You are right, the practical way is to use nuclear rockets, and physics says to put large payloads into space you need vast amounts of energy, this answer will not change and there are only so many ways to obtain the energy densities needed, furthermore it is unlikely people will discover cavorite or some other magic material to defy gravity or generate massive amounts of energy at the densities needed. In fact even if someone did discover such a thing it might be the worst thing ever to happen to life on earth. Take nuclear rockets, one example is the Orion nuclear rocket, which involved dropping nuclear or thermonuclear bombs out the back of a spacecraft to push a reaction plate (this was build-able using 60s technology and a pretty efficient design), I recall the rocket needed on the order of 200-500 bombs to get anywhere interesting in a reasonable amount of time - a good fraction of those bombs would have to be detonated in the earth's atmosphere, we get hysterical about one nuclear reactor having a partial melt down, how do you think people will feel with the _intentional_ detonation of 50 H-bombs in the atmosphere to launch one rocket? and who would want to put on one spaceship enough nuclear weapons to make that one spaceship a major world nuclear power? The power densities and energies needed for space travel are not compatible with a stable biosphere, unless you launch small light-weight robots into space which then go and build your interplanetary spaceships/weapons of mass destruction in space you are not going to see much human space travel.
Amen - most CEO's nowdays do not come from science or engineering they come from sales and marketing - since they are associated with "revenue" they claim huge commisions (engineer orginizations are "cost centers") and leverage the P&L to promote themselves. Ironically my CEO says good products made sales easy - his background is marketing/sales yet he is the CEO - the scientist/engineer(s) who made the good products which allowed him to get his CEO job were outsourced to china...
Thanks, I will remember that the next time I have to explain osmolality to physician making $1M/year - I believe this is in chapter 3 of the first year physiology textbook (Guyton), which is about as difficult to read as a fucking history textbook - I will try and remember that doctors work much harder than everyone else and need much more retained knowledge than myself - you really nailed me there, now I feel like such a loser, I now realize I am just a big welfare fraud with all my free education and my ~10K/year stipend, and I (or anyone else) really don't know anything as important or have to do anything as difficult as you - fuck off you self important asshole, you are a good example of what makes me sick of the medical profession
I believe it was the doctor who was whining about a measly $400k salary, might I add for a job with a skill set consistent with a skilled technician - so get that straight - I was pointing out to that poor exploited man that maybe there are some other people in the world who work and study hard too who somehow manage with less, like scientists, engineers, and concert pianists - but judging from the number of Rolexes on their wrists and BMWs in the parking lot at the hospital I think these poor doctors are somehow going to make it - it seems like their loans are well in hand.
Boo hoo - I spent 7 years after college getting a PhD in Physics and then did a post-doc after that - and I don't know of many Physicists making 400k a year or even half that, I spend my time desiging x-ray machines that doctors use and I have spent quite a bit of time watching them use the machines - as far as I can tell they are glorified technicians, they do the same type of procedure every day, which mostly involves manual dexterity, they don't have a clue how their equipment works, and on several occasions I have had to correct them on basic physiology - I wish I had a job like that, overpaid doing basically the same type of work every day.
Hell Yeah! the oil industry has been a bitch to the government - especially when two oil industry execs were president and VP, and shouldn' we apologise for causing BP so much trouble and "shaking them down", can't have those rigs stand idle in the gulf it might cut into their profits, didn't we invade an oil rich country on false evidence of WMD - oh wait... maybe we are the oil industry's bitch - who is your daddy now!
I agree - when an investment banker can make $10 billion in one year I really don't think it was that big an investment or wasted opprotunity - 10 million dollar mansions in the hamptons and 200K sports cars or running up the prices of commodities when there is no real demand are true wasted opprotunities...
If you make crappy shit it doesn't matter how good your sales guy is - it probably won't sell and vice versa - if you make nice well engineered euqipment your stuff will sell. So tell me again what the sales guy does to justify 5x the salary of a highly skilled engineer? I work for a huge corp. sales and marketing weenies make tons of money but whenever engineering asks them for some market analysis they pull some crap out of their asses, no analysis, nothing and when they ask for new products they say things like I want X that works just as well as your current product for 1/10th the cost - brilliant! why didn't I think of that!
