The big question, never satisfactorily answered, is "Who built Ringworld, and why?"
The more you think about it, the less sense it makes. Philip Jose Farmer imagined the wonderful "Riverworld", but had the same problem, after having his protagonists explore it, they had to find the creators, and that was when it fell flat. Bob Shaw wrote a series about Orbitsville, a complete Dyson shell. Apparently, that was built by a superior race as a playpen to suck humans in so they wouldn't wander around the galaxy making trouble. (A Dyson shell has an area of millions of Earths.) That was fairly believable.
Yes, that "hard-wired" stuff makes little sense. Just about every mammalian species ever studied has sexual practises that the Pope would not approve of. Just look at dogs -- dominant males mount (or at least go through the motions) others to show who's boss. Bonobos spend all day screwing anything that they can find, dolphins, too.... Most of these animals could be considered "old species", whatever that means, (I suppose been relatively unchanged for a million or so years).
Niven tried hard to seem hip about sex in some of his stories, but didn't really convince. As he's aged he seems to have been getting more into the dirty-old-man style that Heinlein exemplared, which was worse.
If you want to read some terrific SF featuring future sex (by which I mean not just porn in space), try John Varley's work, especially the collection The Persistence of Vision.
Personally (how else) I'd say that A World Out of Time was a much more mature story, with better characters (though that's never been a forte of Niven), some mind-expanding astro-engineering, but much more hard-nosed as to the credibility of the science (except for the teleportation booths/immortality treatment) than the mass of contradictions in the Known Space canon that ties you up in knots when you try to reconcile it all. Later he wrote two novels (apparently) in the same timeline, The Integral Trees and its sequel -- also intersting, but not so great.
It's really a shame that Niven lost steam by about 1980. Some authors, like Frederik Pohl, got from strength to strength as they age, but Niven seems to have got stuck and kept recycling stuff he'd whipped off in the 60s, when he was writing the orignal Known Space stories. (I loved many of these, but I wish he'd moved on after Ringworld.) Don't mention Jerry Pournelle -- with the single exception of Inferno, those collaborations were all long-winded crap.
Nope, it was Venus that were traditionally thought of as Hesperos and Phosphoros, the main evening and morning star. If you've ever seen Venus, you know why: bright sucker.
You're about the third person who's said this. Please see my earlier post before telling me how dumb I am. I'm not a classical scholar, but I try to check my facts.
TKinias wrote: the use of ``Lucifer'' to refer to the fallen angel. Does anyone know if there was a connection between Satan and the planet Mercury in any Hebrew tradition?
According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, "Lucifer" was Venus, and was Satan's name before his fall.
Lucifer
(Hebrew helel; Septuagint heosphoros, Vulgate lucifer)
The name Lucifer originally denotes the planet Venus, emphasizing its brilliance. The Vulgate employs the word also for "the light of the morning" (Job 50:17), "the signs of the zodiac" (Job 38:32), and "the aurora" (Psalm 109:3). Metaphorically, the word is applied to the King of Babylon (Isaiah 14:12) as preeminent among the princes of his time; to the high priest Simon son of Onias (Ecclesiasticus 50:6), for his surpassing virtue, to the glory of heaven (Apocalypse 2:28), by reason of its excellency; finally to Jesus Christ himself (II Petr. 1:19; Apocalypse 22:16; the "Exultet" of Holy Saturday) the true light of our spiritual life. The Syriac version and the version of Aquila derive the Hebrew noun helel from the verb yalal, "to lament"; St. Jerome agrees with them (In Isaiah 1:14), and makes Lucifer the name of the principal fallen angel who must lament the loss of his original glory bright as the morning star. In Christian tradition this meaning of Lucifer has prevailed; the Fathers maintain that Lucifer is not the proper name of the devil, but denotes only the state from which he has fallen (Petavius, De Angelis, III, iii, 4).
The Oscars, self-congratulatory though it may be, does need to change with the times.
They wont, the Oscars are part of the star system. There are lots of awards, (I'm sure there are digital awards), but why "The Oscars" have become the Microsoft of awards is because of stars -- presenting, winning and receiving the awards. They have a separate ceremony for "technical" awards, which they give a nod to with a token clip on the "Oscar night". But really, people want to watch Julia Roberts, not some bearded inarticulate geek, no matter that he brought Helm'sDeep to life. The ceremony is a show.
