Of course the people don't want war...But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship...Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to greater danger. --Hermann Goering [wikipedia.org] The question burning in my mind is this: How much will it take? How far does the government have to go before everyone says, "Enough!" and finally recognizes the greater danger that we're all in? How badly does our government have to act before people take up the call to arms and start rioting in the streets of this outrageous behavior?
Well, in the example you cited, it took the destruction of the country by outside forces.
The notion that the public can take up arms and overthrouw the government in this or most any other developed nation is unrealistic, even with our second amendment right to bear arms. In China, perhaps, a single person can stand up to a line of tanks and stop them, but I don't think the same kind of defiance would work here.
I can't believe that they'd even have a system capable of doing this. The kind of system they need would have to be massivce and working for a government entity myself I can't even believe that they'd get this kind of deal through congress.....on the otherhand most of congress are imbeciles so i gues sit could be possible.
Congress doesn't have to know, either in detail or in general. The NSA can be given a black budget of X billion and the details of where the money goes are kept just as dark. In theory, eventually some senator can ask to be briefed and expend their political capital in the fight to make it happen, but in practice do you expect anyone in today's Congress to go out on a limb like that.
I just signed up with them for DSL after waiting for years for it to become available, just to get away from the Comcast monopoly. Time to find me a traffic anonymizer while I clear from the Comcast "old users" list.
That won't help. I strongly suspect it's not just AT&T cooperating with the government, it's all the big carriers. When you're in bed together, as intimately connected as gov't and big business is, this kind of backscratching is de regeur. And moving to another ISP won't help, as they all have to use the big carrier's lines somewhere anyway. It's safe to assume that all internet traffic, no matter who your provider, is now being looked at by the government.
The anonymizer is also probably pointless, and likely to bring increased scrutiny, not increased security. Either the gov't will see a non-anonymous packet somewhere along the line and make the connection back to you, or have the keys to break the encryption to see the data is really innocuous, or will become increasingly suspicious about traffic it can't see and presume that in itself is an admission of guilt and that you are the enemy. remember, this is the backbone we're talking about, not some little hacker hanging off the periphery.
There was a time I would have thought such concerns to be disturbingly paranoid, but that was before the documented existent of pervasive spying by the gov't on everybody and the suspension of habeus corpus whenever they want to. Now paranoia seems the only sane reaction.
NASA should be commended for embracing open source software in some of their applications. Much of what they do would benefit greatly from the efforts of a community which is most supportive of their goals. I used to work as a contractor at NASA doing data reduction algorithms on Landsat, and that would be an ideal app for open source efforts. The data is public, so why not the software related to it as well?
Granted, there are some things that require the kind of expertise and customization that open source wouldn't be appropriate for, and I'm sure some of NASA's efforts are classified. But wherever it's reasonable, open source is a supurb idea. Imagine how many CS geeks would love to contribute to NASA just for the fun of it!
2. Why did the sea creatures decide to go on land?
They didn't "decide" to do anything. They were compelled by nature to seek land: to lay eggs, to find food, to mate safely.
A minor quibble. They weren't "compelled" to do anything. Possibly, some were living in a borderline niche, a wetlands that in some places would dry out more often than not, and since other creatures couldn't survive in that environment, it created an underexploited ecological niche for some creatures with a variation to thrive in. Over time, variations accummulate and the creature diverges from the rest of the population to form it's own species. Even if the rest of the origional population is doing quite well in the domain of their original environment. No compulsion, just the luck of the draw.
This doesn't even require the kind of mutations creationists so like to deride as impossible. Every population has normal variations, which in a typical environment are neutral and immaterial. But in a fringe environment, they can become critical. And there are always fringe environments, since the environment is neither uniform nor stable. That's another point creationists love to ignore (or aren't capable of grasping) -- that environments change and that organisms could have adapted to a series of different requirements in the random walk to the present. As in "What good is half an eye"? Not much in today's world, but when everything else is completely blind, even a rudimentary optic sensor would be a major advantage.
