From the Notebooks of Lazarus Long by Robert Heinlein:
When a place gets crowded enough to require id's, social collapse is not far away. It is time to go elsewhere. The best thing about space travel is that it made it possible to go elsewhere.
Of course. Most women who are on hormone replacement therapy are unaware that Premarin(r) is an abbreviation of Pregnant mares' urine, i.e., the hormone is extracted from horse pee.
According to
Jay Manifold, since the rock spends most of its time between Earth and Mercury, it must be composed of something refractory (i.e., it ain't ice).
The back of Jay's envelope says that assuming it is a perfect sphere with twice the density of water, and assuming a velocity relative to Earth of 18 km/s (7 km/s + acceleration due to Earth's gravity), if you apply V = 4Pr^3/3 and KE = 1/2mv^2 the result is 4.6e15 joules. At a rate of 1 kiloton of TNT equals 4.2 MJ, this works out to about 1.1 megatons.
Yes, this would not cause widespread damage, but nobody would enjoy being within a few miles of the impact point.
Well, my state of Maryland thinks that it is serious enough situation to warrant ordering a review, to decide if it will go ahead with purchasing $55.6 million dollars worth of these machine or cancel the order
All your questions can be answered with the Columbia Loss FAQ. (scroll down to section "VI: Preventative Measures and Rescue Attempts")
Briefly:
They did not have enough oxygen to last for the weeks it would have taken to prep and launch another shuttle.
Even if they could have lasted, there were only two space-rated spacesuits aboard. And STS-107 had no airlock.
STS-107 had nowhere near enough deltaV to be able to alter their orbit enough to dock with the ISS. This is because the ISS is in a weird inclined orbit to allow Russian supply fights to be able to make it to the station.
This wierd orbit is also the reason that no Russian supply fight could have made it to STS-107
All this was argued to death on sci.space.shuttle months ago. The bottom line was that the shuttle was doomed the moment the heat shield was damaged.
The technique used to create a new base reminds me of an MIT trick reported in Steven Levy's book HACKERS.
One fine midnight, the hackers snuck into the comptuter room where the first transistor based computer resided. A few minutes with a soldering iron and the computer had a new opcode.
The DNA scientists were not changing the DNA code so much as they were changing the cell's compiler. The DNA didn't change, only one of its codons were now interpreted as a different amino acid.
Re:FOREVER WAR vs. STARSHIP TROOPERS
on
The Forever War
·
· Score: 1
In my simplistic way, I gave a copy of both books to my nephew, and explained it to him thusly:
STARSHIP TROOPERS: tending towards "right wing", pre-Vietnam, pro-military pro-war spin.
THE FOREVER WAR: tending towards "left wing", post-Vietnam, anti-military anti-war spin.
Now all I have to do is get him a copy of Steakly's ARMOR for something in the middle.
And I'm pretty sure will be a cashless society when teleportation arrives.
If it is not cashless when teleportation arrives, it will be afterwards.
In the classic SF novel VENUS EQUILATERAL by George O. Smith, the heros invent a matter transmitter.
Shortly afterwards they realize that it is also a matter duplicator, making perfect duplicate of whatever you put in the hopper. What's worse, they can make "recordings" of objects, and play them back to make duplicates.
Some clown starts selling matter duplicators to the general public, and the economy of the entire planet collapses. What good is a mink coat or a Lamburgini if everybody and his brother has one?
Not to mention the possibilites of counterfeiting money.
By the time things have sorted themselves out, money is obsolete and the economy is based on personal services (the doctor removes your appendix and you pay him back by mowing his lawn for a few years)
Our heros do help out things by creating a material that cannot be duplicated, for use as a material to write checks on, and so forth. (It is not so much that it cannot be duplicated so much that it explodes when the matter duplicator scans it)
I read something similar to this a long time ago, how tiny algorithms in individual simulated birds composing a simulated flock would automagically produce large scale flock behavior (the same behavior observed in real life flocks of birds).
Naturally the facination is with the big dividends paid to a tiny initial investment in algorithm.
