He may have held out hope for "Peace in our Time" for a while, but he eventually found the balls to declare a state of war over the invasion of Poland. I doubt many European leaders today have even that much backbone.
Re:I'm for the war... but..
on
Strike on Iraq
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· Score: 1
"Who the fuck do you think provided the chemical and biological weapons to Iraq? Why, it was the good old US of A!"
Care to give any proof of that statement? Other than "everyone else I know says it, so it must be true." Sixty-two thousand repetitions does NOT make a truth, no matter how much you wish it did.
Acording to SIPRI (http://www.sipri.se/) the number one arms supply for Iraq from 1973 to 1990 has been the Soviet Union for $25 billion worth of arms, followed by France and China at $5 billion each.
I wonder what else of your belief system is based on "commonly known facts" that you have never investigated.
The automobile wasn't invented here, but Fordization production of it was.
I do think the telephone and the lightbulb are from American inventors (though I'm sure very country on the planet wants to claim that it had some local hobbyist made one in his basement decades earlier)
I've got to give credit where credit is due to the Germans and British for their pioneering work on jet aviation.
I lost a "bad movie night" competition when one of my friends entered Space Mutiny as his selection. After watching it, we were forced to admit that it was not only the worst movie of the night, it was the worst movie any of us had ever seen.
Re:Oh boy, here comes the conspiracy theory.
on
More on Columbia
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· Score: 1
"The point is, NASA is an organization of scientists."
Except for all the managers, administrators, technicians, engineers, etc.
The Horatio Hornblower series of books is good non-sci-fi for the sci-fi fan. It inspired, among other things, Star Trek and Honor Harrington.
The A&E mini-series is very good too, and one of the few movie/TV adaptations that I can recommend seeing even after you read the book (as a general rule, I think that it is better to see the movie before reading the book or you will probably be dissapointed over what the movie cut out).
I don't think you are supposed to ask about how much thrust it produces or ISP or packing density or anything like that. Don't you understand, this is about the ENVIRONMENT, and it is also probably FOR THE CHILDREN! There is no need to ask sensible questions, they used the "E" word. Just give them funding so you can feel good about yourself for caring about Mother Earth.
Now, isn't that easier than turning off unneeded lights or sorting your trash...
First of all, NASA has a LONG way to go before it has a launch frequency high enough for any pollution from their launch vehicles to be significant.
Second, there are plenty of rocket designs for liquid rockets that already produce only water or water and CO2; so an "environmentally friendly rocket" is not a new thing. The Saturn V, for example used Kerosene for fuel.
What is significant news for nerds is that this is work on a hybrid rocket design. Hybrid rocket motors are interesting because they combine some of the benifits of solid and liquid designs... but that probably wouldn't be considered newsworthy to mainstream media outlets. So, my guess is that this NASA center wrote up a press release and stuck in the magic words "environmentally friendly" to get the news to give them some coverage. The fact that we don't need eco-rockets yet, or that other minimally polluting rocket designs have been around for over half a century are irrelevent because the people they are selling themselves to don't have a background in rocketry, don't bother to check their facts, and many of them feel happy inside when they think they are helping to fund something that protects Mother Earth. And meanwhile the pros and cons of hybrid rocket designs (and probably the things that the test program was really supposed to find out) don't get any attention at all.
"The basic business model hasn't changed at all in the past 40 years."
Actually the business model changed significantly after airline deregulation. Many slashdotters are probably too young to remember that air travel was once primarily for the wealthy or business travellers. Cheap airlines with no-frills service like Southwest really started making money after deregulation allowed them to adopt a "cattle car" mentality. The major airlines had to adopt some of the same measures and slash prices to compete. Complain about only getting a bag of peanuts and not having enough legroom if you want (or you could always shell out the money for 1st class you cheap b@$#@&%), but now even college students can afford to fly home for Christmas! And the airlines discovered that they could make a whole boatload of money by going with lower cost but much higher volume. This was a major change to the basic business model. It required significant investment in new aircraft, but the profits made that investment worthwhile... Unfortunately the airlines didn't spread enough of that profit around the beltway; congress raised fuel taxes on the now richer airlines*. Airlines that had counted on using those riches to pay off the airplanes they had just financed where hit hard, and some (like Pan Am) were killed by it. Yet, amazingly the same congressmen that hiked the fuel taxes on the airlines blamed "deregulation" for Pan Am's demise; everyone knows, after all, that congress can run airtravel better than private companies... just look at what a great job they do with space travel and passenger trains. It would be really nice if congress spent some of that increased fuel tax money on building more airports or NASA aeronautical research, but I'm not holding my breath. Aeronautical research at NASA seems to get hind tit to things like the ISS.
Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that there hasn't been a change in business model in 10-20 years. The cheap, readily available but somewhat crowded airtravel of today was not around in 1962.
* That is the problem with changes in gov't policy when the gov't is so large. You can have the best business plan in the world but you can never be sure that an unforseeable change in tax structure or regulation won't destroy your plans completely. It is like sleeping with a hippo. It can be warm and cozy for right now, but you never now when your bedmate might roll over and crush you.
It is not just total travel time that is important, passenger comfort is also a consideration. An hour spent sitting in the Admirals Club at the terminal is not the same as an hour spent in airline seats. Supposedly Boeing studies have determined that once a passenger has been crammed into an airliner for four hours, his discomfort starts to rise very sharply. The Sonic Cruiser would bring many important long distance flights down below that magic 4 hour mark where passengers really start to get unhappy. This goes along with the apparent strategy of capturing the lucrative business class and first class customers.
BTW, I was told by an ex-Boeing employee that anytime she had to take a business flight somewhere for the company that Boeing would pay to upgrade flights of over 4 hours to first class; so perhaps the company (or at least her part of it) had applied its passenger discomfort studies to use in is human resources dept. as well as in design.
No, they are not. They intermarried with the Native Americans, but Mexicans are a mixed heritage. At the time of the Mexican American war, I doubt there was much Native American blood in the ruling class and major landholders of Mexico.
It is also the weapon of the weak... of women... of the elderly... of the handicapped. It is really nice that Mr. Rich White guy has the health and money and spare time to become a martial arts master, but some people don't have that good fortune and must rely on technology.
We could have built a ballistic missle defense system to stop the missles that everyone and their brother would have because of all the unemployed former Soviet rocket scientists who exported their knowledge all around the world since there was no ISS make work program to keep them employed.
Hmmm... Now that I think about it, we could have employed the former Soviet rocket scientists building the BMD system. Ironically building the BMD system that way would reduce the missle threat even if we just threw the hardware away. Of course the need to put thousands and thousands of small interceptors into space would have required better nanosat technology and a different style of launch system for getting lots of small sats up very cheaply... maybe an SSTO. And the Phase 2 BMD Lasers would be very handy for beamed propulsion systems.... this post started out being sarcastic, but now that I think about it the BMD option would have had plenty of side benifits to it. Especially if the final architecture of it could deflect near Earth asteroids.
But with the Space Station make work program, you learn how to build big structures in space, that will come in handy if we ever make Solar Power Sats...
300cc engine? What a huge pig of a car.
on
239 MPG Car
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· Score: 2
Almost 640lbs, and a 300cc engine... What a road hog. Messerschmitt made a passenger car with a 173 cc engine* (the KR175). It initially had no reverse because the car was light enough to just walk it backwards even up an incline. Of course it got a miserable 80 to 100 miles per gallon, but that was back in the mid 50s.
For a modern passenger vehicle of that style, 250 miles per gallon is about right; not "certainly almost unbelievable" as the article says. Doubting comments like "claims that such a technological feat was impossible" must have come from the writer's friends and family, as automotive experts working on fuel efficiency would hardly consider VW's 239 mpg "impossible" when Combidrive's Mouse ( http://www.3wheelers.com/combidrive.html & http://www.trinity-school.org/summer02.pdf ) has already attained over 255 mpg, with a presumably stripped down Mouse claiming 568 mpg at the Shell Milage Marathon in 1996. (201.1km/litre) So VW's claims of being the most economical car are not as "cut and dried" as they would have you believe. The VW does have 4 wheels to the Mouse's (and many other micro's) 3, so they may be trying to differentiate it from its trike competitiors by saying "car" rather than "vehicle" and then using a strict definition of "car". Still, the point is that 239mpg at 46mph is not that surprising for a purpose built non-production vehicle (with things like a magnesium space frame, I doubt they really plan to put this into production any time soon). This is a publicity stunt, not a technological breakthrough.
