Interestingly, and on a completely unrelated note, Rule 34 curiosity led me to google image search "mamushka porn" right after posting this comic and on the second page of results the movie boxes for "Dumb and Dumber" were displayed....I love the internet.
Well, you see, we all have fond memories of playing with mamushka dolls when we were little and...I mean...come on... who honestly doesn't love those things?
...19th century Russia and...United States government.
I'm sorry, but with the way things are going, what exactly do you perceive the difference to be? (Politically that is, we all know there is such a thing as nuclear___ now).
I recall reading an article in the local paper that voter turnout dropped hugely in the most recent California elections. I also recall reading a similar article the next day in the LA Times how voter turnout in LA County also dropped hugely. The whole voter turnout decreasing trend seems to be fairly common throughout the United States these days. Couple that with the ever-popular 'tea party protests' that we have recently seen in the country in which numerous voters are conglomerating and denouncing the government system as a whole and I think you could make a pretty strong case that the drop in the number of votes/voters is not attributable solely to the use of electronic voting instruments. I don't doubt it has had some, and likely even a significant, effect. But I think it would be worth noting that Americans in general seem to have gotten tired of voting. After all, why bother casting a vote when every single candidate elected seems to participate in a general, "who can suck the most" contest. I don't encourage apathy in the populace, but maybe we could try implementing some election system reforms like a, "Choose to withhold my vote from all available candidates" box on ballots. That way we could at least declaratively (yes, I think I made that word up) say that we don't like any of the choices, rather than just not voting and having 'experts' debate the causes of such apathy....
Does anyone else love this idea simply due to the fact that it will make roads visible at night? I, for one, am sick of driving on unlit country roads and only having the fogline to navigate by. Oh, and on roads with heavy chains usage you might as well be driving blind at night, you can't even see the edge of damned road because the chains tear the fogline paint up so bad. Bring on the paint, it would be a nice change.
Now all World of Warcraft and Second Life have to do to take over the world are sponsor some kind of in-game theater/movie experience. I can see it now:
Blizzard announces new skill tree for all classes: Theater Employment skills, featuring 733T skillz like floor sweeping and garbage collecting. New race specific skill introduced: Blood and Night Elf females can now train in the Candy Striper professions.
There will even be a new mount: The handicap wheelchair: Available only when movement is debuffed.
The U.S. Navy has developed autonomous long range torpedo technology. In a completely unrelated article, Rutgers students announce that they have lost all contact with their AUV and have offered no explanation as to why....
Actually that is a standard part of U.S. spacecraft mission design. I would imagine that it is also a standard part of the design cycle for *most* space-capable countries. When we design orbital missions (GEO, LEO, MEO, whatever) the final stages of the mission design are to discuss and develop a legal and effective means at EOL (end of life) disposal. Depending on fuel remaining, cost of development, change in launch mass, etc etc etc, this involves either deorbit into a degrading, destructive Earth orbit, or jettison into a hyperbolic orbit to fling the spacecraft out into God-knows-where. The former option is the preferred option (for some orbits) since the spacecraft disintegrates upon reentry. Of course, these deorbit burns can and do take a long time, sometimes, since a minimum thrust impulse is desired (less fuel reserves have to be kept). This allows for the spacecraft to enter an orbit which, due to drag (usually during perigee), solar pressure, and a number of other factors will eventually force the spacecraft to reenter and destroy.
Also, most spacecraft designs (all in the U.S.) are held to some kind of design standard specification (whether it be military issued, or D.O.D. or whatever). These design specifications have very strict, very black and white specifications on how to deorbit, and what kind of fuel margins must be kept on board for the duration of mission life in order to allow either jettison or deorbit.
Actually, this is the first thing I thought about with the proposed budget. Aussie will certainly not be able to develop the increasingly complex infrastructure for a full fledged space program. However, they could easily use that funding to develop support projects for the rest of the world's space programs. For instance, they could develop a small but reliable ground station complex to assist with launch vehicle and polar orbiter communications. There is a very limited number of ground stations in the world right now and bandwidth on them is in increasing demand and is, thus, expensive. Helping assist other country's space programs with something like orbit-ground communications infrastructure could provide both a source of revenue and an integrated role in mission development for the Aussie space organization, whatever that may be. Also, training staff on support projects like this would increase the market for specialized professions of the aerospace nature in Australia as well as attracting existing professionals to move there. In short, a well organized, supported, stable, and small 'foot-in-the-door' type program could be the first step for Aussie's to become an integrated part of the increasingly global space industry. I think it could work out extremely beneficial if done right...
