Given the geopolitical situation in the middle east and how it affects the rest of the planet (oil, gas) deposing Saddam was the worst possible thing Bush could have done for the long term stability of the world and could possibly spell the end of the US's superpower status.
Iraq was a keystone in the arch of a middle east that had been stable for as long as he was in power (which is why the US backed him to the hilt in the 80s). Now he's gone the country has collapsed and is drawing the rest of the region in; Iran and the Kurds directly, Syria, Lebanon, Israel et al indirectly, through Iran's increased regional power. If/when Iran goes the way of Iraq or the region just descends into a general regional war a good percentage of the world's LNG reserves will be beyond reach, on top of the oil that is already lost in Iraq. Apart from the direct effects of having less energy the knock on effect will be to dramatically increase the power of countries like Russia and (particularly) Venezuela, who between them have most of the energy reserves outside the Middle East. If Chavez and Putin are still in power at that point the outlook may not be good for the US.
Yes, although as an exception to that IIRC the Royal Navy (and other national Navies) lay claim to any wreck of one of it's own ships, however old it maybe and whoever's waters it may be in (not that this is a RN ship). The original owner also gets first dibs on anything from a wreck *landed* in the UK (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Receiver_of_Wreck) and, assuming the the coins are British, presumably the Crown is the original owner. Which probably explains why they chose to sail it hundreds of miles across the Atlantic rather than 40 miles to Plymouth.
I thought the Crown was more aggressive in enforcing its (perceived) rights in these matters, but google tells me this particular government is more interested in getting their dirty paws on the money (http://www.britarch.ac.uk/conserve/sussexpr.html)
Does anyone actually work anywhere that these "boss" stereotypes are real? I've worked a lot of places, and had good and bad bosses, but my immediate managers have never displayed these characteristics (bullying, credit hogging etc). In a real company people who do these things are found out pretty fast and dumped. Surely this is just some weird Dilbert-type fantasy world we're talking about?
Actually I am. I have a degree in Space Science and the discussions of habitability zones and stuff were what I wanted to get from my degree course but didn't so I was really looking forward to it. However Rare Earth turned out to be one of very few books I've never finished. 2/3rds of the way through I had to give up, the repetition was driving me crazy. Maybe I'll go back to it one day, but it's just not a book I can recommend.
What I meant is that before you start arguing about whether guy A was there in 11000BC or guy B was there in 11001BC you have decide what exactly your criteria for "meaningful" human population is.
I think it's very likely that there were people there before 11000BC, but if it was a single guy who drifted there on a raft and got eaten by a jaguar after 3 days is that worth counting as inhabited? Being less extreme, how about, say, a small tribe who lasted 30 years but still died out? The point is that it's normally worth finding out what the question is before arguing about the answer.
Proving that you don't need to be right to have a populist theory, just better at getting yourself on the History Channel...
IIRC the pre-Clovis sites are a few ripples spotted here and there and most have controversial dating evidence available, where as the Clovis evidence is like a tsunami of archaeology. While there may well have been pre-Clovis people this dating evidence (and from the article that's all it appears to be) simply confirms the date of the sites and does little to add anything of merit to the debate.
The argument that it took a maximum 350 years to spread and this is "too fast" for a settlement is spurious. Why is it inconcievable that it "only" took 350 years to get from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego? As it's about 8000 miles at most you would need to drift south at a leisurely 20-30 miles per year. Now this isn't feasible for an agricultural, settled people, but these were hunter-gatherers (as evidenced by the Clovis points) and could conceivably have done their year's quota in a single hunting trip. I doubt getting that far would have been much of a struggle, especially when most of the fat, stupid and tasty animals were in South America.
While it seems very likely that there were people in South America before the Clovis people, they were probably only there in very small numbers, whereas the Clovis people were clearly very numerous indeed and seem to be the first meaningful inhabitants.
