Occam's Razor doesn't demand anything. It's more accurate to say that people who subscribe to Occam's Razor commonly use it to remove God from this equation. Occam's Razor yields True results IFF you have all the facts. Since some facts (the existence, omniscience, and omnipotence of God) are by definition unknowable and unprovable and based not on rationality but on faith, Occam's Razor may not give True results. Within a logical, rational framework, your conclusion is correct. But I do not Believe that a rational framework can completely and accurately model the universe, any more than pure Euclidean geometry can. Very very often, rationality provides useful conclusions, but then again so do Newton's Laws (which Einstein handily knocks into a cocked hat when you get right down to it).
Clarence Darrow vs. William Jennings "Free Silver" Bryan. Great movie with George C. Scott as Darrow, if I remember correctly..."Inherit the Wind"? Isn't that the name of the flick?
I see your point, but there are still a large class of excellent games (Half Life, Deus Ex) that simply wouldn't exist inside this framework.
I guess my objection to both the film and the video game "dogme" (sic) that are discussed in this article do not, in and of themselves, improve the quality of the work. I dunno...I guess imposing artificial limits on yourself to "stimulate creativity" just seems kinda silly to me...
(sorry about the formatting...this got REALLY munged when I pasted it in from an email to myself.)
I don't know about anybody else on Earth, but my favourite video games are ones I get immersed in. When I BELIEVE I'm flying an F-16. When I
BELIEVE I'm crawling through a sewer pipe trying to solve a Big Mystery. When I BELIEVE I'm trying to escape from a top-secret military facility being taken over by otherworldly creatures. If you are trying to immerse the player, you will not be able to do it by just stringing together a bunch of game theory ideas that look good on paper. You've got to tell a story. You've got to grab the player's attention. You've got to present an engaging world to play in. And, with computer games, you do that with 3D graphics. Usually complicated ones. (MYST may be a conspicuous exeception, but I personally found that game boring as hell. Other people certainly disagree with me.)
I dunno, maybe I'm painting with a broad brush, but I also thought that the original filmmaker's credo was stupid. Why SHOULDN'T I be able to
make a film about a talking pig? What's wrong with having a story that takes place in outer space? Why can't I light the scene so that it
looks like it would really look if I happened upon it on the street, instead of looking like something that's been filmed with a flashlight
on top of the camera? If you reduce the thesis to its root, you should be able to tell any story with a simple series of black and white sketches, or with a spoken word story. Arguing that technology makes film bad is like arguing that protein makes food bad. Technology is an essential component of film (and game making) and eschewing it for the sake of some ascetic ideal is cutting off your nose to spite your face.
I think that technology and creativity are not opposites...I think they're orthogonal. You can tell a good or a bad story, with or without technology. Think about novels...you can tell a good or a bad story, and it may be short or long. You can't judge a book by its cover, and you can't judge a film by the fact that it's mastered in Super Hi-Fi Dolby THX Digital OmegaTURBO Sound Blasterrific. Perfect example...Forrest Gump. For me, that movie stopped being a movie, and started being REAL when I clearly heard an RPG round detonate in the seat right next to me. The soundtrack of that battle scene, in the theater I was in, was utterly convincing, and it made the experience That Much Better.
I for one don't want to go back to the days of Donkey Kong. I thought that the game sucked. Sorry...most of the 30's games that a lot of people hearken back to don't engage me at all. I'm not saying they're bad games or that you're stupid if you like them...I just don't happen to enjoy them, and I'm not likely to enjoy a game that pays them homage at the expense of the things I enjoy in a game.
Since all the heat energy in space is radiant, it's easy to insulate. Just use a mylar film. Since there's no atmosphere to take heat out of the vehicle, you don't lose a WHOLE lot of heat that way (some, yes, but it's a relatively easy problem to stay on top of with air heaters inside the station).
The big problem is differential heating. And for that, a giant radiator on the outside of the hab module might be just the thing. The problem is, water is WAY useful for drinking and washing...I don't know if it would be "worth its weight" as an insulator/heat distribution apparatus...but it's a very interesting idea.
