Oh, *very* well put. I do have one minor beef with your post:
On a national scale, this is NOT an expensive undertaking. If I'm successful, the value of the cargo I will bring back ON THE FIRST TRIP will cover the entire cost.
I suspect that C's backers knew very well they were taking a huge risk. At the time, given the economic realities of the trade routes available, they thought the risk worth taking. The thing is, it didn't really start paying off for decades, until more expeditions had taken place. So it was a very long term risk, and if they had known that, they may not have made the effort. Hard to say.
To contrast that, we know that with a serious effort we can make space exploration pay off hugely (asteroid mining, for one ex); we're not quite operating as blindly as C's backers did. We've already sampled what's on the other side, so to speak; we have information that Columbus did not.
It's lack of political and public will that's stopping us now (and other problems, but that's really outside the scope of this argument; Spain in the mid 1400s had much the same problems)
As with all historical analogies, all of ours suffer from differences in the local gestalt...
3. Those of us who have wanted to do it because we feel it's important, and because we'd enjoy the challenge.
Many of us are getting awful old... but there are plenty to take our place. Maybe not with quite the fire of the older dreamers, but with better tools and the benefit of the knowledge the older dreamers bought.
No offense, but I think you're being a bit narrow in your analysis - or maybe you just haven't personally known any really serious space advocates. But then again, I have to confess that it was easier being a space geek:) when I was growing up then it now. One doesn't have to deal with so much flamage, anyway (usenet in the 80s)
Yes, it does. I lived near the Canadian border for 6 years (N. MN) and enjoyed my visits there. The people were very reminiscent of small town S. MN where I grew up:) as you know well.
Can't say that I cared for the over-zealousness of the CA custom officials, but I can't say that I blame them, either.
and in some ways, particluarly in the Yukon or Northwest Territories, it has a positively frontier feel. In many positive ways.
Agreed. Haven't been up there yet, but my uncle has lived in Juneau since 1969, and he says the same thing.
My family has crossed back and forth across the U.S./Canadian border several times over the years...-snip-
Some of them even lived in Austin, MN for a while...and just a friendly warning, it's not the nice small town it was then:(
The Canadians do seem to be a little more common sensical (I correspond with several of them on a regular basis). The advantages you point out re population are all too depressing - look at places like India and China...
The USA has to deal with Texas.
Heh. Well put - but I'd have said "Texan politicians" myself. I was in Texas for a while back in '91, and I was much impressed by the "common" folk I met. They are well and truly balanced by the idiocy of the politicos there, however. Just another unfathomable human dichotomy...
Damn, that's a very good way of putting it...but replace "they" with "media/opinion" and it's spot-on.
We can expend many hundreds of casualties trying to export our brand of political idealism to other regions, but quake at expending a few to explore a whole new and tremendously promising frontier.
The ghosts of the pioneers who opened the west in the 1800s have to be laughing at us. It's shameful.
A lunar colony would have vastly greater resources to draw on, while an orbital "colony" has to have everything shipped to it.
The regolith contains nearly every element necessary to industrial applications and crop growing (a few trace elements will be needed for crops, but they aren't mass/volume intensive and tend to be self-regenerating once a biocycle is established).
Come on now, all this stuff has been debated and hashed over many times since the first lunar soil samples came back. For the same investment as the ISS, and if it's done without contractor/bureacracy money bleed, a self-sufficient lunar colony is very viable.
I do agree somewhat with your other comment - it won't be done (soon, anyway) - but the reason is political, not technical, not even when applied to a self-sufficient colony.
Assuming we don't cripple civilization here with our idiocy, a lunar colony *will* happen; and if it's done intelligently it could be self-sufficient within a few years of start. Sure, there will be pitfalls - but they are nearly all engineering problems, and ones that we have enough evidence to solve (many have been).
Anyway, debating this on slashdot is pointless except perhaps for the knowledge share. Then again, it's no more pointless than writing your congress critters is:)
You don't need to find water, you can make it with Hydrogen and Oxygen. There's a LOT of Oxygen in the moon's crust, and very likely a good amount of Hydrogen in the regolith deposited by the solar wind.
I've seen a lot of different versions; this one is my (so far) my favorite.