BTW, it occcurs to me that if Clovis points were a technology that spread amongst an existing people (rather than the spread of the people with the technology) then neighbouring tribes/families/whatever would have to have been on good terms for it to spread. Anecdotally at least it would seem from what is known of tribes who were recently in this sort of situation that they tend not to be particularly friendly with their neighbours.
That's somewhat impractical and slightly redundant. Presumably the point of a moonbase is to develop the technology and techniques needed to develop colonies in the future? "Importing as little as possible" is an easy thing to say, but a lot harder to do. Even here on earth we find it hard to grow enough food in enclosed environments, what's it going to be like in space?
It's worth looking back at human history for lessons on colonies, in fact probably the colonization of North America is the most enlightening and best known. American colonies, whether English, French, Spanish, Dutch or Danish, all had two things in common:
They were expensive
They had a low success rate
They all had to import things initially (food, people, tools) and they had their own set of problems (disease, climate, natives), but generally colonizing a different continent is a lot easier than a different planetary body. Despite this, most colonies failed miserably. Some of the common reasons for failure included:
Lack of knowledge/technology
Loss of contact with homeland (boats damaged, weather patterns etc)
Abandonment by homeland, due to either upkeep cost or political expediency
The original inhabitants didn't like them
People are idiots
Basically, for a variety of reasons, a self sustaining colony cannot be instantly setup, it always needs expensive support from the homeland until it has adjusted to its new environment. However a few colonies were worth the initial huge cost (in both currency and lives) to keep them maintained, the reasons for this include
They produced something valuable to the homeland
...
To cut a long and interesting story short, the successful ones all made money. In the case of the Spanish they literally brought it home in the form of gold, for the English and Dutch new trade goods and markets and the taxes on trade did it and the French, well, are generally a lesson in how not to do it.
Any extra-terrestrial colony is only going to be a long term proposition if it makes more than it costs. Obviously no body, private or public, is going to throw money at a colony just for the sake of having it there (small scientific outposts excepted). With a current average launch cost of about $10,000 per pound one-way (I think) the moon is going to have to produce or allow production of something pretty fucking valuable to allow a permanent colony to grow there (and there are no new markets out there).
Assuming you can find that thing then you have the next problem of free market economics. Anything that costs $10,000 per lb is going to be sought after and extremely rare on Earth. As soon as you start transporting it back from the moon in practical quantaties (say one full shuttle load) it's no longer going to be rare and the price is going to drop, or, in the case of something that expensive, more likely plummet. I'm not an economist, but common sense tells me the chances of the price staying high enough for long enough to even break even is negligble.
The other end of the problem is to lower launch costs of course. I'm not really in the loop anymore but I think the current thinking is that things start getting interesting when launch costs come down to <$500/lb. That's a twenty fold decrease. A jump of that magnitude needs a technology revolution, not just tinkering with existing techs.
There are many obstacles to permanent ET colonies but the biggie is always the cost of overcoming that pesky gravity field we have. Whilst going to the moon may be fun, and incidentally show those Chinese who's who, I can't help but think that the money would be better spent in this direction.
I think you underestimate just how boring the Moon is... ask someone who's wintered in Antarctica.
They do that because a) it's cool b) it's well paid (by scientific standards). a) only lasts about 6 months, b) relies on having somewhere to go to spend the money.
The UK govt doesn't work like that. What happens is they build something with tax payer's money, attach lots of legislative strings to its output/produce then sell it off because it's "not working". Normally a government minister will then become a director of said privatised company within a couple of years.
The BBC has lots of legislative strings and the reason they can't share the content is ostensibly because it would be competitively "unfair" on the independent TV stations who don't have access to taxpayers money. Of course in the real world ITV and C4 are doing it anyway, but that sort of minor detail doesn't matter in politics.
The really funny thing is that everyone's known that this has been happening for decades, if not centuries (note the silence from the other parties). The thing that has got them in trouble and could potentially bring them down is the lengths they have gone to cover it up. We're only a couple of steps from Watergate UK, methinks.
