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Why You Should Be More Interested In Mars Than the Olympics
New submitter hugeinc sends this quote from an article by author Andrew Kessler:
"Next week, while we're all watching NBC, a nuclear-powered, MINI-Cooper-sized super rover will land on Mars. We accurately guided this monster from 200 million miles away (that's 7.6 million marathons). It requires better accuracy than an Olympic golfer teeing off in London and hitting a hole-in-one in Auckland, New Zealand. It will use a laser to blast rocks, a chemical nose to sniff out the potential for life, and hundreds of other feats of near-magic. Will these discoveries lead us down a path to confirming life on other planets? Wouldn't that be a good story that might make people care about science?"
Running fast and bouncing a ball in a bikini is much more important
Because Mars IS more interesting than some boneheads chasing each other around a dirt track. Humanity needs to move on.
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
There’s insanely amazing stuff happening every day. Marvels of human achievement and technology all around us. And for each, there is usually a group of people around it who:
a) lives and breaths the stuff
b) can’t fathom why everyone else doesn’t feel the same way
It doesn’t work like this. Even if you could some how identify the one absolute “top of the pile” thing that everyone should be focusing on, it’s completely impractical for everyone to do so. It’s the same reason we can’t have every scientist in the world working on say, cancer research. You need some of them to be trying to figure out how to get rid of wrinkles.
Some people don’t care about space. A lot of people don’t care about space. Arguing that they should care about space because it’s a more “worthy” thing to care about than whatever they do care about is just ridiculous.
As to trying to frame the story so it’s more in-line with the stuff they are interested in... even more ridiculous. You can’t trick someone into caring about technology by turning it into a human interest story.
People don't care about it because it's not lip-synching an over-produced pop song, it doesn't have actors trying to pawn things, it's not trying to sleep with a housemate, and it doesn't carry crab traps.
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
The Olympics are self-important beyond their entertainment (or any other) value. Not interested.
I'm pretty sure I can follow both. And be interested in both.
Join me in celebrating the wonders of our world.
People should like what I like not what they like. Only my opinion matters and if you have any interests I don't have then you are wrong and should change that.
How much of an asshole do you have to be to hold an opinion like this? Some people enjoy sports and some people like polishing rocks. The world is a diverse collection of people and just because you might not care for the Olympics doesn't mean its wrong for any one else to do so.
I'll care when the Olympics are ON Mars.
plus Polaris/The NorthStar now moving in still photos when it was a solid point forever, this is indicative of earth wobble
Polaris has never lined up exactly with the Earth's north pole. And there's a natural precession or "wobble" of the Earth due to it being in orbit around the Sun, that will cause the axis to shift away from Polaris over the years.
they're athletes, of course they're in shape (okay, some athletes and/or some sports are an exception).
Minimal clothing is appropriate for exercising in the heat. Tight clothing won't get in the way (whether other players or inanimate objects on the field of play)/
Is is played up beyond that, though?
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
...the Olympics (and all sports) existed for the sole purpose of preempting my favorite TV shows.
Yup, none of the Universe is static.
The Olympics can teach us all kinds things about government corruption and inefficiencies. How the IOC is allowed to change the laws of a country ranging from IP to road laws. How the IOC gets a country verging on bankruptcy to spend around 20 billion dollars so that the 1%, the VIPs, and a token handful of us rif-raf can feel important. One the best examples of this is how the VIPs got so many tickets that the stands are half empty for venues that are "Sold out". Another is that the city with some of the worst traffic in the western world created lanes just like they had in Soviet Russia that were limited to well connected people.
All this to watch various countries send their OCD athletes who have nearly destroyed themselves try for a medal.
Bread and circuses.
The only silver lining is that the company that was an inch away from privatizing the police in Britain has humiliated itself to a point where this won't happen. Another study in where a company that can't find its ass with its hands was able to schmooze its way into the corridors of power and milk this single schmoozing skill for billions.
If the money and effort (considering what that many athletes working out for that many hours must also be worth) put into the Olympics were instead were to have been put into science and space exploration we wouldn't be watching a car sized robot touch down on Mars but would be watching the amateur Olympic team representing Mars participate in a scaled down Solar Olympics.
I'm more interested in how london is a police state under martial law because of the olympics.
Oh please, London was a police state before the Olymipics.
You should be more interested in your dosage.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
So, if the golf analogy is correct - the rover was launched from earth and, after that, has not made use of any sort of propulsion technology for steering, course correction, or braking? That IS pretty impressive...
I'm a pretty pathetic golfer, but I bet my scores would improve dramatically if I had a team of people steering the ball after I hit it. Getting it to New Zealand might still be a bit of a reach, though.
(The rover is darn cool, seriously. I'm more interested in it than in most of the Olympic events.)