Like most really good generic jokes, it's *insert group here*; works for most, with some modification.
The real punchline is the differential between what people think of as important in life. That's pretty much an infinite field (for comedians and punsters) to write to:) and it can even be clean:)
Someday some asshole will quantify irony; and we'll probably all be poorer for it - there will be control groups, numerous studies, and it will conclude that we're all, essentially, insane.
This post just may be used as a example. Ah, well. Infamy...and delusion:)
The whole scene is taking on the guise of a circus, isn't it?:(
I don't know if Flynt would get involved - he's proven that he's way too politically savvy for that - he'll do his influencing in other ways, like he's always done.
I'd laugh if it wasn't relevant to seeing people I care about get screwed over (everybody). But seriously, this is just plain stupid. WTF is Ashcroft thinking? Does he seriously believe that he can call on enough support to make this work?
If Ashcroft shoves his head any further up his ass, his dentist will have to call in a hemmorrhoidal specialist.
SB *scratches own skull at the antics of current admin; but then, it's election year, one should expect stupidity*
Oh, I understand that. Reread what I said; that I don't really believe there is a general causative link. However, if you could read what Harlan wrote, you might find that for some people, there is.
I did not imply that it was general; only that I read something that made me think that causative links for some *do* exist (and you can't deny that, either). Note what I said: "and how the most violent segment of inmates just loved the slash flics."
I just threw that comment out as a comment of my own about something that I'd read that I found profoundly disturbing (to my worldview, which is that violent movies do not cause violence in kids); you see, I also read the other views, and often they have good points.
Sigh. Apparently the article is not online. The whole article was not just about that - in fact it was part of a diatribe concerning violence in film being not art vs. art (concerning Ken Russell's works vis'vis Shelley)...
Perhaps I should not have posted at all unless I typed the relevant paragraphs of Ellison's article. But as I said, he'd undoubtedly be pissed at me, given his recent history; especially when I'd have had to post the whole thing to really bring it's relevance into focus. I am hoping that someone can find the article online (if it exists) it really is a good read.
What makes you think that this crusade of Ashcroft's is going to differentiate between staged/faked and not? Perhaps you can tell the difference (I doubt it, I've seen some pretty convincing vids, and I'm not a kid by any means nor easily fooled) but what makes you think that the government "researchers" will be able to tell?
Or that Ashcroft will care? Remember who he is and what he espouses. He wants *all* porn banned. Don't believe that he doesn't, not for one minute. He's not one for half measures.
The thing is, that what you talk about is already illegal. We don't need more laws concerning *real* rape/murder/child porn, they exist. We don't need another "War on ****" from the Feds, the other ones have been damaging enough. They can continue to enforce existing laws. What this is, really, is election year galloping PR from our AG, trying to convince some segment of the public that he's "doing something" about a topic that disturbs his boss's campaign donaters...
It's a slippery slope you propose our country to tread...
I'm far more offended by a lot of the stupid violence (Freddy movies, etc) that I see in films than I am by most porn, even staged "rape" flix.
Harlan Ellison had an excellent commentary on this back in Fantasy & Science Fiction magazine (Vol 73 # 3, September 1987) where he talked about his visit to a Juvenile facility and how the most violent segment of inmates just loved the slash flics. (wish I had a link, I have the mag in front of me...anyone know if that was ever published online? It's page 66).
It's worth reading, if anyone can find it. I'd re-publish it here, but Mr. Ellison would undoubtedly be a bit miffed at me:) not to mention it's an awful lot of typing, 5000 words +
The smoke-free crusades have been going on for around (more than?) a decade, tho; and are mostly local initiatives. The Fed getting into that one would really have a lot of people up in arms, even rabid non-smokers, considering the subsidies that a lot of tobacco farmers still get.
I still consider it the height of hypocrisy that online gambling is illegal, yet casinos and lotteries are widely accepted, and for Native American casinos, encouraged.
(No, I don't gamble, don't care one whit what others do with their money, either. )
The perfect antithesis then, to all the people who pay for the 'products' on sale. The line "Don't drink, don't smoke, what do you do?" springs to mind. Have you in fact checked he's still alive ?
