There are lots of places to go actually. It sounds like you haven't traveled enough (recently) to know that. Would it make you feel a little better to know that much of the rest of the world is not paranoid and afraid like we are here in the US?
No strip searches or sexual violations to get on airplanes. No one arrested for drawing something or saying something. No roadblocks on the roads. I'm not sure I could 'prove' that most of the other countries I have traveled in and lived in really are freer, but they certainly feel that way living there day to day.
I've lived in various countries in Asia and Latin America (don't want to name them out of paranoia), including a couple of communist ones and with the exception of one communist country I felt freer and less afraid of the police and government than I feel living here in the US. Living in the US can feel a lot like living inside of a large prison, but there are many places in the world that do not feel that way. Even in that one communist country where I certainly did not feel free, the police at least were not angry or violent and not typically thuggish like the police are here in the US. Police in most other countries are just normal guys doing a job. They don't hate you or see you as their enemy. They aren't out to prove how they are bad motherfuckers by kicking your ass for looking at them the wrong way. In countries that I've lived in outside the US it seemed like the government for the most part left you alone. At least that's how it felt. Knowing this, I actually do want to leave the US forever. Unfortunately I was born here and don't have citizenship anywhere else. It takes more effort living as an expat on a tourist visa. It gets tiring after a while. Although there is nowhere that is perfect I have found a few places where I could long term non-tourist visas. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I'll be able to make a break for the exit while I still can.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
So the 20% doubt would be enough for you to acquit? In my case there was no evidence. It was the word of one or more cops against mine. Period. I was able to poke a few holes in the cop's original story, but by the next court date they had altered their story (again) so that it was a bit less absurd. I figure the prosecutor must have pointed out a few of the logical contradictions that the idiot cop missed. I think most people would go with the 80% assumption. Especially because believing that would make them feel safer and better about the world. People don't like believing that cops will lie in court and falsely accuse people of stuff and are just bad/evil in general. So they don't believe it.
Did you even read the post you are replying too? None of those things were mentioned in the story. The photo might be fake. If the police weren't willing to mention those things then why would they be willing to release a photo? I suspect that photo has nothing to do with this case.
By today's standards you were a terrorist. Now you are a reformed terrorist, and after this pseudo-anonymous post you are a known former terrorist soon to be added to various watch lists.
I'm 80% sure that this was not about soap in the cabinet, but that this kid was indeed attempting to manufacture explosives.
This is why I took a plea deal when I was falsely accused of a violent crime. People like you would probably have been on the jury. You believe that police are always rational and reasonable. That where there is smoke there is fire. That if you are accused you must have done something. The police would never go after an innocent person! They are the good guys! Amirite?
No state has looser gun laws than Wyoming or Alaska. In Wyoming (and I think Alaska too) you don't even need a license. So let's compare the amount of violent crime in Cheyenne or Laramie or Juneau or Fairbanks with St. Louis. Or we might compare the rates of violent crime in New York City with that of Cheyenne. I don't think any state has tougher gun laws than New York and yet somehow I don't feel safe walking in certain parts at night. I suppose you would feel 100% safe walking around in even the worst areas of New York because their gun control laws are so strict, right?
A friend of mine did get attacked and hurt while walking in New York during the day. It wasn't even that bad of an area. And they were armed. Very well armed. Do you know who those violent thugs were? The NYPD. And, no, he wasn't breaking any laws or doing anything wrong. They didn't even apologize to him.
I don't know about you, but I would feel much safer walking around in the poorest parts of Cheyenne at 3 AM than New York. Even though pretty much anyone is allowed to carry a firearm. Massachusetts and Connecticut are also known for having tough gun control. That doesn't make me feel any safer walking around certain parts of Boston or New Haven. Especially since I would not be allowed to carry a gun in either state.
So maybe they would prefer a standing army then. I'm up for that. We could have a 100% legal group of trained soldiers with a large cache of modern weapons solely for the purpose of fighting against our own government. I guess maybe the founders thought that idea was a bit impractical and had to settle for just a militia.
The right to defend yourself is a human right. I believe those crazy Founders actually believed we had such things. How naive they were. Rights. Hahaha. It appears that the only rights these days are those of the government itself to trample its citizens and treat them as slaves to do its bidding.
