I did a search for "Hunger Games" and instead found... the Cliff's Notes for The Hunger Games. That lead me down the same path as you: It's not that these are great lines - or lines that a lot of people think are great - but they are lines that are important if you want to understand the themes of the books well enough to discuss them.
I mean, one of the Top 20 is "The rules of the Hunger Games..." which is interesting and useful if you want to know something about the book. It's also something for which the gist could be memorized after reading it twice: 12 districts, 2 Tributes, fight to the death. No way someone reading it on their own would need to keep track of what is going on or where this is revealed. It would be like highlighting the paragraph where you find out that Moby Dick is a whale. "What! I'll have to keep track of that - it might be important later."
And just as additional support, a couple of the other top 10 items are from "Pride and Prejudice": The first line of the book, and a comment deep into it about what "pride" is. Both of those, similarly, reveal much of what the book is about. And nobody who isn't reading for school would bother to highlight the first line of any book.
When I lived in Knoxville, I was encouraged by an acquaintance to apply for one of these escort jobs when I complained about how little I was paid as a university teacher.
I never really believed that these letters were real, but here I am writing one myself. Despite my librarian-style glasses, my students clearly all thought I was quite attractive...
The one that required extreme focus was the one that the Denethor brought to his own funeral pyre, which would otherwise only show a pair of aged hands writhing in flames. Or something like that.
I'm going to repeat a point one other person made, just to make it again: In addition to the direct societal costs (which, I realize, can't even be easily quantified based on TFA: 600K? 400K? The amount charged, the amount paid, the amount paid less the patient's insurance premiums, divided by the number of people paying into policies for the two insurance companies?) and benefits (a few more years for 2 kids to have their dad around, an article investigating health care costs, a discussion on Slashdot on healthcare economics) there is also the advantage of having one more data point.
Because this guy was willing to keep trying, going through significant suffering for the benefit of his wife, his children, and a few more months of life, the medical community knows that a given group of drugs can extend the life of a kidney cancer patient by up to 17 months. The next kidney cancer patient, and the next cancer patient, and the next doctor looking for a way to treat this person who just walked in,and the next researcher investigating how these drugs work, all have a bit more information than they did before. They may decide that it's a goal to shoot for, or they may decide that the regimen is not quite useful. Either way, it's more than they knew before.
Of course, we can't determine the value of that, any better than we can determine whether the rest of the money spent was worth it. It's still a benefit we all get and should consider.
Political types have known about Obama since at least the 2004 Democratic Convention, when he gave a well-received speech.
He was popping up in pop culture in 2007 - A "30 Rock" episode had Liz Lemon saying she'd probably vote for McCain instead of Obama, and a "Gilmore Girls" episode has Rory as a journalist preparing to follow Obama's presidential campaign in Iowa.
I'd think that even non-political types would have noticed him by the Iowa Caucuses 2 years ago, though, it being a hard-fought campaign against the polarizing Ms. Clinton.
Not to answer for dintlu, and I'm really going to talk about famine rather than starvation per se, but:
"They're being prevented from feeding themselves" is not a bad answer. In Somalia in 1992, the people most affected by the famine, perversely, were the farmers, who were also part of the lowest social class.
In any case, the point is that famines are caused not by a lack of food, but by problems distributing food.
Food distribution is done poorly by governments that don't have their people's best interests in mind, e.g. because the government is a dictatorship or oligarchy and doesn't need to pay attention to what the people want. Conversely, famines don't happen in democratic societies with a free press - democracies have to respect the will of the people, and a free press would let the people know if food distribution is failing.
All of this is according to the work of Amartya Sen, who won a Nobel Prize for it.
Open-sourcing the data and process might help with overcoming those barriers. I don't know much about climate, but I deal with big dumps of numbers, and turning them into useful graphs and charts, all the time. If I could go to a place to get the data, I could possibly leave you more time to handle the simulation processing (and understand it better), and the data-collector more time to set up/check/confirm data (and understand IT better).
(BTW, for four-dimensional arrays, do you just mean that there's a point on a map, a point in time, and a depth for each measurement? Or are you dealing with other dimensions as well?)
