"Okay, IF this works then we're looking at a reactionless space drive. No more need to haul huge canisters of highly explosive chemicals around (once you're in orbit). Just throw together a gravity drive and a sufficiently powerful generator (yeah... 'just'), and away you go. It'd make the ion drive in DS-1 obsolete in a Big Hurry."
Yes, and No. Yes, it MIGHT make a very nice propulsion system depending on system characteristics that obviously have not been determined yet. No, it almost certainly would NOT be reactionless. And it is not just a "sufficiently powerful" generator that is needed; you also need it to be efficient, and probably accurate. It may make the ion drive obsolete, but I don't think it will do so in a "Big Hurry" as the power, efficiency, and pointing problems are going to take time to solve.
If anyone is interested in this, and will be in Indianapolis for the AIAA/ASME/SAE/ASEE Joint Propulsion Conference this July, I'll be giving a talk on this very topic at 10:30am in session#86. Or, you can just buy a copy of the paper.
Like any other product, movies and music are worth what the market will pay. I'm sure a lot of the cost of these things is in the marketing that makes people want to buy it. Just like Coke spends a #@!! of a lot more advertising money than Double Cola. Even though such minor colas may taste as good and cost less, people buy the coke anyway. It must be a good business strategy, because Coke makes more money than Double Cola or RC. The same goes for movies and music. I can't watch a movie that I don't know exists.
"The only thing standing between my freedom and some Chinese soldier with Ak47 is not a good will on Chinesse people or an international treaty but good old US military.
Possible.
Another possibility: You've bought into a great big myth that the right-wing media has deemed necessary for you to believe so that it can facilitate more money going to Boeing [boeing.com]."
Hmmm. Maybe your possibility is right. Maybe. Only one way to be sure...
Tell you what. You go over to China and demand that they pardon the two people they just sentenced to 10+ years in prison (Hu Mingjun and Wang Sen) for the horrible crime of trying to promote democracy and subverting the rule of the Communist Party. See how cooperative the PRC is. Maybe you can convince your nation to completely disarm itself, and we'll see how many generations it lasts. I'll stay over here in the United States with Boeing, Rockwell, and Northrup's fine products (http://www.af.mil/photos/images/bombers_b2_0010.j pg) to pull your bacon out of the fire just in case you are wrong. If your method works for a few generations, then maybe we will try it to.
Re:Self-proclaimed scientific authorities on slash
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"The science behind climactic change is beyond any serious dispute."
Nothing in science is beyond serious dispute; as that is the nature of science. Good science, anyway. Even someting as simple, elegant, and obviously correct as Sir Newton's theory of gravity was improved upon, and will likely be further refined in the future. I certainly think the science behind climate change is in its infancy, and if our present models of it are correct enough to make predictions centuries into the future then it is so only by some bizzare coincidence. We do not have nearly the amount of data we need to have refined our models that well through deliberate efforts.
In the interests of full disclosure, I should reveal that I am not a computer scientist. I worked for 5 years as an environmental enginneer doing research on air pollution from stationary sources. I now work for the "evil" oil industry (the one that builds the giant Gaia destroying, oil spraying robots that Capt. Planet fights in the cartoons... you may be surprised to discover that besides fighting the forces of Mother Nature, we also have a small side business providing the fuel that powers almost all the transporation in the modern world).
This post makes me swell with pride at being an American. I have always believed on an individual level that if I found my opinions were in harmony with the vast majority of other people, that perhaps I should re-examine them. It is heartening to know that my entire culture has the same moral courage to go against "the crowd."
It gives me great pride to think that while the rest of the world may be willing to sacrifice everything for "peace and harmony", we Americans still know that Freedom and Liberty are worth going to war over and that evil must be resisted even when that makes you unpopular with everyone else. I do feel bad, however, for those poor souls in the rest of the world that continue to throw away control of their lives and their communities to national and transnational governments in exchange for the promise of "peace and harmony", safety and popularity. I hope they at least enjoy the road to serfdom, because I don't think they are going to like the destination.
I'll take uncertainty and war. I'll take an increased chance of being murdered by a gun if it means that future generations of Americans will get to maintain the ability to resist tyranny. I'll take being unpopular with the global community if it means that we do not sell out our businessmen and laborers to a bunch of champaign socialist and watermelons armed with dogmatic junk science and scare mongering. I'll take the risk of contamination or disease in order to have a real deterrence to our enemies using weapons of mass destruction instead of burying my head in the sand and hoping that a signature on a piece of paper will be sufficient to restrain our enemies. You can have your peace and harmony; I'll live in the world of both risks and reality.