Also, according to the ninth amendment the government wouldn't have any right to take weapons from its citizens anyway. That's a right that the constitution never granted them. They didn't feel it necessary to say that people had the right to own weapons. Just like they didn't feel it necessary to actually say that people had the right to move about freely without having to show papers or be humiliated, strip searched, interrogated, and even sexually violated. They thought it would be easier to just enumerate the few things the government was allowed to do instead. The government was the entity being limited. Not the people. Somehow that turned into the government being the only one with rights to do pretty much anything it wants with just a few little limitations all of which are easily ignored whenever the government finds it convenient.
If you are trying to argue that nuclear weapons are more or less pointless 99.99999% of the time I would agree with you. I don't think we can credit nuclear weapons for preventing a Soviet attack against the US. I don't think the Soviets had any real interest in launching nukes at us. It would have been utterly pointless. If the Soviets wanted to attack us they could have done so the usual way. The Soviets didn't launch nukes at us for the same reason that they didn't launch them against Afghanistan despite the fact that the Afghanis had not a single nuclear weapon to retaliate with. No one has ever used nuclear weapons except us probably because they just aren't very practical. They are too destructive. If you have to resort to nuclear weapons then you've probably already lost. I think nuclear weapons are really only useful in assymetric warfare. If you think a well armed bully country like the US might attack you having a nuclear weapon might be good insurance. Although I don't believe it to be the total panacea that some make it out to be. Having a nuclear weapon is one thing. Being crazy or stupid enough to actually use it is another.
Fidel Castro overthrew Batista with only a small group of armed men. They were able to accomplish that because there were mass defections from the pro-Batista military.
I have no doubt that a sufficiently well prepared group could overthrow the US government. People have this idea that you need F-16s and bombers. You don't. The US government is unlikely to drop bombs on its own cities and towns or even drive tanks through the city streets. Most of the combat would be guys with rifles against guys with rifles. Whoever had more guys with guns would probably win.
But all of this is beside the point. Overthrowing the government was not the only reason the Founders wanted a well-armed citizenry or citizen-soldiers like the MInutemen. It is to defend ourselves and preserve our freedom for any reason at all. It might be a government that has gone full-1984 or it might be a particular branch of the government enforcing some new law. It could be some circumstance that neither of us could even imagine at the moment. The details don't matter because the principle is the same. Self-defense with whatever the standard weapons are at the time is a basic human right. Only a government afraid of its own citizens would try to deny that right.
Actually it's pretty easy to say it. They have never thwarted an attack. Ever. Their fancy imaging machines don't actually work to detect explosives. Or really much of anything else. Certainly no better than a metal detector. There is nothing they are doing now that would stop a terrorist with an IQ above 60.
The only procedures in place now that would have thwarted the 9/11 plot are the locked and presumably reinforced cockpit doors, the realization of the passengers that if they cooperate they will just die anyway (no more highjackings), and maybe the occassional air marshal or armed pilot.
If the TSA were effective you would be seeing alternative targets attacked. Suicide bombs in the security lines themselves. Buses. Trains. Shopping malls. Sporting events. Nuclear reactors. Water supplies. Subways during rush hour. Possibly simultaneously. There are lots of targets other than aviation that could have been attacked if the terrorists wanted to and found aviation too difficult now.
None of that has happened because there just aren't any serious terrorists targeting the US at the moment. If you do the research you'll find that what is called "Al Queda" may not even actually exist. It was just a small number of guys who were pissed off at the US. Most of them either died in the 9/11 attacks or feel that 9/11 was sufficient payback and more attacks are not a priority at the moment. Who knows. All we know is that for whatever reason no terrorist organizations have targeted the US since 9/11. Keep in mind that there weren't many before 9/11 either.
The founders believed that the citizenry had to be able to protect themselves against their own government. I don't think they would care whether that was done with stone axes and primitive bows and arrows are with x-ray lasers and particle beams. They would certainly believe that if the government had it the citizenry should be able to have it too.
That's an interesting point, but presumably humanity would be very interested in the outcome of our very first interstellar journey. I think we could manage to preserve old communication standards. Presumably after 400 years we could simply use the same standards with far greater effect.
