Shudders why? Unless you have phenylketonuria, it's not relevant, and if you do, then it's just one entry in a long list of things you should probably avoid. Aspartame decomposes in the digestive system to aspartic acid, phenylalanine, and methanol. The amount of methanol is comparable to that in wines and fruit juices, the aspartic acid is far lower than is found in most dietary sources, and the phenylalanine is comparable to common dietary sources and less than many phenylalanine-rich dietary sources.
I like my fruit juice pulpy. With enough pulp that you can hold it in your hand without your hand getting damp, and consume it by taking bites out of it.
Weird to see people complaining about sugar but switching to fruit juice, though. Many if not most fruit juices have a higher sugar concentration than coke.
Now, that's only from the sugar perspective. Caffeine has its good and bad sides, so if one wants to cut down, there's that. Phosphoric acid may or may not have a negative effect on bone density (lower bone density is associated with soda consumption but there's dispute over whether it's the phosphoric acid or just the aforementioned caffeine). Fruit juices have vitamins and minerals that most colas won't. But really, the biggest health issue with colas is the sugar, and one may actually increase their sugar intake by switching to juice.
You must be referring to the groups that exist only in US propaganda fantasy land.
PKK, FSA, al-Nusra, Ahrar ash-Sham, and tons of other militias are opposed to and regularly fight Daesh. They control large swaths of Syria, and have recently been making major progress in the northwest, taking over Idleb - which was almost certainly the trigger for Russia to step up its game, as they're nearing Latakia.
It's not that simple of an arrangement. The Kurds are indeed in the north, mainly the northeast. Assad's strongholds are in/around Damascus and among the Alawi populations on the coast (that is to say, west of the Alawiyin mountains), although he also controls many scattered pockets elsewhere, even ones touching Kurdish territory. The FSA and Al-Nusra control large chunks from the western Turkish border down to Idleb, just on the east side of the mountains, as well as many pockets elsewhere. As for Daesh.... they're bloody everywhere. Their territory is shaped like a porous sponge, following rivers and roads. They reach up to part of the Turkish border in the north, east into large chunks of Iraq, south into the southeastern deserts, southwest to towns near Damascus, and west to the FSA / al-Nusra areas. Pretty much everywhere in the country borders them... except where the Russians are. Latakia is only under threat from the FSA, al-Nusra, and related allied militias. And that's who they're bombing.
ISIS, ISIS, ISIL, Islamic State... these are all "respectful" terms. They want to be referred to as the "Islamic State", as their goal is to reestablish a new caliphate.
Daesh is an acronym of their Islamic name. Acronyms are rarely used in Arabic, which has led to confusion and anger on Daesh's part. It removes the "Islamic State" part that's so important to them. And it sounds similar to a word meaning "one who crushes underfoot". Daesh threatens to kill anyone caught using that term for them, which to me is reason enough alone to use it. It's also what the local opposition to them calls them, not wanting to dignify them as a legitimate caliphate.
Such tsunamis may not have the same long-distance range as those that originate from underwater earthquakes, such as the 2004 tsunami in southeast Asia that travelled thousands of kilometres from where the seafloor ruptured.
The article does not say that a volcano in Indonesia caused a tsunami in West Africa. Please read it.
What do you mean "both sides"? There's several dozen different major militias, which really if anything fall into three "sides": Assad, Daesh (what you call ISIS), and a loose, sometimes self-sniping (but decreasingly so) alliance of kurds, secular arabs (the nominal FSA), and islamists. All three sides oppose each other.
Russia supports Assad, the party recognized by the UN and human rights groups as responsible for the lion's share of the war deaths and over 10k tortured to death in its intelligence centers. However, it's doing this not by opposing the opposition uniformly, but by heavily focusing on non-Daesh entities. If successful, this would leave a conflict between Assad and Daesh, wherein the west would basically be forced to accept Assad. Iran and Hezbollah are Russia's copatriots in this.
The US and the Gulf states support the non-Daesh forces. The US strongly supports the FSA, would support the Kurds if not for how it would cost them Turkey's support, and is willing to overlook the islamists so long as they continue along their path of denouncing anti-western activity. The Gulf states by contrast have largely been supporting the Islamist militias - Saudi Arabia in particular focusing on Ahrar ash-Sham, while Qatar seems to be in bed with al-Nusra.
Israel wants Assad and Daesh gone, and seems content at sniping at either of them within the Golan Heights, but doesn't seem to want to take a larger, riskier role.
The strategies used by the US and the Gulf states are similar in regards to Daesh: A continuous but restrained bombing campaign. Both the US and the Gulf states take part in this. The arming strategies have somewhat differed, however, and not simply in regards to what groups are the beneficiaries. The US has been very hesitant to deploy weapons to Syria, waiting three years starting and not giving anything heavier than a TOW. The strongest focus has been on coordinating small numbers of FSA members to operate as effective US ground spotters against Daesh. It's not gone very well. Providing intelligence has proven more useful, and the weaponry, although limited, has allowed for more effective operations in certain fronts, such as Idlib. The Gulf states however have focused more on money and arms to their groups, and started it early. The early successes of the islamist militias while the FSA was flailing led to many waves of desertion, turning it from the largest opposition group to at its lowpoint nearly a running joke.
Turkey has proven willing to support taking on Daesh although uses the opportunity to snipe at the Kurds. Turkey's policy of chasing back Syrian planes who even approach their border has created an effective narrow no-fly zone in Syria's north, which militias on the ground have taken advantage of. With Russia's involvement now, however, it's questionable whether Syria will be able to continue that policy, out of fear of hitting Russian jets.