#DeleteChrome
That would be pretty damn amazing, since the last time golf was featured in the olympics was in 1904. I'm pretty sure they've all been dead for a long time.
I reject the premise of the article.
First, as has been said in a couple other posts, being interested in the Mars story and the Olympics are not mutually exclusive. I like space exploration stories, and I like sports. There is no reason to have to pick one over the other unless we are talking career choices. Recreational level interest is a completely different story.
Second, the sports guy in me (exercise physiology degree, and I've coached a college sport) doesn't buy the idea that the accuracy or endurance is more important or impressive in the Mars mission. More impressive endurance based on raw miles is just silly. There wasn't constant acceleration during the whole voyage. Shooting from the hip, I would imagine it was a whole lot more like a lot of initial acceleration and then months of coasting. Similarly the accuracy comparison is almost laughable. Sure, if you just look at the amount of significant digits on what bearing you're hitting a golf ball the comparison is appropriate, but the Mars mission wasn't exactly launched by someone manually adjusting angles with the same amount of fine tuning as someone with sausage fingers playing Angry Birds on an iPhone. Never mind that the Mars mission wasn't likely to have any unexpected external forces altering its trajectory, and it most likely had some means of course correcting in transit.
Beyond those absurdities, it is the standard media treatment of space exploration stories. It's a brief mention of what is happening that leaves more questions about technical details than it answers. Please leave the unnecessary comparison and competition of two noncompeting, unrelated events. Now, if you want to talk about the technological dark ages the NBC executives call home...
Heroscape, it's like legos combined with anachronistic wargames.
...is that golf isn't currently an Olympic sport (but has been added for 2016), and isn't being contested in London this year.
And yes -- sometimes it is these little details that can cause the non-scientists to completely ignore you. Some will feel there isn't much use in hearing your message about space science if you can't even get the details right about what is happening here on Earth.
Yaz
"Don't you run from me... DON'T YOU RUN!"
After the disappointing, and frankly insulting performance put on by Matt Lauer and Meredith Viera (who I watched while growing up as local TV personalities) and the execrable Ryan Seacrest interviewing Michael Phelps instead of showing the 7/7 memorial, and the NOT EVEN 5 MINUTES BETWEEN COMMERCIALS, I'm done with the Olympics for this go-round.
So much this: http://www.slate.com/blogs/five_ring_circus/2012/07/28/nbc_olympics_coverage_meredith_vieira_think_it_s_cool_to_be_ignorant_.html
FUCK NBC. Fuck all of this crap.
Yes, the Mars Landing is much more relevant. I would rather watch grass grow and paint dry than turn on NBC coverage of the Olympics.
--
BMO
The Olympics are now (more than ever before) just a big sponsorship (as in ultra-capitalist) fuck-fest, period.
Silver? Bronze? All it can do is find life on another planet. And no guarantee the life it finds will taste good!
I think you can find torrents from other sources.
Also there is an NBC Olympics app that lets you watch live feeds (I think that will mean no commentary).
I am with you in that I DETEST Matt Lauer and all of the same people you have been hearing for years utterly ruining the audio track for the whole Olympics.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
This is a complicated landing scheme. It makes me nervous. Unlike the last mission, there is only one rover, so it's all or nothing.
Table-ized A.I.
Not like now. Long term exposure photographs show it.
Long term exposure photographs have always shown it.
It's also now widely known that the earth's magnetic fields weakening and FULL polar shift will occur soon.
The former is known, the latter isn't known, though flipping of the poles will happen sooner or later. There however is no reason to expect pole flips to coincide with most other space phenomena, including potential near passes from high mass objects.
Perhaps because every 3,600 yrs. this bastard passes thru and wipes us out ala Noah's great flood (see that U.S. Naval Map on that note, they're predicting that and they've gone under the seas into the caverns to do so). What's the "trigger"? Niburu/Wormwood kicking off the New Madrid fault.
There's no such evidence of a 3,600 year global flood cycle. And the faults of the world don't create or release water.
And a regular near pass by a large mass (Wikipedia says four times the mass of Earth) will frequently perturb the orbits of all the inner planets and the asteroids in the Asteroid Belt. We don't see any signs of that. All the inner planets have pretty circular orbits and there are many more asteroids in Jupiter resonant orbits (which is where you'd expect them to be sans Nibiru) than in unstable orbits (where you'd expect more of them to be, if Nibiru was coming through so frequently).
Especially if unicorns are involved.
Table-ized A.I.
Why the fuck would we be "all watching NBC" from every other country outside the US?
The Olympics involves every country, too bad Slashdot doesn't.
