Amory Lovins, the well known clean-tech maven, agrees with you. He advocates removing all energy subsidies to create a truly level playing field. But the Big-Oil crowd will never let that happen, because they know that without the massive support they get from the government, they would rapidly be crushed by competition from renewables. In the end, it doesn't matter though, because renewables keep getting better and cheaper while fossil fuels keep getting more expensive. It's just a matter of time.
Stalin and Mao did try very hard to eliminate religion in their states.
Yes, but not "for the cause of atheism"... they did so because they couldn't tolerate any "authority" that might oppose their power, whether institutional or individual. In the meantime, they were quite happy to co-opt the superstitious tendencies of their populations to encourage a "cult of personality" -- especially in Mao's case.
Seems like we mostly agree that tyranny is different from terrorism, though they may often use similar methods. I'm sure there are plenty of atheists (or at least "doubters") among the terrorists, and doubtless many religious believers among the tyrants. But the the guys who actually strap on the explosive vests...? I doubt there are many atheists among that lot.
Yes, in a way. Humans (via GHG emissions) put more energy into the system, causing it to behave more erratically. The recent "polar vortex" event is just one example of this.
I would say Stalin and Mao were dictators who sometimes used terrorism as a tool. Call it state terrorism.
Obviously the GP is a bit foolish to suggest there are no atheist terrorists. Politics is just as capable of producing terrorists as religion is. But by the same token, there's no more truth to the old chestnut that says atheists are "morally rudderless" and thus more liable to commit atrocities.
Both Stalin and Mao may have been atheists, but they both drew on a vast tradition of superstition among their respective populations. Hitler's armies famously used the slogan "Gott mit uns" ("God with us") on their uniforms, and had a cozy relationship with the Vatican.
OTOH, perhaps the GP was referring to "atheist terrorists" who use terrorist tactics to advance the "cause" of atheism. In that case, I would have to agree with him, at least provisionally. If you can show me evidence of "militant atheists" blowing up buses and planes in the name of atheism, I'll take a look.
This guy has the most informative debunking of BS on both sides of of the issue. His series of YouTube videos should be required viewing for policy makers and "armchair experts" alike.
I wouldn't say "decisive", but 2014 should be a great year for both Dragon and Dream Chaser. I'm especially looking forward to the first test flights of the Mk-II Dragon with propulsive landing capability. We might even see it flown with a test crew by the end of the year. That would be sweet. Still, neither SpaceX nor SNC expect to get "over the hump" until 2015, though both have ambitious test regimes planned in the meantime.
SpaceX is also planning/hoping to launch their first Falcon Heavy this year, as well as testing their 1st-stage recovery scheme. If they can enter 2015 with the capability to recover and reuse both 1st stage and capsule of any launch, they will have an unassailable lead over the competition. Even if they can't recover the 2nd stage, they could still (conceivably) cut the effective cost per launch by 60 or 80 percent under their current price, which is already the lowest in the industry. (Even the Chinese say they can't beat SpaceX on cost.)
The next few years will be interesting indeed. In addition to SpaceX and SNC, we can also look forward to Planetary Resources getting their first few "birds" in the sky, the Google Lunar X-Prize, Bigelow Aerospace's first commercial hab/lab, and a few others as well. Space hasn't been this much fun since the 60s.;-)
Agree. Though the plan is far-fetched, they are approaching it seriously and have some "credible" people on the team. To me, the most "low-credibility" aspect is their ambitious schedule. For many folks, the sheer audacity of the plan also hurts their credibility. But this may change somewhat in the next few years, as more and more privately funded space projects make headlines.
A few examples: - both Virgin Galactic and XCOR start service to paying passengers - SpaceX launches first Falcon Heavy, first man-rated Dragon, and first reusable stage - MoonEx (or some other team) wins the Google Lunar X-Prize - Planetary Resources launches its first swarm of asteroid-hunting satellites
As people see more private-sector success stories and costs keep coming down, the Mars-One plan might not seem so far-fetched anymore. It will be interesting to see...
Yes, unfortunately this meme seems to have infected the discourse. Niall Ferguson was on Bill Maher's show a couple of months ago, and embarrassed himself badly by completely misunderstanding this distinction.