First of all, apology accepted. This is not the first or the last time somebody's got their nose out of joint about some poorly-considered humor. 'Sall good.
I think the people you see being inconsiderate were always there. But I think we're being encouraged to be more combative about their presence. It could also be an artifact of population density...we don't have the physical room to be assholes anymore. For each of your examples (the SUV one particularly...I drive a Miata and every fucking one of those nimrods is out to kill me personally) I can think of an example, that's happened to me recently, of a stranger displaying courtesy and good intentions.
I don't live in NYC, though, so maybe I'm just lucky. : )
Well thought out objections, but I still don't agree with you. Then again, at the rate I'm going you may well be building rockets before I am. : )
a) agreed. The sideways fast part (kinetic energy state) is a lot harder to achieve than altitude (potential energy state)
b) Atmosphere is thinner, but you're beating the everloving crap out of the atmosphere you DO encounter. Slugging a big object through the atmosphere for a long time at a high velocity is a great way to waste a lot of fuel.
c) In the back of my head, I was thinking about an aerospike engine like on the Venture Star prototype. This engine design uses variable air pressure to vary its bell geometry as it ascends. Side note...surely you're not proposing to have this thing cruise around the upper atmosphere using its ROCKET? That's another terrifically good way to waste fuel. Rockets are good at applying a big acceleration to something in a small period of time. Sustained operation is a bitch.
1) Well, you still have to make a certain amount of stuff accelerate to a high velocity so you can accelerate the other way...
2) True, but with vertical launch rockets, you can build the thing like a column. No weird stress vectors running around. For a conventionally launched aircraft, you're right. This is a major disadvantage, which could be largely ameliorated by cool carbon fiber construction technology. (Carbon fiber exhibits many properties of the aforementioned unobtainium. It is, however, even more expensive.)
3) Yeah, but it's real easy to shoot from a coast and have your entire range over an ocean. I don't see this as a critical advantage.
4) I'm really really dubious about the viability of reusable "spaceplane" technologies. The X-30 scramjet design was just stupid from the get-go (way too many unused engines in each of its FOUR SEPARATE flight regimes). The X-33 Venture Star looks promising, but I bet that, like the Shuttle, servicing that thing is going to be a bitch. Titan rockets are cheap. Energiya boosters are cheap. (well, when they don't blow up...)
Anyhow, your points are well taken, but I don't think we're anywhere near over the hump on reusable spacecraft yet. But what do I know...I'm still an undergrad (on the 10 year degree plan!)
Right. More powerful cultures/civilizations displace less powerful ones. It's survival of the fittest writ large. Again, I'm not arguing that this is a Good Thing or a Bad Thing, I'm saying it's an Inevitable Thing.
Defensive much? I wasn't trying to poke fun at you. I was poking fun at American attitudes toward foreigners. I didn't at any point assume that you were or were not American. Relax, hombre...nobody's out to get you.
Your reactionary debating style and broad brush painting the American people as selfish and greedy makes you part of the problem. Assumptions like that don't do anybody any good.
My job is to make this planet a bit less unpleasant to live on. I give my time and my money to further this goal. I don't shout and call people names when they disagree with me. Try it...you might get better results.
This idea doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense to me. (and it should...I'm in my senior year of aerospace engineering...)
