True, but as gravity decreases, you accelerate faster per unit energy.
True, but aren't you also transmitting energy for longer distances, losing it via atmospheric absorption and the inverse square law? And aren't you dragging more and more tether mass behind you as you get further out? It's possible I don't quite understand the principle or the technology, though...
When are people going to realize that Christianity in modern America is precisely the kind of Pharisee-like system that Jesus preached against?
Take heart: I agree with you completely on this point. The real tragedy is that so many Christians (and Muslims, and...) fail to reflect on the roots of their faith sufficiently to understand when it is being cynically used to exploit them or even to enlist them into evil. That's why the political use of religion that we're now seeing is so dangerous: People will follow the banner of God regardless of who might be carrying it, or for what purpose.
And the people whose lives science was designed to control won't care much about real right and wrong in the world.
Proponents of competing scientific theories aren't killing each other, last I checked. The "morality" espoused by the religious right, on the other hand, seems limited in scope to that which is necessary to suppress the rights of women and maintain a patriarchal society.
On the whole, it appears to me that religion has served more to exempt its adherents from any reasonable notion of morality than to impose a comprehensive code of it own. With God on your side, what atrocities are you not free to commit?
it's not playing God if you aren't creating life with pure will power alone...
The day may not be far off when the NIH is forced to fund grants to groups of people to do exactly that. The creationist/ID folks are trying to sell their religion as science, but I have yet to see any papers describing the experiments that they must be doing. Maybe I'm reading the wrong journals?
Where religion always fails is when it gets mixed up with scientific questions.
Indeed. If you read the books of the Bible, you see nothing more than the understanding of the physical world that ordinary people had at the time they were written, and perhaps less than that which the Greeks had already achieved. Inspired by God as they purportedly were, it wouldn't have been unreasonable to expect a little more.
no one is seriously pissed off about heliocentrism anymore
They should be, though. It doesn't fit into Genesis theology any better now than it did in Gallileo's time. I think it's just been dropped as a talking point out of little more than embarassment.
religion hasn't helped us discover vaccines, send people into space, create new plastic polymers, or any of the other things which we should expect from scientists.
So true. This points out a difficulty that the creationists - and indeed most of the public - have with the word "theory". They will say that this or that is "just a theory" in the sense that it is not yet a "fact". In science, of course, "facts" are (if they are anything, because scientists rarely use that word) merely observations. Theories are not so much "true" or "false" as they are successful or unsuccessful. You can do a lot of nifty things with a successful theory, like the vaccines and space travel and polymers that you mention. When a theory is successful, it gives you some confidence that you're at least getting close to approximating the "truth", and less successful competing theories are cast aside.
Religion, on the other hand, purports to be Absolute Truth right out of the box. As absolute truth, it can never change in the light of new knowledge. Or if there is change, it will happen slowly and no attention will be directed toward the process. For the most part, the people whose lives religion was designed to control won't care about these questions anyway.
Finally, I think you drastically overlook the social good that old age offers.
In the big picture there are important downsides as well, and that is why just about every species we know of has a genetically-programmed characteristic lifespan. We don't die of old age because our systems "wear out" like a machine. We die of old age because if we didn't, we would never have evolved to the point where we are now. Evolution is nature's solution to an optimization problem (that of survival, adaptation, and propagation), and it simply does not work as efficiently when individuals continue to live for too many (or too few) generations after they have procreated. One reason for that is that the young must compete with their ancestors for resources, reducing their own chances for survival and procreation at the point where the negative effects of this competition begin to outweigh the benefits (cultural transmission of knowledge, etc.) of having a lot of very old people around. Another problem is that the species as a whole will not be able to adapt as well to changing conditions if there is a lot of intergenerational breeding going on (which, at my age, I would admittedly welcome!).
The bottom line is that if you have two species competing with each other, where one is essentially "immortal" and the other is genetically limited in lifespan to some appropriate multiple of the generation period, the smart money will be on the latter species to ultimately dominate, especially if there are survival bottlenecks that require rapid adaptation.
Now in the human case, much of our evolution happens on the scale of populations and cultures, and is driven by the competition between them. Modern civilization is a recent phenomenon, and so you can argue that our lifespan programming has not yet caught up with our environmental conditions, and it is therefore appropriate that we extend it by some finite amount. You can even argue that our imminent ability to to so is itself an adaptation in this direction. That last thought is going to make my head explode, so I have to stop now!
You sound like a common liberal, who thinks "White = Bad."
You sound like a common conservative, who doesn't think at all. White is not "bad", but exclusion, segregation, and forced homogeneity in the service of conservative xenophobia just may be.