If by "we, you are referring to Ukrainians and Australians then a few very brief messages have been sent to stars close enough to us that it might actually reach radio telescopes at the other end. Assuming they are listening specifically for messages from us and that they do so 24/7 continuously for millenia. The US has only sent one message and it was sent to a target so far away as to be utterly meaningless.
Since so many children die in car accidents why are you not calling for a ban on cars? It is easy access to automobiles that causes all those deaths. Ban cars and you will save countless thousands of lives overnight. While you are at it ban knives and chainsaws and axes and hammers and baseball bats and saws and scissors. Ban anything that could conceivably be used to kill children.
To me, high capacity magazines are important for defending ourselves against the government itself. Out of control police officers. Crazy laws. We are all human beings and we should all have the same basic right to protect ourselves, or if we have to die, at least to be able to take down some of our killers.
If a weapon is available to police agencies it should be available to civilians as well. Despite what law enforcement likes to believe we are not second class citizens. It's always only the civilians who are supposed to be left with (single edged) knives and baseball bats to defend ourselves against opponents with every high tech firearm known to man.
A police officer committed a violent crime against me, but I cannot report him because he would almost certainly come to my house and gun me down. He has already tried to kill me once. If I at least had some decent weapons to defend myself against him I might be more inclined to risk my life and do the right thing by reporting him. As it is he will just continue to hurt and terrorize people and everyone will be afraid to report him.
For defending yourself against burglars or car jackers a handgun is generally sufficient. For protecting yourself against the police or other government agents who routinely wear ballistic vests that make most handguns almost useless you need more serious weaponry.
Next time a group of cops break into the wrong house and shoot down a family and their dog will I be hearing cries that only the military should have firearms? That tazers should be more than sufficient for the vast majority of law enforcement officers? People would protest that cops have the right to protect themselves. Well guess, what? So do we. Is a cop's life worth more than a civilian's life? Not to me.
Interesting, but from what I have read, without a truly giant parabolic reflector and a very sensitive receiver none of those VHF/UHF signals would be detectable above background noise at even 1 ly. Those frequencies just don't work very well for point to point communication at great distance. I think the Friis equation would require truly giant reflector dishes compared to higher frequencies. I think they may also be attenuated by the interstellar medium (adds up over truly great distances) in addition to our own atmosphere. And if the receiver were on a planet with a similar sort of atmosphere...well. You really want to get at least above 1 Ghz to have much hope at all and 7-10 Ghz would be much better.
I never specified that the generation ship wouldn't allocate fuel to slow down at the end. Any practical journey would of course want to divide the fuel between acceleration and deceleration. That's one reason the ship must be so large and contain so much fuel and require centuries to build the kilometer scale craft necessary for the journey.
The vast space between star systems is not known for having a lot of space junk floating around. You're lucky enough to find the occassional hydrogen atom. That's not to say that the possibility should not be considered, but it isn't a show stopper. You could wait to accelerate to high speed until you were well out of our system and decelerate well before you enter the target system.
I never found that argument very persuasive. In terms of space travel propulsion systems has our technology really changed that much since the 60s? Seems like we're building pretty much the same rocket engines now that we were nearly half a century ago. It's just that now we can put fancy computers on them. And better robots. Also that 'argument' will always work. By that argument there is never a good time to begin a long space journey.
It turns out that stars are pretty powerful radio transmitters, and the edge of a stellar system has considerable additional noise.
So what?
And then there's the cube-square law.
Don't you mean inverse square law?
Even if they were deliberately transmitting directly at us 12 years ago, it's unlikely we could make out the signal from the noise.
While noise (snr) is certainly a problem in any long range communication, if transmitting at the proper frequencies (ie. 1-10 Ghz; 34-37 Ghz; 75-80 Ghz) it isn't a major one.