"What caused the big bang? or What external force was there that caused the big bang?"
Nothing. And I mean that literally. The whole universe is made up of nothing. It's just that is some places there's more nothing than there is in other places, where there's less nothing.
Once you understand that, the rest of cosmology becomes downright easy.:-)
I gues it all depends on what your definition of "old" is. Different things can have different ages. The uranium was formed in a supernova explosion, but I doubt that a single supernova provided all of the heavy elements that make up the earth. Much more likely, way back in the "good old days" when what would become the solar system was just a tiny part of a vast cloud of gas on the outskirts of the galaxy, many supernova were happening in stellar nurseries, each of which ejected heavy elements which contributed to the chemical composition of the cloud. Eventually one or more of these explosions also triggered the gravitational collapse of the cloud (or this part of it) which formed the sun and our neighbors. So some of the uranium would be about 5 billion years old (b.y.o), some might be six, and some seven or more. Same thing for the other elements as well. Of course, the hydrogen atoms that make up the water in our oceans are thirteen billion years old. The helium could be anywhere from thirteen to five b.y.o. So how old is the earth as a planet? That's easy. 4.5 b.y.o. Asking "as a planet" refers to the organization of the constituents, not the age of the material itself.
There's tons of fascinating material about the development of solar systems and planets available. Even the older stuff is interesting, and is generally still roughly correct. Granted, we're learning much more nowadays with more refined detail, and the models we have can be tested against better observations that weren't possible to make a few decades ago. It's a story well worth looking into.
Our civil liberties are eroding like a California mud-slide.
I doubt that the government's gathering information by using the internet is anything new. I mean, how much privacy can you expect when the medium is as public as can be. I am more concerned that the content of websites, even those domestic sites which are merely critical of government policies, will be seen as legitimate targets of reprisal because they "aid and abet the enemy" when in fact they do nothing more than promote a view of patriotism that respects the constitution and bill of rights.
Too bad no one is talking about international treaties to outlaw such internet attacks, a kind of non-proliferation of malware treaty. Given our recent record of unilaterally ignoring treaties, it probably wouldn't be a credible effort anyway.
What if China only asked to see all of Yahoo's data so it could study how people looked at poolitically and sexually subversive sites in order to develop specifications for future filtering laws, and China then used that info to arrest dissidents. Could they still be sued for complying with China's laws?
It'd make for an interesting precedent either way, wouldn't it?
I'm sure you're very comfortable in your LaRouchist illusions of a "physical economy", but industrial capacity largely depends on access to natural resources, and outsourcing doesn't change who has what natural resources. Being able to wage war when everyone's against you isn't a measure of economic strength; it's a measure of military strength. The only question we should ask of our economic changes is, "Are people living better lives now?"
Are you saying that America doesn't have any more natural resources? Did we use them all up already?
I believe your simplistic view of military strength being disjoint from industrial capacity is very short sighted. Overwhelming force certainly has it's advantages, but it only applies in certain domains, and does not cover all aspects of warfare. Consider that our great dominance in military strength isn't able to win the peace in either Afghanistan or Iraq. And in a sustained conflict, where forces are more evenly matched, how can military strength be maintained for the duration of the conflict? That's an economic problem.
As for people living better being the only question to ask, I guess that explains why the US gov't has maxxed out their credit "cards", and only manages to stay living the good life by applying for more credit cards. Unfortunately, living on credit cards as the gov't and so much of the population does is living in a house of cards, and we all know where that leads....
In light of all the spying that we did against the USSR (xerox copy machines, sabatoged oil line controls leading to an explosion, etc) and China (using Nauru's embassy, splices in the telecom, etc.) , we would be insane to not check the equipment. What amazes me is that over the last 5 years, our gov. has outsourced so many critical areas to nations that are at best neutral, and more likely future enemies.
When will the gov't relearn that outsourcing is a national security issue? If there is ever a conflict and we're on a different side than Japan, how will we get the steel to build our equipment? If Sigapore is in enemy hands, where will we get the memory chips for our military electronics? Etc.