There is a certain amount of LOX that you have to have to combine with your H2 to sling a pound of stuff into orbit. If you harvest that LOX from the atmosphere (schlepping your LOX generation along with you as dead weight) or tank up on the pad (and leave said dead weight on Earth) you still have to have the same volume of stuff to get into orbit. OK, you do get a nominal advantage in that you don't have to lift your LOX from 0 to, say, 60,000 feet, but considering you're needing to go up about 10x that far, this is not a big advantage. (I have the same objection to piggyback rockets like Pegasus and Burt Rutan's X-Prize entry...the air breathing craft does not give your spacecraft a substantially better energy budget than just launching from the surface. I guesstimate that you might get 10% more useful payload by using an air breathing first stage)
Scramjets (supersonic compression stage ramjets) are nice, because they have very few moving parts. (like, about zero.) They are not nice because you have to have a very large frontal area to collect enough air to combust the fuel, AND you still have to carry a conventional rocket engine to boost you into orbit (where there ain't no air to breathe). The key problem is that you cannot use the area rule to decrease your supersonic wave drag...the frontal area of your craft must be large relative to its weight. (Area ruling occurs when you keep the cross sectional area of an airplane close to constant along its length. I don't know why it works, but in the 60's the Convair Delta Dagger was converted into a supersonic interceptor simply by giving the fuselage a little bit of a coke-bottle shape)
Anyhow. Conventional rocketry is messy and expensive, but it's currently the best thing going. I hope that this will change in the future...I've got high hopes for electric and light powered spacecraft. But I don't think we're going to get away from chemical propellants and oxidizers in the near future.
Water is extremely heavy. I guesstimate that you'd have to have at least one body mass of water per human. (yes, I did pull that number out of my arse. Thanks for asking.) This halves your human carrying payload capacity. The advantage, of course, is that you now have water in orbit, which is a very useful commodity. (we'll assume that the scrubbers and such can purify the water from when people piss themselves on takeoff...)
The bottom line is this...it takes a certain (and very large) amount of energy per pound of stuff to get said stuff into orbit. Right now, chemical rockets are the most cost effective way to do it. I think that until skyhooks and/or space elevators come into the picture, space travel is going to have a hard time breaking the $100/lb barrier. (Right now, the cost to launch stuff in the Shuttle is in the neighborhood of $10,000/lb, and the next generation SSTO craft are around $1000/lb IFF they meet their performance goals, which they almost certainly won't.)
I'm away from my history books right now, but if I remember correctly the Mongols had major outposts all the way into Gaul (modern France). The degree to which they "conquered" should be considered relative to the degree to which the areas they ran through had organized government. I know that the Romans (my benchmark for "western" civilization...not necessarily a scholarly distinction, but a useful one) were scared out of their togas both by the Mongols and the Germanic tribes (Visigoths and the Vandals).
The Celts apparently did a reverse Mongol thing, and had substantial power throughout northern Europe and down into Persia and south central Asia (Pakistan region) if I remember correctly.
As far as the "western" culture thing, I don't think that the Celts contributed major notions to what we traditionally think of as western culture. Of course, there were influences, but western culture is largely the product of Roman and Norman influences, because those two peoples were the best organized and most militarily successful. Particularly because of Rome's conscious efforts towards cultural imperialism (ie encouraging soldiers in occupying legions to marry local girls and set up roots in the communities).
Ah. Since Asians do not have colonial urges, please explain China's behaviour in Taiwan and Tibet, and Japan's behaviour up to and including World War II.
Western religions and philosophies largely reject aggressive imperialism and colonialism too, but for some reason the political leaders don't really pay a lot of attention to that stuff. In other words, a culture's political leaders and religious views are often, if not always, diametrically opposed. (The Middle Eastern theocracies are an interesting counterpoint, but I argue that although the political leaders are also the religious leaders, they use their religious power only to enhance their political authority, and not to minister to the spiritual needs of their people.)
Hey, don't ask me, man. These other people think that America shouldn't get involved with feeding hungry people. Me, I think we SHOULD help people into the 21st century, but that's just my western modern patriarchal White Man's Burden bigot mentality showing. Maybe we should just let them drown in their own feces instead (see India).
>Our method of farming doesn't work in every enviroment/climate in the world. It also doesn't work if the culture isn't prepared for it.Ethiopia was not in the position to need more food before the US came along. And i also don't believe there was a 'long standing tradition' to have as many kids as possible. Just look at what the WTO is doing to India as far as food production goes; basically the same thing is happening.Yes, it was b/c of us that they are in their current state...What the hell planet do you live on? I doubt many americans give anything, they're so busy just trying to get out of debt. People in the US seem to be the most greedy around. You can even tell it in the way people drive now, they don't give a fuck who they run off the road, as long as THEY get where they are going 5mins faster...Is that supposed to be foreigner? Nice try dipshit, i'm an American...
