Instead of a fixed north pole, Toutatis' axis of rotation wanders around in two separate cycles of 5.4 and 7.3 Earth-days. Stars seen from any location on the asteroid "would crisscross the sky, never following the same path twice,'' Hudson says.
But I'm pretty sure that any combination of constant rotational velocities about different axes can be considered to be a single constant rotation around some new axis.
So this thing may be spinning around some crazy diagonal axis - but it must still have a constant axis of rotation - and stars seen from any location would appear to go in circles.
If this thing is rotating in the way they describe - with no constant 'poles' - then there must be some continuing source of energy changing it's rotational velocity on a continual basis. It's hard to imagine how gravitation could do that to any significant degree because on the scale of planitary gravitation, all points on the asteroid are almost exactly equidistant from the mass of the star, planet or moon.
So what could possibly make this thing spin like that?!?
Little green men with manouvering thrusters? Outbursts of gas erupting from it's interior? (nah - surely it's too small for that)
There are two ideas here that are seemingly in conflict. Firstly that robots are cheaper and easier to get 'out there'. Secondly that humans need to get off this planet because we need multiple home worlds for reasons of risk-abatement.
I agree with both of those views because they only conflict in the immediate short term.
If you want to get people to Mars in large enough quantities to be meaningful, then you need to do the science on the planet first. If robots can achieve that Mars mission more effectively - then in the short term we should use robots in order to hasten the time when understand enough about the planet to go and live there.
In the very long term, I predict we'll have either machines which are truely as intelligent as us - or a way to put our own thoughts and emotions into robotic bodies (after one generation, it matters very little which of those it is). Either way, sending them to colonise Mars will be just as valid as sending our 'bags of mostly water'. Beings whose thoughts are essentially just software can travel at low cost and at the speed of light with no inconveniences of any kind.
RPN is good because you don't need parentheses to impose ordering on operators.
If you only use your calculator for adding up prices in a store, you're better off without RPN - but if you need to calculate the results of complex expressions, it's clearer and faster than infix notation.
RPN does take a little getting used to - but once you ARE used to it, you won't want to go back.
A true software geek would know that the 16C is the one to have...it's the hex version of the 15C. I just wonder how hard they had to work to get their hex calculator to have '16' as it's model number?!
Then perhaps you might find SCO does get its wish and get bought out by someone.
It's hard to imagine why anyone would want to buy them. Their IP appears to be essentially useless/non-existant (or they'd already have won some lawsuits). They have no products that potential new customers are likely to want. By the time they go down, they won't have any cash on hand. You *certainly* wouldn't be wanting to buy their name/reputation because that just stinks! Their userbase must be plummetting because no geek worthy of the name would want to work with them - so their support contract business is going to be in deep trouble pretty soon. Do they have any actual hard assets?
There is no relationship between the release of graphics libararies and the requirement to purchase video cards.
That's technically true, but useless information. There IS a strong relationship between the release of graphics libraries THAT YOU'D ACTUALLY LIKE TO USE - and the requirement to purchase video cards that are capable of running them.
You aren't going to be able to run GLSL (a crucial part of OpenGL 2.0) at anything like realtime rates without a graphics card that's less than a year old.
It is no longer the case that the graphics cards are chasing the graphics standards. The reality is that one or other of the two remaining 'mainstream' graphics card vendors comes out with a feature - and that feature is immediately added to the two remaining 'mainstream' graphics API's.
If there *is* going to be 3D on cellphones and PDA's then I'd much prefer that they ran a standard API than a non-standard one. Given that there really are only two 3D standards, I'd much rather it was OpenGL than Direct3D.
So - *IF* we want 3D then we want OpenGL.
But do we want 3D in cellphones?
The supposed 'killer app' for 3D on cellphones is the idea of using the positioning detecting capability of the phone - along with network access - to provide an annotated 3D map of your present location. Think of the navigation systems in cars - but in 3D - so you can find the elevator you need to get to a particular office in a big unfamiliar building - or find where you left your car in an multistory parking lot.
Games will obviously use the technology too.
