Again nice story but please explain this. Notice they also simulated the increased UV and the atmosphere, thin as it is, shields enough radiation to allow humans to function for hours, unshielded, on the surface each day so it is not that high. Yes life on Mars is tough but if a similar disaster befell the Earth and we converted to Mars-like conditions we would still have some life left covering the surface. So why not Mars?
That doesn't presume that those organisms would thrive or last for thousands or years or more,
There are several species of lichen and cyanobacteria which can survive and function in simulated martian conditions on Earth. This includes the elevated UV radiation.
In addition the thin atmosphere does provide enough radiation protection for hours of activity per day from human astronauts. If it did not there would be zero point in going to Mars since you would never be able to walk on the surface. The lack of B-field means that the atmosphere is stripped away but what atmosphere there is still provides plenty of shielding. Indeed the reason you do not suffer massive radiation on Earth at the magnetic poles (where the field offers no protection because the field lines are vertical) is because the atmosphere shields you. Mars' atmosphere is a lot, lot thinner but even that is enough to provide a reasonable amount of shielding.
Regarding the time difference this is meaningless if you have a reproducing organism. The organism on Mars is not sitting around dormant waiting a billion years for who-knows-what to happen. It is busily replicating and growing new copies of itself. Even if you have the occasional CME it may kill a lot of life on the surface but that which is sheltered by rocks or cliffs or on the other side of the planet at the time it hits should then recover and grow back.
I likewise have found the US border guards in Canadian airports to be extremely professional and intelligent. However I used to fly between the US and Europe and the US border guards in the US can sometimes be very different. I think the difference is that the powers of the guards in US pre-clearance areas in Canada is far more limited. All they can do is deny you entry to the US, they have no power to detain you and you can leave at anytime. Everything you submit to is voluntary - the only compulsory rule is that you must answer their questions honestly. I would guess that not being able to order indefinite confinement and compulsory strip searches means that such a posting would not appeal to those guards which ironically terrorize people in the name of catching terrorists.
I've noted that here in Canada. In fact the engineers have managed to set up their own medieval guild structure so that, by law, you cannot have a physicist do certain jobs which they are more qualified to do than engineers e.g. teach physics! At one point they were even trying to get laws passed so that only engineers could work in any team designing ANY electronic circuit - fortunately that failed.
However if you get away from the pure engineering jobs and start to look at R&D or even in finance and you'll see lots of physicists. The data mining you do for particle physics coupled with the logical investigative/inference skills and a good understanding of large computer systems is extremely useful for mining financial data and making predictions. I know many colleagues who have left particle physics for the finance sector. Likewise R&D often requires that you know how things work which is where physicists often have the edge on engineers - although you'll undoubtedly be work with engineers to build things. This is a very similar model to physics research and again I've seen many colleagues take this route too. While the job crunch in particle physics is very severe at the moment if you look at the overall employment rate of physicists it is extremely high partly because a physics degree is so flexible.
If these martian organisms can survive the journey why are they still not covering Mars? The surface of Mars is far, far more hospitable to life than the cold, hard, irradiated vacuum of space. Indeed space probes going to Mars have to be disinfected because there are terran micro-organisms that would thrive there.
For your story to be correct you have to explain what sterilized the surface of Mars and removed all signs of life from it (or at least hid it well). It seems far, far more probable to me that live evolved here on Earth by a mechanism that we still imperfectly understand.
As far as I can tell the article mentions that research has found one thing that might help in the formation of early life. They combine this with what evidence there is of the conditions on both Earth and Mars 3.5 billion years ago (and for Mars I imagine that is highly sketchy) and leap to the conclusion that life may have originated on Mars.
If you find this even vaguely scientifically credible here are some questions to think about:
Is highly oxidised molybdenum the only possibility that could assist in the formation of early life or the only one they have found so far?