Of the others
1) Computing power. Not sure how to get around this. Sure, could do some distributed computing, which people might be more interested in with more transparency.
2) Big data dumps, representations of: LIke I said, possibly a good place for division of labor anyway.
3) This is probably where transparency is needed the most. People might be okay with the fact that it's complicated, if they can dig in and see what the factors are, and at least come to an understanding about it.
4) Sounds like more of the same as 3 - assuming that analysis largely includes the stuff that was too complicated even for the model.
Your "go look for them" is easier said than done. When I look around to check my honest skepticism, I end up at sites that are, well, polarized. It seems like either they have absolutely no doubt about what's happening or they have no doubt that it's NOT happening. In either case, it's hard to feel comfortable with their conclusions. And if someone does answer my big question ("The Vostok ice cores show previous cycles of warming, even more than we have now, soon followed by ice ages, so why is there a belief that This Time It's Different?") I have to figure whether they are biased, and how that affects their answer.
Which brings us back to TFA, and how polarization between the camps needs to be dealt with, so that everyone CAN agree on What The Science Says, regardless of policy prescriptions.
"Nuclear winter": Not necessarily, but an actual shooting war over greenhouse gases could potentially be as bad (millions die, etc.) as others that were fought over limited resources, even without nuclear exchanges.
Ice age? Not yet, but the Vostok cores show that these runups in temperature and CO2 have previously preceded a quick and large drop in temperature.
And I could be wrong, but the graph you linked, the graph I linked, and this other graph all indicate that the current temperature anomaly is well below the previous peaks. (Current temperature anomaly below 0.6C; previous peaks hit a max of about 2.0C.) If correct, your collapses/melts/openings/heaves aren't anything new, either.
I'm willing to learn, if CO2 levels are off the chart, and CO2 and temp are correlated, why temperature isn't closer to, or past, the previous peaks.
And you miss a couple of alternate scenarios and outcomes.
Scenario 2a. Climate change is not primarily man-made, but emissions are keeping the next ice age from happening. Activist result: Depth and speed of problem is accelerated by human change.
Scenario 3a. Climate change is primarily man-made, but emissions are keeping the next ice age from happening. Skeptic result: Nothing happens. Activist result: Ice age. Humans deeply impacted. millions die of starvation, cities are relocated, numerous mass extinctions, possible irreversible climate trends.
and for that matter Activist result 1a. Convinced by faulty data that there is no hope unless emissions are controlled, governments struggle to achieve futile targets, concentrate more power in fewer hands, focus more resources on the problem, blame other countries for cheating on targets and dooming us all, attack industrial targets in cheating countries, humans deeply impacted. millions die of starvation, cities are relocated, etc.
I don't know for sure how I can be expected to show you enough data if scientists with opposing views are keeping that data from journals with threats of withdrawing their own results from the journals, but the Vostok Ice Core data suggests to me, anyway, that the change in temperature is consistent with other increases in the past, and is likely to be followed by a steep drop...soon.
I'm no climate scientist, but I felt better about taking out AGW before I knew actual climate scientists were behaving this way.
You've pretty much described Arclight Cinemas. It's a very small part of Pacific Theaters, with only two currently in existence, both in Southern California.
Online tickets - check
Reserved seats - check
No extra charge....pretty sure, check. You can even print them up at home.
No ads - check. Not sure how many trailers they limit to, but they aren't excessive about it in any case.
The downside, of course, is that Arclight is several dollars more expensive per ticket, with fewer ways to get in cheap (e.g. the normal Pacific Theaters have discount tickets that can be bought at a group rate, but they don't work for Arclight). I don't go to movies that often any more, though, so paying the extra money for a better experience works for me.
A Delta IV Heavy can get about 4 tons to geosynchronous orbit. With 2 of them, you should be able to get 4 tons to the moon. (Send one up with just fuel, the other with your astronauts, move the fuel over to the astronaut's vehicle, off you go.)
Use another pair to get the return vehicle onto the moon. Or to have a spare, there.
A Delta IV costs about $300 million. I'll bet you could get a discount if you bought a few at a time, but even so, that's 1.2 billion for 4.
(Not that I have a horse in the race for Ares v. Delta IV v. Proton or whatever - my point is just that we have the lift capability to do SOMETHING.)