"I never understood why evolution is such a threat to religion"
I think that opposing evolution is the most rational thing religious fundamentalists do - once you start deeply thinking about evolution the whole idea of a benevolent creator goes out the window - Darwin knew this and that is why he sat on publishing the origin of species for so long, he didn't publish until he was forced to because Huxley was coming to the same conclusion as Darwin - Darwin originally wanted to publish the book after his death. Specifically, evolution sheds light on the key mysteries that religion attempts to explain - death and sex (sin) - most disturbingly the mechanism of natural selection is not something a benevolent creator would come up with, evolution is fueled by the death of untold millions of creatures and is a mindless and directionless process - anyone who believes the creator invented natural selection is also forced to believe God is a sadist or compeletely unsympathetic to suffering at best.
But... But... there was an executive BONUS at stake - if the plugged up the well some poor BP exec wouldn't get his bonus! that is completely unacceptable, better to take their chances that everything would work out.....
Have you ever heard of pair production? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pair_production (photon -> e+ e-) there needs to be something nearby to balance the momentum, such as a nucleus, happens all the time...
In other disciplines professionals in those disciplines write the text books - physics prof. write physics texts, chemistry and math the same - isn't it professional historians who should write history texts and let them determine what are the most relevant facts? If you are concened the texts can be peer reviewed just like scientific papers...
I hate matlab - there I said it, it is an abomination, no types so when you look at a piece of matlab code you have no freaking idea what it is supposed to do - is that variable an array, an int a float, data structure? who knows? variables appear out of nowhere - aaagh! just stop it already and learn a real language.... the five minutes you think you save using matlab ends up costing 5 hours to someone else who wants to use it.
This is standard operating procedure in corporate america - set up a proxy or shell corporation to cause confusion in the marketplace, and bankrupt your competetors through fivolous law suits or IP issues - esp. if you can't buy them out. What is suprising is that anyone thinks microsoft's behavior is unusual or over the top... every big company does this crap - its the american way.
I agree, the universe if full of energy and resources on scales that boggle the imagination - for a civilization to come to the earth across vast distances for resources or energy is just stupid - I never thought Hawking was much more than a self promoter and I am a professional Physicist. A more plausable reason aliens might come here is to wipe us out out of paranoia - justifiable - after reading some of the post here about how we should consider pre-emptively wipe out emerging civilizations - Greg Bear wrote some great books about this resolution to the Fermi Paradox. Practially speaking if there are wolves or killer civilizations out there we are already toast, they could have seeded the galaxy with probes to monitor the emergence of rivals and have already sent the hyper-relativistic asteroid that will smash the earth on its way... However astronomical evidence points against this theory, we see no debris of smashed planets or any other type of large-scale engineering - unfortuately (or fortunately) most likely we are alone in this galaxy based on our current understanding of biology and astronomy - see "rare earth hypothesis" on wikipedia.
Very perceptive, if we had less goverment Goldman, Exxon, Chase, GM, ADM, Aetna etc.. would be less powerful, I am sure this would happen I just can't see how but you must be right - after all I am ignorant. I am sure competition would spring forth, prices and transaction fees would go down, taxes would go to zero and we would live in a libertaian utopia. Unfortuantely, I suspect most companies miss slavery, since the damn gubernment made it illegal in the 1860s - the next best thing it to put everyone in debt and make people pay for things that used to be free - for example if I ran a bottled water company I would lobby for the gubernment to reduce taxes and get rid of water treatment plants, by reducing regulation and goverment meddling, I would create "value", and make the serfs pay for their potable water - I love captalism.
OMFG - jack booted thugs in black helicopters are coming! and that socialist, un-american Barack Hussien Obama is going to force us to have abortions and watch Oprah - their gonna take our guns and force us to marry horses! Oh the humanity! Thanks for straightening me out.
Whatever - how many times do you have to get screwed by a company before you realize that the goverment might not be the greatest but at least it is accountable to people through elections - think of that the next time you get credit card fees, deal with high interest rates in the middle of a recession(!), have to pay your student loan from a private loan company, pay deductables on health insurance if you can get it, deal with a defective product, or watch your 401K go nowhere in 10 years (apparently gov't bonds are a better place to put your money than the market) - thank-you may I have another? apparently so - rest assured these big companies will lobby tirelessly to reduce your individual rights and extract more money from you (through "deregulation" over the past 20 years) - and apparently you deserve it. The goverment might not be the greatest but it cares more about you than the tender tentacles Goldman, Exxon, GM, Chase, Microsoft, ADM etc...
