"For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong."
It makes zero sense to reserve dedicated bandwidth for most consumers. Measuring bandwidth to the ISP's routers is the best option and it's still pretty useless as an indication of real world speeds. If you're not willing to pay extra for a SLA that's on you.
I feel like the quality of your posts has decreased markedly in the last few years.
IPWD is the most pro-patent site in existence. I believe that they patented that, actually. Generally, I feel confident that they will be on the wrong or immoral side of any argument about patents. I'll read the article, but you were very correct to provide the disclaimer.
So you read some slashdot story on a scientific topic until you get to a poorly-written rant which promotes "skepticism", which is a dog whistle for various anti-science types. Complaining about the scientific establishment, questioning the value of research and astronomy in general, and talking up "free thinkers" are the hallmarks of the physics crank. This person does not ask what the significance of the research is, they instead write paragraphs about how the useless the research is. This is not a person seeking to remedy their ignorance.
I'll retract most of my criticism of your scholarship. I do think that your style of writing is poor, and that you might want to get that young-person prejudice looked at. I'm in my 30s and was raised in rural Alaska; whatever qualities you imagine I have are unlikely to be applicable. And yes, I often belittle the intelligence of others on this forum. I'll consider your criticism on that score.
The paper, if you haven't read it, is available on the arxiv. (You may also want some background on echelle spectrometers). It does not go into great detail about the formation of star systems generally; it's focused on the subset of star systems with these "hot Jupiters". These systems are interesting because [1] they're big compared to rocky planets and therefore more easily found and studied, and [2] they're almost the 'default' result of excess stellar material. We would expect Jupiter to form more or less where it is, and then migrate inwards closer to the Sun, gobbling up or ejecting the inner planets as it went. One theory is that it actually started to do so, but then was pulled back by Saturn. It's not extremely well supported as yet, but it's one of the more interesting developments in astronomy in recent years. A critical review from the arxiv.
Generally speaking, the solar system doesn't look like how our models think it should. We ask: why? How much did the peculiar configuration affect the origin of life on Earth? Where else in the universe might we find conditions similarly hospitable for life? This discovery is a very small step towards answering these questions. They are, of course, of no practical use, now or in the future, but there's nothing wrong with the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake.
And nations occasionally go to war for such reasons. Do you actually have any standards of morality or just whatever's convenient at the time?
That's the question you should be asking yourself. I tolerate espionage and propaganda as normal parts of international relations, so obviously I wouldn't go to war over it. It is you who is insisting that this is a violation of sovereignty, which means that you provide a justification for going to war over it.
I don't think you even understand what you're saying. Obviously I'm taking a moral position here, although there may additionally be some sort of (irrelevant) international law to that effect. I also have not suggested that the events in question constitute a casus belli, nor have I suggested that anything specific be done. I also haven't mentioned sovereignty -- it's interesting how many words you can put in my mouth -- and it doesn't seem quite applicable to the topic. The moral principle I did mention was self-determination, which is not compatible with foreign influences by definition.
...I have plenty of indications that you want particular political and economic interests to "treat the American electorate as a football."
Absolutely, I would like American political and economic interests to do that, as opposed to foreign powers. Having the opposite preference could be described as treasonous. However, I would like to correct you if you think that I have any affiliation with any political party; as far as I'm concerned they can all go to hell.
And "argumentum ad hominem" would be "your argument is wrong because you are naive and hypocritical" (not a very effective ad hominem). I'm saying the opposite: "you are naive and hypocritical because of your argument"
Saying that I am a hypocrite is addressing the argument, unfortunately, so I'm afraid we have to count it (see also the previous paragraph). But really I just felt like your heart wasn't really in it today. Would it help if I were more irritating?
My apologies for assuming that you were a more specific brand of moron.
Frankly you're not really worth the time to do more than insult you. There's not really an argument to be had about whether or not you see the value in any particular bit of research. There isn't actually any way to value pure knowledge either.
