Sometimes, I get the feeling that scientific research grants could be spent with a little more wisdom.
Because, MRIs are fun, but no one should need that much tech to come to the conclusion that "making something up based of recollections and saying it" takes more brain power than "just saying it".
Also useless, making a study about how gummy bears pick up dirt when dropped on the floor (really, sticky stuff picks up dirt when dropped on floor? amazing, please tell me more). Digging up corpses from the first american colonies and deducing that the cause of death was scurvy, when the survivors described the signs and symptoms in disgusting gory details, etc.
No, come to think of it, these studies are crucial! Now if you'll excuse me, I have to draft my proposition to do a study about the effect of gravity around the equator: I will go to tropical countries ans verify that neither I nor my kaluha float off into space...
No, they aren't. They are described in the books, but the SFX tech of 1984 weren't up to the task to include them in the movie (not with their budget and timeframe at least).
In the movie, it's a levitating craft, similar to their floating lamps.
Unless you mean that boring TV-movie, which I didn't tolerate long enough to get to the ornithopters, I only got as far as the first shot of a sandworm before calling it quits.
The main interest in ornithopters today is in Micro Air Vehicles- small (~6 inches) military reconnaissance robots. Incidentally, the aerodynamics of flapping flight at small sizes are very different from those of aircraft. Insects use lots of weird mechanisms, such as the ability to generate high lift with leading edge vortices.
That's actually an entomopter, because it is based on insects, as you mentioned, rather than on birds.
Evolution, at its very fundamentals, just plain makes no sense.
Makes perfect sense to me, and to tons of people with fancy titles like "professor" and "doctor". Just because you don't understand something doesn't mean that thing makes no sense. Maybe you're just stupid, have you given any thought to that possiblity?
And no, there is not infinately more evidence for evolution then for spontaneous genesis.
Yes, there is infinatly more evidence for evolution. Since there IS evidence for evolution, whereas there is only claims for the "the old man in the sky waved his hand and POOF! Horsies and bunnies!".
Then again, if finding the tooth of a now extinct type of pig or chimp is enough to convince someone that we all evolved from monkeys
Yeah, you're igorant all right. Here's something you seem to have never heard of: The Evolution of Man.
Again, the evidence is all around us that evolution has not and is not taking place.
Evidence such as the fossil records showing primitive versions of modern animals?
Or how about all the stages of evolution recorded in their living descendents? Fish, fish with bony flippers that use them to walk around in shallow water, or even mud. Fish with the ability to "swallow" air into their buyancy-controlling bladder, and to extract oxygen from it, living in rivers that dry up and turn into oxygen-deprived pools, etc.
faith in God's Word.
Actually, that is men's word that it's god words. Unless you have been visited by an angel? And then, it's the angel's word.
Sheesh, people who give more credit to some long dead farmer's badly described and haphazardly translated (many times over) dream than to actual evidence...disgusting.
Listen, I understand that it's hard to let go of the stuff you were indoctrinated to believe in as a child, especially since your feelings about your own mortality and that f your loved ones depends on this fairy tale, but opposing the march of science isn't helping anything.
I've never met an evolutionist who didn't think the theory was "obvious".
You've never met me.
And, which theory is that? Darwinism, or Lamarckism? Yes, bible-thumper, the theory of evolution is older than Darwin.
And it is far from obvious, SO many people don't understand it, mostly the ones rejecting it because of their backward upbringing, but also a lot of people who accept it based on faith in science, rather than understanding it.
You heartless bastard. What about the rights of the sperm? Are we just going to sit by idly as millions- billions of sperm are mercilessly slaughtered, as if somehow a single flagellated cell was worth less than an entire human being? We need a constitutional ban on masturbation! Masturbation is MURDER!
Every sperm is sacred. Every sperm is great. If a sperm is wasted, God gets quite irate.
Let the heathen spill theirs On the dusty ground. God shall make them pay for Each sperm that can't be found.
Every sperm is wanted. Every sperm is good. Every sperm is needed In your neighbourhood.
Half of the population (namely woman) have been freed up to contribute to technology and society of this choose.