How certain are we of the conditions on Earth 3.5 billion years ago everywhere on the planet? What about deep ocean trenches - even if the surface lacked oxygen did these areas?
How certain are we that the conditions required existed on Mars 3.5 billion years ago?
How likely is it that an organism which evolved under the conditions required would survive a journey from Mars to Earth on a blasted out chunk of rock? We can find organisms now on Earth that might make the journey but out planet is teeming with a vast array of life - if a similar diverse array of life was present on Mars why hasn't some of it survived? It seems strange that none of these organism could survive on the surface of Mars now and yet survive a meteor impact followed by years in the cold vacuum of space ending with a fiery entry through Earth;s atmosphere.
It's certainly possible but conjecture this wild without the evidence to back it up is just hard science fiction not science.
Just like Warren Buffet says (paraphrased), just because you'll have to pay tax on it, doesn't make anyone stop trying to earn an extra dollar.... except apparently you.
It is not just tax that is the issue it is the overhead to do the government's job of figuring out for them how much you owe. If you already had a company infrastructure set up I would completely agree with you but this is a group of open source developers we are talking about here. They probably don't even exist as any sort of legal entity. The cost and effort required to set themselves up as a legal entity and then figure out whether tax is due and if so how much and what sort (should they be charging VAT/sales tax for example?) is unlikely to be adequately compensated by $5k.
Really it boils down to a simple cost/benefit analysis. If earning you a one-off $5k payment costs look like they will be $5k or more in admin overhead and taxes, not to mention an additional cost in time, why bother?
I'm guessing you never spent much time at altitude. I wasn't referring to the cold or the wind, but the lack of air.
I've been up to ~3800m in the Alps and I agree that when deposited there by cable car you certainly do notice the lack of air. Climbing stairs rapidly can make you feel a little woozy etc. However it is possible to adapt to altitude and, although not a medic, I understand this involves your body producing more haemoglobin which is why olympic athletes often train at altitude. While I am sure these adaptations do not make everything magically better you are wrong to compare a brief exposure to high altitude for a day or two with living there.
I also notice you ignored the other salient point, which is a total of 0 working toilets at the station (they have 1 working urinal).
No I did address this. Their main argument is the "harsh" conditions not the lack of amenities. If they do not appear concerned by this then I can only guess that by the local standards the amenities are perhaps not so bad. I also have doubts that they have no access to a toilet of any description because that would be exceedingly inefficient.
Look beyond the obvious. It's hard, I know, but you'll learn how the world really works.
Sound advice because in the real world there is something called "income tax" and if you submit an invoice saying that you provided support and in return someone gives you money for that "support" something called the government may want to have some cut of it. Of course there are ways around this, for example you might set yourself up as a non-profit organization...err or perhaps not. One thing is for certain though that invoice is likely to cause a huge pile of paperwork and require the project to spend time reading and understanding obfuscated tax laws at which point they will probably question whether they would rather skip the money and spend the time reading and understanding obfuscated code instead.
The human cultures that are most exposed to modern scientific education are also those with birth rates below replacement levels. So, for whatever reason, scientific education is co-related with the decline of human civilization.
Not true. Humans have increased their numbers until the entire planet is full of us and vast areas of its surface have been taken over to provide us the food that we need. In an environment with massive, untapped natural resources which can be developed and exploited to serve an every increasing population you may have a point that to sustain civilization you need to grow and expand. This is arguably no longer the case.
If we want to sustain our civilization we have to find a way to switch from growth through increasing our numbers to a stable population. This is concerning because it is extremely hard to do since nature generally seems to take the "grow or die" approach...but when to grow is to die (either from fighting for limited resources or from a lack of resources) then we have to find another way and it is hard to imagine that science will not the route to finding it.