Everyone has their own endgames in mind.
In Russia's and Iran's, the conflict turns into "Assad vs. Daesh", the west reluctantly agrees to accept Assad, wipes out Daesh, and their only Mediterranean ally remains in power. They know he'll probably undertake some serious purges over the next several years while trying to wipe out any vestiges of opposition remaining. Their media will happily not report it.
In the US's and Israel's preferred scenarios, the secular/kurdish/islamist coalition wipes out both Assad and Daesh, with their help on the latter. Each ends up with regions under their control. The goal would be a Lebanon-style power sharing agreement. A more realistic expectation would be a Libya-style post-dictator power vacuum with random sniping militias. Those who support this view that as a vastly better improvement than the current situation or an Assad re-conquest.
In the Gulf states view, they really could care less whether the post-Assad, post-Daesh environment would be a Lebanon-style arrangement or simply another dictator, this time not allied with Iran against them. They'd be quite
I once checked out an archive of old Nazi political cartoons, and indeed they made use of that very sort of thing. There was one incident for example where the allies accidentally bombed Switzerland not long after hitting a hospital in Germany during a bombing raid. The cartoon played on the similarity of the Swiss flag and the Red Cross flag, with the allied pilot apologizing to the Swiss on the grounds that he got the flags mixed up.
Do we even know at this point that it was approved? I see four potential points of failure here:
1) Information about the hospital not relayed to those in charge of making the target decision(s) 2) Those making the target decision(s) not noticing or deliberately ignoring the information 3) The aircrew having a different target but mistakenly or deliberately targeting the hospital 4) The aircrew targeting a different target but the bomb going off course.
#1 and #2 can be applied repeatedly on each stage of communication. Malice is possible in #2 and #3, and technically #1 although that would be an unlikely spot for malice. All possibilities have non-malicious routes, and it would be highly unrealistic for #4 to be malice.
""The bombing continued for more than 30 minutes after American and Afghan military officials in Kabul and Washington were first informed,” the organization said in a statement."
The bombing in Kunduz continued for more than 30 minutes after American and Afghan military officials in Kabul and Washington were first informed
The deletion of "in Kunduz" was clearly done to make it sound like the US kept hitting the hospital again and again; there is no other reason someone would have removed that from the sentence.
You're really telling me that you see no difference between laser guided bomb strikes that occasionally go wrong and mass-produced $200 barrel bombs rolled out of helicopters to turn cities of millions of people into this?
Yeah, totally the same thing.
As for Russia's involvement in Syria, I don't think anyone is objecting to the fact that they're bombing. It's the fact that rather than bombing Daesh, they're bombing groups opposed to Daesh, in order to prop up the failing government of the aforementioned guy flattening cities with mass-produced $200 barrel bombs. As well as having sent large amounts of equipment with absolutely no bearing to Daesh (or any rebel group really), such as advanced air defense systems and air superiority fighters carrying air-to-air missiles. People's problem with Russia's actions are not that they're taking part in military activity, but what side they're taking part on behalf of.
This was not a screw-up not after having been made aware of their coordinates and location several times. Someone ordered this strike
Right, because if there's anything that describes the US military brass, it's "relentlessly competent"?
The US dropped 1600 bombs just in March of this year just against Daesh. If you expect 100% perfection out of tens of thousands of strikes from ~10 kilometers altitude using intelligence data gathered from tens of thousands of sources, you have a few screws loose on your beliefs of what is realistically achievable.
I personally believe that the Timothy are unable to do so because, uh, some, uh, people out there in our nation don't have spellcheck and, uh, I believe that our education like such as in South Africa and, uh, the Iraq, everywhere like such as, and, I believe that they should, our education over here in the U.S. should help the U.S., uh, or, uh, should help South Africa and should help the Iraq and the Asian countries, so we will be able to build up our future for our children.
It occurred to me that there might be a way around this problem: give it a header that starts with a PNG signature and then stores the FLIF data in one or more chunks that have no effect (such as text chunks or a new non-registered chunk type), then moves on to chunk(s) representing the exact same image in a conventional PNG format. So a person whose browser has no FLIF support will just read it as a PNG file that's about 50% larger than it needs to be, while a person whose browser has FLIF support can give up downloading the file as soon as it receives the FLIF chunk and not bother downloading the PNG version.
You'll be unhappy with the gaps : For both bodies, it's very high resolution on one side, very poor resolution on the opposite side, and on the "dark poles" we've got almost nothing at all. They'll be trying to weasel more data out of the dark areas later via "charonshine" and "plutoshine", but don't get your hopes up too much. This was a flyby mission, not an orbiter, unfortunately.
Your best bets for maps as it stands would be over at unmannedspaceflight.com, they've been trying to piece together the datasets as best as possible. They have some maps, but nobody's done anything significant thusfar to try to ferret out topo data via photogrammetry. That should come later, though, and is definitely something to look forward to - these bodies have some very interesting topography, to say the least:)
These other objects have a name: Dwarf Planets. I will grant that this is moderately confusing, as you would expect anything with "planet" in its name to be a subset of "planets" as a whole, thus I've never cared for this nomenclature.
Yes, it's stupid, confusing, and the IAU needs to revisit their bad decision even if only for this reason, rather than letting it fester.