Basic ant food gathering behavior exibits finely tuned feedback and efficency with similar tiny algorithms.
A scout ant searches for food. When it finds it, algorithm #1 kicks in:
Grab as much food as you can carry.
Run to the nest.
If and only if there is food left at the site, leave a scent trail as you go to the nest.
Ants at the nest who are unassigned to task, upon smelling the scent execute algorithm #2, which is basically "follow the scent trail".
As more ants grab food and leave scent trails to the nest, the intensity of the scent induces more and more ants to execute algorithm #2.
When the food source is exhausted, no more scent is deposited on the trail, and the scent trail dissapates.
A modest proposal
on
More WTC News
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
A friend of mine had an interesting proposal to deal with the problem. I'll turn this over to Mr. Burnsides:
I am firmly of the opinion that we will want and need every willing back, every strong hand in friendship, every erg and dyne of support we can get in this conflict.
This is not a conflict that calls for a measured, careful response.
This is a conflict that calls for an overwhelming, careful response, and a continued commitment.
The enemy has billed this as a war of cultural annihilation. Either they remove us, or we will remove them.
They have defined the goals of the conflict. The enemy is just as vulnerable to these objectives as we are. More so, in fact. The enemy builds his force on ignorance, on the Big Lie.
The enemy's greatest fear is that the prosperity of the West will seduce the generation after this one. That the memories of old blood feuds will fade when presented with McDonald's and computers and cheap cell phones. Every call they make to recruit is against the decadence of the West destroying their way of life.
This should be our stated objective. To destroy their way of life. Never forget this; this is their stated objective against us.
After we punish the enemy with bombs, with bullets, we must salt the soil that the twisted tree of intolerance and fanaticism takes root in. We must change the hearts and minds of the young.
We salt them with small computers. With internet access. With a telephone in every village. With juvenile novels and encyclopedias translated into Arabic. With teachers who speak their language, and who teach them to use these tools to answer questions for themselves. Yes, some of those teachers will be killed. They are soldiers in this war as much as anyone who puts on a beret or takes up a gun, and we will make martyrs of them for the world.
No tyrant can long survive with an informed and educated populace.
The organizations they declaim as the mouthpieces of the US shall be USED as the mouthpieces of the west. We tell their children that there is a life beyond substistence farming and blood feuds. We tell their wives and daughters that there is a life where they are valued as individuals and people in their own right, not as mutilated chattel.
We give them the tools of bilateral communication, rather than unilateral indoctrination. We give them the internet. We declare a great work, of making sure that every corner of this globe has access to fast internet access. Not just the US. Not just Europe. The world.
They will see pornography sites. They will also see sites discussing engineering, and simple improvements to agriculture. Some may even see this mailing list. The curiousity of children will be piqued, and their questions answered. With each question asked, and each answer given, we slowly wean them away from the culture of intolerance.
They'll be able to ask questions without censure or censoring, and get answers they might not otherwise have.
I would sooner carpet bomb with Gameboys and Pokemon, and an Arabic translation of Monopoly or Delta V, than FAEs and nuclear explosives. The adults are beyond our reach. The young MUST be reached so that 20 years from now, the thought of piloting a captured airliner into an office building full of innocent bystanders meets with truly universal horror.
I fear, in the haste for vengeance, that the nature of this conflict will be forgotten. Make no bones about it -- this is a culture war. It can only end with a declaration on the order of Cartago Delendo Est.
We cannot win this war with bombs or bullets, although we can accelerate its prosecution by those means. We can only win this war through a generational conflict; we must win the war in the hearts and minds of the children growing up in the Middle East now.
Winning that longer war will be costlier and less immediately gratifying than cluster bombs and Fuel Air Explosives, and "killing the bastards and everyone that helped them.", but it is a war that all of us can participate in.
If you are an author, or someone who creates media, contact your publisher about translating your works into Arabic. Someone in the DoD is in charge of outbound propaganda; we should find who that person is, and give them the munitions to win this war.
Bin-Ladin has declared this a culture war.
Let's show him what a culture war TRULY looks like. Let's send in Shakespeare. And Heinlein. And Harlequin Romances, Pokemon and The Simpsons.
