You want the same crew that accidentally converted from Imperial to Metric to be responsible for redirecting something this size toward earth? You do understand that an orbital calculation is a very fine thing, in a sense you're shooting not simply at a target, but to intentionally MISS the target by a hairsbreadth at a specific speed and time?
"...a lot more interesting and exciting..." indeed.
Which is why I tend to believe that these sorts of mechanoids will operate on broadcast power, or, even better for the type of use they're intended for, scavenged power (either leaked voltage or actually sensing, seeking, and directly tapping electrical flows). Sure, they may have batteries or some sort of capacitors to get through the bulk of the day, but essentially they'll spend most of their time searching for 'food'...gee, kinda like REAL bugs.
Of course, you're absolutely right. When I say "the government should pay me" in the context above, what I'm REALLY saying is that all you poor suckers who work need to take great chunks of your income and pitch it into the trough from which I and my mates regularly feed.
He says something on the order of "...since we haven't been visited by aliens...".
O Rly?
Bear with me, I'm not one of the Project Bluebook fanbois or a UFOlogist. Here's my logic: - presupposing there is no "Great Filter" as posited in the article - the universe, being something like 15 billion years old - humans went from essentially animals to homo sapiens sapiens in what, about 3 million years? (Assuming that we're average in that respect.) - earth itself being only about 5 billion years - assuming that the universe needed at least 5 billion years to 'get going', that still leaves a 10-billion year window in which another earth could have developed completely, and easily within that span one or more sapient life forms could develop.
Given all of the above, it's exceedingly likely that any sapient race which has existed before us has hundreds of thousands if not MILLIONS of years of development ahead of us.
And, presuming that they'd bother to visit a yellow, main sequence star out on the Milky Way rim, would we have *ANY* chance of observing them, observing us? Do amoeba's recognize that we are looking at them in the microscope?
Using that logic, I believe that we're quite unlikely to run into any sapient race, as they are either millions of years ahead or behind us, and if they're ahead, I only hope they're friendly because we'd have no chance if not. None. (Then again, we'd probably have little they're interested in...I hope.)
...in one column he talked about what he wanted to happen when he died -screw the $$, the house, the cars, he couldn't care less about those: JUST WIPE HIS LAPTOP PLEASE before it's given to any next-of-kin.
When you not only expect but DEMAND that someone else take care of your every whim: I can't get a job, the government should pay me! My job sucks, but I had 16 children anyway, the government should pay me! I didn't finish school because, well, I didn't want to, but the government should train me! I'm hooked on drugs, the government should provide a program to get me off them and then train me to be a human again. I can't afford a home, the government should house me! I live BELOW SEA LEVEL but the government should rebuild my home when it floods! Etc. etc. ad infinitum ad nauseum.
When you surrender your individual sovereignty in so many ways, is it so surprising that this monster you've created starts to take on a life of its own? When the government is paying for our health care, are we surprised that the government starts to circumscribe our dangerous, self-destructive activities for "our own good"? First it's risky sports, then smoking, then other less clear 'risky behaviours'. When our fear of (terrorists/pedophiles/boogeymen) impels us to allow our government to surveil our every activity, restrict our movements, and even peruse our private messages without outcry, does it surprise anyone that some bureaucratic moralist will start to define what's 'permissible' according to his own particular morality?
Bah, we've gotten PRECISELY the government we deserve. We sit at home, hypnotized by television or playing meaningless games on the internet, while the real world crumbles outside our doors. Ever see Brazil?
And as far as a legal activity being illegal in some other form, you should try smoking in the states. Cigarettes are legal to buy, own, and smoke...just not anywhere specifically. You can probably get away with it now in your own car, but certainly not if it's a rental. Mark my words, soon enough they will ban smoking in people's private homes because little Billy comes to school with colds all the time.*
I have a tax lawyer that I've used for my business for 12 years who STILL doesn't 'trust' email for ANY communication. He doesn't have an email address at all - everything must be faxed or sent snail-mail.
Seriously I've been on the verge of getting rid of him, just because he's so hard to communicate with (every call's a voicemail) but he does a great job knocking down my property taxes, so I put up with it.
Not sure how new this is, we were there well over a month ago and it was already there.
I found it underwhelming - I mean, instead of an interesting exhibition on some of the capabilities of UAVs and how significantly they are changing the tactical landscape, it was just a few UAVs hanging at one end of the hall. (shrug).