Spend half a billion to man-rate the Delta IV, another 800 million for a launch pad, and you still have 2.5 billion left over for your vehicle - if you want to make a 50% profit on your expenditure, and if we cut the prize down to $10 billion instead of 20.
Heck with getting people up and back - $20 billion should be enough to get a full colony started on the moon.
Yeah, my first thought was "Whaaat?" but my *second* thought was "Marvel wanted to be a movie studio but couldn't make it work out" - this is probably more an indication of Marvel being in trouble than of Disney really looking forward to getting into the comic book market. And if not that, an indication that Marvel sees movies as its future and being unable to do them internally.
Although tween boys have always been a demographic hole for Disney, so maybe they're hoping to close it with this acquisition.
mention a Sotheby's auction of (very small) Russian rocks; the "Goodwill Rocks" which the United States gave to each country in the world which have sometimes ended up "for sale;" and a short length of adhesive tape with moondust stuck to it. I also recall reading of a bag used to carry some Apollo mission's moon rocks from some point A to point B - the bag was sold as surplus, and the owner realized that the black dirt inside it was legally acquired moon dust.
Taken together, there's some ability to determine the going price. A million dollars a gram (as the CS Monitor article suggests) seems a bit high to me, but it is in line with these other sales and attempted sales.
It will get worse for about the next 10-15 years. At which point this current crisis will peak -- with a peak like WWII or the Revolutionary War. At that point, it will turn out that what we'll need is a bunch of young adults who think they are the most important people in the world. And who will do what they need to do to get what they want.
Place I worked at used island names. It's been years since I worked there, but if you asked me what Malta does, I can still tell you, and can quickly rebuild my memories to tell you what Rhodes and Sicily and Hawaii did as well.
They started using some more corporate-approved names just before I left, and I can't remember any of them, much less what they do or did.
No property rights in space? Well...yeah, that's about right.
There are some potential nuances - I think the definition of "celestial bodies" being one.
Another way to look at it is "No nation on Earth can claim that the entire Moon belongs to them, just because they landed on it, occupied it, mined it or anything else."
I don't think it was intended to close off economic incentive. I'd say it was intended to close off schemes - whether serious or just "clever" - by nations who wanted to lay claims to entire celestial bodies, whether it was because they landed a few guys on the moon for a couple of hours at a time or because their nation lies directly under the Sun's orbital path. Or, for that matter, because their ancestors deeded it to them when the earth was new...
Thinking about it this way, it was probably a good idea. If you can't assert sovereignty from Earth, then theoretical discussions about who owns Mare Tranquillatus remain theoretical, until and unless you actually are willing to occupy and defend it. That sets the bar a lot higher, and reduces the number of messy disagreements that might occur.
Advantages of Earth Orbit Rendezvous: 1) Two launches of an existing launch system is faster than one launch of a yet-unbuilt larger launch system 2) Fuel sent up in a separate launch package can be cheaper/more effective by some combination of
a) Accepting a higher chance of launch failure - lost fuel can be replaced, after all.
b) Eliminating the safeguards required for humans and life support systems. 3) Cheaper fuel means some combination of
a) Overall cost can be decreased
b) More fuel can be launched
c) More mass and money available for human consumables and equipment
Whether or not it's more of a hassle depends on where you want to spend your money and spread your risk. Using a single vehicle for launch, lunar landing, and return would require more powerful launch vehicles than currently exist - even the Saturn V would have had trouble with that. The Apollo configuration used multiple modular vehicles requiring a bunch of dockings and separations, so it's a good thing they used test pilots for astronauts.
Separate launches for fuel and equipment wouldn't necessarily be any more of a hassle than those options, and might very well work better.
But Lucas DID have the storylines written with sequels and prequels in mind. The sequels went well, the prequels didn't. Other sequels have done a good job of expanding on the storylines set up, although it's a rare enough result. (Terminator 2 and Godfather 2 come to mind easily, but not much else. Maybe Before Sunset....)
Which doesn't mean you're wrong. I think that a good movie resolves its mysteries, although it may suggest some other directions to be explored. I think it's simpler than that: It's difficult to write a good script. If you're doing a sequel, and therefore have the same (presumably) well-received characters and the same (presumably) well-defined situations, you still have to create a plot that still works with those characters and in those situations, and a good story around that plot.