How do you know how much accuracy it takes to shoot a non-existent airborne terrorist from the sky with a roof-top missile? Mars is cool, but considering the extensive array of excellent pubs to choose from, playing with missiles in London is hard to beat. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/11/london-rooftop-missiles-olympics_n_1664653.html
Forward! -- Emperor Norton, 2012
I see your point, but there's something to be said for being the pinnacle of human physical fitness.
It's exciting to see the fastest person alive.
They're using their grammar skills there.
Than Mars, & BY FAR http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6IESrRo129I (Wormwood's coming). Look up "U.S. Naval Map" on Google too alongside FEMA camps plus "New Madrid Fault" (plus Polaris/The NorthStar now moving in still photos when it was a solid point forever, this is indicative of earth wobble), with earth magnetic field failure and pole shift and then lastly, lookup Niburu/Planet X. Hope you're in a safe spot, IF there really is one.
Look up the Russian word for Wormwood. Its near Kiev.
Anyone who suggest otherwise is trying to sell you something or wants to spend your tax money.
Going to mars is an absolute waste of resources.
What resources were lost in this trip to Mars? What would they have gone toward if we hadn't used them for this mission?
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
It's exciting to see the fastest person alive.
I've seen him. I was sitting at an outdoor cafe enjoying a pint, when I saw someone with a wallet in his hand running, oh, about twice the speed of Ben Johnson, leaving a pair of pursuing cops in the dust. They wouldn't have caught him on motorbikes.
No, wait, fast as he was, he's not the fastest person alive. That would be the trio of Stafford, Young and Ceman. It's amazing that these ~80 year olds hold the record.
The only real game in the Winter Olympics is curling.
--
BMO
I find no vbalue whatsoever in olympics. In fact I find no value whatsoever in *watching* all sports. I do compete in archery and do a few other sports. But passive looking never held any interrest whatsoever be it local competition or olympics.
"A quick googling shows that about 10960 athletes from 204 countries have come together in competition within one city. If you can't find the value in that, then I feel sorry for you."
And I feel sorry for people which think they can dictate what value others should find into something.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Diplomacy and international politics are also both important for our continued survival. For that matter so is the global economy.
All the science in the world isn't going to help us if we blow ourselves up, or our system of managing resources and man power falls apart. You ask someone who works in either of these areas.. I mean who is really involved.. and they will pretty much parrot _exactly_ what you said, with appropriate fields replaced.
Everyone wants to put their area of interest in a special category. Everyone can make a case that the thing _they_ care about is really the most critical and anyone who doesn't get that just doesn't understand reality.
For many discipline (all?) we already have known for a long time the limit of the human body. We don't test for that anymore. What we test nowadays, are two factors : how far can we push materials to get an advantage, and, to a thankfully lesser extent, how far can we push human modification/doping and get away with it without getting caught.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
"Area Man Constantly Telling People He Doesn't Watch the Olympics".
I see your point, but there's something to be said for being the pinnacle of human physical fitness.
Pinnacle for a specific purpose/sport/activity perhaps. Track, swimming, gymnastic, archery, etc... fitness (and skills) are not interchangeable. You want to see the pinnacle of human fitness, try something like the US Navy SEALs. [ Any other better examples /. ? ]
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
1 - Organized sport has largely supplanted war as a means of getting one over one one's rivals. Imperial pissing contests now involve athletic achievement, not who can build the biggest battleship with the biggest phallic symbol guns. I think humanity has moved on quite a bit in many ways, and organized sport is one tool that has helped.
2 - The opening ceremony of the Olympics gave pride of place to honouring two engineers who changed the world: Isambard Kingdom Brunel and Tim Berners Lee. (If I were directing I would have tried to add Frank Whittle in there, but I'm not griping, I thought it was a powerful show and I found it very moving. Probably helped that I watched the BBC's coverage, anyone who watched it on NBC seemed to complain about it.)
Yes the Curiosity mission is exciting and I'll be following it with great interest. But I'll also be watching sports. Hell I'm even going to watch tomorrow's Formula 1 Grand Prix. It is possible to do two things at once, especially when there's about 7 billion of us.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
I remember when I was a kid I used to love watching the Olympics. Then all the doping scandals started, then all the professionals started competing, then they started adding all these stupid new sports...and I lost interest. I mean, beach volleyball in the Olympics? Really? The older I get the less interest I have in jocks of any kind - Olympic or otherwise.
Mod Parent Up. I have but one lifetime -- and someone out there wants me to spend it all on learning Esperanto.
The older I get, the more I become aware just how much we collectively know -- and how little of it I will have time to learn, apply, and teach others. Rather than follow along in real-time with the Mars story, I'll wait for the uninformed talking heads to move on to some other story because "Mars is old now." I'll read the intelligent executive summary after the research is completed.
