I hear they're going to have to change the name of the third movie to "Revenge of the King" because there's already a popular movie with "Return of the" in the title.
Sagan met claims of extraterrestrial visitation with an open mind and summarily debunked them.
"Contact" was Sagan's way of countering all the tales of visitation and abduction. He proposed a story of how contact might actually proceed.
When you say that "exploration is the ONLY way mankind will ever encounter such intelligence," you seem to be implying that transporting ourselves or our machines around the galaxy will have a much better chance of succeeding than other methods of detecting. This indicates to me that you don't have a grasp of how much easier it is to listen to a billion stars via radio, than to travel to one of them in less than a hundred generations. You speak of the power concerns of a radio message, which is nothing in comparison to what it takes to move matter to another star.
Right now, radio is what we have. It's reasonable to assume (as far as it's reasonable to assume anything about ETI) that other minds in the galaxy will acquire radio and see how it can be used to communicate between the stars. A very powerful race might have a few members who decide to build their own radios as part of an ongoing SETI contact project.
If there is something other than radio suitible for interstellar communication (please don't suggest entangled particles or some kind of FTL communication), then we can start SETI with that. In fact, optical SETI projects are currently underway. Perhaps we'll figure out how to detect artificial gravity waves, though I doubt we'd really want to meet people capable of communicating with binary neutron stars, or what not.
Yes, that happens in one of the episodes. On the tape I rented a while back, that episode featured an bit at the end with an older Sagan telling about a computer simulation that one Cosmos fan created. It shows a non-relativistic flight through a lattice of sticks and balls, followed by a relativistic flight through it. Quite interesting.
for someone with his insight and knowledge, there is no way he could not have seen that.
Sagan was great, but he wasn't the only great one. I won't try to list names, but if Sagan knew what you claim he knew, then hundreds of his colleages would have known it, too, and would have to be in on the cover-up.
Besides, I can't recall Carl Sagan actually writing that the Earth has not been visited. I do recall him writing that claims of such extraordinary visits would require extraordinary proof, which, so far, has yet to surface.
The story is based on the short story "The Sentinel" anyway
Quite loosely based, really, and only the parts having to do with finding the monolith on the moon, not the monkey-men or the trip to Jupiter/Saturn (movie/book) or the subsequent craziness.
According to you we are only ethically allowed to do things that "save" other people. No one would like to live in a world like that, so there's no point to it. Sometimes, groups of people have to do things that are just plain fun. The space program is more than fun, of course. It's an extension of the exploration that brought our ancestors up from the sea and down from the trees. If they had stopped to make sure everyone was up to speed, we'd still be picking lice off one another. No, thanks.
If you are against pure science for its own sake, then you must also be against funding for the arts. The opera won't get anyone out of the gutter, a fine novel won't get anyone off drugs, and a painting won't put food on the table (not even for the artist in most cases). Well, come to that, perhaps you ARE against arts funding. Sometimes the government seems to be.
But, if you are going to target the space program, then you should also target government funded history studies. Talk about a waste of money. When was the last time history produced anything new, except bad feelings towards people and things long past?
I'm not really against the study of history. History is wonderful and it helps us understand who we are and where we came from. Well, exploratory science achieves exactly that same purpose, among others. The more we can learn about other planets, the more we can learn about our own, where it has been and where it is going. For instance, it was only during studies of the atmosphere of Venus (partially undertaken by robot probes) that scientists gained the first inklings of something called the "greenhouse effect."
Exploration of all kinds is worthy. We can never know what it will show us. If we do eventually get everyone equal and happy, it will make us all proud to have that knowledge.
Besides, even if we do halt government space exploration, how much money do you really think that will free up? A few billion? Most of that will go straight into the military and what's left will be spread around into a multitude of other goverment programs, only a few of which have anything to do with betteering the lives of the poor, starving, and ignorant. And the ignorant will have that much less to learn about even if they do get into schools.
If we halt all scientific and exploratory work until everyone is happy, we'll never make any advancements or learn anything new and there won't be any point to being alive. There are worse wastes of money than science. Go pick on those.
You target the space program because it is obvious and because you don't see the use of it. The truth is that the space program gets only a few percent of the national budget. Confiscating this and redistributing it to "worthy" causes is not likely to make much of a difference.
We're never going to solve all of our problems, so we might as well try to make a tiny amount of forward progress in science and exploration while fighting the good fight at the same time. We don't know what we'll find or what use it might some day be to us. There is wealth out there, and need for amazing technology that will find uses back on earth, if only we can keep striving towards it.
Right, right, that's the whole fear, but we're a long way from that. Who knows if it's really even possible. Can we even make macromachines that can copy themselves? Well, I guess that's not as scary since nanobots could conceivably take molecular construction material right out of seawater. I guess the only option is to make another bot that feeds off the goobots. That and lots of napalm.
Too bad it seems like we're going to need super-light super-strong nano-structures to make it to other worlds and survive there in any reasonable manner.