So why bother? Why not just allow the term to continue its peaceful existence in the popular lexicon, without attaching an arbitrary definition to it?
Because new objects have been and will be discovered in our solar system, and others, that some might think of as "planets", and so the question of where actually to draw the line has arisen (actually many years ago, this is just the latest proposal).
Anyway, I won't continue this thread. Feel free to make more condescending comments for your fans.
Scientific terms need a definition in terms of a scientific theory
Yes. Which is not contradictory with what I wrote.
And analogously, it would be silly to disqualify something that otherwise fit into our theory of planets perfectly on the basis of its size.
"Analogously" doesn't prove anything, it's just a way of illustrating what you believe.
And anyway, "size" WASN'T the determinant offered by the astronomer, but being large enough to be spherical due to gravity, which turns out to be about 700 km diameter.
why can't we be content to keep the traditional designations of what make up a planet?
a) this is science, not tradition, scientific terms need an absolute definition.
b) traditionally, you only had the naked-eye planets: Mercury, venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn. What do you call the other gas giants? Not to mention, Mercury was thought to be two planets by some (the morning and evening star).
c) my opinion, just set it so that Pluto-size is the cut-off. Anything smaller isn't one. However, in a few centuries when we can detect "planets" in other solar systems this would seem a bit heliocentric, so I can see the Basri's point (in the FA: "Basri's definition, a planet must orbit a star, not another planet, and it must be round. That means it must be 700 kilometres in diameter, when gravity moulds it into a sphere, or bigger.").
Today (a day after the original post) it has a new logo, not the "Google logo with R superimposed" original one. Now he's had his 15 minutes, maybe he will capitalise on it to actually do something.
The reason they don't take down live dupes is because of the comments that have been posted.
Thye don't have to delete the story (there may be some threads that people want to pursue). However, there should be some way to bounce it from the front page. (The simplest hack would be to change the date, to make it yesterday. Or preferably, something that had the same effect, of moving it to "older stuff".)
Could the previewers see a "Mod Story as Dupe" Button that would dissappear when the story went live?
Why should it disappear? If the previeewers miss that it was a dupe, say becasue it went live in only 3 minutes instead of 20 (which is a maximum, not a set period, according to Malda), it's still a dupe. The problem would be to limit abuse by twats who would modify everything a a dupe. But that's where metamoderation would work, here as for comments.
So the quick answer is: "Sure, caching would be neat." It would make things a lot easier when servers go down, but it's a complicated issue that would need to be thought through in great detail before being implemented.
So in the year or more since that was written, who has "thought it through in great detail".
Just caching everything linked is bad, for the reasons cited. How about making an offline cache, and sending a message to the owner of the site, where this is known, when the story is queued, asking if they want his cache to be made available, for instance? Not perfect, but would help in many cases. One thinks that Malda et al take a perverse pride in their "Slashdot effect" making people take notice of their site.
They never take down dupes. Anyway, why should this be limited to "paid subscribers"? A dupe is a dupe, whoever notices it.
What would be an obvious extension of the moderating system is moderating the articles themselves. The default could be to ignore this, so only readers who gave damn would see the effect -- otherwise organised groups would be likely to mod off articles completely for spurious reasons (newbies wouldn't know why, more experienced ones who activated the feature would know how to turn it off if abuse was suspected).
American companies sell cigarettes all over the world without having to deal with the consequences...
As I said earlier, "unless one plays with numbers to hide the costs, or transfer them to others."
So some states that export massive amoounts of tobacco may come out ahead on that basis. It's fucking evil and immoral, though. My mother smoked a pack a day, and died of cancer. So I have an axe to grind...
You say "you are likely to find". So you're just guessing too. I'm "sure" the costs of smoking are far more than the benefits, unless one plays with numbers to hide the costs, or transfer them to others. Here's one page which puts cost/benefit at 10:1, the author has an axe to grind, but he backs it up.
