I've heard this argument quite a bit over the years and while it certainly is true that life can survive in extremely hostile conditions, it does not necessarily stand to reason that life could develop equally well in such conditions.
Colder conditions are necessarily going to have fewer of the chemical reactions that lead to the bottom of the chain that is life. Hotter conditions are likely to have so much entropy that life either never develops initially or is wiped out over and over again.
The whole question, however, may be moot. As Zubrin points out in Entering Space, Earth-originating bacteria has possibly already reached other star systems. So as the unmitigated greatness of Red Dwarf posits, it's possible that life evolves nowhere else in the universe than Earth and things are still pretty interesting.
Absolutely correct. The last idea I want to introduce into discussion is anti-intellectualism, or Luddism. What I'm putting forth is that when we choose what particular projects to pursue, we put too little consideration into the impact of the knowledge we will gain. The United States enjoys a unique position in that it can undertake certain projects that might not take place in other places until much later, or perhaps never. This imposes upon us a responsibility to choose these projects carefully.
The first thing that comes to mind when I hear about this is a germ lab in Baghdad creating a virus that only attacks a Jewish genome. Hopefully that won't be a possibility for much longer.
I will agree that there is room for debate on this issue. A non-nuclear WW III would have been fought with a post-Stalingrad Soviet Union, and could have spared the world 50 years of communist butchery. Of course, when you get into questions of speculative history, you quickly come off the rails: it would have depended on who was president / premier for each side, our disposition with post-war Germany, and certainly the war with Japan wouldn't have ended when it did.
I think, unfortunately, that the price for the existence of nuclear weapons has not yet been wholly accessed. Between the North Korea, Pakistan / India, and the Islamofascists think we will see another use in anger in my lifetime.
Anyhow, we're way off topic here. I stand by original point that man's cleverness often (usually?) outpaces his wisdom.
I think that there's pretty much a consensus that the world would be a better place if nuclear weapons had never existed. A bell, of course, cannot be unrung.
What Bible-thumpers like myself contend is that man's ability to create often outpaces man's wisdom to use. Do you can consider that a controversial argument? I think that the "creation" (not really a creation, more like stripping the engine and transmission out of a car and replacing them) is the first step into creating an unimaginably powerful force. Whether that force will be for good or evil is yet to be seen.
Simply because one can make the case that a force can save lives does not automatically trump any force for evil it may introduce concomitantly. See Edward Teller...
Anyhow, at this point, it's way too late to have this debate. The genie is already out of the bottle, and now we have to ensure that the good guys stay ahead of the bad guys in this race.
Everytime I read that headline...
on
Fanwing Planes?
·
· Score: 2
It comes out "Fawning Planes". As if somehow planes are now desperate to please us.
This device would serve one purpose and one only: PVR. No one willing to shell out 1700 bucks for a media computer is going to settle for non-progressive scan DVD, for the first thing.
Secondly, mp3, photos, etc., are what my computer is for. I already have that capability.
Games? If you have a big screen TV, I guess. I also second the post about the shape and size of this thing; why make it so radically different than every other AV component I have? The old desktop shape is more the proper shape than a cube.
I still don't understand why I can't just shell out $350 for a device that does nothing but record TV. I want a digital VCR, that's all.
Well, according to your definition, we're also the bitch of Britain, France, South Korea...the list goes on. Yes, you're correct; we do choose sides that we will defend, even when they're not any more perfect than we are.
You don't think that our alliance has anything to do with the fact that they are a democracy, or that maybe some people in this country think that the Jews should be allowed a homeland?
No, NK wouldn't use it against us. They might use it against South Korea, which is always the issue. They might also sell nukes to terrorists to prop up an aging communist dictatorship that can't feed its people. Best case scenario, they demand U.N. funds and programs in exchange for dismantling their nuke program. Does this make us South Korea's bitch?
Israel as the biggest threat to peace...I certainly hope I'm misunderstanding you. What I'm hearing is "we could only have world peace if we would sell out the Jews", which is all too familiar a refrain...
You're seriously going to tell me that North Korean / Iraqi Nukes = Israeli nukes? Do you really think that there's a good chance Israel would use its nukes against us?
You and I are stranded on a desert island. You're a doctor, and I'm a carpenter. Without working together, I die in a great shelter of pneumonia, and you die well-treated but still dead of exposure. By trading service for service, we are both better off. Money is simply a proxy for the value, so that we don't have to constantly be converting doctor-hours into carpenter-minutes into orange-grower seasons.
...the business model -- subsidizing manufacturers and relying on subscriptions for profits -- was not viable.