"It would be nice if the U.S. started making some long term goals. I think one of the biggest problems the government has is its band-aid approach to everything."
I think a bigger problem is that people think that the government has to be the method by which society solves all its ills. Our gov't is not set up to have 100 year plans. If you want a long term goal, MAKE ONE YOURSELF. I think a lot of people in the U.S. have long term goals. I think it is a good thing that the gov't doesn't try to force us to all have the same one. If you feel otherwise, then go move to the PRC; I'm sure the Party leadership has a long term plan you can be a cog in.
Ooo, I just had a better idea for how to use a crew slot on a Mars mission to help the poorest nations. Randomly select one of the 5 poorest nations (in GDP per capita) a few weeks before the launch. The leader of that nation gets to go to Mars, where he will be stoned to death as the 1st human sacrifice on Mars to appease the local gods and insure a safe mission for the rest of the crew.
Announce this "lottery" years in advance. Use CIA figures for GDP. Have Delta Force or some SAS guys do the "snatch job" if possible, to minimize the collatoral damage of a full scale invasion. I think people would be amazed at how quickly the situation in the poorest nations improves when the leaders fear they may pay with their lives if they are not able to lift their society from the grips of poverty.
Great, so some petty tyrant's nephew gets to be the 1st man on Mars. What does that say about Earthlings? Come on, you don't think the poorest nation in the world is going to be a corruption free democratic society do you?
And, how would the people in the 2nd poorest nation feel? They could have had one of their people on Mars... if only the had been just a little poorer. You know what that says to me? "We reward failures."
If you wanted to use a slot on the Mars mission to help motivate the 3rd world, then we should invent some kind of "most improved" award where we would give a crew slot to the nation that can increase it's per capita GDP the most between now and then. Of course, that would lead to fraudulent GDP figures from everybody. I wouldn't even trust the U.N. to produce honest figures to base the choice on. Then again, perhaps if the politically unconnected citizens could keep some of the wealth they earn instead of it going to buy el Presidente and his thugs a new private jet they would be even more motivated to produce real wealth. Nah, that's crazy; a useless gesture from the gov't that makes spoiled rich 1st worlders feel good about themselves without them having to really get off their @$$es and help solve the problem is much more sensible.
"In the 1960's, every single American astronaut was a married, white male in his 30's or 40's. "
There was a black astronaut in the 1960's. His name was Robert H. Lawrence, Jr. He deselected himself from the program before he could make his space flight, however. He did this by digging a multimillion dollar hole in the ground with an airplane during training. This was a common way for test pilots and astronauts of all races to end their career back then, so gravity was not being racist at the time.
Actually, I strongly suspect that the Iraqi supergun was pointed East, not West. First of all, it was "officially" a space launcher. To do that, you would need to point it in a generally Eastward direction in order to take advangage of the Earth's rotation. I do believe they may have really tried to launch a small spacecraft for the publicity of being the 1st Arab space power, and to demonstrate the "peaceful" nature of the cannon. Secondly (and more convincingly for me), I don't think Saddam gives a flying f(&^(^*% about Israel except as a nice scapegoat for propoganda that will win him support in the rest of the Arab world. He strikes me as far too practical a man to worry about fighting some kind of religous struggle if it does not help him personally. IRAN, on the otherhand... They are right next door, they have plenty of resources he'd like to have, and (of course) Iraq and Iran have already fought a long series of border wars for just that reason. Tehran is far, far, more likely a target for Saddam's Supergun (IMHO) than Tel Aviv.
So why did the Israeli's kill Bull, then? Well, they may not have know where the gun was pointed and guessed wrong. Even though the gun may not have been pointed at them, Bull was supposedly also giving Iraq advice on increasing the range and payload of their Scud missles, which can't have made Israel very happy. Israel may not have even killed him at all, it could just as easily have been Iraq or Iran.
Why would news reports say it was pointed at Israel if it wasn't? My best guess is simple mistakes compounded by laziness in the media. I have known too many reporters to be impressed with their unerring accuracy. The gun was in an unpleasant, isolated location and if one respectible reporter (or gov't official) said it was pointed that way, then you can be sure the rest would have parroted it without bothering to check on the facts first hand. It could even have been deliberate misinformation on the part of the U.S. or Israel. Most Westerner's probably would have said "well, good riddance... let them fight each other", if it was suggested that Iraq was preparing to shell Iran again.