It requires better accuracy than an Olympic golfer teeing off in London and hitting a hole-in-one in Auckland, New Zealand.
It probably does not, because the golfer couldn't do midcourse corrections.
Strap a skimpy bikini on the rover and they would have had ratings gold!
Will these discoveries lead us down a path to confirming life on other planets? Wouldn't that be a good story that might make people care about science?
Actually, I think the possibility of discovering life on other planets is exactly what drives a disappointingly large percentage of the population to *not* care about science. Might mess with their whole world view and all that. Some of them haven't fully accepted the round-earth-orbiting-the-sun thing, life eveloving on other planets would just lead to apoplexy.
I imagine you're going to need some fairly fit people to survive a trip to Mars without their bodies failing. So the art of physical fitness isn't wasted.
Just because one cannot run a mile in under five minutes does not mean that one should belittle those that can. The people competing in the Olympics are at the pinnacle of human fitness which takes dedication and skill no less equal to eroding your muscle mass while chowing down on sugary snacks and tapping away at a keyboard. Oh wait. See what I did there in the name of sensationalism?
So you are making recommendations you haven't tried.
No, I have used the app, just not yet with actual live feeds.
The non-live clips from the opening ceremony did NOT have any of the commentary that was there during the broadcast (I watched some of both).
So, it seems pretty likely the other live feeds also come without commentary.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Please ... don't mention the rover or you might jinx it.
We might all be watching and it will go splat, and so the Olympics my win after all.
In any even, for inspirational reasons Challenges of Getting to Mars: Curiosity's Seven Minutes of Terror
It's not like there's any science involved in any sports and sporting events these days right? Oh wait..
Not really, most of the major religions already accept evolution. Religion is not a theory, it's a story, they will fit little green men into the plot like they do everything else, some of the smaller churches like Scientology will be delighted and claim it proves them right.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
On Soviet Mars, robotic life finding machines welcome YOU!
Good, inexpensive web hosting
The thing to remember is that the universe is by no means one constant motion.
The earth has an eccentric orbit, and the planet itself wobbles on it's spinning axis. (think of a top)
Add in other gravitational pulls from objects around Earth (and other objects in space), and it's all chaos theory in it's truest form.
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
the pinnacle of human fitness, try something like the US Navy SEALs. [ Any other better examples /. ? ]
Nah. If you want fitness try somebody from Cirque du Soleil .. or a Ballet dancer. They'll run rings around one of those Navy grunts.
No sig today...
Pentathlon?
Shooting, fencing, swimming, horse riding (show jumping), track running. Not only that, it is a proper competition, unlike the SEALS who have better equipment and intel than the other side ever will.
Help I am stuck in a signature factory!
I imagine you're going to need some fairly fit people to survive a trip to Mars without their bodies failing.
Actually no. That's why this Mars crap is not interesting to me.
If they did it right it would be interesting to me. Example of doing space stuff right: work on building a space station with artificial gravity[1], better radiation shielding.
Once we have that technology working in practical ways it removes the main obstacles to long term human space travel and inhabitation. It would no longer matter so much that it takes months to get to some place in the solar system.
Next step would be tests on space-based mining, factories and farms[2]. These can be done concurrently.
Then space colonies, and self-sustaining space colonies.
In contrast much of the human space travel stuff NASA is working on appears to be mostly dead end stuff. You are not going to have a viable human colony using that tech (drugs to slow wasting and bone loss etc). It can come in handy for specific cases, but it's pretty stupid to waste time, resources and money on this sort of stuff at our current tech stage. All that NASA talk about going to Mars is stupid at this stage too- Mars is a gravity well. Only do it later when the space colonies are rich and thriving (from mining the asteroids and trade).
[1] Example option for a small station is using tethers and a counterweight.
[2] Fish farms could be one of the many good farm options. Sunlight + CO2 + nitrogen+iron for algae.The fish (e.g. tilapia) eat the algae, the humans eat the fish. I suspect fish farms could be fine in low-g regions of a space station/colony (water oxygenation could be a problem in zero-g regions, but maybe the fish and their food might be able do fine in an air-water foam). It'll cost a lot to get that much water up into space, but we should later be able to get lots of water from asteroids and similar. So initial ones would be small scale test farms which should cost less to set up.
Farms on the Moon might be worth considering - but there are many unknowns - lunar soil is very very different from earth soil. Might have to stick to hydroponics till we figure more out.
British SAS are far superior to the US Navy SEALs. (As are the Australian SASR, but even they pale in comparison to the pom's SAS)
This is the weakest story concept I've ever seen on Slashdot.
I see press release pitches like this constantly: The Olympics are exciting! And you know what else is exciting? Canon dot-matrix printers! Our newest model...."
