Biblical Scholars are still trying to figure out which town Jesus was born in. There are some (albeit wierdos) that claim the Jesus really wasn't born in Bethlahem, and the whole story was cooked for the big J.C. to better fit in with Prophesy.
There are a few good questions skeptics ask:
Why is it mentioned only in one of the Gospels?
Why is there no record of said Roman Census?
Why was he "Jesus of Nazareth" if he was born in Bethlahem?
Why on Earth would a carpenter who worked in Nazereth (namely Joseph) go to Bethlahem to pay taxes?
Please don't let there be a Secretary of Information Technology. The creation of cabinet level posts is like 1984. We create a Homeland Security Secretary to instill fear and insecurity with his "Terror Alert" system. We have a Secretary of Defense who invades other countries. Our Secretary of Education is wrapped up in testing to the point of interfering with actual education.
I shudder to think of what a "Secretary of Information Technology" would be. In my tinfoil sheilded skull I imagine a jack boot on the throat of the internet.
Another example would be ordering a Dell. While there are Dells that are available retail, most of them can only be gotten directly from the manufacturer. The same is true for High-end Macintoshes, most mainframes, and a good deal of tape library market.
A company that does background checks lets hucksters through? And when the matter is discovered, they only notify the people affected when forced to by law. Credibility, meet Mr. Dumpster.
I dunno. Nothing draws the cat to my lap faster than being knee deep in a coding project. At which point the cat ceases to be happy with my lap and figures the keyboard is better. Nothing like having to scrap the last 1/2 hour of changes because it's full of random keystrokes.
Well no. You don't have to mix HIV and ebola to make ebola devastating. The problem with ebola is that it is SO simple it kicks every cell it invades into overdrive to produce more ebola. It has just enough proteins to latch onto a cell and do its job. By the time you realize you have ebola, you are as good as dead.
HIV is the opposite extreme. It's latency period is so long that someone will be infected for years if not decades before the infection is detected. HIV is a large, complex, and fickle virus.
There is already something airborne, virilent, and with a just short enough but just long enough incubation time. It's called influenza and it kills millions per year. And it has been killing people for as long as we have been keeping track of epidemics.
DLPs are a lot more effiecient with light because they use reflection instead of diffustion to control light. A polarizer takes 50% of the light out, even if it passes straight through. DLP's are about 80% reflective. So a white wall is about 40% brighter on a DLP using the same bulb as the LCD.
Depends on how close the system came to the large gravitational mass that flung them off. If they passed really close, and the pull of the larger body exceeded the pull of the star, then yes, a lot of stuff would transfer orbit to the larger body, or been slingshotted off into space.
If the approach wasn't that close, then the planets would still have been a lot more attracted to the "traveling star" than anything else. Their orbits may have been altered slightly by the influence of the larger mass, but they would have stayed.
Ok. Fine. Nit pick about that one thing, and ignore the fact he also had to invent a material called "scrith" just to hold the entire ringworld together, and that the energy required to pull the whole trick off would have been more than the output of that star for a few million years...
Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving, And revolving at 900 miles per hour, That's orbiting at 19 miles a second, so it's reckoned, A sun that's the source of all our power. The sun and you and me and all the stars that we can see, Are moving at a million miles a day In an outer spiral arm at 40,000 miles an hour, Of a Galaxy we call the Milky Way.
Observationally, we don't know. It required a lot of observations to gauge its proper speed. It is going to require a lot more to gauge how much that speed is changing.
One moment of insight I had into how much we don't know about our universe was fooling around with some software from NASA. (Perks of working in a science museum with a planetarium.) One of the items you could toggle on you flights around the solar system and surrounds and... well just about anywhere in the observable universe... was paralax error.
That's a neat orange strip that shows all of the possible values that the paralax, the difference between the angles observed at different places. It's used to calculate distance. Even on nearby stars, we have paralax errors that place them over ranges of hundreds of light years.
We can measure the relative direction of a star easily. Determining the distance is largely voodoo. Especially when you throw in "proper motion." What we see as the constellations are changing slowly above our heads as the stars themselved move relative to one another and Sol.
When they quoted the mass of the star, did they take into account General Relatively. Namely, that something traveling that fast increases in mass as time slows down.