What "GMO" means in the modern context has nothing to do with the line-breeding that has been going on for thousands of years... unless you can show me some way to make an octopus successfully mate with a rice plant (without the aid of gene splicing in the lab).
Folks, this is not your grandpa's "animal husbandry" anymore, it's playing with a kind of "fire" we don't yet fully understand. I don't know about you, but personally, I would recommend that we tread cautiously in this new territory of knowledge.
Solar output has been gradually increasing for a long time, and some "skeptics" claim this is the real reason for the climate changes we've observed (ie: not greenhouse gas emissions). But the emerging consensus is that this increase in solar output is nowhere near enough to account for the warming we've seen in the last century.
It might have something to do with Michigan's GOP governor appointing an emergency manager last March to take over the city (hoping to make an "example" of it). One could also argue that Detroit has been hardest hit among the cities you mentioned. It has lost nearly 70% of its population in the last couple of decades, and those few who remain have seen their property values plummet, taking the city's tax base down with them.
Thirty years of Reaganomics has crushed the American middle class and hollowed out our economy. It amazes me that there are still some people who think more of the same is what we need right now.
punch in beta.slashdot.org. Then vomit in your mouth
Damn you, girlintraining! I just checked out the new "beta" site and now I'm choking back the bile. Holy shit, does that ever suck! It's like a satanic spawn of HuffPo and FB... Painful.
I wonder how long the "legacy" version will remain available after the changeover? Heaven help us.
Although it will be a while before we get mass drivers working on the moon, even in the meantime, it's still much cheaper to boost out of Luna's gravity well than Earth's. Anyone who doesn't think there's a "business model" up there hasn't been paying attention to the last few years of development.
How many countries where Muslims are in the majority have such a theocracy?
Hmm... let's see... Saudi Arabia, Iran, Afghanistan (under the Taliban)...? Arguably Pakistan is teetering on the brink of theocracy. Several of the smaller Gulf states are dictatorial regimes with varying degrees of theocratic influence.
I agree with your overall point that Islam is not the giant bogeyman the many seem to think it is, but its track record with "democracy & freedom" is not without blemish.
Who needs planets? If the whole universe is a comfy "room temperature" you'd just need a bit of free-floating primordial soup to brew up some RNA, and with no gravity well to escape, it could spread rapidly throughout.
Hm, no, that doesn't solve "the waste issue" it only makes one aspect of it easier to deal with. It's useless for spent nuclear fuel, for example.
The problem with SNF is that it's all mixed together. Most of the isotopes are actually quite useful for medical or industrial uses, but only if they are isolated from each other. As described in this video SNF from today's nuke fleet is like taking everything from your pantry and dumping it out on the floor in one big pile. There isn't much you can do other than shovel it into the dumpster. But if you have flour, sugar, salt, etc. all in separate containers you can use them to bake a cake.
This level of fine-grained reprocessing is difficult and expensive for solid nuclear fuels, but relatively easy and cheap to do with liquid nuclear fuels. This is one reason why molten salt reactors are getting more attention in recent years. It's just so much easier to chemically separate the various byproducts "on the fly" while the reactor is online.
Sorry, I should have specified those with a "predisposition" to obesity, whether by genetics or prenatal environment or some other cause. They have various "breeds" of lab rats with such disorders, and they respond to low-calorie diets the way I described.
There was a study of Dutch people born during of WWII, and those who were in a certain stage of gestation (2nd trimester IIRC) during a particularly harsh period of widespread starvation grew up with a much greater propensity toward obesity. Such people would also respond like those rats to a low-calorie diet, preserving the "fat ratio" at the cost of growth or something else. (Sorry, no citation handy. I saw it referenced in another YouTube talk.)
The point is, the standard "received wisdom" about calories-in-calories-out is not necessarily applicable to everyone equally. As the GGP was saying, it's a lot more complicated and "individual" than that.
Slashdot Mirror
Amory Lovins, the well known clean-tech maven, agrees with you. He advocates removing all energy subsidies to create a truly level playing field. But the Big-Oil crowd will never let that happen, because they know that without the massive support they get from the government, they would rapidly be crushed by competition from renewables. In the end, it doesn't matter though, because renewables keep getting better and cheaper while fossil fuels keep getting more expensive. It's just a matter of time.
James Lee was motivated (apparently) by environmental extremism, not atheism.