Why not? People view PVR as an applicance, like a DVD player, not as a service, like satellite TV. I don't have one, though I would really like one. The reason? I don't want or need any additional guides, services, or communication with a server. I just want a hard drive that plays back video in real time.
This business model is a dancing bear type of deal...it's amazing that the bear can dance at all, let alone well. Eventually, this stuff will get standardized enough that the price will fall to a profitable level and all of this subscription B.S. will fall to the wayside.
While this sounds good, and makes us feel warm deep inside, the question is:
What is the alternate use of that money?
Perhaps it could be used to feed starving children, or reduce global warming or process sperm whales into reactor fuel rods.
Seriously, though, this stinks to high heaven of a pissed of NASA guy (and he has a right to be pissed off) saying "Screw it! Get Oberg on the line and have him prepare a rebuttal to this crap!"
This program has all the signs of being a typical United Nations money/time rathole. If anyone here has some personal experience with this group, please feel free to correct me.
Go work on some elderly person's house...do meals on wheels, or best of all start a computer job skills training program with your local government.It's been my experience that I can't save the world, but I can make a huge difference in a small people's lives.
IANATA (I am not a tax attorney), but from what I understand, you cannot deduct the value of donated time. If you mow lawns for a living and make $10 an hour, if you mow a lawn for charitable purposes you can only deduct the expense of the gasoline (and perhaps the depreciation on the lawnmower, but de minimus).
As for hard $$$, that's definitely deductible as long as it's a legal charity, as far as I know.
What I mean is a maximum limitation to be eligble for the voucher (perhaps I need to revise my sig), i.e., you cannot qualify for a voucher unless you can demonstrate need.
The purpose of the argument is to demonstrate that the real objection is not about quality of education, it's about the powerful in this country staying powerful by limiting the choices of the less powerful.
Slashdot Mirror
Can anyone here explain exactly why the Space Station takes so much time and effort to maintain? What is it that can't be automated on ISS?
Here is the first test subject...
I've heard this argument quite a bit over the years and while it certainly is true that life can survive in extremely hostile conditions, it does not necessarily stand to reason that life could develop equally well in such conditions.
Colder conditions are necessarily going to have fewer of the chemical reactions that lead to the bottom of the chain that is life. Hotter conditions are likely to have so much entropy that life either never develops initially or is wiped out over and over again.
The whole question, however, may be moot. As Zubrin points out in Entering Space, Earth-originating bacteria has possibly already reached other star systems. So as the unmitigated greatness of Red Dwarf posits, it's possible that life evolves nowhere else in the universe than Earth and things are still pretty interesting.
How about a "doctors are selfishly spending time away from the hospital when they could be saving lives" protest commercial?
Scarcity sucks.
ask that question again to your physician friends, and see what they whip out of their pockets
Is that a dictaphone in your packet or are you just happy to see me?
All it takes is a Google search, my friend...
Israel has actually been accused of the reverse by some nutcases.
Absolutely correct. The last idea I want to introduce into discussion is anti-intellectualism, or Luddism. What I'm putting forth is that when we choose what particular projects to pursue, we put too little consideration into the impact of the knowledge we will gain. The United States enjoys a unique position in that it can undertake certain projects that might not take place in other places until much later, or perhaps never. This imposes upon us a responsibility to choose these projects carefully.
The first thing that comes to mind when I hear about this is a germ lab in Baghdad creating a virus that only attacks a Jewish genome. Hopefully that won't be a possibility for much longer.
I will agree that there is room for debate on this issue. A non-nuclear WW III would have been fought with a post-Stalingrad Soviet Union, and could have spared the world 50 years of communist butchery. Of course, when you get into questions of speculative history, you quickly come off the rails: it would have depended on who was president / premier for each side, our disposition with post-war Germany, and certainly the war with Japan wouldn't have ended when it did.
I think, unfortunately, that the price for the existence of nuclear weapons has not yet been wholly accessed. Between the North Korea, Pakistan / India, and the Islamofascists think we will see another use in anger in my lifetime.
Anyhow, we're way off topic here. I stand by original point that man's cleverness often (usually?) outpaces his wisdom.
I think that there's pretty much a consensus that the world would be a better place if nuclear weapons had never existed. A bell, of course, cannot be unrung.
What Bible-thumpers like myself contend is that man's ability to create often outpaces man's wisdom to use. Do you can consider that a controversial argument? I think that the "creation" (not really a creation, more like stripping the engine and transmission out of a car and replacing them) is the first step into creating an unimaginably powerful force. Whether that force will be for good or evil is yet to be seen.
Simply because one can make the case that a force can save lives does not automatically trump any force for evil it may introduce concomitantly. See Edward Teller...