They, can't, they're all just curmudgeonly, aging perl hippies, bitter and twisted cos the web left them behind around the time of HTML 3.2. Viva la Revolution!
Slashdot Mirror
Because they're all too busy wearing sandals and stroking their beards to take a look around..
"A source said" is always a euphemism for "I just made this up"
Iraq was a keystone in the arch of a middle east that had been stable for as long as he was in power (which is why the US backed him to the hilt in the 80s). Now he's gone the country has collapsed and is drawing the rest of the region in; Iran and the Kurds directly, Syria, Lebanon, Israel et al indirectly, through Iran's increased regional power. If/when Iran goes the way of Iraq or the region just descends into a general regional war a good percentage of the world's LNG reserves will be beyond reach, on top of the oil that is already lost in Iraq. Apart from the direct effects of having less energy the knock on effect will be to dramatically increase the power of countries like Russia and (particularly) Venezuela, who between them have most of the energy reserves outside the Middle East. If Chavez and Putin are still in power at that point the outlook may not be good for the US.
I thought the Crown was more aggressive in enforcing its (perceived) rights in these matters, but google tells me this particular government is more interested in getting their dirty paws on the money (http://www.britarch.ac.uk/conserve/sussexpr.html)
What's the difference? Ah, your freedom to bear arms...
Does anyone actually work anywhere that these "boss" stereotypes are real? I've worked a lot of places, and had good and bad bosses, but my immediate managers have never displayed these characteristics (bullying, credit hogging etc). In a real company people who do these things are found out pretty fast and dumped. Surely this is just some weird Dilbert-type fantasy world we're talking about?
Actually I am. I have a degree in Space Science and the discussions of habitability zones and stuff were what I wanted to get from my degree course but didn't so I was really looking forward to it. However Rare Earth turned out to be one of very few books I've never finished. 2/3rds of the way through I had to give up, the repetition was driving me crazy. Maybe I'll go back to it one day, but it's just not a book I can recommend.
http://driving.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_styl e/driving/features/article569961.ece
Play games. And I don't mean Sudoku.
Sorry, you can't blame the coffee anymore...
there should at least be a verifyable paper trail that each voter can see their votes cast on paper
Begging the question, why bother with the machines at all?I think it's very likely that there were people there before 11000BC, but if it was a single guy who drifted there on a raft and got eaten by a jaguar after 3 days is that worth counting as inhabited? Being less extreme, how about, say, a small tribe who lasted 30 years but still died out? The point is that it's normally worth finding out what the question is before arguing about the answer.
PS "South America" was a typo for "America".
The thing I find odd is that most of the advanced civilizations were in Mexico and S. America, rather than from the North.
That's just because the ones in the North aren't so famous...IIRC the pre-Clovis sites are a few ripples spotted here and there and most have controversial dating evidence available, where as the Clovis evidence is like a tsunami of archaeology. While there may well have been pre-Clovis people this dating evidence (and from the article that's all it appears to be) simply confirms the date of the sites and does little to add anything of merit to the debate. The argument that it took a maximum 350 years to spread and this is "too fast" for a settlement is spurious. Why is it inconcievable that it "only" took 350 years to get from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego? As it's about 8000 miles at most you would need to drift south at a leisurely 20-30 miles per year. Now this isn't feasible for an agricultural, settled people, but these were hunter-gatherers (as evidenced by the Clovis points) and could conceivably have done their year's quota in a single hunting trip. I doubt getting that far would have been much of a struggle, especially when most of the fat, stupid and tasty animals were in South America.
While it seems very likely that there were people in South America before the Clovis people, they were probably only there in very small numbers, whereas the Clovis people were clearly very numerous indeed and seem to be the first meaningful inhabitants.
