There's "rare and valuable" and then there's "rare and valuable". We're talking about stuff like neodymium and gadolinium, not iridium and tellurium.
> The plant should still make a huge profit, unless I am misunderstanding basic economics.
You're thinking about the mining company's perspective.
But there's another perspective to consider. As far as the people who own the relevant mineral rights are concerned, they can sell now while China's still producing a lot of the stuff and the prices are relatively tame, or they can hold out and hope China restricts the supply or runs low on ore, in which case they'd be sitting on a rather larger fortune.
It's not like the stuff's going to become less valuable sitting in the ground.
Yeah, I had to do that once. The fee for the service was insane, like $10 plus 5% of the amount or something outrageous like that. Not such a big deal for a one-time thing, but it's definitely not something I'd want to do on a regular basis for paying my monthly bills.
> Wow. I guess that just puts a spot light on the diversity of the U.S. Here in California
Culturally speaking, from the perspective of a midwesterner, California is basically a foreign land. Canada, for instance, is much more culturally similar to us than you folks are. Heck, even the deep south is not as culturally distant from us as California.
As for geography, California is basically the ends of the earth. It's so far, it's pretty much like going overseas, because you pretty much have to fly to get there. I mean, *theoretically* you can drive to California, but you need at least two weeks, three if you want to stay for a few days before you head back. That's crazy. We can drive to Florida (or, in a different direction, New York City) in two days, Chicago or Niagara Falls in one day. These places are far apart, but we've got good roads in the US, so it's doable. But California is far, even farther than Mexico. It takes about as long to fly there as it takes to fly to Europe.
Also, it's rumored that California is nearly as *expensive* to visit as Europe. I don't know if this is true, because I haven't been there myself, but they say everything costs 5-10 times as much as it does here.
But hey, your paper money is the right color, so we have that in common.
(In fairness, we probably imagine California as being even more different from us than you really are, because a lot of what we know about it comes from Hollywood.)
> What is irresponsible is to use a credit card for long term > debt., and to spend more money than you have.
Yeah, but people who use credit cards on a daily basis invariably end up spending more than they have, because they never know how much they already spent until the statement comes weeks later. Also, a very large percentage of the people who use credit cards on a day-to-day basis are doing so precisely *because* they already spent all their money and won't have any more until their next paycheck comes in. Financially responsible people don't *need* credit cards, because there's money in their checking accounts.
> I've never bothered to use the ledger in my chequebook
Yeah, I don't mess with that either. I use carbon-copy checks, which makes it unnecessary.
> it might make sense if the chequebook is the *only* way money leaves your account
How *else* would money leave a checking account? I suppose I could go to the bank and fill out a withdrawal form and get cash, but why bother, when I can just write a check?
> I'm not going to easily keep track of all the direct debits, > standing orders, ATM withdrawals, debit card transactions, etc.
Exactly. That's the point.
> And that's before you even consider money going *in* to your account
Money goes into my checking account when I deposit checks. And just in case I don't remember to write down the amounts beforehand, the bank teller hands me a deposit receipt with the amount printed on it. But generally I put my paychecks into the computer first and take them to the bank later.
> > buying everyday stuff like groceries on credit is not fiscally > > responsible and will quickly land you hip-deep in debt > > It will? I can't say I've noticed
Evidence: about twenty percent of the population of North America.
> My credit card bill arrives at the end of the month and gets > paid off by an automatic direct debit from my current account > when the bill becomes due a month later.
Ah. That would help a little. Here, if your credit card bill becomes overdue, they just start charging usurious interest rates, not to mention late fees. However, even with that difference...
> If you lack the discipline to only spend within your limits
It's not just a matter of discipline (though that is relevant too), but also of keeping track. With a checkbook, you generally have a record of what you've spent. (With carbon-copy checks, you always have a record of what you've spent.) With a credit card, you don't know until the end of the month when you get your bill. Unless you keep a ledger, but if you do that the credit card is no longer more convenient than writing a check.