Just another thought, though: It seems that there is an idea that because, in sequels, you already have your characters and situations, you can and should jump right into the action. Pirates 2 is as good an example as any for that not being the case: within five minutes, we know the new problem that Will and Elizabeth have to overcome. While the characters may not need to get acclimated to their situation, though, the audience really does. As a result, the first 40 minutes or so zip past, and the plot only moves along because of useful speeches given by the characters who happen to know what's going on.
The Phantom Menace is much the same: It should have spent a couple of minutes what the base trade issue is, trying to understand who the good guys and bad guys are, and getting involved in their reasons for doing what they are doing. Instead, it jumps right from Jedi Show Up to Jedi Start Fighting to J**-J** B****. In both cases, there's nothing wrong with the plot as such, but the story around that plot isn't well structured. The success of The Phantom Edit can be taken as evidence that the problems weren't difficult to fix, if desired.
All of which together, though, appears to be pretty much what you were saying: Write something cool. Not that it's an easy thing.
I was one of the test subjects for this process. I'd signed up for future auditions on their website, and got an email one day: Go to this website on this day - at this specific time - to take an online test.
They had a page with a Flash application that gave you questions and a place to enter your answer. Didn't have to be in the form of a question, which was fortunate, because you didn't get much time to enter it. There were plenty I barely answered, so I can't imagine typing it into Google first. (Just realized: Because it was Flash, you couldn't copy and paste it there, either.) No going back to previous questions, either.
I evidently did well enough, because I was called to an in-person audition as well. It sounds like it was about the same as previous auditions as mentioned elsewhere in this thread. In any case, the people there said they were testing this to do the initial filter on contestants - previously, they'd pull dozens (hundreds?) of hopefuls, they'd take the test, wait an hour to get them tested, and most wouldn't do well enough to go to the next step. (One audition was mentioned where NOBODY did well enough on the test to move forward.)
The one I was at had maybe 30-40 people, and everyone passed the written: They made us take another test, similar to the online one but written rather than electronic. Different questions, just the answers again, and not a lot of time to get it right. (But you could, if you wanted, go back and change your answers. Not that you had time for that.)
Evidently, the rest of the audition was just like it used to be: Take people three at a time to play a mock game, to see how you handle being in front of people. I thought I did okay...but haven't heard back yet. And they said that the only way we'd know how we did was if we heard back within a year. Still waiting...
I was thinking something along those lines as I hit the Submit button, actually. It's not like he can trade the Apple of eight years ago (moribund, barely surviving) for the Disney of eight years ago (an icon reborn and ruling the world). Instead it would be the modern Apple (an icon, etc.) for the modern Disney (moribund, ditto).
Still, parallels abound between Next/Apple and Pixar/Disney, and those might attract Mr. Jobs as well. In particular, the possibility to rescue another ailing American icon from the inside out may interest him, the more so if he can do it better than Mr. Eisner has managed recently.
I'd argue on whether movies change the world, but it's certainly true that movie companies are extremely influential. I don't doubt that he'd get more coverage as CEO of Disney than he does as CEO of Apple. Granting, of course, that he gets more coverage as Steve Jobs than most CEOs probably get their whole lives.
In any case, I'll agree that Mr. Jobs isn't going to give Apple away easily, and certainly not without an ego-feeding option waiting in the wings. But if it's not Intel, I can't imagine it being anything else but Disney.
I was thinking the same thing....okay, almost the same thing:
Only way this would happen is if Jobs was given CEO title of Disney/Pixar and a buttload of control.
That is, Jobs hands his first baby off to a company that has means and incentive to take care of it well, so that he has the chance to become the media mogul that he really wants to be.
Not that I really believe what Cringely says, but it wouldn't surprise me if Jobs considered being the CEO of Disney as an even better job than his current ones. This would give him the opportunity to do that without [quite] destroying Apple in the process.
Slashdot Mirror
I did a search for "Hunger Games" and instead found ... the Cliff's Notes for The Hunger Games. That lead me down the same path as you: It's not that these are great lines - or lines that a lot of people think are great - but they are lines that are important if you want to understand the themes of the books well enough to discuss them.