BTW, it occcurs to me that if Clovis points were a technology that spread amongst an existing people (rather than the spread of the people with the technology) then neighbouring tribes/families/whatever would have to have been on good terms for it to spread. Anecdotally at least it would seem from what is known of tribes who were recently in this sort of situation that they tend not to be particularly friendly with their neighbours.
Of course H3 could be that wonder cargo, but that would require similar leaps forward in technology required before we go up there to get it.
That's somewhat impractical and slightly redundant. Presumably the point of a moonbase is to develop the technology and techniques needed to develop colonies in the future? "Importing as little as possible" is an easy thing to say, but a lot harder to do. Even here on earth we find it hard to grow enough food in enclosed environments, what's it going to be like in space?
It's worth looking back at human history for lessons on colonies, in fact probably the colonization of North America is the most enlightening and best known. American colonies, whether English, French, Spanish, Dutch or Danish, all had two things in common:
- They were expensive
- They had a low success rate
They all had to import things initially (food, people, tools) and they had their own set of problems (disease, climate, natives), but generally colonizing a different continent is a lot easier than a different planetary body. Despite this, most colonies failed miserably. Some of the common reasons for failure included:Basically, for a variety of reasons, a self sustaining colony cannot be instantly setup, it always needs expensive support from the homeland until it has adjusted to its new environment. However a few colonies were worth the initial huge cost (in both currency and lives) to keep them maintained, the reasons for this include
To cut a long and interesting story short, the successful ones all made money. In the case of the Spanish they literally brought it home in the form of gold, for the English and Dutch new trade goods and markets and the taxes on trade did it and the French, well, are generally a lesson in how not to do it.
Any extra-terrestrial colony is only going to be a long term proposition if it makes more than it costs. Obviously no body, private or public, is going to throw money at a colony just for the sake of having it there (small scientific outposts excepted). With a current average launch cost of about $10,000 per pound one-way (I think) the moon is going to have to produce or allow production of something pretty fucking valuable to allow a permanent colony to grow there (and there are no new markets out there).
Assuming you can find that thing then you have the next problem of free market economics. Anything that costs $10,000 per lb is going to be sought after and extremely rare on Earth. As soon as you start transporting it back from the moon in practical quantaties (say one full shuttle load) it's no longer going to be rare and the price is going to drop, or, in the case of something that expensive, more likely plummet. I'm not an economist, but common sense tells me the chances of the price staying high enough for long enough to even break even is negligble.
The other end of the problem is to lower launch costs of course. I'm not really in the loop anymore but I think the current thinking is that things start getting interesting when launch costs come down to <$500/lb. That's a twenty fold decrease. A jump of that magnitude needs a technology revolution, not just tinkering with existing techs.
There are many obstacles to permanent ET colonies but the biggie is always the cost of overcoming that pesky gravity field we have. Whilst going to the moon may be fun, and incidentally show those Chinese who's who, I can't help but think that the money would be better spent in this direction.
They do that because a) it's cool b) it's well paid (by scientific standards). a) only lasts about 6 months, b) relies on having somewhere to go to spend the money.
The BBC has lots of legislative strings and the reason they can't share the content is ostensibly because it would be competitively "unfair" on the independent TV stations who don't have access to taxpayers money. Of course in the real world ITV and C4 are doing it anyway, but that sort of minor detail doesn't matter in politics.
I didn't know that... Ta
This is Google, I think they've paid a monkey 15k a year to look for bombs and manually fix them in their index...
And good luck trying to get it changed...
The really funny thing is that everyone's known that this has been happening for decades, if not centuries (note the silence from the other parties). The thing that has got them in trouble and could potentially bring them down is the lengths they have gone to cover it up. We're only a couple of steps from Watergate UK, methinks.
They, can't, they're all just curmudgeonly, aging perl hippies, bitter and twisted cos the web left them behind around the time of HTML 3.2. Viva la Revolution!
Something to do with lighting I'd imagine (unless they've also modeled gravitational attraction)
Or 1s it just c00l to Do tHis?