I don't know whether this is important to people or not - but if 3D is happening, it should CERTAINLY be in OpenGL - initially a small subset - gradually improving to a full-blown implementation in every phone as the technology catches up.
Personally, I'd be much happier with a last-generation basic phone that had 10x battery life and didn't lose service quite so easily.
I'm not sure that there are only those four catagories.
Godels theorem pretty much says that there are things that you can NEVER know are true or false...and that in some cases you can PROVE that you can never know them.
This leads to some other states that your knowledge can be in:
CERTAINTY OF UNCERTAINTY: In some cases you can know (by solid mathematical proof) that you can never know some particular thing. For example. we know with absolute certainty - that you can't solve the 'Halting Problem' (to prove whether an arbitary computer program will eventually halt or whether it'll run forever). That's something we KNOW we'll never be able to do no matter how smart we get. That's not the same as KK/KD/DK or DD. It's tempting to lump this in with KD - but in the case of simply being aware that we are ignorant of something, we might take steps to resolve that ignorance. In this case, we know that this is something we cannot EVER know.
CERTAINTY OF POTENTIAL CERTAINTY: If you know the current "largest prime number" - then by definition, you don't know of a larger prime - but you DO know that you could definitely find a larger prime if you really wanted to.
UNCERTAINTY OF POTENTIAL CERTAINTY: Then there are other things that you might not know whether they are knowable or not - such as the proof of some of the classic mathematical problems. Before Fermat's last theorem was proved, nobody was sure whether it could be proved or not.
Some things have to be taken as Axioms. A=A is one of them. All the things you prove that rely on A always being equal to A can be taken as true PROVIDING you accept that axiom. We like to pick axioms that we have a gut feel 'must' be true - but you can do interesting mathematics by denying some of those axioms and see where they take you. The classic geometric case of denying that parallel lines never meet produced a whole range of interesting geometries that don't exactly represent the real world but none-the-less have interesting and useful consequences.
So - when you come across a theorem that you can't prove but are pretty damned certain is true - you COULD choose to simply make it be an axiom. The problem is that the theorems you are subsequently able to come up with are only as reliable as your initial assumption of that axiom.
If your axioms eventually turn out not to match the real world - then all you have is a pile of more or less useless theorems that don't mean anything for the real world.
It's therefore pretty important to stick with a really basic set of axioms to reduce the risk that an axiom might turn out not to be 'true' for the real world and bring down the entire edifice of mathematics along with it.
If we ever found some sense in which A!=A then every single thing we thought we knew about math would be in doubt.
I know that when the tunnels met, one of the two boring machines had to be driven off diagonally into perpetual oblivion in order to let the other one go past because they aparrently do not have a reverse gear.
I thought the buried one was on offer for 1 pound to anyone who could retrieve it.
I guess this one (if it's truly the one in the photo) isn't the one that's buried.
Well, either way, they don't tell you the state of the bodywork or how many miles it'll do to the gallon.:-)
It seems to me that one should keep the actual documents as simple as possible in order to facilitate future conversions to other file formats or print media. If fancier presentation of that raw data is needed then that ought to be something that's automatically created.
Re:Can somebody explain something?
on
Methane on Mars?
·
· Score: 1
(That link is broken because/. broke it - for some arcane reason they stick a space into the link to deliberately break it. Just remove the space between 'mond' and 'ay')
I like your bracketing of that sentence. You could well be right - maybe hydrogen is produced in the reaction between water and rock - and one bunch of critters metabolise that into methane whilst the remainder live off the methane they produce.
Wouldn't the chances be 50-50? That being the case, finding a difference would be pretty conclusive - but not finding a difference would tell you nothing.
When (and I think it's a matter of 'when' - not 'if') we find simple life on Mars, the implications of it depend critically on which of four likely possibilities it is:
1) Life originated only on Earth and travelled to Mars in an ejected rock. This would be just *boring*.
2) Life originated on Mars and travelled to Earth in an ejected rock like the famous Mars meteorite. We are all Martians? Well, there's an interesting thought.
3) Life originated somewhere else and travelled to both Mars and Earth by one of these mechanisms. Panspermia. Life would be very likely to exist throughout the galaxy in every niche you could imagine.