This particular paper does not present new techniques so far as I have read, but analyzing spectroscopic data is a fairly interesting topic on its own. I assume you've read it, of course. Must be old hat to you, right? More generally, studying exoplanets provides information on what types of star systems are able to be formed, and gives us some insight into the formation of our own solar system. If you're searching after a practical application however, again, the fault is with your own understanding: that's not the goal of research.
'Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it.' — Feynman
(blah blah millennials blah blah political correctness blah blah my age is greater than my IQ)
Espionage and propaganda are universally used by countries, including the US.
And nations occasionally go to war for such reasons. Do you actually have any standards of morality or just whatever's convenient at the time?
All political parties everywhere have dirty secrets or (equivalently) things that can be made to look like dirty secrets.
Well, and Trump's "dirty secrets" also came out
Good for him. Trump is not the issue at hand. I'm not terribly concerned about him, as I said. He seems to be his own worst enemy so far, and I'd just as soon have him in charge than someone who would more effectively work against my interests.
You're both enormously naive and enormously hypocritical.
You've had better ad homs. You actually don't have any indication that I support US interference in foreign politics. Given that I'm on the self-determination side of this argument, that's probably not a good assumption.
Actually you are just a moron. Sorry to be the one to let you know. If you were qualified to be "skeptical" you would write a rebuttal paper and submit it for review. That goes double for anything involving modeling.
Why don't you cure your skepticism with some facts.
Your first issue is that you have conflated science and engineering. Your second issue is that you know little of either. Your ultimate issue is that you think like you write, and your writing is incoherent.
You're also wrong about almost everything you say, but I'm not interested in pig-wrestling today.
All political parties everywhere have dirty secrets or (equivalently) things that can be made to look like dirty secrets. We're all familiar with the line "give me six lines from the hand of the most honest of men, and I will find something in them to hang him," and it's even easier to hang people in the court of public opinion, but let's take an example:
The government gives a billion dollar aerospace contract to Boeing. There is a bidding process, but the requirements are such that only Boeing can meet them (including e.g. having a history of similar successful contracts). Is this corporate welfare, or is the government simply being diligent in making sure that they spend public money wisely?
The answer is whatever you want to make it look like. Politics is messy by nature, and even if you are the lone moral politician, it makes very little difference to your public perception.
The part that bothers me is not that the Dems were hacked, or that Trump was elected, or that Russia is succeeding in their plan to destabilize the US. The part that bothers me is that now other countries have seen that you can monkey with the American electoral process with impunity. That's not exactly going to deter people from trying. I'm sure that we would all have a fun time when (e.g.) China hacks party A in response to Russia hacking party B, but I'm not sure that democracy is best when foreign powers treat the American electorate as a football.
Services provided by governments are usually (but not always) monopolies
You could say that government is the natural monopoly of natural monopolies. Services that are universal and especially services that are required to be universal (e.g. mail) head up this list, because letting someone profit from such a thing amounts to a private tax. Otherwise we start looking at whether there are market failures, like a high barrier to entry. Whether or not the government is good at what it does is actually a distinct issue.
Part of me wants to see the red states get exactly the government that they want, but maybe that's too vindictive.
So where's the teeth in that system?
That would be the concept of democracy. I believe it's defined as 'the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.'
The only "consequences" for saying something stupid should be that everyone now knows you're stupid. The only "consequences" for saying something rude should be that everyone now knows you're rude.
Private entities can do whatever they want in response to you being stupid. And yeah, being stupid is actually a pretty good reason to not get to go to Harvard. Being rude is an excellent way to get others to not socialize with you. You do not get to be free from the consequences of your speech, and I'm not sure why anyone here is bothering to argue otherwise. It's not like anyone is covering new ground with this debate.
Because no-platforming amounts to shutting down speech you disagree with. All that does is make the speech more desirable to those who oppose the orthodox view, and give it currency.
Citation needed. And also explain why any third party commercial service has to give you a platform, because the opposite of that has been a point of jurisprudence for centuries in this country.
I don't necessarily like you or agree with you terribly often, but you're a better person than you're showing in this comment. I don't know what your disagreement might be, but I think you should offer an apology for this remark.