War is a test of the economic strength of nations. The foundation of economic strength is industrial capacity. We have sacrificed our internal manufacturing abilities on the alter of short term corporate profits. Whatever strength the US has is superficial, and becoming thinner all the time. We desperately need to rebuild our internal strength.
The US should be very wary of antagonizing the rest of the world. We are very dependant upon them for our survival.
Nasa was never about science. It was about putting people on the moon. The science talk is just a nicer lofty goal that hides the real goal: making sure nobody gets control of the moon other than the US.
If you control the moon, you have a major military strategic advantage, the ultimate high ground. You can catapult anything down, anywhere on Earth and nobody can stop you. So NASA's highest priority is making sure nobody gets ahead of the US on this technology.
The moon is not of high military value. Controlling near earth orbit is of much greater strategic value, since travel time to target is very short. Being able to deny your enemy access to geosynchronous orbit is worth something to the military. Until there are massive economic interests on the moon itself, the moon is irrelevant to the military.
If NASA wants any funding at all, it has to portray what it does as sexy. Little wonder that manned moon bases and missions to Mars are what they're trying to sell, regardless of the actual feasability of either goal.
Unfortunately, this is correct. It's not NASA's priorities that need internal adjustment, because NASA doesn't control their priorities. They are set by the President and by Congress. Much of NASA's budget is earmarked for specific projects, and they have only limited discretion over the remainder.
NASA needs to do a better job of explaining to the public the benefits of different types of programs, and the cost/benefits of different goals. Robotics and Mission to Earth programs have vastly better ROI than a manned mission to Mars or the ISS or Space Shuttle do (which have essentially no R for a big OI). And even that PR function is controlled by Presidential appointments, hence the recent fundamentalist antiscience scandal.
There is one good reason to build a Moonbase: Telescopes on the far side of the Moon are as insulated as you can get from interference from human sources. A good set of telescopes, in all spectrums, on the far side of the Moon should be an eventual goal of NASA. (Not that we need people there to run them...)
I mostly disagree with the above statement. Optical telescopes can work just as well on satellites than on the moon -- even better in a zero-g environment so there's no mirror flexure. But an array of large radio telescopes would be well suited for lunar deploymant, since the far side is shielded from pervasive terrestrial interference.
These are people that would be (rather rightly I think) seen as dissidents, potentially dangerous seperatists, and enemies of the state. It's quite likely that the average American would fear and distrust them if they were acting today.
Perhaps their biggest flaw was that, like most idealists, they assumed that people were as deeply passionate about these things as they were. That they cared strongly about injustice and the abuse of power and were willing to act on it.
They weren't patriots because they supported the current government. They were patriots because they didn't.
Bravo. If I could mode your post up past 5, I would.
The most important thing to a functional democracy is an informed and involved public. I doubt that the current administration fears anything more. I also doubt that a different administration would be much better in that regard, but at least I can hope.
UAVs are something we're going to have to get used to. Up next: pilotless passenger planes. Most modern aircraft are already equipped with auto-takeoff, auto-pilot (cruise), and auto-land. What more do you need? The ability to control them from the ground? That's being worked on for security reasons.
That's a terrible idea, especially if you think it will improve security. Quite the opposite. All you need is one terrorist hacker to break into the system and grab control. Then instead of an attack by four planes you have every plane in the air becoming a weapon and/or target at the same time.
If they can simulate something else than a virus (because I don't think viruses are intelligent) could they by this way obtain intelligence by simulating an intelligent animal?
Would you consider a bacterium intelligent? I bacterium is several orders of magnitude more complex than a virus. How about an ameoba? Again, several orders of magnitude more complex than a bacterium? Perhaps a jellyfish? A nematode?
The pure simulation method is unlikely to ever be used in developing an artificial intelligence. And that's just as well, as it wouldn't teach us anything more than just physically reconstucting the object atom by atom. Finding alternative routes to the goal is more likely to be interesting and useful.