4) Life originated quite differently and separately on Earth and Mars. Woahh! Now *that* is a deep thought.
It seems likely to me that Scientists (being careful people) will start off with assumption (1). It would be hard to tell the difference between (1)/(2) and (3) without going off to mine some comets that have never been close enough to Earth or Mars to pick up a stray life-bearing meteorite. It would be hard to imagine any test that would distinguish between (1) and (2).
So it'll come down to (1)/(2)/(3) versus (4). If it's (4), I'd expect us to be able to see that pretty easily - eg: Totally different fundamental mechanisms for just about everything.
Even at 10 parts per billion, that's a lot of Methane to have been made by a handful of escaped earthly bacteria. In the extreme conditions of Mars, even if some hardy Earth extremophile bacteria had made it there, it would take an immense amount of time for them to multiply enough to make that much Methane.
I don't think that's in the realms of possibility.
Can somebody explain something?
on
Methane on Mars?
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
The article says that methane in the atmosphere would decay over a few hundred years - so something is continuously renewing it...and that something is very likely to be life. Furthermore, we know (I think) that these hypothetical Martian beasts would have to be living underground in some very salty water.
OK - I can buy that - but I've been reading a bit about this subject - and I happened on this article:
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/mystery_mo nd ay_040308.html...which is talking about weird bacteria on Earth and how they manage to survive deep underground in salty water:
"On Earth, organisms do thrive deep underground -- hundreds of feet below -- without a single ray of sunshine. They live off chemical energy instead, like methane or hydrogen produced in chemical interactions between water and rock."
Wooaaahhh. Hold ON a minute. "methane... produced in chemical interactions between water and rock" ???
If methane can be produced between rock and water (eg: of the salty kind presumed to be found underground on Mars) then isn't the signature of 10 parts per billion of Methane in the atmosphere of Mars merely a further indication of underground water?
That's not what the 'experts' are saying though. Clearly I'm missing something - but I don't understand what.
The problem is that there isn't a widely agreed standard for size when talking about planets versus 'debris'. Planet means 'wanderer' - and in ancient times was used to refer to a point of light in the sky that didn't progress around like a star would. That's the only valid definition for the word.
But really - does it matter?
Scientists (if they need a clear catagorisation) can easily come up with a clean naming scheme. Like the stellar classes or something. We have N'th magnitude stars, G-type stars, etc.
IMHO, the word 'planet' should be reserved for the planets out to Pluto/Neptune - and leave it at that - no matter the size. Not having incorrect textbooks in about 1e6 schools is a worth-while reason not to change the meaning or add new planets.
I still have my Linux-based 'Agenda' PDA. It's pretty good - although the handwriting recognition is kinda iffy and it's a bit short of CPU power.
It's quite surreal to be able to pop up an Xterm on this tiny box.
It's nice to be able to use NFS via PPP to copy files back and forth to my PC...having that level of general 'stuff' available is a powerful reason for wanting Linux in a PDA.
Last I checked mate, the Brits weren't much more loved than the US. Mighty fine glass house.
I'm not sure to what extent that's true. But to the extent that it is - the fact that the British government decided (largely against the wishes of the people) to support the US in the gulf is presumably the cause of that.
The British (as individual people) do indeed often hate the French (as a nation). Well, perhaps *hate* is a strong word. "...are irritated by..." would perhaps be a better description.
However, any random individual Brit will get on just fine with any typical French person. I'm a Brit - my wife is French - so I'm personal testament to that fact. (Of course, my mother-in-law and I don't get on. We just don't seem to speak the same language!:-)
The things about the French (nation) that irritate British (people) are hard to pin down. Arrogance (or the perception of it) is some of it...I really don't know. France (the geographical region) is wonderful, so are individual French people.
We're probably just jealous because they can cook and make kick-ass Wine...things we Brit's are not exactly renowned for! We probably havn't forgiven them for that 'Napoleon' guy - he *really* pissed us off.
That's certainly true - but the people who are prepared to dedicate the time to seek out other opinions on these matters are in a TINY minority. They really don't make enough of a dent to change the way elections are run. Even given the apallingly poor turnout at US elections, there just aren't enough informed people.