Well, I realize that it is not much of a conspiracy theory compared to the grassy knoll or UFO abductions, but at least it is something.
A mathematician, a physicist, and an engineer are asked to find the volume of a red rubber ball. The mathematician measures the diameter and calculates the ball's volume. The physicist submerges the ball in a full beaker, and measures the amount of water that spills out to get the volume. The engineer turns the ball over until he find's it's serial number, then looks up the volume for that model on his Red Rubber Ball Table.
Half of the library in my office is catalogs and equipment data sheets for components. A lot of the rest is more generalized data like stress concentration factors for various object geometries and material characteristics; these are things that CANNOT be derived from theory. Only about 4 of my books (which, admittedly, I do use a great deal) are theoretical books. Physics, Advanced Math, Design of Experiments, and a Mech. Eng. Handbook. When you work with real objects, rather than just theory and pure numbers, you tend to need a lot more detailed reference materials. And I'm sure that at least one Engineer in the red rubber ball industry has himself a Red Rubber Ball Table.
What I want to know is why you pay Adult prices at the movies when you are 13, but you can't see Adult movies until you are 18?
Re:"Invasive American culture" -- no way.
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"Americans seek out and embrace other cultures.
I have traveled through more than 20 states, and I have seen it with my own eyes: Americans, for the most part, are genuinely interested in foreign cultures, willing to embrace new ideas."
As an American, I suspect that part of our success comes from just what you describe. We do not suffer from a "not invented here" syndrome that a lot of other cultures do. As a result, we feel perfectly free to adopt what works and discard what doesn't, regardless of where it comes from. That is a generous description. A more cynical description would be that we steal any idea we can, especially if it looks like it can make us money.
Look at our response to the surge of Japanese imports in the 70s and 80s. Some businessmen who saw their companies couldn't compete called for trade restrictions with Japan; but that was not the general response. It was certainly not the response from agressive successful businesses. They sent people to Japan to study how the Japanese did business, and what we could learn from them. Companies that couldn't figure out what was working and what was fluff wound up implimenting a lot of useless programs just because the Japanese were doing it; but that sort of experimentation is necessary. Many good business ideas like lean manufacturing and new quality standards came out of that process of learning from the Japanese's success.
Traditional American culture is commonly thought of as being replaced by the European colonists here. Yet the parts of Native American culture that were thought to be superior wound up replacing the old European culture or getting merged with it to make something even more successful than the other two. Think about how many people smoke tobacco, or eat popcorn. Even some of the U.S. military's small unit tactics can trace their ancestry back to the orignial Americans.
If other countries don't want to adopt portions of our culture becuase they think it is somehow tainted by its origin; then in the long run they are only hurting themselves. Meanwhile, we will feel free to appropriate other people's good ideas for our own uses. So what if the most vocal Mid-Easterner's don't want their neighbors adopting American ideas. That isn't going to stop me from listening to rai music and using the number zero.
Re:Good to see misinformation is alive and well.
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"Sit back for a moment and realize you're justifying the loss of lives."
Yes. We know. Did you think this was news or something? Welcome to the world of adults, kid; this is not some computer game you can save and retry if you screw up. No pressure, though.
"When did humans become so bleak as to find reasons to justify the loss of fellow humans?"
Back before we were Homo Sapiens. Or, back at the beginning of Genesis if you prefer. Like I said, maybe you should spend a little less time on the alternative news sites and read some good history books. They will explain the mysteries of the present and the future far better than any "indy news source".
"People, shocked by the death of the innocent people, become suicide bombers in moments of hatred."
Just so you know, the more sophisticated operators in these terror groups will not "recruit" the suicide bombers from their own ranks. It tends to deplete the supply of loyal thugs. They find some poor schmuck, kidnap his family, and tell him that they will murder his wife and kids if he doesn't strap on the bomb vest and "do the right thing." Sure, some of those suicide bombers are real, honest to goodness fanatics, but some of them are just victims. Sick isn't it? Remember your previous question about man's remarkable ability to find "reasons to justify the loss of fellow humans". Before you get on your high horse, remember that you too are human, and subject to the same weaknesses. What would you be able to justify... if you had to?
"The reason why the rest of the world hates the US is because the US fuels this. If the US refused to support Israel until it pulled back from Palestine, it would make a big impression on the entire world."