As a corallary to this you could ask is there really anything big business does right? I mean we get a finiancial collapse every 5 years, Enron (remeber them), GM (we can't make a decent car by an american company), Microsoft (we are a bloodsucking monopoly that stifles innovation), Insurance Companies, Banks (they charge 30% credit card fees, get money from free from the gov't and collapse the economy) - the list just goes on and on - YES! given a choice bettween Goldman Sachs and the US government I will take the US goverment ANY time!
it is not just software developers - every technical carrer in the US is like this with IP issues, healthcare issues etc... everone is forced to work for a big corp which takes all the rewards while you pray you can retire
Umm... wasn't Christ the first martyr, he died in on the cross to take away our sins, he was son of God, so according to catholic dogma he didn't have to die, he choose to. Many saints are martyrs, the definition of being a saint is that they are gauranteed a place in heaven. In Christianity it is OK to die for a "good cause", martyrs imatate christ and sacrifice themselves for the good of all. Of course the "good cause" is in the eye of the beholder: Killing abortion doctors might be a good cause for some christian sects and dying by way of the death penalty might be acceptable if they are rewarded in heaven.
Believe in an afterlive must certainly motivate suicide bombers, getting a hundred hookers in heaven and all that, and the chistaina religion also has the concept of martyrdom - an athiest would just encourge other suckers to die for him...
That's interesting - does that mean AT&T is using up all the verizon bandwidth and there is not more to be had? or does it mean AT&T needs to buy more from verizon? on the other hand I thought the issue was the number of towers servicing manhanttan (towers presumably owned by AT&T) not the optical backbone, in that case adding more towers and breaking up manhanttan into more cells would alleviate the problem and the underlying network is not the issue...
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You are right, the practical way is to use nuclear rockets, and physics says to put large payloads into space you need vast amounts of energy, this answer will not change and there are only so many ways to obtain the energy densities needed, furthermore it is unlikely people will discover cavorite or some other magic material to defy gravity or generate massive amounts of energy at the densities needed. In fact even if someone did discover such a thing it might be the worst thing ever to happen to life on earth. Take nuclear rockets, one example is the Orion nuclear rocket, which involved dropping nuclear or thermonuclear bombs out the back of a spacecraft to push a reaction plate (this was build-able using 60s technology and a pretty efficient design), I recall the rocket needed on the order of 200-500 bombs to get anywhere interesting in a reasonable amount of time - a good fraction of those bombs would have to be detonated in the earth's atmosphere, we get hysterical about one nuclear reactor having a partial melt down, how do you think people will feel with the _intentional_ detonation of 50 H-bombs in the atmosphere to launch one rocket? and who would want to put on one spaceship enough nuclear weapons to make that one spaceship a major world nuclear power? The power densities and energies needed for space travel are not compatible with a stable biosphere, unless you launch small light-weight robots into space which then go and build your interplanetary spaceships/weapons of mass destruction in space you are not going to see much human space travel.
Amen - most CEO's nowdays do not come from science or engineering they come from sales and marketing - since they are associated with "revenue" they claim huge commisions (engineer orginizations are "cost centers") and leverage the P&L to promote themselves. Ironically my CEO says good products made sales easy - his background is marketing/sales yet he is the CEO - the scientist/engineer(s) who made the good products which allowed him to get his CEO job were outsourced to china...
Thanks, I will remember that the next time I have to explain osmolality to physician making $1M/year - I believe this is in chapter 3 of the first year physiology textbook (Guyton), which is about as difficult to read as a fucking history textbook - I will try and remember that doctors work much harder than everyone else and need much more retained knowledge than myself - you really nailed me there, now I feel like such a loser, I now realize I am just a big welfare fraud with all my free education and my ~10K/year stipend, and I (or anyone else) really don't know anything as important or have to do anything as difficult as you - fuck off you self important asshole, you are a good example of what makes me sick of the medical profession
I believe it was the doctor who was whining about a measly $400k salary, might I add for a job with a skill set consistent with a skilled technician - so get that straight - I was pointing out to that poor exploited man that maybe there are some other people in the world who work and study hard too who somehow manage with less, like scientists, engineers, and concert pianists - but judging from the number of Rolexes on their wrists and BMWs in the parking lot at the hospital I think these poor doctors are somehow going to make it - it seems like their loans are well in hand.
