Yes, but how many strip clubs are there in Calgary compared to Montreal? Even on a per capita basis, there are significantly more in Montreal. Woohoo! A new first for me! This is the first time I've seen two Canadians arguing over who has more sex businesses...
In Seattle, alcohol isn't allowed in Strip clubs and they tried to pass a "4 foot rule" which, as stated, forbits the stripper from getting within 4 feet of the customer. But besides that, all the girls here look like they got hit by a brick so you probably don't want them within 4 feet of you anyways.(emphasis mine) Bloody hell, you're just another American? You just killed my excitement.
I have to say, though, that the "4 foot rule" is a lot better than what they did in my town. They waited until a strip club was almost built, then they passed an ordnance that banned them. There was a long legal fight and, eventually, that went away. So they passed another one that said "No strip clubs within 300 yards of a church", then they built a church nearby and forced the club to close. End result? It cost me $10 in gas every time I wanted to go to a strip club and less of the girls were local. Oh, and increased DUIs on the highway to the nearest populous city.
No one ever said sex is harmful or immoral; as I just said we NEED it for procreation. It would be an obvious problem if Christians said it is immoral knowing that it is required to carry on the species. It is immoral when performed for money or entertainment or where the intent is anything but what it was intended for.
Right, so by the design of Christianity, the strongest human urge (aside from hunger and thirst, which you can only deny for limited periods of time) is evil unless it is done specifically to produce more Christians. I'm glad you recognize that there is a logical paradox here, but I'm saddened that you accept their explanation. Should an infertile married couple be allowed to have sex? If not, why can't they express their love towards each other? If so, why? God has already made His will evident by making one of them unable to procreate. If they should, how is this different from a gay couple having sex? I mean, they can't procreate, but if they're doing it to express love for one another...
We have always had a live and let live mentality. There have been no laws respecting an establishment of religion that say you have to be a certain religion.
Right, like the blue laws, the jim crow laws, womens' suffrage since the founding of the US, prohibition, the prosecution of educators for teaching Darwinism because it conflicted with Genesis. Oh, wait, those are all religiously-inspired state-enforced morals, aren't they? I mean, you can go to jail for sinning even if it doesn't harm anyone. I understand that Christians feel they are saving souls by making it less desirable for people to sin, but they are still putting their religious beliefs into law.
Christians don't care what you do (again, there are displays of religious teachings but not commandments or laws) but there is a difference between them not caring what you do and still being able to do what they do without you complaining about how it infringes on your rights when they aren't making you do *anything* with their *displays*.
Right, and when I'm standing trial in court for smoking marijuana at home, surrounded by armed guards wearing crosses, staring up at "You shall have no other gods before me", I'm just admiring a wonderful display.
However no morals means we no longer have a sense of having to suffer the consequences of our actions. We are then left to live a life of just another animal on this planet. We already have free will to choose; what is the point of having that if we don't have to suffer for bad choices? (snip) Porn on cell phones would increase the lack of morals in the U.S. and remove any sense of responsiblity we have to live up to a certain standard of living. I'm sure you agree with the law that says murder is a crime and you would probably agree with that even if it wasn't one of the 10 Commandments but when you start making your own moral law you still have to answer for your actions.
Ok, so in the beginning of your argument you say that morals are what sets us apart from animals. I suppose I would partially, somewhat, sort of agree. Now how are your morals determined? Obviously you draw some of your morals from the bible. You don't draw all of them from the bible, because you aren't stoning unbelievers to death, bombing abortion clinics, and converting people to Christianity by your sword. You likely haven't killed anyone when you found out they were working on the sabbath, either. The rest of your argument stems from your definition of morals. I don't see sexual entertainment as an intrinsically immoral thing. Of course you do, based on your bible, but me watching sex on my cell phone does not harm anyone else in our society. If you are correct, I will go to hell and suffer eternally, but surely you will not be punished for having the compassion to allow me to make my own choices.
We all agree that murder should be illegal. It has been in every known society in the history o
Most of it is by a bunch of backwards-thinking liberals that just can't side with science and admit that God does not exist, and must constantly force their beliefs upon our legal system. Where's the separation of church and state in that?. Uhhh...... I've heard of people blaming the liberals for a lot of things, but I think this is the first time I've heard of religious nutjobs being called liberals. I suppose I agree with the rest of what you said, though.
