The biggest problem you have on the birth control front is religious opposition to it, not in eduction or access.
Which manifests itself in the political and education systems.
Just curious, are you a bleeding heart, liberal, urbanite... a sophisticated city slickers who feels its his duty, and a national imperative, to teach all the dumb, inbred, hillbillies to not make any more babies, and leave the world to the yuppies?
Yes, your cliched stereotype is completely accurate. Your insight into my inner workings -- my true face, as it were -- is frightening in its intelligence. You really nailed it.
Turn off Limbaugh, fucktard. I have lived much of my life in and have many roots in small communities in Texas. I know what I speak of, especially in central and west Texas. They can't afford a dentist but they can pump out the future white/brown trash/meth dealers of America at an astonishing rate.
Fair point. However, with the amount of difficulties that have plagued both the ISS and the shuttle missions I wonder how comparable the two are. I don't think there are *any* areas that would be easier, but I am, as they say, not a rocket scientist.
When you strap people onto a gigantic tank full of hydrogen and oxygen, controlled by a myriad of complex (and aging, see above) systems, and then light the damn thing, occasionally something is going to go wrong.
I have seen this sentiment many times in this thread, and previous ones. It's common. "We just need to be brave" is the theme, and it is a mistaken one. It's not about a lack of bravery, or understanding of the risks involved, it's the high cost of mistakes. Getting into space is expensive. Vastly so. Prohibitively so. Mistakes that prevent the success of a mission are costly not just in lives but in dollars, millions and millions of them. Care is taken not because of a lack of bravery, of which I think there is plenty. Care is taken because to do otherwise would be unwise.
Everyone, even people like me who basically think NASA is an antiquated money pit, is well aware that launching vehicles is a risky venture. You're setting up a strawman by claiming otherwise.
But i'd be suprised if it, and many other acts like it, will solve the biggest problem mentioned by the grandparent:
"It didn't eliminate the painful lack of genuine purpose that many of us long for."
It wouldn't solve it. But people who are either hungry or living hand-to-mouth have neither the desire nor the time to ponder such luxurious issues as "why am I here." Maslow's hierarchy. In any event, space travel will help out a poor family in West Virginia about as much as a bicycle would help a fish.
So why not try and do both and see what the smeg happens?
We have. For 40+ years, now. And it hasn't worked very well.
. Throwing money at social problems doesn't always fix them, and sometimes makes them worse (see the comparitive self-sufficiency of kids born to other kids completely hooked on welfare, etc.).
And sometimes makes them better: Project Head Start, AFDC, WIC, public education, need-based and academic scholarships, EITC, etc. Tell the whole story.
In the US, you pretty much cannot drop dead from lack of food unless you want to, or are so addled/sick that you can't grasp what's being offered to you. Every city in the country at least has a place to obtain a meal for those that ask, and it's only through even grander technological feats that we polish the efficiencies and productivity that make that largess possible.
Only? You are saying that the *only* reason that the poor are fed is because of technology? Gen. George Marshall once said "amateurs study tactics, professionals study logistics." You are limiting your view to the tactics in producing food, but fail to take into account how that food or other aid is paid for and distributed, or the logistics. Technology plays a part, but only a part, and a small one. Eventually it requires people with the ability to organize it and fund it.
But for that to happen meaningfully, we've got to take the lawyers out of healthcare first.
Legal urban legends. Most of the stories you hear are lies perpetuated by those with an interest in doing so.
This has not been true since the industrial revolution. With modern farming equipment, computer controlled irrigation and pest control, and other technological advancements large families are no longer necessary. Couple this with the fact that the vast majority of the rural population are not farmers and your comment becomes much less insightful.
If this had been the dominant mindset in mankind we wouldn't have crossed mountains, oceans, the Wright brothers would never have flown, and we wouldn't have gone to the Moon.
Reductio ad absurdum? Again, past success is no indication of future performance. Your argument has been made for ~70 years now, and it has so far failed to hold true for space travel, even once. So long as we do not have the means to generate enough energy to achieve much faster speeds than we can today we are for all practical purposes stuck. The costs for getting off-planet have not been significantly reduced in the 40 years since the Apollo missions. If there were even theoretical advances in propulsion physics being made then hope could be maintained. But there aren't.
It's nice to dream, but in the meantime someone has to pay the bills and make sure the kids get fed.
Absolutely. Space is way overrated. The potentials are great, yes, but so are the potentials for helping humanity on the planet RIGHT NOW, not in some distant future that could very well be physically impossible to achieve.