The problems are more along the lines of:
1. It seems unlikely that any system within 50 ly of us would contain a planet with not just life, but intelligent life. Biogenesis has been compared to a tornado in a junkyard constructing a car. We really have no idea how to even do it ourselves. So it really may be quite rare. And even where there is life, intelligent life of the giant parabolic dish building variety is certainly not a given. Consider how many species there are on our planet brimming with life from pole to pole and only a single species seems to be intelligent enough to build computers and spacecraft and giant radio telescopes. If intelligence is such a good survival strategy why have more species not taken advantage of it? Even with all those stars out there intelligent life of the radio telescope building kind may be far more rare than those of us who enjoy science fiction may like to believe. The majority of life on earth is still simple microbial life.
2. The transmission has to either be aimed directly at us or be of orders of magnitude more power than at least we are capable of transmitting if only for economic reason. Either possibility seems rather unlikely.
3. No one really knows about us yet. We are just another star in a sky filled with them. If we embarked upon a major coming out party and transmitted signals for long periods to every star within, say, 100 ly then things might be different, but as it is there is no reason for anyone out there to point a dish in our direction except for causal surveys of nearby stars which might listen for only a few seconds each decade.
4. The aliens could be transmitting directly at us and we probably wouldn't hear them because they might be transmitting on one of the many frequencies that we are not listening on or which are attenuated by our oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere. Anything from 20-30 Ghz or above 100 Ghz is mostly blocked by our thick atmosphere. Very high frequencies tend to be more effecient at interstellar communication. Which is why setting up radio telescopes on the moon or mars would be rather nice.
"On a small scale" is an understatement. We have virtually sent no signals at all. To any system past Alpha Centauri we would be dead silent on a radio scan of our system 99.9999999999999999999999999999% of the time. Are you wondering why we haven't made any effort to send signals? Fear. Even many radio astronomers themselves are frightened of attracting the attention of more advanced civilizations that may be listening. If we are too afraid to do it other civilizations may be as well. So we all listen but never speak. Everyone will stay very quiet out of ignorance and fear. Hence Fermi's Paradox and The Great Silence.
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There are lots of places to go actually. It sounds like you haven't traveled enough (recently) to know that. Would it make you feel a little better to know that much of the rest of the world is not paranoid and afraid like we are here in the US?
No strip searches or sexual violations to get on airplanes. No one arrested for drawing something or saying something. No roadblocks on the roads. I'm not sure I could 'prove' that most of the other countries I have traveled in and lived in really are freer, but they certainly feel that way living there day to day.
I've lived in various countries in Asia and Latin America (don't want to name them out of paranoia), including a couple of communist ones and with the exception of one communist country I felt freer and less afraid of the police and government than I feel living here in the US. Living in the US can feel a lot like living inside of a large prison, but there are many places in the world that do not feel that way. Even in that one communist country where I certainly did not feel free, the police at least were not angry or violent and not typically thuggish like the police are here in the US. Police in most other countries are just normal guys doing a job. They don't hate you or see you as their enemy. They aren't out to prove how they are bad motherfuckers by kicking your ass for looking at them the wrong way. In countries that I've lived in outside the US it seemed like the government for the most part left you alone. At least that's how it felt. Knowing this, I actually do want to leave the US forever. Unfortunately I was born here and don't have citizenship anywhere else. It takes more effort living as an expat on a tourist visa. It gets tiring after a while. Although there is nowhere that is perfect I have found a few places where I could long term non-tourist visas. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I'll be able to make a break for the exit while I still can.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
Rutger Hauer, Blade Runner
So the 20% doubt would be enough for you to acquit? In my case there was no evidence. It was the word of one or more cops against mine. Period. I was able to poke a few holes in the cop's original story, but by the next court date they had altered their story (again) so that it was a bit less absurd. I figure the prosecutor must have pointed out a few of the logical contradictions that the idiot cop missed. I think most people would go with the 80% assumption. Especially because believing that would make them feel safer and better about the world. People don't like believing that cops will lie in court and falsely accuse people of stuff and are just bad/evil in general. So they don't believe it.
Did you even read the post you are replying too? None of those things were mentioned in the story. The photo might be fake. If the police weren't willing to mention those things then why would they be willing to release a photo? I suspect that photo has nothing to do with this case.
No, I suspect there are good reasons to arrest this guy because, usually, the police have good reasons when they arrest someone.