Yes. Those people who oppose American policies would see that terrorism is an effective means of getting us to change. If we demonstrate that terrorism will be more effective at bringing about political change than rational debate, what do you think will happen next? More terrorism, or less? One group is a little happier (for now), and every other opposition group on the planet has just been shown a new, very effective way of bending America to their will. When answering, keep in mind your previous question about man's remarkable ability to find "reasons to justify the loss of fellow humans".
"So next time, rather then luckily not being in the portion of the city that's being attacked, I'll end up along side the other victims"
Ah... so now we see what fuels this angst. You have discovered your mortality. There is much fear in this one. LOL. If you are talking about "the odds", I recommend you spend more time worrying about bad drivers and fatty foods than you do terrorists or school shootings. And when it comes to letting fear drive political decisions, keep in mind what Ben Franklin said. I'm sure there are plenty of Karma Whores out there who will remind you if you have forgotten.
Re:Good to see misinformation is alive and well.
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Mod the parent of this post up.
It is amazing to me that there are now kids of draft age to whom the war for the fate of mankind that I grew up with is nothing more than a footnote. Not too long ago, you could say phrases like "for the fate of mankind," "better dead than red" and "world being destroyed" and no one considered it hyperbole.
Did we fight "fair"? No. Neither did the Communists. Did we make mistakes? Yes. They obviously made more. Does it make it right? No. It just makes it the lesser of evils. But before you condemn that choice; you must understand what the alternatives were. Get some good history books, and then go read the unpleasant parts.
And then next year when you are old enough to vote, you get to try your hand at finding the best of imperfect alternatives. Good luck... it is not as easy as it seems from a casual glance. At least you can take comfort in the fact that if you screw it up there is almost no chance that you will condemn the future of mankind to an Orwellian nightmare for hundreds of years or reduce the Earth to a smoldering rock habitable only to cockroaches and lichens.
How did _I_ get to be this old? It seems like only a couple of years ago I was the snotty kid with all the answers.
Not if you are a citizen of the United States of America, anyway. Our constitution was written on parchment, not paper. Parchment is made from animal skin. It has historically been used for important documents because it is considered more durable than paper (and floppy disks).
If you don't want to pay 12 of your little Candian dollars for a moive... the don't spend them on it. Go buy a book or something. Don't tell me that the Canadian gov't sends a SWAT team out to put a gun to your head, forcibly remove 12 dollars from you and lock you in a movie theater (if they do, then you should move to a different country... perhaps Quebec). Do they not have cheap theaters there in Canada that play the movies a couple of months after they are released in the expensive theaters? If so, go to them instead. If enough movie goers go to them instead of the mainstream theaters then the expensive theaters will have to lower their prices to attract their customers back. If you can't stand to wait 2 months to see the movie and you'd rather spend that money on a movie than on other entertainment... well, then it sounds like you must be getting your 12 dollars worth of value out of the movie and you are just upset that you can't rip off the movie theater by getting more value than you pay for.
"Visualize American oil companies buying Russian oil while those Russian oil employees buy shiny new Maytag washers and dryers. "
As someone who is currently employed designing oil drilling equipment*, I can say that the current state of affairs is: American oil companies buying Russian oil while those Russian Oil companies buy the oil drilling and pumping equipment from American Mfg. Companies. Despite the fact that we are a manufacturing company, a lot of our "value" comes from service; that is spending a lot of engineering man-hours customizing the equipment to the needs of the users and the environment they will drill in. Those Ruskies look very serious about their efforts to supplant Saudi Arabia.
I don't think China will ever be able to compete with the United States until they begin to emulate the Free World politically and economically. An economy managed from the top down will never be competitive with a free market because economies are just too complex for our current ability to measure, calculate, and control. I think that is also why the idea behind Japan Inc. has produced a decade long "recession". Despite their propaganda to the contrary, China is run a lot more like a "company town" than it is a "workers paradise". Once they do become a free country, I wish them all the success they can handle.
*Another year of faithful service and I can start attending the secret Oil Business consiracy planning sessions where we figure out how to keep alternative energy sources from being economically viable. BWA HA HA HA!
After the 1st V2 raid on London, Von Braun is reputed to have said to a fellow German scientist "They worked perfectly... they just hit the wrong planet.
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Except that with "welfare for everyone else" you just get more lazy jobless people.
With "welfare for engineers" you get a fleet of bad@$$ fighter planes that can fly around real fast and blow stuff up.