Giving a rural family access to and education about birth control is FAR more beneficial, both immediately and in the long term, than money spent on space programs.
Virgin Atlantic has a revenue base that is greater than NASA's budget.
It's not about the revenue base, it's about how much can be allocated to R&D and for how long. Investors and creditors tend to get pissy when billions are dumped into ventures for which there is no profit in sight, and if there is no profit then even individual enthusiasts eventually lose their will. This has been consistent for decades.
Now add that to a dozen other companies trying to do the same thing, and you'll see the jump to LEO and beyond pretty quickly.
People have been saying that for 70 years. They have been wrong. Neither the magic of the marketplace nor the government has been able to crack this nut, and there just may be fundamental physical reasons for this.
We are now in the time where personal and commercial space flights are nearing possible.
Those aren't space flights. Those are high-altitude intercontinental jaunts. Yes, yes, I know. But what the article in question is talking about is interstellar travel. The difficulties with that are something that Richard Branson cannot solve. Yes, we may soon have aristocrats globe-hopping via space ships. But they will still be deep within Earth's gravity well, with only a tiny fraction of the energy necessary to escape it.
I think this highlights the fundamental difficulty we face in getting elsewhere in the universe, namely the difficulty of getting enough energy to move stuff around. This is not an easy nut to crack, and despite optimistic predictions it is quite possible that it is one that is insoluble. Yes, we have had many scientific breakthroughs throughout human history. Yes, naysayers are frequently proven wrong. But "past success is no indicator of future performance", as the disclaimer says, and I think this is no different.
Until we are able to get bodies of non-trivial mass to speeds that are an integer percentage of light speed we will for all practical purposes be stuck on this zealot-infested rock. Getting men and women into space and having them survive is extremely difficult even for the short periods of time the STS is in orbit. This shows that allowing them to survive for months on end is a nigh-impossible task without some fundamental advances, and there are no areas in physics that we can look to for hope in this regard.
Yes, it's possible we may one day colonize Mars, Kim Stanly Robinson style. But I doubt it. Just because it is wished for and can be imagined does not mean it is physically possible in any real sense.
I am one such user who has never tried iTunes. I've never had a need to do so, and I don't like the idea of my music being locked via DRM to a single computer (trust me, I move my MP3s around my network a lot).
And obviously you suffer from some misconceptions. You are not "locked in" to any DRM with iTunes. If you want to rip CDs as MP3s, you can. Even the music you buy off of ITMS is easy to convert to MP3: burn it, then rip it as MP3. And I move files between my home and work computer all the time, no special software required, and I use iTunes on both.
Anyway, unless you're one of those people who pride themselves in being ignorant of things that are popular, you may consider giving it a shot. At the very least be careful when offering an opinion about things you don't have any experience with.
Let's face it, nobody works the media like Apple. I love it.
Yeah, but that will only get you so far if you don't have solid products to back up the hype. MS spends a crapload more on marketing than Apple does, and yet they are widely panned. Why? Because previous buzz created by MS has turned out to be almost completely without substance. Once bitten, twice shy.
It's more convenient to attack a figure that is conveniently accessibe (i.e. GW Bush) than one that is not (Bin Laden).
So many fallacies...
How about this: I think George Bush *and* bin Laden are worthy of serious criticisms.
Whether you voted for the guy or not, he's our commander in chief for another 4 years so there is no alternative but to stand by him and wait until the next election to vote democrat.
Or I could criticize him when he justly deserves it, regardless of party affiliation. News flash: George Bush is not God. He is not perfect. He has made mistakes, serious ones, and he continues to do so, some of them with rather serious effects. What do you think? That we should just set idly by while war crimes, torture, treason, and vote fraud take place, quietly acquiescing to four more years of criminality?
Fuck that, and fuck you for your vapid apologetics. You can handle your cognitive dissonance by tuning the radio to whatever right wing government propagandist tickles your fancy. I'm going do the right thing and oppose that fuck with every fiber of my being.
Your constant attempts at fear-mongering no longer have an effect upon me. After 9/11 I was very frightened, very angry, and very vengeful. I believed that terrorists posed a direct threat to me and my family, and that our government should "do something."
Now I believe that our government is far more threatening to me than Al Qaeda will ever dream of being, and that the media only serves to distract from this with bullshit stories such as this one.
I'm not afraid any more, or at least I feel my fear is more intelligent than it was in the years after September 2001. I fear and hate fascists and theocrats as much as (if not more) than I hate bin Laden.