...that in about one week's time there will be a report in the mainstream media about how multiple US Armed Forces' networks underwent a thorough attack by unknown sources that were probably of Russian or Chinese origin, not realizing that it was this training exercise?
If I could mod you up I would, at least I know there is one other person on here who understands that space is a shit environment and trying to power something in it is not a simple hand wavy thing. Hell, it takes engineers more than a year to design a functioning power system for spacecraft that don't leave Earth orbit....This is going to degrade into a rant so I am stopping now...
Oh yeah, let's just do that. Hmmm, what kind of energy sources exist in space? There's the sun, but we are too far away from that...There are gravity sinks so I suppose we could use some of the orbital energy and convert it to electricity. Of course then our rate of travel decreases and the mission life extends and we need more energy. There is some free-floating radiation out there so maybe we could use the surface charge on the spacecraft and convert it to electricity, except oh hmmm, that tends to screw with the electronics inside the spacecraft...There is of course a lot of matter between vacuum areas (odd way of phrasing it), maybe we could make a rock eater that breaks chemical bonds to generate electricity. Oh wait, that involves an extremely complex mission segment dedicated to a rendezvous/intercept coupled with a departure which involves changing flight path, increasing mission complexity, and then, oh yeah, increasing energy needs. Maybe we should find a way to carry energy with us. Let's explore that path....
We could use batteries, but then of course they have a lifetime and cycle limit associated with them that is extremely small compared to nuclear power sources. It doesn't help that they add one metric $hit-ton of launch weight which drives costs through the roof. It also doesn't help that they add a large mass sink in your spacecraft that makes controlling the dynamic and static states of the spacecraft a veritable nightmare...We could put an internal combustion engine on the spacecraft...oh wait, no air. Well what about a solar reflector that focuses sunlight and forces a steam-turbine...oh, yeah, we are too far away from the sun. Let's see, what is a good way to bring energy to deep space? Isn't there some sort of element or material that has a naturally high energy that is just waiting to release that energy in the form of heat to generate electricity? Oh yeah! It's called a radioactive material....we should use that.
No? Okay, well organic lifeforms store a lot of energy, lets just strap some chimpanzees in the pilot's seat and power the spacecraft off their silly monkey antics. Better yet, let's invent a puppy-combustion engine and just pack all of the chihuahuas in the world onto the spacecraft....
Don't get me wrong, I am all for innovation and as soon as we figure out a better method of power-generation for deep space missions, we should jump on it like slashdotters on a flamebait thread. However, at this point, nuclear power really is the ONLY reasonable means to power deep space missions. Coming up with alternatives takes a hell of a lot of imagination, time, and money that, well, scientists and engineers are not being given these days. Please, take it from an aerospace engineer that has specialized his degree in spacecraft power systems, nuclear power generation is the most efficient and useful means of generating power in space. For deep space missions, this method is necessary and will remain so for quite a while. If you or anyone else can come up with something better, please do, but for now, sidelining nuclear-powered spacecraft will bring deep space exploration to a grinding halt.
It's funny for me to see this posted. When I used to consider myself a practicing Christian, I pledged myself to the faith in an attempt to understand the idea, theme, and entity called God. After all, that's what most religions claim to be authorities on. However, after much frustration, I finally gave it all up because churches don't care about God. They don't have any interest in trying to better understand concepts like an infinite deity, omnipresence, or timeless existence. Any attempt to approach these concepts with curiosity and questioning in mind was always met with either harsh criticism or an intense urging to accept naivete and ignorance instead. Very few churches I ever attended were willing to discuss the indescribable nature of what the word God was originally meant to address. It seemed to me, that the only goal of churches was to mindlessly and zealously turn people to their belief system in the name of a savior. They had little care for anything regarding the complex nature of the subject matter. Churches just wanted more followers as quickly and easily as possible.
If trying to describe to someone the beauty of an idea like timeless, infinite existence (God) in 140 characters or less isn't a perfect representation of that theme, I don't know what is.
"Let's recruit people with catch phrases, zingers, and one-liners about God!"
"Yeah, its not like the entire idea behind a God entity is worth thinking about or discussing in depth or anything."
"Yay!"