Yup. The Cardboard Regatta is still a big annual event. I haven't entered this event myself, since in my experience from Stevens Tech, canoes should be made of concrete, not cardboard!
The Lake has been in the news lately because a gay group from Chicago wanted to join a rowing event at a festival here. The Park District refused to grant them permission, then under a public outcry reversed their decision. In what is generally considered a conservative area, this show of tolerance from the community was suprising and encouraging.
I don't want to take up too much of/.'s space with matters of interest to only a few. If you're interested in further info, feel free to contact me through my website, www.cairone.com.
On the other hand, a 1-hour flight would facilitate global infidelity. An errant British businessman could fly to San Francisco, have dinner and sex with his squeeze, and then return to London within 4 hours.
That's got to be some pretty good squeeze, seeing as how a ticket is likely to cost even more than the Concorde (Round-trip fare: New York-Paris: $US 8,720)!
What is this obsession people have with turning every good book into a play/film/tv series etc? Some stuff just doesn't work when converted, and similarly, not every good film makes a good book.
I believe it's called money.
Isn't the LOTH in public domain? Free script, built in audience, profit.
I see you are from Crystal Lake. I grew up in Wonder lake. Have not been there since the early 80's. Has it grown a great deal since then?
Oh my, yes. You might not recognize much of the area. McHenry county has been the fastest growing county in IL for some time. In just the ten years I've been out here the transformation has been remarkable. I'm not against growth and development, but wish it could be done with a bit more planning and forethought.
A flyover with Google Earth might be revealing, or upsetting.
Hopefully, if this works, we will start more taps in wyoming/montana around Yellowstone park. I realize that some will worry that we would tap too much heat out, but if we work from the outside, it is doubtful that we could change Old Faithful. It is time that we take advantage of none destuctive alternatives such as this (as well as nukes).
It is a good idea, and of less concern than you think. Geothermal energy should be exploited more, but it's uncommon to find a good natural source with a configuration that makes it economically feasible to exploit.
However, your comment about geysers is incorrect. Geysers form under very peculiar circumstances, needing long vertical shafts with interveening chambers of a certain geometry. Under more common conditions you only get hot springs or boiling mud pots. Geysers are spectacular and rare for a reason. Also, Old Faithful hasn't been since an earthquake in 1998. Faithful, that is. It used to go off like regular clockwork, but now it's much more sporatic. In general, geysers often simply stop erupting, most commonly because mineral deposits change their geometry or choke off their vents. Earthquakes, ubiquitous in regions with geysers, are another major factor. Fascinating objects, really, and worth a closer look.
Considering the practical difficulties of accelerating to a high percentage of the speed of light, what's a little extra radiation exposure? A few extra meters of shielding ought to reduce that problem, though all that mass will take some extra energy to get up to speed.
How much would it cost to Lorentz contract my time so I can stop in the year 3006? A couple of gazillion? Would I even want to see how much more screwed up the world will be in another thousand years?
Maybe that radiation wouldn't be such a bad thing after all.
A Japanese girlfriend of mine has a sick mother who needs constant care all of the time. Nobody is at home to look after her. The father needs to work to pay the bills. She doesn't want to quit her job to stay home to look after her. It is expensive to live in Japan, and it's boring to stay home and look after parents. She doesn't want to do it... in fact none of the family want to do it. She doesn't want to throw her future and career away to do it. Her whole family feels that her mother is a real burden to everyone else, and the whole family wishes that she would just go into a hospital and not be an extra thorn in everyone's lifestyle.
Curious, for a country with a history of venerating their ancestors, that living oparents aren't so revered.
It seems that Billy West got it wrong when he announced that there are 26 new episodes of Futurama on the way, and instead there will only be the 4 movies as planned. "
Only four movies? What a disappointment.
The first one isn't even out yet, and already the movie franchise is well underway. Is this isn't success, then I don't know what is.