Tom Geller
The olympics have been around since the 8th century B.C. Exactly how many wars do you really think they have stopped? Probably none at all.
I see your point, but there's something to be said for being the pinnacle of human physical fitness.
The pinnacle, is of taking the maximum amount of drugs, without being caught at it.
It's exciting to see the fastest person alive.
It's even more amazing, that they are still alive, given the amounts of Bath Salts that they are 'meth-ed up on.
I wouldn't be surprised to see some athletes wig out and do some Florida Zombie style face eating. Now that would deserve a gold!
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
"A manned mission to Mars will attract attention from hundreds of millions of people around the world. The three week period surrounding the launch, and the three week period surrounding the landing on Mars, will attract global media attention comparable to (or more likely, significantly exceeding that of) the Olympic Games." http://mars-one.com/en/faq-en/23-faq-feasability/257-what-is-the-business-model
Right. I didn't see the Hutus challenging the Tutsis to a jolly old game of cricket, and what's going on in Syria doesn't resemble a game of soccer. Even by Rugby's standards it's a bit on the rough side.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
>> pinnacle of human physical fitness
It's more like extreme genetic freaks of nature pumped on top of that full of various performance enhancing drugs. A freak show.
We tried and failed to contact K'Brell, official speaker for the Council of Elders thus, for the moment we have no news of this new alleged attempt of the filthy eartlings to attack our planet with their diabollical mechanical devices.
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I'm sorry, it's just not as fascinating as Women's Beach Volleyball.
the pinnacle of human fitness, try something like the US Navy SEALs. [ Any other better examples /. ? ]
Nah. If you want fitness try somebody from Cirque du Soleil .. or a Ballet dancer. They'll run rings around one of those Navy grunts.
Possible, but I have trouble imagining a ballerina or Cirque du Soleil performer HALO jumping into the ocean, swimming 5 miles (with full combat gear), hiking 10 miles (w/said gear), doing God knows what over/under buildings, night-vision shooting some bad-guy in the eye and getting the fuck out - all undetected - before breakfast. Just sayin'. But, hey it *could* happen - though aren't those Soleil guys/gals Canadian? :-)
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Isn't it too small to sustain an atmosphere anyway ? Even if we were able to create one, wouldn't it be blown away with the next solar winds ?
Because Mars IS more interesting than some boneheads chasing each other around a dirt track. Humanity needs to move on.
Sadly we as a species have not moved on far enough yet and must have competition between tribes (read nations). The Olympics is of paramount import precisely because the show of tribal rivalries both weakness and strength in an athletic competition is a far better thing than the other tribal sport that we excel at ....WHICH IS WAR.
How soon we forget the importance of Jesse Owens making the Aryan supremacy rantings of Der Fuehrer's Nazis look stupid even to the worst segregation ranting "tighty whities" in Georgia.
NO before we can effectively use, understand and benefit from space exploration we must pull together as one species from one planet not just explore under the banner of the stars and stripes or the great red star or russian eagle or whatever flag!
And having an olympic sporting event that shows our differences as a species to be trivial is a GREAT THING
Your thesis intrigues me, and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
Everything I've ever learned the hard way was based on a statistically invalid sample.
The olympics have been around since the 8th century B.C.
Actually the games as we know them started in the 1890's. There was a bit of a gap between the Fourth Century and then.
If God forks the Universe every time you roll a die, he'd better have a damned good memory.
Tell me how many straight males you know who subscribe to Vogue. Women care about what other women are wearing, but it's for social purposes, not reproductive.
The number of anorexic 'heroin chic' Kate Moss types in the world are very few and far between, people have to pick and choose from the gene pool of reality, not whatever you're seeing on TV.
moox. for a new generation.
a nuclear-powered, MINI-Cooper-sized super rover will land on Mars.
Is that an English Mini Cooper or a German Mini Cooper?
You'd think NASA would be more careful with their metric-vs-traditional units after the last Mars landing cock-up!
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
Oh please, London was a police state before the Olymipics.
That's debatable, but there certainly weren't any SAM launchers on roofs before Olympic madness set in.
If God forks the Universe every time you roll a die, he'd better have a damned good memory.
It requires better accuracy than an Olympic golfer teeing off in London and hitting a hole-in-one in Auckland, New Zealand.
Not it didn't. A car can arrive exactly at its destination after hundreds of miles, but not because it set out with incredibly precise steering. Rockets, like cars, but unlike golf balls, can steer.
And that's not the only difference between sport and space-science.
WHEN THERE ARE MURDERERS LOSE?
This story is a ridiculous logical fallacy.
Let me guess, it's the GOP and/or Israel's fault.
