Whatever the solution, some hardcore diplomacy will be in order.
Homesteading has a very definite problem of it's own: where is the lower limit on what is considered appropriation? What's to stop a person or organisation from doing the bare minimum of land development on unreasonably giant tracts of lunar landscape just to lay claim to it first, like some real-estate patent troll?
Acts like that will most definitely lead to disagreements on land ownership which will eventually lead to violence, which I think we'd like to prevent.
Then again, feel free to disregard this post as I've thought long and hard but I can't think of a solution that wouldn't be crushed by greed, insanity and/or a lust for power.
I'm being a bit of a tool saying this, but I want to give my two cents.
If people are still seeing or using evolution as any kind of indicator of superiority, I'd attest that there should actually be more education on evolution, not less.
Evolution is not a gradient from inferior to superior; it's a process of completely random mutation and a somewhat less random process of elimination based on the results of said mutations. A more successful organism isn't superior to it's ancestor; but merely better adapted to current circumstance and sometimes not even that. Whatever ancestor the peacock must've had probably didn't have the massive sexually-selected for tail feathers, so it's safe to say it was probably better equipped to survive, it was just far less arbitrarily attractive than the current peacock.
Modern organisms would die almost instantly if they were transported back to the hostile environment of the eartch ca. 12 billion B.C.; so were they inferior or superior to current-day organisms?
In a nutshell, I don't think that the inconsistencies between the general public's view of evolution and the actual accepted facts of it warrant less education on the issue.
It's always exciting to me when I realize that, yes, we are actually living in the fucking future.
We might miss our flying cars and jetpacks, but only because we've realized there's far more amazing things to research than personal locomotion.
A fully automated robot doing research on Mars;
The possibility of near-limitless amounts of information and communication readily available on large swathes of our populated landmass;
Constructing any sort of object in any sort of shape with a single machine;
YHWH be damned, we've got tiny surgeon robots guided by invisible and indestructive energy (or rather a field property or something, quantum physics confuses me, doy)
A single device catering to most if not all of your needs; being a media player, internet platform, phone, camera, schedule, notebook and whatever someone thinks of cramming right the fook in thur';
Cancer having a real chance of becoming curable in foreseeable time;
There's so much more examples of technological wonders we've grown used to, but would inspire disbelief for anyone born even forty years ago; and more examples like this are added every day.
As such is baseless sentimentality and uninformed hope, lovely.
My first reaction to this news was a knee-jerk negative reaction, but I actually welcome this development.
For starters: my entire problem with surveillance is being seen by authorities at any time of the day, but since these camera's are actually accompanied by an actual, living, authority figure, that point is kind of moot.
Second: I don't really fear they'll just shut off their cameras to destroy evidence of their brutality. Especially in the inner city, there's almost always someone equipped with a camera-phone and a desire to document police brutality. The police's go-to excuse used to be "This video was shot right after the mitigating circumstances explaining why the brutality was necessary occured". If that were a fact, police would be happy to turn over their own version of events.
If they fail to produce their own video of the event, or refuse to do so, it seriously hurts their case.
So all in all, barring circumstances I'm too ignorant to think of, it seems like a good development.
Slashdot Mirror
Whatever the solution, some hardcore diplomacy will be in order.
Homesteading has a very definite problem of it's own: where is the lower limit on what is considered appropriation? What's to stop a person or organisation from doing the bare minimum of land development on unreasonably giant tracts of lunar landscape just to lay claim to it first, like some real-estate patent troll?
Acts like that will most definitely lead to disagreements on land ownership which will eventually lead to violence, which I think we'd like to prevent.
Then again, feel free to disregard this post as I've thought long and hard but I can't think of a solution that wouldn't be crushed by greed, insanity and/or a lust for power.
I'm being a bit of a tool saying this, but I want to give my two cents. If people are still seeing or using evolution as any kind of indicator of superiority, I'd attest that there should actually be more education on evolution, not less. Evolution is not a gradient from inferior to superior; it's a process of completely random mutation and a somewhat less random process of elimination based on the results of said mutations. A more successful organism isn't superior to it's ancestor; but merely better adapted to current circumstance and sometimes not even that. Whatever ancestor the peacock must've had probably didn't have the massive sexually-selected for tail feathers, so it's safe to say it was probably better equipped to survive, it was just far less arbitrarily attractive than the current peacock. Modern organisms would die almost instantly if they were transported back to the hostile environment of the eartch ca. 12 billion B.C.; so were they inferior or superior to current-day organisms? In a nutshell, I don't think that the inconsistencies between the general public's view of evolution and the actual accepted facts of it warrant less education on the issue.
It's always exciting to me when I realize that, yes, we are actually living in the fucking future.
We might miss our flying cars and jetpacks, but only because we've realized there's far more amazing things to research than personal locomotion.
A fully automated robot doing research on Mars;
The possibility of near-limitless amounts of information and communication readily available on large swathes of our populated landmass;
Constructing any sort of object in any sort of shape with a single machine;
YHWH be damned, we've got tiny surgeon robots guided by invisible and indestructive energy (or rather a field property or something, quantum physics confuses me, doy)
A single device catering to most if not all of your needs; being a media player, internet platform, phone, camera, schedule, notebook and whatever someone thinks of cramming right the fook in thur';
Cancer having a real chance of becoming curable in foreseeable time;
There's so much more examples of technological wonders we've grown used to, but would inspire disbelief for anyone born even forty years ago; and more examples like this are added every day.
As such is baseless sentimentality and uninformed hope, lovely.
My first reaction to this news was a knee-jerk negative reaction, but I actually welcome this development.
For starters: my entire problem with surveillance is being seen by authorities at any time of the day, but since these camera's are actually accompanied by an actual, living, authority figure, that point is kind of moot.
Second: I don't really fear they'll just shut off their cameras to destroy evidence of their brutality. Especially in the inner city, there's almost always someone equipped with a camera-phone and a desire to document police brutality. The police's go-to excuse used to be "This video was shot right after the mitigating circumstances explaining why the brutality was necessary occured". If that were a fact, police would be happy to turn over their own version of events. If they fail to produce their own video of the event, or refuse to do so, it seriously hurts their case.
So all in all, barring circumstances I'm too ignorant to think of, it seems like a good development.