Last week I attended a talk given by Dr. Nick Hoffman of La Trobe University (Melbourne, Australia), who is one of the originators of the CO2-not-H2O theory, which he calls "White Mars"
(white as in dry ice, and yes it's a nod to Kim Stanley Robinson). I was very impressed. He did
a very good job of pointing out the emperor's nudity.
PS: can people PLEASE stop saying "canals" when they mean "channels"? It's important: "canals" implies artificiality, "channels" can be natural in origin. (Damn the Italian language for having "canali" as the word for channels.) There are NO canals on Mars, but there are channels.
Except that is is much larger than the next largest asteroid or comet, as far as we know.
There are a few moons bigger (the Moon, Titan
and the Galileans) but they don't orbit the Sun independently. Hence, Pluto is a planet.
(Yes, I KNOW the IAU is considering reclassifying
Pluto as a minor planet, but as a former astronomer I think they are nutty.)
Yeah, and what a crock of shit MacOS is for
serving. I have a MacOS 8.6 (was 9.0.4)
server which controls an iMac lab. Damn thing
crashes once a week (used to once every 1-2 days,
until I downgraded AppleShare IP). I can't wait
until MacAdministrator 2.0 comes out, then I can
run the iMacs from our Solaris server(which only
goes down when I tell it to!).
Ever wonder why Apple use Solaris for www.apple.com instead of MacOS? It's a crappy OS for serving,
that's why.
What I'm saying is there's a lot of assumptions being made. ...
Some good scientists admit these assumptions up front, for example
http://www.icr.org/research/sa/sa-r03.htm clearly says:
This is a troll, right? Or you are a creationist. The above URL is at the
Institute for Creation Research, a creationist outfit. They have a vested interest in proving that isotope dating methods are wrong, because they believe the Earth is only ~10000 years old.
And that God created it, evolution is a lie, and so on and so forth. As they say on their home page:
The Institute for Creation Research (ICR) is a Christ focused creation ministry where science and the
Bible live in harmony.
These are not "[s]ome good scientists" (Andrew Snelling especially); they are not interested in objective truth and are distorting scientific
evidence for their own ends.
We don't have millions of years to press a huge history of plant matter down into a barrel of oil in order to
sustain "the wonderful economy"
Indeed. One thing which worries me is what happens
if our current civilisation gets wiped out by an
asteroid or whatever - if the remnants try to rebuild, virtually all of the easily accessible oil will have been pumped out already (by us). They'll be stuck with late-19th century energy sources for a long, long time...
Intelligent life (AFAWK) has not been around for long enough for you to be able to say this. The evolutionary advantage of intelligence has yet to be determined. Come back in a billion years and we'll talk.
Besides which, I'm sure some forms of bacteria have survived essentially unchanged on such timescales.
Second, Nazi Germany was left alone even though it invaded US allies, so actually US extremely poorly performed its own obligations as an ally.
Which US allies did Germany invade? When France and Russia were invaded, and Britain attacked, they weren't US allies, and only became so after Pearl Harbour. The US had no allies at this time, with the possible exception of various satellite states. So it had no "obligations" to defend anyone.
Otherwise, your contention that the US held back from attacking Germany frontally until it became clear that Russia would survive is certainly arguable at best. I would blame Churchill's insistence on attacking the "soft underbelly of Europe" (ie Italy, 1943) which meant that there were no resources for a landing in France until 1944... which is when they did land. 1942 would have been *way* too early for a landing in France - the landing ships, troops, air forces just were not available then. But I would say that it was pretty clear that Russia was going to survive after Stalingrad in 1942/43. As I've explained, D-Day wasn't really an option in 1942, so where's your evidence?
(Please don't get me wrong: I'm not saying that the US "won the war" in Europe or anything like that. In fact, I think it is pretty clear that the USSR did by far the most to defeat Germany, and paid the highest price for doing so. I just don't buy your theories. If anyone was thinking along those lines, it was Churchill - the Americans were quite clueless as to the Soviet threat until very late in the war.)
