospital emergency rooms, and in most of those cases the rings had been bent out-of-round and were putting painful pressure on the finger. Titanium rings are less likely to crush or bend out-of-round, so if you shut your hand in a car door or drop a heavy object on it, it might be safer to be wearing a titanium ring than a precious metal band!
If I don't put anything here, will anyone recognize me anymore?
Replace the word "rockets" with "satellites".
Replace the word "Kazakhstan" with "Australia".
Finally replace "toxic rocket fuel" with "atomic radiation", and only then do you begin to see how incompetant NASA really is!
The currency in Kazakhstan is the Tenge with about 140 or so to the dollar.
Well, you're probably about to admit you voted for Bush, after what you saw in that movie, and on TV every day, and the newspapers. Of course, everyone else is wrong, and you and monkeyboy are right. Iraq is a cakewalk! The economy is booming! We've got Osama! His siamese twin, Saddam, coughed up the WMD! Our buddies, the Saudis, opened up that extra oilfield, and gas is too cheap to meter! North Korea really just wanted China to love them, so they merged back with South Korea for the extra rice! Where's my second round of kool-aid?
--
make install -not war
As anyone who has ever lived in the country knows, those cows weren't killed by rockets. No, sir, that was good old fashioned cow tippin' what killed them cows. Killed 'em but good.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Are those titanium rings plated or clad with some other metal? I thought titanium was significantly grayer and duller, even when polished. Is it just good photography?
>>> Aluminum was not known as a metal 1,000 years ago
You will be surprised to hear that aluminum metal was found in a metal ornament found in a 1700 year old tomb in China.
http://www.metkos.com/aluminum.htm
Don't try to use the force. Do or do not, there is no try.
It is duller... one of my friends had a titanium wedding ring (he is allergic to most precious metals). It is a dull grey and has a second band of a different colored metal in the center that is nicely etched... very nice, but definitely not shiny.
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
Yeah, all the titanium I've ever seen looks only slightly lighter than lead. Those rings pictured must be plated with stainless steel, except for this one
Yeah, why should you believe your eyes, when you can believe Rush Limbaugh instead? After all, Bush's America is doing so well. With the highest >6 month unemployment since WWII, the catastrophe in Iraq, Osama on the loose, $2.50 gallons of gas, Christian conversion of government, $45T in committed debt...
--
make install -not war
Um, Aluminum (aluminium, for you purists, though aluminum is the older form of the name) was isolated in 1825.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
No, actually I was busy earning millions of dollars making and selling quality information systems, while we lived off the "Peace Dividend". Remember that?
Let's compare now and then, just on the few items I mentioned:
highest >6 month unemployment since WWII
vs
highest employment, near the American theoretical maximum
the catastrophe in Iraq
vs
peace (except for Serbia, where we stopped a genocide, then left)
Osama on the loose
vs
Osama on the run (until he saw his chance after Bush took over)
$2.50 gallons of gas
vs
$1.10 gallons of gas, and higher income
Christian conversion of government
vs
Rhodes scholar in the White House
$45T in committed debt
vs
turning the (Reagan/Bush) debt into a surplus
But so what? The past is over. Why are you whining? You've got your boys in the White House for 5 years now, controlling Congress for 10, 6 of 9 Supreme Court Justices. Where's the conservative worker's paradise? Are your boys such pussies that one bad day in 2001 can paralyze their ability to grow the country for a decade? Oh yeah, WHERE'S OSAMA?
--
make install -not war
Ex-Soviet Russia is famous for *not* managing its nuclear waste (hundreds of nuclear submarines slowly rotting away in Barents Sea, pissing off Finns and Swedes) ; nuclear weapons out of hand or simply "missing" ; some famous fuckups (Tchernobyl; that bio-warfare incident about 20 years ago, when a lab leaked a killer virus over a village) ; etc...
So nobody should be surprised that they let booster rockets fall on populated areas...
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
What a load of crap.
Environment awareness has nothing to do with political regimes.
Capitalist countries (Germany and France) fucked up the Rhine river so badly it didn't have fish in it for more than 30 years. Fish had to be reintroduced by man some years ago. This is no better or worse than what happened in Russia or other communist regimes.
France's industrialized, capitalistic, intensive agriculture is so dependent on nitrates and fertilizers they messed up phreatic reserves of whole regions, making tap water non-drinkable. There are countless examples of land, resource and energy overutilization in capitalist economies.
I would go further and say that the overconsumption model capitalism promotes (and depends on for steady growth) helps making resource-overutilization and pollution even worse, but this is just my uninformed opinion.
Capitalism doesn't even prevent huge accidents from happening:
Does Three Mile Island ring a bell? Okay, this one wasn't too bad. What about Bhopal, India (linkie).
(short version : 5000 died on the spot, 15000 more from mid-long term consequences, and 120 000 still suffer from diseases and disorders related to the accident.)
Look, man, the country that produces 25% of all CO2 on the planet and is most dependent on oil and other non-renewable, polluting energy sources is NOT a communist regime : it's the US. Closely followed by China (BTW do you count China as communist or capitalist?)
In short: environmental awareness has to do with political will, not political regimes.
You could argue that communism does not let the people express their political will, and evidence tends to fit that theory.
but you could also argue that capitalism sees environmental protection as a cost that has to be reduced, and evidence also tends to fit that theory. Capitalist industries constantly tend to cut corners when it comes to environment protection. Example: Texas refineries prefer to illegally release sulfur (sp?) in the atmosphere and pay huge fines, instead of retrofitting their factories with proper filters, because it costs more. But no-one will put higher fines on them because it would be "anticapitalist" to do so.
I have to ask : are you one of those guys who stick Greenpeace bumper stickers on your SUV to feel better about it?
Hello! I'm a disaster waiting to happen!
That's some rough math considering we're looking at 116,516 in WWI and 405,399 in WWII. And that's total deaths with the European and Pacific theatres combined, the American losses in Europe in WWII number just under 300,000. In contrast, the Soviets lost a total of over 21 million people in WWII. By your logic, we should then first thank Stalin for helping us avoid speaking German and then thank Eisenhower, Kennedy et al for not speaking Russian. Maybe you should thank us Europeans for not speaking Navajo...
How much did that cost, who did we bill?
It's all about the money, isn't it? Never mind the lofty ideals of freedom, democracy and good will towards man, whenever this topic comes up it's always about the money. The US didn't setup the Marshall Plan to be helpful or kind, it did so to influence European policy and build a bulkhead against the Soviet Union, much like they did with the Eastern bloc countries.
Have we ever been paid back?
Yes. The loans have been paid back, as stipulated in the European Recovery Program. The grants ($11.8 billion from 1948 to 1952) have been paid back indirectly many times over, as designed. At the end of WWII, the US had an unsustainable trade imbalance and urgently needed to get dollars out into the world so American companies could convert to civilian production and find markets for their goods abroad. I'd say this plan worked admirably and everyone won out until the Bretton Woods trade triangle collapsed in the 70's. We don't owe you jack shit.
Who is the first to offer assistance when disasters happen throughout the world?
That would be the UN. The US must generally be dragged kicking and screaming into anything that can't easily be used to promote American national interests. Oh, there's a famine in Sudan? Tough luck. In the last 20+ years, the US has intervened globally exactly once without having any ulterior motives and that time you were so uninterested and unable to follow-through that it turned into a bit of a disaster. I'm referring to Somalia, in case you hadn't figured it out.
maybe next time we'll let you all handle the next one by yourselves.
Promises, promises...
Money for nothing, pix for free