My honest comments about having difficulty with Linux (http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=525116&cid=23096792) under the topically relevant thread titled "Hardy Heron Making Linux Ready for the Masses?" were heavily downmodded as FLAMEBAIT.
You be the judge: "I'd say I'm an intermediate to expert Win user, but I found Ubuntu a challenge. I installed Gutsy Gibbon so that I could hopefully run stepmania on a fairly old system. Installing a program - if it's not on "the list" of stuff you can download for "your" flavor of Linux - and figuring out its dependencies is NOT for anyone less than intimately savvy with Linux.
Ubuntu: great to use when it's running, but changing anything, or troubleshooting? Ick. Also, I have to say - I know it's a Windows-operation meme but for some reason Ubuntu wouldn't just RUN an executable on the desktop when it was double-clicked. Simply RUNNING a program that wasn't on the executable menu was a ridiculous headache."
I dare him to have her do something slightly more complex - install stepmania, as a good example. Something with a nice pile of dependencies. Installing stepmania on a win-box was EASY. Double-click an executable, confirm where you want it installed, and hit ok. Done.
I've also always wanted to be buried in something quickly biodegradeable - I'd like to know that some tree grew stronger or taller because of me.
However, you'll find in the US that this can sometimes be problematic. Nevertheless, I've discovered in my state (MN) that in most cases you can be buried on private property without the cement vault required.
Unfortunately, Ben Stein's POINT (about the scientific and academic communities developing an orthodoxy of thought and belief which they defend as mindlessly and reactionarily as any medieval Pope) is tainted by the particular point he choses to use as an example: Creationism.
Look, truth in reporting here: I'm a long time questioning Christian whose faith seems to be strengthening as I pass 40. I think Creationism - and the idea that it should be taught as some sort of alternative scientific theory (ID being nothing more than camouflage for that) - is ludicrous and the very idea would be funny if it wasn't so serious. FWIW on this subject, I don't think the miracle of creation is any less miraculous having taken billions of years, instead of 6 days. (Shrug.) So that's where I'm coming from on his particular choice of issues.
But no honest observer can deny that there is a (ironically) near-religious mania in academia today for defending certain points of view. Even this wouldn't be so bad - fervency itself is no sin. But the fact that certain subjects seem to be held as above questioning, and that anyone who does raise such an issue isn't merely disagreed with, but subjected to vicious ad hominem attacks and bitter calumny...well, that's the tragedy.
The scientific community has no moral obligation to treat & debate every idea equally, certainly. The guy who thinks the earth floats on the back of a turtle shouldn't anyone's time in an astrophysics discussion. Creationism is about that credible: dispense with it, and move on. But there are a number of other subjects which ARE NOT so certain - from Anthropogenic Global Climate Change to the forbidden idea that different ethnic groups (or even the two sexes) might have different intellectual capabilities. Friendships are broken, careers destroyed over simply RAISING questions about these topics.
Honestly, what's happening in the debate over ID and evolution is the closest real-world analogue I've ever seen to simple internet trolling: merely bothering to argue the point, means the troll has won.
Um, if someone wants to spend what, $30,000/year to sit in your classes and play flash games while the professor talks, why would the university care? That's almost as expensive as sitting at Starbucks and having a muffin, but at least there you get the muffin.
I'd say I'm an intermediate to expert Win user, but I found Ubuntu a challenge.
I installed Gutsy Gibbon so that I could hopefully run stepmania on a fairly old system.
Installing a program - if it's not on "the list" of stuff you can download for "your" flavor of Linux - and figuring out its dependencies is NOT for anyone less than intimately savvy with Linux.
Ubuntu: great to use when it's running, but changing anything, or troubleshooting? Ick.
Also, I have to say - I know it's a Windows-operation meme but for some reason Ubuntu wouldn't just RUN an executable on the desktop when it was double-clicked. Simply RUNNING a program that wasn't on the executable menu was a ridiculous headache.
"Many scientists have devoted their careers to prove different aspects of human behavior contribute to global warming from increased CO2 levels, pollution, oceanic current changes, etc."
Precisely one of my main problems with the data. They are working TO prove something. I thought science was a process of hypothesize, test, update hypothesis, test again?
If one devoted one's entire career to proving something, it would be awfully hard to say "well, I guess that data doesn't test out, so I'll go home now".