However, it's pretty clear to my eyes that Pluto and Charon are Kuiper Belt Objects, fundamentally unlike the rocky inner planets or the enormous gas and ice giant outer planets.
You apparently see no problem grouping together the rocky inner planets with the enormous gas and ice giant outer planets. Yet you have a fundamental problem with grouping the rocky inner planets with bodies like Ceres and Pluto that they share far more in common with.
And yes, Pluto and Charon are KBOs. KBOs are an orbital designation, one type among many. Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars also have an orbital designation, for example - "inner planets". An orbital designation can quite happily sit side by side with a classification of an object based on what its actual physical characteristics are.
It seems pretty apparent there is a need to distinguish between what are currently deemed planets, and everything else.
You're avoiding the question: why? What's so damned logical about grouping Mars with Jupiter, but not with Ceres or Pluto? And what was "currently deemed planets" included Pluto until the IAU decided to butt in, so that argument buys you nothing. They changed the status quo, they weren't preserving it.
Hydrostatic equilibrium is a highly logical dividing line. It has meaning, unlike whether a neighborhood has been cleared (usually by a larger second party, I should add, not by the planet itself - the IAU definition is built on a foundation that is a lie, that the "8 planets" cleared their own neighborhoods). When a body relaxes into hydrostatic equilibrium, it not only changes shape, but it differentiates and remineralizes. It becomes a fundamentally new type of body, with internal structure, non-primordial minerals, and internal heat flows (even if they - like everything else - eventually die). One studies bodies that are in non-hydrostatic equilibrium to learn about the primordial solar system, while one studies bodies that are in hydrostatic equilibrium to learn about planetary evolution, to search for life, etc. It's a distinct dividing line. Let's not pretend that it's not there. Or that it doesn't need a term to refer to it. Such as the term we've been using this whole damned time - "planet".
but you seem to be denying that there is any reason to draw the distinction at all. There is. For the most part, planets are visible to the naked eye.
Which is why the ancients knew of Uranus and Neptune, right? Oh wait... Sorry, I guess they're not planets!
And again: why don't we just lock all sciences down by what the ancients knew? Sorry, guys, there's only 8 elements - copper, sulfur, tin, gold, antimony, mercury, and lead - everything else is just "earths"! Or maybe we should just stick with the 4 elements? Because that's the whole point of science, after all - rote memorization of things that people in long-extinct societies declared in their ignorance.
It was discovered because of the perturbations it was causing elsewhere, and likely had a great deal to do with scattering all those KBOs in the first place (as well as capturing one for itself). There is no such claim for Pluto
"all" is of course a falsehood. For many KBOs, Neptune has little effect. And here's a category for you to ponder while you're at it: the Sednoids. One of the leading theories is that there's a body out there, potentially in the ballpark of the size of the Earth, that's scattering them;
I hate to respond to my own comment, but something just occurred to me.
"Scientists find mildly damp rocket fuel on Mars"
That was in reference to the fact that the "water streaks" are not "water", but rather deliquescent perchlorate salts that managed to draw enough water out of the atmosphere to create damp streaks on the surface. Perchlorates are most famously used as the oxidizer in a number of rocket fuel mixtures, and seem to be very abundant in the Martian regolith, all over the planet - it makes up about half a percentage of its mass. This is of course bad for the search for life - they make a better hand sanitizer than they do a growth medium.
But could one actually use them for what we use them for on Earth - rocket fuel?
They're readily soluble - many are even deliquescent - and so should be very easy to extract with nothing more than water in a closed loop, consuming little energy (compared to the amount of energy needed to produce oxygen as an oxidizer on Mars). And the oxidizer is the heavier portion of a rocket propellant. Rather than the concept of making Mars return propellant from turning atmospheric CO2 and water-electrolysis hydrogen (or Earth-imported hydrogen**) into methane, and liquefying oxygen as an oxidizer, you could use the easy-to-extract perchlorates as your oxidizer. A clever rover wheel or tread design could scoop up regolith as it crawls, wash it, dry it, and return it in a continuous process.
Calcium perchlorate, for example, is a common Martian perchlorate - Ca(ClO4)2. It burns with hydrogen (14 H2) to produce CaO + Cl2 + 7 H2O. It burns with methane (3,5 CH4) to produce CaO + Cl2 + 3,5 CO2 + 3.5 H2O. In the former case, that's 28 AMU of hydrogen per 239 AMU of calcium perchlorate, or a ratio of 1:8.5. In the latter case, it's 14 AMU of hydrogen per 239 of calcium perchlorate, or a ratio of 1:17 - meaning you need very little hydrogen per unit mass of oxidizer (which is a very good thing!**). LOX/H2 and LOX/CH4 are, by contrast, ratios of 1:4 and 1:8, respectively. Now, using perchlorate as an oxidizer yields a propellant that's not as high ISP as using LOX, of course, but for the first stage (the heavy stage), you don't need a super-high ISP. Calcium perchlorate is 2 1/2 times denser than LOX (a huge advantage in terms of reducing tankage mass), suffers no thermal management issues at practical Martian temperatures, and being a solid rather than a liquid does not slosh. The ISP of the propellent mix can be improved by converting the calcium perchlorate to ammonium perchlorate, at a cost of complexity and additional raw materials (imported hydrogen + local Haber process or imported NH3). If a pure solid rocket is desired rather than a hybrid, methane can be polymerized with heat and catalysts to heavier hydrocarbons that will solidify when allowed to cool to Martian ambient temperatures. This process would further reduce the amount of hydrogen that needs to be imported, as hydrogen gas gets released during polymerization.