Try convincing your children as to why they should care about pollution, American land-mines or why US military leaders should be held to the same international standards as the rest of the world.
My son is aware of those issues - and I think he cares - but that's because he's well informed. If I simply let him watch the TV channels he wants to - not listen to the BBC world service - or read international news on the web - then he'd fall into exactly the catagory you describe.
One might hope that the US educational system would teach children critical thinking skills and the love of looking deeper into the news. However, schools (at least here in Texas) teach strictly to the curriculum - which is designed to get children through stanadarized testing.
Big business likes standardised testing because it makes for nice interchangable workers with a standardized level of knowledge...so this may not be an accident.
The argument that just because the US helped out in the World Wars, then everyone else has to be OK with that it's doing now is *completely* vacuuous.
If past history counts - then the rest of the world can throw slavery into the debate.
If only helping out in world wars counts then I'd point out Britain and Germany's role in the Napoleonic wars...or Italy (then Rome) in the wars against Ghengis Khan.
Anti-Americanism goes way back, for a lot of different reasons, many of them deserved, many not.
It does - but everyone was very positive about the USA at the time of the first Gulf War. The good will from those times has not just evaporated, it's reversed.
I don't think the average Joe on the streets of Europe knows anything about American imperialism in the 1880's.
I live in America, and I'm not sure the rest of the world believes me when I say that the American people really don't want to run your country or own the world.
I certainly believe that. Most Americans are EXTREMELY ill-informed about world events. (I recall an incident at a Sonic's drive-through: "I love your accent! Where are you from?" - "I'm from England" - "Oh...So what language do you speak there?"...OK - that was a cheap shot!)
But the US media doesn't like to impart uncomfortable images of America in the world. Making people uncomfortable makes them tune out - and that sells less soap powder.
It's really difficult for Americans to find out about the real issues that the rest of the world cares about. Heck - most of them think that everyone except the Arabs and the French still love America!
The worst I can accuse us of is being willing to take advantage of less-developed countries, to use cheap jobs and nonexistent worker and environmental regulations to our advantage.
I don't think that's it either. I'm sure British, French and German companies do much the same kinds of exploitation.
But I believe that Americans, as individuals, had no interest in stealing Iraqi oil, even if the President did.
Yep. I agree.
I don't believe that Americans as individuals are responsible for ANY of the problems that the rest of the world has with America. I think that most thinking people outside of the USA don't hate Americans as individuals.
Big business and worse government are the things people can't stand. What I think Europeans don't generally understand is just how ill-informed people here in the USA are about that.
What's *so* distressing is that there isn't a way out of that. Once people only see events through the lens of the media (which is owned by big business) - they vote on the basis of what they see and are influenced by advertising campaigns that are paid for by...guess what...big business again. This makes it VERY hard for America to get the government that it truly needs.
Take something like Global Warming. The US media broadcasts very mixed messages about this "It's not proven", "Fixing pollution will wreck the economy" - that kind of bullshit. The government is in the pockets of people who are quite anxious to sell more oil - and honking great SUV's - so THEY aren't going to fix it.
The citizens who COULD fix it - either by buying smaller cars - or by voting out government who won't impose the necessary car efficiency laws - don't even believe there is a problem! I simply cannot believe how almost every American I talk to denies that Global Warming is even *real*!!! It's not because they are stupid or uncaring - it's because they are being cut off from the truth.
The rest of the civilised world isn't (yet) under such constraints - so most Europeans are driving more appropriate vehicles and voting in governments who want to do something about the problem. When they look to America - they just can't believe how people here could be so STUPID as to not want to do something about it.
If it were just one issue - this would be overwhelmed by the fact that Americans are actually a pretty reasonable, nice people with good intentions. But it's not just one issue. Scarcely a day goes by without something like the USA being the *ONLY* country in the entire world who refused to sign the anti-land-mine treaty! Ack!
