When I have written letters to the editor of my local paper, they have called me and verified that I did indeed write it and that I give permission for them to print it.
Sounds like this girl is right - town full of assholes. Asshole principal, asshole newspaper editor, asshole citizenry.
I'll point out that.015 dollars does not equal a penny and a half, since the US (and Canada) have no coin called a penny. That's England. Here we have cents.
well, my post was more about Mars... and terraforming. Bases on the moon may be a good idea, but they aren't going to be another basket to put our eggs in. Too close, too hard to sustain life long term there. No chance of an actual ecosystem, ever... compared with Mars' slim chance.
and the cost, Mars colony would definitely be more than an anti-asteroid system. Early detection would be much more acheivable than late deflection. But a moon base would not be a very nice alternative to it... the earth is pretty nice - detecting and deflecting asteroids would be worth much MORE than the cost of a moon colony.
But again, I was talking more in line of Mars terraforming etc.
Self sustaining Mars BASE, quite possibly. But a colony, large enough and robust enough to provide a future for the whole species if the earth goes kablooey? One that can survive the unforseen possible long term deleterious effects of not having a diverse biosphere? (immunity problems, fertility, micronutrients, who the hells knows what?) Not freaking likely.
And also, have you considered that against the fairly long odds of a mars colony being the basis for human survival, NOT terraforming Mars could possibly be the best bet for our survival?
A whole fracking planet, do we want to start mucking it up before we're sure whats there in every nook, cranny, cave?
Fossils, that will show us we were not the only life to arise in this solar system, and hence life is likely widespread in the universe? Would that change our global attitude and make us more unified and less fractuous?
Or actual extant life, the study of which could give us untold knowledge, maybe knowledge that eventually could help us genetically engineer our own survival in some way?
Who knows? But possibly a better return that trying to create atmosphere when we cant stop fucking up the one we have, etc.
I would be too, but lets be honest - scientific return and thee progress of human knowledge is not measured by what gives you and me a visceral thrill. That's not science, that's entertainment. Good science can of course be entertaining, but what's most entertaining does is not necessarily the best science. If it were, porn would have cured cancer.
An astronaut climbed Everest last month, read about it on nasawatch.com Millions of people protested and complained, saying it was too much of a risk despite the scientific data gained from his trip (a photo at the summit for his blog)
"You may think it's fantasy, but keep in mind that eventually, a life-killer asteroid strike, while extremely unlikely in any given year, is eventually a mathematical certainty. By all the best evidence, it has happened before, probably more than once."
That comes under learning to take care of the planet we have. It would be a hell of a lot easier and cheaper and more quickly accomplishable to build an asteroid detection and intercept system than to create a self-sustaining population of humans off the earth that can be the entire future of the species.
There are reasons to send people out there, maybe even permanently at some point. Thinking that they could be a future branch of the human race any time within the forseeable future is nuts. We can more easily come up with way to deal with any calamity to befall the Earth until the sun goes red giant than we can move off of it.
I'm a lifelong NASA nut and space fan, and my fantasies are as elaborate as anyone's but that's all it is - fantasy.
There are billions of people on this planet, and counting. We would have to launch over 200,000 people a day into space each day just to keep up with the daily increase in the population, without even making a dent in the "reserve."
Apart from thousands of years off Nivenesque dreams of turning the planet itself into a spaceship, we just stuck here and we have to face it.
The absolute best we could hope to achieve is to launch a very select elite by using far more than their fair share of resources, while leaving essentially the entire human populace behind to deal with the consequences.
And when they left, then what? Here we are with a perfectly self-regulating ecosystem in the prime location with conditions tailor made for us (or rather us for them), and we can't understand it well enough or control our own impulses well enough to keep from fucking it up.... but somehow we'll be smart enough to go somewhere else less opportune and build one from scratch?
"Get us off this rock" attitudes are the product of denial, passing the buck to the our future victims, the ultimate expression of our throw-away consumer culture. We'll use up this planet, toss it and get a new one.
No. Exploration of space is vital to scientific knowledge and indeed to our attempts to understand earth (as exploring Venus helped us understand global warming) but as a species we are stuck with what we have and we'd better take care of it, there's nowhere else in the neighborhood worth anything more than an outpost.
If a sentient species from earth ever DOES spread out far enough to fully leave Earth behind for good, it won't be Homo Sapiens who does it... it would be far enough in the future that either our descendant species (or something else's) will be doing it.
Speaking as a former antiques dealer, I can tell you what the value of your priceless photos will be maybe 50 years after your death when your great grandchildren, having completely forgotten who you were, decide to let the mini-storage place sell off the contents of their unit rather than continue to pay the rent on it... and your photos, along with old clothes, high school yearbooks, etc... go to the highest bidder...