I suppose you also think that when you buy groceries you are paying "welfare for grocery store employees".
"Okay, IF this works then we're looking at a reactionless space drive. No more need to haul huge canisters of highly explosive chemicals around (once you're in orbit). Just throw together a gravity drive and a sufficiently powerful generator (yeah... 'just'), and away you go. It'd make the ion drive in DS-1 obsolete in a Big Hurry."
Yes, and No. Yes, it MIGHT make a very nice propulsion system depending on system characteristics that obviously have not been determined yet. No, it almost certainly would NOT be reactionless. And it is not just a "sufficiently powerful" generator that is needed; you also need it to be efficient, and probably accurate. It may make the ion drive obsolete, but I don't think it will do so in a "Big Hurry" as the power, efficiency, and pointing problems are going to take time to solve.
If anyone is interested in this, and will be in Indianapolis for the AIAA/ASME/SAE/ASEE Joint Propulsion Conference this July, I'll be giving a talk on this very topic at 10:30am in session#86. Or, you can just buy a copy of the paper.
Like any other product, movies and music are worth what the market will pay. I'm sure a lot of the cost of these things is in the marketing that makes people want to buy it. Just like Coke spends a #@!! of a lot more advertising money than Double Cola. Even though such minor colas may taste as good and cost less, people buy the coke anyway. It must be a good business strategy, because Coke makes more money than Double Cola or RC. The same goes for movies and music. I can't watch a movie that I don't know exists.
President Bush invented pop under ads?
"The only thing standing between my freedom and some Chinese soldier with Ak47 is not a good will on Chinesse people or an international treaty but good old US military.
j pg) to pull your bacon out of the fire just in case you are wrong. If your method works for a few generations, then maybe we will try it to.
Possible.
Another possibility: You've bought into a great big myth that the right-wing media has deemed necessary for you to believe so that it can facilitate more money going to Boeing [boeing.com]."
Hmmm. Maybe your possibility is right. Maybe. Only one way to be sure...
Tell you what. You go over to China and demand that they pardon the two people they just sentenced to 10+ years in prison (Hu Mingjun and Wang Sen) for the horrible crime of trying to promote democracy and subverting the rule of the Communist Party. See how cooperative the PRC is. Maybe you can convince your nation to completely disarm itself, and we'll see how many generations it lasts. I'll stay over here in the United States with Boeing, Rockwell, and Northrup's fine products (http://www.af.mil/photos/images/bombers_b2_0010.
"The science behind climactic change is beyond any serious dispute."
Nothing in science is beyond serious dispute; as that is the nature of science. Good science, anyway. Even someting as simple, elegant, and obviously correct as Sir Newton's theory of gravity was improved upon, and will likely be further refined in the future. I certainly think the science behind climate change is in its infancy, and if our present models of it are correct enough to make predictions centuries into the future then it is so only by some bizzare coincidence. We do not have nearly the amount of data we need to have refined our models that well through deliberate efforts.
In the interests of full disclosure, I should reveal that I am not a computer scientist. I worked for 5 years as an environmental enginneer doing research on air pollution from stationary sources. I now work for the "evil" oil industry (the one that builds the giant Gaia destroying, oil spraying robots that Capt. Planet fights in the cartoons... you may be surprised to discover that besides fighting the forces of Mother Nature, we also have a small side business providing the fuel that powers almost all the transporation in the modern world).
This post makes me swell with pride at being an American. I have always believed on an individual level that if I found my opinions were in harmony with the vast majority of other people, that perhaps I should re-examine them. It is heartening to know that my entire culture has the same moral courage to go against "the crowd."
It gives me great pride to think that while the rest of the world may be willing to sacrifice everything for "peace and harmony", we Americans still know that Freedom and Liberty are worth going to war over and that evil must be resisted even when that makes you unpopular with everyone else. I do feel bad, however, for those poor souls in the rest of the world that continue to throw away control of their lives and their communities to national and transnational governments in exchange for the promise of "peace and harmony", safety and popularity. I hope they at least enjoy the road to serfdom, because I don't think they are going to like the destination.
I'll take uncertainty and war. I'll take an increased chance of being murdered by a gun if it means that future generations of Americans will get to maintain the ability to resist tyranny. I'll take being unpopular with the global community if it means that we do not sell out our businessmen and laborers to a bunch of champaign socialist and watermelons armed with dogmatic junk science and scare mongering. I'll take the risk of contamination or disease in order to have a real deterrence to our enemies using weapons of mass destruction instead of burying my head in the sand and hoping that a signature on a piece of paper will be sufficient to restrain our enemies. You can have your peace and harmony; I'll live in the world of both risks and reality.