*Even the ME KR175 was huge compared to the 1964 Peel P50 (49cc engine, 132 lbs., http://www.3wheelers.com/peel.html ).
"I left the meeting thinking that the ISS should never have been built, and this comes from somebody who is enthralled about space exploration."
The problem with not building the ISS is, that we would have had to come up with some other gov't project to keep all those former Soviet rocket scientists busy. There isn't enough commercial work for them all, and we couldn't very well have them being unemployed. A large number of starving weapons researchers let loose in a multipolar world is just a Dr. Evil-style disaster waiting to happen.
I would have preferred a moonbase, but I can also think of worse make-work projects that could have been chosen instead.
I suspect that this is not so much a Space Policy move as it is a step in the dance of international diplomacy. The administration wants Russia to bear more of the costs, so they are floating out the idea of shutting down ISS as a negotiating tactic. I would not be surprised if they "settle" for Russia agreeing to extend their obligation to supply the station lifeboat for a few more years until NASA's orbital space plane is ready.
Shutting down the ISS is probably not likely. If it comes to that, however, I would not mind sacrificing a couple of years of 3 man station occupation in order to spend that money on getting a 6 or 7 man crew onboard sooner. Twice as large a crew should yield a lot more than twice the science.
The way such byzantine things work they may actually be after something completely different, like Russian support for a particular postwar Iraqi governmental structure.
"You think other U.S. Media is dominated by Liberals? You live in a domestic bubble, where Clinton is considered "left." Try www.guardian.co.uk - Now look at the absurdity of your statement"
He said "liberal", not "socialist." I'm sure Clinton is also considered terribly right wing in Cuba and the PRC, as well.
Since such definitions are relative to geography, it makes sense to use the local reference point. I agree that Fox's news analyists seem to be more conservative (and in the present climate, more mainstream) than other major news outlets. Using typical U.S. definitions, of course, since it is a U.S. network.
It will not proctect you near the blast. But if you are in the much larger area outside the lethal zone where structural damage will occur to buildings, then "duck and cover" will help keep you from being injured from falling objects and other minor building damage (for the same reason you want to take similar actions during an earthquake or tornado). If it had been needed, then it almost certainly would have reduced casualites resulting from a nuclear attack.
Just because it can't protect everyone doesn't mean it should be ridiculed as useless.
A doctor, a priest, and an engineer were playing golf together. The foursome ahead of them was taking forever to play. They would hit the balls in all directions, and wander around randomly to find them. Finally the greenskeeper drives by in a cart and the three complain about the delay the foursome is causing. The greenskeeper explains that those four people are blind firefighters. Years ago there was a terrible fire at the course's clubhouse. These four firemen had responded to the fire and helped rescue a lot of people, but were burned badly and blinded in the proccess. Out of gratitude the golf course allowed them to play whenever they wanted, even though it was an inconvinience for the other players. The doctor was very moved by this, and said "I have a co-worker who is a great opthamologist, I will see if there is anything he can do to help restore these poor firefighter's sight." The minister, empathetic to the firefighter's plight, said that he would ask his congregation to pray for the firefighter's recover. The engineer thought for a moment and asked, "Why don't they just play at night?"
It is the People's Republic of China that is not really China; they are oppressive thugs with guns. I look forward to the day when Taiwan can reestablish its rightful rule over the mainland. Of course that may take a while...
Slashdot Mirror
http://www.techcentralstation.com/1051/defensewrap per.jsp?PID=1051-350&CID=1051-030603A
He may have held out hope for "Peace in our Time" for a while, but he eventually found the balls to declare a state of war over the invasion of Poland. I doubt many European leaders today have even that much backbone.
"Who the fuck do you think provided the chemical and biological weapons to Iraq? Why, it was the good old US of A!"