I like to think of them as incentives. That's all they are, really. Copyright law when originated actually was based on the understanding that information, once made public, naturally becomes public domain... that this is GOOD, and to be encouraged... and they encouraged it by a temporary artificial monopoly with the end goal being MORE PUBLIC DOMAIN WORKS.
The propaganda by the beneficiaries of this public largess has been so successful that most people now actually think that copyright violation is stealing, actually think that information in MY head can be someone else's property... actually think that this is natural and proper. Insane.
Copyright was an incentive. Like a government small business loan, enterprise zones, tax breaks, cheap hydro power for industry, taxpayer subsidized NFL stadiums, whatever.
"He was making the point that it's hard enough to protect history right next door - near impossible 200,000 miles away."
I would think it's pretty obvious that it's the other way around, seeing as the only thing that is going to mess it up is us. I've seen many historic sites here on earth destroyed in the last 10 years by fire, developers tearing them down to erect car washes and strip malls, vandals, etc. The likelihood of that happening on the moon is, well, not as great.
Look at the difference between gmail and hotmail. Gmail has a clean interface, and it's quick and snappy. The newly-redesigned (yet still crappy) hotmail has a cluttered, less usable interface full of minor annoyances, AND it's a sluggish buggy piece of shit.
wait... he's running out of oxygen, and the rare oxygen he managed to find is locked inside rocks... released only be the heat of his fire. His WHAT? Fire? How the hell does he have a fire if the oxygen is so rare its locked up in rocks?
I've long said, in response to "but this will only make the police's jobs harder!" complaints about court rulings, etc... that that is precisely and specifically what the Bill of Rights was intended to do - make the police's job harder.
Slashdot Mirror
"programmer saying "this program is bug free, because I'm a programmer." It just doesn't (or at least shouldn't) happen that often"
Well in this case I disagree - it doesn't but SHOULD happen more often.
When I have written letters to the editor of my local paper, they have called me and verified that I did indeed write it and that I give permission for them to print it.
Sounds like this girl is right - town full of assholes. Asshole principal, asshole newspaper editor, asshole citizenry.
We do have dimes. That's the official name. We don't have nickels, we have five cent pieces.
My point was simply that if the grandparent was going to be pedantic and correct what he corrected, I could be pedantic and correct HIS inaccuracy.
The thing with lincoln on it is a one cent piece. There is no US coin called a penny.
I'll point out that .015 dollars does not equal a penny and a half, since the US (and Canada) have no coin called a penny. That's England. Here we have cents.
Do you have any idea how long it would take to travel to even the closest other star systems?
well, my post was more about Mars... and terraforming. Bases on the moon may be a good idea, but they aren't going to be another basket to put our eggs in. Too close, too hard to sustain life long term there. No chance of an actual ecosystem, ever... compared with Mars' slim chance.
and the cost, Mars colony would definitely be more than an anti-asteroid system. Early detection would be much more acheivable than late deflection. But a moon base would not be a very nice alternative to it... the earth is pretty nice - detecting and deflecting asteroids would be worth much MORE than the cost of a moon colony.
But again, I was talking more in line of Mars terraforming etc.
Self sustaining Mars BASE, quite possibly. But a colony, large enough and robust enough to provide a future for the whole species if the earth goes kablooey? One that can survive the unforseen possible long term deleterious effects of not having a diverse biosphere? (immunity problems, fertility, micronutrients, who the hells knows what?) Not freaking likely.
And also, have you considered that against the fairly long odds of a mars colony being the basis for human survival, NOT terraforming Mars could possibly be the best bet for our survival?
A whole fracking planet, do we want to start mucking it up before we're sure whats there in every nook, cranny, cave?
Fossils, that will show us we were not the only life to arise in this solar system, and hence life is likely widespread in the universe? Would that change our global attitude and make us more unified and less fractuous?
Or actual extant life, the study of which could give us untold knowledge, maybe knowledge that eventually could help us genetically engineer our own survival in some way?
Who knows? But possibly a better return that trying to create atmosphere when we cant stop fucking up the one we have, etc.
Just some food for thought.
I would be too, but lets be honest - scientific return and thee progress of human knowledge is not measured by what gives you and me a visceral thrill. That's not science, that's entertainment. Good science can of course be entertaining, but what's most entertaining does is not necessarily the best science. If it were, porn would have cured cancer.
An astronaut climbed Everest last month, read about it on nasawatch.com Millions of people protested and complained, saying it was too much of a risk despite the scientific data gained from his trip (a photo at the summit for his blog)
Oh no wait, there were no protests. Funny, that.