Doesn't climate change (warming) mean that an INCREASING amount of landmass will experience 'optimal' growing seasons?
I mean, if you push the temperate zones toward the poles, the amount of land under them actually increases. Plus, since the left has been claiming since the 1970s that we're exhausting our arable land by overfarming, won't this open up NEW arable land not so pressured?
Granted the article is SPECIFICALLY talking about NZ/Australia, which don't really have many options if the best temperatures move poleward.
Finally, from the article: "New Zealand and Australian brewer Lion Nathan's corporate affairs director Liz Read said climate change already was forcing up the price of malted barley, sugar, aluminum and sugar." Aluminum? ALUMINUM is becoming more expensive due to climate change? Pray tell, please tell me how much harder it is to grow THAT?
This whole global warming^H^H^Hclimate change thing is so confusing. What am I supposed to be thinking this week?
I've double-clicked that image file on like 6 different computers here at work, I even tried a couple in the IT dept, and I still can't get it to show up. Damn those network admins that stop us having fun.
"...remains of a village in Sand Canyon Pueblo..."
My understanding (IANAPA I am not a pre-historic anthropologist) is that current speculation about the Sand Canyon Pueblo history is that there was some evidence of cannibalism by the Sand Canyon people over a long span of time, preying on neighboring tribes. The inference is that the neighbor tribes either finally got strong enough or fed up enough to resist, annihilate the Sand Canyon residents completely, and declare the place evil enough that nobody would ever live there again.
Slashdot Mirror
You want the same crew that accidentally converted from Imperial to Metric to be responsible for redirecting something this size toward earth? You do understand that an orbital calculation is a very fine thing, in a sense you're shooting not simply at a target, but to intentionally MISS the target by a hairsbreadth at a specific speed and time?
"...a lot more interesting and exciting..." indeed.
Which is why I tend to believe that these sorts of mechanoids will operate on broadcast power, or, even better for the type of use they're intended for, scavenged power (either leaked voltage or actually sensing, seeking, and directly tapping electrical flows). Sure, they may have batteries or some sort of capacitors to get through the bulk of the day, but essentially they'll spend most of their time searching for 'food'...gee, kinda like REAL bugs.
Of course, you're absolutely right. When I say "the government should pay me" in the context above, what I'm REALLY saying is that all you poor suckers who work need to take great chunks of your income and pitch it into the trough from which I and my mates regularly feed.
He says something on the order of "...since we haven't been visited by aliens...".
O Rly?
Bear with me, I'm not one of the Project Bluebook fanbois or a UFOlogist. Here's my logic:
- presupposing there is no "Great Filter" as posited in the article
- the universe, being something like 15 billion years old
- humans went from essentially animals to homo sapiens sapiens in what, about 3 million years? (Assuming that we're average in that respect.)
- earth itself being only about 5 billion years
- assuming that the universe needed at least 5 billion years to 'get going', that still leaves a 10-billion year window in which another earth could have developed completely, and easily within that span one or more sapient life forms could develop.
Given all of the above, it's exceedingly likely that any sapient race which has existed before us has hundreds of thousands if not MILLIONS of years of development ahead of us.
And, presuming that they'd bother to visit a yellow, main sequence star out on the Milky Way rim, would we have *ANY* chance of observing them, observing us? Do amoeba's recognize that we are looking at them in the microscope?
Using that logic, I believe that we're quite unlikely to run into any sapient race, as they are either millions of years ahead or behind us, and if they're ahead, I only hope they're friendly because we'd have no chance if not. None. (Then again, we'd probably have little they're interested in...I hope.)
...in one column he talked about what he wanted to happen when he died -screw the $$, the house, the cars, he couldn't care less about those: JUST WIPE HIS LAPTOP PLEASE before it's given to any next-of-kin.
What, precisely, does everyone expect?
When you not only expect but DEMAND that someone else take care of your every whim: I can't get a job, the government should pay me! My job sucks, but I had 16 children anyway, the government should pay me! I didn't finish school because, well, I didn't want to, but the government should train me! I'm hooked on drugs, the government should provide a program to get me off them and then train me to be a human again. I can't afford a home, the government should house me! I live BELOW SEA LEVEL but the government should rebuild my home when it floods! Etc. etc. ad infinitum ad nauseum.
