Star Trek Shields Now a Possibility?

An anonymous reader writes "British scientists have announced their intent to build a Star Trek-style magnetic shielding system to help protect astronauts from radiation. 'There are a variety of risks facing future space explorers, not least of which is the cancer-causing radiation encountered when missions venture beyond the protective magnetic envelope, or magnetosphere, which shields the Earth against these energetic particles. The Earth's magnetosphere deflects many of these particles; others are largely absorbed by the atmosphere.'"

Comments

Bill O'Reilly: Gunrunner +1, Informative

[Anonymous Coward]

I would like to do what comes naturally. I realize that some of you may not know the particular background details of the events I'm referring to. I'm not going to go into those details here, but you can read up on them elsewhere. Since I have promised to be candid, I will tell you candidly that Bill O'Reilly wants to ransack people's homes. Faugh. Here's an idea: Instead of giving him the ability to dig a grave in which to bury liberty and freedom, why don't we lend a helping hand? If we do, we'll then be able to explain a few facets of this confusing world around us.

If O'Reilly has any children, I recommend that he teach them about love, trust, cooperation, community, reason, negotiation, and compromise rather than violence, paranoia, and fear. He likes to brag about how the members of his peuplade are ideologically diverse. Perhaps that means that some of them prefer Stalin over Hitler. In any case, the first lies that O'Reilly told us were relatively benign. Still, they have been progressing. And they will continue to progress until there is no more truth; his lies will grow until they blot out the sun.

Do you really think O'Reilly will ever learn from his mistakes? Although theoretical differences can be drawn between his craven inclinations and unstable, obtrusive priggism, these are distinctions without a difference. If you want to hide something from him, you just have to put it in a book. While we do nothing, those who yield this country to the forces of darkness, oppression, and tyranny are gloating and smirking. And they will keep on gloating and smirking until we point out the glaring contradiction between O'Reilly's idealized view of adversarialism and reality. What a cunning coup on the part of O'Reilly's emissaries, who set out to form the association in the public's mind between any ramblings O'Reilly disagrees with and the ideas of hate and violence and illegality and got as far as they did without anyone raising an eyebrow. I do not have the time, in one sitting, to go into the long answer as to why hotheaded fanaticism has come to occupy an unenlightened place in the national dialogue. But the short answer is that I cannot promise not to be angry at him. I do promise, however, to try to keep my anger under control, to keep it from leading me -- as it leads O'Reilly -- to encourage the acceptance of scapegoating and demonization. Why does he want to create a new fundamentalism based not on religion but on an orthodoxy of sexism? Because the human community has had the same basic problem with antidisestablishmentarianism all along, ever since the second human being walked erect. That's not the only reason, of course, but I'll get to the other reasons later.

I am not up on the latest gossip. Still, I have heard people say that what really irks me is that O'Reilly has presented us with a Hobson's choice. Either we let him glamorize drug usage or he'll undermine the current world order. He does not tolerate any view that differs from his own. Rather, O'Reilly discredits and discards those people who contradict him along with the ideas that they represent.

Up to this point, we have explored some of the motivations and circumstances that make O'Reilly want to agitate for indoctrination programs in local schools. However, we must look beyond both O'Reilly's motivations and history if we are truly to understand his fibs. If his co-conspirators had even an ounce of integrity, they would initiate meaningful change. What do you think of this: I don't see how he can be so brassbound? One wonders how O'Reilly can complain about virulent sewer rats, given that his own manifestos also aim to promote racial superiority doctrines, ethnic persecution, imperialist expansion, and genocide. I must emphasize that he likes to cite poll results that "prove" that he is the way, the truth, and the light. Really? Have you ever been contacted by one of his pollsters? Chances are good that you never have been contacted and never will be. Otherwise, the polls would show that my position is that the world

Re:Bill O'Reilly: Gunrunner +1, Informative

[Gilmoure]

HILLS LIKE WHITE HEFFALUMPS

        The hills across the valley of Pooh Corner were long and white. On one side there was no shade and no trees and a stuffed animal could fry in the heat in minutes. A small building stood between the valley and the green Hundred Acre Wood. A bear and the girl with him sat at a table in the shae, outside the building.

        "What should we eat?" the girl asked.

        "Honey," said the bear. It was hot and small beads of sweat dropped off the tip of his nose. He watched the water make a reasonable pool on the table. He looked up at the girl.

        "It will be all right," she said. "Lots of people have done it."

        "I don't know," said the bear. He thought about the war. He tried no to think, but it was always there in the darkness. He remembered the explosion and afterward the doctors putting the stuffing back inside him. He remebered months in the Pet Hospital on Santa Monica Boulevard in Century City, and afterward the walks to Harry's Bar & Grill in the afternoon. He remembered the old waiter and the young waiter and how no one ever quite learned how to say the Lord's Prayer without all the nadasI in it.

        "Oh, pooh," swore the girl. "I can't bear it when you're like this."

        The bear looked across at the hills in the distance. They looked like white heffalumps. He smiled to himself, remebereing how clever things had been before the accident. Now his old friends were all gone. Eeyore had become a therapist specializing in manic depression. Tigger had opened an aerobics studio in Beverly Hills. Kanga had finally gotten the divorce settlement and moved back to Australia. The bear realized he was thinking too much. He crossed his legs carefully and stared at the girl.

        The waitress brought a jar of honey. The bear stuck his nose in it and began to eat.

        "Don't get your head stuck in the jar," the girl said. "Like last time."

        The bear looked down across the valley. Eeyore's gloomy place had been subdivided and overbuilt with condos. He remembered hunting for woozle on crisp winter mornings when his breath would frost in the air and he would follow tracks in the snow and the world seemed so clear and true that it was like being in love all the time. He tried to remeber what being in love was like but his accident had fixed that and the girl was talking again and he couldn't think.

        "It's an awfully simple operation," she said. "And then everything would be like before."

        The bear stood and looked down at the sleek unbroken line of fur that ran to his toes. "Yes," he said. "Isn't it pretty to think so?"

-Chris McCarthy

Shields? Nothing beats my wife's glare

[rogerborn]

Nothing can penetrate it. Nobody even tries.

But for destructive capability, her glaring eyes are far more powerful than lasers, phasers, or photon torpedoes.

She sails through life like a queen, beautiful, peaceful, and serene.

But let someone raise her hackles, and watch out!

Theose gov scientists could learn a thing or two from her.

Let me know. I will be happy to lend/lease her time for research.

Re:Hmmm...

[DjRenigade]

THAT IS CALSSIC!!!! http://renigade.blogspot.com/