There are lots of p0rn on the internet. They charge $4 for just dl'ing p0rn without unknown quality in a tiny screen is just silly. Now if you tell me that there is some interactions (say chat lines/requests), may be there is a market.
We'll see if you sing the same tune when your car breaks down on the way to your girlfriend's house and the towing company says they'll be there in four hours...and you realize you've forgotten your laptop. Nerd. In that situation, I'd call my girlfriend up, tell her to bring a blanket and come to where I am. We'd spread the blanket out somewhere nearby and have some crazy semi-public sex while waiting for the tow truck to arrive. I might, however, use my camera phone to take some videos and pictures.
Why? They have their uses and are not that inhumane -- supposedly, the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear bombings have taken less lives, than the weeks of conventional bombings before them (something like 150K lives per night is allegedly attributable to the latter). They are certainly more humane than other weapons of mass destruction, not to say that they're pleasant. You are certainly correct about the number of lives killed; the fire bombings were much worse! If you don't include the people killed by after effects, the firebombing of Tokyo killed more people than Hiroshima. If you include them, Hiroshima killed the most, Tokyo fire bombings were #2, and Nagasaki was a distant third. I can't remember the numbers from Dresden, but many more Japanese were killed from fire bombing than nuclear bombing.
Of course the real point in using it was the psychological impact of "look what we can do with one plane and one bomb". I'd equate this to scaring someone off with a shotgun when a small pocket knife just isn't doing the job, even though you can slowly bleed them to death with a small knife.
So you wouldn't define military victory as "occupying all lands in a country, obliterating their military, and removing all leadership from power"? Then I guess the allies didn't actually win WWII until being a racist in Germany became illegal, and the American civil war wasn't really won until the Jim Crow laws were struck down... We should probably update our history books to reflect this new definition of military victory.
Of course I'm not saying we've done a perfect job in preventing an Iranian insurgency. I'm not saying the current Iraqi government is a model of democracy we should all follow, and I'm certainly not saying that we finished the job there before public opinion turned against it. None of this implies that we didn't actually have an incredibly quick military victory.
Uh, maybe I'm not up-to-date on my American vocabulary, but to me, "urinate" is as clean a word as can be found(meaning it would, for instance, be used in a formal medical setting), while "shit" is definitely not - aren't you looking for the word "defecate"? I actually thought about that when posting and decided to use both terms. As the originally comment used the term "earthy" to describe certain words, I feel it is important to note that such people would not be caught dead using terms that actually directly describe such human acts. At least to the people I've met, they would not be caught dead saying "feces" or "defecate", and intentionally use terms such as "Go #2" or "see a man about a horse" to avoid saying the actual terms. While I could go on for hours about the history of the attempted use of new, cleansing terms for excretory acts, I don't think that's what you were asking about. Suffice to say that people afraid of using "earthy" words for bodily functions are constantly trying to find new ways of expressing necessary thoughts without actually saying the words because they feel it somehow raises the level of the conversation, as the original poster stated.
Also, in my opinion it would seem that the discussion above is not the result of either an excessive phobia of "bad" words on one part nor of crudeness on the other, but simply a confusion(or rather, a disagreement), on how formal a setting a Slashdot discussion is. This is really to be expected, in some threads here people tend to converse as if they're debating an issue, while in others people are just chatting as one would between friends at a pub. I'm not sure I agree, but point well taken. I interpreted the remarks about earthy words as an implication that euphemisms and periphrases are somehow on an elevated, holy, or non-earthy level. It should be quite obvious that I disagree with that line of thinking.
Of course I don't feel there's a need to change vocabulary simply because you're in a formal debate or sharing thoughts in a pub so long as people are using the most technically accurate and commonly understood words as possible.
>Also, your phobia of the words 'toilet' and 'shit' is humourous.
It's not a "phobia", it's just (a degree of) class. Or a degree of feeling that you are above, perhaps somehow cleaner than, people who understand, accept, and openly talk about bodily functions...
Life is not made any more enjoyable by everyone using the earthiest words that they can think of all the time and in all circumstances. Earthiest?! I dare say even the most heavenly and religious attempts by humans are still earthly and entirely human. You may think you are somehow being less "dirty" or "earthy" by calling it a lieu, toilette, rest room, water closet, comfort room, or John, but you're still describing exactly the same thing, and everybody still knows exactly what you're talking about. Over time, the cleansing effect of these foreign words is lost, and society moves on to a new, unfamiliar euphemism. The only group of people above this petty, earthy self-disgust is the group that refuses to use such obfuscating terms.