It's sad, really that church has become synonymous with recruiting ground and not a place for intelligent, philosophical exploration./sigh
The only limitations of a perl programmer are those imposed by his own biological weaknesses. The Truly Enlightened understand this and patiently await your journey into the never-ending along the righteous path of of sigils, regular expressions, context.
Oh hey look at that, here countries are trying to reduce their dependence on foreign resources like oil with 'sustainable' solutions like solar, wind, and electric energy when all of the sudden its discovered that these fun things called batteries, required to store the energy from inconsistent sources (like solar and wind) are actually needed to make these solutions viable. Oh and wait, there are some countries with more battery materials than others? No, the rest of the world won't depend on them for these new resources like we did oil right?
*facepalm* *headbang desk*
Are people really so blind that they cannot see that something like new "green" energies are going to simply shift dependence to a new kind of resource? When the f**k are people going to wake up and realize that until we start funding and developing truly renewable and truly sustainable and truly consistent energy production methods based on fuels like hydrogen (like, oh, I don't know say fusion?) we are just going to be replicating the same problem we have run into with fossil fuels?
I am tired of people and their useless groupthink...
Hang on a second. That's not exactly a common mix. Was this guy trying out for the "Most Random Acid Cocktail" award?
Actually he was working on a formula for the next new male sexual enhancement drug, but instead he accidentally created another alternative to sexual intercourse with a male for women....oh irony....
The **AA stumbled upon some sort of blackmail content (pictures or whatever) involving the judge and wanted to meet with him privately to give him the chance to toss the case before revealing said material. Hence the judge's willingness to seal everything going on. I would laugh at myself for the idea but am not sure its much of a joke these days....
Slashdot Mirror
I would be very wary of cloning any and all dinosaurs if I were you. Unless, of course, you passed your Velociraptor Math Test already....
Interestingly, and on a completely unrelated note, Rule 34 curiosity led me to google image search "mamushka porn" right after posting this comic and on the second page of results the movie boxes for "Dumb and Dumber" were displayed....I love the internet.
Well, you see, we all have fond memories of playing with mamushka dolls when we were little and...I mean...come on... who honestly doesn't love those things?
...19th century Russia and ...United States government.
I'm sorry, but with the way things are going, what exactly do you perceive the difference to be? (Politically that is, we all know there is such a thing as nuclear___ now).
I recall reading an article in the local paper that voter turnout dropped hugely in the most recent California elections. I also recall reading a similar article the next day in the LA Times how voter turnout in LA County also dropped hugely. The whole voter turnout decreasing trend seems to be fairly common throughout the United States these days. Couple that with the ever-popular 'tea party protests' that we have recently seen in the country in which numerous voters are conglomerating and denouncing the government system as a whole and I think you could make a pretty strong case that the drop in the number of votes/voters is not attributable solely to the use of electronic voting instruments. I don't doubt it has had some, and likely even a significant, effect. But I think it would be worth noting that Americans in general seem to have gotten tired of voting. After all, why bother casting a vote when every single candidate elected seems to participate in a general, "who can suck the most" contest. I don't encourage apathy in the populace, but maybe we could try implementing some election system reforms like a, "Choose to withhold my vote from all available candidates" box on ballots. That way we could at least declaratively (yes, I think I made that word up) say that we don't like any of the choices, rather than just not voting and having 'experts' debate the causes of such apathy....
Does anyone else love this idea simply due to the fact that it will make roads visible at night? I, for one, am sick of driving on unlit country roads and only having the fogline to navigate by. Oh, and on roads with heavy chains usage you might as well be driving blind at night, you can't even see the edge of damned road because the chains tear the fogline paint up so bad. Bring on the paint, it would be a nice change.
The only operating system needed for navigating the clouds is piloted by bears that care ... a lot.
Angelina Jolie has a legitimate excuse to stop posturing as an actress and can pursue her true destiny...
Now all World of Warcraft and Second Life have to do to take over the world are sponsor some kind of in-game theater/movie experience. I can see it now:
Blizzard announces new skill tree for all classes: Theater Employment skills, featuring 733T skillz like floor sweeping and garbage collecting. New race specific skill introduced: Blood and Night Elf females can now train in the Candy Striper professions.
There will even be a new mount: The handicap wheelchair: Available only when movement is debuffed.
