If you actually read the article you would have noticed that the Christians currently hold a slight edge on starting wars over the last few hundred years. WWI and II certainly were not started by Muslims.
"All your other examples gave an benefit immediatly, either in objective benefits, eg obtaining valuable minerals"
Manned flight didn't make any money at all for 50 years! There are hundreds of examples of people pushing the bounds of science without regard for profit which turned out to be very benificial to humanity in the long run.
Making a profit should not be the main goal of human activity. The main goal of humanity is to push the bounries of knowledge, art, and reason. We should be working towards a better future, not just making a buck next quarter.
Would you have vetoed Columbus's voyage because there was likely no profit in it?
Well actually, there are MORE people alive right now than all the people that have lived and died in all of history - so its not a big stretch to say that global warming can, in fact, affect that many people.
The Artic (North pole) is NOT frozen all year round, and the time that it is 'defrosted' has been increasing over the last few years which is causing all sorts of problems for polar bears which depend on the ice for their hunting.
Your little tale about all the wonderful changes global warming will bring is a pipe dream. No one knows for sure what will happen if the Earth warms up a few degrees. The main thing is that there will be MORE ENERGY. More energy means bigger storms, more 'extreme weather events'. From what I've read, global warming will make some parts of the world more pleasant, but it will make just as many places much less pleasant:
USA Midewest will become a dust bowl
Northern Europe will actually get cooler (due to a cold artic current not running as deep in the warmer water)
Canadian prairies get wetter (a welcome change)
More frequent large storms
If enough ice melts, the oceans will rise.
The weather is too complicated to predict with any great accuracy, so all this should be taken with a grain of salt.
Solve your political problems by murdering hundreds of people? That's not insightful - that's sick.
Get off your lazy asses and VOTE. If everyone who didn't vote had voted for the same person they would have won the last few American Presidential election (talking registered voters here).
Voting Green or whatever is not wasting your vote.
Its WAVE power, not tidal power. The BC test site is going to be on part of the west coast of Vancouver Island where there are lots of WAVES (not large tides) most of the year.
BC Hydro (a crown corporation, more or less a government owned company) wants to use more "Green Power" in the future. Currently over 85% of BC's power is Hydro-electric, but the poltics involved in building large dams makes new large dams unlikely (could happen on a few sites on rivers that are already dammed). Thus the interest in alternative green energy.
Now, I'm generally a right wing kind of guy, but BC Hydro would not be looking at actually BUILDING a wave power station if it was a private company that (as it must) only looks at it bottom line.
Combined cycle Gas turbine plants have had an efficiency of over 50% for a few years now, and have just recently reach 60%. As far as I know no laws of thermodynamics have changed in the last few years.
More people die from car accidents each year than will every die from Nuclear power plants.
We'll stop burning fossil fuels the moment we run out.
Baddly sub-titled films can be just as bad/funny as bad dubbing.
I watched an old Hong Kong Kungfu flick once with sub-titles that went like this:
Distraught hero is discussing his next course of action after taking a drubbing from the bad guy, he is talking with his teacher
Student: should I challenge bad guy to a duel and restore my families honour?
At this point the teacher speaks for about 2 minutes, then the sub-title:
NO!
Cracked me up.
I've also found different sub-titles on the same movie, one was abridged, the other was a fair bit wordier and told the sory much better.
The point is, bad sub-titles can be just as bad as bad dubbing.
Re:so, you people want to build a gun eh?
on
Homemade Gauss Gun
·
· Score: 4, Informative
You are just silly as the person you are insulting.
2000ms over a 3m barrel is not "hundreds of thousands of G's" its about 66G. Your average 24" (less than a.5m) rifle barrel acclerates a lead slug to about 1100m/s. This is about 220g. Air does not become concrete, the rifle does not explode. BTY 1G is 9.98m/s per sec.
As for 5000v, I thought you wanted lots of amps for a solenoid, but it is a small matter to ramp up/down a voltage using a transformer (which is just two coils, one inside the other).
So while I'm sure making a rail gun isn't that simple your "science" is just as bad. Might want to read a 1st year phyics book.
One of the odd things about changing global weather paterns is some of the unexpected side affects. Global warming may decrease the temperature in Northern Europe by a few degrees by changing some rather major artic ocean currents. Warming would bring a major cold stream that is currently quite deep (and makes it farther south) to raise up and cool Europe.
Weather is very complicated. Global warming will not simply give us the same weather, but warmer. It will cause strange, and unexpected new weather patterns. Storms will tend to be more intense (high temp = more energy), some places will get wetter, some drier, some warmer, some cooler.
But all this is nothing compared to the Ocean's rising if it actually get warm enough to break up the antartic ice shelf.
And all xfiles people know that global warming is being orchestrated by a global conspiracy of GOOD guys to stave off an imminent ice-age!