And it's hardly cool or rebellious anymore - if you want to be a rebel these days, clean up your speech:) And it's hardly cool or rebellious to follow the group think that you need to use the term "tinkle" instead of "urinate", or "go #2" instead of "shit". Hell, it's downright childish.
Personally, I see the point of rebellion as doing away with the idiotic mass practices of a culture or society which serve no purpose. As such, a rebellion could grow to encompass 90% of the population and still be a rebellion. This rebellion is about doing away with the idiotic pussy-footing of words and replacing it with a more precise, technical, and direct use of words. The fact that we're kicking your ass in a culture war does not mean entitle you to rebel status!
Same here. I've never understood this whole "toilet reading" phenomenon. When I have to take a shit, I sit down, dump, wipe, get up, and wash. So you're the asshole! The proper procedure is "Shit, wipe, flush". If you continue to ignore company policy, you will be sent back to remedial training at your own expense. An instructional poster will be posted inside the stall by close of business.
Not that your comment has anything to do with the one you replied to, or this article in general, but I have to point out that your whining of homelessness doesn't go well with your sig: "Being homeless, I need five things: a job, marijuana, money, beer, and food." Wasting money on marijuana and beer isn't likely to help with the job-hunting, money-saving, house-purchasing efforts. Not that you really need a house in La Jolla. You shouldn't even be complaining. It's not like you're homeless in North Dakota! 60 F during the day, 51 F at night? Come on, now. I'd rather have internet access than a home if I lived in climate like that.
Use his problem-solving skills to obtain a copy of the source in question?
What problem-solving skills would aardvarkjoe use? I would prefer if "problem-solving skills" did not involve copyright infringement or computer network misuse. Or should "problem-solving skills" involve changing the subject, turning a report about a given topic into a report about the holes in a school's journal subscriptions?
Your inability to think of a solution does not imply that no solution exists, unless you set the criteria as "get the journal from this school library without influencing them in any way to obtain it on their own." May I suggest some solutions using a barometer?
Offer to give the librarian your wonderful barometer if she will obtain the required journals
Threaten to beat the librarian with your barometer if she does not obtain the required journals
Travel to another university and bribe a student there with your barometer in return for loaning you the journal
Threaten to beat the student at the other school with your barometer for failing to obtain your journal in time
Offer your barometer as collateral for your doppelgänger's school ID (at another school which has said journal), then use that ID to peruse the journal which you so desire
Go on television and offer your barometer as a reward for the first person who sends you the journal
Sell the barometer on the black barometer market to obtain the required funds to purchase the journal yourself
Tie a string to the barometer and use it to hypnotize the librarian, then get her to order a copy of the journal
Offer to assist your local senator with a large barometer donation to his campaign if he establishes a program to fund the purchase of missing journals for university libraries
There. You now have 9 solutions which use a barometer. I am sure that, even though the school appears to be slightly underfunded, you will be able to obtain more tools than a mere barometer. I have found that telephones, friends (as available), the internet, and money work even better than barometers in many situations.
Sadly, while your energy production peaks coincide with peak demand, you're still paid a flat rate for the production. We're not even paid for production in our area, and it's still a fast return on the investment. When the meter goes net backwards in a month, the excess power is carried over to the next month as a credit. This goes on for a year. At the end of the year they start over again. Anything you produce for them is lost. They get that for free. So the trick, in our area, is to build a solar or wind system that matches your power needs as closely as possible without producing more than you consume.
Of course the electric companies designed it this way so that people will still be on the grid and paying them money, and people will ease their load during the peak load hours. But none of this makes it a bad deal to go along with the plan. My 8-10 year calculation for breaking even is ignoring the state subsidies and tax credits. Including them it is about 6 years. The system can be reasonably expected to operate for roughly 3 times that, so we'll be getting "free" power for 2/3 of the time. And that's assuming energy prices stay the same for the next 20 years.
I really don't understand why more people haven't jumped on it, especially with the subsidies. Even with people moving so often, it seems "free power for the next 10 years" would be a great selling point for a house. In many places it absolutely is worth the investment. I guess people are either dumb or don't have the required capital to pay the large up-front costs.
