Meh, I understand the people who say "ah, going to the moon for its own sake is meaningless"...it probably is.
I believe that there are sound STRATEGIC goals for going to the moon. There are precisely 2 lunar points that have effectively 24/7 line-of-sight to the Earth - each pole. On earth, yes, racing to the poles was simply about the 19th-century equivalent to epeen. Not so the moon. There are strong suggestions that water ice is perhaps COMMON at the poles, and as a location for a military/observation base, those two points are valuable real-estate - maybe not so much today, but eventually it's inarguable.
It would be great if presidents started considering that their country will continue to exist and need to act for decades if not centuries after their OWN term.
"Woman Claims Nerve Damage Caused Persistent Sexual Arousal Syndrome. Doctors Unsurprised. Woman Further Claims That Falling On The Floor Can Cause Nerve Damage. Doctors Still Unsurprised. Woman Then Observes That Balancing On A Small Piece Of Plastic Can Result In Falling On The Floor. Doctors Remain Unsurprised. Hey, you know what else can "cause" persistent sexual arousal syndrome? NOT ENOUGH."
"Obama's promises to limit the influence of lobbyists."
Wouldn't it just be simpler to hire oh, NO LOBBYISTS?
Or are you telling me that in a country of 330,000,000 there is not a single qualified person for this job who hasn't already Lewinski'd congress or the White House?
In previous elections, some of the candidates were Creationists (or were likely to have been), which prompted some of my friends to comment "There's no way I could vote for such a moron."
Now, while I may perhaps otherwise agree with the implied assertion that someone who LITERALLY believes that the world began in a *poof* of magic is, in fact, moronic, I took issue with this.
My illustrative followup questions were these: - do we require that the president of the US be an intellectual? - do we require that they be 'brilliant'? - does someone need to be brillian to be a successful CEO? - do you know if the CEO of the company you work for is a creationist? - Does it matter if he/she is? Would it really impact whether your company is successful or no?
Therefore while it may be intellectually satisfying and ego-soothing to impute that anyone who is a creationist is a 'moron' it's plainly not -for the purposes measured by everyday intellectual functions - true.
Meh, I understand your argument about commodity pricing, but I disagree with it on a visceral level.
Price and value are commonly tied together, but aren't inextricable.
For example, the PRICE for water on earth is, essentially, free (unless you're buying it from Dasani...). What would be the value to the space program and long-term prospects for humans in space of having 100 million tons of water in orbit?
My point being that bringing a Type-M asteroid to L4 could provide in-orbit something like 2 BILLION tons of nickel-iron ore. World production in 2004 was only 1 billion tons. This is totally aside from other space-valuable commodities like water, rare metals, etc.
That's not just a matter of earth-level commodity pricing. That's a game-changer entirely.
1) in terms of space use, suddenly there is (effectively) unlimited raw materials for construction, in an environment where power is essentially free? (I mean in terms of the energy needed to smelt/refine this ore) Wow. 2) commercially on earth...as long as you have a place/way to land it (and who really cares if 10% ablates on the way in when there's no scarcity?), you can deliver 000's or millions of tons of steel to any place on earth. Almost for FREE. 3) militarily...well, imagine #2 if you were angry at the receiver. Tunguska wherever you want, whenever you want, for free, with no lingering radiation. Just build a warhead as big as you want, and tip it over the edge of the gravity well. Nothing...nothing could stop/intercept it, and it would be as inevitable as gravity. Need to land troops somewhere? Station your fleet in the shadow of a cape or island, and whack the coast you want to land on with a tidal wave.
Seriously, I don't think you can simply say 'oh look commodity prices will drop, it won't be worth it' - I think that calculus breaks in this context.
I grabbed 4 random ice core and tree ring data series, and plotted the raw data in excel, and I see NOTHING.
I submit - 80 years of warming is meaningless static if you're talking about CLIMATE data. 80 years is practically weather, especially if you consider the longer-term Milankovic cycles.
"There seems to be a certain type of person who simply can not conceive that there are people who are not essentially humanitarian."
Or the flip side of that coin, there are certain people that believe that "I'm good and well-meaning, therefore if you disagree with me you must NOT be good and well-meaning, ergo evil."
Discounting entirely that we may BOTH be good and well-meaning, and SIMPLY DISAGREE.
It's really what's happened to political discourse in the US.