Not saying that this is the best of approaches. It's just an approach I haven't heard discussed before as far as locally produced propellants are concerned.
** While most people assume local Martian hydrogen and oxygen from electrolysis of Martian ice, this is far harder than most people assume, and not simply because mining hard materials on another world is so potentially difficult. Our history of experience with electrolysis in space has been fraught with problems (see the ISS for examples), and that's with about as tightly controlled feedstocks as you can get. On Mars you're dealing with not pure water ice, but rather frozen muck. Hence the lower-risk proposals call for using a solid oxide fuel cell to convert CO2 to CO+O2 to get the oxygen and importing the hydrogen.
and is not in orbit around another non-stellar object a planet -- you're going to have upwards of 100 of them, and that's just what we know of right now.
.... and?... your point is...?
New rule: there's only 8 rivers on Earth, and all others are "dwarf rivers" and don't really count as rivers. In order to retain the use of the word "river" in a context that is relatively closely related to its historical usage when people were primitive tribesmen and only knew of a few rivers in their area, a line has to be drawn somewhere. It is far more logical to draw that line above the Brahmaputra than below it. If you are advocating for every river which is large enough to be too deep and fast flowing to ford a river -- you're going to have upwards of 100000 of them, and that's just what we know of right now.
New rule: there are only organs in the human body, and all others are "dwarf organs" and don't really count as organs. In order to retain the use of the word "organ" in a context that is relatively closely related to its historical usage, a line has to be drawn somewhere. It is far more logical to draw that line above the spleen than below it. If you are advocating for every object which is large enough to have a distinct biological function, and is not a part of another organ an organ -- you're going to have many hundreds if not thousands of them, and that's just what we know of right now.
New rule: there are only 8 elements, and all others are "secondary elements" and don't really count as elements. In order to retain the use of the word "element" in a context that is relatively closely related to its historical usage, a line has to be drawn somewhere. It is far more logical to draw that line above bismuth than below it. If you are advocating for every particle which contains a unique number of protons to be called an element -- you're going to have 118 of them, and that's just what we know of right now.
Shall I keep going?
It is in no way, shape or form scientific to define what something is based on whether schoolchildren can memorize a list of all of them. Time and time again, ancient peoples have created names for things thinking that there's only a small number of them, and later scientists discovered that there's actually a vast diversity of them. Well, guess what, you deal with that and accept that the universe is a fascinating place rather than trying to hide it with definitions that aren't even internally consistent or in alignment with our models of what actually cleared most "neighborhoods" in our solar system (hint: it wasn't planets like Mars).
And you certainly don't do so in opposition to the very perception of the word itself. People look at pictures of Pluto and they see a planet. Because it's a giant chunk of rock orbiting a star - yes, there are bigger ones, but it's still huge, so large that gravity crammed it into a sphere, setting of processes of mineralization, tectonics, and so forth - which more to the point appear to be still active to this day. People turn on Star Trek and when they see the Enterprise arrive at a body like Pluto, they expect to hear Captain Kirk say "Beam me down to the planet", not "Beam me down to this... hmm, Spock, I'm not sure what to call it, could you run a long-range scan to see if it has "cleared its neighborhood"... oh wait, I forgot, "planets" can only be objects in orbit around the sun, there is no name for whatever this thing is!"
The IAU...resolves that planets and other bodies in the Solar System be defined into three distinct categories in the following way:
(1) A planet [1] is a celestial body that (a) is in orbit around the Sun, (b) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape, and (c) has cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit.
(2) A "dwarf planet" is a celestial body that (a) is in orbit around the Sun, (b) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape [2], (c) has not cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit, and (d) is not a satellite.
(3) All other objects [3] orbiting the Sun shall be referred to collectively as "Small Solar System Bodies".
[1] The eight planets are: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.
[2] An IAU process will be established to assign borderline objects into either dwarf planet and other categories.
[3] These currently include most of the Solar System asteroids, most Trans-Neptunian Objects (TNOs), comets, and other small bodies.
1. Nomenclature: An "adjective-noun" should always be a subset of "noun". A "dwarf planet" should be no less seen as a type of planet than a "dwarf star" is seen as a type of star.
2. Erroneous foundation: Current research suggests that most planets did not clear their own neighborhoods, and even that their neighborhoods may not always have been where they are. Jupiter, and Saturn to a lesser extent, have cleared most neighborhoods. Mars has 1/300th the Stern-Levison parameter as Neptune, and Neptune has multiple bodies a couple percent of Mars's mass (possibly even larger, we've only detected an estimated 1% of large KBOs) in its "neighborhood". Mars's neighborhood would in no way would be clear if Jupiter did not exist - even Earth's might not be. Should we demote the terrestrial planets as well?
3. Comparative inconsistency: Earth is far more like Ceres and Pluto than it is like Jupiter, yet these very dissimilar groups - gas giants and terrestrial planets - are lumped together as "planets" while dwarfs are excluded.
4. Poor choice of dividing line: While defining objects inherently requires drawing lines between groups, the chosen line has been poorly selected. Achieving a rough hydrostatic equilibrium is a very meaningful dividing line - it means differentiation, mineralization processes, alteration of primordial materials, and so forth. It's also often associated with internal heat and, increasingly as we're realizing, a common association with subsurface fluids. In short, a body in a category of "not having achieved hydrostatic equilibrium" describes a body which one would study to learn about the origins of our solar system, while a body in a category of "having achieved hydrostatic equilibrium" describes a body one would study, for example, to learn more about tectonics, geochemistry, (potentially) biology, etc. By contrast, a dividing line of "clearing its neighborhood" - which doesn't even meet standard #2 - says little about the body itself.