I really just think that ESR has no value as a commentator. He's never been known for his technical skills, and it's been a long time since he was relevant in the Open Source community. Generally people stopped paying attention to him once he started going full-on wingnut. I'm of course far from alone in my opinion of him, but most people seem to be posting their negativism as ACs.
I don't really get this idea of lumping people into a category and pretending they all share the same vaguely-defined set of bad qualities. It's a poor habit of mind to dehumanize one's opponents. "SJW", "hipster", "millenial", "hippie" -- the purpose of these words is virtue signaling, not dialogue. In an individual it's boring and a little pathetic, but that this mindset is a popular one is a grave risk to our democracy.
Uhm. If you created it, you aren't appropriating it.
ESR did not create the Unix culture.
Oh, so you're an SJW who believes in no-platforming.
Ad hominem, and I have no idea what you might mean by that. Probably nothing interesting. I'll assume that by defending ESR you're endorsing his views -- sound fair?
I wish ESR would stop writing entirely. I don't like to see him being given a platform here. Not only does he have a history of being a racist fuckwit, but he also has a nasty habit of appropriating bits of Unix culture. I don't know if this article quite counts, but the video game he released recently certainly does. "Here's the source code for this old game! I just rewrote it in C98." And the damning one is the Jargon File, which he took and 'improved' it into something unrecognizable. Generally, he's an attention-seeking twat who has done as much damage as good for Open Source, and I don't think that Slashdot should be promoting his writing any longer. His days of relevancy are long since past.
Well great but what they need more than rockets is a path to profitability. They need to be cost-effective for some market sector. That's clearly not going to be heavy lifting, so they are, what, hoping that microsattelites become as popular as smartphones? And that they aren't banging on lower cost to orbit as a selling point worries me. This feels like a solution in search of a problem; feel free to correct me on that score.
No, one is the country in the Middle East with the largest Buddhist population and the other is Afghanistan.
So what's the problem with selling shitty outdated weapons to Saudi Arabia so they can blow up muslims in Yemen?
We shouldn't be doing business with jihadists. How do you not see a problem with that? How on Earth can you possibly carry blind partisanship to the point of supporting literal terrorists? What makes this better than doing business with Nazis? The hell is wrong with you?
Why do you think I'd be opposed to another Islamic government? Haven't I been clear that my issue is with the jihadist extremists? Be as repressive as you like, just don't export terrorism.
But touching on those "holiest sites in Islam", it is worth noting that about 200 years ago those sites were invaded by the House of Saud, who proceeded to destroy the tombs of Mohammad's followers (as being too close to idolatry). You can imagine this move was not universally popular and is still not remembered fondly. Islam has a lot of internal drama about how progressive or modernist it is acceptable to be, and unfortunately the Western world in exploiting the region has made rather a bad impression.
As a highly relevant example, we can consider the modern history of Iran, whose citizens managed to elect a democratic and progressive leader just after WWII, when pro-US sentiment ran high. Quite sensibly, the first thing this person did was to nationalize their oil industry (which had been benevolently managed by BP). So the CIA staged a coup and installed a friendly dictator (because that's their thing). This sent a clear message about what democracy means to Americans.
Islam generally has some issues with modern concepts like democracy or nation-states (which IMO is pretty humorous), but that doesn't mean that there are no Islamic nation-states or democracies. People generally recognize that it's not the 13th Century any more, and that they need to adapt. Whether or not a given people adopt democracy is their issue, but we shouldn't talk like it's somehow impossible or even unexpected.
then you'd have to change their fundamental worldview, which means ridding them of Islam. So you'd kind of have to convert them from Islam to something else. Probably not going to be atheism because it's pretty damn difficult to replace something with nothing (and ultimately this isn't much different than the "secular despot" option above). Buddhism or some shit is pretty alien. Maybe another Abrahamic religion? I don't think they're going to go for Judaism. If only there were some well-established Abrahamic religion that puts a really big emphasis on peaceful coexistence with others, and features as its holy figure the 2nd holiest figure in Islam. If only if only...