Reminds me of an old joke: -- A bum, who'd obviously seen more than his share of hard times, approached a well-dressed man on the street. "Hey, Buddy.....can you spare two dollars?"
The well-dressed man replied, "You're not going to spend it on liquor are you?"
"No, sir, I don't drink," the bum responded.
"You're not going to throw it away on fishing gear, are you?" the gentleman asked.
"No... I don't fish either!" answered the bum.
"You wouldn't waste the money on a deer lease, would you?" asks the man. "No, I wouldn't!" says the bum, "I don't hunt!"
So the man asked the bum if he'd like to come home with him for a home cooked meal. The bum accepted eagerly. On the way to the man's house, the bum's curiosity got the better of him. "Isn't your wife going to be upset when you bring a guy like me to your house for dinner?"
"Well, probably," said the man, "but it'll be well worth it for her to see what happens to a man that doesn't drink, fish or hunt". --
Depends on how much civil rights crushing he does in this particular crusade...but you're probably right, it'll be a lot more difficult for him. The pr0n industry has a lot of bucks and a lot of power.
Then again, it'd be just like him to attach the word "terrorist" to the pr0n industry - you know, a threat to America's "Superior Moral Position" or some such tripe like that. 'Think of the children!'
Slashdot Mirror
Oh, *very* well put. I do have one minor beef with your post:
On a national scale, this is NOT an expensive undertaking. If I'm successful, the value of the cargo I will bring back ON THE FIRST TRIP will cover the entire cost.
I suspect that C's backers knew very well they were taking a huge risk. At the time, given the economic realities of the trade routes available, they thought the risk worth taking. The thing is, it didn't really start paying off for decades, until more expeditions had taken place. So it was a very long term risk, and if they had known that, they may not have made the effort. Hard to say.
To contrast that, we know that with a serious effort we can make space exploration pay off hugely (asteroid mining, for one ex); we're not quite operating as blindly as C's backers did. We've already sampled what's on the other side, so to speak; we have information that Columbus did not.
It's lack of political and public will that's stopping us now (and other problems, but that's really outside the scope of this argument; Spain in the mid 1400s had much the same problems)
As with all historical analogies, all of ours suffer from differences in the local gestalt...
Cheers!
SB
3. Those of us who have wanted to do it because we feel it's important, and because we'd enjoy the challenge.
Many of us are getting awful old... but there are plenty to take our place. Maybe not with quite the fire of the older dreamers, but with better tools and the benefit of the knowledge the older dreamers bought.
No offense, but I think you're being a bit narrow in your analysis - or maybe you just haven't personally known any really serious space advocates. But then again, I have to confess that it was easier being a space geek
Sigh.
SB
I *loved* this thread. Great analogies, guys. You should get together and write a alternate history novel (not sarcasm!)
SB
Canada has the "feel" of a small town
:) as you know well.
:(
Yes, it does. I lived near the Canadian border for 6 years (N. MN) and enjoyed my visits there. The people were very reminiscent of small town S. MN where I grew up
Can't say that I cared for the over-zealousness of the CA custom officials, but I can't say that I blame them, either.
and in some ways, particluarly in the Yukon or Northwest Territories, it has a positively frontier feel. In many positive ways.
Agreed. Haven't been up there yet, but my uncle has lived in Juneau since 1969, and he says the same thing.
My family has crossed back and forth across the U.S./Canadian border several times over the years...-snip-
Some of them even lived in Austin, MN for a while...and just a friendly warning, it's not the nice small town it was then
The Canadians do seem to be a little more common sensical (I correspond with several of them on a regular basis). The advantages you point out re population are all too depressing - look at places like India and China...
The USA has to deal with Texas.
Heh. Well put - but I'd have said "Texan politicians" myself. I was in Texas for a while back in '91, and I was much impressed by the "common" folk I met. They are well and truly balanced by the idiocy of the politicos there, however. Just another unfathomable human dichotomy...
Cheers, Rob
SB
PS: How's Vern doing?
Damn, that's a very good way of putting it...but replace "they" with "media/opinion" and it's spot-on.
We can expend many hundreds of casualties trying to export our brand of political idealism to other regions, but quake at expending a few to explore a whole new and tremendously promising frontier.