For 2000-2008 Bush wasn't merely someone who was well-meaning but had a totally different set of priorities and agenda items than me, he was EVIL, and Darth Cheney was the black-soulled Devil himself.
For 2009-2012, Obama's not just a naive intellectual with a totally different set of priorities and agenda items than me, he's an EVIL COMMUNIST BENT ON DESTROYING DEMOCRACY.
I'm not saying there aren't genuinely evil people - there are, quite plainly. But to infer that everyone who disagrees with, say, Anthropogenic Global Warming theory is somehow either lying, a corporate tool, or some brainwashed larvae of the Fox News channel at the very least precludes any possibility of coming to a rational CONSENSUS with those same people.
Our spies on the watery blue-green third planet have intercepted secret transmissions between the Simian inhabitants' space agency and their woeful oppressed subjects that reveal new plans to attack our beloved world.
This new device will be a behemoth, equipped with a powerful laser and a fission powerplant, so it is clearly a craft of war.
However, there is no need to allow your flagellum to swell; our agents-in-place are preparing to once again to deploy an array of tactics all have which been successfully used to sabotage earlier Human missions. This vessel too will either pass into deep space or crash harmlessly into some meaningless, uninhabited zone of Mars. (We remind all ONCE AGAIN that the impact of the last Earth-invasion-craft into the nesting home of our political opponents was entirely an accident, and we will endeavor to avoid a repeat of that regrettable incident.)
At this point there is no cause for alarm, no need to slither for your lives. Cover your egg sacs as usual, and excrete soothing pheremones to your swarming younglings. Know that we, your beloved and compassionate Ruler, have this crisis well in tentacle.
NOTE: It is doubly important that we make sure to keep the canal covers in place. The effort to destroy the reputation of an Earth astronomer in this century would exceed our available resources.
Olypus Mons News: FAIR AND BALANCED. A Rupert Murdoch Company.
Or they note that you're posting at 2:06 in the afternoon which means that you're SUPPOSED TO BE AT WORK FINISHING THAT REPORT THAT YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO HAVE ON MY DESK FIRST THING THIS MORNING JOHN PARKER.
Coward? Perhaps. (Well, he IS clearly a Democrat, so that's kinda redundant.)
...as an American living in Norway, you ARE aware that Norway is a state awash in petrodollars, yes?
It pretty much destroys the point I think you were trying to make, ie "lookit all the cool stuff they have in their libraries, they don't even charge late fees!!"
I'm sure you'll get dozens of posts with specifics, but most accurately the issue comes down to one that has caused arguments since 1789 (and in fact caused the US Civil War): state power vs. federal power.
The original formulation of the United States was a trade confederation of otherwise-independent states, linked minimally by a unified foreign policy, military, and an agreement to (by & large) honor each other's laws. From the very beginning, however, there has always been a strong Federalist element, arguing that (for any number of reasons from efficiency to survivability, etc) such a confederation is inherently unstable and needed to be more centralized.
The goal of the original founders seems to have been to establish a political 'free market' for ideas. If you didn't like how Pennsylvania was being run, you could move to Rhode Island. If you didn't like that, you could move to Georgia. Each state would be free to pursue its own systems of governing, bounded only by the certain rules set by the US Constitution, which is purely a NEGATIVE document - aside from basic mechanisms of government, they Constitution otherwise only defines limits on what the Fed can do. Even to this day, despite 200+ years of twisting the Constitution almost beyond recognition, you'd still see the Fed has very little to do with individuals, generally the Fed tells the States what to do, and it's up to them to both comply and (usually) come up with the money to pay for it.
If Kentucky wanted to run their state, requiring all voters to wear blue hats, they could do it. If you lived in KY and disliked hats (and couldn't democratically change the system), you could move to a state where there was no wearing of hats required. On the other hand, if the wearing of blue hats carried with it some benefit that made KY a better place to live, more people would ultimately move there, and the state would flourish.
This Federal health care mandate is a direct rejection of the principles of the framers of the Constitution on several points. At its most basic level, it denies states the ability to benefit from their long-term choices. I live in a state (MN) that has relatively higher taxes, lower crime, excellent educational and health care systems. That isn't sheer luck, that's the result of 150 years of policy choices by the governments elected by the people of MN. Now you can have other states that have done a far shittier job of planning for long-term needs to get a free ride while OUR taxpayers are charged (on top of the high costs we already absorb as a choice for our state) to pay for it. That's fair?