I mean, one of the Top 20 is "The rules of the Hunger Games..." which is interesting and useful if you want to know something about the book. It's also something for which the gist could be memorized after reading it twice: 12 districts, 2 Tributes, fight to the death. No way someone reading it on their own would need to keep track of what is going on or where this is revealed. It would be like highlighting the paragraph where you find out that Moby Dick is a whale. "What! I'll have to keep track of that - it might be important later."
And just as additional support, a couple of the other top 10 items are from "Pride and Prejudice": The first line of the book, and a comment deep into it about what "pride" is. Both of those, similarly, reveal much of what the book is about. And nobody who isn't reading for school would bother to highlight the first line of any book.
TSG
When I lived in Knoxville, I was encouraged by an acquaintance to apply for one of these escort jobs when I complained about how little I was paid as a university teacher.
I never really believed that these letters were real, but here I am writing one myself. Despite my librarian-style glasses, my students clearly all thought I was quite attractive...
and one white tree.
The one that required extreme focus was the one that the Denethor brought to his own funeral pyre, which would otherwise only show a pair of aged hands writhing in flames. Or something like that.
TSG
Hellenikon?
Or should it be Pigspartacus?
TSG
I'm going to repeat a point one other person made, just to make it again: In addition to the direct societal costs (which, I realize, can't even be easily quantified based on TFA: 600K? 400K? The amount charged, the amount paid, the amount paid less the patient's insurance premiums, divided by the number of people paying into policies for the two insurance companies?) and benefits (a few more years for 2 kids to have their dad around, an article investigating health care costs, a discussion on Slashdot on healthcare economics) there is also the advantage of having one more data point.
Because this guy was willing to keep trying, going through significant suffering for the benefit of his wife, his children, and a few more months of life, the medical community knows that a given group of drugs can extend the life of a kidney cancer patient by up to 17 months. The next kidney cancer patient, and the next cancer patient, and the next doctor looking for a way to treat this person who just walked in,and the next researcher investigating how these drugs work, all have a bit more information than they did before. They may decide that it's a goal to shoot for, or they may decide that the regimen is not quite useful. Either way, it's more than they knew before.
Of course, we can't determine the value of that, any better than we can determine whether the rest of the money spent was worth it. It's still a benefit we all get and should consider.
TSG
Political types have known about Obama since at least the 2004 Democratic Convention, when he gave a well-received speech.
He was popping up in pop culture in 2007 - A "30 Rock" episode had Liz Lemon saying she'd probably vote for McCain instead of Obama, and a "Gilmore Girls" episode has Rory as a journalist preparing to follow Obama's presidential campaign in Iowa.
I'd think that even non-political types would have noticed him by the Iowa Caucuses 2 years ago, though, it being a hard-fought campaign against the polarizing Ms. Clinton.
TSG
Not to answer for dintlu, and I'm really going to talk about famine rather than starvation per se, but:
"They're being prevented from feeding themselves" is not a bad answer. In Somalia in 1992, the people most affected by the famine, perversely, were the farmers, who were also part of the lowest social class.
In any case, the point is that famines are caused not by a lack of food, but by problems distributing food.
Food distribution is done poorly by governments that don't have their people's best interests in mind, e.g. because the government is a dictatorship or oligarchy and doesn't need to pay attention to what the people want. Conversely, famines don't happen in democratic societies with a free press - democracies have to respect the will of the people, and a free press would let the people know if food distribution is failing.
All of this is according to the work of Amartya Sen, who won a Nobel Prize for it.
TSG
Wish I had mod points.
Open-sourcing the data and process might help with overcoming those barriers. I don't know much about climate, but I deal with big dumps of numbers, and turning them into useful graphs and charts, all the time. If I could go to a place to get the data, I could possibly leave you more time to handle the simulation processing (and understand it better), and the data-collector more time to set up/check/confirm data (and understand IT better).
(BTW, for four-dimensional arrays, do you just mean that there's a point on a map, a point in time, and a depth for each measurement? Or are you dealing with other dimensions as well?)