It cites Singapore and my own state of Victoria, Australia as having the only true working government portals in existence. Embarrassingly, I'd never even visited www.maxi.com.au, although I had heard of it...
It's already too late for that... MacOS 9 already has voiceprint identification, although this is only for logging in and not general use. I've been thinking of buying a microphone just so I can test it out...
Re:Good v. Bad wars and national self-interest
on
Virtual War
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· Score: 1
Viet Nam may have been a turning point in the Cold War, but regardless of the lives of all the western soldiers (Australian, New Zealand, South African, Canadian, French and others as well as American) lost there, it's a drop in the bucket compared to the Vietnamese civilian deaths, much less the deaths of civilians in communist gulags.
I agree with most of your post, AC, but I never heard that South Africa and Canada were involved in Vietnam (and I know you say you are Canadian!) According to Canadians in Vietnam perhaps 2500 Canadians served in Vietnam, but as members of the US Armed Forces, not the Canadian ones, mostly as a matter of choice. I guess that meaning isn't excluded by what you say, but the rest of us (and I'm an Australian, with an uncle who served there) were there because our governments said so.
Hmmm, the Napoleonic wars are admittedly not my forte, but that's not the image I have of them. I'm fairly sure the British still used muskets mostly, with rifles only for specialist units. See this link which discusses the weaponry of the British army in this period, noting that the British continued to use the musket right up until 1853! You may be thinking more of the Spanish guerillas in the Peninsular campaign (but I don't know that they used rifles either). Note also that on land a very large share of the defeat of Napolean goes to the Prussians and Russians - the latter most definitely were not using rifles!
Also, I was reading Jeremy Black's War and the World: Military Power and the Fate of Continets recently; I seem to recall that he suggests that the American claim that accurate rifle fire from rebel sharpshooters played a major part in defeating the overly regimented, slow, musket firing redcoats is exaggerated. But I don't have it handy to check...
Well, Dyson's sphere is much more practical than Niven's ring - because the original Dyson sphere was not a solid sphere. It's simply a vast number of solar collectors independently orbiting a star. Far more feasible than a solid sphere or ring (as Niven himself realised - didn't he have to add massive rockets to his ring for stability in later stories?). It has been elaborated in SF style solid shells, but the original concept is always going to be easier to build.
Indeed. It's not that America's nuclear arsenal is so dangerous--it isn't.
Gosh, you're right. It's hard to imagine any scenario where thousands of nuclear-tipped ICBMs could be dangerous, isn't it?
I agree that there are more likely threats out there. But the number of casualties resulting from an American pushing the button would have to be second only to a major asteroid strike, or perhaps the super-ebola bug you mention. If you still think we are particularly safe in American hands, have a look at Twenty mishaps that might have started Accidental Nuclear War between 1956 and 1995... scary stuff. We are lucky to still be here.
Other than being a neat project to look at the stars, this has very little scientific research.... This is simply just a neat toy.
Not so, so-called "virtual observatories" are becoming a hot topic in astronomy. See, for example this "vision statement" for the Virtual Observatories of the Future conference being held at Caltech in June (which I may be going to, if I can get my ass into gear). See also the Digital Sky Project, which has links to the major efforts underway. (Note that the surveys don't even need to be digital: the single most useful project in astronomical history is probably the Palomar Sky Survey, orignally undertaken in the 1950s.)
A quote from the vision statement: For the first time in the history of astronomy, we will have data sets whose full information content greatly exceeds the original purposes for which the data were obtained. This opens the new field of data-mining of digital sky surveys, using the data for newly conceived projects and exploring the vast data parameter spaces. It is inevitable that the previously poorly explored parts of the observable parameter space will contain new discoveries and surprises.
And again: We will be able to tackle some major problems with an unprecedented accuracy, e.g., mapping of the large-scale structure of the universe, the structure of our Galaxy, etc. The unprecedented size of the data sets will enable searches for extremely rare types of astronomical objects (e.g., high-redshift quasars, brown dwarfs, etc.) and may well lead to surprising new discoveries of previously unknown types of objects or new astrophysical phenomena. Combining surveys done at different wavelengths, from radio and infrared, through visible light, ultraviolet, and x-rays, both from the ground-based telescopes and from space observatories, would provide a new, panchromatic picture of our universe, and lead to a better understanding of the objects in it. These are the types of scientific investigations which were not feasible with the more limited data sets of the past.