Care to give any proof of that statement? Other than "everyone else I know says it, so it must be true." Sixty-two thousand repetitions does NOT make a truth, no matter how much you wish it did.
Acording to SIPRI (http://www.sipri.se/) the number one arms supply for Iraq from 1973 to 1990 has been the Soviet Union for $25 billion worth of arms, followed by France and China at $5 billion each.
I wonder what else of your belief system is based on "commonly known facts" that you have never investigated.
http://www.pratt.edu/campus/engine/index.html
http://www.asme.org/history/roster/H025.html
http://www.tva.com/heritage/littledam/index.htm
The automobile wasn't invented here, but Fordization production of it was.
I do think the telephone and the lightbulb are from American inventors (though I'm sure very country on the planet wants to claim that it had some local hobbyist made one in his basement decades earlier)
I've got to give credit where credit is due to the Germans and British for their pioneering work on jet aviation.
I lost a "bad movie night" competition when one of my friends entered Space Mutiny as his selection. After watching it, we were forced to admit that it was not only the worst movie of the night, it was the worst movie any of us had ever seen.
"The point is, NASA is an organization of scientists."
Except for all the managers, administrators, technicians, engineers, etc.
The Horatio Hornblower series of books is good non-sci-fi for the sci-fi fan. It inspired, among other things, Star Trek and Honor Harrington.
The A&E mini-series is very good too, and one of the few movie/TV adaptations that I can recommend seeing even after you read the book (as a general rule, I think that it is better to see the movie before reading the book or you will probably be dissapointed over what the movie cut out).
I don't think you are supposed to ask about how much thrust it produces or ISP or packing density or anything like that. Don't you understand, this is about the ENVIRONMENT, and it is also probably FOR THE CHILDREN! There is no need to ask sensible questions, they used the "E" word. Just give them funding so you can feel good about yourself for caring about Mother Earth.
Now, isn't that easier than turning off unneeded lights or sorting your trash...
First of all, NASA has a LONG way to go before it has a launch frequency high enough for any pollution from their launch vehicles to be significant.
Second, there are plenty of rocket designs for liquid rockets that already produce only water or water and CO2; so an "environmentally friendly rocket" is not a new thing. The Saturn V, for example used Kerosene for fuel.
What is significant news for nerds is that this is work on a hybrid rocket design. Hybrid rocket motors are interesting because they combine some of the benifits of solid and liquid designs... but that probably wouldn't be considered newsworthy to mainstream media outlets. So, my guess is that this NASA center wrote up a press release and stuck in the magic words "environmentally friendly" to get the news to give them some coverage. The fact that we don't need eco-rockets yet, or that other minimally polluting rocket designs have been around for over half a century are irrelevent because the people they are selling themselves to don't have a background in rocketry, don't bother to check their facts, and many of them feel happy inside when they think they are helping to fund something that protects Mother Earth. And meanwhile the pros and cons of hybrid rocket designs (and probably the things that the test program was really supposed to find out) don't get any attention at all.
Call me when they are testing cubane fuels.
"The basic business model hasn't changed at all in the past 40 years."
Actually the business model changed significantly after airline deregulation. Many slashdotters are probably too young to remember that air travel was once primarily for the wealthy or business travellers. Cheap airlines with no-frills service like Southwest really started making money after deregulation allowed them to adopt a "cattle car" mentality. The major airlines had to adopt some of the same measures and slash prices to compete. Complain about only getting a bag of peanuts and not having enough legroom if you want (or you could always shell out the money for 1st class you cheap b@$#@&%), but now even college students can afford to fly home for Christmas! And the airlines discovered that they could make a whole boatload of money by going with lower cost but much higher volume. This was a major change to the basic business model. It required significant investment in new aircraft, but the profits made that investment worthwhile... Unfortunately the airlines didn't spread enough of that profit around the beltway; congress raised fuel taxes on the now richer airlines*. Airlines that had counted on using those riches to pay off the airplanes they had just financed where hit hard, and some (like Pan Am) were killed by it. Yet, amazingly the same congressmen that hiked the fuel taxes on the airlines blamed "deregulation" for Pan Am's demise; everyone knows, after all, that congress can run airtravel better than private companies... just look at what a great job they do with space travel and passenger trains. It would be really nice if congress spent some of that increased fuel tax money on building more airports or NASA aeronautical research, but I'm not holding my breath. Aeronautical research at NASA seems to get hind tit to things like the ISS.
Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that there hasn't been a change in business model in 10-20 years. The cheap, readily available but somewhat crowded airtravel of today was not around in 1962.
* That is the problem with changes in gov't policy when the gov't is so large. You can have the best business plan in the world but you can never be sure that an unforseeable change in tax structure or regulation won't destroy your plans completely. It is like sleeping with a hippo. It can be warm and cozy for right now, but you never now when your bedmate might roll over and crush you.
It is not just total travel time that is important, passenger comfort is also a consideration. An hour spent sitting in the Admirals Club at the terminal is not the same as an hour spent in airline seats. Supposedly Boeing studies have determined that once a passenger has been crammed into an airliner for four hours, his discomfort starts to rise very sharply. The Sonic Cruiser would bring many important long distance flights down below that magic 4 hour mark where passengers really start to get unhappy. This goes along with the apparent strategy of capturing the lucrative business class and first class customers.
BTW, I was told by an ex-Boeing employee that anytime she had to take a business flight somewhere for the company that Boeing would pay to upgrade flights of over 4 hours to first class; so perhaps the company (or at least her part of it) had applied its passenger discomfort studies to use in is human resources dept. as well as in design.
Sam,
No, they are not. They intermarried with the Native Americans, but Mexicans are a mixed heritage. At the time of the Mexican American war, I doubt there was much Native American blood in the ruling class and major landholders of Mexico.
"Also, the Americans of the time did not feel taking the Mexican land was just."
So, how did the Mexicans feel about having orignially taken the land from the Native Americans?
"Say what you will about Mexico, but it is not exactly a hotbed of anti-American radicalism."
I mm igration/Reconquista/
http://aztlan.net/
http://directory.google.com/Top/Society/Issues/
http://www.sgaus.org/
http://home.att.net/~dcannon.tenn/TNSG.html
http://www.dmna.state.ny.us/nyg/nyg.html
http://www.mil.state.or.us/SDF/index.html
and several more
It is also the weapon of the weak... of women... of the elderly... of the handicapped. It is really nice that Mr. Rich White guy has the health and money and spare time to become a martial arts master, but some people don't have that good fortune and must rely on technology.
The Arecibo dish is something to see. Plus, sunny Puerto Rico is a nice vacation spot anyway.
o /
http://www.space-technology.com/projects/Arecib
We could have built a ballistic missle defense system to stop the missles that everyone and their brother would have because of all the unemployed former Soviet rocket scientists who exported their knowledge all around the world since there was no ISS make work program to keep them employed.
... this post started out being sarcastic, but now that I think about it the BMD option would have had plenty of side benifits to it. Especially if the final architecture of it could deflect near Earth asteroids.
Hmmm... Now that I think about it, we could have employed the former Soviet rocket scientists building the BMD system. Ironically building the BMD system that way would reduce the missle threat even if we just threw the hardware away. Of course the need to put thousands and thousands of small interceptors into space would have required better nanosat technology and a different style of launch system for getting lots of small sats up very cheaply... maybe an SSTO. And the Phase 2 BMD Lasers would be very handy for beamed propulsion systems.
But with the Space Station make work program, you learn how to build big structures in space, that will come in handy if we ever make Solar Power Sats...
Almost 640lbs, and a 300cc engine... What a road hog. Messerschmitt made a passenger car with a 173 cc engine* (the KR175). It initially had no reverse because the car was light enough to just walk it backwards even up an incline. Of course it got a miserable 80 to 100 miles per gallon, but that was back in the mid 50s.
