I only remember being scared by 1 episode. It seems like it was a Tom Baker episode and there was some monster that lived in a jungle like habitat. It entered a lab through some kind of portal thing, attacked people and then went back into hiding.
I was much the same, I never really understood the "hiding behind the couch" thing. But Planet of Evil was one of the few Who stories that scared the bejeezus out of me as a kid...
Ahh, thanks for the tip, in a few months I will be travelling to Canberra and spending most of a week or so sitting in the ANY library! So I will be prepared...
Indeed, as somebody who spends a lot of time in Australian research libraries, I've never seen one that used LOC. In fact I was only very vaguely aware of its existence, and was surprised to learn from this story's posts than in the US it seems to be more common than DDC in research libraries!
Don't be ridiculous. Solar power would be sufficient - just cover every available surface of the mouse and keyboard with photovoltaic cells and away you go.
You obviously haven't read many critiques of your little theory then - even Snopes has the same explanation for the sand (as well as, incidentally, a photo of some aircraft debris on the lawn).
What I don't understand is what faking an airliner crash into the Pentagon is suposed to achieve, above and beyond the real WTC crashes (I suppose you don't deny those were real?). If only the WTC had been attacked, would there have been any less reason to go after al-Qaeda? Or if there was "only" a truck-bomb at the Pentagon, that would similarly be not good enough somehow? And, well, presumably these conspirators arranged the WTC crashes as well? If so, why couldn't they just arrange a real crash into the Pentagon? Why cause the missing airliner to crash somewhere else and then fake the Pentagon crash?
You conspiracy nuts never see the wood for the trees. You get caught up in these minor inconsistencies and never think to check whether it makes sense in the bigger picture.
How is it stationary? The Earth's magnetosphere is asymmetric and Sun-oriented, so in fact an elevator couldn't possibly see an unvarying magnetic field as it orbits.
That woud be Damien Broderick, who shamefully I have never read (bar a couple of short stories a decade or more ago), despite his being a research fellow at my uni!
Now that's funny. Because, of course, when you have a religious elementary or high school, it teaches just one brand of Christianity [that is, whatever denomination the founders happened to be]. Therefore, such schools are called parochial schools. So any Catholic prochial school would therefore be an oxymoron.
Actually, you've got it exactly backwards - parochial is the adjectival form of parish, so parochial schools are so called because they are parish schools, not because of their narrow teachings. Of course, their teachings are singularly narrow, and so parochial also came to possess the more common meaning it does today.
And while I'm doing the pedant thing, yep, it's Tolkien:)
(I've also heard statistics that the US uses the same amount of power it did in the 1970s... because even though we power more, we do it with less.)
How nice it must be for you, that the "statistics" you heard jibe with your preconceived notion. Let's look at some data though, shall we?
According to Wisconsin's Department of Administration total US energy consumption stood at 68.0 quadrillion BTUs in 1970 (of which 63.5 quadrillion BTUs was in greenhouse-producing hydrocarbons). The comparable figures for 2001 were 97.0 quadrillion BTUs total (of which 82.4 quadrillion BTUs was in hydrocarbons). That's an increase of nearly 43% in 31 years, in total energy consumption, and nearly 30% in hydrocarbon burning energy consumption. Other figures are even worse, eg growth in electricity sales in the period 1990-2001 was 24% according to the Department of Energy.
Now, what these figures don't show is the actual growth in greenhouse emissions; efficiency improvements could also mean that although more power is being generated, less hydrocarbons are being burnt to generate it. No doubt there are better sources out there, but this page at the DOE shows US greenhouse emissions gently rising since the early 1980s, and this one likewise shows US energy consumption per capita gently rising over the same period (presumably the turning point was when people got over the oil shocks of the 1970s and stopped worrying about energy efficiency).
So while more efficient technology is no doubt having an important effect, it's not enough to negate that of increasing energy demands. You'll need to let go of your comfort blanket, or at least find a new one...
True. It's also the case that there will always be gaps... once you find a species to fill a gap, you've now got two more
gaps on either side of it... it's always going to be an issue when applying a discrete concept such as that of species to what is in reality a continuum.
No, with all due respect to the fictional Dr. Arroway, her numbers are bogus. Let's do an order of magnitude calulation... so there are 10^11 stars in the galaxy. If one in a million (10^6) stars has planets, then 10^5 stars in the galaxy have planets. Take the most liberal of your estimates for the number of planets per solar system, which conveniently enough is a nice round 10. So there are 10^6 planets in the galaxy. Now if one in a million planets has life, then there are 10^0 planets with life in the galaxy (ie 1). And if one in a million planets with life has intelligent life, then there are 10^-6 civilisations in the galaxy, give or take a factor of 10. Put another way, a million Milky Way-type galaxies chosen at random would have about 1 civilisation between them. Not millions per galaxy.