A state secret is something that needs to be secret in order to protect the lives of the citizens of that state
But politicians are citizens too and these secrets often protect their political lives so its almost the same right? Sarcasm aside there are other things which should be 'protected' e.g. the frank and honest opinions of diplomats about the foreign governments they deal with. It's hard to see how these will protect lives. Perhaps the level for being allowed to reveal 'secrets' should be evidence of a crime and/or deliberately misleading the public. This actually used to be in the UK official secrets act as the "public interest" defence but that was removed in 1989.
Adding 16,000 ft to elevation is much harsher than dropping temps 30 degrees.
Since you are mixing unit systems it is worth pointing out that a temp change of 30C is 54F. I'd agree that a sudden change in altitude is much worse but, given time, your body adapts so you can at least stand outside in normal clothing for a period of time. Try doing that in -40C weather with a wind and you will not live long enough to worry about dehydration. In addition the far lower temperature means that while the relative humidity is usually higher in Alberta (20-30% in the winter on a dry day) the absolute humidity is probably at least as low if not lower. Certainly it affects your skin and hair.
You probably also have running water and access to a working toilet, a variety of entertainment options, restaurants and shopping choices, even if they are all moose related.
Having moose related shopping choices still leaves for a lot of variety. There's chocolate moose, vanilla moose, raspberry moose and a whole list of other flavours not to mention bear paws. However if the point is the lack of amenities then they should make it: not arguing about the 'terrible' -10C temperatures, low humidity and wind.
You should try an Alberta winter sometime. It can get down to -40C and I've seen -53C with windchill. They often put out warnings about frostbite warnings that exposed skin will freeze in seconds. In january we are lucky if we hit -10C for a _high_. Without the proper attire and equipment you would not survive 48 minutes let alone hours.
Obviously there needs to be a bonus for working up there, freezing you ass off
There does? Last time I checked I didn't get a winter bonus up here in Canada where the temperatures hit -40C. -10C for a _high_ counts as heat wave in January. Even the schools will send the kids out for break times as long as the temperature is above -23C. Except for the altitude those conditions are mild compared to a typical Canadian winter and the Alberta minimum wage is only C$1,854/month with an undoubtedly higher cost of living.
As you point out more details are needed to do a fair comparison but, with the details available so far, it frankly looks like they are not being teated that shabbily.
Exactly - I don't understand why this is either surprising. In fact my only concern is that a national paper thinks that it should publish such details. Having a foreign intelligence base in the heart of the region from where many of the terrorists come from sounds like an very sensible, reasonable thing. It's the detaining non-terrorist suspects under terrorism laws and spying on their own citizens and allies alike that is the concerning part. It appears that the press seems to have lost sight of this. Although I expect it may be somewhat related to the farce of destroying their UK-based disks and laptops.
Not necessarily.. if they're doing something equivalent to a poll where they can make predictions
To be valid such a poll has to be a random sample of the population. In this case that is simply not true: they are selecting a sample containing only rich twits. Those without the time, inclination or money to buy a suitable device to use twitter are excluded.
You are looking at this all wrong: I have a 45 minute commute and get exercise too by cycling. Edmonton has a fantastic river valley park so not only is about half the cycle ride through parks but the climb out of the valley helps increase the exercise. Of course being in Canada you can only do this 6-7 months of the year but for the winter there are buses so still no need to drive unless I'm working late. Not only does this get you exercise without taking up a lot of time but it's also saves money (bike maintenance is a lot less than the cost of bus fares or petrol).
The only rule of law should be: do nothing that people will take you to task for. People generally know right and wrong...
You are forgetting two important things. First while people may know right from wrong what each of us agrees is 'right' or 'wrong' varies, sometimes significantly. For example is it right that a woman should be able to terminate a pregnancy? [NOTE: this is intended to show that we do not all agree on what is 'right' NOT to start a flamewar on who is right!] The other thing you forget is that while people may know the difference they do not always act accordingly - if they did murder, theft and rape would not be the problems that they are. These two simple reasons are why we invented laws. It might not be a perfect solution - indeed it often seems very far from perfect - but it is better than the alternative where we all live in mud huts and beat each other over the heads with clubs when we tick each other off.