Meh, we're gonna be outbred by the Amish and the fundamentalist Muslim and other assorted backwards religious groups. They'll outbreed the "more enlightened" people, turning democracy against us with sheer numbers, and they'll end up winning with their old fashioned strategy of "making lots of babies so that it doesn't matter if you loose a couple, in the long run".
Diseases like diabetes, which were once fatal, are now affecting more and more people just because we can treat it.
Diabetes is affecting more and more people because they INGEST TOO MUCH SUGAR.
We evolved an appetite for sugar that is perfectly natural, in a world where sugar is rare. But technology grants us all the sugar we can ever want, and so people get sick from too much of a good thing. It's not devolution, it's capitalism making you sick by cramming down Coca Cola (tm) brand sugared water down our throats all the time.
Vending machines in highschools are to blame, not insulin shots.
Many things effect evolution... Medical science has been effecting evolution
Ah for crying out loud! You have it correctly written, quoted right above your own text, and you use "effect" TWICE in the first line? Jeez!
The human species has not had real natural selection for a long time because we do not die from genetic problems as often.
And THAT is just ignorant nonsense. Ever hear the words "third world"? Yes, BILLIONS of people without any kind of medical care. BILLIONS!!! They don't even have drinking water that you or I would consider fit for human consumption!
Or do you simply not consider them human?
Stupid people are having more children than smart people, therefore people are going to get stupider. Maybe it's already happened
Well, at least there's some irony to go along with your nonsense.
We do not abandon our sick, injured, or weak... we look after them. And the higher brain functions that we have evolved seem to be serving a purpose of actually _weakening_ our species, rather than strengthening it.
How is it "actually" weakening our species? I mean, the species that now has over six billion members, going up, how is that weakening it? The species that is attempting to colonize other freaking planets, how, exactly, is it weakening our species to keep people alive?
If an individual is injured, infected or weakened, HOW THE HELL DOES IT HARM THE SPECIES TO HELP HIM SURVIVE?
Unless you seriously believe in lamarckism, then it strenghtens our species to keep these people alive and reproducing despite what circumstances have done to them.
The sick, malnourished kid with the broken leg that you would let die might grow up to perfect nuclear fusion reactors if we cure, feed and heal him. That is how it actually strenghtens the damn species to keep people alive.
That's what I find insightful... and perhaps it was my bad for not clarifying that point in my own previous post, but it really hadn't occurred to me that it would be necessary.
And that's why you're being called bad names and your intelligence is being questioned: Because you think that irrationnal, illogical, unscientific crap like that is insightfull, and it doesn't even OCCUR to you that others see it differently.
No, the same people who claim Darwin was right and that there is no God, also feel some compelling need to try to prove Darwin wrong by protecting those who are not able to survive by natural means.
You do not understand darwinism. It's not important how you survive, or how you reproduce, the only thing that matters is if you do, or not. Or rather, if your genes do.
Helping others survive does not, in ANY way, "prove Darwin wrong".
This isn't evolution (because the selection is artificial rather than natural)
It is evolution. It is how wolves evolved to survive the rise of Man (Humans are part of nature too, you know) : By becomming our pets rather than our competitors.
Becomming some small, frail chihuahua might not look like an evolutionary step up from a large, deadly wolf, but the chihuahua is infinatly fitter for life in a human world than a wolf. Some people find them cute, they are small, baby-sized lil' helpless things. They are fed and protected by our unfullfilled nurturing and parenting instincts, instead of being slaughtered for their scaryness like their wolf ancestors.
How many wolves are there left in the world? Hundreds? Thousands? There are probably more dogs in any given city then there are wolves worldwide.
Remember what it was like in high school? All the stupid little games about who was popular?
Those people only bothered me when they interrupted my reading to ask me why I was reading a book that I wasn't forced to read (for some reason, "because it's good" wasn't an acceptable awnser...go figure).
Now imagine the entire Earth being like that.
I would just go to Amish country with a truckload of replicated canned food and a bible cover to put over my books so the Amish'll leave me alone;-)
I remember some dude that had created Mars planes on a simulator, using real NASA-supplied data. His findings: low gravity and ultrathin atmosphere are bitches.
From RTFA, I got the feeling that the plan is for the wings to be mostly controll surfaces, and that the lift would come from the jet of CO2.