Wow, you know nothing about Judiasm, Buddhism, Islam, or the history of the Middle East. It's been said that until recently it made more sense to talk about Judeo-Islamic culture than Judeo-Christian culture, for one. For two, Buddhism was the popular religion of the region before Islam was established, and although the initial Arab conquests established Islam was the majority religion, the various Islamic empires were extremely tolerant of other religions, and there was a bit of cross-pollination at times. You may recall a few years ago some Wahhabists destroyed a pair of large stone buddhas in Afghanistan; there are similar monuments throughout the region. Which is not to say that there are a lot of Buddhists in the Middle East, but it's hardly alien. Finally, while Jesus is mentioned quite a bit in the Qoran, his actual teachings are not, so "second holiest" is a bit of a stretch, and it's not necessarily a selling point for conversions.
That's pretty irrelevant though, because Islam is not a problem to be fixed. I mean, as a religion/political system it has all kinds of issues, but that's for them to worry about. It is not "Muslim bad!", it's jihadism and Wahhabism that are the issues, and really again only insofar as it tends to spill over into other countries. I don't mind Muslims killing other Muslims due to religious conflicts; I expect them to be doing that for centuries. If that's their idea of jihad they can even keep it. I just draw the line at "God says we all have to kill all nonbelievers".
Yeah, I don't understand the purpose of this project. Yes, you can launch Pegasus rockets from anywhere you choose, as long as you can find a runway long enough for this monster, and hopefully your launch facility has enough LOX and RP-1 for you to use. Probably best if your launch point is over water or unpopulated areas since most people don't appreciate having rocket stages dropped on their heads. But these sort of restrictions are no match for a man with vision!
I imagine Elon sent them a nice card congratulating them on having a reusable first stage. The Stratolaunch team has been trying to reassure people that this is not a billionaire's vanity project. We'll see what the score is when they figure out what their cost-per-kg to LEO is, but really I think that this situation could have been avoided by buying Paul a copy of KSP and having him play that until he figures out why this is a bad idea.
Slashdot Mirror
"For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong."
It makes zero sense to reserve dedicated bandwidth for most consumers. Measuring bandwidth to the ISP's routers is the best option and it's still pretty useless as an indication of real world speeds. If you're not willing to pay extra for a SLA that's on you.
I feel like the quality of your posts has decreased markedly in the last few years.
Hacking is a security issue, not a free speech issue, and your position is traitorous.
IPWD is the most pro-patent site in existence. I believe that they patented that, actually. Generally, I feel confident that they will be on the wrong or immoral side of any argument about patents. I'll read the article, but you were very correct to provide the disclaimer.
So you read some slashdot story on a scientific topic until you get to a poorly-written rant which promotes "skepticism", which is a dog whistle for various anti-science types. Complaining about the scientific establishment, questioning the value of research and astronomy in general, and talking up "free thinkers" are the hallmarks of the physics crank. This person does not ask what the significance of the research is, they instead write paragraphs about how the useless the research is. This is not a person seeking to remedy their ignorance.
I'll retract most of my criticism of your scholarship. I do think that your style of writing is poor, and that you might want to get that young-person prejudice looked at. I'm in my 30s and was raised in rural Alaska; whatever qualities you imagine I have are unlikely to be applicable. And yes, I often belittle the intelligence of others on this forum. I'll consider your criticism on that score.
The paper, if you haven't read it, is available on the arxiv. (You may also want some background on echelle spectrometers). It does not go into great detail about the formation of star systems generally; it's focused on the subset of star systems with these "hot Jupiters". These systems are interesting because [1] they're big compared to rocky planets and therefore more easily found and studied, and [2] they're almost the 'default' result of excess stellar material. We would expect Jupiter to form more or less where it is, and then migrate inwards closer to the Sun, gobbling up or ejecting the inner planets as it went. One theory is that it actually started to do so, but then was pulled back by Saturn. It's not extremely well supported as yet, but it's one of the more interesting developments in astronomy in recent years. A critical review from the arxiv.
Generally speaking, the solar system doesn't look like how our models think it should. We ask: why? How much did the peculiar configuration affect the origin of life on Earth? Where else in the universe might we find conditions similarly hospitable for life? This discovery is a very small step towards answering these questions. They are, of course, of no practical use, now or in the future, but there's nothing wrong with the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake.