Of the others
1) Computing power. Not sure how to get around this. Sure, could do some distributed computing, which people might be more interested in with more transparency.
2) Big data dumps, representations of: LIke I said, possibly a good place for division of labor anyway.
3) This is probably where transparency is needed the most. People might be okay with the fact that it's complicated, if they can dig in and see what the factors are, and at least come to an understanding about it.
4) Sounds like more of the same as 3 - assuming that analysis largely includes the stuff that was too complicated even for the model.
Your "go look for them" is easier said than done. When I look around to check my honest skepticism, I end up at sites that are, well, polarized. It seems like either they have absolutely no doubt about what's happening or they have no doubt that it's NOT happening. In either case, it's hard to feel comfortable with their conclusions. And if someone does answer my big question ("The Vostok ice cores show previous cycles of warming, even more than we have now, soon followed by ice ages, so why is there a belief that This Time It's Different?") I have to figure whether they are biased, and how that affects their answer.
Which brings us back to TFA, and how polarization between the camps needs to be dealt with, so that everyone CAN agree on What The Science Says, regardless of policy prescriptions.
TSG
"Nuclear winter": Not necessarily, but an actual shooting war over greenhouse gases could potentially be as bad (millions die, etc.) as others that were fought over limited resources, even without nuclear exchanges.
TSG
Ice age? Not yet, but the Vostok cores show that these runups in temperature and CO2 have previously preceded a quick and large drop in temperature.
And I could be wrong, but the graph you linked, the graph I linked, and this other graph all indicate that the current temperature anomaly is well below the previous peaks. (Current temperature anomaly below 0.6C; previous peaks hit a max of about 2.0C.) If correct, your collapses/melts/openings/heaves aren't anything new, either.
I'm willing to learn, if CO2 levels are off the chart, and CO2 and temp are correlated, why temperature isn't closer to, or past, the previous peaks.
TSG
"It's not about being right"? Really?
And you miss a couple of alternate scenarios and outcomes.
Scenario 2a. Climate change is not primarily man-made, but emissions are keeping the next ice age from happening.
Activist result: Depth and speed of problem is accelerated by human change.
Scenario 3a. Climate change is primarily man-made, but emissions are keeping the next ice age from happening.
Skeptic result: Nothing happens.
Activist result: Ice age. Humans deeply impacted. millions die of starvation, cities are relocated, numerous mass extinctions, possible irreversible climate trends.
and for that matter
Activist result 1a. Convinced by faulty data that there is no hope unless emissions are controlled, governments struggle to achieve futile targets, concentrate more power in fewer hands, focus more resources on the problem, blame other countries for cheating on targets and dooming us all, attack industrial targets in cheating countries, humans deeply impacted. millions die of starvation, cities are relocated, etc.
I don't know for sure how I can be expected to show you enough data if scientists with opposing views are keeping that data from journals with threats of withdrawing their own results from the journals, but the Vostok Ice Core data suggests to me, anyway, that the change in temperature is consistent with other increases in the past, and is likely to be followed by a steep drop...soon.
I'm no climate scientist, but I felt better about taking out AGW before I knew actual climate scientists were behaving this way.
TSG
You've pretty much described Arclight Cinemas. It's a very small part of Pacific Theaters, with only two currently in existence, both in Southern California.
Online tickets - check
Reserved seats - check
No extra charge....pretty sure, check. You can even print them up at home.
No ads - check. Not sure how many trailers they limit to, but they aren't excessive about it in any case.
The downside, of course, is that Arclight is several dollars more expensive per ticket, with fewer ways to get in cheap (e.g. the normal Pacific Theaters have discount tickets that can be bought at a group rate, but they don't work for Arclight). I don't go to movies that often any more, though, so paying the extra money for a better experience works for me.
TSG
A Delta IV Heavy can get about 4 tons to geosynchronous orbit. With 2 of them, you should be able to get 4 tons to the moon. (Send one up with just fuel, the other with your astronauts, move the fuel over to the astronaut's vehicle, off you go.)
Use another pair to get the return vehicle onto the moon. Or to have a spare, there.
A Delta IV costs about $300 million. I'll bet you could get a discount if you bought a few at a time, but even so, that's 1.2 billion for 4.