Where there is smoke there is fire, huh? Guilty until proven innocent. I just hope you're never on a jury.
By today's standards you were a terrorist. Now you are a reformed terrorist, and after this pseudo-anonymous post you are a known former terrorist soon to be added to various watch lists.
I'm 80% sure that this was not about soap in the cabinet, but that this kid was indeed attempting to manufacture explosives.
This is why I took a plea deal when I was falsely accused of a violent crime. People like you would probably have been on the jury. You believe that police are always rational and reasonable. That where there is smoke there is fire. That if you are accused you must have done something. The police would never go after an innocent person! They are the good guys! Amirite?
No state has looser gun laws than Wyoming or Alaska. In Wyoming (and I think Alaska too) you don't even need a license. So let's compare the amount of violent crime in Cheyenne or Laramie or Juneau or Fairbanks with St. Louis. Or we might compare the rates of violent crime in New York City with that of Cheyenne. I don't think any state has tougher gun laws than New York and yet somehow I don't feel safe walking in certain parts at night. I suppose you would feel 100% safe walking around in even the worst areas of New York because their gun control laws are so strict, right?
A friend of mine did get attacked and hurt while walking in New York during the day. It wasn't even that bad of an area. And they were armed. Very well armed. Do you know who those violent thugs were? The NYPD. And, no, he wasn't breaking any laws or doing anything wrong. They didn't even apologize to him.
I don't know about you, but I would feel much safer walking around in the poorest parts of Cheyenne at 3 AM than New York. Even though pretty much anyone is allowed to carry a firearm. Massachusetts and Connecticut are also known for having tough gun control. That doesn't make me feel any safer walking around certain parts of Boston or New Haven. Especially since I would not be allowed to carry a gun in either state.
So maybe they would prefer a standing army then. I'm up for that. We could have a 100% legal group of trained soldiers with a large cache of modern weapons solely for the purpose of fighting against our own government. I guess maybe the founders thought that idea was a bit impractical and had to settle for just a militia.
The right to defend yourself is a human right. I believe those crazy Founders actually believed we had such things. How naive they were. Rights. Hahaha. It appears that the only rights these days are those of the government itself to trample its citizens and treat them as slaves to do its bidding.
Also, according to the ninth amendment the government wouldn't have any right to take weapons from its citizens anyway. That's a right that the constitution never granted them. They didn't feel it necessary to say that people had the right to own weapons. Just like they didn't feel it necessary to actually say that people had the right to move about freely without having to show papers or be humiliated, strip searched, interrogated, and even sexually violated. They thought it would be easier to just enumerate the few things the government was allowed to do instead. The government was the entity being limited. Not the people. Somehow that turned into the government being the only one with rights to do pretty much anything it wants with just a few little limitations all of which are easily ignored whenever the government finds it convenient.
If you are trying to argue that nuclear weapons are more or less pointless 99.99999% of the time I would agree with you. I don't think we can credit nuclear weapons for preventing a Soviet attack against the US. I don't think the Soviets had any real interest in launching nukes at us. It would have been utterly pointless. If the Soviets wanted to attack us they could have done so the usual way. The Soviets didn't launch nukes at us for the same reason that they didn't launch them against Afghanistan despite the fact that the Afghanis had not a single nuclear weapon to retaliate with. No one has ever used nuclear weapons except us probably because they just aren't very practical. They are too destructive. If you have to resort to nuclear weapons then you've probably already lost. I think nuclear weapons are really only useful in assymetric warfare. If you think a well armed bully country like the US might attack you having a nuclear weapon might be good insurance. Although I don't believe it to be the total panacea that some make it out to be. Having a nuclear weapon is one thing. Being crazy or stupid enough to actually use it is another.
The machines look quite different. You can tell them apart just by looking at them.
Fidel Castro overthrew Batista with only a small group of armed men. They were able to accomplish that because there were mass defections from the pro-Batista military.
I have no doubt that a sufficiently well prepared group could overthrow the US government. People have this idea that you need F-16s and bombers. You don't. The US government is unlikely to drop bombs on its own cities and towns or even drive tanks through the city streets. Most of the combat would be guys with rifles against guys with rifles. Whoever had more guys with guns would probably win.