And nations occasionally go to war for such reasons. Do you actually have any standards of morality or just whatever's convenient at the time?
That's the question you should be asking yourself. I tolerate espionage and propaganda as normal parts of international relations, so obviously I wouldn't go to war over it. It is you who is insisting that this is a violation of sovereignty, which means that you provide a justification for going to war over it.
I don't think you even understand what you're saying. Obviously I'm taking a moral position here, although there may additionally be some sort of (irrelevant) international law to that effect. I also have not suggested that the events in question constitute a casus belli, nor have I suggested that anything specific be done. I also haven't mentioned sovereignty -- it's interesting how many words you can put in my mouth -- and it doesn't seem quite applicable to the topic. The moral principle I did mention was self-determination, which is not compatible with foreign influences by definition.
...I have plenty of indications that you want particular political and economic interests to "treat the American electorate as a football."
Absolutely, I would like American political and economic interests to do that, as opposed to foreign powers. Having the opposite preference could be described as treasonous. However, I would like to correct you if you think that I have any affiliation with any political party; as far as I'm concerned they can all go to hell.
And "argumentum ad hominem" would be "your argument is wrong because you are naive and hypocritical" (not a very effective ad hominem). I'm saying the opposite: "you are naive and hypocritical because of your argument"
Saying that I am a hypocrite is addressing the argument, unfortunately, so I'm afraid we have to count it (see also the previous paragraph). But really I just felt like your heart wasn't really in it today. Would it help if I were more irritating?
My apologies for assuming that you were a more specific brand of moron.
Frankly you're not really worth the time to do more than insult you. There's not really an argument to be had about whether or not you see the value in any particular bit of research. There isn't actually any way to value pure knowledge either.
This particular paper does not present new techniques so far as I have read, but analyzing spectroscopic data is a fairly interesting topic on its own. I assume you've read it, of course. Must be old hat to you, right? More generally, studying exoplanets provides information on what types of star systems are able to be formed, and gives us some insight into the formation of our own solar system. If you're searching after a practical application however, again, the fault is with your own understanding: that's not the goal of research.
'Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it.' — Feynman
(blah blah millennials blah blah political correctness blah blah my age is greater than my IQ)
Espionage and propaganda are universally used by countries, including the US.
And nations occasionally go to war for such reasons. Do you actually have any standards of morality or just whatever's convenient at the time?
All political parties everywhere have dirty secrets or (equivalently) things that can be made to look like dirty secrets.
Well, and Trump's "dirty secrets" also came out
Good for him. Trump is not the issue at hand. I'm not terribly concerned about him, as I said. He seems to be his own worst enemy so far, and I'd just as soon have him in charge than someone who would more effectively work against my interests.
You're both enormously naive and enormously hypocritical.
You've had better ad homs. You actually don't have any indication that I support US interference in foreign politics. Given that I'm on the self-determination side of this argument, that's probably not a good assumption.
Actually you are just a moron. Sorry to be the one to let you know. If you were qualified to be "skeptical" you would write a rebuttal paper and submit it for review. That goes double for anything involving modeling.
Why don't you cure your skepticism with some facts.
Your first issue is that you have conflated science and engineering. Your second issue is that you know little of either. Your ultimate issue is that you think like you write, and your writing is incoherent.
You're also wrong about almost everything you say, but I'm not interested in pig-wrestling today.
All political parties everywhere have dirty secrets or (equivalently) things that can be made to look like dirty secrets. We're all familiar with the line "give me six lines from the hand of the most honest of men, and I will find something in them to hang him," and it's even easier to hang people in the court of public opinion, but let's take an example:
The government gives a billion dollar aerospace contract to Boeing. There is a bidding process, but the requirements are such that only Boeing can meet them (including e.g. having a history of similar successful contracts). Is this corporate welfare, or is the government simply being diligent in making sure that they spend public money wisely?
The answer is whatever you want to make it look like. Politics is messy by nature, and even if you are the lone moral politician, it makes very little difference to your public perception.