I'm sure he was referring to people who steal $100 or less, or can't afford bail. If you grab $10 million or more, you're not a criminal, you're a prospective campaign contributor...
Nobody's justifying anything. You're making the common conservative error of mistaking an effort to understand a thing as an attempt to condone it. Righteousness and moral indignation have their place, but if you want to really understand why people behave the way they do, sometimes you just have to let it rest for a little while. There's a lot of good children's literature for those who require a moral lesson with every story.
The thing with the 419 is that the victim is being 'tricked' into an illegal act, technically, money laundering. Sometimes the victim isn't even really aware of the illegality, but they believe they are actually helping someone.
Which ones have you been getting? It's pretty clear from the ones I've seen that they're soliciting participation in something under-the-table. Usually they promise a substantial cut if you'll assist them in a plainly illegal transfer of money out of their country, but only after you put up a few rounds of faith money. Make millions by doing next to nothing. People fall for it not because it appears credible, but because their greed overcomes their reason.
I wonder how much it would have cost to develop the software driving Slashdot (for example), if it had been bid on by one of the big IT contractors instead of growing incrementally as a FOSS project? How well would it have worked?
Having worked for most of my career in small-shop software development, the money involved in "big-time" IT contracts is mind-boggling. Often, the projects don't seem inherently more complex than the things I've worked on with only a handful of people (although deployments may be on a larger scale). Dollars in the hundreds of millions to develop software... Where does all that money go?
I don't know about HU-210 specifically, but... THC has a 5-carbon (pentyl) side chain hanging off of its benzene ring. Synthetic analogs with longer chains (e.g., hexyl and up) in that position can be many times more potent than natural THC. They're not hard to synthesize if you're an organic chemist and can obtain the necessary precursors, but of course attempting to do so is likely to bring you more attention than you'll want.
Last time I looked the US was the 1st on the list of scientific papers published by countries with more than 60% of the papers.
Ah, but look at how many of those papers are written by scientists that have come here from places like India and China, and look at how many students in U.S. science & engineering graduate programs are from elsewhere. It's been a very good thing for us to have been such a magnet for so much of the world's scientific talent, but since 9/11 the Powers That Be have done everything in their power to cut off the flow. Now just who is going to be hurt by that in the long run?
Call it bias or whatever you want. But the US certainly isn't overrepresented.
Until there's a Nobel Prize for Creationism and Intelligent Design, that is. We'll be filling our own children's heads with crap as we import our scientists and engineers from elsewhere.
Slashdot Mirror
True, but aren't you also transmitting energy for longer distances, losing it via atmospheric absorption and the inverse square law? And aren't you dragging more and more tether mass behind you as you get further out? It's possible I don't quite understand the principle or the technology, though...
Take heart: I agree with you completely on this point. The real tragedy is that so many Christians (and Muslims, and...) fail to reflect on the roots of their faith sufficiently to understand when it is being cynically used to exploit them or even to enlist them into evil. That's why the political use of religion that we're now seeing is so dangerous: People will follow the banner of God regardless of who might be carrying it, or for what purpose.
Proponents of competing scientific theories aren't killing each other, last I checked. The "morality" espoused by the religious right, on the other hand, seems limited in scope to that which is necessary to suppress the rights of women and maintain a patriarchal society.
On the whole, it appears to me that religion has served more to exempt its adherents from any reasonable notion of morality than to impose a comprehensive code of it own. With God on your side, what atrocities are you not free to commit?
The day may not be far off when the NIH is forced to fund grants to groups of people to do exactly that. The creationist/ID folks are trying to sell their religion as science, but I have yet to see any papers describing the experiments that they must be doing. Maybe I'm reading the wrong journals?
Indeed. If you read the books of the Bible, you see nothing more than the understanding of the physical world that ordinary people had at the time they were written, and perhaps less than that which the Greeks had already achieved. Inspired by God as they purportedly were, it wouldn't have been unreasonable to expect a little more.
no one is seriously pissed off about heliocentrism anymore
They should be, though. It doesn't fit into Genesis theology any better now than it did in Gallileo's time. I think it's just been dropped as a talking point out of little more than embarassment.
So true. This points out a difficulty that the creationists - and indeed most of the public - have with the word "theory". They will say that this or that is "just a theory" in the sense that it is not yet a "fact". In science, of course, "facts" are (if they are anything, because scientists rarely use that word) merely observations. Theories are not so much "true" or "false" as they are successful or unsuccessful. You can do a lot of nifty things with a successful theory, like the vaccines and space travel and polymers that you mention. When a theory is successful, it gives you some confidence that you're at least getting close to approximating the "truth", and less successful competing theories are cast aside.