I am and a lot of my friends are as well. The Olympics is no longer what it is supposed to be, and in face hasn't bee cince the 70's. Almost everyon I know does not care at all about the Olympics.
problem is they dont care about the mars lander either, they care about the new season of "americas got talent", and "dancing with the stars".. the general US population thinks that science is worthless and uninteresting. This is a very very sad thing.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
You are a genius! I need to get this perfect weapon to the democratic party ASAP!
If all the dems come out as loving and supporting oxygen and breathing, we can eliminate the republican plague overnight! You sir are an american hero.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
"but there's something to be said for being the pinnacle of human physical fitness."
and it should be held in a lower value than the pinnacle of human intelligence. But we all know that intelligence is looked down upon and a useless trait of physical fitness is held up as the ultimate a human can be.
Sorry, I don't need to chase down gazelles for food anymore. Highly physical fit is a useless trait to humanity nowdays.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
My coworkers and I have been talking about the idea of additional competition tiers with more relaxed rules since the winter olympics. The first tier would simply be what already goes on, but unabashedly so. Blood doping, hormone related chemicals, but also we might see some gene therapy in the not so distant future. The remaining tiers would allow non-organic implants with various rules on the power supplies (human-powered, batteries and sub-kwh, and no holds barred "we are the borg" tier). What gave me the idea is a coworker whose heart was damaged by a virus. He had an assist installed to keep his heart going until they found a replacement, but he had been fairly healthy and active and he kept running with the assist in. Eventually his heart started recovering and the doctors realized he wouldn't need a transplant after all, but towards the end there he said he felt like the energizer bunny on his runs, he just couldn't get tired. When they eventually took it out, he said the relative fatigue was crushing. If a simple heart assist pump could make that big a difference in a marathon, imagine what else we could come up with! Billions of dollars of corporate ad money funding advances that make people better at sport, but probably can heal some things too.
refactor the law, its bloated, confusing and unmaintainable.
But the British SAS have an easy to exploit weakness. just go into a field you think they are in and say "France will kick the arse of the english football league any day." and they will instantly stand up to politely disagree with you.
You don't have to convince me.
I was more interested in the dry toast I had for breakfast than this orgy of corporate excess they call the "Olympics".
There's nothing going on in London but product placement and exploitation. This is the first Olympics in which I have absolutely no interest. There is nothing in these games about human achievement or "sport" that has not been crushed under a blanket of ad revenue and messed up priorities.
Even the athletes just make me sad for how badly they are being used.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Actually this might be good timing, if the rover crashes nobody will ever know due to the Olympic coverage.
That still covers quite a few wars, though.
Leave them behind when the rest of us get the chance to leave this mudball.
"Go back a few centuries and fat chicks were teh hotness."
It usually depends on what is "easy" - when food was expensive and harder to get, being fat meant you were rich and special. Today the cheapest food is the most unhealthy crap that makes you fat.
Just like once most people were outside working in the fields etc, and they all got suntanned - so the in thing was to be as pale as possible. That showed you were rich and powerful, because you could stay inside and didn't have to work.
Today most people have to work inside, in their small offices and thus are very pale. So being tanned means you have time to be outside.
History shows how odd these humans are
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
I said "largely" supplanted in the hope that it would ward off the usual /. pedants. Seems like I was wasting my time since you don't know the meaning of "largely."
Drill baby drill - on Mars
You need maybe the tenth percentile of physical fitness for a Mars colony. Probably more like twentieth.
For the Olympics, you need people who have molded their bodies for some particular purpose. Most of them have high general fitness. This level of fitness is outrageously high.
How many countries has Germany invaded lately? Italy? Japan? I don't see them flexing their militaristic muscle in the old chest-beating manner. Instead I see forums in which countries do business and work out their scores, like the WTO, the EU, the UN, and international sporting competitions. The battlefield is no longer the first forum of choice.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
Although I agree with the headline, I disagree with the article. The article says we should be interested in space missions because of the toil, hard work, and sacrifice of the people involved, even for robotic missions. That it's a cryin' shame that NASA doesn't put out highly-produced specials detailing the lives of these driven men and women.
Bullshit.
That's the worst part of any sporting event televised in the US. They spend all this time on the "human interest" angle that they never get around to showing us the action. I don't care that so-and-so spent 10 years working out 23 hours a day and eating nothing but Wheaties, or that his dedication to his craft cost him his marriage, his truck, and his dog. My wife is a sports nut, and she DVRs the events just so she can skip that crap. For the Olympics she goes out of her way to find foreign coverage so she can see events which don't have a big-name American athlete competing.
Okay, somebody out there must like the human interest stuff. Maybe that would be a way to make science appealing to the masses, to the people who watch all those wretched reality shows and follow the celebrity gossip. But do we really need yet another cult of celebrity?