>But to say produces more energy than Solar and Wind combined, is that really saying much? By your powers combined... I am Captain Solar Winds! *cue blue and green superhero music* Thank you, Samah. I have been trying to remember the name of that game for weeks now! The game's graphics were incredible. It was Solar Winds by Epic Megagames. "You are Jake Stone, Bounty Hunter" Good times, good times. Gonna go fire up a virtual pc and start playing.
Try about 20 Ours were guaranteed for 20, but expected to last 25-30. At the current rates, the total break even point is going to be about 8-10 years. We generally run the meter slowly backwards about 8 hours a day when it's sunny, and drain slightly in the evening and on cloudy days. The amazing thing is that even at night (during a full moon), and on cloudy days, we have seen decent juice coming off the system. Then again, that's Southern California, but it does take considerable strain off the grid during peak (air conditioning) hours, and we've found it will be highly cost effective.
In that case, the spammers have won. A lot of captchas have become so distorted these days, it takes me 2 or 3 attempts before I pass. Especially when they're case sensitive or use zeroes and ohs (0 and O). If the best OCR system known to man (the human brain) can't process it, god help technology. Right, but if the spammers have to make their images that hard to read, the spammers lose. The idiots who actually buy stock based on "omg buy this stock" spam won't be able to decipher it either.
Landing an aeroplane on sealand would likely DEMOLISH Sealand. True, but it could be expanded. Do you know what territorial claims Sealand has made? I'd assume they'd want at least a mile in every direction.
You're right. I didn't realize that bouncing sound off of something and bouncing light off of something are two completely different fields of study and the math to go with each is completely unique. I *thought* that the invisible light spectrum and radio spectrum were one and the same... thank you for correcting my education.
Now how do we make sure this information gets to Northrop Grumman? I'm sure they already know that this is a bogus project which will make them a lot of money. Regardless, your attempted smart-ass response didn't work, because you don't know wtf you are talking about. There is a rather large difference between actively tracking with something like radar and the way this system passively "tracks" its target. Let me say it again: THIS IS NOT ACTIVE TRACKING. It does not bounce its laser all over the place all day long until it finds something moving above a certain velocity. It uses those little sensors you can see in the picture to detect something coming at it. It probably works the same way NORAD did, based on heat signatures. I remember hearing stories of the American defense network picking up house fires. Regardless, I'd doubt if the system has any idea of the distance or velocity of the object it's detecting, and it doesn't need it in order to fire its laser in the correct direction.
And there is a rather large difference between bouncing sound off of something and bouncing light off of something. I'm not sure exactly what it is, but I believe that light may travel slightly faster than sound.
Exactly, who say Aliens - if they exist - hasn't come up with some vastly superior way of travel
Who says travelling faster than light will ever be possible? We've never observed anything doing so, and we have some reasonably good theory that suggests that it's impossible.
I've never been much for replacing good arguments, logic, and independent thinking with quotes from famous people, but here goes:
"Things are only impossible until they're not."
Jean-Luc Picard, 'Star Trek: The Next Generation'
"When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong."
Sir Arthur C. Clarke, Clarke's first law
And please refrain from calling me out for attempting to refute your argument by quoting Star Trek and a science fiction writer. Picard and Clarke have a certain power around slashdot, and are to be considered honorary scientists among nerds.
Slashdot Mirror
I have to say, though, that the "4 foot rule" is a lot better than what they did in my town. They waited until a strip club was almost built, then they passed an ordnance that banned them. There was a long legal fight and, eventually, that went away. So they passed another one that said "No strip clubs within 300 yards of a church", then they built a church nearby and forced the club to close. End result? It cost me $10 in gas every time I wanted to go to a strip club and less of the girls were local. Oh, and increased DUIs on the highway to the nearest populous city.
No one ever said sex is harmful or immoral; as I just said we NEED it for procreation. It would be an obvious problem if Christians said it is immoral knowing that it is required to carry on the species. It is immoral when performed for money or entertainment or where the intent is anything but what it was intended for.
Right, so by the design of Christianity, the strongest human urge (aside from hunger and thirst, which you can only deny for limited periods of time) is evil unless it is done specifically to produce more Christians. I'm glad you recognize that there is a logical paradox here, but I'm saddened that you accept their explanation. Should an infertile married couple be allowed to have sex? If not, why can't they express their love towards each other? If so, why? God has already made His will evident by making one of them unable to procreate. If they should, how is this different from a gay couple having sex? I mean, they can't procreate, but if they're doing it to express love for one another...