The part that bothers me is not that the Dems were hacked, or that Trump was elected, or that Russia is succeeding in their plan to destabilize the US. The part that bothers me is that now other countries have seen that you can monkey with the American electoral process with impunity. That's not exactly going to deter people from trying. I'm sure that we would all have a fun time when (e.g.) China hacks party A in response to Russia hacking party B, but I'm not sure that democracy is best when foreign powers treat the American electorate as a football.
Services provided by governments are usually (but not always) monopolies
You could say that government is the natural monopoly of natural monopolies. Services that are universal and especially services that are required to be universal (e.g. mail) head up this list, because letting someone profit from such a thing amounts to a private tax. Otherwise we start looking at whether there are market failures, like a high barrier to entry. Whether or not the government is good at what it does is actually a distinct issue.
Part of me wants to see the red states get exactly the government that they want, but maybe that's too vindictive.
So where's the teeth in that system?
That would be the concept of democracy. I believe it's defined as 'the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.'
The only "consequences" for saying something stupid should be that everyone now knows you're stupid. The only "consequences" for saying something rude should be that everyone now knows you're rude.
Private entities can do whatever they want in response to you being stupid. And yeah, being stupid is actually a pretty good reason to not get to go to Harvard. Being rude is an excellent way to get others to not socialize with you. You do not get to be free from the consequences of your speech, and I'm not sure why anyone here is bothering to argue otherwise. It's not like anyone is covering new ground with this debate.
Because no-platforming amounts to shutting down speech you disagree with. All that does is make the speech more desirable to those who oppose the orthodox view, and give it currency.
Citation needed. And also explain why any third party commercial service has to give you a platform, because the opposite of that has been a point of jurisprudence for centuries in this country.
Why don't you explain that term. In particular, explain why there is some default assumption that all viewpoints deserve an audience.
I don't necessarily like you or agree with you terribly often, but you're a better person than you're showing in this comment. I don't know what your disagreement might be, but I think you should offer an apology for this remark.
This post deserves more visibility.
If you must write a flimsy rationalization of your prejudices, be concise.
Any timeline of these events should probably start with this book. So far things are proceeding as planned, and ultimate success seems likely.
I really just think that ESR has no value as a commentator. He's never been known for his technical skills, and it's been a long time since he was relevant in the Open Source community. Generally people stopped paying attention to him once he started going full-on wingnut. I'm of course far from alone in my opinion of him, but most people seem to be posting their negativism as ACs.
I don't really get this idea of lumping people into a category and pretending they all share the same vaguely-defined set of bad qualities. It's a poor habit of mind to dehumanize one's opponents. "SJW", "hipster", "millenial", "hippie" -- the purpose of these words is virtue signaling, not dialogue. In an individual it's boring and a little pathetic, but that this mindset is a popular one is a grave risk to our democracy.
Uhm. If you created it, you aren't appropriating it.
ESR did not create the Unix culture.
Oh, so you're an SJW who believes in no-platforming.
Ad hominem, and I have no idea what you might mean by that. Probably nothing interesting. I'll assume that by defending ESR you're endorsing his views -- sound fair?
I wish ESR would stop writing entirely. I don't like to see him being given a platform here. Not only does he have a history of being a racist fuckwit, but he also has a nasty habit of appropriating bits of Unix culture. I don't know if this article quite counts, but the video game he released recently certainly does. "Here's the source code for this old game! I just rewrote it in C98." And the damning one is the Jargon File, which he took and 'improved' it into something unrecognizable. Generally, he's an attention-seeking twat who has done as much damage as good for Open Source, and I don't think that Slashdot should be promoting his writing any longer. His days of relevancy are long since past.
Well great but what they need more than rockets is a path to profitability. They need to be cost-effective for some market sector. That's clearly not going to be heavy lifting, so they are, what, hoping that microsattelites become as popular as smartphones? And that they aren't banging on lower cost to orbit as a selling point worries me. This feels like a solution in search of a problem; feel free to correct me on that score.
Is Afghanistan Saudi Arabia?
No, one is the country in the Middle East with the largest Buddhist population and the other is Afghanistan.