According to me time machines will never be invented. Why? When you use a time machine to travel into the past you keep changing things slightly, and these changes only stop when you make a change that UN-invents the time machine! no time machine, no changes.
All 'spooky action at a distance' experiments have NOT transmited any information. The 'spooky' action has been completely RANDOM which makes it very difficult to use for transmitting information, much less FTL information.
Just in case you didn't notice, the Earth is FINITE in size. This means that it can support a FINITE population.
If you want everyone to have the same standard of living that people enjoy in 'western' countries then we are already 'over-populated'. On the other hand, if you want everyone to have just enough food to stay alive and don't mind decimating every last forest and other natural habitat on the planet then we can still, maybe, double the population.
To prove your sincerity please move to the nearest jungle - naked.
Advance technology like spears is making it too easy for the slow among us to hunt. This must also be banned to 'strengthen the species'. No more cooking food. If your digestive system can't handle raw food you don't deserve to live. It is also time to give up all modern sanitation. All this washing and cleaning is letting people with weak immune systems survive their childhood's! Its just scandalous that we are using technology to thwart evolution!
Since when did anyone start praying at the altar of evolution? Yes, we understand how evolution works, but that doesn't mean that the criteria that makes a lion successful should be applied to humanity. What makes humanity the most successful creature on the planet? Our brains. Not our ability to breed fast. Not our ability to run fast. Not any of our 'natural' athletic abilities put us at the top of the food chain. The yard stick to measure humanities success is completely different than for any other creature. Our ability to change the environment to suit us is what makes humanity successful. This advance is no different from using a lever. It is a technology that we can use to enhance our abilities.
Here we have a simple and recent story about the impact taking VC money and management had on a (historically speaking) completely unimportant company. Something like this, you would think, would be easy to document and it would be easy to see the 'truth'.
Makes you wonder how we can ever determine the historical truth about anything.
The random changes that kill the organism before it can breed gets weeded out pretty fast. The random changes that improves the chances of breeding lives on. This is the 'natural selection' part of evolution.
Believing in God was all you needed to know these 'facts' at different points in history:
The Earth is the centre of the universe.
All the cosmos revolves around the Earth.
The Universe was created in 7 days.
But many pious people have been able to give up these beliefs without losing their faith in God. Creationists are simply making the same mistake of ignoring anything that doesn't agree with their dogma.
For a very good ovrview of the current state of Evolution, and some of the more common 'arguments' used by creationists read:
The Triumph of Evolution and the Failure of Creationism by Niles Eldridge. A good review is at: The Triumph of Evolution"
"well and good" is a common english idiom.
Like "easy as pie" or "piece of cake", "its gone bad". Things native speakers understand, but can be confusing for someone learning the language.
And most of the collateral damage you point out is caused by the drugs being illegal. The price is artificailly high beause they are illegal making it difficult for people with few skills to support their habits without resorting to crime. Violence surrounds the drug trade beause it is illegal. Legal drugs will still cause problems, but the cost to society in general will be much, much, lower.
How come Bush hasn't turned himself in for doing coke in his youth? Shouldn't he be doing ten years in some nice Texas jail?
Slashdot Mirror
For those of you who are not Niven fans, the "Gripping hand" was a very lame sequel to the excellent "Mote in God's eye".
If you actually read the article you would have noticed that the Christians currently hold a slight edge on starting wars over the last few hundred years. WWI and II certainly were not started by Muslims.
Why is this flamebait? He's right. His sig is a bit rude, but that doesn't make hime wrong.
Manned flight didn't make any money at all for 50 years! There are hundreds of examples of people pushing the bounds of science without regard for profit which turned out to be very benificial to humanity in the long run.
Making a profit should not be the main goal of human activity. The main goal of humanity is to push the bounries of knowledge, art, and reason. We should be working towards a better future, not just making a buck next quarter.
Would you have vetoed Columbus's voyage because there was likely no profit in it?
If the USA can kiss and make up with Vietnam and China it should be able to hold its nose and normalize relations with Cuba.
The Artic (North pole) is NOT frozen all year round, and the time that it is 'defrosted' has been increasing over the last few years which is causing all sorts of problems for polar bears which depend on the ice for their hunting.
Your little tale about all the wonderful changes global warming will bring is a pipe dream. No one knows for sure what will happen if the Earth warms up a few degrees. The main thing is that there will be MORE ENERGY. More energy means bigger storms, more 'extreme weather events'. From what I've read, global warming will make some parts of the world more pleasant, but it will make just as many places much less pleasant:
The weather is too complicated to predict with any great accuracy, so all this should be taken with a grain of salt.
This factoid doesn't make the WTO terrorism less tragic.
Get off your lazy asses and VOTE. If everyone who didn't vote had voted for the same person they would have won the last few American Presidential election (talking registered voters here).