Of course, those "1 in a million" numbers are plucked out of nowhere, anyway. For a start, the fraction of stars with planets is going to be far higher than that. Plucking some of my own numbers out of the air, we have 100 known planetary systems within 400 light years. And the space density of stars in these parts is about 10^-3 per cubic light year. 400 ly radius is about 6.4x10^7 cubic ly, which equates to about 6x10^4 stars within that volume. So the fraction of stars with planets in the solar neighbourhood is (at a lower limit, because there's no way we have done a comprehensive search yet) 1 in 6x10^2, that is 1 in 600. Call it 1 in 1000, and you'd only need 1000 galaxies to have an average of 1 civilisation between them:)
I don't think you understand my point, but then I didn't understand yours either. When you said Kennedy anticipated getting to the moon by 1968, when he had a reasonable expectation of being re-elected, I thought you meant Kennedy wanted a moon landing to help him get re-elected in 1968, not that he would have already been re-elected in 1964. Sorry.
Not true! Kennedy anticipated getting to the moon by 1968, when he had a reasonable expectation of being re-elected. If it weren't for the Apollo I tragedy, more than likely we would have succeded.
Presumably then, he also anticipated getting Congress
to rescind the 22nd Amendment limiting presidents to a maximum of two terms in office. (Hint: Kennedy was elected President in 1960. You do the math.)
No, Hitler didn't stop anybody from using "Jewish physics". There was a movement for deutsche Physik (Aryan or German physics) promoted by two eminent physicists (Johannes Stark and Philip Lenard), but it ultimately failed. It only received intermittent interest from the SS high command, and virtually none from Hitler, even though Stark and Lenard had impeccable Nazi credentials to go along with their scientific one. About the most that happened was that in became inadvisable to mention eg Einstein's name when talking about relativity (although Heisenberg had a scare when he was accused of being a "white Jew" in the SS newspaper Das Schwarze Korps, and while under this cloud was denied the theoretical physics chair at Munich).
Check out Mark Walker, German national socialism and the quest for nuclear power, 1939-1949 (Cambridge, 1989) and Paul Lawrence Rose, Heisenberg and the Nazi atomic bomb project: a study in German culture (Berkeley, 1998), for a start - I wrote an essay on the deutsche Physik movement a couple of years ago, but the references are at home...
Even most Mac OS X users replace the single-button mouse with a triple.
Wow, it just must be a coincidence that as an IT manager in a mostly-Mac university department I've never seen even one three-button mouse in use under OSX! Hell, I don't even use one, and I'm an X11 user from way back...
Sorry bud, but you said "asteroids, comets and other phenomenon which haven't been classified yet", nothing about satellites. "Tracking centres" have nothing to do with comets and asteroids; that's an astronomer's job and they don't use the term UFO ever (and you can trust me on that; I used to be one). If that wasn't what you meant, well, you shouldn'ta said it...
About "tracking centres", well, I have no evidence either way. But I would have doubted they used it in that sense, and even if they did, they would not have priority, because the term UFO predates Sputnik (just - it was apparently first used in a Blue Book publication in 1956) and hence any tracking centres. So if they do use the term UFO in tracking centres, they've imported it from popular parlance and not vice versa.
Nobody in astronomy calls asteroids etc UFOs, even before they are positively identified. They don't use the term at all - it has no technical meaning, only the lay one.
Sorry to be a pedant, but technically the only way to violate Godwin's law is to have an infinitely long discussion which never invokes the Nazis or Hitler at all:)
I hope in the coming century we realize that the failings of our icons make them more human and more admirable in their courage and do not keep hold the hollow tradition of ripping them down simply because we can.
Right, and how exactly are we to know what the "failings of our icons" are if we don't examine them critically??
Slashdot Mirror
Planet of Evil ?
I was much the same, I never really understood the "hiding behind the couch" thing. But Planet of Evil was one of the few Who stories that scared the bejeezus out of me as a kid ...
Trust ANU to be different. Elitist snobs! :)
Indeed, as somebody who spends a lot of time in Australian research libraries, I've never seen one that used LOC. In fact I was only very vaguely aware of its existence, and was surprised to learn from this story's posts than in the US it seems to be more common than DDC in research libraries!
Don't be ridiculous. Solar power would be sufficient - just cover every available surface of the mouse and keyboard with photovoltaic cells and away you go.
Yep, it's definitely well written, and a fascinating story too. If you are at all interested in the topic, grab it for sure!
What I don't understand is what faking an airliner crash into the Pentagon is suposed to achieve, above and beyond the real WTC crashes (I suppose you don't deny those were real?). If only the WTC had been attacked, would there have been any less reason to go after al-Qaeda? Or if there was "only" a truck-bomb at the Pentagon, that would similarly be not good enough somehow? And, well, presumably these conspirators arranged the WTC crashes as well? If so, why couldn't they just arrange a real crash into the Pentagon? Why cause the missing airliner to crash somewhere else and then fake the Pentagon crash?
You conspiracy nuts never see the wood for the trees. You get caught up in these minor inconsistencies and never think to check whether it makes sense in the bigger picture.