It was a joke, Mr. Ad Hominem Attack. I guarantee I can spell better than any four people you can name. As far as you being an American, it sounds like you're part of the problem rather than part of the solution. Oh well...just makes my job a bit harder.
Don't be stupid. Was America a colony 300 years ago? Just so's you're not confused, that puts us at 1701. My Timetables of History puts the Declaration of Independence at 1776 (July 4...why does THAT date stick in my mind?) and British recognition of US independence some seven years later (Treaty of Paris, 1783).
As far as pure luck goes, we won't go into the differences between African and European cultures that made the Europeans more apt to develop technology. However, luck DOES play a part in human history. If the tables had been reversed, do you really think the Africans would have colonized, say, France with hugs and kisses and brotherly love? If you do, I refer you to accounts of the battles between the Hutus and the Tutsis, or the Zulu and any non-Zulu they encountered. The Africans (much like the native Americans) were not peaceful, pastoral, living on the land close to nature lying down with lions innocents that everybody seems to like to imagine. They were warlike, territorial, and absolutely ferocious to their enemies. Kinda like just about every other culture on the planet. They just happened to come up with the short end of the technological stick.
Try the Mongols. Or the Celts. (Yes, the Celts were from the West, but the culture has little to do with Western European culture today.) A good argument could also be made for the Germanic tribes. They didn't conquer and hold anything, but Central Europe was pretty well 0wn3d by them between 600 and 900 AD. (I refuse to say CE...politically correct bullshit)
How ironic that three hundred years ago, America itself was a colony. Or are you intimating that the African people are somehow less able to protect their own interests from foreign powers?
And when in human history has it NOT been Man's nature to take what he can from those who can't protect it? I'm not saying it's right, I'm saying it's inevitable.
Oh, so the tin pot dictators in Mogadishu are going to impound food, but cash they'll pass right along to the populace? Right.
Famine is not an economic problem. It's not a logistics problem. It's a political problem. Since the "heads of state" of these countries use hunger as a weapon to keep their populace in line, it's silly to lay the blame at America's feet.
I don't disagree with your point, that importing large amounts of food depresses the food market, but if the food market is not feeding the people, it's not doing its job, and people oughtn't have to starve just because the farmers cannot produce enough food at an attractive profit.
Hmmm...and now America produces most of the food on the planet, and Ethiopia (and Somalia, and a large fraction of the rest of the African continent) can't feed themselves. So obviously Americans don't know dick about farming. I'm not at all sure I follow your logic.
Ethiopia needs more food. America suggests how they can get more food. Ethiopia is, for whatever reason, unable to implement suggestions, and happens to also continue the long-standing tradition of having as many (or more) children as humanly possible. So obviously, it's America's fault that Ethiopia is starving. Never mind that US aid agencies send uncountable tons of food to needy countries, only to have the foodstuffs impounded by the local governments. It's obviously America's fault.
Look, the American people are the most generous people on the planet. We habitually give away huge amounts of money and food to people in need. (No, I'm not talking about our government, we don't like them any more than you furriners do).
If it has a longer MTBF, it is more reliable. If it does not, it is not. I don't care about the "quality" of the parts...I care about the numbers they generate.
Projecting your negative experiences at one company onto another company is silly and illogical. If the facts bear out, I don't care about the construction. If they don't, these guys are crooks. Since no drives have been manufactured, it's not useful to speculate, is it?
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If you've never learned anything or had your life improved by a fictional or allegorical story, I feel very sorry for you.
Why are you so defensive about the existence of God?