For a modern passenger vehicle of that style, 250 miles per gallon is about right; not "certainly almost unbelievable" as the article says. Doubting comments like "claims that such a technological feat was impossible" must have come from the writer's friends and family, as automotive experts working on fuel efficiency would hardly consider VW's 239 mpg "impossible" when Combidrive's Mouse ( http://www.3wheelers.com/combidrive.html & http://www.trinity-school.org/summer02.pdf ) has already attained over 255 mpg, with a presumably stripped down Mouse claiming 568 mpg at the Shell Milage Marathon in 1996. (201.1km/litre) So VW's claims of being the most economical car are not as "cut and dried" as they would have you believe. The VW does have 4 wheels to the Mouse's (and many other micro's) 3, so they may be trying to differentiate it from its trike competitiors by saying "car" rather than "vehicle" and then using a strict definition of "car". Still, the point is that 239mpg at 46mph is not that surprising for a purpose built non-production vehicle (with things like a magnesium space frame, I doubt they really plan to put this into production any time soon). This is a publicity stunt, not a technological breakthrough.
*Even the ME KR175 was huge compared to the 1964 Peel P50 (49cc engine, 132 lbs., http://www.3wheelers.com/peel.html ).
"I left the meeting thinking that the ISS should never have been built, and this comes from somebody who is enthralled about space exploration."
The problem with not building the ISS is, that we would have had to come up with some other gov't project to keep all those former Soviet rocket scientists busy. There isn't enough commercial work for them all, and we couldn't very well have them being unemployed. A large number of starving weapons researchers let loose in a multipolar world is just a Dr. Evil-style disaster waiting to happen.
I would have preferred a moonbase, but I can also think of worse make-work projects that could have been chosen instead.
I suspect that this is not so much a Space Policy move as it is a step in the dance of international diplomacy. The administration wants Russia to bear more of the costs, so they are floating out the idea of shutting down ISS as a negotiating tactic. I would not be surprised if they "settle" for Russia agreeing to extend their obligation to supply the station lifeboat for a few more years until NASA's orbital space plane is ready.
Shutting down the ISS is probably not likely. If it comes to that, however, I would not mind sacrificing a couple of years of 3 man station occupation in order to spend that money on getting a 6 or 7 man crew onboard sooner. Twice as large a crew should yield a lot more than twice the science.
The way such byzantine things work they may actually be after something completely different, like Russian support for a particular postwar Iraqi governmental structure.
"You think other U.S. Media is dominated by Liberals? You live in a domestic bubble, where Clinton is considered "left." Try www.guardian.co.uk - Now look at the absurdity of your statement"
He said "liberal", not "socialist." I'm sure Clinton is also considered terribly right wing in Cuba and the PRC, as well.
Since such definitions are relative to geography, it makes sense to use the local reference point. I agree that Fox's news analyists seem to be more conservative (and in the present climate, more mainstream) than other major news outlets. Using typical U.S. definitions, of course, since it is a U.S. network.
It will not proctect you near the blast. But if you are in the much larger area outside the lethal zone where structural damage will occur to buildings, then "duck and cover" will help keep you from being injured from falling objects and other minor building damage (for the same reason you want to take similar actions during an earthquake or tornado). If it had been needed, then it almost certainly would have reduced casualites resulting from a nuclear attack.
Just because it can't protect everyone doesn't mean it should be ridiculed as useless.
A doctor, a priest, and an engineer were playing golf together. The foursome ahead of them was taking forever to play. They would hit the balls in all directions, and wander around randomly to find them. Finally the greenskeeper drives by in a cart and the three complain about the delay the foursome is causing. The greenskeeper explains that those four people are blind firefighters. Years ago there was a terrible fire at the course's clubhouse. These four firemen had responded to the fire and helped rescue a lot of people, but were burned badly and blinded in the proccess. Out of gratitude the golf course allowed them to play whenever they wanted, even though it was an inconvinience for the other players. The doctor was very moved by this, and said "I have a co-worker who is a great opthamologist, I will see if there is anything he can do to help restore these poor firefighter's sight." The minister, empathetic to the firefighter's plight, said that he would ask his congregation to pray for the firefighter's recover. The engineer thought for a moment and asked, "Why don't they just play at night?"
Of course Taiwan is China.
It is the People's Republic of China that is not really China; they are oppressive thugs with guns. I look forward to the day when Taiwan can reestablish its rightful rule over the mainland. Of course that may take a while...