Then again, the baddies (probably in the form of countries) WILL acquire nanotechnology one way or another, at one point or another. I sure would like to have thousands of bright, independent individuals plugging away at ways to make antidotes or defenses from nano-evil in order to save their own butts. Maybe they'll come up with something we can all use.
(Who's gonna beat me to it?)
The "Japan subway gassing" is actually supposed to be from that pic of the monk self-immolating himself as part of some demonstration. I just know the picture, I can't tell you what it's for.
I know most of them (or I know the picture they are trying to protray) but "Outside Hernandez, Mississippi" (the guy who got dragged by the rednecks?), "Fredo & Neri" (another pic from a movie? I didn't look too closely), "Cabin - Early Spring" (the Unabomber?), and "Sherman Hills" (the gay guy who was beaten to death?) escape me.
I think my favorite has to be the Disgrace Mr. Banks, from Mary Poppins.
Pretty interesting, though I should think that the exponential growth of race should modify this. If not, there could come a point when your figuring would predict the end of all human life in the next 60 seconds.
That idea lies along the same lines as another measuring trick I read about (in Scientific American, I think).
When estimating the end-time of an ongoing event for which we have no strong actuarial data, say the lifespan of an intelligent species, it is fair to say that the odds are low (only 1 in 10) that you are witnessing either the last 5% or the first 5% of the event. Therefore, if human life has existed for 100,000 years before you came on the scene then you can bank on it lasting anywhere between another 5,000 years or another 95,000.
Statistical chain-jerking? Perhaps, but also a fun game to play, and that's what matters.
Skin cancer is the most popular association with depleted ozone, but there are other theoretical effects that could be much worse. The one that comes to mind is the destruction of microscopic ocean life close to the surface. The idea goes that these plankton and whatnot form the basis of a major food chain. Take out that link and the whole system could break down, starting with the oceans.
Okay, I don't know the particulars and I'm not even sure I believe any of it, but the article sanemind offered didn't go very far towards convincing me that ozone depletion is not worth a great deal of economic upheaval. Besides, anytime anyone puts forth the economy as a good reason NOT to do something, I'm suspicious.
---
You can find today's sig on page 28 of your User's Manual.
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Actually, monoliths reproduce at a geometric rate. However, they prefer to gobble hydrogen, so perhaps we're safe.
Are the proportions one by four by nine? I hope to see it tonight and measure it.
It doesn't matter what the movie is like, a lot of people here are just going to rip it to shreds one way or the other.
People need to stop making movies for books that require glossaries (eg. DUNE).
I hear they're going to have to change the name of the third movie to "Revenge of the King" because there's already a popular movie with "Return of the" in the title.
... on January 12, 1997 at Champagne-Urbana?
I think this was an obvious attempt by someone at /. to rile up the fans and get them to post. Shameless.
.sig
This is not a
Sagan met claims of extraterrestrial visitation with an open mind and summarily debunked them.
"Contact" was Sagan's way of countering all the tales of visitation and abduction. He proposed a story of how contact might actually proceed.
When you say that "exploration is the ONLY way mankind will ever encounter such intelligence," you seem to be implying that transporting ourselves or our machines around the galaxy will have a much better chance of succeeding than other methods of detecting. This indicates to me that you don't have a grasp of how much easier it is to listen to a billion stars via radio, than to travel to one of them in less than a hundred generations. You speak of the power concerns of a radio message, which is nothing in comparison to what it takes to move matter to another star.
Right now, radio is what we have. It's reasonable to assume (as far as it's reasonable to assume anything about ETI) that other minds in the galaxy will acquire radio and see how it can be used to communicate between the stars. A very powerful race might have a few members who decide to build their own radios as part of an ongoing SETI contact project.
If there is something other than radio suitible for interstellar communication (please don't suggest entangled particles or some kind of FTL communication), then we can start SETI with that. In fact, optical SETI projects are currently underway. Perhaps we'll figure out how to detect artificial gravity waves, though I doubt we'd really want to meet people capable of communicating with binary neutron stars, or what not.
Yes, that happens in one of the episodes. On the tape I rented a while back, that episode featured an bit at the end with an older Sagan telling about a computer simulation that one Cosmos fan created. It shows a non-relativistic flight through a lattice of sticks and balls, followed by a relativistic flight through it. Quite interesting.
for someone with his insight and knowledge, there is no way he could not have seen that.
Sagan was great, but he wasn't the only great one. I won't try to list names, but if Sagan knew what you claim he knew, then hundreds of his colleages would have known it, too, and would have to be in on the cover-up.
Besides, I can't recall Carl Sagan actually writing that the Earth has not been visited. I do recall him writing that claims of such extraordinary visits would require extraordinary proof, which, so far, has yet to surface.
Is Mechanical Universe on DVD yet?
The story is based on the short story "The Sentinel" anyway
Quite loosely based, really, and only the parts having to do with finding the monolith on the moon, not the monkey-men or the trip to Jupiter/Saturn (movie/book) or the subsequent craziness.