Slashdot Mirror
Instead of a fixed north pole, Toutatis' axis of rotation wanders around in two separate cycles of 5.4 and 7.3 Earth-days. Stars seen from any location on the asteroid "would crisscross the sky, never following the same path twice,'' Hudson says.
But I'm pretty sure that any combination of constant rotational velocities about different axes can be considered to be a single constant rotation around some new axis.
So this thing may be spinning around some crazy diagonal axis - but it must still have a constant axis of rotation - and stars seen from any location would appear to go in circles.
If this thing is rotating in the way they describe - with no constant 'poles' - then there must be some continuing source of energy changing it's rotational velocity on a continual basis. It's hard to imagine how gravitation could do that to any significant degree because on the scale of planitary gravitation, all points on the asteroid are almost exactly equidistant from the mass of the star, planet or moon.
So what could possibly make this thing spin like that?!?
Little green men with manouvering thrusters? Outbursts of gas erupting from it's interior? (nah - surely it's too small for that)
There is something very fishy about this.
There are two ideas here that are seemingly in conflict. Firstly that robots are cheaper and easier to get 'out there'. Secondly that humans need to get off this planet because we need multiple home worlds for reasons of risk-abatement.
I agree with both of those views because they only conflict in the immediate short term.
If you want to get people to Mars in large enough quantities to be meaningful, then you need to do the science on the planet first. If robots can achieve that Mars mission more effectively - then in the short term we should use robots in order to hasten the time when understand enough about the planet to go and live there.
In the very long term, I predict we'll have either machines which are truely as intelligent as us - or a way to put our own thoughts and emotions into robotic bodies (after one generation, it matters very little which of those it is). Either way, sending them to colonise Mars will be just as valid as sending our 'bags of mostly water'. Beings whose thoughts are essentially just software can travel at low cost and at the speed of light with no inconveniences of any kind.
RPN is good because you don't need parentheses to impose ordering on operators.
If you only use your calculator for adding up prices in a store, you're better off without RPN - but if you need to calculate the results of complex expressions, it's clearer and faster than infix notation.
RPN does take a little getting used to - but once you ARE used to it, you won't want to go back.
This one just might join my trusty 15C
A true software geek would know that the 16C is the one to have...it's the hex version of the 15C. I just wonder how hard they had to work to get their hex calculator to have '16' as it's model number?!
Then perhaps you might find SCO does get its wish and get bought out by someone.
It's hard to imagine why anyone would want to buy them. Their IP appears to be essentially useless/non-existant (or they'd already have won some lawsuits). They have no products that potential new customers are likely to want. By the time they go down, they won't have any cash on hand. You *certainly* wouldn't be wanting to buy their name/reputation because that just stinks! Their userbase must be plummetting because no geek worthy of the name would want to work with them - so their support contract business is going to be in deep trouble pretty soon. Do they have any actual hard assets?
That's technically true, but useless information. There IS a strong relationship between the release of graphics libraries THAT YOU'D ACTUALLY LIKE TO USE - and the requirement to purchase video cards that are capable of running them.
You aren't going to be able to run GLSL (a crucial part of OpenGL 2.0) at anything like realtime rates without a graphics card that's less than a year old.
It is no longer the case that the graphics cards are chasing the graphics standards. The reality is that one or other of the two remaining 'mainstream' graphics card vendors comes out with a feature - and that feature is immediately added to the two remaining 'mainstream' graphics API's.
If there *is* going to be 3D on cellphones and PDA's then I'd much prefer that they ran a standard API than a non-standard one. Given that there really are only two 3D standards, I'd much rather it was OpenGL than Direct3D.
So - *IF* we want 3D then we want OpenGL.
But do we want 3D in cellphones?
The supposed 'killer app' for 3D on cellphones is the idea of using the positioning detecting capability of the phone - along with network access - to provide an annotated 3D map of your present location. Think of the navigation systems in cars - but in 3D - so you can find the elevator you need to get to a particular office in a big unfamiliar building - or find where you left your car in an multistory parking lot.
Games will obviously use the technology too.
I don't know whether this is important to people or not - but if 3D is happening, it should CERTAINLY be in OpenGL - initially a small subset - gradually improving to a full-blown implementation in every phone as the technology catches up.