"It would be nice if the U.S. started making some long term goals. I think one of the biggest problems the government has is its band-aid approach to everything."
I think a bigger problem is that people think that the government has to be the method by which society solves all its ills. Our gov't is not set up to have 100 year plans. If you want a long term goal, MAKE ONE YOURSELF. I think a lot of people in the U.S. have long term goals. I think it is a good thing that the gov't doesn't try to force us to all have the same one. If you feel otherwise, then go move to the PRC; I'm sure the Party leadership has a long term plan you can be a cog in.
Ooo, I just had a better idea for how to use a crew slot on a Mars mission to help the poorest nations. Randomly select one of the 5 poorest nations (in GDP per capita) a few weeks before the launch. The leader of that nation gets to go to Mars, where he will be stoned to death as the 1st human sacrifice on Mars to appease the local gods and insure a safe mission for the rest of the crew.
Announce this "lottery" years in advance. Use CIA figures for GDP. Have Delta Force or some SAS guys do the "snatch job" if possible, to minimize the collatoral damage of a full scale invasion. I think people would be amazed at how quickly the situation in the poorest nations improves when the leaders fear they may pay with their lives if they are not able to lift their society from the grips of poverty.
Great, so some petty tyrant's nephew gets to be the 1st man on Mars. What does that say about Earthlings? Come on, you don't think the poorest nation in the world is going to be a corruption free democratic society do you?
And, how would the people in the 2nd poorest nation feel? They could have had one of their people on Mars... if only the had been just a little poorer. You know what that says to me? "We reward failures."
If you wanted to use a slot on the Mars mission to help motivate the 3rd world, then we should invent some kind of "most improved" award where we would give a crew slot to the nation that can increase it's per capita GDP the most between now and then. Of course, that would lead to fraudulent GDP figures from everybody. I wouldn't even trust the U.N. to produce honest figures to base the choice on. Then again, perhaps if the politically unconnected citizens could keep some of the wealth they earn instead of it going to buy el Presidente and his thugs a new private jet they would be even more motivated to produce real wealth. Nah, that's crazy; a useless gesture from the gov't that makes spoiled rich 1st worlders feel good about themselves without them having to really get off their @$$es and help solve the problem is much more sensible.
"In the 1960's, every single American astronaut was a married, white male in his 30's or 40's. "
There was a black astronaut in the 1960's. His name was Robert H. Lawrence, Jr. He deselected himself from the program before he could make his space flight, however. He did this by digging a multimillion dollar hole in the ground with an airplane during training. This was a common way for test pilots and astronauts of all races to end their career back then, so gravity was not being racist at the time.
>So, anyone got plans for December 22, 2012?
I plan on running around town looking for Christmas presents.
Actually, I strongly suspect that the Iraqi supergun was pointed East, not West. First of all, it was "officially" a space launcher. To do that, you would need to point it in a generally Eastward direction in order to take advangage of the Earth's rotation. I do believe they may have really tried to launch a small spacecraft for the publicity of being the 1st Arab space power, and to demonstrate the "peaceful" nature of the cannon. Secondly (and more convincingly for me), I don't think Saddam gives a flying f(&^(^*% about Israel except as a nice scapegoat for propoganda that will win him support in the rest of the Arab world. He strikes me as far too practical a man to worry about fighting some kind of religous struggle if it does not help him personally. IRAN, on the otherhand... They are right next door, they have plenty of resources he'd like to have, and (of course) Iraq and Iran have already fought a long series of border wars for just that reason. Tehran is far, far, more likely a target for Saddam's Supergun (IMHO) than Tel Aviv.
So why did the Israeli's kill Bull, then? Well, they may not have know where the gun was pointed and guessed wrong. Even though the gun may not have been pointed at them, Bull was supposedly also giving Iraq advice on increasing the range and payload of their Scud missles, which can't have made Israel very happy. Israel may not have even killed him at all, it could just as easily have been Iraq or Iran.
Why would news reports say it was pointed at Israel if it wasn't? My best guess is simple mistakes compounded by laziness in the media. I have known too many reporters to be impressed with their unerring accuracy. The gun was in an unpleasant, isolated location and if one respectible reporter (or gov't official) said it was pointed that way, then you can be sure the rest would have parroted it without bothering to check on the facts first hand. It could even have been deliberate misinformation on the part of the U.S. or Israel. Most Westerner's probably would have said "well, good riddance... let them fight each other", if it was suggested that Iraq was preparing to shell Iran again.