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
You left out the USA, for some reason. Please explain.
I am actually looking for others to give me data on disproving some of it which is why I ask here: This place is chock full of skeptics and it's one time they're very useful. Thanks.
Well, let's start with the claim that there are 3,600 year cycles. That seems by far the weakest evidence. First, keep in mind that if the cycle length were off by a few hundred years, then that John Moore video wouldn't sell, it'd be a problem for some future generation. He has financial incentive to claim there is a problem now.
Historically, there hasn't been any particular problems in 1800 BC or 5400 BC (or previous times for that matter). The worst of social collapses happened at other times (such as the collapse of Greek and Middle East cultures around 1200 BC or the Dark Ages during the period of 500-1500 AD).
In astronomy, we don't see highly elliptical planetary orbits or signs that a lot of asteroids have been thrown around. Frankly, if a fair sized planet was going through the inner Solar System every 3,600 years, which is very frequent in terms of a Solar System that's 4.5 billion years old, I don't think we'd have an asteroid belt to speak of.
Geologically, there are a number of places that would show evidence of any sort of periodic disturbance, but which don't (at least on that time scale): lake beds, ice cores, and the surface of the Moon (which I might add shows few asteroid impacts in the past few hundred million years!).
Yeah! I stay away from freaks by spending my time reading Slashdot comment threads.
There are biblical records of Noah's flood and Moses (not as bad) though.
No date and the extent of the flood is obviously grossly exaggerated, assuming it actually represents a true event and isn't just a complete myth.
As far as a geologic record, strata of mud or even icefields in the arctic plus antarctic show changes, HUGE ones (beneath the antarctic iceshelf, there is evidence of massive plantlife, on the scale of jungles in fact).
Not in the past few thousand years. That ice has been there for hundreds of thousands to millions of years.
THERE IS AN ASTEROID BELT BETWEEN MARS AND JUPITER (they suspect it was a destroyed planet in fact).
There wouldn't be by the theory of Nibiru.
You claimed to want evidence that the Nibiru scenario was false. I gave you ample evidence. Now it appears that you didn't want such evidence in the first place. I'm not surprised.
Actually.. wars stop the Olympics, not vice-versa.
tone
I wasn't very thorough either, there's a lot more that Moore + others enumerated in many videos + other sources that are reputable (moreso in fact like NASA & other scientific figures).
So what if there's a lot of videos as opposed to a few? Where the evidence? To the contrary, even a cursory look at actual evidence and actual scenarios (like how does a near pass from another planet cause global flooding and how it doesn't kick your planet out of the Solar System in the process?) indicates that the proposed theory just doesn't make sense.
So fine I gave you a "counterpoint".
Let's not forget the key problem. You're missing a planet. No matter how you spread it, the rest is just an empty story without that planet.
Obviously the space program is badly in need of some PR help. Here we've got what promises to be one of the most dramatic off-planet landings ever attempted(sans humans), and they schedule it to happen when it's competing for attention with a worldwide sports event that was scheduled decades ahead of time. Yeah, I know there's a limited launch window, but I'm willing to bet they could have adjusted the timing by a few weeks one way or the other.
And they wonder why space doesn't capture people's imagination anymore. Can you imagine if they'd scheduled the moon landing in the middle of the Superbowl? Sure, the geeks would still all tune in, but I'm betting the widespread sense of awe and collective accomplishment would have suffered considerably.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
If you define fitness as "endurance" then I dunno who'd win. Those acrobat guys are unbelievably strong compared to normal people and they all have heart rates in the 40's, etc.
No sig today...
On "there really is no planet", then why is GOOGLE SKY hiding the spots in the videos at the coordinates noted in those videos with a SQUARE BLACK SPOT?????
So that's where Nibiru is? Then find it. Infrared observation is a bit difficult on Earth, but it'd not out of the league of amateur astronomy.
"as we know them" yeah, but they were still began nearly 3000 years ago in a form that we took and modeled the current olympics on.
Farms on the Moon might be worth considering - but there are many unknowns - lunar soil is very very different from earth soil. Might have to stick to hydroponics till we figure more out.
Exactly... start working out the kinks on the moon and build a good base: then go to mars using the moon as a delivery point.
This rush to mars is nuts... rush to get there, then die. Good job: "Never leave a man behind... except for those guys... yeah... they're real, real far away. Yeah."
soylentnews.org Go there to enjoy the people!
You left out the USA, for some reason. Please explain.