(Not that I have a horse in the race for Ares v. Delta IV v. Proton or whatever - my point is just that we have the lift capability to do SOMETHING.)
Spend half a billion to man-rate the Delta IV, another 800 million for a launch pad, and you still have 2.5 billion left over for your vehicle - if you want to make a 50% profit on your expenditure, and if we cut the prize down to $10 billion instead of 20.
Heck with getting people up and back - $20 billion should be enough to get a full colony started on the moon.
TSG
Yeah, my first thought was "Whaaat?" but my *second* thought was "Marvel wanted to be a movie studio but couldn't make it work out" - this is probably more an indication of Marvel being in trouble than of Disney really looking forward to getting into the comic book market. And if not that, an indication that Marvel sees movies as its future and being unable to do them internally.
Although tween boys have always been a demographic hole for Disney, so maybe they're hoping to close it with this acquisition.
TSG
Bits and pieces of the moon come up for sale every once in a while. Sometimes legitimate, usually less so. A couple of links on the subject
http://www.geotimes.org/sept02/NN_moon.html
http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0617/p14s02-stss.html
mention a Sotheby's auction of (very small) Russian rocks; the "Goodwill Rocks" which the United States gave to each country in the world which have sometimes ended up "for sale;" and a short length of adhesive tape with moondust stuck to it. I also recall reading of a bag used to carry some Apollo mission's moon rocks from some point A to point B - the bag was sold as surplus, and the owner realized that the black dirt inside it was legally acquired moon dust.
Taken together, there's some ability to determine the going price. A million dollars a gram (as the CS Monitor article suggests) seems a bit high to me, but it is in line with these other sales and attempted sales.
TSG
It will get worse for about the next 10-15 years. At which point this current crisis will peak -- with a peak like WWII or the Revolutionary War. At that point, it will turn out that what we'll need is a bunch of young adults who think they are the most important people in the world. And who will do what they need to do to get what they want.
It happened before, it'll happen again.
TSG
YES yes yes yes.
Place I worked at used island names. It's been years since I worked there, but if you asked me what Malta does, I can still tell you, and can quickly rebuild my memories to tell you what Rhodes and Sicily and Hawaii did as well.
They started using some more corporate-approved names just before I left, and I can't remember any of them, much less what they do or did.
RV
What else can you say but that.
TSG
No property rights in space? Well...yeah, that's about right.
There are some potential nuances - I think the definition of "celestial bodies" being one.
Another way to look at it is "No nation on Earth can claim that the entire Moon belongs to them, just because they landed on it, occupied it, mined it or anything else."
I don't think it was intended to close off economic incentive. I'd say it was intended to close off schemes - whether serious or just "clever" - by nations who wanted to lay claims to entire celestial bodies, whether it was because they landed a few guys on the moon for a couple of hours at a time or because their nation lies directly under the Sun's orbital path. Or, for that matter, because their ancestors deeded it to them when the earth was new...
Thinking about it this way, it was probably a good idea. If you can't assert sovereignty from Earth, then theoretical discussions about who owns Mare Tranquillatus remain theoretical, until and unless you actually are willing to occupy and defend it. That sets the bar a lot higher, and reduces the number of messy disagreements that might occur.
TSG
Advantages of Earth Orbit Rendezvous:
1) Two launches of an existing launch system is faster than one launch of a yet-unbuilt larger launch system
2) Fuel sent up in a separate launch package can be cheaper/more effective by some combination of
a) Accepting a higher chance of launch failure - lost fuel can be replaced, after all.
b) Eliminating the safeguards required for humans and life support systems.
3) Cheaper fuel means some combination of
a) Overall cost can be decreased
b) More fuel can be launched
c) More mass and money available for human consumables and equipment
Whether or not it's more of a hassle depends on where you want to spend your money and spread your risk. Using a single vehicle for launch, lunar landing, and return would require more powerful launch vehicles than currently exist - even the Saturn V would have had trouble with that. The Apollo configuration used multiple modular vehicles requiring a bunch of dockings and separations, so it's a good thing they used test pilots for astronauts.
Separate launches for fuel and equipment wouldn't necessarily be any more of a hassle than those options, and might very well work better.