Further, by asserting health care as a RIGHT, we grant the US government the logical ability to command certain behaviors - if the US taxpayer is ultimately responsible to foot the bill, wouldn't it make sense for the government to ban smoking completely? How about alcohol? Risky behavior in general? How about McDonald's food, or Dorito's? Clearly, neither of these are healthy food choices; the government will now have a sound financial interest in circumscribing people's eating habits. At what point do people get to make their own choices, and LIVE WITH THE CONSEQUENCES?
One of the many ironies here is that the Left - who are in favor of this bill - simultaneously assert that NOBODY but a woman should have any say over her own reproductive system...while supporting this bill that grants to bureaucrats in Washington far greater authority over the broad swath of the citizenry.
Ultimately, as much as this repels me and I will try to fight it, I have to recognize that this is the result of the democratic process. It's far and away not perfect. But the utter stupidity of this Bill (nor the Dem majority, nor the moronic current administration) would NOT have been possible without the major failure of the PREVIOUS administration. This law only passed because the Bush administration fumbled so badly that otherwise-sensible people felt compelled to vote for big-government, big-spending Democrats. Now we have to live with those choices.
Actually, AFAIK the Bazalt is maneuverable only during its cruise phase, once it reaches the terminal guidance track and goes supersonic, it isn't really more than marginally guideable.
I'd guess that the Indian one is supersonic most of its range (thus the puny 300km) and will accept course guidance during supersonic flight.
So no, I'd guess that the title is only misleading, not grossly wrong as you imply.
"4. Looks like US is one of the backwards countries that will try to limit women's access to health care they need." translation - women won't get abortions free on demand, paid for by the taxpayer?
One interesting point for me is that your skepticism and downright cynicism is validated in the US Constitution.
The Framers built the document on the PRESUMPTION that the various parts of government would constantly try to marginalize the others, and that government always is ultimately a threat to its citizens' liberties. It's all about the assumption that power corrupts and people are generally bastards.
"A government big enough to supply you with everything you need, is a government big enough to take away everything that you have...." - Gerald Ford
Note, the bulk of our government is now dedicated to catering to our needs. Think about that.
Ha ha ha ha. I love you guys, and I'm glad to see you're somewhere still lurking (anonymously, of course!) on the intarwebs.
Hi, I'm FIFTEEN YEARS AGO, I'd like my news back.
Also, I'm obsessively focussed on the United States. No country other than the US has ever behaved with hegemonic disdain for the sovereignty of smaller countries. Ever! The United States INVENTED it, in fact. Like slavery. And racism.
Hey, is that a black helicopter over your shoulder? Didn't you see that same delivery van parked outside your house yesterday?
The shuttle's promised capability of "bringing cargo back" is a bygone requirement of the days when retrieving a spy satellite was needed to recover the film. How many payloads did the shuttle actually BRING BACK, compared to how many times did it come back with an essentially empty cargo bay, thus purely wasting the space?
Essentially, every time it came down with an empty hold, you had needless overcomplication. Instead of a relatively simple task of bringing X people back, you had to design a vehicle that brought X people back AND meanwhile hauled a giant, empty schoolbus-worth of space, with all the concomitant engineering difficulties therewith.
With the advancement of unmanned vehicles, there is NO reason that we can't build a dedicated, redundant, deeply-failsafed SMALLER launch vehicle or system for putting people into orbit, and let the heavy crap be launched elsewise with one-shot systems that then don't need to be engineered for the complicated, dangerous process of return.
Re-use is a canard that cost us astronauts' lives.
Sadly, yes. Previous president made big statements...without funding.
Previous president ^2 made big statement...without funding.
This president...defunding.
(Shrug) I fail to see the actual difference, except that the current president might be interpreted to be more honest - unless one recognizes his policy choices less as motivated by honesty than as simply pandering to a DIFFERENT voter block.
Neither party has any core value that actually understands space science, nor has the political balls to fund something that is a GUARANTEED benefit for our country (and all of humanity, for that matter) because its reward is too many election cycles away.
The US Constitution means what it says: it forbids precisely the establishment of a state religion.
"Amendment 1 - Freedom of Religion, Press, Expression. Ratified 12/15/1791. Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
It's not hard to understand this, if you even briefly study the world the Constitutional framers lived in, and the context of English government at the time.