Um, no. While fast, most bodies like Comets take hundreds of years to reach the apex of their orbit. Sure, you would save on fuel, but those savings would be offset by having enough supplies around to maintain a small population.
The folks starting the Journey sure as hell aren't going to see the end of it.
Slashdot Mirror
For as often as the second head came up (not very often), I can see why the producer would yank it. It really didn't add that much to the character.
There are a few good questions skeptics ask: Why is it mentioned only in one of the Gospels? Why is there no record of said Roman Census? Why was he "Jesus of Nazareth" if he was born in Bethlahem? Why on Earth would a carpenter who worked in Nazereth (namely Joseph) go to Bethlahem to pay taxes?
I don't take a stand on the matter, personally.
Damn Vogons. Well, time to update Earth's entry...
No, no, It's "Our's, See!"
I shudder to think of what a "Secretary of Information Technology" would be. In my tinfoil sheilded skull I imagine a jack boot on the throat of the internet.
Another example would be ordering a Dell. While there are Dells that are available retail, most of them can only be gotten directly from the manufacturer. The same is true for High-end Macintoshes, most mainframes, and a good deal of tape library market.
Besides, last I checked (back when I bought mine) there is a 6-8 week waiting list for Xserves. (Confessions of an Apple Fan Boy.)
What kind of troll would parrot back such a hackneyed old line.
A company that does background checks lets hucksters through? And when the matter is discovered, they only notify the people affected when forced to by law. Credibility, meet Mr. Dumpster.
Cop: Son, is that an evil bit I see on your header?
Kid under flashlight: No sir, it's... it's my brother's. Yeah...
Well at least we will get some regulation for all that signal intercept.
The best cops are the ones you don't know are there.
I dunno. Nothing draws the cat to my lap faster than being knee deep in a coding project. At which point the cat ceases to be happy with my lap and figures the keyboard is better. Nothing like having to scrap the last 1/2 hour of changes because it's full of random keystrokes.
HIV is the opposite extreme. It's latency period is so long that someone will be infected for years if not decades before the infection is detected. HIV is a large, complex, and fickle virus.
There is already something airborne, virilent, and with a just short enough but just long enough incubation time. It's called influenza and it kills millions per year. And it has been killing people for as long as we have been keeping track of epidemics.
DLPs are a lot more effiecient with light because they use reflection instead of diffustion to control light. A polarizer takes 50% of the light out, even if it passes straight through. DLP's are about 80% reflective. So a white wall is about 40% brighter on a DLP using the same bulb as the LCD.
For Christ sake we have picture of Scott McNealy in a Penguin suit and Merril Lynch basically telling them "Buy RedHat or Novel".
I think he is in the same branch of the military as General Panic and General Failure.
If the approach wasn't that close, then the planets would still have been a lot more attracted to the "traveling star" than anything else. Their orbits may have been altered slightly by the influence of the larger mass, but they would have stayed.
Or is that bring me a steak and throw another virgin on the flames?
Ok. Fine. Nit pick about that one thing, and ignore the fact he also had to invent a material called "scrith" just to hold the entire ringworld together, and that the energy required to pull the whole trick off would have been more than the output of that star for a few million years...
Observationally, we don't know. It required a lot of observations to gauge its proper speed. It is going to require a lot more to gauge how much that speed is changing.
One moment of insight I had into how much we don't know about our universe was fooling around with some software from NASA. (Perks of working in a science museum with a planetarium.) One of the items you could toggle on you flights around the solar system and surrounds and ... well just about anywhere in the observable universe... was paralax error.
That's a neat orange strip that shows all of the possible values that the paralax, the difference between the angles observed at different places. It's used to calculate distance. Even on nearby stars, we have paralax errors that place them over ranges of hundreds of light years.
We can measure the relative direction of a star easily. Determining the distance is largely voodoo. Especially when you throw in "proper motion." What we see as the constellations are changing slowly above our heads as the stars themselved move relative to one another and Sol.
I wonder how many we don't see leaving because they didn't cheap out, and built a Dysen Sphere instead?
When they quoted the mass of the star, did they take into account General Relatively. Namely, that something traveling that fast increases in mass as time slows down.
The folks starting the Journey sure as hell aren't going to see the end of it.