But all of this is beside the point. Overthrowing the government was not the only reason the Founders wanted a well-armed citizenry or citizen-soldiers like the MInutemen. It is to defend ourselves and preserve our freedom for any reason at all. It might be a government that has gone full-1984 or it might be a particular branch of the government enforcing some new law. It could be some circumstance that neither of us could even imagine at the moment. The details don't matter because the principle is the same. Self-defense with whatever the standard weapons are at the time is a basic human right. Only a government afraid of its own citizens would try to deny that right.
Actually it's pretty easy to say it. They have never thwarted an attack. Ever. Their fancy imaging machines don't actually work to detect explosives. Or really much of anything else. Certainly no better than a metal detector. There is nothing they are doing now that would stop a terrorist with an IQ above 60.
The only procedures in place now that would have thwarted the 9/11 plot are the locked and presumably reinforced cockpit doors, the realization of the passengers that if they cooperate they will just die anyway (no more highjackings), and maybe the occassional air marshal or armed pilot.
If the TSA were effective you would be seeing alternative targets attacked. Suicide bombs in the security lines themselves. Buses. Trains. Shopping malls. Sporting events. Nuclear reactors. Water supplies. Subways during rush hour. Possibly simultaneously. There are lots of targets other than aviation that could have been attacked if the terrorists wanted to and found aviation too difficult now.
None of that has happened because there just aren't any serious terrorists targeting the US at the moment. If you do the research you'll find that what is called "Al Queda" may not even actually exist. It was just a small number of guys who were pissed off at the US. Most of them either died in the 9/11 attacks or feel that 9/11 was sufficient payback and more attacks are not a priority at the moment. Who knows. All we know is that for whatever reason no terrorist organizations have targeted the US since 9/11. Keep in mind that there weren't many before 9/11 either.
The founders believed that the citizenry had to be able to protect themselves against their own government. I don't think they would care whether that was done with stone axes and primitive bows and arrows are with x-ray lasers and particle beams. They would certainly believe that if the government had it the citizenry should be able to have it too.
You actually think TSA's procedures are effective at preventing terrorism? The same way that having a magic rock can protect you from tigers?
That's an interesting point, but presumably humanity would be very interested in the outcome of our very first interstellar journey. I think we could manage to preserve old communication standards. Presumably after 400 years we could simply use the same standards with far greater effect.
If by "we, you are referring to Ukrainians and Australians then a few very brief messages have been sent to stars close enough to us that it might actually reach radio telescopes at the other end. Assuming they are listening specifically for messages from us and that they do so 24/7 continuously for millenia. The US has only sent one message and it was sent to a target so far away as to be utterly meaningless.
Since so many children die in car accidents why are you not calling for a ban on cars? It is easy access to automobiles that causes all those deaths. Ban cars and you will save countless thousands of lives overnight. While you are at it ban knives and chainsaws and axes and hammers and baseball bats and saws and scissors. Ban anything that could conceivably be used to kill children.
To me, high capacity magazines are important for defending ourselves against the government itself. Out of control police officers. Crazy laws. We are all human beings and we should all have the same basic right to protect ourselves, or if we have to die, at least to be able to take down some of our killers.
If a weapon is available to police agencies it should be available to civilians as well. Despite what law enforcement likes to believe we are not second class citizens. It's always only the civilians who are supposed to be left with (single edged) knives and baseball bats to defend ourselves against opponents with every high tech firearm known to man.
A police officer committed a violent crime against me, but I cannot report him because he would almost certainly come to my house and gun me down. He has already tried to kill me once. If I at least had some decent weapons to defend myself against him I might be more inclined to risk my life and do the right thing by reporting him. As it is he will just continue to hurt and terrorize people and everyone will be afraid to report him.
For defending yourself against burglars or car jackers a handgun is generally sufficient. For protecting yourself against the police or other government agents who routinely wear ballistic vests that make most handguns almost useless you need more serious weaponry.
Next time a group of cops break into the wrong house and shoot down a family and their dog will I be hearing cries that only the military should have firearms? That tazers should be more than sufficient for the vast majority of law enforcement officers? People would protest that cops have the right to protect themselves. Well guess, what? So do we. Is a cop's life worth more than a civilian's life? Not to me.