How is it stationary? The Earth's magnetosphere is asymmetric and Sun-oriented, so in fact an elevator couldn't possibly see an unvarying magnetic field as it orbits.
That woud be Damien Broderick, who shamefully I have never read (bar a couple of short stories a decade or more ago), despite his being a research fellow at my uni!
Actually, you've got it exactly backwards - parochial is the adjectival form of parish, so parochial schools are so called because they are parish schools, not because of their narrow teachings. Of course, their teachings are singularly narrow, and so parochial also came to possess the more common meaning it does today.
And while I'm doing the pedant thing, yep, it's Tolkien :)
I'd agree, and according to the terms of the Clarke-Asimov Treaty (or Asimov-Clarke Treaty, if you prefer), Asimov did too :)
Dramatic and boring! That's a neat trick ...
How nice it must be for you, that the "statistics" you heard jibe with your preconceived notion. Let's look at some data though, shall we?
According to Wisconsin's Department of Administration total US energy consumption stood at 68.0 quadrillion BTUs in 1970 (of which 63.5 quadrillion BTUs was in greenhouse-producing hydrocarbons). The comparable figures for 2001 were 97.0 quadrillion BTUs total (of which 82.4 quadrillion BTUs was in hydrocarbons). That's an increase of nearly 43% in 31 years, in total energy consumption, and nearly 30% in hydrocarbon burning energy consumption. Other figures are even worse, eg growth in electricity sales in the period 1990-2001 was 24% according to the Department of Energy.
Now, what these figures don't show is the actual growth in greenhouse emissions; efficiency improvements could also mean that although more power is being generated, less hydrocarbons are being burnt to generate it. No doubt there are better sources out there, but this page at the DOE shows US greenhouse emissions gently rising since the early 1980s, and this one likewise shows US energy consumption per capita gently rising over the same period (presumably the turning point was when people got over the oil shocks of the 1970s and stopped worrying about energy efficiency).
So while more efficient technology is no doubt having an important effect, it's not enough to negate that of increasing energy demands. You'll need to let go of your comfort blanket, or at least find a new one ...
True. It's also the case that there will always be gaps ... once you find a species to fill a gap, you've now got two more
gaps on either side of it ... it's always going to be an issue when applying a discrete concept such as that of species to what is in reality a continuum.
You think the people at the Violence Policy Center are runaway slaves? You're an even bigger moron than I thought ...
Um, yeah ... right. That makes sense.
Of course, those "1 in a million" numbers are plucked out of nowhere, anyway. For a start, the fraction of stars with planets is going to be far higher than that. Plucking some of my own numbers out of the air, we have 100 known planetary systems within 400 light years. And the space density of stars in these parts is about 10^-3 per cubic light year. 400 ly radius is about 6.4x10^7 cubic ly, which equates to about 6x10^4 stars within that volume. So the fraction of stars with planets in the solar neighbourhood is (at a lower limit, because there's no way we have done a comprehensive search yet) 1 in 6x10^2, that is 1 in 600. Call it 1 in 1000, and you'd only need 1000 galaxies to have an average of 1 civilisation between them :)
Having said all that, I remain a SETI optimist ...
Read The Case for Mars by Robert Zubrin. Trust me! A manned Mars mission is much more feasible than you think.
I don't think you understand my point, but then I didn't understand yours either. When you said Kennedy anticipated getting to the moon by 1968, when he had a reasonable expectation of being re-elected, I thought you meant Kennedy wanted a moon landing to help him get re-elected in 1968, not that he would have already been re-elected in 1964. Sorry.
Presumably then, he also anticipated getting Congress to rescind the 22nd Amendment limiting presidents to a maximum of two terms in office. (Hint: Kennedy was elected President in 1960. You do the math.)
Check out Mark Walker, German national socialism and the quest for nuclear power, 1939-1949 (Cambridge, 1989) and Paul Lawrence Rose, Heisenberg and the Nazi atomic bomb project: a study in German culture (Berkeley, 1998), for a start - I wrote an essay on the deutsche Physik movement a couple of years ago, but the references are at home ...
Wow, it just must be a coincidence that as an IT manager in a mostly-Mac university department I've never seen even one three-button mouse in use under OSX! Hell, I don't even use one, and I'm an X11 user from way back ...
About "tracking centres", well, I have no evidence either way. But I would have doubted they used it in that sense, and even if they did, they would not have priority, because the term UFO predates Sputnik (just - it was apparently first used in a Blue Book publication in 1956) and hence any tracking centres. So if they do use the term UFO in tracking centres, they've imported it from popular parlance and not vice versa.
Nobody in astronomy calls asteroids etc UFOs, even before they are positively identified. They don't use the term at all - it has no technical meaning, only the lay one.
Sorry to be a pedant, but technically the only way to violate Godwin's law is to have an infinitely long discussion which never invokes the Nazis or Hitler at all :)
Right, and how exactly are we to know what the "failings of our icons" are if we don't examine them critically??