When you surrender your individual sovereignty in so many ways, is it so surprising that this monster you've created starts to take on a life of its own? When the government is paying for our health care, are we surprised that the government starts to circumscribe our dangerous, self-destructive activities for "our own good"? First it's risky sports, then smoking, then other less clear 'risky behaviours'. When our fear of (terrorists/pedophiles/boogeymen) impels us to allow our government to surveil our every activity, restrict our movements, and even peruse our private messages without outcry, does it surprise anyone that some bureaucratic moralist will start to define what's 'permissible' according to his own particular morality?
Bah, we've gotten PRECISELY the government we deserve. We sit at home, hypnotized by television or playing meaningless games on the internet, while the real world crumbles outside our doors. Ever see Brazil?
And as far as a legal activity being illegal in some other form, you should try smoking in the states. Cigarettes are legal to buy, own, and smoke...just not anywhere specifically. You can probably get away with it now in your own car, but certainly not if it's a rental. Mark my words, soon enough they will ban smoking in people's private homes because little Billy comes to school with colds all the time.*
* and I'm not even a smoker, never have been.
I have a tax lawyer that I've used for my business for 12 years who STILL doesn't 'trust' email for ANY communication. He doesn't have an email address at all - everything must be faxed or sent snail-mail.
Seriously I've been on the verge of getting rid of him, just because he's so hard to communicate with (every call's a voicemail) but he does a great job knocking down my property taxes, so I put up with it.
Not sure how new this is, we were there well over a month ago and it was already there.
I found it underwhelming - I mean, instead of an interesting exhibition on some of the capabilities of UAVs and how significantly they are changing the tactical landscape, it was just a few UAVs hanging at one end of the hall. (shrug).
Slashdot mentality is to blame.
My honest comments about having difficulty with Linux (http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=525116&cid=23096792) under the topically relevant thread titled "Hardy Heron Making Linux Ready for the Masses?" were heavily downmodded as FLAMEBAIT.
You be the judge: "I'd say I'm an intermediate to expert Win user, but I found Ubuntu a challenge.
I installed Gutsy Gibbon so that I could hopefully run stepmania on a fairly old system.
Installing a program - if it's not on "the list" of stuff you can download for "your" flavor of Linux - and figuring out its dependencies is NOT for anyone less than intimately savvy with Linux.
Ubuntu: great to use when it's running, but changing anything, or troubleshooting? Ick.
Also, I have to say - I know it's a Windows-operation meme but for some reason Ubuntu wouldn't just RUN an executable on the desktop when it was double-clicked. Simply RUNNING a program that wasn't on the executable menu was a ridiculous headache."
I dare him to have her do something slightly more complex - install stepmania, as a good example. Something with a nice pile of dependencies. Installing stepmania on a win-box was EASY. Double-click an executable, confirm where you want it installed, and hit ok. Done.
I *STILL* haven't gotten it running in HH.
Phht, who cares about that any more?
I'd like to find more Khorium and Eternium, and my bank is overflowing with Adamantium.
Although it'd be hilarious to see someone get 1 'unbibium' for every 10^12 units of thorium prospected. They'd be like "WTF?"
...our next national intelligence estimate will state that the #1 threat to the USA is a grue.
I've also always wanted to be buried in something quickly biodegradeable - I'd like to know that some tree grew stronger or taller because of me.
However, you'll find in the US that this can sometimes be problematic. Nevertheless, I've discovered in my state (MN) that in most cases you can be buried on private property without the cement vault required.
"Many, many people cannot grasp the idea that you will be worm food when you die."
I'm not sure where you're coming from on this issue, but I think you miss the point of the difference between body & soul.
Heaven AND 'rotting worm food' are not mutually exclusive.
If I had boobs, I'd have no time to fight anyone. I'd probably never leave the house.
Unfortunately, Ben Stein's POINT (about the scientific and academic communities developing an orthodoxy of thought and belief which they defend as mindlessly and reactionarily as any medieval Pope) is tainted by the particular point he choses to use as an example: Creationism.
Look, truth in reporting here: I'm a long time questioning Christian whose faith seems to be strengthening as I pass 40. I think Creationism - and the idea that it should be taught as some sort of alternative scientific theory (ID being nothing more than camouflage for that) - is ludicrous and the very idea would be funny if it wasn't so serious. FWIW on this subject, I don't think the miracle of creation is any less miraculous having taken billions of years, instead of 6 days. (Shrug.) So that's where I'm coming from on his particular choice of issues.