The ghosts of the pioneers who opened the west in the 1800s have to be laughing at us. It's shameful.
SB
A lunar colony would have vastly greater resources to draw on, while an orbital "colony" has to have everything shipped to it.
:)
The regolith contains nearly every element necessary to industrial applications and crop growing (a few trace elements will be needed for crops, but they aren't mass/volume intensive and tend to be self-regenerating once a biocycle is established).
Come on now, all this stuff has been debated and hashed over many times since the first lunar soil samples came back. For the same investment as the ISS, and if it's done without contractor/bureacracy money bleed, a self-sufficient lunar colony is very viable.
I do agree somewhat with your other comment - it won't be done (soon, anyway) - but the reason is political, not technical, not even when applied to a self-sufficient colony.
Assuming we don't cripple civilization here with our idiocy, a lunar colony *will* happen; and if it's done intelligently it could be self-sufficient within a few years of start. Sure, there will be pitfalls - but they are nearly all engineering problems, and ones that we have enough evidence to solve (many have been).
Anyway, debating this on slashdot is pointless except perhaps for the knowledge share. Then again, it's no more pointless than writing your congress critters is
SB
You don't need to find water, you can make it with Hydrogen and Oxygen. There's a LOT of Oxygen in the moon's crust, and very likely a good amount of Hydrogen in the regolith deposited by the solar wind.
Not only that, but combining H and O gives you energy in addition to water...and the upper few meters of regolith are rich in implanted ions of hydrogen and helium.
SB
Hee, I've done that a time or two *cough* :-)
SB
Bineural Ocular Rights Gizmo.
SB
lol
SB
I've seen a lot of different versions; this one is my (so far) my favorite.
Like most really good generic jokes, it's *insert group here*; works for most, with some modification.
The real punchline is the differential between what people think of as important in life. That's pretty much an infinite field (for comedians and punsters) to write to
Someday some asshole will quantify irony; and we'll probably all be poorer for it - there will be control groups, numerous studies, and it will conclude that we're all, essentially, insane.
This post just may be used as a example. Ah, well. Infamy...and delusion
/soapbox
Cheers,
SB
The whole scene is taking on the guise of a circus, isn't it? :(
I don't know if Flynt would get involved - he's proven that he's way too politically savvy for that - he'll do his influencing in other ways, like he's always done.
I'd laugh if it wasn't relevant to seeing people I care about get screwed over (everybody). But seriously, this is just plain stupid. WTF is Ashcroft thinking? Does he seriously believe that he can call on enough support to make this work?
If Ashcroft shoves his head any further up his ass, his dentist will have to call in a hemmorrhoidal specialist.
SB *scratches own skull at the antics of current admin; but then, it's election year, one should expect stupidity*
Yup, we already had the Big Pile of Dead Jedi.
SB
Oh, I understand that. Reread what I said; that I don't really believe there is a general causative link. However, if you could read what Harlan wrote, you might find that for some people, there is.
...
I did not imply that it was general; only that I read something that made me think that causative links for some *do* exist (and you can't deny that, either). Note what I said: "and how the most violent segment of inmates just loved the slash flics."
I just threw that comment out as a comment of my own about something that I'd read that I found profoundly disturbing (to my worldview, which is that violent movies do not cause violence in kids); you see, I also read the other views, and often they have good points.
Sigh. Apparently the article is not online. The whole article was not just about that - in fact it was part of a diatribe concerning violence in film being not art vs. art (concerning Ken Russell's works vis'vis Shelley)
Perhaps I should not have posted at all unless I typed the relevant paragraphs of Ellison's article. But as I said, he'd undoubtedly be pissed at me, given his recent history; especially when I'd have had to post the whole thing to really bring it's relevance into focus. I am hoping that someone can find the article online (if it exists) it really is a good read.
My wrists hurt. Enough typing for now.
SB
Not my point. Reread what I said.
Besides;
What makes you think that this crusade of Ashcroft's is going to differentiate between staged/faked and not? Perhaps you can tell the difference (I doubt it, I've seen some pretty convincing vids, and I'm not a kid by any means nor easily fooled) but what makes you think that the government "researchers" will be able to tell?