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Of course the people don't want war...But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship...Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to greater danger.
--Hermann Goering [wikipedia.org]
The question burning in my mind is this: How much will it take? How far does the government have to go before everyone says, "Enough!" and finally recognizes the greater danger that we're all in? How badly does our government have to act before people take up the call to arms and start rioting in the streets of this outrageous behavior?
Well, in the example you cited, it took the destruction of the country by outside forces.
The notion that the public can take up arms and overthrouw the government in this or most any other developed nation is unrealistic, even with our second amendment right to bear arms. In China, perhaps, a single person can stand up to a line of tanks and stop them, but I don't think the same kind of defiance would work here.
I can't believe that they'd even have a system capable of doing this. The kind of system they need would have to be massivce and working for a government entity myself I can't even believe that they'd get this kind of deal through congress.....on the otherhand most of congress are imbeciles so i gues sit could be possible.
Congress doesn't have to know, either in detail or in general. The NSA can be given a black budget of X billion and the details of where the money goes are kept just as dark. In theory, eventually some senator can ask to be briefed and expend their political capital in the fight to make it happen, but in practice do you expect anyone in today's Congress to go out on a limb like that.
I just signed up with them for DSL after waiting for years for it to become available, just to get away from the Comcast monopoly. Time to find me a traffic anonymizer while I clear from the Comcast "old users" list.
That won't help. I strongly suspect it's not just AT&T cooperating with the government, it's all the big carriers. When you're in bed together, as intimately connected as gov't and big business is, this kind of backscratching is de regeur. And moving to another ISP won't help, as they all have to use the big carrier's lines somewhere anyway. It's safe to assume that all internet traffic, no matter who your provider, is now being looked at by the government.
The anonymizer is also probably pointless, and likely to bring increased scrutiny, not increased security. Either the gov't will see a non-anonymous packet somewhere along the line and make the connection back to you, or have the keys to break the encryption to see the data is really innocuous, or will become increasingly suspicious about traffic it can't see and presume that in itself is an admission of guilt and that you are the enemy. remember, this is the backbone we're talking about, not some little hacker hanging off the periphery.
There was a time I would have thought such concerns to be disturbingly paranoid, but that was before the documented existent of pervasive spying by the gov't on everybody and the suspension of habeus corpus whenever they want to. Now paranoia seems the only sane reaction.
NASA should be commended for embracing open source software in some of their applications. Much of what they do would benefit greatly from the efforts of a community which is most supportive of their goals. I used to work as a contractor at NASA doing data reduction algorithms on Landsat, and that would be an ideal app for open source efforts. The data is public, so why not the software related to it as well?
Granted, there are some things that require the kind of expertise and customization that open source wouldn't be appropriate for, and I'm sure some of NASA's efforts are classified. But wherever it's reasonable, open source is a supurb idea. Imagine how many CS geeks would love to contribute to NASA just for the fun of it!
2. Why did the sea creatures decide to go on land?
They didn't "decide" to do anything. They were compelled by nature to seek land: to lay eggs, to find food, to mate safely.
A minor quibble. They weren't "compelled" to do anything. Possibly, some were living in a borderline niche, a wetlands that in some places would dry out more often than not, and since other creatures couldn't survive in that environment, it created an underexploited ecological niche for some creatures with a variation to thrive in. Over time, variations accummulate and the creature diverges from the rest of the population to form it's own species. Even if the rest of the origional population is doing quite well in the domain of their original environment. No compulsion, just the luck of the draw.
This doesn't even require the kind of mutations creationists so like to deride as impossible. Every population has normal variations, which in a typical environment are neutral and immaterial. But in a fringe environment, they can become critical. And there are always fringe environments, since the environment is neither uniform nor stable. That's another point creationists love to ignore (or aren't capable of grasping) -- that environments change and that organisms could have adapted to a series of different requirements in the random walk to the present. As in "What good is half an eye"? Not much in today's world, but when everything else is completely blind, even a rudimentary optic sensor would be a major advantage.