Which is exactly my point, namely that reality and libertarianism diverge in ways significant enough to make libertarian capitalism nothing more than a pipe dream, little different from Marxist communism in its hopeful idealism.
I attack nothing, merely point out what seems obvious.
To sum it all up, to have a prosperous nation, the government absolutely needs to stay out of the free market.
Open your eyes, idiot. There is not a single libertarian nation on this planet -- with the possible exception of Somalia -- and yet there are many nations whose prosperity and success is high, whose people are healthy, educated, and peaceful.
Every time they get involved, not only do they voilate the constitution, they also make the economy a mess.
Every time they get involved, not only do they voilate the constitution, they also make the economy a mess.
I don't know if you are intentionally lying or simply incredibly stupid. Either way, you are utterly wrong, and even a cursory glance at the world around you would shows this. Capitalism is not the One True Holy economic philosophy. It works sometimes, fails sometimes. No system is perfect, and libertarian capitalism is no different.
A vote against a Libertarian candidate is
a vote to abolish the Constitution itself.
That is utterly pathetic. No one group can make claim to being the one true Constitutional party, any more than any given church can lay claim to know the "true" word of God. Sure, zealots make such claims, but they are just that: zealots.
It's about time they did this, goverment interference in the economy will, in the long run, screw people over. As broadband is becoming more widely available it is becoming easier to switch providers, as well.
It's been my experience that corporations are far more likely to screw people over than governments. Libertarian capitalism, like communism, looks good on paper but fails utterly in reality.
I don't think that is accurate at all. There are far too many members of my family who are "Left Behind" nutbags, and who quietly acquiesce to crap like this because they believe it "inevitable". Why fight it if the Bible says it is going to happen? Indeed, wouldn't they get a little egotistical thrill out of this? "Look! I'm right! Yay now we get to wear RFID chips in our skulls! PRAISE GOD!"
And don't try and tell them they have misinterpreted the Bible. That's just crazy liberal talk.
I can't honestly believe that we're now bashing microsoft in the damned if they do damned if they don't way.
No one would have any complaints if Microsoft could produce quality software, but for reasons that are mysterious to me they seem institutionally incapable of doing so. Microsoft is slammed because they are this multibillion dollar corporation who, despite their mountains of available cash, can't even do something as simple as get a working shell out the door. The present case is no different.
Slashdot Mirror
The biggest problem you have on the birth control front is religious opposition to it, not in eduction or access.
Which manifests itself in the political and education systems.
Just curious, are you a bleeding heart, liberal, urbanite ... a sophisticated city slickers who feels its his duty, and a national imperative, to teach all the dumb, inbred, hillbillies to not make any more babies, and leave the world to the yuppies?
Yes, your cliched stereotype is completely accurate. Your insight into my inner workings -- my true face, as it were -- is frightening in its intelligence. You really nailed it.
Turn off Limbaugh, fucktard. I have lived much of my life in and have many roots in small communities in Texas. I know what I speak of, especially in central and west Texas. They can't afford a dentist but they can pump out the future white/brown trash/meth dealers of America at an astonishing rate.
Fuck you, come again.
Fair point. However, with the amount of difficulties that have plagued both the ISS and the shuttle missions I wonder how comparable the two are. I don't think there are *any* areas that would be easier, but I am, as they say, not a rocket scientist.
When you strap people onto a gigantic tank full of hydrogen and oxygen, controlled by a myriad of complex (and aging, see above) systems, and then light the damn thing, occasionally something is going to go wrong.
I have seen this sentiment many times in this thread, and previous ones. It's common. "We just need to be brave" is the theme, and it is a mistaken one. It's not about a lack of bravery, or understanding of the risks involved, it's the high cost of mistakes. Getting into space is expensive. Vastly so. Prohibitively so. Mistakes that prevent the success of a mission are costly not just in lives but in dollars, millions and millions of them. Care is taken not because of a lack of bravery, of which I think there is plenty. Care is taken because to do otherwise would be unwise.
Everyone, even people like me who basically think NASA is an antiquated money pit, is well aware that launching vehicles is a risky venture. You're setting up a strawman by claiming otherwise.
Well said.
Thank you.
There's nothing wrong with our resources, it's our lack of hope and our lost ability to dream big that has us in its grip.
Hope doesn't make ships escape Earth's gravity well.