Personally, I'd be much happier with a last-generation basic phone that had 10x battery life and didn't lose service quite so easily.
I'm not sure that there are only those four catagories.
Godels theorem pretty much says that there are things that you can NEVER know are true or false...and that in some cases you can PROVE that you can never know them.
This leads to some other states that your knowledge can be in:
CERTAINTY OF UNCERTAINTY: In some cases you can know (by solid mathematical proof) that you can never know some particular thing. For example. we know with absolute certainty - that you can't solve the 'Halting Problem' (to prove whether an arbitary computer program will eventually halt or whether it'll run forever). That's something we KNOW we'll never be able to do no matter how smart we get. That's not the same as KK/KD/DK or DD. It's tempting to lump this in with KD - but in the case of simply being aware that we are ignorant of something, we might take steps to resolve that ignorance. In this case, we know that this is something we cannot EVER know.
CERTAINTY OF POTENTIAL CERTAINTY: If you know the current "largest prime number" - then by definition, you don't know of a larger prime - but you DO know that you could definitely find a larger prime if you really wanted to.
UNCERTAINTY OF POTENTIAL CERTAINTY: Then there are other things that you might not know whether they are knowable or not - such as the proof of some of the classic mathematical problems. Before Fermat's last theorem was proved, nobody was sure whether it could be proved or not.
Some things have to be taken as Axioms. A=A is one of them. All the things you prove that rely on A always being equal to A can be taken as true PROVIDING you accept that axiom. We like to pick axioms that we have a gut feel 'must' be true - but you can do interesting mathematics by denying some of those axioms and see where they take you. The classic geometric case of denying that parallel lines never meet produced a whole range of interesting geometries that don't exactly represent the real world but none-the-less have interesting and useful consequences.
So - when you come across a theorem that you can't prove but are pretty damned certain is true - you COULD choose to simply make it be an axiom. The problem is that the theorems you are subsequently able to come up with are only as reliable as your initial assumption of that axiom.
If your axioms eventually turn out not to match the real world - then all you have is a pile of more or less useless theorems that don't mean anything for the real world.
It's therefore pretty important to stick with a really basic set of axioms to reduce the risk that an axiom might turn out not to be 'true' for the real world and bring down the entire edifice of mathematics along with it.
If we ever found some sense in which A!=A then every single thing we thought we knew about math would be in doubt.
I know that when the tunnels met, one of the two boring machines had to be
:-)
driven off diagonally into perpetual oblivion in order to let the other one go past because they aparrently do not have a reverse gear.
I thought the buried one was on offer for 1 pound to anyone who could retrieve it.
I guess this one (if it's truly the one in the photo) isn't the one that's buried.
Well, either way, they don't tell you the state of the bodywork or how many miles it'll do to the gallon.
It's not even Duplo - it's some kind of cheesey clone.
It seems to me that one should keep the actual documents as simple as possible in order to facilitate future conversions to other file formats or print media. If fancier presentation of that raw data is needed then that ought to be something that's automatically created.
(That link is broken because /. broke it - for some arcane reason they stick a space into the link to deliberately break it. Just remove the space between 'mond' and 'ay')
I like your bracketing of that sentence. You could well be right - maybe hydrogen is produced in the reaction between water and rock - and one bunch of critters metabolise that into methane whilst the remainder live off the methane they produce.
Wouldn't the chances be 50-50? That being the case, finding a difference would be pretty conclusive - but not finding a difference would tell you nothing.
When (and I think it's a matter of 'when' - not 'if') we find simple life on Mars, the implications of it depend critically on which of four likely possibilities it is:
1) Life originated only on Earth and travelled to Mars in an ejected rock. This would be just *boring*.
2) Life originated on Mars and travelled to Earth in an ejected rock like the famous Mars meteorite. We are all Martians? Well, there's an interesting thought.
3) Life originated somewhere else and travelled to both Mars and Earth by one of these mechanisms. Panspermia. Life would be very likely to exist throughout the galaxy in every niche you could imagine.
4) Life originated quite differently and separately on Earth and Mars. Woahh! Now *that* is a deep thought.