Well. With the exception of the Olympics they're not exactly renowned for participating in international sport, are they? Every time their soccer team does well in the World Cup, heartland insular conservative xenophobes (the same people who are always first to call for war) sharpen their pencils and write articles stating how much they don't care about the global game because they prefer their own version of football. Many take delight in claiming that they don't know the World Cup is happening. Cycling has shot to popularity thanks to the Armstrong factor but it's still very much a minority pursuit in the US and the professional peleton is not dominated by Americans by a long way. Formula 1? They've never even heard of it; their motor racing fans are either watching indycars or they're gun-toting rednecks who watch NASCAR. The big 4 sports in America are American football, basketball, ice hockey and baseball, none of which can claim to be truly globalized. (I know, i know, baseball has a following in Japan and the Caribbean, but hasn't exactly swept the world now, has it?)
Americans who hang out on the left of the political spectrum and are usually opposed to war are the same people who are more likely to take an interest in world sport.
I would argue that there seems to be a correlation between American sporting insularity and American willingness to wage war.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
Water-borne life as we know it requires gravity to clarify the water by essentially centrifuging it. Which tells you how to solve the problem and makes your other point even more important. Space will go to the Chinese, because they have a huge booming economy and are prepared to get people killed trying. The first superpower to get hold of an iceteroid will rule the solar system because while everyone else is doing carefully planned orbits and millisecond burns to conserve their limited reaction mass, people with an iceteroid can make all the oxygen they want (fresh air in a space station!) and can make huge prolonged extravagant burns that let them zoom all over the place like in the movies. This will give them a naval superiority unparalleled in human history.
The gods have decreed that humanity is doomed to extinction here on earth.
"THE END IS NEAR"
%~P
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
Mind you, longevity would go well with a space culture. Rabid breeding is a function of culture. Escaping to space and preventing those cultures from leaving the planet would be a good way to do it. Imagine what the United States would be like if they hadn't filled it up with everyone else's riffraff and it continued to be peopled and run by wealthy scientists and engineers, as it was in the beginning.
that nasty cut on my upper lip I've made this morning while shaving. Thanks for your attention to that matter.
--Stephen Fry
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
What olympics? there is nothing left of the real spirit of the olympics.. The olympics was meant for amateurs, but it's hard to pick any amateur these days, most athletes are real professionals which get paid a lot of money (look at tennis with some people who played on the last wimbledon (which is for professionals, not amateurs), look at the american basketball team (NBA is a professional league))..
We should put the money that's spend on the Olympics into space research as that's where the money and future is, without proper and decent space research we will be extinct in the not so far away future..
The ancient games were about bringing the best warriors from the martial fields into competition with one another. The modern games are about bringing the best athletes (also referred to as "warriors" on a field of battle) together in competition. At the heart, the tradition is the same. We even continue with games designed 3000 years ago and have added even more warlike games into the mix. Does it really matter that they were only open to Greek free men? No. Does it matter if there was a hiatus? No.
The olympics have been around since the 8th century B.C.
Actually the games as we know them started in the 1890's. There was a bit of a gap between the Fourth Century and then.
Technically, the first modern Olympics were in 1850, but it is true the modern Olympic movement was 1890.
No colour or religion ever stopped the bullet from a gun
They need to find some little green men to get people interested. Surely it can't be beyond the wit of the people who faked the moon landings to mock up a few dummy ET corpses for them to "find" on Mars?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
The only real game in the Winter Olympics is curling.
-- BMO
Curling is for people who find bowls too sublte and complicated.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
I know Michelle Jenneke made the games vastly more interesting for me.
On "there really is no planet", then why is GOOGLE SKY hiding the spots in the videos at the coordinates noted in those videos with a SQUARE BLACK SPOT????? That reeks of something wrong in and of itself, bigtime.
OMG, YOU"RE RITE!!! There's these huge BLACK regions all over the place! Google must be covering up hundreds of thousands of planets. Or maybe that's where the UFOs are.
Or maybe it's just that there's a lot of empty space out there.
--Joe
I know quite well enough about the Mars rover - the drivers-to-be have been blogging and tweeting excitedly about it for months.
But why are you having to put on NBC suits? Have you had some chemical leak or something? Does that mean the Mars rovers will be our final remaining legacy?
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Certainly less useful. But not useless.
I agree that we have our priorities backwards, but that doesn't mean being physically fit can't be nice.
Touch everywhere, even when inappropriate.
Next step would be tests on space-based mining, factories and farms[2]. These can be done concurrently.
Then space colonies, and self-sustaining space colonies.
First target - LV-223. I hear there are some nice eggs there ripe for harvesting.
"No matter where you go, there you are." -- Buckaroo Banzai
agreed. All you hear is navy seals this and navy seals that. SAS has always been the best special forces in the world. Because they combine physical and mental fitness instead of producing grunts that can do tactics.
Is SBS just a lame attempt at aping SAS by the way, or do the marines really have the same calibre?
"Everyone knows that vi vi vi is the number of the beast" -- Richard Stallman