But i'd be suprised if it, and many other acts like it, will solve the biggest problem mentioned by the grandparent: "It didn't eliminate the painful lack of genuine purpose that many of us long for."
It wouldn't solve it. But people who are either hungry or living hand-to-mouth have neither the desire nor the time to ponder such luxurious issues as "why am I here." Maslow's hierarchy. In any event, space travel will help out a poor family in West Virginia about as much as a bicycle would help a fish.
So why not try and do both and see what the smeg happens?
We have. For 40+ years, now. And it hasn't worked very well.
. Throwing money at social problems doesn't always fix them, and sometimes makes them worse (see the comparitive self-sufficiency of kids born to other kids completely hooked on welfare, etc.).
And sometimes makes them better: Project Head Start, AFDC, WIC, public education, need-based and academic scholarships, EITC, etc. Tell the whole story.
In the US, you pretty much cannot drop dead from lack of food unless you want to, or are so addled/sick that you can't grasp what's being offered to you. Every city in the country at least has a place to obtain a meal for those that ask, and it's only through even grander technological feats that we polish the efficiencies and productivity that make that largess possible.
Only? You are saying that the *only* reason that the poor are fed is because of technology? Gen. George Marshall once said "amateurs study tactics, professionals study logistics." You are limiting your view to the tactics in producing food, but fail to take into account how that food or other aid is paid for and distributed, or the logistics. Technology plays a part, but only a part, and a small one. Eventually it requires people with the ability to organize it and fund it.
But for that to happen meaningfully, we've got to take the lawyers out of healthcare first.
Legal urban legends. Most of the stories you hear are lies perpetuated by those with an interest in doing so.
This has not been true since the industrial revolution. With modern farming equipment, computer controlled irrigation and pest control, and other technological advancements large families are no longer necessary. Couple this with the fact that the vast majority of the rural population are not farmers and your comment becomes much less insightful.
If this had been the dominant mindset in mankind we wouldn't have crossed mountains, oceans, the Wright brothers would never have flown, and we wouldn't have gone to the Moon.
Reductio ad absurdum? Again, past success is no indication of future performance. Your argument has been made for ~70 years now, and it has so far failed to hold true for space travel, even once. So long as we do not have the means to generate enough energy to achieve much faster speeds than we can today we are for all practical purposes stuck. The costs for getting off-planet have not been significantly reduced in the 40 years since the Apollo missions. If there were even theoretical advances in propulsion physics being made then hope could be maintained. But there aren't.
It's nice to dream, but in the meantime someone has to pay the bills and make sure the kids get fed.
Giving a rural family access to and education about birth control is FAR more beneficial, both immediately and in the long term, than money spent on space programs.
Virgin Atlantic has a revenue base that is greater than NASA's budget.
It's not about the revenue base, it's about how much can be allocated to R&D and for how long. Investors and creditors tend to get pissy when billions are dumped into ventures for which there is no profit in sight, and if there is no profit then even individual enthusiasts eventually lose their will. This has been consistent for decades.
Now add that to a dozen other companies trying to do the same thing, and you'll see the jump to LEO and beyond pretty quickly.
People have been saying that for 70 years. They have been wrong. Neither the magic of the marketplace nor the government has been able to crack this nut, and there just may be fundamental physical reasons for this.
Tell it to Odysseus.
We are now in the time where personal and commercial space flights are nearing possible.
Those aren't space flights. Those are high-altitude intercontinental jaunts. Yes, yes, I know. But what the article in question is talking about is interstellar travel. The difficulties with that are something that Richard Branson cannot solve. Yes, we may soon have aristocrats globe-hopping via space ships. But they will still be deep within Earth's gravity well, with only a tiny fraction of the energy necessary to escape it.
I think this highlights the fundamental difficulty we face in getting elsewhere in the universe, namely the difficulty of getting enough energy to move stuff around. This is not an easy nut to crack, and despite optimistic predictions it is quite possible that it is one that is insoluble. Yes, we have had many scientific breakthroughs throughout human history. Yes, naysayers are frequently proven wrong. But "past success is no indicator of future performance", as the disclaimer says, and I think this is no different.
Until we are able to get bodies of non-trivial mass to speeds that are an integer percentage of light speed we will for all practical purposes be stuck on this zealot-infested rock. Getting men and women into space and having them survive is extremely difficult even for the short periods of time the STS is in orbit. This shows that allowing them to survive for months on end is a nigh-impossible task without some fundamental advances, and there are no areas in physics that we can look to for hope in this regard.