5. Mutability: What an object is declared at can be altered without any of the properties of the object changing simply by its "neighborhood" changing in any of countless ways.
6. Situational inconsistency: An exact copy of Earth (what the vast majority of people would consider the prototype for what a planet should be), identical down to all of the life on its surface, would not be considered a planet if orbiting in the habitable zone of a significantly larger star (harder to clear zone), or a young star (insufficient time to clear), a star without a Jupiter equivalent (no assistance in clearing), or so forth.
Slashdot Mirror
Shudders why? Unless you have phenylketonuria, it's not relevant, and if you do, then it's just one entry in a long list of things you should probably avoid. Aspartame decomposes in the digestive system to aspartic acid, phenylalanine, and methanol. The amount of methanol is comparable to that in wines and fruit juices, the aspartic acid is far lower than is found in most dietary sources, and the phenylalanine is comparable to common dietary sources and less than many phenylalanine-rich dietary sources.
I like my fruit juice pulpy. With enough pulp that you can hold it in your hand without your hand getting damp, and consume it by taking bites out of it.
Weird to see people complaining about sugar but switching to fruit juice, though. Many if not most fruit juices have a higher sugar concentration than coke.
Now, that's only from the sugar perspective. Caffeine has its good and bad sides, so if one wants to cut down, there's that. Phosphoric acid may or may not have a negative effect on bone density (lower bone density is associated with soda consumption but there's dispute over whether it's the phosphoric acid or just the aforementioned caffeine). Fruit juices have vitamins and minerals that most colas won't. But really, the biggest health issue with colas is the sugar, and one may actually increase their sugar intake by switching to juice.
Cola is hardly the only way to get caffeine.
I was a very active protester against the Iraq war, but thanks for playing.
PKK, FSA, al-Nusra, Ahrar ash-Sham, and tons of other militias are opposed to and regularly fight Daesh. They control large swaths of Syria, and have recently been making major progress in the northwest, taking over Idleb - which was almost certainly the trigger for Russia to step up its game, as they're nearing Latakia.
Check a map.
It's not that simple of an arrangement. The Kurds are indeed in the north, mainly the northeast. Assad's strongholds are in/around Damascus and among the Alawi populations on the coast (that is to say, west of the Alawiyin mountains), although he also controls many scattered pockets elsewhere, even ones touching Kurdish territory. The FSA and Al-Nusra control large chunks from the western Turkish border down to Idleb, just on the east side of the mountains, as well as many pockets elsewhere. As for Daesh.... they're bloody everywhere. Their territory is shaped like a porous sponge, following rivers and roads. They reach up to part of the Turkish border in the north, east into large chunks of Iraq, south into the southeastern deserts, southwest to towns near Damascus, and west to the FSA / al-Nusra areas. Pretty much everywhere in the country borders them... except where the Russians are. Latakia is only under threat from the FSA, al-Nusra, and related allied militias. And that's who they're bombing.
ISIS, ISIS, ISIL, Islamic State... these are all "respectful" terms. They want to be referred to as the "Islamic State", as their goal is to reestablish a new caliphate.
Daesh is an acronym of their Islamic name. Acronyms are rarely used in Arabic, which has led to confusion and anger on Daesh's part. It removes the "Islamic State" part that's so important to them. And it sounds similar to a word meaning "one who crushes underfoot". Daesh threatens to kill anyone caught using that term for them, which to me is reason enough alone to use it. It's also what the local opposition to them calls them, not wanting to dignify them as a legitimate caliphate.
From the article:
The article does not say that a volcano in Indonesia caused a tsunami in West Africa. Please read it.
What do you mean "both sides"? There's several dozen different major militias, which really if anything fall into three "sides": Assad, Daesh (what you call ISIS), and a loose, sometimes self-sniping (but decreasingly so) alliance of kurds, secular arabs (the nominal FSA), and islamists. All three sides oppose each other.
Russia supports Assad, the party recognized by the UN and human rights groups as responsible for the lion's share of the war deaths and over 10k tortured to death in its intelligence centers. However, it's doing this not by opposing the opposition uniformly, but by heavily focusing on non-Daesh entities. If successful, this would leave a conflict between Assad and Daesh, wherein the west would basically be forced to accept Assad. Iran and Hezbollah are Russia's copatriots in this.
The US and the Gulf states support the non-Daesh forces. The US strongly supports the FSA, would support the Kurds if not for how it would cost them Turkey's support, and is willing to overlook the islamists so long as they continue along their path of denouncing anti-western activity. The Gulf states by contrast have largely been supporting the Islamist militias - Saudi Arabia in particular focusing on Ahrar ash-Sham, while Qatar seems to be in bed with al-Nusra.
Israel wants Assad and Daesh gone, and seems content at sniping at either of them within the Golan Heights, but doesn't seem to want to take a larger, riskier role.