Occam's Razor doesn't demand anything. It's more accurate to say that people who subscribe to Occam's Razor commonly use it to remove God from this equation. Occam's Razor yields True results IFF you have all the facts. Since some facts (the existence, omniscience, and omnipotence of God) are by definition unknowable and unprovable and based not on rationality but on faith, Occam's Razor may not give True results. Within a logical, rational framework, your conclusion is correct. But I do not Believe that a rational framework can completely and accurately model the universe, any more than pure Euclidean geometry can. Very very often, rationality provides useful conclusions, but then again so do Newton's Laws (which Einstein handily knocks into a cocked hat when you get right down to it).
Clarence Darrow vs. William Jennings "Free Silver" Bryan. Great movie with George C. Scott as Darrow, if I remember correctly..."Inherit the Wind"? Isn't that the name of the flick?
See, Dictionary.com obviously has it wrong. THEY say:
Innovate: v. intr
To begin or introduce something new.
But EVERYBODY knows it SHOULD be like this:
Innovate: v. intr
To profit from the labor of others, ideally without giving said others credit, recognition, or royalties.
Now Microsoft's business model makes PERFECT sense. I'm so glad they clarified their position.
I see your point, but there are still a large class of excellent games (Half Life, Deus Ex) that simply wouldn't exist inside this framework.
I guess my objection to both the film and the video game "dogme" (sic) that are discussed in this article do not, in and of themselves, improve the quality of the work. I dunno...I guess imposing artificial limits on yourself to "stimulate creativity" just seems kinda silly to me...
Call me a sensualist, but I'd rather play a bad game with good eye candy than a bad game with bad eye candy.
(sorry about the formatting...this got REALLY munged when I pasted it in from an email to myself.)
I don't know about anybody else on Earth, but my favourite video games are ones I get immersed in. When I BELIEVE I'm flying an F-16. When I
BELIEVE I'm crawling through a sewer pipe trying to solve a Big Mystery. When I BELIEVE I'm trying to escape from a top-secret military facility being taken over by otherworldly creatures. If you are trying to immerse the player, you will not be able to do it by just stringing together a bunch of game theory ideas that look good on paper. You've got to tell a story. You've got to grab the player's attention. You've got to present an engaging world to play in. And, with computer games, you do that with 3D graphics. Usually complicated ones. (MYST may be a conspicuous exeception, but I personally found that game boring as hell. Other people certainly disagree with me.)
I dunno, maybe I'm painting with a broad brush, but I also thought that the original filmmaker's credo was stupid. Why SHOULDN'T I be able to
make a film about a talking pig? What's wrong with having a story that takes place in outer space? Why can't I light the scene so that it
looks like it would really look if I happened upon it on the street, instead of looking like something that's been filmed with a flashlight
on top of the camera? If you reduce the thesis to its root, you should be able to tell any story with a simple series of black and white sketches, or with a spoken word story. Arguing that technology makes film bad is like arguing that protein makes food bad. Technology is an essential component of film (and game making) and eschewing it for the sake of some ascetic ideal is cutting off your nose to spite your face.
I think that technology and creativity are not opposites...I think they're orthogonal. You can tell a good or a bad story, with or without technology. Think about novels...you can tell a good or a bad story, and it may be short or long. You can't judge a book by its cover, and you can't judge a film by the fact that it's mastered in Super Hi-Fi Dolby THX Digital OmegaTURBO Sound Blasterrific. Perfect example...Forrest Gump. For me, that movie stopped being a movie, and started being REAL when I clearly heard an RPG round detonate in the seat right next to me. The soundtrack of that battle scene, in the theater I was in, was utterly convincing, and it made the experience That Much Better.
I for one don't want to go back to the days of Donkey Kong. I thought that the game sucked. Sorry...most of the 30's games that a lot of people hearken back to don't engage me at all. I'm not saying they're bad games or that you're stupid if you like them...I just don't happen to enjoy them, and I'm not likely to enjoy a game that pays them homage at the expense of the things I enjoy in a game.
Since all the heat energy in space is radiant, it's easy to insulate. Just use a mylar film. Since there's no atmosphere to take heat out of the vehicle, you don't lose a WHOLE lot of heat that way (some, yes, but it's a relatively easy problem to stay on top of with air heaters inside the station).