From Cigarettes: A Huge Cost to Society:
Smoking as of 2002, costs Americans $157.4 billion per year. The annual amount is about $3,391 per person. Each pack leads to medical costs. Each pack reduces productivity. The total per-pack cost is calculated at $7.18. -- U.S. Centers for Disease Control.
Some people say this is all just "opinion." But think about it, the mathematical calculation aspect. Add up the costs of the tobacco-related medical care, divide by number of packs.
As each pack costs smokers far less than the actual cost impact on America, nonsmokers pay the difference. Nonsmokers pay the difference via increased taxes and insurance premiums.
For this reason alone, the per-pack tax should be $7.18.
States receive only about $16 billion a year from tobacco taxes and the widely touted Attorney-General-initiated settlement. This is barely 10% of the aforesaid costs.
With all the political satire, in jokes, and social comentary the Simpson's is hardly a kid show.
Nevertheless, my five-year-old daughter loves it. And check out all the toys, tee-shirts and other Simpsons merchandise. It's not all bought by sad "comic-book-store guy" types, mostly it's kids.
From "net profit", subtract the medical expenses and loss of taxes to the government from the people who get cancer, it's probably not a profit at all. On the other hand, I've heard it argued that by killing of people in their 60s, they save on benefits.
In the FA: Steinberg said. "There should be no cartoon figures in any form of gambling."
Here in Hong Kong the game parlour machines are roughly 50% street-fighter style,and 50% Mahjong or card games. All use cartoons. Many of the games have a femal opponent who disrobes as you progress... I'm pretty sure some parlours pay off in cash, though it's illegal.
Slashdot Mirror
The more you think about it, the less sense it makes. Philip Jose Farmer imagined the wonderful "Riverworld", but had the same problem, after having his protagonists explore it, they had to find the creators, and that was when it fell flat. Bob Shaw wrote a series about Orbitsville, a complete Dyson shell. Apparently, that was built by a superior race as a playpen to suck humans in so they wouldn't wander around the galaxy making trouble. (A Dyson shell has an area of millions of Earths.) That was fairly believable.
Niven tried hard to seem hip about sex in some of his stories, but didn't really convince. As he's aged he seems to have been getting more into the dirty-old-man style that Heinlein exemplared, which was worse.
If you want to read some terrific SF featuring future sex (by which I mean not just porn in space), try John Varley's work, especially the collection The Persistence of Vision.
It's really a shame that Niven lost steam by about 1980. Some authors, like Frederik Pohl, got from strength to strength as they age, but Niven seems to have got stuck and kept recycling stuff he'd whipped off in the 60s, when he was writing the orignal Known Space stories. (I loved many of these, but I wish he'd moved on after Ringworld.) Don't mention Jerry Pournelle -- with the single exception of Inferno, those collaborations were all long-winded crap.
You're about the third person who's said this. Please see my earlier post before telling me how dumb I am. I'm not a classical scholar, but I try to check my facts.
According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, "Lucifer" was Venus, and was Satan's name before his fall.
See previous posts on this point.
They wont, the Oscars are part of the star system. There are lots of awards, (I'm sure there are digital awards), but why "The Oscars" have become the Microsoft of awards is because of stars -- presenting, winning and receiving the awards. They have a separate ceremony for "technical" awards, which they give a nod to with a token clip on the "Oscar night". But really, people want to watch Julia Roberts, not some bearded inarticulate geek, no matter that he brought Helm'sDeep to life. The ceremony is a show.
Much further. Since the beginning. Le Voyage Dans La Lune (A Trip To The Moon) (1902)
Because new objects have been and will be discovered in our solar system, and others, that some might think of as "planets", and so the question of where actually to draw the line has arisen (actually many years ago, this is just the latest proposal).
Anyway, I won't continue this thread. Feel free to make more condescending comments for your fans.
Following up myself ("Mercury was thought to be two planets"):
Mercury was believed by the Greeks to be two different stars. Mercury's appearance in the morning was called Apollo, and its evening appearance was referred to as Hermes.
> In my part of the world, Venus is the morning and evening star. Thats probably how it is over at your place to.
"A" instead of "the".
(See Mercury is often visible near the rising or setting Sun as the morning or evening star) But I don't think Venus was ever thought to be two planets, but IIRC, Mercury was.
Yes. Which is not contradictory with what I wrote.