Or that Ashcroft will care? Remember who he is and what he espouses. He wants *all* porn banned. Don't believe that he doesn't, not for one minute. He's not one for half measures.
The thing is, that what you talk about is already illegal. We don't need more laws concerning *real* rape/murder/child porn, they exist. We don't need another "War on ****" from the Feds, the other ones have been damaging enough. They can continue to enforce existing laws. What this is, really, is election year galloping PR from our AG, trying to convince some segment of the public that he's "doing something" about a topic that disturbs his boss's campaign donaters...
It's a slippery slope you propose our country to tread...
SB
Count "Doogie" : not be decided with by our skills with the force... but by our skill with a scalpel!
SB
I'm far more offended by a lot of the stupid violence (Freddy movies, etc) that I see in films than I am by most porn, even staged "rape" flix.
:) not to mention it's an awful lot of typing, 5000 words +
Harlan Ellison had an excellent commentary on this back in Fantasy & Science Fiction magazine (Vol 73 # 3, September 1987) where he talked about his visit to a Juvenile facility and how the most violent segment of inmates just loved the slash flics. (wish I had a link, I have the mag in front of me...anyone know if that was ever published online? It's page 66).
It's worth reading, if anyone can find it. I'd re-publish it here, but Mr. Ellison would undoubtedly be a bit miffed at me
SB
Doesn't matter. This whole agenda of Ashcroft's is going to piss off a whole lot of voters.
Wouldn't it be ironic if it was Ashcroft's newest crusade that *really* cost Bush the election?
Note: I don't care much for Kerry, either. But I'll take a potential wimp over a potential fascist anyday. You can *educate* a wimp.
SB
Michael is up
That explained it right there...
SB
(sorry, couldn't resist)
So right-wing nutheads from Washington, D.C. will be...
:)
use of the words fuck, shit, piss, cunt, motherfucker, cocksucker and tits? (New CHEESE tits!)
You forgot snapper
SB
I agree completely with you; but :) if makeup makes you think of sex even while looking at a five year old, you have a problem.
:)
I suggest forced viewing of Tammy Fae Baker (crying or not) for at least an hour a day until you are cured.
SB
The smoke-free crusades have been going on for around (more than?) a decade, tho; and are mostly local initiatives. The Fed getting into that one would really have a lot of people up in arms, even rabid non-smokers, considering the subsidies that a lot of tobacco farmers still get.
I still consider it the height of hypocrisy that online gambling is illegal, yet casinos and lotteries are widely accepted, and for Native American casinos, encouraged.
(No, I don't gamble, don't care one whit what others do with their money, either. )
SB
The perfect antithesis then, to all the people who pay for the 'products' on sale. The line "Don't drink, don't smoke, what do you do?" springs to mind. Have you in fact checked he's still alive ?
.....can you spare two dollars?"
Reminds me of an old joke:
--
A bum, who'd obviously seen more than his share of hard times, approached a well-dressed man on the street. "Hey, Buddy
The well-dressed man replied, "You're not going to spend it on liquor are you?"
"No, sir, I don't drink," the bum responded.
"You're not going to throw it away on fishing gear, are you?" the gentleman asked.
"No... I don't fish either!" answered the bum.
"You wouldn't waste the money on a deer lease, would you?" asks the man. "No, I wouldn't!" says the bum, "I don't hunt!"
So the man asked the bum if he'd like to come home with him for a home cooked meal. The bum accepted eagerly. On the way to the man's house, the bum's curiosity got the better of him. "Isn't your wife going to be upset when you bring a guy like me to your house for dinner?"
"Well, probably," said the man, "but it'll be well worth it for her to see what happens to a man that doesn't drink, fish or hunt".
--
SB
Depends on how much civil rights crushing he does in this particular crusade...but you're probably right, it'll be a lot more difficult for him. The pr0n industry has a lot of bucks and a lot of power.
Then again, it'd be just like him to attach the word "terrorist" to the pr0n industry - you know, a threat to America's "Superior Moral Position" or some such tripe like that. 'Think of the children!'
SB
Don't you mean glazed eyes and sticky fingers?
SB