But no honest observer can deny that there is a (ironically) near-religious mania in academia today for defending certain points of view. Even this wouldn't be so bad - fervency itself is no sin. But the fact that certain subjects seem to be held as above questioning, and that anyone who does raise such an issue isn't merely disagreed with, but subjected to vicious ad hominem attacks and bitter calumny...well, that's the tragedy.
The scientific community has no moral obligation to treat & debate every idea equally, certainly. The guy who thinks the earth floats on the back of a turtle shouldn't anyone's time in an astrophysics discussion. Creationism is about that credible: dispense with it, and move on. But there are a number of other subjects which ARE NOT so certain - from Anthropogenic Global Climate Change to the forbidden idea that different ethnic groups (or even the two sexes) might have different intellectual capabilities. Friendships are broken, careers destroyed over simply RAISING questions about these topics.
Honestly, what's happening in the debate over ID and evolution is the closest real-world analogue I've ever seen to simple internet trolling: merely bothering to argue the point, means the troll has won.
Um, if someone wants to spend what, $30,000/year to sit in your classes and play flash games while the professor talks, why would the university care? That's almost as expensive as sitting at Starbucks and having a muffin, but at least there you get the muffin.
You again?
....still not there.
I'd say I'm an intermediate to expert Win user, but I found Ubuntu a challenge.
I installed Gutsy Gibbon so that I could hopefully run stepmania on a fairly old system.
Installing a program - if it's not on "the list" of stuff you can download for "your" flavor of Linux - and figuring out its dependencies is NOT for anyone less than intimately savvy with Linux.
Ubuntu: great to use when it's running, but changing anything, or troubleshooting? Ick.
Also, I have to say - I know it's a Windows-operation meme but for some reason Ubuntu wouldn't just RUN an executable on the desktop when it was double-clicked. Simply RUNNING a program that wasn't on the executable menu was a ridiculous headache.
"In space, no one can hear lawyers scream."
Can we try?
Please?
And for a good statistical sample, let's use something like 1 million lawyers.
Finally, a space program the whole country could get behind.
"Many scientists have devoted their careers to prove different aspects of human behavior contribute to global warming from increased CO2 levels, pollution, oceanic current changes, etc."
Precisely one of my main problems with the data.
They are working TO prove something. I thought science was a process of hypothesize, test, update hypothesis, test again?
If one devoted one's entire career to proving something, it would be awfully hard to say "well, I guess that data doesn't test out, so I'll go home now".
"Global warming is causing changes in ecosystems ,and changing ecosystems can major disruptions in flora and fauna. "
One quick question - please let me know when in human or terrestrial history ecosystems have NOT changed?
Just because humans happened to develop during a certain temperature/climate phase, doesn't ipso facto mean climate will stay that way.
Doesn't climate change (warming) mean that an INCREASING amount of landmass will experience 'optimal' growing seasons?
I mean, if you push the temperate zones toward the poles, the amount of land under them actually increases. Plus, since the left has been claiming since the 1970s that we're exhausting our arable land by overfarming, won't this open up NEW arable land not so pressured?
Granted the article is SPECIFICALLY talking about NZ/Australia, which don't really have many options if the best temperatures move poleward.
Finally, from the article: "New Zealand and Australian brewer Lion Nathan's corporate affairs director Liz Read said climate change already was forcing up the price of malted barley, sugar, aluminum and sugar."
Aluminum? ALUMINUM is becoming more expensive due to climate change? Pray tell, please tell me how much harder it is to grow THAT?
This whole global warming^H^H^Hclimate change thing is so confusing. What am I supposed to be thinking this week?
I've double-clicked that image file on like 6 different computers here at work, I even tried a couple in the IT dept, and I still can't get it to show up. Damn those network admins that stop us having fun.
"...remains of a village in Sand Canyon Pueblo..."
My understanding (IANAPA I am not a pre-historic anthropologist) is that current speculation about the Sand Canyon Pueblo history is that there was some evidence of cannibalism by the Sand Canyon people over a long span of time, preying on neighboring tribes. The inference is that the neighbor tribes either finally got strong enough or fed up enough to resist, annihilate the Sand Canyon residents completely, and declare the place evil enough that nobody would ever live there again.
How big a number is 'essentially'?