The big problem is differential heating. And for that, a giant radiator on the outside of the hab module might be just the thing. The problem is, water is WAY useful for drinking and washing...I don't know if it would be "worth its weight" as an insulator/heat distribution apparatus...but it's a very interesting idea.
First of all, apology accepted. This is not the first or the last time somebody's got their nose out of joint about some poorly-considered humor. 'Sall good.
I think the people you see being inconsiderate were always there. But I think we're being encouraged to be more combative about their presence. It could also be an artifact of population density...we don't have the physical room to be assholes anymore. For each of your examples (the SUV one particularly...I drive a Miata and every fucking one of those nimrods is out to kill me personally) I can think of an example, that's happened to me recently, of a stranger displaying courtesy and good intentions.
I don't live in NYC, though, so maybe I'm just lucky. : )
Well thought out objections, but I still don't agree with you. Then again, at the rate I'm going you may well be building rockets before I am. : )
a) agreed. The sideways fast part (kinetic energy state) is a lot harder to achieve than altitude (potential energy state)
b) Atmosphere is thinner, but you're beating the everloving crap out of the atmosphere you DO encounter. Slugging a big object through the atmosphere for a long time at a high velocity is a great way to waste a lot of fuel.
c) In the back of my head, I was thinking about an aerospike engine like on the Venture Star prototype. This engine design uses variable air pressure to vary its bell geometry as it ascends. Side note...surely you're not proposing to have this thing cruise around the upper atmosphere using its ROCKET? That's another terrifically good way to waste fuel. Rockets are good at applying a big acceleration to something in a small period of time. Sustained operation is a bitch.
1) Well, you still have to make a certain amount of stuff accelerate to a high velocity so you can accelerate the other way...
2) True, but with vertical launch rockets, you can build the thing like a column. No weird stress vectors running around. For a conventionally launched aircraft, you're right. This is a major disadvantage, which could be largely ameliorated by cool carbon fiber construction technology. (Carbon fiber exhibits many properties of the aforementioned unobtainium. It is, however, even more expensive.)
3) Yeah, but it's real easy to shoot from a coast and have your entire range over an ocean. I don't see this as a critical advantage.
4) I'm really really dubious about the viability of reusable "spaceplane" technologies. The X-30 scramjet design was just stupid from the get-go (way too many unused engines in each of its FOUR SEPARATE flight regimes). The X-33 Venture Star looks promising, but I bet that, like the Shuttle, servicing that thing is going to be a bitch. Titan rockets are cheap. Energiya boosters are cheap. (well, when they don't blow up...)
Anyhow, your points are well taken, but I don't think we're anywhere near over the hump on reusable spacecraft yet. But what do I know...I'm still an undergrad (on the 10 year degree plan!)
Right. More powerful cultures/civilizations displace less powerful ones. It's survival of the fittest writ large. Again, I'm not arguing that this is a Good Thing or a Bad Thing, I'm saying it's an Inevitable Thing.
Defensive much? I wasn't trying to poke fun at you. I was poking fun at American attitudes toward foreigners. I didn't at any point assume that you were or were not American. Relax, hombre...nobody's out to get you.
Your reactionary debating style and broad brush painting the American people as selfish and greedy makes you part of the problem. Assumptions like that don't do anybody any good.
My job is to make this planet a bit less unpleasant to live on. I give my time and my money to further this goal. I don't shout and call people names when they disagree with me. Try it...you might get better results.
This idea doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense to me. (and it should...I'm in my senior year of aerospace engineering...)