Of course, the Gashopper isn't supposed to take off or land
Vertical take off and landing using jets.
I'm sure the good people at NASA's jet propulsion lab are gonna run the numbers better than "some dude" : )
What kind of response times do you get from mars? I mean, could you interactively fly this thing, or would you just kind of point it and it would end up in some random location, in that general direction?
I think there's about a 6 minute delay both ways...
But have you never heard of artificial intelligence, autonomous robots, and autopilot? The thing could be told to go to places selected on topographical maps and fly there autonomously...it's not like there's a lot of air traffic to worry about. There's an annual competition of autonomous flying machines I believe, you might want to google for that.
what's the advantage over, say, one of those tumbleweed style bots.
This one goes where you tell it to go, instead of where the wind takes it.
I have to make an obligatory "global warming" mention, just like everyone else.
Considering that they are going to liquefy the CO2, I think that the fact that Mars is very, very cold is an important factor in their plan.
But I guess you can't say the words "atmospheric CO2" in public without people parroting "global warming". Nevermind the fact that it's extraterrestrial CO2 we're talking about...
The wings holding the solar panels would have to be self-cleaning though.
Well, they'll have pressurized CO2 on hand, they could use some of it to dust off the sloar panels. If the output of the panels drops below a set threshold, simply blow the dust off with a little bit of the propellant (it must take quite a whole lot more of it to lift the 100lbs craft than it would take to clean its wings).
Slashdot Mirror
Sometimes, I get the feeling that scientific research grants could be spent with a little more wisdom.
Because, MRIs are fun, but no one should need that much tech to come to the conclusion that "making something up based of recollections and saying it" takes more brain power than "just saying it".
Also useless, making a study about how gummy bears pick up dirt when dropped on the floor (really, sticky stuff picks up dirt when dropped on floor? amazing, please tell me more).
Digging up corpses from the first american colonies and deducing that the cause of death was scurvy, when the survivors described the signs and symptoms in disgusting gory details, etc.
No, come to think of it, these studies are crucial!
Now if you'll excuse me, I have to draft my proposition to do a study about the effect of gravity around the equator: I will go to tropical countries ans verify that neither I nor my kaluha float off into space...
Those things are used in the movie DUNE
No, they aren't.
They are described in the books, but the SFX tech of 1984 weren't up to the task to include them in the movie (not with their budget and timeframe at least).
In the movie, it's a levitating craft, similar to their floating lamps.
Unless you mean that boring TV-movie, which I didn't tolerate long enough to get to the ornithopters, I only got as far as the first shot of a sandworm before calling it quits.
The main interest in ornithopters today is in Micro Air Vehicles- small (~6 inches) military reconnaissance robots. Incidentally, the aerodynamics of flapping flight at small sizes are very different from those of aircraft. Insects use lots of weird mechanisms, such as the ability to generate high lift with leading edge vortices.
That's actually an entomopter, because it is based on insects, as you mentioned, rather than on birds.
Based on the description of Ann, trying to get into her pants was probably one of the more sane things he did. At least it was predictable.
I think getting rid of the giant flying magnifying glass before they used it to burn them off like ants was quite sane.
Evolution, at its very fundamentals, just plain makes no sense.
Makes perfect sense to me, and to tons of people with fancy titles like "professor" and "doctor".
Just because you don't understand something doesn't mean that thing makes no sense. Maybe you're just stupid, have you given any thought to that possiblity?
And no, there is not infinately more evidence for evolution then for spontaneous genesis.
Yes, there is infinatly more evidence for evolution. Since there IS evidence for evolution, whereas there is only claims for the "the old man in the sky waved his hand and POOF! Horsies and bunnies!".
Then again, if finding the tooth of a now extinct type of pig or chimp is enough to convince someone that we all evolved from monkeys
Yeah, you're igorant all right.
Here's something you seem to have never heard of: The Evolution of Man.
Glad I could help.
Again, the evidence is all around us that evolution has not and is not taking place.
Evidence such as the fossil records showing primitive versions of modern animals?