Stalin and Mao did try very hard to eliminate religion in their states.
Yes, but not "for the cause of atheism"... they did so because they couldn't tolerate any "authority" that might oppose their power, whether institutional or individual. In the meantime, they were quite happy to co-opt the superstitious tendencies of their populations to encourage a "cult of personality" -- especially in Mao's case.
Seems like we mostly agree that tyranny is different from terrorism, though they may often use similar methods. I'm sure there are plenty of atheists (or at least "doubters") among the terrorists, and doubtless many religious believers among the tyrants. But the the guys who actually strap on the explosive vests...? I doubt there are many atheists among that lot.
Yes, in a way. Humans (via GHG emissions) put more energy into the system, causing it to behave more erratically. The recent "polar vortex" event is just one example of this.
I would say Stalin and Mao were dictators who sometimes used terrorism as a tool. Call it state terrorism.
Obviously the GP is a bit foolish to suggest there are no atheist terrorists. Politics is just as capable of producing terrorists as religion is. But by the same token, there's no more truth to the old chestnut that says atheists are "morally rudderless" and thus more liable to commit atrocities.
Both Stalin and Mao may have been atheists, but they both drew on a vast tradition of superstition among their respective populations. Hitler's armies famously used the slogan "Gott mit uns" ("God with us") on their uniforms, and had a cozy relationship with the Vatican.
OTOH, perhaps the GP was referring to "atheist terrorists" who use terrorist tactics to advance the "cause" of atheism. In that case, I would have to agree with him, at least provisionally. If you can show me evidence of "militant atheists" blowing up buses and planes in the name of atheism, I'll take a look.
I forgot to mention, Mr. Hadfield is a science journalist with dry, British wit and deadpan delivery, making it entertaining as well as informative.
Actually, his series on Creationism vs. Evolution is also quite amusing. ;-)
This guy has the most informative debunking of BS on both sides of of the issue. His series of YouTube videos should be required viewing for policy makers and "armchair experts" alike.
I wouldn't say "decisive", but 2014 should be a great year for both Dragon and Dream Chaser. I'm especially looking forward to the first test flights of the Mk-II Dragon with propulsive landing capability. We might even see it flown with a test crew by the end of the year. That would be sweet. Still, neither SpaceX nor SNC expect to get "over the hump" until 2015, though both have ambitious test regimes planned in the meantime.
SpaceX is also planning/hoping to launch their first Falcon Heavy this year, as well as testing their 1st-stage recovery scheme. If they can enter 2015 with the capability to recover and reuse both 1st stage and capsule of any launch, they will have an unassailable lead over the competition. Even if they can't recover the 2nd stage, they could still (conceivably) cut the effective cost per launch by 60 or 80 percent under their current price, which is already the lowest in the industry. (Even the Chinese say they can't beat SpaceX on cost.)
The next few years will be interesting indeed. In addition to SpaceX and SNC, we can also look forward to Planetary Resources getting their first few "birds" in the sky, the Google Lunar X-Prize, Bigelow Aerospace's first commercial hab/lab, and a few others as well. Space hasn't been this much fun since the 60s. ;-)
Agree. Though the plan is far-fetched, they are approaching it seriously and have some "credible" people on the team. To me, the most "low-credibility" aspect is their ambitious schedule. For many folks, the sheer audacity of the plan also hurts their credibility. But this may change somewhat in the next few years, as more and more privately funded space projects make headlines.
A few examples:
- both Virgin Galactic and XCOR start service to paying passengers
- SpaceX launches first Falcon Heavy, first man-rated Dragon, and first reusable stage
- MoonEx (or some other team) wins the Google Lunar X-Prize
- Planetary Resources launches its first swarm of asteroid-hunting satellites
As people see more private-sector success stories and costs keep coming down, the Mars-One plan might not seem so far-fetched anymore. It will be interesting to see...
Yes, unfortunately this meme seems to have infected the discourse. Niall Ferguson was on Bill Maher's show a couple of months ago, and embarrassed himself badly by completely misunderstanding this distinction.
What "GMO" means in the modern context has nothing to do with the line-breeding that has been going on for thousands of years... unless you can show me some way to make an octopus successfully mate with a rice plant (without the aid of gene splicing in the lab).