There is a certain amount of LOX that you have to have to combine with your H2 to sling a pound of stuff into orbit. If you harvest that LOX from the atmosphere (schlepping your LOX generation along with you as dead weight) or tank up on the pad (and leave said dead weight on Earth) you still have to have the same volume of stuff to get into orbit. OK, you do get a nominal advantage in that you don't have to lift your LOX from 0 to, say, 60,000 feet, but considering you're needing to go up about 10x that far, this is not a big advantage. (I have the same objection to piggyback rockets like Pegasus and Burt Rutan's X-Prize entry...the air breathing craft does not give your spacecraft a substantially better energy budget than just launching from the surface. I guesstimate that you might get 10% more useful payload by using an air breathing first stage)
Scramjets (supersonic compression stage ramjets) are nice, because they have very few moving parts. (like, about zero.) They are not nice because you have to have a very large frontal area to collect enough air to combust the fuel, AND you still have to carry a conventional rocket engine to boost you into orbit (where there ain't no air to breathe). The key problem is that you cannot use the area rule to decrease your supersonic wave drag...the frontal area of your craft must be large relative to its weight. (Area ruling occurs when you keep the cross sectional area of an airplane close to constant along its length. I don't know why it works, but in the 60's the Convair Delta Dagger was converted into a supersonic interceptor simply by giving the fuselage a little bit of a coke-bottle shape)
Anyhow. Conventional rocketry is messy and expensive, but it's currently the best thing going. I hope that this will change in the future...I've got high hopes for electric and light powered spacecraft. But I don't think we're going to get away from chemical propellants and oxidizers in the near future.
Water is extremely heavy. I guesstimate that you'd have to have at least one body mass of water per human. (yes, I did pull that number out of my arse. Thanks for asking.) This halves your human carrying payload capacity. The advantage, of course, is that you now have water in orbit, which is a very useful commodity. (we'll assume that the scrubbers and such can purify the water from when people piss themselves on takeoff...)
The bottom line is this...it takes a certain (and very large) amount of energy per pound of stuff to get said stuff into orbit. Right now, chemical rockets are the most cost effective way to do it. I think that until skyhooks and/or space elevators come into the picture, space travel is going to have a hard time breaking the $100/lb barrier. (Right now, the cost to launch stuff in the Shuttle is in the neighborhood of $10,000/lb, and the next generation SSTO craft are around $1000/lb IFF they meet their performance goals, which they almost certainly won't.)
I'm away from my history books right now, but if I remember correctly the Mongols had major outposts all the way into Gaul (modern France). The degree to which they "conquered" should be considered relative to the degree to which the areas they ran through had organized government. I know that the Romans (my benchmark for "western" civilization...not necessarily a scholarly distinction, but a useful one) were scared out of their togas both by the Mongols and the Germanic tribes (Visigoths and the Vandals).
The Celts apparently did a reverse Mongol thing, and had substantial power throughout northern Europe and down into Persia and south central Asia (Pakistan region) if I remember correctly.
As far as the "western" culture thing, I don't think that the Celts contributed major notions to what we traditionally think of as western culture. Of course, there were influences, but western culture is largely the product of Roman and Norman influences, because those two peoples were the best organized and most militarily successful. Particularly because of Rome's conscious efforts towards cultural imperialism (ie encouraging soldiers in occupying legions to marry local girls and set up roots in the communities).
Ah. Since Asians do not have colonial urges, please explain China's behaviour in Taiwan and Tibet, and Japan's behaviour up to and including World War II.
Western religions and philosophies largely reject aggressive imperialism and colonialism too, but for some reason the political leaders don't really pay a lot of attention to that stuff. In other words, a culture's political leaders and religious views are often, if not always, diametrically opposed. (The Middle Eastern theocracies are an interesting counterpoint, but I argue that although the political leaders are also the religious leaders, they use their religious power only to enhance their political authority, and not to minister to the spiritual needs of their people.)
Hey, don't ask me, man. These other people think that America shouldn't get involved with feeding hungry people. Me, I think we SHOULD help people into the 21st century, but that's just my western modern patriarchal White Man's Burden bigot mentality showing. Maybe we should just let them drown in their own feces instead (see India).