This has NOTHING to suggest that the founders intended a secular state; in fact, church services were held in the congress for years.
I would also argue that this clause should make the government religion-blind; churches should have no special tax status certainly, nor be treated in any way differently than any other corporation or association of individuals.
"Proof that eating babies gives you laser vision would not lead to legalization of baby eating."
That's a rather sweeping, unqualified statement.
Let's think of all the morally objectionable things that humans have done over the centuries. Logically, the people that did them, did them for some reason more tangible than simply 'motivated by evil', no? One might posit that with enough reward, people can be induced to do almost any abhorrent thing.
Thus I think it's a far more reasonable and historically supportable conclusion to say that if you had incontrovertible proof that performing an abhorrent act would give you some irrefutable personal gain, SOME people would, indeed, try to perform that act.
"I think the bigger question is "is abortion moral?" "...and I think you're absolutely right.
I think the Bush administration felt this was one small issue that they could 'take the risk on' and make a moral stand against something-somewhat-in-relation-to abortion, and perhaps it would be a camel's nose situation.
People seem to instinctively understand this, and the split over embryonic stem cells mirrors perfectly (in all the folks I've talked to) the split on abortion.
Personally I have deep qualms about abortion, and I also had deep qualms about the use of embryonic stem cells.
Slashdot Mirror
Meh, I understand the people who say "ah, going to the moon for its own sake is meaningless"...it probably is.
I believe that there are sound STRATEGIC goals for going to the moon. There are precisely 2 lunar points that have effectively 24/7 line-of-sight to the Earth - each pole. On earth, yes, racing to the poles was simply about the 19th-century equivalent to epeen. Not so the moon. There are strong suggestions that water ice is perhaps COMMON at the poles, and as a location for a military/observation base, those two points are valuable real-estate - maybe not so much today, but eventually it's inarguable.
It would be great if presidents started considering that their country will continue to exist and need to act for decades if not centuries after their OWN term.
"Woman Claims Nerve Damage Caused Persistent Sexual Arousal Syndrome. Doctors Unsurprised.
Woman Further Claims That Falling On The Floor Can Cause Nerve Damage. Doctors Still Unsurprised.
Woman Then Observes That Balancing On A Small Piece Of Plastic Can Result In Falling On The Floor. Doctors Remain Unsurprised.
Hey, you know what else can "cause" persistent sexual arousal syndrome? NOT ENOUGH."
Fixed that for you.
"Obama's promises to limit the influence of lobbyists."
Wouldn't it just be simpler to hire oh, NO LOBBYISTS?
Or are you telling me that in a country of 330,000,000 there is not a single qualified person for this job who hasn't already Lewinski'd congress or the White House?
PRECISELY.
In previous elections, some of the candidates were Creationists (or were likely to have been), which prompted some of my friends to comment "There's no way I could vote for such a moron."
Now, while I may perhaps otherwise agree with the implied assertion that someone who LITERALLY believes that the world began in a *poof* of magic is, in fact, moronic, I took issue with this.
My illustrative followup questions were these:
- do we require that the president of the US be an intellectual?
- do we require that they be 'brilliant'?
- does someone need to be brillian to be a successful CEO?
- do you know if the CEO of the company you work for is a creationist?
- Does it matter if he/she is? Would it really impact whether your company is successful or no?
Therefore while it may be intellectually satisfying and ego-soothing to impute that anyone who is a creationist is a 'moron' it's plainly not -for the purposes measured by everyday intellectual functions - true.
3:43 - the two guys in the crosshairs have an AK47 and what looks to me like an RPG.
US forces had taken small arms fire from this area earlier.
I understand the journalists were trying to cover a story, but in my world it's dangerous to hang out with armed dudes in a warzone.
And no, they weren't bodyguards (with an RPG?).
Then they squat at a corner, peering around as if in ambush.
Finally, you hear shattering gunfire, and the screams of injured men - you throw your kids into the van to go investigate?
I recommend against:
- having wedding parties in the shadow of AAA guns.
- taking kids toward gunfire & fighting.
Meh, I understand your argument about commodity pricing, but I disagree with it on a visceral level.
Price and value are commonly tied together, but aren't inextricable.