The strategies used by the US and the Gulf states are similar in regards to Daesh: A continuous but restrained bombing campaign. Both the US and the Gulf states take part in this. The arming strategies have somewhat differed, however, and not simply in regards to what groups are the beneficiaries. The US has been very hesitant to deploy weapons to Syria, waiting three years starting and not giving anything heavier than a TOW. The strongest focus has been on coordinating small numbers of FSA members to operate as effective US ground spotters against Daesh. It's not gone very well. Providing intelligence has proven more useful, and the weaponry, although limited, has allowed for more effective operations in certain fronts, such as Idlib. The Gulf states however have focused more on money and arms to their groups, and started it early. The early successes of the islamist militias while the FSA was flailing led to many waves of desertion, turning it from the largest opposition group to at its lowpoint nearly a running joke.
Turkey has proven willing to support taking on Daesh although uses the opportunity to snipe at the Kurds. Turkey's policy of chasing back Syrian planes who even approach their border has created an effective narrow no-fly zone in Syria's north, which militias on the ground have taken advantage of. With Russia's involvement now, however, it's questionable whether Syria will be able to continue that policy, out of fear of hitting Russian jets.
Everyone has their own endgames in mind.
In Russia's and Iran's, the conflict turns into "Assad vs. Daesh", the west reluctantly agrees to accept Assad, wipes out Daesh, and their only Mediterranean ally remains in power. They know he'll probably undertake some serious purges over the next several years while trying to wipe out any vestiges of opposition remaining. Their media will happily not report it.
In the US's and Israel's preferred scenarios, the secular/kurdish/islamist coalition wipes out both Assad and Daesh, with their help on the latter. Each ends up with regions under their control. The goal would be a Lebanon-style power sharing agreement. A more realistic expectation would be a Libya-style post-dictator power vacuum with random sniping militias. Those who support this view that as a vastly better improvement than the current situation or an Assad re-conquest.
In the Gulf states view, they really could care less whether the post-Assad, post-Daesh environment would be a Lebanon-style arrangement or simply another dictator, this time not allied with Iran against them. They'd be quite
It's interesting how willing you are to declare people murderers without actually knowing the chain of events that led up to the case.
This is a window into your character and what is revealed is disturbing, to say the least.
I once checked out an archive of old Nazi political cartoons, and indeed they made use of that very sort of thing. There was one incident for example where the allies accidentally bombed Switzerland not long after hitting a hospital in Germany during a bombing raid. The cartoon played on the similarity of the Swiss flag and the Red Cross flag, with the allied pilot apologizing to the Swiss on the grounds that he got the flags mixed up.
Do we even know at this point that it was approved? I see four potential points of failure here:
1) Information about the hospital not relayed to those in charge of making the target decision(s)
2) Those making the target decision(s) not noticing or deliberately ignoring the information
3) The aircrew having a different target but mistakenly or deliberately targeting the hospital
4) The aircrew targeting a different target but the bomb going off course.
#1 and #2 can be applied repeatedly on each stage of communication. Malice is possible in #2 and #3, and technically #1 although that would be an unlikely spot for malice. All possibilities have non-malicious routes, and it would be highly unrealistic for #4 to be malice.
Oh, and to correct:
No, they actually said:
The deletion of "in Kunduz" was clearly done to make it sound like the US kept hitting the hospital again and again; there is no other reason someone would have removed that from the sentence.
You're really telling me that you see no difference between laser guided bomb strikes that occasionally go wrong and mass-produced $200 barrel bombs rolled out of helicopters to turn cities of millions of people into this?
Yeah, totally the same thing.
As for Russia's involvement in Syria, I don't think anyone is objecting to the fact that they're bombing. It's the fact that rather than bombing Daesh, they're bombing groups opposed to Daesh, in order to prop up the failing government of the aforementioned guy flattening cities with mass-produced $200 barrel bombs. As well as having sent large amounts of equipment with absolutely no bearing to Daesh (or any rebel group really), such as advanced air defense systems and air superiority fighters carrying air-to-air missiles. People's problem with Russia's actions are not that they're taking part in military activity, but what side they're taking part on behalf of.
I'm confused, I thought the US was proud of its ability to make "surgical strikes".
Right, because if there's anything that describes the US military brass, it's "relentlessly competent"?
The US dropped 1600 bombs just in March of this year just against Daesh. If you expect 100% perfection out of tens of thousands of strikes from ~10 kilometers altitude using intelligence data gathered from tens of thousands of sources, you have a few screws loose on your beliefs of what is realistically achievable.
I personally believe that the Timothy are unable to do so because, uh, some, uh, people out there in our nation don't have spellcheck and, uh, I believe that our education like such as in South Africa and, uh, the Iraq, everywhere like such as, and, I believe that they should, our education over here in the U.S. should help the U.S., uh, or, uh, should help South Africa and should help the Iraq and the Asian countries, so we will be able to build up our future for our children.
It occurred to me that there might be a way around this problem: give it a header that starts with a PNG signature and then stores the FLIF data in one or more chunks that have no effect (such as text chunks or a new non-registered chunk type), then moves on to chunk(s) representing the exact same image in a conventional PNG format. So a person whose browser has no FLIF support will just read it as a PNG file that's about 50% larger than it needs to be, while a person whose browser has FLIF support can give up downloading the file as soon as it receives the FLIF chunk and not bother downloading the PNG version.
You'll be unhappy with the gaps : For both bodies, it's very high resolution on one side, very poor resolution on the opposite side, and on the "dark poles" we've got almost nothing at all. They'll be trying to weasel more data out of the dark areas later via "charonshine" and "plutoshine", but don't get your hopes up too much. This was a flyby mission, not an orbiter, unfortunately.