According to you we are only ethically allowed to do things that "save" other people. No one would like to live in a world like that, so there's no point to it. Sometimes, groups of people have to do things that are just plain fun. The space program is more than fun, of course. It's an extension of the exploration that brought our ancestors up from the sea and down from the trees. If they had stopped to make sure everyone was up to speed, we'd still be picking lice off one another. No, thanks.
If you are against pure science for its own sake, then you must also be against funding for the arts. The opera won't get anyone out of the gutter, a fine novel won't get anyone off drugs, and a painting won't put food on the table (not even for the artist in most cases). Well, come to that, perhaps you ARE against arts funding. Sometimes the government seems to be.
But, if you are going to target the space program, then you should also target government funded history studies. Talk about a waste of money. When was the last time history produced anything new, except bad feelings towards people and things long past?
I'm not really against the study of history. History is wonderful and it helps us understand who we are and where we came from. Well, exploratory science achieves exactly that same purpose, among others. The more we can learn about other planets, the more we can learn about our own, where it has been and where it is going. For instance, it was only during studies of the atmosphere of Venus (partially undertaken by robot probes) that scientists gained the first inklings of something called the "greenhouse effect."
Exploration of all kinds is worthy. We can never know what it will show us. If we do eventually get everyone equal and happy, it will make us all proud to have that knowledge.
Besides, even if we do halt government space exploration, how much money do you really think that will free up? A few billion? Most of that will go straight into the military and what's left will be spread around into a multitude of other goverment programs, only a few of which have anything to do with betteering the lives of the poor, starving, and ignorant. And the ignorant will have that much less to learn about even if they do get into schools.
Peace.
If we halt all scientific and exploratory work until everyone is happy, we'll never make any advancements or learn anything new and there won't be any point to being alive. There are worse wastes of money than science. Go pick on those.
You target the space program because it is obvious and because you don't see the use of it. The truth is that the space program gets only a few percent of the national budget. Confiscating this and redistributing it to "worthy" causes is not likely to make much of a difference.
We're never going to solve all of our problems, so we might as well try to make a tiny amount of forward progress in science and exploration while fighting the good fight at the same time. We don't know what we'll find or what use it might some day be to us. There is wealth out there, and need for amazing technology that will find uses back on earth, if only we can keep striving towards it.
Right, right, that's the whole fear, but we're a long way from that. Who knows if it's really even possible. Can we even make macromachines that can copy themselves? Well, I guess that's not as scary since nanobots could conceivably take molecular construction material right out of seawater. I guess the only option is to make another bot that feeds off the goobots. That and lots of napalm.
Too bad it seems like we're going to need super-light super-strong nano-structures to make it to other worlds and survive there in any reasonable manner.
Then again, the baddies (probably in the form of countries) WILL acquire nanotechnology one way or another, at one point or another. I sure would like to have thousands of bright, independent individuals plugging away at ways to make antidotes or defenses from nano-evil in order to save their own butts. Maybe they'll come up with something we can all use.
(Who's gonna beat me to it?)
The "Japan subway gassing" is actually supposed to be from that pic of the monk self-immolating himself as part of some demonstration. I just know the picture, I can't tell you what it's for.
I know most of them (or I know the picture they are trying to protray) but "Outside Hernandez, Mississippi" (the guy who got dragged by the rednecks?), "Fredo & Neri" (another pic from a movie? I didn't look too closely), "Cabin - Early Spring" (the Unabomber?), and "Sherman Hills" (the gay guy who was beaten to death?) escape me.
I think my favorite has to be the Disgrace Mr. Banks, from Mary Poppins.
This WAS on memepool just yesterday, but that's not really a complaint, because at least people get to talk about it here.
Won't you be... my neighbor?
Pretty interesting, though I should think that the exponential growth of race should modify this. If not, there could come a point when your figuring would predict the end of all human life in the next 60 seconds.
That idea lies along the same lines as another measuring trick I read about (in Scientific American, I think).
When estimating the end-time of an ongoing event for which we have no strong actuarial data, say the lifespan of an intelligent species, it is fair to say that the odds are low (only 1 in 10) that you are witnessing either the last 5% or the first 5% of the event. Therefore, if human life has existed for 100,000 years before you came on the scene then you can bank on it lasting anywhere between another 5,000 years or another 95,000.
Statistical chain-jerking? Perhaps, but also a fun game to play, and that's what matters.
Skin cancer is the most popular association with depleted ozone, but there are other theoretical effects that could be much worse. The one that comes to mind is the destruction of microscopic ocean life close to the surface. The idea goes that these plankton and whatnot form the basis of a major food chain. Take out that link and the whole system could break down, starting with the oceans. Okay, I don't know the particulars and I'm not even sure I believe any of it, but the article sanemind offered didn't go very far towards convincing me that ozone depletion is not worth a great deal of economic upheaval. Besides, anytime anyone puts forth the economy as a good reason NOT to do something, I'm suspicious. --- You can find today's sig on page 28 of your User's Manual.