We have always had a live and let live mentality. There have been no laws respecting an establishment of religion that say you have to be a certain religion.
Right, like the blue laws, the jim crow laws, womens' suffrage since the founding of the US, prohibition, the prosecution of educators for teaching Darwinism because it conflicted with Genesis. Oh, wait, those are all religiously-inspired state-enforced morals, aren't they? I mean, you can go to jail for sinning even if it doesn't harm anyone. I understand that Christians feel they are saving souls by making it less desirable for people to sin, but they are still putting their religious beliefs into law.
Christians don't care what you do (again, there are displays of religious teachings but not commandments or laws) but there is a difference between them not caring what you do and still being able to do what they do without you complaining about how it infringes on your rights when they aren't making you do *anything* with their *displays*.
Right, and when I'm standing trial in court for smoking marijuana at home, surrounded by armed guards wearing crosses, staring up at "You shall have no other gods before me", I'm just admiring a wonderful display.
However no morals means we no longer have a sense of having to suffer the consequences of our actions. We are then left to live a life of just another animal on this planet. We already have free will to choose; what is the point of having that if we don't have to suffer for bad choices? (snip) Porn on cell phones would increase the lack of morals in the U.S. and remove any sense of responsiblity we have to live up to a certain standard of living. I'm sure you agree with the law that says murder is a crime and you would probably agree with that even if it wasn't one of the 10 Commandments but when you start making your own moral law you still have to answer for your actions.
Ok, so in the beginning of your argument you say that morals are what sets us apart from animals. I suppose I would partially, somewhat, sort of agree. Now how are your morals determined? Obviously you draw some of your morals from the bible. You don't draw all of them from the bible, because you aren't stoning unbelievers to death, bombing abortion clinics, and converting people to Christianity by your sword. You likely haven't killed anyone when you found out they were working on the sabbath, either. The rest of your argument stems from your definition of morals. I don't see sexual entertainment as an intrinsically immoral thing. Of course you do, based on your bible, but me watching sex on my cell phone does not harm anyone else in our society. If you are correct, I will go to hell and suffer eternally, but surely you will not be punished for having the compassion to allow me to make my own choices.
We all agree that murder should be illegal. It has been in every known society in the history o
Well, it is a rather large cage...
No, I think it was speaking ironically!
Well then, with all that said, I must agree that it was a funny joke.
Of course the real point in using it was the psychological impact of "look what we can do with one plane and one bomb". I'd equate this to scaring someone off with a shotgun when a small pocket knife just isn't doing the job, even though you can slowly bleed them to death with a small knife.
So you wouldn't define military victory as "occupying all lands in a country, obliterating their military, and removing all leadership from power"? Then I guess the allies didn't actually win WWII until being a racist in Germany became illegal, and the American civil war wasn't really won until the Jim Crow laws were struck down... We should probably update our history books to reflect this new definition of military victory.
Of course I'm not saying we've done a perfect job in preventing an Iranian insurgency. I'm not saying the current Iraqi government is a model of democracy we should all follow, and I'm certainly not saying that we finished the job there before public opinion turned against it. None of this implies that we didn't actually have an incredibly quick military victory.
So which of your countries is it? USA? Canada? The Netherlands? County != Country
Of course I don't feel there's a need to change vocabulary simply because you're in a formal debate or sharing thoughts in a pub so long as people are using the most technically accurate and commonly understood words as possible.
Sadly, no, I don't. If google answers was still around I'd be willing to put $10 up for an answer, though.
It's not a "phobia", it's just (a degree of) class. Or a degree of feeling that you are above, perhaps somehow cleaner than, people who understand, accept, and openly talk about bodily functions... Life is not made any more enjoyable by everyone using
the earthiest words that they can think of all the time
and in all circumstances. Earthiest?! I dare say even the most heavenly and religious attempts by humans are still earthly and entirely human. You may think you are somehow being less "dirty" or "earthy" by calling it a lieu, toilette, rest room, water closet, comfort room, or John, but you're still describing exactly the same thing, and everybody still knows exactly what you're talking about. Over time, the cleansing effect of these foreign words is lost, and society moves on to a new, unfamiliar euphemism. The only group of people above this petty, earthy self-disgust is the group that refuses to use such obfuscating terms. And it's hardly cool or rebellious anymore - if you want
to be a rebel these days, clean up your speech
Personally, I see the point of rebellion as doing away with the idiotic mass practices of a culture or society which serve no purpose. As such, a rebellion could grow to encompass 90% of the population and still be a rebellion. This rebellion is about doing away with the idiotic pussy-footing of words and replacing it with a more precise, technical, and direct use of words. The fact that we're kicking your ass in a culture war does not mean entitle you to rebel status!