For example, the PRICE for water on earth is, essentially, free (unless you're buying it from Dasani...). What would be the value to the space program and long-term prospects for humans in space of having 100 million tons of water in orbit?
My point being that bringing a Type-M asteroid to L4 could provide in-orbit something like 2 BILLION tons of nickel-iron ore. World production in 2004 was only 1 billion tons. This is totally aside from other space-valuable commodities like water, rare metals, etc.
That's not just a matter of earth-level commodity pricing. That's a game-changer entirely.
1) in terms of space use, suddenly there is (effectively) unlimited raw materials for construction, in an environment where power is essentially free? (I mean in terms of the energy needed to smelt/refine this ore) Wow.
2) commercially on earth...as long as you have a place/way to land it (and who really cares if 10% ablates on the way in when there's no scarcity?), you can deliver 000's or millions of tons of steel to any place on earth. Almost for FREE.
3) militarily...well, imagine #2 if you were angry at the receiver. Tunguska wherever you want, whenever you want, for free, with no lingering radiation. Just build a warhead as big as you want, and tip it over the edge of the gravity well. Nothing...nothing could stop/intercept it, and it would be as inevitable as gravity. Need to land troops somewhere? Station your fleet in the shadow of a cape or island, and whack the coast you want to land on with a tidal wave.
Seriously, I don't think you can simply say 'oh look commodity prices will drop, it won't be worth it' - I think that calculus breaks in this context.
Use SRWare's Iron.
It's google Chrome without the reporting bits (and actually with newer rendering java, so it's actually faster).
It's screamingly fast, and emulates IE-dedicated pages (including nasties like MS Webmail) far better than Firefox. I love it.
Right. Let's go there shall we?
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/data.html
I grabbed 4 random ice core and tree ring data series, and plotted the raw data in excel, and I see NOTHING.
I submit - 80 years of warming is meaningless static if you're talking about CLIMATE data. 80 years is practically weather, especially if you consider the longer-term Milankovic cycles.
"... in the end, some people will have to make sacrifices for the greater good."
Usually this really means "... in the end, some people other than will have to make sacrifices for my greater good." ?
"There seems to be a certain type of person who simply can not conceive that there are people who are not essentially humanitarian."
Or the flip side of that coin, there are certain people that believe that "I'm good and well-meaning, therefore if you disagree with me you must NOT be good and well-meaning, ergo evil."
Discounting entirely that we may BOTH be good and well-meaning, and SIMPLY DISAGREE.
It's really what's happened to political discourse in the US.
For 2000-2008 Bush wasn't merely someone who was well-meaning but had a totally different set of priorities and agenda items than me, he was EVIL, and Darth Cheney was the black-soulled Devil himself.
For 2009-2012, Obama's not just a naive intellectual with a totally different set of priorities and agenda items than me, he's an EVIL COMMUNIST BENT ON DESTROYING DEMOCRACY.
I'm not saying there aren't genuinely evil people - there are, quite plainly. But to infer that everyone who disagrees with, say, Anthropogenic Global Warming theory is somehow either lying, a corporate tool, or some brainwashed larvae of the Fox News channel at the very least precludes any possibility of coming to a rational CONSENSUS with those same people.
*ALERT* *ALERT* *ALERT* *ALERT* *ALERT* *ALERT*
Earth Intentions Finally Revealed.
Our spies on the watery blue-green third planet have intercepted secret transmissions between the Simian inhabitants' space agency and their woeful oppressed subjects that reveal new plans to attack our beloved world.
This new device will be a behemoth, equipped with a powerful laser and a fission powerplant, so it is clearly a craft of war.
However, there is no need to allow your flagellum to swell; our agents-in-place are preparing to once again to deploy an array of tactics all have which been successfully used to sabotage earlier Human missions. This vessel too will either pass into deep space or crash harmlessly into some meaningless, uninhabited zone of Mars. (We remind all ONCE AGAIN that the impact of the last Earth-invasion-craft into the nesting home of our political opponents was entirely an accident, and we will endeavor to avoid a repeat of that regrettable incident.)
At this point there is no cause for alarm, no need to slither for your lives. Cover your egg sacs as usual, and excrete soothing pheremones to your swarming younglings. Know that we, your beloved and compassionate Ruler, have this crisis well in tentacle.
NOTE: It is doubly important that we make sure to keep the canal covers in place. The effort to destroy the reputation of an Earth astronomer in this century would exceed our available resources.