Folks, this is not your grandpa's "animal husbandry" anymore, it's playing with a kind of "fire" we don't yet fully understand. I don't know about you, but personally, I would recommend that we tread cautiously in this new territory of knowledge.
> laid with MINIX...
Works better if you say, "Linus knew MINIX."
...is the actual name of a leading researcher in this area. He gave a rather fascinating Google TechTalk a few weeks ago. Well worth the time.
Citation please?
Wish I had mod points today. +1 Insightful.
Solar output has been gradually increasing for a long time, and some "skeptics" claim this is the real reason for the climate changes we've observed (ie: not greenhouse gas emissions). But the emerging consensus is that this increase in solar output is nowhere near enough to account for the warming we've seen in the last century.
It might have something to do with Michigan's GOP governor appointing an emergency manager last March to take over the city (hoping to make an "example" of it). One could also argue that Detroit has been hardest hit among the cities you mentioned. It has lost nearly 70% of its population in the last couple of decades, and those few who remain have seen their property values plummet, taking the city's tax base down with them.
Thirty years of Reaganomics has crushed the American middle class and hollowed out our economy. It amazes me that there are still some people who think more of the same is what we need right now.
YDIW...
punch in beta.slashdot.org. Then vomit in your mouth
Damn you, girlintraining! I just checked out the new "beta" site and now I'm choking back the bile. Holy shit, does that ever suck! It's like a satanic spawn of HuffPo and FB... Painful.
I wonder how long the "legacy" version will remain available after the changeover? Heaven help us.
[mod parent up, please]
Although it will be a while before we get mass drivers working on the moon, even in the meantime, it's still much cheaper to boost out of Luna's gravity well than Earth's. Anyone who doesn't think there's a "business model" up there hasn't been paying attention to the last few years of development.
a Kingdom is a bit different to a Theocracy
Not if the kingdom specifically supports a particular religion. (Actually, a particular sect of a particular religion.)
the same can be said with Tribal councils
Ditto.
Try harder.
No need to.
How many countries where Muslims are in the majority have such a theocracy?
Hmm... let's see... Saudi Arabia, Iran, Afghanistan (under the Taliban)...? Arguably Pakistan is teetering on the brink of theocracy. Several of the smaller Gulf states are dictatorial regimes with varying degrees of theocratic influence.
I agree with your overall point that Islam is not the giant bogeyman the many seem to think it is, but its track record with "democracy & freedom" is not without blemish.
life-bearing planets
Who needs planets? If the whole universe is a comfy "room temperature" you'd just need a bit of free-floating primordial soup to brew up some RNA, and with no gravity well to escape, it could spread rapidly throughout.
Let me google that for you...
Hm, no, that doesn't solve "the waste issue" it only makes one aspect of it easier to deal with. It's useless for spent nuclear fuel, for example.
The problem with SNF is that it's all mixed together. Most of the isotopes are actually quite useful for medical or industrial uses, but only if they are isolated from each other. As described in this video SNF from today's nuke fleet is like taking everything from your pantry and dumping it out on the floor in one big pile. There isn't much you can do other than shovel it into the dumpster. But if you have flour, sugar, salt, etc. all in separate containers you can use them to bake a cake.
This level of fine-grained reprocessing is difficult and expensive for solid nuclear fuels, but relatively easy and cheap to do with liquid nuclear fuels. This is one reason why molten salt reactors are getting more attention in recent years. It's just so much easier to chemically separate the various byproducts "on the fly" while the reactor is online.
You should learn how to code a URL in HTML before calling someone else a retard on Slashdot.
Sorry, I should have specified those with a "predisposition" to obesity, whether by genetics or prenatal environment or some other cause. They have various "breeds" of lab rats with such disorders, and they respond to low-calorie diets the way I described.
There was a study of Dutch people born during of WWII, and those who were in a certain stage of gestation (2nd trimester IIRC) during a particularly harsh period of widespread starvation grew up with a much greater propensity toward obesity. Such people would also respond like those rats to a low-calorie diet, preserving the "fat ratio" at the cost of growth or something else. (Sorry, no citation handy. I saw it referenced in another YouTube talk.)
The point is, the standard "received wisdom" about calories-in-calories-out is not necessarily applicable to everyone equally. As the GGP was saying, it's a lot more complicated and "individual" than that.