Actually, surprisingly enough the very first extrasolar planets were detected after a false alarm. These are not the relatively nearby planrts of Marcy and Butler, but the rather bizarre pulsar planets found by Alexander Wolszczan, of which two have been confirmed since 1994. In 1992, Matthew Bailes, then a PhD student at Jodrell Bank (I think - later he was a post-doc in the astro group I was in) "discovered" a pulsar planet with a period of 6 months - had a paper published in Nature and all. Then had to retract the claim a few months later when they realised it was a calibration error. But others were already looking for other pulsar planets and found some real ones!
I can tell you, he is NOT in the least bit proud to have sent others looking in the right direction by his mistake!!
Well, I do now! How embarrassing. I guess I've been at this job too long... Good Times and its relations get sent around here with depressing regularity.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to see if I can find my sense of humour again...
Re:"Good Times" wasn't a hoax
on
Hoax-a-go-go!
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· Score: 2
OK, hands up - who was the turkey who moderated this one up?
Slashdot Mirror
Hoffman has a very informative website at http://irian.geolo gy. latrobe.edu.au/~nhoffman/Mars/index.html, much of it comprehensible to non-planetary scientists like me.
PS: can people PLEASE stop saying "canals" when they mean "channels"? It's important: "canals" implies artificiality, "channels" can be natural in origin. (Damn the Italian language for having "canali" as the word for channels.) There are NO canals on Mars, but there are channels.
(Yes, I KNOW the IAU is considering reclassifying Pluto as a minor planet, but as a former astronomer I think they are nutty.)
What the hell does that mean? Is this from the original Sony dialect of Japlish?
Ever wonder why Apple use Solaris for www.apple.com instead of MacOS? It's a crappy OS for serving, that's why.
http://www.linuxone.net/
Gee, I don't know. How about running East Timor while it makes the transition from brutal Indonesian rule to a (hopefully) peaceful democracy?
Some good scientists admit these assumptions up front, for example http://www.icr.org/research/sa/sa-r03.htm clearly says:
This is a troll, right? Or you are a creationist. The above URL is at the Institute for Creation Research, a creationist outfit. They have a vested interest in proving that isotope dating methods are wrong, because they believe the Earth is only ~10000 years old. And that God created it, evolution is a lie, and so on and so forth. As they say on their home page:
The Institute for Creation Research (ICR) is a Christ focused creation ministry where science and the Bible live in harmony.
These are not "[s]ome good scientists" (Andrew Snelling especially); they are not interested in objective truth and are distorting scientific evidence for their own ends.
Indeed. One thing which worries me is what happens if our current civilisation gets wiped out by an asteroid or whatever - if the remnants try to rebuild, virtually all of the easily accessible oil will have been pumped out already (by us). They'll be stuck with late-19th century energy sources for a long, long time ...
Besides which, I'm sure some forms of bacteria have survived essentially unchanged on such timescales.
Which US allies did Germany invade? When France and Russia were invaded, and Britain attacked, they weren't US allies, and only became so after Pearl Harbour. The US had no allies at this time, with the possible exception of various satellite states. So it had no "obligations" to defend anyone.
Otherwise, your contention that the US held back from attacking Germany frontally until it became clear that Russia would survive is certainly arguable at best. I would blame Churchill's insistence on attacking the "soft underbelly of Europe" (ie Italy, 1943) which meant that there were no resources for a landing in France until 1944 ... which is when they did land. 1942 would have been *way* too early for a landing in France - the landing ships, troops, air forces just were not available then. But I would say that it was pretty clear that Russia was going to survive after Stalingrad in 1942/43. As I've explained, D-Day wasn't really an option in 1942, so where's your evidence?