So what's the problem with selling shitty outdated weapons to Saudi Arabia so they can blow up muslims in Yemen?
We shouldn't be doing business with jihadists. How do you not see a problem with that? How on Earth can you possibly carry blind partisanship to the point of supporting literal terrorists? What makes this better than doing business with Nazis? The hell is wrong with you?
Why do you think I'd be opposed to another Islamic government? Haven't I been clear that my issue is with the jihadist extremists? Be as repressive as you like, just don't export terrorism.
But touching on those "holiest sites in Islam", it is worth noting that about 200 years ago those sites were invaded by the House of Saud, who proceeded to destroy the tombs of Mohammad's followers (as being too close to idolatry). You can imagine this move was not universally popular and is still not remembered fondly. Islam has a lot of internal drama about how progressive or modernist it is acceptable to be, and unfortunately the Western world in exploiting the region has made rather a bad impression.
As a highly relevant example, we can consider the modern history of Iran, whose citizens managed to elect a democratic and progressive leader just after WWII, when pro-US sentiment ran high. Quite sensibly, the first thing this person did was to nationalize their oil industry (which had been benevolently managed by BP). So the CIA staged a coup and installed a friendly dictator (because that's their thing). This sent a clear message about what democracy means to Americans.
Islam generally has some issues with modern concepts like democracy or nation-states (which IMO is pretty humorous), but that doesn't mean that there are no Islamic nation-states or democracies. People generally recognize that it's not the 13th Century any more, and that they need to adapt. Whether or not a given people adopt democracy is their issue, but we shouldn't talk like it's somehow impossible or even unexpected.
then you'd have to change their fundamental worldview, which means ridding them of Islam. So you'd kind of have to convert them from Islam to something else. Probably not going to be atheism because it's pretty damn difficult to replace something with nothing (and ultimately this isn't much different than the "secular despot" option above). Buddhism or some shit is pretty alien. Maybe another Abrahamic religion? I don't think they're going to go for Judaism. If only there were some well-established Abrahamic religion that puts a really big emphasis on peaceful coexistence with others, and features as its holy figure the 2nd holiest figure in Islam. If only if only...
Wow, you know nothing about Judiasm, Buddhism, Islam, or the history of the Middle East. It's been said that until recently it made more sense to talk about Judeo-Islamic culture than Judeo-Christian culture, for one. For two, Buddhism was the popular religion of the region before Islam was established, and although the initial Arab conquests established Islam was the majority religion, the various Islamic empires were extremely tolerant of other religions, and there was a bit of cross-pollination at times. You may recall a few years ago some Wahhabists destroyed a pair of large stone buddhas in Afghanistan; there are similar monuments throughout the region. Which is not to say that there are a lot of Buddhists in the Middle East, but it's hardly alien. Finally, while Jesus is mentioned quite a bit in the Qoran, his actual teachings are not, so "second holiest" is a bit of a stretch, and it's not necessarily a selling point for conversions.
That's pretty irrelevant though, because Islam is not a problem to be fixed. I mean, as a religion/political system it has all kinds of issues, but that's for them to worry about. It is not "Muslim bad!", it's jihadism and Wahhabism that are the issues, and really again only insofar as it tends to spill over into other countries. I don't mind Muslims killing other Muslims due to religious conflicts; I expect them to be doing that for centuries. If that's their idea of jihad they can even keep it. I just draw the line at "God says we all have to kill all nonbelievers".
Yeah, I don't understand the purpose of this project. Yes, you can launch Pegasus rockets from anywhere you choose, as long as you can find a runway long enough for this monster, and hopefully your launch facility has enough LOX and RP-1 for you to use. Probably best if your launch point is over water or unpopulated areas since most people don't appreciate having rocket stages dropped on their heads. But these sort of restrictions are no match for a man with vision!
I imagine Elon sent them a nice card congratulating them on having a reusable first stage. The Stratolaunch team has been trying to reassure people that this is not a billionaire's vanity project. We'll see what the score is when they figure out what their cost-per-kg to LEO is, but really I think that this situation could have been avoided by buying Paul a copy of KSP and having him play that until he figures out why this is a bad idea.