"What caused the big bang? or What external force was there that caused the big bang?"
:-)
Nothing. And I mean that literally. The whole universe is made up of nothing. It's just that is some places there's more nothing than there is in other places, where there's less nothing.
Once you understand that, the rest of cosmology becomes downright easy.
I gues it all depends on what your definition of "old" is. Different things can have different ages. The uranium was formed in a supernova explosion, but I doubt that a single supernova provided all of the heavy elements that make up the earth. Much more likely, way back in the "good old days" when what would become the solar system was just a tiny part of a vast cloud of gas on the outskirts of the galaxy, many supernova were happening in stellar nurseries, each of which ejected heavy elements which contributed to the chemical composition of the cloud. Eventually one or more of these explosions also triggered the gravitational collapse of the cloud (or this part of it) which formed the sun and our neighbors. So some of the uranium would be about 5 billion years old (b.y.o), some might be six, and some seven or more. Same thing for the other elements as well. Of course, the hydrogen atoms that make up the water in our oceans are thirteen billion years old. The helium could be anywhere from thirteen to five b.y.o. So how old is the earth as a planet? That's easy. 4.5 b.y.o. Asking "as a planet" refers to the organization of the constituents, not the age of the material itself.
There's tons of fascinating material about the development of solar systems and planets available. Even the older stuff is interesting, and is generally still roughly correct. Granted, we're learning much more nowadays with more refined detail, and the models we have can be tested against better observations that weren't possible to make a few decades ago. It's a story well worth looking into.
Our civil liberties are eroding like a California mud-slide.
I doubt that the government's gathering information by using the internet is anything new. I mean, how much privacy can you expect when the medium is as public as can be. I am more concerned that the content of websites, even those domestic sites which are merely critical of government policies, will be seen as legitimate targets of reprisal because they "aid and abet the enemy" when in fact they do nothing more than promote a view of patriotism that respects the constitution and bill of rights.
Too bad no one is talking about international treaties to outlaw such internet attacks, a kind of non-proliferation of malware treaty. Given our recent record of unilaterally ignoring treaties, it probably wouldn't be a credible effort anyway.
What if China only asked to see all of Yahoo's data so it could study how people looked at poolitically and sexually subversive sites in order to develop specifications for future filtering laws, and China then used that info to arrest dissidents. Could they still be sued for complying with China's laws?
It'd make for an interesting precedent either way, wouldn't it?
I'm sure you're very comfortable in your LaRouchist illusions of a "physical economy", but industrial capacity largely depends on access to natural resources, and outsourcing doesn't change who has what natural resources. Being able to wage war when everyone's against you isn't a measure of economic strength; it's a measure of military strength. The only question we should ask of our economic changes is, "Are people living better lives now?"
Are you saying that America doesn't have any more natural resources? Did we use them all up already?
I believe your simplistic view of military strength being disjoint from industrial capacity is very short sighted. Overwhelming force certainly has it's advantages, but it only applies in certain domains, and does not cover all aspects of warfare. Consider that our great dominance in military strength isn't able to win the peace in either Afghanistan or Iraq. And in a sustained conflict, where forces are more evenly matched, how can military strength be maintained for the duration of the conflict? That's an economic problem.
As for people living better being the only question to ask, I guess that explains why the US gov't has maxxed out their credit "cards", and only manages to stay living the good life by applying for more credit cards. Unfortunately, living on credit cards as the gov't and so much of the population does is living in a house of cards, and we all know where that leads....
In light of all the spying that we did against the USSR (xerox copy machines, sabatoged oil line controls leading to an explosion, etc) and China (using Nauru's embassy, splices in the telecom, etc.) , we would be insane to not check the equipment. What amazes me is that over the last 5 years, our gov. has outsourced so many critical areas to nations that are at best neutral, and more likely future enemies.
When will the gov't relearn that outsourcing is a national security issue? If there is ever a conflict and we're on a different side than Japan, how will we get the steel to build our equipment? If Sigapore is in enemy hands, where will we get the memory chips for our military electronics? Etc.