Anyhow, at this point, it's way too late to have this debate. The genie is already out of the bottle, and now we have to ensure that the good guys stay ahead of the bad guys in this race.
It comes out "Fawning Planes". As if somehow planes are now desperate to please us.
This device would serve one purpose and one only: PVR. No one willing to shell out 1700 bucks for a media computer is going to settle for non-progressive scan DVD, for the first thing.
Secondly, mp3, photos, etc., are what my computer is for. I already have that capability.
Games? If you have a big screen TV, I guess. I also second the post about the shape and size of this thing; why make it so radically different than every other AV component I have? The old desktop shape is more the proper shape than a cube.
I still don't understand why I can't just shell out $350 for a device that does nothing but record TV. I want a digital VCR, that's all.
Well, according to your definition, we're also the bitch of Britain, France, South Korea...the list goes on. Yes, you're correct; we do choose sides that we will defend, even when they're not any more perfect than we are.
You don't think that our alliance has anything to do with the fact that they are a democracy, or that maybe some people in this country think that the Jews should be allowed a homeland?
No, NK wouldn't use it against us. They might use it against South Korea, which is always the issue. They might also sell nukes to terrorists to prop up an aging communist dictatorship that can't feed its people. Best case scenario, they demand U.N. funds and programs in exchange for dismantling their nuke program. Does this make us South Korea's bitch?
Israel as the biggest threat to peace...I certainly hope I'm misunderstanding you. What I'm hearing is "we could only have world peace if we would sell out the Jews", which is all too familiar a refrain...
You're seriously going to tell me that North Korean / Iraqi Nukes = Israeli nukes? Do you really think that there's a good chance Israel would use its nukes against us?
Finally, the key question. For the long answer read The Wealth of Nations: An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes. For the short answer look at a desert island example, so beloved by economists:
You and I are stranded on a desert island. You're a doctor, and I'm a carpenter. Without working together, I die in a great shelter of pneumonia, and you die well-treated but still dead of exposure. By trading service for service, we are both better off. Money is simply a proxy for the value, so that we don't have to constantly be converting doctor-hours into carpenter-minutes into orange-grower seasons.
I kept expecting a green wall to appear behind it, and for it to make an instantaneous 90 degree turn...
...the business model -- subsidizing manufacturers and relying on subscriptions for profits -- was not viable.
Why not? People view PVR as an applicance, like a DVD player, not as a service, like satellite TV. I don't have one, though I would really like one. The reason? I don't want or need any additional guides, services, or communication with a server. I just want a hard drive that plays back video in real time.
This business model is a dancing bear type of deal...it's amazing that the bear can dance at all, let alone well. Eventually, this stuff will get standardized enough that the price will fall to a profitable level and all of this subscription B.S. will fall to the wayside.
While this sounds good, and makes us feel warm deep inside, the question is:
What is the alternate use of that money?
Perhaps it could be used to feed starving children, or reduce global warming or process sperm whales into reactor fuel rods.
Seriously, though, this stinks to high heaven of a pissed of NASA guy (and he has a right to be pissed off) saying "Screw it! Get Oberg on the line and have him prepare a rebuttal to this crap!"
This program has all the signs of being a typical United Nations money/time rathole. If anyone here has some personal experience with this group, please feel free to correct me.
Go work on some elderly person's house...do meals on wheels, or best of all start a computer job skills training program with your local government.It's been my experience that I can't save the world, but I can make a huge difference in a small people's lives.
IANATA (I am not a tax attorney), but from what I understand, you cannot deduct the value of donated time. If you mow lawns for a living and make $10 an hour, if you mow a lawn for charitable purposes you can only deduct the expense of the gasoline (and perhaps the depreciation on the lawnmower, but de minimus).
As for hard $$$, that's definitely deductible as long as it's a legal charity, as far as I know.
What I mean is a maximum limitation to be eligble for the voucher (perhaps I need to revise my sig), i.e., you cannot qualify for a voucher unless you can demonstrate need.
The purpose of the argument is to demonstrate that the real objection is not about quality of education, it's about the powerful in this country staying powerful by limiting the choices of the less powerful.
Mmmm...hypothetical donut...
Or spell existence, for that matter.
Hey really smart guy. Star at really far distance, or planet at closer distance.
Crack a book.
It seems to me that an object of this size could influence the Kuiper belt substantially. Could this be Nemesis?
Eventually, he said, the computer password could be a gesture known only to the user.
I'm a classical pianist, and if I could make my password the first four bars of Rhapsody in Blue, I would feel pretty secure with my computer.