Your best bets for maps as it stands would be over at unmannedspaceflight.com, they've been trying to piece together the datasets as best as possible. They have some maps, but nobody's done anything significant thusfar to try to ferret out topo data via photogrammetry. That should come later, though, and is definitely something to look forward to - these bodies have some very interesting topography, to say the least :)
You could replace Pluto with an exact copy of Earth, and it still wouldn't be called a planet under the IAU's definition.
Yes, it's stupid, confusing, and the IAU needs to revisit their bad decision even if only for this reason, rather than letting it fester.
You apparently see no problem grouping together the rocky inner planets with the enormous gas and ice giant outer planets. Yet you have a fundamental problem with grouping the rocky inner planets with bodies like Ceres and Pluto that they share far more in common with.
And yes, Pluto and Charon are KBOs. KBOs are an orbital designation, one type among many. Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars also have an orbital designation, for example - "inner planets". An orbital designation can quite happily sit side by side with a classification of an object based on what its actual physical characteristics are.
You're avoiding the question: why? What's so damned logical about grouping Mars with Jupiter, but not with Ceres or Pluto? And what was "currently deemed planets" included Pluto until the IAU decided to butt in, so that argument buys you nothing. They changed the status quo, they weren't preserving it.
Hydrostatic equilibrium is a highly logical dividing line. It has meaning, unlike whether a neighborhood has been cleared (usually by a larger second party, I should add, not by the planet itself - the IAU definition is built on a foundation that is a lie, that the "8 planets" cleared their own neighborhoods). When a body relaxes into hydrostatic equilibrium, it not only changes shape, but it differentiates and remineralizes. It becomes a fundamentally new type of body, with internal structure, non-primordial minerals, and internal heat flows (even if they - like everything else - eventually die). One studies bodies that are in non-hydrostatic equilibrium to learn about the primordial solar system, while one studies bodies that are in hydrostatic equilibrium to learn about planetary evolution, to search for life, etc. It's a distinct dividing line. Let's not pretend that it's not there. Or that it doesn't need a term to refer to it. Such as the term we've been using this whole damned time - "planet".
Which is why the ancients knew of Uranus and Neptune, right? Oh wait... Sorry, I guess they're not planets!
And again: why don't we just lock all sciences down by what the ancients knew? Sorry, guys, there's only 8 elements - copper, sulfur, tin, gold, antimony, mercury, and lead - everything else is just "earths"! Or maybe we should just stick with the 4 elements? Because that's the whole point of science, after all - rote memorization of things that people in long-extinct societies declared in their ignorance.
"all" is of course a falsehood. For many KBOs, Neptune has little effect. And here's a category for you to ponder while you're at it: the Sednoids. One of the leading theories is that there's a body out there, potentially in the ballpark of the size of the Earth, that's scattering them;
Hmm.
I hate to respond to my own comment, but something just occurred to me.
That was in reference to the fact that the "water streaks" are not "water", but rather deliquescent perchlorate salts that managed to draw enough water out of the atmosphere to create damp streaks on the surface. Perchlorates are most famously used as the oxidizer in a number of rocket fuel mixtures, and seem to be very abundant in the Martian regolith, all over the planet - it makes up about half a percentage of its mass. This is of course bad for the search for life - they make a better hand sanitizer than they do a growth medium.
But could one actually use them for what we use them for on Earth - rocket fuel?
They're readily soluble - many are even deliquescent - and so should be very easy to extract with nothing more than water in a closed loop, consuming little energy (compared to the amount of energy needed to produce oxygen as an oxidizer on Mars). And the oxidizer is the heavier portion of a rocket propellant. Rather than the concept of making Mars return propellant from turning atmospheric CO2 and water-electrolysis hydrogen (or Earth-imported hydrogen**) into methane, and liquefying oxygen as an oxidizer, you could use the easy-to-extract perchlorates as your oxidizer. A clever rover wheel or tread design could scoop up regolith as it crawls, wash it, dry it, and return it in a continuous process.
Calcium perchlorate, for example, is a common Martian perchlorate - Ca(ClO4)2. It burns with hydrogen (14 H2) to produce CaO + Cl2 + 7 H2O. It burns with methane (3,5 CH4) to produce CaO + Cl2 + 3,5 CO2 + 3.5 H2O. In the former case, that's 28 AMU of hydrogen per 239 AMU of calcium perchlorate, or a ratio of 1:8.5. In the latter case, it's 14 AMU of hydrogen per 239 of calcium perchlorate, or a ratio of 1:17 - meaning you need very little hydrogen per unit mass of oxidizer (which is a very good thing!**). LOX/H2 and LOX/CH4 are, by contrast, ratios of 1:4 and 1:8, respectively. Now, using perchlorate as an oxidizer yields a propellant that's not as high ISP as using LOX, of course, but for the first stage (the heavy stage), you don't need a super-high ISP. Calcium perchlorate is 2 1/2 times denser than LOX (a huge advantage in terms of reducing tankage mass), suffers no thermal management issues at practical Martian temperatures, and being a solid rather than a liquid does not slosh. The ISP of the propellent mix can be improved by converting the calcium perchlorate to ammonium perchlorate, at a cost of complexity and additional raw materials (imported hydrogen + local Haber process or imported NH3). If a pure solid rocket is desired rather than a hybrid, methane can be polymerized with heat and catalysts to heavier hydrocarbons that will solidify when allowed to cool to Martian ambient temperatures. This process would further reduce the amount of hydrogen that needs to be imported, as hydrogen gas gets released during polymerization.