War is a test of the economic strength of nations. The foundation of economic strength is industrial capacity. We have sacrificed our internal manufacturing abilities on the alter of short term corporate profits. Whatever strength the US has is superficial, and becoming thinner all the time. We desperately need to rebuild our internal strength.
The US should be very wary of antagonizing the rest of the world. We are very dependant upon them for our survival.
Nasa was never about science. It was about putting people on the moon. The science talk is just a nicer lofty goal that hides the real goal: making sure nobody gets control of the moon other than the US.
If you control the moon, you have a major military strategic advantage, the ultimate high ground. You can catapult anything down, anywhere on Earth and nobody can stop you. So NASA's highest priority is making sure nobody gets ahead of the US on this technology.
The moon is not of high military value. Controlling near earth orbit is of much greater strategic value, since travel time to target is very short. Being able to deny your enemy access to geosynchronous orbit is worth something to the military. Until there are massive economic interests on the moon itself, the moon is irrelevant to the military.
If NASA wants any funding at all, it has to portray what it does as sexy. Little wonder that manned moon bases and missions to Mars are what they're trying to sell, regardless of the actual feasability of either goal.
Unfortunately, this is correct. It's not NASA's priorities that need internal adjustment, because NASA doesn't control their priorities. They are set by the President and by Congress. Much of NASA's budget is earmarked for specific projects, and they have only limited discretion over the remainder.
NASA needs to do a better job of explaining to the public the benefits of different types of programs, and the cost/benefits of different goals. Robotics and Mission to Earth programs have vastly better ROI than a manned mission to Mars or the ISS or Space Shuttle do (which have essentially no R for a big OI). And even that PR function is controlled by Presidential appointments, hence the recent fundamentalist antiscience scandal.
There is one good reason to build a Moonbase: Telescopes on the far side of the Moon are as insulated as you can get from interference from human sources. A good set of telescopes, in all spectrums, on the far side of the Moon should be an eventual goal of NASA. (Not that we need people there to run them...)
I mostly disagree with the above statement. Optical telescopes can work just as well on satellites than on the moon -- even better in a zero-g environment so there's no mirror flexure. But an array of large radio telescopes would be well suited for lunar deploymant, since the far side is shielded from pervasive terrestrial interference.
These are people that would be (rather rightly I think) seen as dissidents, potentially dangerous seperatists, and enemies of the state. It's quite likely that the average American would fear and distrust them if they were acting today.
Perhaps their biggest flaw was that, like most idealists, they assumed that people were as deeply passionate about these things as they were. That they cared strongly about injustice and the abuse of power and were willing to act on it.
They weren't patriots because they supported the current government. They were patriots because they didn't.
Bravo. If I could mode your post up past 5, I would.
The most important thing to a functional democracy is an informed and involved public. I doubt that the current administration fears anything more. I also doubt that a different administration would be much better in that regard, but at least I can hope.
UAVs are something we're going to have to get used to. Up next: pilotless passenger planes. Most modern aircraft are already equipped with auto-takeoff, auto-pilot (cruise), and auto-land. What more do you need? The ability to control them from the ground? That's being worked on for security reasons.
That's a terrible idea, especially if you think it will improve security. Quite the opposite. All you need is one terrorist hacker to break into the system and grab control. Then instead of an attack by four planes you have every plane in the air becoming a weapon and/or target at the same time.
If they can simulate something else than a virus (because I don't think viruses are intelligent) could they by this way obtain intelligence by simulating an intelligent animal?
Would you consider a bacterium intelligent? I bacterium is several orders of magnitude more complex than a virus. How about an ameoba? Again, several orders of magnitude more complex than a bacterium? Perhaps a jellyfish? A nematode?
The pure simulation method is unlikely to ever be used in developing an artificial intelligence. And that's just as well, as it wouldn't teach us anything more than just physically reconstucting the object atom by atom. Finding alternative routes to the goal is more likely to be interesting and useful.