Or how about all the stages of evolution recorded in their living descendents? Fish, fish with bony flippers that use them to walk around in shallow water, or even mud. Fish with the ability to "swallow" air into their buyancy-controlling bladder, and to extract oxygen from it, living in rivers that dry up and turn into oxygen-deprived pools, etc.
faith in God's Word.
Actually, that is men's word that it's god words. Unless you have been visited by an angel? And then, it's the angel's word.
Sheesh, people who give more credit to some long dead farmer's badly described and haphazardly translated (many times over) dream than to actual evidence...disgusting.
Listen, I understand that it's hard to let go of the stuff you were indoctrinated to believe in as a child, especially since your feelings about your own mortality and that f your loved ones depends on this fairy tale, but opposing the march of science isn't helping anything.
I've never met an evolutionist who didn't think the theory was "obvious".
You've never met me.
And, which theory is that? Darwinism, or Lamarckism?
Yes, bible-thumper, the theory of evolution is older than Darwin.
And it is far from obvious, SO many people don't understand it, mostly the ones rejecting it because of their backward upbringing, but also a lot of people who accept it based on faith in science, rather than understanding it.
Macro-evolution is obviously a myth.
lol!
The religious nutjobs are using the "I know you are, but what am I" tactic now? Hahaha!
Tell me this, if evolution is true then where are all the "half-monkey/half-man" things walking around now?
We killed them all, you idiot.
You heartless bastard. What about the rights of the sperm? Are we just going to sit by idly as millions- billions of sperm are mercilessly slaughtered, as if somehow a single flagellated cell was worth less than an entire human being? We need a constitutional ban on masturbation! Masturbation is MURDER!
Every sperm is sacred.
Every sperm is great.
If a sperm is wasted,
God gets quite irate.
Let the heathen spill theirs
On the dusty ground.
God shall make them pay for
Each sperm that can't be found.
Every sperm is wanted.
Every sperm is good.
Every sperm is needed
In your neighbourhood.
Half of the population (namely woman) have been freed up to contribute to technology and society of this choose.
Meh, we're gonna be outbred by the Amish and the fundamentalist Muslim and other assorted backwards religious groups. They'll outbreed the "more enlightened" people, turning democracy against us with sheer numbers, and they'll end up winning with their old fashioned strategy of "making lots of babies so that it doesn't matter if you loose a couple, in the long run".
Diseases like diabetes, which were once fatal, are now affecting more and more people just because we can treat it.
Diabetes is affecting more and more people because they INGEST TOO MUCH SUGAR.
We evolved an appetite for sugar that is perfectly natural, in a world where sugar is rare. But technology grants us all the sugar we can ever want, and so people get sick from too much of a good thing.
It's not devolution, it's capitalism making you sick by cramming down Coca Cola (tm) brand sugared water down our throats all the time.
Vending machines in highschools are to blame, not insulin shots.
"How will this affect evolution?"
Many things effect evolution... Medical science has been effecting evolution
Ah for crying out loud! You have it correctly written, quoted right above your own text, and you use "effect" TWICE in the first line? Jeez!
The human species has not had real natural selection for a long time because we do not die from genetic problems as often.
And THAT is just ignorant nonsense. Ever hear the words "third world"? Yes, BILLIONS of people without any kind of medical care. BILLIONS!!! They don't even have drinking water that you or I would consider fit for human consumption!
Or do you simply not consider them human?
Stupid people are having more children than smart people, therefore people are going to get stupider. Maybe it's already happened
Well, at least there's some irony to go along with your nonsense.
We do not abandon our sick, injured, or weak... we look after them. And the higher brain functions that we have evolved seem to be serving a purpose of actually _weakening_ our species, rather than strengthening it.
How is it "actually" weakening our species?
I mean, the species that now has over six billion members, going up, how is that weakening it?
The species that is attempting to colonize other freaking planets, how, exactly, is it weakening our species to keep people alive?
If an individual is injured, infected or weakened, HOW THE HELL DOES IT HARM THE SPECIES TO HELP HIM SURVIVE?
Unless you seriously believe in lamarckism, then it strenghtens our species to keep these people alive and reproducing despite what circumstances have done to them.