"You may think it's fantasy, but keep in mind that eventually, a life-killer asteroid strike, while extremely unlikely in any given year, is eventually a mathematical certainty. By all the best evidence, it has happened before, probably more than once."
That comes under learning to take care of the planet we have. It would be a hell of a lot easier and cheaper and more quickly accomplishable to build an asteroid detection and intercept system than to create a self-sustaining population of humans off the earth that can be the entire future of the species.
There are reasons to send people out there, maybe even permanently at some point. Thinking that they could be a future branch of the human race any time within the forseeable future is nuts. We can more easily come up with way to deal with any calamity to befall the Earth until the sun goes red giant than we can move off of it.
I am so tired of the "get us off this rock" crap.
I'm a lifelong NASA nut and space fan, and my fantasies are as elaborate as anyone's but that's all it is - fantasy.
There are billions of people on this planet, and counting. We would have to launch over 200,000 people a day into space each day just to keep up with the daily increase in the population, without even making a dent in the "reserve."
Apart from thousands of years off Nivenesque dreams of turning the planet itself into a spaceship, we just stuck here and we have to face it.
The absolute best we could hope to achieve is to launch a very select elite by using far more than their fair share of resources, while leaving essentially the entire human populace behind to deal with the consequences.
And when they left, then what? Here we are with a perfectly self-regulating ecosystem in the prime location with conditions tailor made for us (or rather us for them), and we can't understand it well enough or control our own impulses well enough to keep from fucking it up.... but somehow we'll be smart enough to go somewhere else less opportune and build one from scratch?
"Get us off this rock" attitudes are the product of denial, passing the buck to the our future victims, the ultimate expression of our throw-away consumer culture. We'll use up this planet, toss it and get a new one.
No. Exploration of space is vital to scientific knowledge and indeed to our attempts to understand earth (as exploring Venus helped us understand global warming) but as a species we are stuck with what we have and we'd better take care of it, there's nowhere else in the neighborhood worth anything more than an outpost.
If a sentient species from earth ever DOES spread out far enough to fully leave Earth behind for good, it won't be Homo Sapiens who does it... it would be far enough in the future that either our descendant species (or something else's) will be doing it.
Speaking as a former antiques dealer, I can tell you what the value of your priceless photos will be maybe 50 years after your death when your great grandchildren, having completely forgotten who you were, decide to let the mini-storage place sell off the contents of their unit rather than continue to pay the rent on it... and your photos, along with old clothes, high school yearbooks, etc... go to the highest bidder...
not fucking much.
I like to think of them as incentives. That's all they are, really. Copyright law when originated actually was based on the understanding that information, once made public, naturally becomes public domain... that this is GOOD, and to be encouraged... and they encouraged it by a temporary artificial monopoly with the end goal being MORE PUBLIC DOMAIN WORKS.
The propaganda by the beneficiaries of this public largess has been so successful that most people now actually think that copyright violation is stealing, actually think that information in MY head can be someone else's property... actually think that this is natural and proper. Insane.
Copyright was an incentive. Like a government small business loan, enterprise zones, tax breaks, cheap hydro power for industry, taxpayer subsidized NFL stadiums, whatever.
"He was making the point that it's hard enough to protect history right next door - near impossible 200,000 miles away."
I would think it's pretty obvious that it's the other way around, seeing as the only thing that is going to mess it up is us. I've seen many historic sites here on earth destroyed in the last 10 years by fire, developers tearing them down to erect car washes and strip malls, vandals, etc. The likelihood of that happening on the moon is, well, not as great.
Well at least that limits it to those that are ALLOWED to go home.
Look at the difference between gmail and hotmail. Gmail has a clean interface, and it's quick and snappy. The newly-redesigned (yet still crappy) hotmail has a cluttered, less usable interface full of minor annoyances, AND it's a sluggish buggy piece of shit.
wait... he's running out of oxygen, and the rare oxygen he managed to find is locked inside rocks... released only be the heat of his fire. His WHAT? Fire? How the hell does he have a fire if the oxygen is so rare its locked up in rocks?
Ancient stupidity? Sounds to me like the problem is it's still a CURRENT stupidity.
I've long said, in response to "but this will only make the police's jobs harder!" complaints about court rulings, etc... that that is precisely and specifically what the Bill of Rights was intended to do - make the police's job harder.
Brezhnev was "elected" too.
I shot the sheriff?
"However, AdBlock is illegally manipulating the author's content "
Citation please.
Uh, wrong. Specter was a Republican since 1966, essentially has been a Republican his whole adult life, apart from a short time as a Dem in his youth.
8 years of Bush showed us that? What, you don't remember the 8 years of Reagan showing us that?