TSG
But Lucas DID have the storylines written with sequels and prequels in mind. The sequels went well, the prequels didn't. Other sequels have done a good job of expanding on the storylines set up, although it's a rare enough result. (Terminator 2 and Godfather 2 come to mind easily, but not much else. Maybe Before Sunset....)
Which doesn't mean you're wrong. I think that a good movie resolves its mysteries, although it may suggest some other directions to be explored. I think it's simpler than that: It's difficult to write a good script. If you're doing a sequel, and therefore have the same (presumably) well-received characters and the same (presumably) well-defined situations, you still have to create a plot that still works with those characters and in those situations, and a good story around that plot.
Just another thought, though: It seems that there is an idea that because, in sequels, you already have your characters and situations, you can and should jump right into the action. Pirates 2 is as good an example as any for that not being the case: within five minutes, we know the new problem that Will and Elizabeth have to overcome. While the characters may not need to get acclimated to their situation, though, the audience really does. As a result, the first 40 minutes or so zip past, and the plot only moves along because of useful speeches given by the characters who happen to know what's going on.
The Phantom Menace is much the same: It should have spent a couple of minutes what the base trade issue is, trying to understand who the good guys and bad guys are, and getting involved in their reasons for doing what they are doing. Instead, it jumps right from Jedi Show Up to Jedi Start Fighting to J**-J** B****. In both cases, there's nothing wrong with the plot as such, but the story around that plot isn't well structured. The success of The Phantom Edit can be taken as evidence that the problems weren't difficult to fix, if desired.
All of which together, though, appears to be pretty much what you were saying: Write something cool. Not that it's an easy thing.
TSG
I was one of the test subjects for this process. I'd signed up for future auditions on their website, and got an email one day: Go to this website on this day - at this specific time - to take an online test.
They had a page with a Flash application that gave you questions and a place to enter your answer. Didn't have to be in the form of a question, which was fortunate, because you didn't get much time to enter it. There were plenty I barely answered, so I can't imagine typing it into Google first. (Just realized: Because it was Flash, you couldn't copy and paste it there, either.) No going back to previous questions, either.
I evidently did well enough, because I was called to an in-person audition as well. It sounds like it was about the same as previous auditions as mentioned elsewhere in this thread. In any case, the people there said they were testing this to do the initial filter on contestants - previously, they'd pull dozens (hundreds?) of hopefuls, they'd take the test, wait an hour to get them tested, and most wouldn't do well enough to go to the next step. (One audition was mentioned where NOBODY did well enough on the test to move forward.)
The one I was at had maybe 30-40 people, and everyone passed the written: They made us take another test, similar to the online one but written rather than electronic. Different questions, just the answers again, and not a lot of time to get it right. (But you could, if you wanted, go back and change your answers. Not that you had time for that.)
Evidently, the rest of the audition was just like it used to be: Take people three at a time to play a mock game, to see how you handle being in front of people. I thought I did okay...but haven't heard back yet. And they said that the only way we'd know how we did was if we heard back within a year. Still waiting...
TSG
Still, parallels abound between Next/Apple and Pixar/Disney, and those might attract Mr. Jobs as well. In particular, the possibility to rescue another ailing American icon from the inside out may interest him, the more so if he can do it better than Mr. Eisner has managed recently.
I'd argue on whether movies change the world, but it's certainly true that movie companies are extremely influential. I don't doubt that he'd get more coverage as CEO of Disney than he does as CEO of Apple. Granting, of course, that he gets more coverage as Steve Jobs than most CEOs probably get their whole lives.
In any case, I'll agree that Mr. Jobs isn't going to give Apple away easily, and certainly not without an ego-feeding option waiting in the wings. But if it's not Intel, I can't imagine it being anything else but Disney.
TSG
Only way this would happen is if Jobs was given CEO title of Disney/Pixar and a buttload of control.
That is, Jobs hands his first baby off to a company that has means and incentive to take care of it well, so that he has the chance to become the media mogul that he really wants to be.
Not that I really believe what Cringely says, but it wouldn't surprise me if Jobs considered being the CEO of Disney as an even better job than his current ones. This would give him the opportunity to do that without [quite] destroying Apple in the process.
TSG