Yes, it's possible we may one day colonize Mars, Kim Stanly Robinson style. But I doubt it. Just because it is wished for and can be imagined does not mean it is physically possible in any real sense.
I am one such user who has never tried iTunes. I've never had a need to do so, and I don't like the idea of my music being locked via DRM to a single computer (trust me, I move my MP3s around my network a lot).
And obviously you suffer from some misconceptions. You are not "locked in" to any DRM with iTunes. If you want to rip CDs as MP3s, you can. Even the music you buy off of ITMS is easy to convert to MP3: burn it, then rip it as MP3. And I move files between my home and work computer all the time, no special software required, and I use iTunes on both.
Anyway, unless you're one of those people who pride themselves in being ignorant of things that are popular, you may consider giving it a shot. At the very least be careful when offering an opinion about things you don't have any experience with.
Let's face it, nobody works the media like Apple. I love it.
Yeah, but that will only get you so far if you don't have solid products to back up the hype. MS spends a crapload more on marketing than Apple does, and yet they are widely panned. Why? Because previous buzz created by MS has turned out to be almost completely without substance. Once bitten, twice shy.
It's more convenient to attack a figure that is conveniently accessibe (i.e. GW Bush) than one that is not (Bin Laden).
So many fallacies...
How about this: I think George Bush *and* bin Laden are worthy of serious criticisms.
Whether you voted for the guy or not, he's our commander in chief for another 4 years so there is no alternative but to stand by him and wait until the next election to vote democrat.
Or I could criticize him when he justly deserves it, regardless of party affiliation. News flash: George Bush is not God. He is not perfect. He has made mistakes, serious ones, and he continues to do so, some of them with rather serious effects. What do you think? That we should just set idly by while war crimes, torture, treason, and vote fraud take place, quietly acquiescing to four more years of criminality?
Fuck that, and fuck you for your vapid apologetics. You can handle your cognitive dissonance by tuning the radio to whatever right wing government propagandist tickles your fancy. I'm going do the right thing and oppose that fuck with every fiber of my being.
Your constant attempts at fear-mongering no longer have an effect upon me. After 9/11 I was very frightened, very angry, and very vengeful. I believed that terrorists posed a direct threat to me and my family, and that our government should "do something."
Now I believe that our government is far more threatening to me than Al Qaeda will ever dream of being, and that the media only serves to distract from this with bullshit stories such as this one.
I'm not afraid any more, or at least I feel my fear is more intelligent than it was in the years after September 2001. I fear and hate fascists and theocrats as much as (if not more) than I hate bin Laden.
I attack nothing, merely point out what seems obvious.
To sum it all up, to have a prosperous nation, the government absolutely needs to stay out of the free market.
Open your eyes, idiot. There is not a single libertarian nation on this planet -- with the possible exception of Somalia -- and yet there are many nations whose prosperity and success is high, whose people are healthy, educated, and peaceful.
Every time they get involved, not only do they voilate the constitution, they also make the economy a mess.
Every time they get involved, not only do they voilate the constitution, they also make the economy a mess.
I don't know if you are intentionally lying or simply incredibly stupid. Either way, you are utterly wrong, and even a cursory glance at the world around you would shows this. Capitalism is not the One True Holy economic philosophy. It works sometimes, fails sometimes. No system is perfect, and libertarian capitalism is no different.
A vote against a Libertarian candidate is a vote to abolish the Constitution itself.
That is utterly pathetic. No one group can make claim to being the one true Constitutional party, any more than any given church can lay claim to know the "true" word of God. Sure, zealots make such claims, but they are just that: zealots.
And is exactly why libertarianism is and probably forever will be nothing more than a pipe dream.
It's about time they did this, goverment interference in the economy will, in the long run, screw people over. As broadband is becoming more widely available it is becoming easier to switch providers, as well.
It's been my experience that corporations are far more likely to screw people over than governments. Libertarian capitalism, like communism, looks good on paper but fails utterly in reality.
The desire to see our egos affirmed outweighs any altruistic motives evangelicals may hold.
And don't try and tell them they have misinterpreted the Bible. That's just crazy liberal talk.
I can't honestly believe that we're now bashing microsoft in the damned if they do damned if they don't way.
No one would have any complaints if Microsoft could produce quality software, but for reasons that are mysterious to me they seem institutionally incapable of doing so. Microsoft is slammed because they are this multibillion dollar corporation who, despite their mountains of available cash, can't even do something as simple as get a working shell out the door. The present case is no different.