Voting Green or whatever is not wasting your vote.
BC Hydro (a crown corporation, more or less a government owned company) wants to use more "Green Power" in the future. Currently over 85% of BC's power is Hydro-electric, but the poltics involved in building large dams makes new large dams unlikely (could happen on a few sites on rivers that are already dammed). Thus the interest in alternative green energy.
Now, I'm generally a right wing kind of guy, but BC Hydro would not be looking at actually BUILDING a wave power station if it was a private company that (as it must) only looks at it bottom line.
For more information:
General info on Green Power in BC
Info on the Vancouver Island Wave Plant"
More people die from car accidents each year than will every die from Nuclear power plants.
We'll stop burning fossil fuels the moment we run out.
I watched an old Hong Kong Kungfu flick once with sub-titles that went like this:
Distraught hero is discussing his next course of action after taking a drubbing from the bad guy, he is talking with his teacher
Student: should I challenge bad guy to a duel and restore my families honour?
At this point the teacher speaks for about 2 minutes, then the sub-title:
NO!
Cracked me up.
I've also found different sub-titles on the same movie, one was abridged, the other was a fair bit wordier and told the sory much better.
The point is, bad sub-titles can be just as bad as bad dubbing.
2000ms over a 3m barrel is not "hundreds of thousands of G's" its about 66G. Your average 24" (less than a .5m) rifle barrel acclerates a lead slug to about 1100m/s. This is about 220g. Air does not become concrete, the rifle does not explode. BTY 1G is 9.98m/s per sec.
As for 5000v, I thought you wanted lots of amps for a solenoid, but it is a small matter to ramp up/down a voltage using a transformer (which is just two coils, one inside the other).
So while I'm sure making a rail gun isn't that simple your "science" is just as bad. Might want to read a 1st year phyics book.
Weather is very complicated. Global warming will not simply give us the same weather, but warmer. It will cause strange, and unexpected new weather patterns. Storms will tend to be more intense (high temp = more energy), some places will get wetter, some drier, some warmer, some cooler.
But all this is nothing compared to the Ocean's rising if it actually get warm enough to break up the antartic ice shelf.
And all xfiles people know that global warming is being orchestrated by a global conspiracy of GOOD guys to stave off an imminent ice-age!
Mod up please, good info, good link.
According to me time machines will never be invented. Why? When you use a time machine to travel into the past you keep changing things slightly, and these changes only stop when you make a change that UN-invents the time machine! no time machine, no changes.
All 'spooky action at a distance' experiments have NOT transmited any information. The 'spooky' action has been completely RANDOM which makes it very difficult to use for transmitting information, much less FTL information.
Can't remember which story exactly, but this has been explored in fiction.
If you want everyone to have the same standard of living that people enjoy in 'western' countries then we are already 'over-populated'. On the other hand, if you want everyone to have just enough food to stay alive and don't mind decimating every last forest and other natural habitat on the planet then we can still, maybe, double the population.
Advance technology like spears is making it too easy for the slow among us to hunt. This must also be banned to 'strengthen the species'. No more cooking food. If your digestive system can't handle raw food you don't deserve to live. It is also time to give up all modern sanitation. All this washing and cleaning is letting people with weak immune systems survive their childhood's! Its just scandalous that we are using technology to thwart evolution!
Since when did anyone start praying at the altar of evolution? Yes, we understand how evolution works, but that doesn't mean that the criteria that makes a lion successful should be applied to humanity. What makes humanity the most successful creature on the planet? Our brains. Not our ability to breed fast. Not our ability to run fast. Not any of our 'natural' athletic abilities put us at the top of the food chain. The yard stick to measure humanities success is completely different than for any other creature. Our ability to change the environment to suit us is what makes humanity successful. This advance is no different from using a lever. It is a technology that we can use to enhance our abilities.Makes you wonder how we can ever determine the historical truth about anything.
The random changes that kill the organism before it can breed gets weeded out pretty fast. The random changes that improves the chances of breeding lives on. This is the 'natural selection' part of evolution.
The Earth is the centre of the universe.
All the cosmos revolves around the Earth.
The Universe was created in 7 days.
But many pious people have been able to give up these beliefs without losing their faith in God. Creationists are simply making the same mistake of ignoring anything that doesn't agree with their dogma.
For a very good ovrview of the current state of Evolution, and some of the more common 'arguments' used by creationists read: The Triumph of Evolution and the Failure of Creationism by Niles Eldridge. A good review is at:
The Triumph of Evolution"
Like "easy as pie" or "piece of cake", "its gone bad". Things native speakers understand, but can be confusing for someone learning the language.
The world does not need more stupid regulations and warnings because a small percenage of people are complete idiots.
How come Bush hasn't turned himself in for doing coke in his youth? Shouldn't he be doing ten years in some nice Texas jail?