Slashdot Mirror
You can conjecture with no evidence....It's not concrete, but it's plenty for a story to tickle the neurons.
Indeed you can but this is exactly what good science fiction authors do, not good scientists.
Again nice story but please explain this. Notice they also simulated the increased UV and the atmosphere, thin as it is, shields enough radiation to allow humans to function for hours, unshielded, on the surface each day so it is not that high. Yes life on Mars is tough but if a similar disaster befell the Earth and we converted to Mars-like conditions we would still have some life left covering the surface. So why not Mars?
That doesn't presume that those organisms would thrive or last for thousands or years or more,
There are several species of lichen and cyanobacteria which can survive and function in simulated martian conditions on Earth. This includes the elevated UV radiation.
In addition the thin atmosphere does provide enough radiation protection for hours of activity per day from human astronauts. If it did not there would be zero point in going to Mars since you would never be able to walk on the surface. The lack of B-field means that the atmosphere is stripped away but what atmosphere there is still provides plenty of shielding. Indeed the reason you do not suffer massive radiation on Earth at the magnetic poles (where the field offers no protection because the field lines are vertical) is because the atmosphere shields you. Mars' atmosphere is a lot, lot thinner but even that is enough to provide a reasonable amount of shielding.
Regarding the time difference this is meaningless if you have a reproducing organism. The organism on Mars is not sitting around dormant waiting a billion years for who-knows-what to happen. It is busily replicating and growing new copies of itself. Even if you have the occasional CME it may kill a lot of life on the surface but that which is sheltered by rocks or cliffs or on the other side of the planet at the time it hits should then recover and grow back.
I likewise have found the US border guards in Canadian airports to be extremely professional and intelligent. However I used to fly between the US and Europe and the US border guards in the US can sometimes be very different. I think the difference is that the powers of the guards in US pre-clearance areas in Canada is far more limited. All they can do is deny you entry to the US, they have no power to detain you and you can leave at anytime. Everything you submit to is voluntary - the only compulsory rule is that you must answer their questions honestly. I would guess that not being able to order indefinite confinement and compulsory strip searches means that such a posting would not appeal to those guards which ironically terrorize people in the name of catching terrorists.
I've noted that here in Canada. In fact the engineers have managed to set up their own medieval guild structure so that, by law, you cannot have a physicist do certain jobs which they are more qualified to do than engineers e.g. teach physics! At one point they were even trying to get laws passed so that only engineers could work in any team designing ANY electronic circuit - fortunately that failed.
However if you get away from the pure engineering jobs and start to look at R&D or even in finance and you'll see lots of physicists. The data mining you do for particle physics coupled with the logical investigative/inference skills and a good understanding of large computer systems is extremely useful for mining financial data and making predictions. I know many colleagues who have left particle physics for the finance sector. Likewise R&D often requires that you know how things work which is where physicists often have the edge on engineers - although you'll undoubtedly be work with engineers to build things. This is a very similar model to physics research and again I've seen many colleagues take this route too. While the job crunch in particle physics is very severe at the moment if you look at the overall employment rate of physicists it is extremely high partly because a physics degree is so flexible.
If these martian organisms can survive the journey why are they still not covering Mars? The surface of Mars is far, far more hospitable to life than the cold, hard, irradiated vacuum of space. Indeed space probes going to Mars have to be disinfected because there are terran micro-organisms that would thrive there.
For your story to be correct you have to explain what sterilized the surface of Mars and removed all signs of life from it (or at least hid it well). It seems far, far more probable to me that live evolved here on Earth by a mechanism that we still imperfectly understand.
Of course to be politically correct they should have had some womannequins as well. ;-)
If you find this even vaguely scientifically credible here are some questions to think about:
It's certainly possible but conjecture this wild without the evidence to back it up is just hard science fiction not science.