Religion, on the other hand, purports to be Absolute Truth right out of the box. As absolute truth, it can never change in the light of new knowledge. Or if there is change, it will happen slowly and no attention will be directed toward the process. For the most part, the people whose lives religion was designed to control won't care about these questions anyway.
In the big picture there are important downsides as well, and that is why just about every species we know of has a genetically-programmed characteristic lifespan. We don't die of old age because our systems "wear out" like a machine. We die of old age because if we didn't, we would never have evolved to the point where we are now. Evolution is nature's solution to an optimization problem (that of survival, adaptation, and propagation), and it simply does not work as efficiently when individuals continue to live for too many (or too few) generations after they have procreated. One reason for that is that the young must compete with their ancestors for resources, reducing their own chances for survival and procreation at the point where the negative effects of this competition begin to outweigh the benefits (cultural transmission of knowledge, etc.) of having a lot of very old people around. Another problem is that the species as a whole will not be able to adapt as well to changing conditions if there is a lot of intergenerational breeding going on (which, at my age, I would admittedly welcome!).
The bottom line is that if you have two species competing with each other, where one is essentially "immortal" and the other is genetically limited in lifespan to some appropriate multiple of the generation period, the smart money will be on the latter species to ultimately dominate, especially if there are survival bottlenecks that require rapid adaptation.
Now in the human case, much of our evolution happens on the scale of populations and cultures, and is driven by the competition between them. Modern civilization is a recent phenomenon, and so you can argue that our lifespan programming has not yet caught up with our environmental conditions, and it is therefore appropriate that we extend it by some finite amount. You can even argue that our imminent ability to to so is itself an adaptation in this direction. That last thought is going to make my head explode, so I have to stop now!
You sound like a common conservative, who doesn't think at all. White is not "bad", but exclusion, segregation, and forced homogeneity in the service of conservative xenophobia just may be.
What usually lands you in jail for "minor" crimes is not being able to pay your bond. In that sense, you effectively are in debtors' prison.
I'm sure he was referring to people who steal $100 or less, or can't afford bail. If you grab $10 million or more, you're not a criminal, you're a prospective campaign contributor...
That's exactly what everybody is doing here, and yet it seems to upset you.
That, and they're rich, and you're not.
That really is more to the point, isn't it?
Who said anything about STDs? This is about zero-gravity. Think about it.
That's the best idea I've seen on Slashdot in... well, several weeks, at least.
Just remember to use a condom... please.
This directive probably came straight from the White House. Perhaps the plan is to send only born-again Republicans to Mars.
Nobody's justifying anything. You're making the common conservative error of mistaking an effort to understand a thing as an attempt to condone it. Righteousness and moral indignation have their place, but if you want to really understand why people behave the way they do, sometimes you just have to let it rest for a little while. There's a lot of good children's literature for those who require a moral lesson with every story.
Which ones have you been getting? It's pretty clear from the ones I've seen that they're soliciting participation in something under-the-table. Usually they promise a substantial cut if you'll assist them in a plainly illegal transfer of money out of their country, but only after you put up a few rounds of faith money. Make millions by doing next to nothing. People fall for it not because it appears credible, but because their greed overcomes their reason.
Not at all. Wednesday is Spaghetti Day!
Having worked for most of my career in small-shop software development, the money involved in "big-time" IT contracts is mind-boggling. Often, the projects don't seem inherently more complex than the things I've worked on with only a handful of people (although deployments may be on a larger scale). Dollars in the hundreds of millions to develop software... Where does all that money go?
Huh? What did this have to do with open source advocacy? Or was it just a "talking point" popping up in an inappropriate context?
This one is so fundamental that you could actually define "home" as the place where you feel most comfortable taking a dump...
I don't know about HU-210 specifically, but... THC has a 5-carbon (pentyl) side chain hanging off of its benzene ring. Synthetic analogs with longer chains (e.g., hexyl and up) in that position can be many times more potent than natural THC. They're not hard to synthesize if you're an organic chemist and can obtain the necessary precursors, but of course attempting to do so is likely to bring you more attention than you'll want.
Ah, but look at how many of those papers are written by scientists that have come here from places like India and China, and look at how many students in U.S. science & engineering graduate programs are from elsewhere. It's been a very good thing for us to have been such a magnet for so much of the world's scientific talent, but since 9/11 the Powers That Be have done everything in their power to cut off the flow. Now just who is going to be hurt by that in the long run?
Oh, Lordy... I was wondering how far down the usual nationalistic dick-wagging was going to start. I hardly had to touch the scrollbar.
Until there's a Nobel Prize for Creationism and Intelligent Design, that is. We'll be filling our own children's heads with crap as we import our scientists and engineers from elsewhere.