The U.S. Navy has developed autonomous long range torpedo technology. In a completely unrelated article, Rutgers students announce that they have lost all contact with their AUV and have offered no explanation as to why....
...that when viewed from outside the solar system, Pluto might actually still look like a planet?
Woohoo! Score one for our favorite space rock!
So, you're saying that if they fail as soccer bots, we could train them as robotic ninjas? The world just got 20 times more awesome than it was.
Actually that is a standard part of U.S. spacecraft mission design. I would imagine that it is also a standard part of the design cycle for *most* space-capable countries. When we design orbital missions (GEO, LEO, MEO, whatever) the final stages of the mission design are to discuss and develop a legal and effective means at EOL (end of life) disposal. Depending on fuel remaining, cost of development, change in launch mass, etc etc etc, this involves either deorbit into a degrading, destructive Earth orbit, or jettison into a hyperbolic orbit to fling the spacecraft out into God-knows-where. The former option is the preferred option (for some orbits) since the spacecraft disintegrates upon reentry. Of course, these deorbit burns can and do take a long time, sometimes, since a minimum thrust impulse is desired (less fuel reserves have to be kept). This allows for the spacecraft to enter an orbit which, due to drag (usually during perigee), solar pressure, and a number of other factors will eventually force the spacecraft to reenter and destroy.
Also, most spacecraft designs (all in the U.S.) are held to some kind of design standard specification (whether it be military issued, or D.O.D. or whatever). These design specifications have very strict, very black and white specifications on how to deorbit, and what kind of fuel margins must be kept on board for the duration of mission life in order to allow either jettison or deorbit.
I hope this helped clarify.
Cheers.
Actually, this is the first thing I thought about with the proposed budget. Aussie will certainly not be able to develop the increasingly complex infrastructure for a full fledged space program. However, they could easily use that funding to develop support projects for the rest of the world's space programs. For instance, they could develop a small but reliable ground station complex to assist with launch vehicle and polar orbiter communications. There is a very limited number of ground stations in the world right now and bandwidth on them is in increasing demand and is, thus, expensive. Helping assist other country's space programs with something like orbit-ground communications infrastructure could provide both a source of revenue and an integrated role in mission development for the Aussie space organization, whatever that may be. Also, training staff on support projects like this would increase the market for specialized professions of the aerospace nature in Australia as well as attracting existing professionals to move there. In short, a well organized, supported, stable, and small 'foot-in-the-door' type program could be the first step for Aussie's to become an integrated part of the increasingly global space industry. I think it could work out extremely beneficial if done right...
Cheers.
...that in about one week's time there will be a report in the mainstream media about how multiple US Armed Forces' networks underwent a thorough attack by unknown sources that were probably of Russian or Chinese origin, not realizing that it was this training exercise?
If I could mod you up I would, at least I know there is one other person on here who understands that space is a shit environment and trying to power something in it is not a simple hand wavy thing. Hell, it takes engineers more than a year to design a functioning power system for spacecraft that don't leave Earth orbit....This is going to degrade into a rant so I am stopping now...
Oh yeah, let's just do that. Hmmm, what kind of energy sources exist in space? There's the sun, but we are too far away from that...There are gravity sinks so I suppose we could use some of the orbital energy and convert it to electricity. Of course then our rate of travel decreases and the mission life extends and we need more energy. There is some free-floating radiation out there so maybe we could use the surface charge on the spacecraft and convert it to electricity, except oh hmmm, that tends to screw with the electronics inside the spacecraft...There is of course a lot of matter between vacuum areas (odd way of phrasing it), maybe we could make a rock eater that breaks chemical bonds to generate electricity. Oh wait, that involves an extremely complex mission segment dedicated to a rendezvous/intercept coupled with a departure which involves changing flight path, increasing mission complexity, and then, oh yeah, increasing energy needs. Maybe we should find a way to carry energy with us. Let's explore that path....
We could use batteries, but then of course they have a lifetime and cycle limit associated with them that is extremely small compared to nuclear power sources. It doesn't help that they add one metric $hit-ton of launch weight which drives costs through the roof. It also doesn't help that they add a large mass sink in your spacecraft that makes controlling the dynamic and static states of the spacecraft a veritable nightmare...We could put an internal combustion engine on the spacecraft...oh wait, no air. Well what about a solar reflector that focuses sunlight and forces a steam-turbine...oh, yeah, we are too far away from the sun. Let's see, what is a good way to bring energy to deep space? Isn't there some sort of element or material that has a naturally high energy that is just waiting to release that energy in the form of heat to generate electricity? Oh yeah! It's called a radioactive material....we should use that.