Boo hoo - I spent 7 years after college getting a PhD in Physics and then did a post-doc after that - and I don't know of many Physicists making 400k a year or even half that, I spend my time desiging x-ray machines that doctors use and I have spent quite a bit of time watching them use the machines - as far as I can tell they are glorified technicians, they do the same type of procedure every day, which mostly involves manual dexterity, they don't have a clue how their equipment works, and on several occasions I have had to correct them on basic physiology - I wish I had a job like that, overpaid doing basically the same type of work every day.
Hell Yeah! the oil industry has been a bitch to the government - especially when two oil industry execs were president and VP, and shouldn' we apologise for causing BP so much trouble and "shaking them down", can't have those rigs stand idle in the gulf it might cut into their profits, didn't we invade an oil rich country on false evidence of WMD - oh wait... maybe we are the oil industry's bitch - who is your daddy now!
I agree - when an investment banker can make $10 billion in one year I really don't think it was that big an investment or wasted opprotunity - 10 million dollar mansions in the hamptons and 200K sports cars or running up the prices of commodities when there is no real demand are true wasted opprotunities...
If you make crappy shit it doesn't matter how good your sales guy is - it probably won't sell and vice versa - if you make nice well engineered euqipment your stuff will sell. So tell me again what the sales guy does to justify 5x the salary of a highly skilled engineer? I work for a huge corp. sales and marketing weenies make tons of money but whenever engineering asks them for some market analysis they pull some crap out of their asses, no analysis, nothing and when they ask for new products they say things like I want X that works just as well as your current product for 1/10th the cost - brilliant! why didn't I think of that!
"I never understood why evolution is such a threat to religion" I think that opposing evolution is the most rational thing religious fundamentalists do - once you start deeply thinking about evolution the whole idea of a benevolent creator goes out the window - Darwin knew this and that is why he sat on publishing the origin of species for so long, he didn't publish until he was forced to because Huxley was coming to the same conclusion as Darwin - Darwin originally wanted to publish the book after his death. Specifically, evolution sheds light on the key mysteries that religion attempts to explain - death and sex (sin) - most disturbingly the mechanism of natural selection is not something a benevolent creator would come up with, evolution is fueled by the death of untold millions of creatures and is a mindless and directionless process - anyone who believes the creator invented natural selection is also forced to believe God is a sadist or compeletely unsympathetic to suffering at best.
But... But... there was an executive BONUS at stake - if the plugged up the well some poor BP exec wouldn't get his bonus! that is completely unacceptable, better to take their chances that everything would work out.....
Have you ever heard of pair production? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pair_production (photon -> e+ e-) there needs to be something nearby to balance the momentum, such as a nucleus, happens all the time...
In other disciplines professionals in those disciplines write the text books - physics prof. write physics texts, chemistry and math the same - isn't it professional historians who should write history texts and let them determine what are the most relevant facts? If you are concened the texts can be peer reviewed just like scientific papers...
I hate matlab - there I said it, it is an abomination, no types so when you look at a piece of matlab code you have no freaking idea what it is supposed to do - is that variable an array, an int a float, data structure? who knows? variables appear out of nowhere - aaagh! just stop it already and learn a real language.... the five minutes you think you save using matlab ends up costing 5 hours to someone else who wants to use it.
This is standard operating procedure in corporate america - set up a proxy or shell corporation to cause confusion in the marketplace, and bankrupt your competetors through fivolous law suits or IP issues - esp. if you can't buy them out. What is suprising is that anyone thinks microsoft's behavior is unusual or over the top... every big company does this crap - its the american way.