(Please don't get me wrong: I'm not saying that the US "won the war" in Europe or anything like that. In fact, I think it is pretty clear that the USSR did by far the most to defeat Germany, and paid the highest price for doing so. I just don't buy your theories. If anyone was thinking along those lines, it was Churchill - the Americans were quite clueless as to the Soviet threat until very late in the war.)
It cites Singapore and my own state of Victoria, Australia as having the only true working government portals in existence. Embarrassingly, I'd never even visited www.maxi.com.au, although I had heard of it ...
It's already too late for that ... MacOS 9 already has voiceprint identification, although this is only for logging in and not general use. I've been thinking of buying a microphone just so I can test it out ...
I agree with most of your post, AC, but I never heard that South Africa and Canada were involved in Vietnam (and I know you say you are Canadian!) According to Canadians in Vietnam perhaps 2500 Canadians served in Vietnam, but as members of the US Armed Forces, not the Canadian ones, mostly as a matter of choice. I guess that meaning isn't excluded by what you say, but the rest of us (and I'm an Australian, with an uncle who served there) were there because our governments said so.
Also, I was reading Jeremy Black's War and the World: Military Power and the Fate of Continets recently; I seem to recall that he suggests that the American claim that accurate rifle fire from rebel sharpshooters played a major part in defeating the overly regimented, slow, musket firing redcoats is exaggerated. But I don't have it handy to check ...
Well, how about one Herbert George Wells, who wrote The Island of Dr. Moreau in 1896?
Anyhoo, see the Dyson Sphere FAQ for more.
Gosh, you're right. It's hard to imagine any scenario where thousands of nuclear-tipped ICBMs could be dangerous, isn't it?
I agree that there are more likely threats out there. But the number of casualties resulting from an American pushing the button would have to be second only to a major asteroid strike, or perhaps the super-ebola bug you mention. If you still think we are particularly safe in American hands, have a look at Twenty mishaps that might have started Accidental Nuclear War between 1956 and 1995 ... scary stuff. We are lucky to still be here.
http://www.ipnsig.org/
Yes, and here's the URL (for those too lazy to look it up in Google!): http://ipn.jpl.nasa.gov/
Not so, so-called "virtual observatories" are becoming a hot topic in astronomy. See, for example this "vision statement" for the Virtual Observatories of the Future conference being held at Caltech in June (which I may be going to, if I can get my ass into gear). See also the Digital Sky Project, which has links to the major efforts underway. (Note that the surveys don't even need to be digital: the single most useful project in astronomical history is probably the Palomar Sky Survey, orignally undertaken in the 1950s.)
A quote from the vision statement: For the first time in the history of astronomy, we will have data sets whose full information content greatly exceeds the original purposes for which the data were obtained. This opens the new field of data-mining of digital sky surveys, using the data for newly conceived projects and exploring the vast data parameter spaces. It is inevitable that the previously poorly explored parts of the observable parameter space will contain new discoveries and surprises.
And again: We will be able to tackle some major problems with an unprecedented accuracy, e.g., mapping of the large-scale structure of the universe, the structure of our Galaxy, etc. The unprecedented size of the data sets will enable searches for extremely rare types of astronomical objects (e.g., high-redshift quasars, brown dwarfs, etc.) and may well lead to surprising new discoveries of previously unknown types of objects or new astrophysical phenomena. Combining surveys done at different wavelengths, from radio and infrared, through visible light, ultraviolet, and x-rays, both from the ground-based telescopes and from space observatories, would provide a new, panchromatic picture of our universe, and lead to a better understanding of the objects in it. These are the types of scientific investigations which were not feasible with the more limited data sets of the past.
I hate to be pedantic (OK, well, I love it) but Babbage was more like 1830, not 1780.
OH, I see now ... silly me!
I can tell you, he is NOT in the least bit proud to have sent others looking in the right direction by his mistake!!
An excellent reference on extra-solar planets in general is the Extrasolar Planets Encyclopedia.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to see if I can find my sense of humour again ...
In case anyone believes the above, here's a link to the Good Times Virus Hoax FAQ.
Geddit? (Goddit.) Good!