I thought you just needed a special license. Same with suppressors.
Interesting, but from what I have read, without a truly giant parabolic reflector and a very sensitive receiver none of those VHF/UHF signals would be detectable above background noise at even 1 ly. Those frequencies just don't work very well for point to point communication at great distance. I think the Friis equation would require truly giant reflector dishes compared to higher frequencies. I think they may also be attenuated by the interstellar medium (adds up over truly great distances) in addition to our own atmosphere. And if the receiver were on a planet with a similar sort of atmosphere...well. You really want to get at least above 1 Ghz to have much hope at all and 7-10 Ghz would be much better.
I never specified that the generation ship wouldn't allocate fuel to slow down at the end. Any practical journey would of course want to divide the fuel between acceleration and deceleration. That's one reason the ship must be so large and contain so much fuel and require centuries to build the kilometer scale craft necessary for the journey.
The vast space between star systems is not known for having a lot of space junk floating around. You're lucky enough to find the occassional hydrogen atom. That's not to say that the possibility should not be considered, but it isn't a show stopper. You could wait to accelerate to high speed until you were well out of our system and decelerate well before you enter the target system.
I never found that argument very persuasive. In terms of space travel propulsion systems has our technology really changed that much since the 60s? Seems like we're building pretty much the same rocket engines now that we were nearly half a century ago. It's just that now we can put fancy computers on them. And better robots. Also that 'argument' will always work. By that argument there is never a good time to begin a long space journey.
It turns out that stars are pretty powerful radio transmitters, and the edge of a stellar system has considerable additional noise.
So what?
And then there's the cube-square law.
Don't you mean inverse square law?
Even if they were deliberately transmitting directly at us 12 years ago, it's unlikely we could make out the signal from the noise.
While noise (snr) is certainly a problem in any long range communication, if transmitting at the proper frequencies (ie. 1-10 Ghz; 34-37 Ghz; 75-80 Ghz) it isn't a major one.
The problems are more along the lines of:
1. It seems unlikely that any system within 50 ly of us would contain a planet with not just life, but intelligent life. Biogenesis has been compared to a tornado in a junkyard constructing a car. We really have no idea how to even do it ourselves. So it really may be quite rare. And even where there is life, intelligent life of the giant parabolic dish building variety is certainly not a given. Consider how many species there are on our planet brimming with life from pole to pole and only a single species seems to be intelligent enough to build computers and spacecraft and giant radio telescopes. If intelligence is such a good survival strategy why have more species not taken advantage of it? Even with all those stars out there intelligent life of the radio telescope building kind may be far more rare than those of us who enjoy science fiction may like to believe. The majority of life on earth is still simple microbial life.
2. The transmission has to either be aimed directly at us or be of orders of magnitude more power than at least we are capable of transmitting if only for economic reason. Either possibility seems rather unlikely.
3. No one really knows about us yet. We are just another star in a sky filled with them. If we embarked upon a major coming out party and transmitted signals for long periods to every star within, say, 100 ly then things might be different, but as it is there is no reason for anyone out there to point a dish in our direction except for causal surveys of nearby stars which might listen for only a few seconds each decade.
4. The aliens could be transmitting directly at us and we probably wouldn't hear them because they might be transmitting on one of the many frequencies that we are not listening on or which are attenuated by our oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere. Anything from 20-30 Ghz or above 100 Ghz is mostly blocked by our thick atmosphere. Very high frequencies tend to be more effecient at interstellar communication. Which is why setting up radio telescopes on the moon or mars would be rather nice.
I can't tell if you are serious or not.
"On a small scale" is an understatement. We have virtually sent no signals at all. To any system past Alpha Centauri we would be dead silent on a radio scan of our system 99.9999999999999999999999999999% of the time. Are you wondering why we haven't made any effort to send signals? Fear. Even many radio astronomers themselves are frightened of attracting the attention of more advanced civilizations that may be listening. If we are too afraid to do it other civilizations may be as well. So we all listen but never speak. Everyone will stay very quiet out of ignorance and fear. Hence Fermi's Paradox and The Great Silence.