>Our method of farming doesn't work in every enviroment/climate in the world. It also doesn't work if the culture isn't prepared for it.Ethiopia was not in the position to need more food before the US came along. And i also don't believe there was a 'long standing tradition' to have as many kids as possible. Just look at what the WTO is doing to India as far as food production goes; basically the same thing is happening.Yes, it was b/c of us that they are in their current state...What the hell planet do you live on? I doubt many americans give anything, they're so busy just trying to get out of debt. People in the US seem to be the most greedy around. You can even tell it in the way people drive now, they don't give a fuck who they run off the road, as long as THEY get where they are going 5mins faster...Is that supposed to be foreigner? Nice try dipshit, i'm an American...
It was a joke, Mr. Ad Hominem Attack. I guarantee I can spell better than any four people you can name. As far as you being an American, it sounds like you're part of the problem rather than part of the solution. Oh well...just makes my job a bit harder.
Don't be stupid. Was America a colony 300 years ago? Just so's you're not confused, that puts us at 1701. My Timetables of History puts the Declaration of Independence at 1776 (July 4...why does THAT date stick in my mind?) and British recognition of US independence some seven years later (Treaty of Paris, 1783).
As far as pure luck goes, we won't go into the differences between African and European cultures that made the Europeans more apt to develop technology. However, luck DOES play a part in human history. If the tables had been reversed, do you really think the Africans would have colonized, say, France with hugs and kisses and brotherly love? If you do, I refer you to accounts of the battles between the Hutus and the Tutsis, or the Zulu and any non-Zulu they encountered. The Africans (much like the native Americans) were not peaceful, pastoral, living on the land close to nature lying down with lions innocents that everybody seems to like to imagine. They were warlike, territorial, and absolutely ferocious to their enemies. Kinda like just about every other culture on the planet. They just happened to come up with the short end of the technological stick.
Try the Mongols. Or the Celts. (Yes, the Celts were from the West, but the culture has little to do with Western European culture today.) A good argument could also be made for the Germanic tribes. They didn't conquer and hold anything, but Central Europe was pretty well 0wn3d by them between 600 and 900 AD. (I refuse to say CE...politically correct bullshit)
How ironic that three hundred years ago, America itself was a colony. Or are you intimating that the African people are somehow less able to protect their own interests from foreign powers?
And when in human history has it NOT been Man's nature to take what he can from those who can't protect it? I'm not saying it's right, I'm saying it's inevitable.
Oh, so the tin pot dictators in Mogadishu are going to impound food, but cash they'll pass right along to the populace? Right.
Famine is not an economic problem. It's not a logistics problem. It's a political problem. Since the "heads of state" of these countries use hunger as a weapon to keep their populace in line, it's silly to lay the blame at America's feet.
I don't disagree with your point, that importing large amounts of food depresses the food market, but if the food market is not feeding the people, it's not doing its job, and people oughtn't have to starve just because the farmers cannot produce enough food at an attractive profit.
Hmmm...and now America produces most of the food on the planet, and Ethiopia (and Somalia, and a large fraction of the rest of the African continent) can't feed themselves. So obviously Americans don't know dick about farming. I'm not at all sure I follow your logic.
Ethiopia needs more food. America suggests how they can get more food. Ethiopia is, for whatever reason, unable to implement suggestions, and happens to also continue the long-standing tradition of having as many (or more) children as humanly possible. So obviously, it's America's fault that Ethiopia is starving. Never mind that US aid agencies send uncountable tons of food to needy countries, only to have the foodstuffs impounded by the local governments. It's obviously America's fault.
Look, the American people are the most generous people on the planet. We habitually give away huge amounts of money and food to people in need. (No, I'm not talking about our government, we don't like them any more than you furriners do).
Anyhow, that's my rant.
So does that mean you'll let me follow you around with a loaded gun pointed at your head? I promise I won't pull the trigger.
Patents are there to threaten opponents, whether they are actually employed or not is pretty irrelevant.
If it has a longer MTBF, it is more reliable. If it does not, it is not. I don't care about the "quality" of the parts...I care about the numbers they generate.
Projecting your negative experiences at one company onto another company is silly and illogical. If the facts bear out, I don't care about the construction. If they don't, these guys are crooks. Since no drives have been manufactured, it's not useful to speculate, is it?