Slashdot Mirror
From the Notebooks of Lazarus Long by Robert Heinlein:
When a place gets crowded enough to require id's, social collapse is not far away. It is time to go elsewhere. The best thing about space travel is that it made it possible to go elsewhere.
SETI researchers favor those frequencies because they lie in a metaphorical "water hole" .
Ah, but on the topic of man in space, Robert Heinlein said:
"We'll be there to stay someday. 'We' will most certainly be humans, but they won't necessarily be speaking English."
Of course. Most women who are on hormone replacement therapy are unaware that Premarin(r) is an abbreviation of Pregnant mares' urine, i.e., the hormone is extracted from horse pee.
According to Jay Manifold, since the rock spends most of its time between Earth and Mercury, it must be composed of something refractory (i.e., it ain't ice).
The back of Jay's envelope says that assuming it is a perfect sphere with twice the density of water, and assuming a velocity relative to Earth of 18 km/s (7 km/s + acceleration due to Earth's gravity), if you apply V = 4Pr^3/3 and KE = 1/2mv^2 the result is 4.6e15 joules. At a rate of 1 kiloton of TNT equals 4.2 MJ, this works out to about 1.1 megatons.
Yes, this would not cause widespread damage, but nobody would enjoy being within a few miles of the impact point.
Well, my state of Maryland thinks that it is serious enough situation to warrant ordering a review, to decide if it will go ahead with purchasing $55.6 million dollars worth of these machine or cancel the order
Voting machine review ordered
All your questions can be answered with the Columbia Loss FAQ. (scroll down to section "VI: Preventative Measures and Rescue Attempts")
Briefly:
They did not have enough oxygen to last for the weeks it would have taken to prep and launch another shuttle.
Even if they could have lasted, there were only two space-rated spacesuits aboard. And STS-107 had no airlock.
STS-107 had nowhere near enough deltaV to be able to alter their orbit enough to dock with the ISS. This is because the ISS is in a weird inclined orbit to allow Russian supply fights to be able to make it to the station.
This wierd orbit is also the reason that no Russian supply fight could have made it to STS-107
All this was argued to death on sci.space.shuttle months ago. The bottom line was that the shuttle was doomed the moment the heat shield was damaged.
http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,54332,00 .html
The technique used to create a new base reminds me
of an MIT trick reported in Steven Levy's book HACKERS.
One fine midnight, the hackers snuck into the comptuter room where the first transistor based
computer resided. A few minutes with a soldering iron and the computer had a new opcode.
The DNA scientists were not changing the DNA code so much as they were changing the cell's compiler . The DNA didn't change, only one of its codons were now interpreted as a different amino acid.
In my simplistic way, I gave a copy of both books to my nephew, and explained it to him thusly:
STARSHIP TROOPERS: tending towards "right wing", pre-Vietnam, pro-military pro-war spin.
THE FOREVER WAR: tending towards "left wing", post-Vietnam, anti-military anti-war spin.
Now all I have to do is get him a copy of Steakly's ARMOR for something in the middle.
There are more fonts here, here, and here
There is also a Windows utility to aid in writing in Elvish: Tengwar Scribe.
In the classic SF novel VENUS EQUILATERAL by George O. Smith, the heros invent a matter transmitter.
Shortly afterwards they realize that it is also a matter duplicator, making perfect duplicate of whatever you put in the hopper. What's worse, they can make "recordings" of objects, and play them back to make duplicates.
Some clown starts selling matter duplicators to the general public, and the economy of the entire planet collapses. What good is a mink coat or a Lamburgini if everybody and his brother has one?
Not to mention the possibilites of counterfeiting money.
By the time things have sorted themselves out, money is obsolete and the economy is based on personal services (the doctor removes your appendix and you pay him back by mowing his lawn for a few years)
Our heros do help out things by creating a material that cannot be duplicated, for use as a material to write checks on, and so forth. (It is not so much that it cannot be duplicated so much that it explodes when the matter duplicator scans it)
Naturally the facination is with the big dividends paid to a tiny initial investment in algorithm.