Too much access to energy would be bad... Seriously, just go fuck off.
I think the problem he should be more concerned about is too much access to good scotch....he seems to be suffering from it.
The most plausible explanation was that the potential criminals were at home playing.
I think the word you are looking for is training, not playing. ;-)
They can't even hit the broadside of a barn!
As a barn is 10e-28 square metres (roughly the cross-sectional area of a uranium nucleus) that's hardly surprising is it?
Just like Warren Buffet says (paraphrased), just because you'll have to pay tax on it, doesn't make anyone stop trying to earn an extra dollar.... except apparently you.
It is not just tax that is the issue it is the overhead to do the government's job of figuring out for them how much you owe. If you already had a company infrastructure set up I would completely agree with you but this is a group of open source developers we are talking about here. They probably don't even exist as any sort of legal entity. The cost and effort required to set themselves up as a legal entity and then figure out whether tax is due and if so how much and what sort (should they be charging VAT/sales tax for example?) is unlikely to be adequately compensated by $5k.
Really it boils down to a simple cost/benefit analysis. If earning you a one-off $5k payment costs look like they will be $5k or more in admin overhead and taxes, not to mention an additional cost in time, why bother?
I'm guessing you never spent much time at altitude. I wasn't referring to the cold or the wind, but the lack of air.
I've been up to ~3800m in the Alps and I agree that when deposited there by cable car you certainly do notice the lack of air. Climbing stairs rapidly can make you feel a little woozy etc. However it is possible to adapt to altitude and, although not a medic, I understand this involves your body producing more haemoglobin which is why olympic athletes often train at altitude. While I am sure these adaptations do not make everything magically better you are wrong to compare a brief exposure to high altitude for a day or two with living there.
I also notice you ignored the other salient point, which is a total of 0 working toilets at the station (they have 1 working urinal).
No I did address this. Their main argument is the "harsh" conditions not the lack of amenities. If they do not appear concerned by this then I can only guess that by the local standards the amenities are perhaps not so bad. I also have doubts that they have no access to a toilet of any description because that would be exceedingly inefficient.
Look beyond the obvious. It's hard, I know, but you'll learn how the world really works.
Sound advice because in the real world there is something called "income tax" and if you submit an invoice saying that you provided support and in return someone gives you money for that "support" something called the government may want to have some cut of it. Of course there are ways around this, for example you might set yourself up as a non-profit organization...err or perhaps not. One thing is for certain though that invoice is likely to cause a huge pile of paperwork and require the project to spend time reading and understanding obfuscated tax laws at which point they will probably question whether they would rather skip the money and spend the time reading and understanding obfuscated code instead.
The human cultures that are most exposed to modern scientific education are also those with birth rates below replacement levels. So, for whatever reason, scientific education is co-related with the decline of human civilization.
Not true. Humans have increased their numbers until the entire planet is full of us and vast areas of its surface have been taken over to provide us the food that we need. In an environment with massive, untapped natural resources which can be developed and exploited to serve an every increasing population you may have a point that to sustain civilization you need to grow and expand. This is arguably no longer the case.
If we want to sustain our civilization we have to find a way to switch from growth through increasing our numbers to a stable population. This is concerning because it is extremely hard to do since nature generally seems to take the "grow or die" approach...but when to grow is to die (either from fighting for limited resources or from a lack of resources) then we have to find another way and it is hard to imagine that science will not the route to finding it.
A state secret is something that needs to be secret in order to protect the lives of the citizens of that state
But politicians are citizens too and these secrets often protect their political lives so its almost the same right? Sarcasm aside there are other things which should be 'protected' e.g. the frank and honest opinions of diplomats about the foreign governments they deal with. It's hard to see how these will protect lives. Perhaps the level for being allowed to reveal 'secrets' should be evidence of a crime and/or deliberately misleading the public. This actually used to be in the UK official secrets act as the "public interest" defence but that was removed in 1989.