Olypus Mons News: FAIR AND BALANCED.
A Rupert Murdoch Company.
Or they note that you're posting at 2:06 in the afternoon which means that you're SUPPOSED TO BE AT WORK FINISHING THAT REPORT THAT YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO HAVE ON MY DESK FIRST THING THIS MORNING JOHN PARKER.
Coward? Perhaps. (Well, he IS clearly a Democrat, so that's kinda redundant.)
Anonymous? Not so much.
...as an American living in Norway, you ARE aware that Norway is a state awash in petrodollars, yes?
It pretty much destroys the point I think you were trying to make, ie "lookit all the cool stuff they have in their libraries, they don't even charge late fees!!"
...but Congress and the President currently are using it for toilet paper.
I'm sure you'll get dozens of posts with specifics, but most accurately the issue comes down to one that has caused arguments since 1789 (and in fact caused the US Civil War): state power vs. federal power.
The original formulation of the United States was a trade confederation of otherwise-independent states, linked minimally by a unified foreign policy, military, and an agreement to (by & large) honor each other's laws. From the very beginning, however, there has always been a strong Federalist element, arguing that (for any number of reasons from efficiency to survivability, etc) such a confederation is inherently unstable and needed to be more centralized.
The goal of the original founders seems to have been to establish a political 'free market' for ideas. If you didn't like how Pennsylvania was being run, you could move to Rhode Island. If you didn't like that, you could move to Georgia. Each state would be free to pursue its own systems of governing, bounded only by the certain rules set by the US Constitution, which is purely a NEGATIVE document - aside from basic mechanisms of government, they Constitution otherwise only defines limits on what the Fed can do. Even to this day, despite 200+ years of twisting the Constitution almost beyond recognition, you'd still see the Fed has very little to do with individuals, generally the Fed tells the States what to do, and it's up to them to both comply and (usually) come up with the money to pay for it.
If Kentucky wanted to run their state, requiring all voters to wear blue hats, they could do it.
If you lived in KY and disliked hats (and couldn't democratically change the system), you could move to a state where there was no wearing of hats required. On the other hand, if the wearing of blue hats carried with it some benefit that made KY a better place to live, more people would ultimately move there, and the state would flourish.
This Federal health care mandate is a direct rejection of the principles of the framers of the Constitution on several points. At its most basic level, it denies states the ability to benefit from their long-term choices. I live in a state (MN) that has relatively higher taxes, lower crime, excellent educational and health care systems. That isn't sheer luck, that's the result of 150 years of policy choices by the governments elected by the people of MN. Now you can have other states that have done a far shittier job of planning for long-term needs to get a free ride while OUR taxpayers are charged (on top of the high costs we already absorb as a choice for our state) to pay for it. That's fair?
Further, by asserting health care as a RIGHT, we grant the US government the logical ability to command certain behaviors - if the US taxpayer is ultimately responsible to foot the bill, wouldn't it make sense for the government to ban smoking completely? How about alcohol? Risky behavior in general? How about McDonald's food, or Dorito's? Clearly, neither of these are healthy food choices; the government will now have a sound financial interest in circumscribing people's eating habits. At what point do people get to make their own choices, and LIVE WITH THE CONSEQUENCES?
One of the many ironies here is that the Left - who are in favor of this bill - simultaneously assert that NOBODY but a woman should have any say over her own reproductive system...while supporting this bill that grants to bureaucrats in Washington far greater authority over the broad swath of the citizenry.
Ultimately, as much as this repels me and I will try to fight it, I have to recognize that this is the result of the democratic process. It's far and away not perfect. But the utter stupidity of this Bill (nor the Dem majority, nor the moronic current administration) would NOT have been possible without the major failure of the PREVIOUS administration. This law only passed because the Bush administration fumbled so badly that otherwise-sensible people felt compelled to vote for big-government, big-spending Democrats. Now we have to live with those choices.
Actually, AFAIK the Bazalt is maneuverable only during its cruise phase, once it reaches the terminal guidance track and goes supersonic, it isn't really more than marginally guideable.
I'd guess that the Indian one is supersonic most of its range (thus the puny 300km) and will accept course guidance during supersonic flight.
So no, I'd guess that the title is only misleading, not grossly wrong as you imply.