Basic ant food gathering behavior exibits finely tuned feedback and efficency with similar tiny algorithms.
A scout ant searches for food. When it finds it, algorithm #1 kicks in:
- Grab as much food as you can carry.
- Run to the nest.
- If and only if there is food left at the site, leave a scent trail as you go to the nest.
Ants at the nest who are unassigned to task, upon smelling the scent execute algorithm #2, which is basically "follow the scent trail".As more ants grab food and leave scent trails to the nest, the intensity of the scent induces more and more ants to execute algorithm #2.
When the food source is exhausted, no more scent is deposited on the trail, and the scent trail dissapates.
I am firmly of the opinion that we will want and need every willing back, every strong hand in friendship, every erg and dyne of support we can get in this conflict.
This is not a conflict that calls for a measured, careful response.
This is a conflict that calls for an overwhelming, careful response, and a continued commitment.
The enemy has billed this as a war of cultural annihilation. Either they remove us, or we will remove them.
They have defined the goals of the conflict. The enemy is just as vulnerable to these objectives as we are. More so, in fact. The enemy builds his force on ignorance, on the Big Lie.
The enemy's greatest fear is that the prosperity of the West will seduce the generation after this one. That the memories of old blood feuds will fade when presented with McDonald's and computers and cheap cell phones. Every call they make to recruit is against the decadence of the West destroying their way of life.
This should be our stated objective. To destroy their way of life. Never forget this; this is their stated objective against us.
After we punish the enemy with bombs, with bullets, we must salt the soil that the twisted tree of intolerance and fanaticism takes root in. We must change the hearts and minds of the young.
We salt them with small computers. With internet access. With a telephone in every village. With juvenile novels and encyclopedias translated into Arabic. With teachers who speak their language, and who teach them to use these tools to answer questions for themselves. Yes, some of those teachers will be killed. They are soldiers in this war as much as anyone who puts on a beret or takes up a gun, and we will make martyrs of them for the world.
No tyrant can long survive with an informed and educated populace.
The organizations they declaim as the mouthpieces of the US shall be USED as the mouthpieces of the west. We tell their children that there is a life beyond substistence farming and blood feuds. We tell their wives and daughters that there is a life where they are valued as individuals and people in their own right, not as mutilated chattel.
We give them the tools of bilateral communication, rather than unilateral indoctrination. We give them the internet. We declare a great work, of making sure that every corner of this globe has access to fast internet access. Not just the US. Not just Europe. The world.
They will see pornography sites. They will also see sites discussing engineering, and simple improvements to agriculture. Some may even see this mailing list. The curiousity of children will be piqued, and their questions answered. With each question asked, and each answer given, we slowly wean them away from the culture of intolerance.
They'll be able to ask questions without censure or censoring, and get answers they might not otherwise have.
I would sooner carpet bomb with Gameboys and Pokemon, and an Arabic translation of Monopoly or Delta V, than FAEs and nuclear explosives. The adults are beyond our reach. The young MUST be reached so that 20 years from now, the thought of piloting a captured airliner into an office building full of innocent bystanders meets with truly universal horror.
I fear, in the haste for vengeance, that the nature of this conflict will be forgotten. Make no bones about it -- this is a culture war. It can only end with a declaration on the order of Cartago Delendo Est.
We cannot win this war with bombs or bullets, although we can accelerate its prosecution by those means. We can only win this war through a generational conflict; we must win the war in the hearts and minds of the children growing up in the Middle East now.
Winning that longer war will be costlier and less immediately gratifying than cluster bombs and Fuel Air Explosives, and "killing the bastards and everyone that helped them.", but it is a war that all of us can participate in.
If you are an author, or someone who creates media, contact your publisher about translating your works into Arabic. Someone in the DoD is in charge of outbound propaganda; we should find who that person is, and give them the munitions to win this war.
Bin-Ladin has declared this a culture war.
Let's show him what a culture war TRULY looks like. Let's send in Shakespeare. And Heinlein. And Harlequin Romances, Pokemon and The Simpsons.