Well, I realize that it is not much of a conspiracy theory compared to the grassy knoll or UFO abductions, but at least it is something.
There is such a way.
It is called Communism.
I think they are still doing it in Cuba.
A mathematician, a physicist, and an engineer are asked to find the volume of a red rubber ball. The mathematician measures the diameter and calculates the ball's volume. The physicist submerges the ball in a full beaker, and measures the amount of water that spills out to get the volume. The engineer turns the ball over until he find's it's serial number, then looks up the volume for that model on his Red Rubber Ball Table.
Half of the library in my office is catalogs and equipment data sheets for components. A lot of the rest is more generalized data like stress concentration factors for various object geometries and material characteristics; these are things that CANNOT be derived from theory. Only about 4 of my books (which, admittedly, I do use a great deal) are theoretical books. Physics, Advanced Math, Design of Experiments, and a Mech. Eng. Handbook. When you work with real objects, rather than just theory and pure numbers, you tend to need a lot more detailed reference materials. And I'm sure that at least one Engineer in the red rubber ball industry has himself a Red Rubber Ball Table.
What I want to know is why you pay Adult prices at the movies when you are 13, but you can't see Adult movies until you are 18?
"Americans seek out and embrace other cultures.
I have traveled through more than 20 states, and I have seen it with my own eyes: Americans, for the most part, are genuinely interested in foreign cultures, willing to embrace new ideas."
As an American, I suspect that part of our success comes from just what you describe. We do not suffer from a "not invented here" syndrome that a lot of other cultures do. As a result, we feel perfectly free to adopt what works and discard what doesn't, regardless of where it comes from. That is a generous description. A more cynical description would be that we steal any idea we can, especially if it looks like it can make us money.
Look at our response to the surge of Japanese imports in the 70s and 80s. Some businessmen who saw their companies couldn't compete called for trade restrictions with Japan; but that was not the general response. It was certainly not the response from agressive successful businesses. They sent people to Japan to study how the Japanese did business, and what we could learn from them. Companies that couldn't figure out what was working and what was fluff wound up implimenting a lot of useless programs just because the Japanese were doing it; but that sort of experimentation is necessary. Many good business ideas like lean manufacturing and new quality standards came out of that process of learning from the Japanese's success.
Traditional American culture is commonly thought of as being replaced by the European colonists here. Yet the parts of Native American culture that were thought to be superior wound up replacing the old European culture or getting merged with it to make something even more successful than the other two. Think about how many people smoke tobacco, or eat popcorn. Even some of the U.S. military's small unit tactics can trace their ancestry back to the orignial Americans.
If other countries don't want to adopt portions of our culture becuase they think it is somehow tainted by its origin; then in the long run they are only hurting themselves. Meanwhile, we will feel free to appropriate other people's good ideas for our own uses. So what if the most vocal Mid-Easterner's don't want their neighbors adopting American ideas. That isn't going to stop me from listening to rai music and using the number zero.
"Sit back for a moment and realize you're justifying the loss of lives."
Yes. We know. Did you think this was news or something? Welcome to the world of adults, kid; this is not some computer game you can save and retry if you screw up. No pressure, though.
"When did humans become so bleak as to find reasons to justify the loss of fellow humans?"
Back before we were Homo Sapiens. Or, back at the beginning of Genesis if you prefer. Like I said, maybe you should spend a little less time on the alternative news sites and read some good history books. They will explain the mysteries of the present and the future far better than any "indy news source".
"People, shocked by the death of the innocent people, become suicide bombers in moments of hatred."
Just so you know, the more sophisticated operators in these terror groups will not "recruit" the suicide bombers from their own ranks. It tends to deplete the supply of loyal thugs. They find some poor schmuck, kidnap his family, and tell him that they will murder his wife and kids if he doesn't strap on the bomb vest and "do the right thing." Sure, some of those suicide bombers are real, honest to goodness fanatics, but some of them are just victims. Sick isn't it? Remember your previous question about man's remarkable ability to find "reasons to justify the loss of fellow humans". Before you get on your high horse, remember that you too are human, and subject to the same weaknesses. What would you be able to justify... if you had to?