"4. Looks like US is one of the backwards countries that will try to limit women's access to health care they need." translation - women won't get abortions free on demand, paid for by the taxpayer?
Please.
One interesting point for me is that your skepticism and downright cynicism is validated in the US Constitution.
The Framers built the document on the PRESUMPTION that the various parts of government would constantly try to marginalize the others, and that government always is ultimately a threat to its citizens' liberties. It's all about the assumption that power corrupts and people are generally bastards.
"A government big enough to supply you with everything you need, is a government big enough to take away everything that you have...." - Gerald Ford
Note, the bulk of our government is now dedicated to catering to our needs. Think about that.
Ha ha ha ha. I love you guys, and I'm glad to see you're somewhere still lurking (anonymously, of course!) on the intarwebs.
Hi, I'm FIFTEEN YEARS AGO, I'd like my news back.
Also, I'm obsessively focussed on the United States. No country other than the US has ever behaved with hegemonic disdain for the sovereignty of smaller countries. Ever! The United States INVENTED it, in fact. Like slavery. And racism.
Hey, is that a black helicopter over your shoulder? Didn't you see that same delivery van parked outside your house yesterday?
Only thing I could find was the implied difference in polar launch vs. normal launch - http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/shuttle/reference/shutref/sts/launch.html
Normal launch payload: 55,000 lbs ...that's at launch, of course.
Polar: 17,000 lbs
Pretty clear why they didn't waste shuttles lifting polar-orbitting cargoes.
Spot on.
The shuttle's promised capability of "bringing cargo back" is a bygone requirement of the days when retrieving a spy satellite was needed to recover the film. How many payloads did the shuttle actually BRING BACK, compared to how many times did it come back with an essentially empty cargo bay, thus purely wasting the space?
Essentially, every time it came down with an empty hold, you had needless overcomplication. Instead of a relatively simple task of bringing X people back, you had to design a vehicle that brought X people back AND meanwhile hauled a giant, empty schoolbus-worth of space, with all the concomitant engineering difficulties therewith.
With the advancement of unmanned vehicles, there is NO reason that we can't build a dedicated, redundant, deeply-failsafed SMALLER launch vehicle or system for putting people into orbit, and let the heavy crap be launched elsewise with one-shot systems that then don't need to be engineered for the complicated, dangerous process of return.
Re-use is a canard that cost us astronauts' lives.
Sadly, yes.
Previous president made big statements...without funding.
Previous president ^2 made big statement...without funding.
This president...defunding.
(Shrug) I fail to see the actual difference, except that the current president might be interpreted to be more honest - unless one recognizes his policy choices less as motivated by honesty than as simply pandering to a DIFFERENT voter block.
Neither party has any core value that actually understands space science, nor has the political balls to fund something that is a GUARANTEED benefit for our country (and all of humanity, for that matter) because its reward is too many election cycles away.
The US Constitution means what it says: it forbids precisely the establishment of a state religion.
"Amendment 1 - Freedom of Religion, Press, Expression. Ratified 12/15/1791.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
It's not hard to understand this, if you even briefly study the world the Constitutional framers lived in, and the context of English government at the time.
This has NOTHING to suggest that the founders intended a secular state; in fact, church services were held in the congress for years.
I would also argue that this clause should make the government religion-blind; churches should have no special tax status certainly, nor be treated in any way differently than any other corporation or association of individuals.
"Proof that eating babies gives you laser vision would not lead to legalization of baby eating."
That's a rather sweeping, unqualified statement.
Let's think of all the morally objectionable things that humans have done over the centuries. Logically, the people that did them, did them for some reason more tangible than simply 'motivated by evil', no? One might posit that with enough reward, people can be induced to do almost any abhorrent thing.
Thus I think it's a far more reasonable and historically supportable conclusion to say that if you had incontrovertible proof that performing an abhorrent act would give you some irrefutable personal gain, SOME people would, indeed, try to perform that act.
"I think the bigger question is "is abortion moral?" " ...and I think you're absolutely right.
I think the Bush administration felt this was one small issue that they could 'take the risk on' and make a moral stand against something-somewhat-in-relation-to abortion, and perhaps it would be a camel's nose situation.
People seem to instinctively understand this, and the split over embryonic stem cells mirrors perfectly (in all the folks I've talked to) the split on abortion.
Personally I have deep qualms about abortion, and I also had deep qualms about the use of embryonic stem cells.