It seems likely to me that Scientists (being careful people) will start off with assumption (1). It would be hard to tell the difference between (1)/(2) and (3) without going off to mine some comets that have never been close enough to Earth or Mars to pick up a stray life-bearing meteorite. It would be hard to imagine any test that would distinguish between (1) and (2).
So it'll come down to (1)/(2)/(3) versus (4). If it's (4), I'd expect us to be able to see that pretty easily - eg: Totally different fundamental mechanisms for just about everything.
Even at 10 parts per billion, that's a lot of Methane to have been made by a handful of escaped earthly bacteria. In the extreme conditions of Mars, even if some hardy Earth extremophile bacteria had made it there, it would take an immense amount of time for them to multiply enough to make that much Methane.
I don't think that's in the realms of possibility.
The article says that methane in the atmosphere would decay over a few hundred years - so something is continuously renewing it...and that something is very likely to be life. Furthermore, we know (I think) that these hypothetical Martian beasts would have to be living underground in some very salty water.
o nd ay_040308.html ...which is talking about weird bacteria on Earth and how they manage to survive deep underground in salty water:
... produced in chemical interactions between water and rock" ???
OK - I can buy that - but I've been reading a bit about this subject - and I happened on this article:
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/mystery_m
"On Earth, organisms do thrive deep underground -- hundreds of feet below -- without a single ray of sunshine. They live off chemical energy instead, like methane or hydrogen produced in chemical interactions between water and rock."
Wooaaahhh. Hold ON a minute. "methane
If methane can be produced between rock and water (eg: of the salty kind presumed to be found underground on Mars) then isn't the signature of 10 parts per billion of Methane in the atmosphere of Mars merely a further indication of underground water?
That's not what the 'experts' are saying though. Clearly I'm missing something - but I don't understand what.
Help?
The problem is that there isn't a widely agreed standard for size when talking about planets versus 'debris'. Planet means 'wanderer' - and in ancient times was used to refer to a point of light in the sky that didn't progress around like a star would. That's the only valid definition for the word.
But really - does it matter?
Scientists (if they need a clear catagorisation) can easily come up with a clean naming scheme. Like the stellar classes or something. We have N'th magnitude stars, G-type stars, etc.
IMHO, the word 'planet' should be reserved for the planets out to Pluto/Neptune - and leave it at that - no matter the size. Not having incorrect textbooks in about 1e6 schools is a worth-while reason not to change the meaning or add new planets.
I still have my Linux-based 'Agenda' PDA. It's pretty good - although the handwriting recognition is kinda iffy and it's a bit short of CPU power.
It's quite surreal to be able to pop up an Xterm on this tiny box.
It's nice to be able to use NFS via PPP to copy files back and forth to my PC...having that level of general 'stuff' available is a powerful reason for wanting Linux in a PDA.
Last I checked mate, the Brits weren't much more loved than the US. Mighty fine glass house. I'm not sure to what extent that's true. But to the extent that it is - the fact that the British government decided (largely against the wishes of the people) to support the US in the gulf is presumably the cause of that.
The British (as individual people) do indeed often hate the French (as a nation). Well, perhaps *hate* is a strong word. "...are irritated by..." would perhaps be a better description.
:-)
However, any random individual Brit will get on just fine with any typical French person. I'm a Brit - my wife is French - so I'm personal testament to that fact.
(Of course, my mother-in-law and I don't get on. We just don't seem to speak the same language!
The things about the French (nation) that irritate British (people) are hard to pin down. Arrogance (or the perception of it) is some of it...I really don't know. France (the geographical region) is wonderful, so are individual French people.
We're probably just jealous because they can cook and make kick-ass Wine...things we Brit's are not exactly renowned for! We probably havn't forgiven them for that 'Napoleon' guy - he *really* pissed us off.
That's certainly true - but the people who are prepared to dedicate the time to seek out other opinions on these matters are in a TINY minority. They really don't make enough of a dent to change the way elections are run. Even given the apallingly poor turnout at US elections, there just aren't enough informed people.
Try convincing your children as to why they should care about pollution, American land-mines or why US military leaders should be held to the same international standards as the rest of the world.