The sick, malnourished kid with the broken leg that you would let die might grow up to perfect nuclear fusion reactors if we cure, feed and heal him. That is how it actually strenghtens the damn species to keep people alive.
That's what I find insightful... and perhaps it was my bad for not clarifying that point in my own previous post, but it really hadn't occurred to me that it would be necessary.
And that's why you're being called bad names and your intelligence is being questioned: Because you think that irrationnal, illogical, unscientific crap like that is insightfull, and it doesn't even OCCUR to you that others see it differently.
Very insightful, IMO.
Very ignorant, in fact.
No, the same people who claim Darwin was right and that there is no God, also feel some compelling need to try to prove Darwin wrong by protecting those who are not able to survive by natural means.
You do not understand darwinism.
It's not important how you survive, or how you reproduce, the only thing that matters is if you do, or not. Or rather, if your genes do.
Helping others survive does not, in ANY way, "prove Darwin wrong".
This isn't evolution (because the selection is artificial rather than natural)
It is evolution.
It is how wolves evolved to survive the rise of Man (Humans are part of nature too, you know) : By becomming our pets rather than our competitors.
Becomming some small, frail chihuahua might not look like an evolutionary step up from a large, deadly wolf, but the chihuahua is infinatly fitter for life in a human world than a wolf. Some people find them cute, they are small, baby-sized lil' helpless things. They are fed and protected by our unfullfilled nurturing and parenting instincts, instead of being slaughtered for their scaryness like their wolf ancestors.
How many wolves are there left in the world? Hundreds? Thousands? There are probably more dogs in any given city then there are wolves worldwide.
It is the right of every person to stand and stare across the beautiful barrenness and desolation of the Martian surface
Cool, so who's paying for my ticket? It IS my right to go there, after all...
Remember what it was like in high school? All the stupid little games about who was popular?
;-)
Those people only bothered me when they interrupted my reading to ask me why I was reading a book that I wasn't forced to read (for some reason, "because it's good" wasn't an acceptable awnser...go figure).
Now imagine the entire Earth being like that.
I would just go to Amish country with a truckload of replicated canned food and a bible cover to put over my books so the Amish'll leave me alone
You might also run a fusion reactor on the moon
Whoa there Bubba!
We can't even run those on earth yet.
I remember some dude that had created Mars planes on a simulator, using real NASA-supplied data.
His findings: low gravity and ultrathin atmosphere are bitches.
From RTFA, I got the feeling that the plan is for the wings to be mostly controll surfaces, and that the lift would come from the jet of CO2.
Of course, the Gashopper isn't supposed to take off or land
Vertical take off and landing using jets.
I'm sure the good people at NASA's jet propulsion lab are gonna run the numbers better than "some dude" : )
What kind of response times do you get from mars? I mean, could you interactively fly this thing, or would you just kind of point it and it would end up in some random location, in that general direction?
I think there's about a 6 minute delay both ways...
But have you never heard of artificial intelligence, autonomous robots, and autopilot? The thing could be told to go to places selected on topographical maps and fly there autonomously...it's not like there's a lot of air traffic to worry about. There's an annual competition of autonomous flying machines I believe, you might want to google for that.
what's the advantage over, say, one of those tumbleweed style bots.
This one goes where you tell it to go, instead of where the wind takes it.
A really big one might help with moon mining as proposed here. Of course it would literally have to hop as wings are useless on the moon.
The plan is to use stored, compressed atmospheric gasses as propellant for a winged aircraft.
Sit back, and think about this for a second.
Now, tell me again about how this would work on the moon except for the wings.
I have to make an obligatory "global warming" mention, just like everyone else.
Considering that they are going to liquefy the CO2, I think that the fact that Mars is very, very cold is an important factor in their plan.
But I guess you can't say the words "atmospheric CO2" in public without people parroting "global warming". Nevermind the fact that it's extraterrestrial CO2 we're talking about...
The wings holding the solar panels would have to be self-cleaning though.
Well, they'll have pressurized CO2 on hand, they could use some of it to dust off the sloar panels.
If the output of the panels drops below a set threshold, simply blow the dust off with a little bit of the propellant (it must take quite a whole lot more of it to lift the 100lbs craft than it would take to clean its wings).