I agree, the universe if full of energy and resources on scales that boggle the imagination - for a civilization to come to the earth across vast distances for resources or energy is just stupid - I never thought Hawking was much more than a self promoter and I am a professional Physicist. A more plausable reason aliens might come here is to wipe us out out of paranoia - justifiable - after reading some of the post here about how we should consider pre-emptively wipe out emerging civilizations - Greg Bear wrote some great books about this resolution to the Fermi Paradox. Practially speaking if there are wolves or killer civilizations out there we are already toast, they could have seeded the galaxy with probes to monitor the emergence of rivals and have already sent the hyper-relativistic asteroid that will smash the earth on its way... However astronomical evidence points against this theory, we see no debris of smashed planets or any other type of large-scale engineering - unfortuately (or fortunately) most likely we are alone in this galaxy based on our current understanding of biology and astronomy - see "rare earth hypothesis" on wikipedia.
Do angels have wings? what color is the imaginary unicon that poops skittles? and what color are the imaginary skittles it poops?
not to mention that water is a solid on titan, not a liquid like at temperatures in the asphalt lake
Very perceptive, if we had less goverment Goldman, Exxon, Chase, GM, ADM, Aetna etc.. would be less powerful, I am sure this would happen I just can't see how but you must be right - after all I am ignorant. I am sure competition would spring forth, prices and transaction fees would go down, taxes would go to zero and we would live in a libertaian utopia. Unfortuantely, I suspect most companies miss slavery, since the damn gubernment made it illegal in the 1860s - the next best thing it to put everyone in debt and make people pay for things that used to be free - for example if I ran a bottled water company I would lobby for the gubernment to reduce taxes and get rid of water treatment plants, by reducing regulation and goverment meddling, I would create "value", and make the serfs pay for their potable water - I love captalism.
OMFG - jack booted thugs in black helicopters are coming! and that socialist, un-american Barack Hussien Obama is going to force us to have abortions and watch Oprah - their gonna take our guns and force us to marry horses! Oh the humanity! Thanks for straightening me out.
Whatever - how many times do you have to get screwed by a company before you realize that the goverment might not be the greatest but at least it is accountable to people through elections - think of that the next time you get credit card fees, deal with high interest rates in the middle of a recession(!), have to pay your student loan from a private loan company, pay deductables on health insurance if you can get it, deal with a defective product, or watch your 401K go nowhere in 10 years (apparently gov't bonds are a better place to put your money than the market) - thank-you may I have another? apparently so - rest assured these big companies will lobby tirelessly to reduce your individual rights and extract more money from you (through "deregulation" over the past 20 years) - and apparently you deserve it. The goverment might not be the greatest but it cares more about you than the tender tentacles Goldman, Exxon, GM, Chase, Microsoft, ADM etc...
As a corallary to this you could ask is there really anything big business does right? I mean we get a finiancial collapse every 5 years, Enron (remeber them), GM (we can't make a decent car by an american company), Microsoft (we are a bloodsucking monopoly that stifles innovation), Insurance Companies, Banks (they charge 30% credit card fees, get money from free from the gov't and collapse the economy) - the list just goes on and on - YES! given a choice bettween Goldman Sachs and the US government I will take the US goverment ANY time!
it is not just software developers - every technical carrer in the US is like this with IP issues, healthcare issues etc... everone is forced to work for a big corp which takes all the rewards while you pray you can retire
Umm... wasn't Christ the first martyr, he died in on the cross to take away our sins, he was son of God, so according to catholic dogma he didn't have to die, he choose to. Many saints are martyrs, the definition of being a saint is that they are gauranteed a place in heaven. In Christianity it is OK to die for a "good cause", martyrs imatate christ and sacrifice themselves for the good of all. Of course the "good cause" is in the eye of the beholder: Killing abortion doctors might be a good cause for some christian sects and dying by way of the death penalty might be acceptable if they are rewarded in heaven.
Believe in an afterlive must certainly motivate suicide bombers, getting a hundred hookers in heaven and all that, and the chistaina religion also has the concept of martyrdom - an athiest would just encourge other suckers to die for him...
That's interesting - does that mean AT&T is using up all the verizon bandwidth and there is not more to be had? or does it mean AT&T needs to buy more from verizon? on the other hand I thought the issue was the number of towers servicing manhanttan (towers presumably owned by AT&T) not the optical backbone, in that case adding more towers and breaking up manhanttan into more cells would alleviate the problem and the underlying network is not the issue...