My son is aware of those issues - and I think he cares - but that's because he's well informed. If I simply let him watch the TV channels he wants to - not listen to the BBC world service - or read international news on the web - then he'd fall into exactly the catagory you describe.
One might hope that the US educational system would teach children critical thinking skills and the love of looking deeper into the news. However, schools (at least here in Texas) teach strictly to the curriculum - which is designed to get children through stanadarized testing.
Big business likes standardised testing because it makes for nice interchangable workers with a standardized level of knowledge...so this may not be an accident.
The argument that just because the US helped out in the World Wars, then everyone else has to be OK with that it's doing now is *completely* vacuuous.
If past history counts - then the rest of the world can throw slavery into the debate.
If only helping out in world wars counts then I'd point out Britain and Germany's role in the Napoleonic wars...or Italy (then Rome) in the wars against Ghengis Khan.
What matters is what the US is doing NOW.
Hmmm - no terms beginning with u,v,w,x,y or z - you need a more comprehensive thesaurus :-) ...unwise, vacuous, witless, xenophobe, yahoo...
Damn! I need a better thesaurus too!
Oh - and he's one letter short of a complete character set too!
Anti-Americanism goes way back, for a lot of different reasons, many of them deserved, many not.
It does - but everyone was very positive about the USA at the time of the first Gulf War. The good will from those times has not just evaporated, it's reversed.
I don't think the average Joe on the streets of Europe knows anything about
American imperialism in the 1880's.
I live in America, and I'm not sure the rest of the world believes me when I say that the American people really don't want to run your country or own the world.
I certainly believe that. Most Americans are EXTREMELY ill-informed about world events. (I recall an incident at a Sonic's drive-through: "I love your accent! Where are you from?" - "I'm from England" - "Oh...So what language do you speak there?"...OK - that was a cheap shot!)
But the US media doesn't like to impart uncomfortable images of America in the world. Making people uncomfortable makes them tune out - and that sells less soap powder.
It's really difficult for Americans to find out about the real issues that the rest of the world cares about. Heck - most of them think that everyone except the Arabs and the French still love America!
The worst I can accuse us of is being willing to take advantage of less-developed countries, to use cheap jobs and nonexistent worker and environmental regulations to our advantage.
I don't think that's it either. I'm sure British, French and German companies do much the same kinds of exploitation.
But I believe that Americans, as individuals, had no interest in stealing Iraqi oil, even if the President did.
Yep. I agree.
I don't believe that Americans as individuals are responsible for ANY of the problems that the rest of the world has with America. I think that most thinking people outside of the USA don't hate Americans as individuals.
Big business and worse government are the things people can't stand. What I think Europeans don't generally understand is just how ill-informed people here in the USA are about that.
What's *so* distressing is that there isn't a way out of that. Once people only see events through the lens of the media (which is owned by big business) - they vote on the basis of what they see and are influenced by advertising campaigns that are paid for by...guess what...big business again. This makes it VERY hard for America to get the government that it truly needs.
Take something like Global Warming. The US media broadcasts very mixed messages about this "It's not proven", "Fixing pollution will wreck the economy" - that kind of bullshit. The government is in the pockets of people who are quite anxious to sell more oil - and honking great SUV's - so THEY aren't going to fix it.
The citizens who COULD fix it - either by buying smaller cars - or by voting out government who won't impose the necessary car efficiency laws - don't even believe there is a problem! I simply cannot believe how almost every American I talk to denies that Global Warming is even *real*!!! It's not because they are stupid or uncaring - it's because they are being cut off from the truth.
The rest of the civilised world isn't (yet) under such constraints - so most Europeans are driving more appropriate vehicles and voting in governments who want to do something about the problem. When they look to America - they just can't believe how people here could be so STUPID as to not want to do something about it.
If it were just one issue - this would be overwhelmed by the fact that Americans are actually a pretty reasonable, nice people with good intentions. But it's not just one issue. Scarcely a day goes by without something like the USA being the *ONLY* country in the entire world who refused to sign the anti-land-mine treaty! Ack!