Adding 16,000 ft to elevation is much harsher than dropping temps 30 degrees.
Since you are mixing unit systems it is worth pointing out that a temp change of 30C is 54F. I'd agree that a sudden change in altitude is much worse but, given time, your body adapts so you can at least stand outside in normal clothing for a period of time. Try doing that in -40C weather with a wind and you will not live long enough to worry about dehydration. In addition the far lower temperature means that while the relative humidity is usually higher in Alberta (20-30% in the winter on a dry day) the absolute humidity is probably at least as low if not lower. Certainly it affects your skin and hair.
You probably also have running water and access to a working toilet, a variety of entertainment options, restaurants and shopping choices, even if they are all moose related.
Having moose related shopping choices still leaves for a lot of variety. There's chocolate moose, vanilla moose, raspberry moose and a whole list of other flavours not to mention bear paws. However if the point is the lack of amenities then they should make it: not arguing about the 'terrible' -10C temperatures, low humidity and wind.
You should try an Alberta winter sometime. It can get down to -40C and I've seen -53C with windchill. They often put out warnings about frostbite warnings that exposed skin will freeze in seconds. In january we are lucky if we hit -10C for a _high_. Without the proper attire and equipment you would not survive 48 minutes let alone hours.
Obviously there needs to be a bonus for working up there, freezing you ass off
There does? Last time I checked I didn't get a winter bonus up here in Canada where the temperatures hit -40C. -10C for a _high_ counts as heat wave in January. Even the schools will send the kids out for break times as long as the temperature is above -23C. Except for the altitude those conditions are mild compared to a typical Canadian winter and the Alberta minimum wage is only C$1,854/month with an undoubtedly higher cost of living.
As you point out more details are needed to do a fair comparison but, with the details available so far, it frankly looks like they are not being teated that shabbily.
Given the trend during that last Star Trek series you have to wonder whether it will end up being 50 shades of Blake's 7.
Exactly - I don't understand why this is either surprising. In fact my only concern is that a national paper thinks that it should publish such details. Having a foreign intelligence base in the heart of the region from where many of the terrorists come from sounds like an very sensible, reasonable thing. It's the detaining non-terrorist suspects under terrorism laws and spying on their own citizens and allies alike that is the concerning part. It appears that the press seems to have lost sight of this. Although I expect it may be somewhat related to the farce of destroying their UK-based disks and laptops.
Not necessarily .. if they're doing something equivalent to a poll where they can make predictions
To be valid such a poll has to be a random sample of the population. In this case that is simply not true: they are selecting a sample containing only rich twits. Those without the time, inclination or money to buy a suitable device to use twitter are excluded.
You are looking at this all wrong: I have a 45 minute commute and get exercise too by cycling. Edmonton has a fantastic river valley park so not only is about half the cycle ride through parks but the climb out of the valley helps increase the exercise. Of course being in Canada you can only do this 6-7 months of the year but for the winter there are buses so still no need to drive unless I'm working late. Not only does this get you exercise without taking up a lot of time but it's also saves money (bike maintenance is a lot less than the cost of bus fares or petrol).
Parliament didn't even listen to it at the time it was published so why would they 400 years later?
The only rule of law should be: do nothing that people will take you to task for. People generally know right and wrong...
You are forgetting two important things. First while people may know right from wrong what each of us agrees is 'right' or 'wrong' varies, sometimes significantly. For example is it right that a woman should be able to terminate a pregnancy? [NOTE: this is intended to show that we do not all agree on what is 'right' NOT to start a flamewar on who is right!] The other thing you forget is that while people may know the difference they do not always act accordingly - if they did murder, theft and rape would not be the problems that they are. These two simple reasons are why we invented laws. It might not be a perfect solution - indeed it often seems very far from perfect - but it is better than the alternative where we all live in mud huts and beat each other over the heads with clubs when we tick each other off.