Not that your comment has anything to do with the one you replied to, or this article in general, but I have to point out that your whining of homelessness doesn't go well with your sig: "Being homeless, I need five things: a job, marijuana, money, beer, and food." Wasting money on marijuana and beer isn't likely to help with the job-hunting, money-saving, house-purchasing efforts. Not that you really need a house in La Jolla. You shouldn't even be complaining. It's not like you're homeless in North Dakota! 60 F during the day, 51 F at night? Come on, now. I'd rather have internet access than a home if I lived in climate like that.
What problem-solving skills would aardvarkjoe use? I would prefer if "problem-solving skills" did not involve copyright infringement or computer network misuse. Or should "problem-solving skills" involve changing the subject, turning a report about a given topic into a report about the holes in a school's journal subscriptions?
Your inability to think of a solution does not imply that no solution exists, unless you set the criteria as "get the journal from this school library without influencing them in any way to obtain it on their own." May I suggest some solutions using a barometer?There. You now have 9 solutions which use a barometer. I am sure that, even though the school appears to be slightly underfunded, you will be able to obtain more tools than a mere barometer. I have found that telephones, friends (as available), the internet, and money work even better than barometers in many situations.
Of course the electric companies designed it this way so that people will still be on the grid and paying them money, and people will ease their load during the peak load hours. But none of this makes it a bad deal to go along with the plan. My 8-10 year calculation for breaking even is ignoring the state subsidies and tax credits. Including them it is about 6 years. The system can be reasonably expected to operate for roughly 3 times that, so we'll be getting "free" power for 2/3 of the time. And that's assuming energy prices stay the same for the next 20 years.
I really don't understand why more people haven't jumped on it, especially with the subsidies. Even with people moving so often, it seems "free power for the next 10 years" would be a great selling point for a house. In many places it absolutely is worth the investment. I guess people are either dumb or don't have the required capital to pay the large up-front costs.
By your powers combined... I am Captain Solar Winds!
*cue blue and green superhero music* Thank you, Samah. I have been trying to remember the name of that game for weeks now! The game's graphics were incredible. It was Solar Winds by Epic Megagames. "You are Jake Stone, Bounty Hunter" Good times, good times. Gonna go fire up a virtual pc and start playing.
You're right. I didn't realize that bouncing sound off of something and bouncing light off of something are two completely different fields of study and the math to go with each is completely unique. I *thought* that the invisible light spectrum and radio spectrum were one and the same... thank you for correcting my education.
Now how do we make sure this information gets to Northrop Grumman? I'm sure they already know that this is a bogus project which will make them a lot of money. Regardless, your attempted smart-ass response didn't work, because you don't know wtf you are talking about. There is a rather large difference between actively tracking with something like radar and the way this system passively "tracks" its target. Let me say it again: THIS IS NOT ACTIVE TRACKING. It does not bounce its laser all over the place all day long until it finds something moving above a certain velocity. It uses those little sensors you can see in the picture to detect something coming at it. It probably works the same way NORAD did, based on heat signatures. I remember hearing stories of the American defense network picking up house fires. Regardless, I'd doubt if the system has any idea of the distance or velocity of the object it's detecting, and it doesn't need it in order to fire its laser in the correct direction.
And there is a rather large difference between bouncing sound off of something and bouncing light off of something. I'm not sure exactly what it is, but I believe that light may travel slightly faster than sound.
Who says travelling faster than light will ever be possible? We've never observed anything doing so, and we have some reasonably good theory that suggests that it's impossible.
I've never been much for replacing good arguments, logic, and independent thinking with quotes from famous people, but here goes:"Things are only impossible until they're not."
Jean-Luc Picard, 'Star Trek: The Next Generation'
"When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong."
Sir Arthur C. Clarke, Clarke's first law
And please refrain from calling me out for attempting to refute your argument by quoting Star Trek and a science fiction writer. Picard and Clarke have a certain power around slashdot, and are to be considered honorary scientists among nerds.