And analogously, it would be silly to disqualify something that otherwise fit into our theory of planets perfectly on the basis of its size.
"Analogously" doesn't prove anything, it's just a way of illustrating what you believe.
And anyway, "size" WASN'T the determinant offered by the astronomer, but being large enough to be spherical due to gravity, which turns out to be about 700 km diameter.
a) this is science, not tradition, scientific terms need an absolute definition.
b) traditionally, you only had the naked-eye planets: Mercury, venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn. What do you call the other gas giants? Not to mention, Mercury was thought to be two planets by some (the morning and evening star).
c) my opinion, just set it so that Pluto-size is the cut-off. Anything smaller isn't one. However, in a few centuries when we can detect "planets" in other solar systems this would seem a bit heliocentric, so I can see the Basri's point (in the FA: "Basri's definition, a planet must orbit a star, not another planet, and it must be round. That means it must be 700 kilometres in diameter, when gravity moulds it into a sphere, or bigger.").
Other than "Sun is waisting no time". At least it wasn't a dupe.
Today (a day after the original post) it has a new logo, not the "Google logo with R superimposed" original one. Now he's had his 15 minutes, maybe he will capitalise on it to actually do something.
Thye don't have to delete the story (there may be some threads that people want to pursue). However, there should be some way to bounce it from the front page. (The simplest hack would be to change the date, to make it yesterday. Or preferably, something that had the same effect, of moving it to "older stuff".)
Why should it disappear? If the previeewers miss that it was a dupe, say becasue it went live in only 3 minutes instead of 20 (which is a maximum, not a set period, according to Malda), it's still a dupe. The problem would be to limit abuse by twats who would modify everything a a dupe. But that's where metamoderation would work, here as for comments.
I just do "ctrl-f mirror".
So in the year or more since that was written, who has "thought it through in great detail".
Just caching everything linked is bad, for the reasons cited. How about making an offline cache, and sending a message to the owner of the site, where this is known, when the story is queued, asking if they want his cache to be made available, for instance? Not perfect, but would help in many cases. One thinks that Malda et al take a perverse pride in their "Slashdot effect" making people take notice of their site.
What would be an obvious extension of the moderating system is moderating the articles themselves. The default could be to ignore this, so only readers who gave damn would see the effect -- otherwise organised groups would be likely to mod off articles completely for spurious reasons (newbies wouldn't know why, more experienced ones who activated the feature would know how to turn it off if abuse was suspected).
As I said earlier, "unless one plays with numbers to hide the costs, or transfer them to others."
So some states that export massive amoounts of tobacco may come out ahead on that basis. It's fucking evil and immoral, though. My mother smoked a pack a day, and died of cancer. So I have an axe to grind...
From Cigarettes: A Huge Cost to Society:
Smoking as of 2002, costs Americans $157.4 billion per year. The annual amount is about $3,391 per person. Each pack leads to medical costs. Each pack reduces productivity. The total per-pack cost is calculated at $7.18. -- U.S. Centers for Disease Control.
Some people say this is all just "opinion." But think about it, the mathematical calculation aspect. Add up the costs of the tobacco-related medical care, divide by number of packs.
As each pack costs smokers far less than the actual cost impact on America, nonsmokers pay the difference. Nonsmokers pay the difference via increased taxes and insurance premiums.
For this reason alone, the per-pack tax should be $7.18. States receive only about $16 billion a year from tobacco taxes and the widely touted Attorney-General-initiated settlement. This is barely 10% of the aforesaid costs.
The Centers for Disease Control has much more on this.
Nevertheless, my five-year-old daughter loves it. And check out all the toys, tee-shirts and other Simpsons merchandise. It's not all bought by sad "comic-book-store guy" types, mostly it's kids.
From "net profit", subtract the medical expenses and loss of taxes to the government from the people who get cancer, it's probably not a profit at all. On the other hand, I've heard it argued that by killing of people in their 60s, they save on benefits.
Here in Hong Kong the game parlour machines are roughly 50% street-fighter style,and 50% Mahjong or card games. All use cartoons. Many of the games have a femal opponent who disrobes as you progress... I'm pretty sure some parlours pay off in cash, though it's illegal.