No? Okay, well organic lifeforms store a lot of energy, lets just strap some chimpanzees in the pilot's seat and power the spacecraft off their silly monkey antics. Better yet, let's invent a puppy-combustion engine and just pack all of the chihuahuas in the world onto the spacecraft....
Don't get me wrong, I am all for innovation and as soon as we figure out a better method of power-generation for deep space missions, we should jump on it like slashdotters on a flamebait thread. However, at this point, nuclear power really is the ONLY reasonable means to power deep space missions. Coming up with alternatives takes a hell of a lot of imagination, time, and money that, well, scientists and engineers are not being given these days. Please, take it from an aerospace engineer that has specialized his degree in spacecraft power systems, nuclear power generation is the most efficient and useful means of generating power in space. For deep space missions, this method is necessary and will remain so for quite a while. If you or anyone else can come up with something better, please do, but for now, sidelining nuclear-powered spacecraft will bring deep space exploration to a grinding halt.
Cheers.
(1/3 to 2/3 of government bureaucrats don't do noticeable amounts of useful work)
While Zoidberg might agree with you there, I think Hermes would be especially offended by that statement...
No, we just have to find Them
Disclaimer: I do not work for a newspaper, but I still feel fully justified in citing Wikipedia.
It's funny for me to see this posted. When I used to consider myself a practicing Christian, I pledged myself to the faith in an attempt to understand the idea, theme, and entity called God. After all, that's what most religions claim to be authorities on. However, after much frustration, I finally gave it all up because churches don't care about God. They don't have any interest in trying to better understand concepts like an infinite deity, omnipresence, or timeless existence. Any attempt to approach these concepts with curiosity and questioning in mind was always met with either harsh criticism or an intense urging to accept naivete and ignorance instead. Very few churches I ever attended were willing to discuss the indescribable nature of what the word God was originally meant to address. It seemed to me, that the only goal of churches was to mindlessly and zealously turn people to their belief system in the name of a savior. They had little care for anything regarding the complex nature of the subject matter. Churches just wanted more followers as quickly and easily as possible.
/sigh
If trying to describe to someone the beauty of an idea like timeless, infinite existence (God) in 140 characters or less isn't a perfect representation of that theme, I don't know what is.
"Let's recruit people with catch phrases, zingers, and one-liners about God!"
"Yeah, its not like the entire idea behind a God entity is worth thinking about or discussing in depth or anything."
"Yay!"
It's sad, really that church has become synonymous with recruiting ground and not a place for intelligent, philosophical exploration.
The only limitations of a perl programmer are those imposed by his own biological weaknesses. The Truly Enlightened understand this and patiently await your journey into the never-ending along the righteous path of of sigils, regular expressions, context.
Oh hey look at that, here countries are trying to reduce their dependence on foreign resources like oil with 'sustainable' solutions like solar, wind, and electric energy when all of the sudden its discovered that these fun things called batteries, required to store the energy from inconsistent sources (like solar and wind) are actually needed to make these solutions viable. Oh and wait, there are some countries with more battery materials than others? No, the rest of the world won't depend on them for these new resources like we did oil right?
*facepalm* *headbang desk*
Are people really so blind that they cannot see that something like new "green" energies are going to simply shift dependence to a new kind of resource? When the f**k are people going to wake up and realize that until we start funding and developing truly renewable and truly sustainable and truly consistent energy production methods based on fuels like hydrogen (like, oh, I don't know say fusion?) we are just going to be replicating the same problem we have run into with fossil fuels?
I am tired of people and their useless groupthink...
Hang on a second. That's not exactly a common mix. Was this guy trying out for the "Most Random Acid Cocktail" award?
Actually he was working on a formula for the next new male sexual enhancement drug, but instead he accidentally created another alternative to sexual intercourse with a male for women....oh irony....
Can't we just credit God or something?
We do, its called the Higg's Boson....haven't you been paying attention? Sheesh...
The **AA stumbled upon some sort of blackmail content (pictures or whatever) involving the judge and wanted to meet with him privately to give him the chance to toss the case before revealing said material. Hence the judge's willingness to seal everything going on. I would laugh at myself for the idea but am not sure its much of a joke these days....