Not saying that this is the best of approaches. It's just an approach I haven't heard discussed before as far as locally produced propellants are concerned.
** While most people assume local Martian hydrogen and oxygen from electrolysis of Martian ice, this is far harder than most people assume, and not simply because mining hard materials on another world is so potentially difficult. Our history of experience with electrolysis in space has been fraught with problems (see the ISS for examples), and that's with about as tightly controlled feedstocks as you can get. On Mars you're dealing with not pure water ice, but rather frozen muck. Hence the lower-risk proposals call for using a solid oxide fuel cell to convert CO2 to CO+O2 to get the oxygen and importing the hydrogen.
New rule: there's only 8 rivers on Earth, and all others are "dwarf rivers" and don't really count as rivers. In order to retain the use of the word "river" in a context that is relatively closely related to its historical usage when people were primitive tribesmen and only knew of a few rivers in their area, a line has to be drawn somewhere. It is far more logical to draw that line above the Brahmaputra than below it. If you are advocating for every river which is large enough to be too deep and fast flowing to ford a river -- you're going to have upwards of 100000 of them, and that's just what we know of right now.
New rule: there are only organs in the human body, and all others are "dwarf organs" and don't really count as organs. In order to retain the use of the word "organ" in a context that is relatively closely related to its historical usage, a line has to be drawn somewhere. It is far more logical to draw that line above the spleen than below it. If you are advocating for every object which is large enough to have a distinct biological function, and is not a part of another organ an organ -- you're going to have many hundreds if not thousands of them, and that's just what we know of right now.
New rule: there are only 8 elements, and all others are "secondary elements" and don't really count as elements. In order to retain the use of the word "element" in a context that is relatively closely related to its historical usage, a line has to be drawn somewhere. It is far more logical to draw that line above bismuth than below it. If you are advocating for every particle which contains a unique number of protons to be called an element -- you're going to have 118 of them, and that's just what we know of right now.
Shall I keep going?
It is in no way, shape or form scientific to define what something is based on whether schoolchildren can memorize a list of all of them. Time and time again, ancient peoples have created names for things thinking that there's only a small number of them, and later scientists discovered that there's actually a vast diversity of them. Well, guess what, you deal with that and accept that the universe is a fascinating place rather than trying to hide it with definitions that aren't even internally consistent or in alignment with our models of what actually cleared most "neighborhoods" in our solar system (hint: it wasn't planets like Mars).
And you certainly don't do so in opposition to the very perception of the word itself. People look at pictures of Pluto and they see a planet. Because it's a giant chunk of rock orbiting a star - yes, there are bigger ones, but it's still huge, so large that gravity crammed it into a sphere, setting of processes of mineralization, tectonics, and so forth - which more to the point appear to be still active to this day. People turn on Star Trek and when they see the Enterprise arrive at a body like Pluto, they expect to hear Captain Kirk say "Beam me down to the planet", not "Beam me down to this... hmm, Spock, I'm not sure what to call it, could you run a long-range scan to see if it has "cleared its neighborhood"... oh wait, I forgot, "planets" can only be objects in orbit around the sun, there is no name for whatever this thing is!"
First, the IAU definition:
1. Nomenclature: An "adjective-noun" should always be a subset of "noun". A "dwarf planet" should be no less seen as a type of planet than a "dwarf star" is seen as a type of star.
2. Erroneous foundation: Current research suggests that most planets did not clear their own neighborhoods, and even that their neighborhoods may not always have been where they are. Jupiter, and Saturn to a lesser extent, have cleared most neighborhoods. Mars has 1/300th the Stern-Levison parameter as Neptune, and Neptune has multiple bodies a couple percent of Mars's mass (possibly even larger, we've only detected an estimated 1% of large KBOs) in its "neighborhood". Mars's neighborhood would in no way would be clear if Jupiter did not exist - even Earth's might not be. Should we demote the terrestrial planets as well?
3. Comparative inconsistency: Earth is far more like Ceres and Pluto than it is like Jupiter, yet these very dissimilar groups - gas giants and terrestrial planets - are lumped together as "planets" while dwarfs are excluded.
4. Poor choice of dividing line: While defining objects inherently requires drawing lines between groups, the chosen line has been poorly selected. Achieving a rough hydrostatic equilibrium is a very meaningful dividing line - it means differentiation, mineralization processes, alteration of primordial materials, and so forth. It's also often associated with internal heat and, increasingly as we're realizing, a common association with subsurface fluids. In short, a body in a category of "not having achieved hydrostatic equilibrium" describes a body which one would study to learn about the origins of our solar system, while a body in a category of "having achieved hydrostatic equilibrium" describes a body one would study, for example, to learn more about tectonics, geochemistry, (potentially) biology, etc. By contrast, a dividing line of "clearing its neighborhood" - which doesn't even meet standard #2 - says little about the body itself.
5. Mutability: What an object is declared at can be altered without any of the properties of the object changing simply by its "neighborhood" changing in any of countless ways.
6. Situational inconsistency: An exact copy of Earth (what the vast majority of people would consider the prototype for what a planet should be), identical down to all of the life on its surface, would not be considered a planet if orbiting in the habitable zone of a significantly larger star (harder to clear zone), or a young star (insufficient time to clear), a star without a Jupiter equivalent (no assistance in clearing), or so forth.