"The reason why the rest of the world hates the US is because the US fuels this. If the US refused to support Israel until it pulled back from Palestine, it would make a big impression on the entire world."
Yes. Those people who oppose American policies would see that terrorism is an effective means of getting us to change. If we demonstrate that terrorism will be more effective at bringing about political change than rational debate, what do you think will happen next? More terrorism, or less? One group is a little happier (for now), and every other opposition group on the planet has just been shown a new, very effective way of bending America to their will. When answering, keep in mind your previous question about man's remarkable ability to find "reasons to justify the loss of fellow humans".
"So next time, rather then luckily not being in the portion of the city that's being attacked, I'll end up along side the other victims"
Ah... so now we see what fuels this angst. You have discovered your mortality. There is much fear in this one. LOL. If you are talking about "the odds", I recommend you spend more time worrying about bad drivers and fatty foods than you do terrorists or school shootings. And when it comes to letting fear drive political decisions, keep in mind what Ben Franklin said. I'm sure there are plenty of Karma Whores out there who will remind you if you have forgotten.
Mod the parent of this post up.
It is amazing to me that there are now kids of draft age to whom the war for the fate of mankind that I grew up with is nothing more than a footnote. Not too long ago, you could say phrases like "for the fate of mankind," "better dead than red" and "world being destroyed" and no one considered it hyperbole.
Did we fight "fair"? No. Neither did the Communists. Did we make mistakes? Yes. They obviously made more. Does it make it right? No. It just makes it the lesser of evils. But before you condemn that choice; you must understand what the alternatives were. Get some good history books, and then go read the unpleasant parts.
And then next year when you are old enough to vote, you get to try your hand at finding the best of imperfect alternatives. Good luck... it is not as easy as it seems from a casual glance. At least you can take comfort in the fact that if you screw it up there is almost no chance that you will condemn the future of mankind to an Orwellian nightmare for hundreds of years or reduce the Earth to a smoldering rock habitable only to cockroaches and lichens.
How did _I_ get to be this old? It seems like only a couple of years ago I was the snotty kid with all the answers.
I think you are confusing "Written on hemp" with "Written WHILE on hemp." :)
"Our constitution was written on paper!"
No.
Not if you are a citizen of the United States of America, anyway. Our constitution was written on parchment, not paper. Parchment is made from animal skin. It has historically been used for important documents because it is considered more durable than paper (and floppy disks).
If you don't want to pay 12 of your little Candian dollars for a moive... the don't spend them on it. Go buy a book or something. Don't tell me that the Canadian gov't sends a SWAT team out to put a gun to your head, forcibly remove 12 dollars from you and lock you in a movie theater (if they do, then you should move to a different country... perhaps Quebec). Do they not have cheap theaters there in Canada that play the movies a couple of months after they are released in the expensive theaters? If so, go to them instead. If enough movie goers go to them instead of the mainstream theaters then the expensive theaters will have to lower their prices to attract their customers back. If you can't stand to wait 2 months to see the movie and you'd rather spend that money on a movie than on other entertainment... well, then it sounds like you must be getting your 12 dollars worth of value out of the movie and you are just upset that you can't rip off the movie theater by getting more value than you pay for.
"Visualize American oil companies buying Russian oil while those Russian oil employees buy shiny new Maytag washers and dryers. "
As someone who is currently employed designing oil drilling equipment*, I can say that the current state of affairs is: American oil companies buying Russian oil while those Russian Oil companies buy the oil drilling and pumping equipment from American Mfg. Companies. Despite the fact that we are a manufacturing company, a lot of our "value" comes from service; that is spending a lot of engineering man-hours customizing the equipment to the needs of the users and the environment they will drill in. Those Ruskies look very serious about their efforts to supplant Saudi Arabia.
I don't think China will ever be able to compete with the United States until they begin to emulate the Free World politically and economically. An economy managed from the top down will never be competitive with a free market because economies are just too complex for our current ability to measure, calculate, and control. I think that is also why the idea behind Japan Inc. has produced a decade long "recession". Despite their propaganda to the contrary, China is run a lot more like a "company town" than it is a "workers paradise". Once they do become a free country, I wish them all the success they can handle.
*Another year of faithful service and I can start attending the secret Oil Business consiracy planning sessions where we figure out how to keep alternative energy sources from being economically viable. BWA HA HA HA!
After the 1st V2 raid on London, Von Braun is reputed to have said to a fellow German scientist "They worked perfectly... they just hit the wrong planet.
Damn Watermelons.