Is Crystal Lake still racing C-Scows there?
/.'s space with matters of interest to only a few. If you're interested in further info, feel free to contact me through my website, www.cairone.com.
Yup. The Cardboard Regatta is still a big annual event. I haven't entered this event myself, since in my experience from Stevens Tech, canoes should be made of concrete, not cardboard!
The Lake has been in the news lately because a gay group from Chicago wanted to join a rowing event at a festival here. The Park District refused to grant them permission, then under a public outcry reversed their decision. In what is generally considered a conservative area, this show of tolerance from the community was suprising and encouraging.
I don't want to take up too much of
On the other hand, a 1-hour flight would facilitate global infidelity. An errant British businessman could fly to San Francisco, have dinner and sex with his squeeze, and then return to London within 4 hours.
That's got to be some pretty good squeeze, seeing as how a ticket is likely to cost even more than the Concorde (Round-trip fare: New York-Paris: $US 8,720)!
What is this obsession people have with turning every good book into a play/film/tv series etc? Some stuff just doesn't work when converted, and similarly, not every good film makes a good book.
I believe it's called money.
Isn't the LOTH in public domain? Free script, built in audience, profit.
I see you are from Crystal Lake. I grew up in Wonder lake. Have not been there since the early 80's. Has it grown a great deal since then?
Oh my, yes. You might not recognize much of the area. McHenry county has been the fastest growing county in IL for some time. In just the ten years I've been out here the transformation has been remarkable. I'm not against growth and development, but wish it could be done with a bit more planning and forethought.
A flyover with Google Earth might be revealing, or upsetting.
Hopefully, if this works, we will start more taps in wyoming/montana around Yellowstone park. I realize that some will worry that we would tap too much heat out, but if we work from the outside, it is doubtful that we could change Old Faithful. It is time that we take advantage of none destuctive alternatives such as this (as well as nukes).
It is a good idea, and of less concern than you think. Geothermal energy should be exploited more, but it's uncommon to find a good natural source with a configuration that makes it economically feasible to exploit.
However, your comment about geysers is incorrect. Geysers form under very peculiar circumstances, needing long vertical shafts with interveening chambers of a certain geometry. Under more common conditions you only get hot springs or boiling mud pots. Geysers are spectacular and rare for a reason. Also, Old Faithful hasn't been since an earthquake in 1998. Faithful, that is. It used to go off like regular clockwork, but now it's much more sporatic. In general, geysers often simply stop erupting, most commonly because mineral deposits change their geometry or choke off their vents. Earthquakes, ubiquitous in regions with geysers, are another major factor. Fascinating objects, really, and worth a closer look.
Considering the practical difficulties of accelerating to a high percentage of the speed of light, what's a little extra radiation exposure? A few extra meters of shielding ought to reduce that problem, though all that mass will take some extra energy to get up to speed.
How much would it cost to Lorentz contract my time so I can stop in the year 3006? A couple of gazillion? Would I even want to see how much more screwed up the world will be in another thousand years?
Maybe that radiation wouldn't be such a bad thing after all.
A Japanese girlfriend of mine has a sick mother who needs constant care all of the time. Nobody is at home to look after her. The father needs to work to pay the bills. She doesn't want to quit her job to stay home to look after her. It is expensive to live in Japan, and it's boring to stay home and look after parents. She doesn't want to do it... in fact none of the family want to do it. She doesn't want to throw her future and career away to do it. Her whole family feels that her mother is a real burden to everyone else, and the whole family wishes that she would just go into a hospital and not be an extra thorn in everyone's lifestyle.
Curious, for a country with a history of venerating their ancestors, that living oparents aren't so revered.
It seems that Billy West got it wrong when he announced that there are 26 new episodes of Futurama on the way, and instead there will only be the 4 movies as planned. "
Only four movies? What a disappointment.
The first one isn't even out yet, and already the movie franchise is well underway. Is this isn't success, then I don't know what is.