> If you lack the discipline to only spend within your > limits, you can always use a debit card instead,
Oh, yeah, I definitely want to be charged use fees in excess of a dollar for each and every transaction. How could I pass up a deal like that?
And, like with a credit card, if you keep a ledger so that you know your balance, it's no longer more convenient than writing checks.
> which will be declined at the time of the transaction if your bank account is empty.
Many debit cards in the US don't even do that. They automatically transform into credit cards if your balance goes below zero. (No, I don't understand why this is legal. Some loophole, presumably, probably having something to do with some waiver hidden in the microscopic print of the contract you have to sign when you get the card, or something. You don't necessarily have to go in to the bank and sign paperwork to get a credit card, but to get a debit card, you do.)
And again, if you keep a ledger so that you know your balance, it's no longer more convenient than writing checks. I know I keep saying this, but it's really a fairly major point.
I'd like to know what Europeans think is so bad about a checkbook. It's actually quite handy.
> I even saw someone writing a check in a supermarket when I was in the US recently!
Yeah, most of us do that. Some people pay cash, but when you're buying a week's worth of groceries for a whole family you don't really want to carry that much cash around. A few groceries (mainly the larger ones, particularly chains such as Meijer) have started to take credit cards, but buying everyday stuff like groceries on credit is not fiscally responsible and will quickly land you hip-deep in debt -- unless you keep a ledger like you would for a checkbook, but if you're going to do that it's no longer more convenient than writing a check.
> Some banks only span a few towns (although these are disappearing)
Disappearing, really? As far as I'm aware, *all* the banks in my immediate geographical area (Crawford County, Ohio) are small like that. I've seen no evidence that they're disappearing. The bank I use (First Federal) has, I think, eight branches altogether, and a couple of those are just loan offices. Their headquarters is four blocks from here.
The big chain banks don't seem to bother with small towns (where most of the population of the US lives, unlike in Europe where everyone lives in the big cities). They just put in branches in the major cities and call it quits. Even in the big cities, the major-chain banks are in the minority. Perhaps this is because most Americans are more comfortable with a local bank. The big chain banks tend to evoke distrust, similar to the way you'd feel dealing with a bank that has changed ownership six times in the last five years. You don't know who they are or what they're going to do with your account, or what their policies and rates and hours are going to be next month. Who needs that?
Buying stuff from a retail chain is different, because the stuff is right there, you can hold it in your hands and walk out with it, and you know what you got for your money. No problem. Hence, Wal-Mart. But the psychology is very different with a bank. If Wal-Mart offered a banking service, most Americans would not trust it. We'd continue buying stuff from their stores, but we wouldn't put our money in their bank, because we'd worry about whether it would still be there next Tuesday.
Many banks advertise the fact that they've been locally owned and operated for generations. It's a selling point. (First Federal's letterhead/logo says "Locally Owned and Operated Since 1891", for instance.) Remember, too, that over here that's a long time. (Difference between Brits and Americans: The British think a hundred miles is a long ways, and Americans think a hundred years is a long time. A hundred miles? Half the population commutes that far round-trip to work. But a hundred years is, like, basically forever.) So for us, if a bank has been locally owned and operated since the late nineteenth century, it has achieved a reputation for reliability, for always being there through the generations. You can have confidence doing business with a bank like that.
> They still have "bank managers" too and you can go in an "speak to them"
Well, yes, that's sort of a requirement, or at least a very strong expectation.
> - Most UK branches haven't had this for years.
Such banks would be considered extremely disreputable over here. The reaction would be along the lines of "What do you mean, there's no manager you can speak to? Holy cow, what is this, some fly-by-night scam run out of the back of a truck? Did you forge this FDIC member placard?"
> Or what if US just stops using inferior checks and just wires money like rest of the world?
Unlikely. Checks are much cheaper. You can get a whole box of checks (anywhere from a hundred or so to more like twice that, depending on whether you get the carbon-copy ones or the ones where you have to use a ledger) for the price of wiring money *once*.
In the eighties, are you kidding? Microsoft was still selling DOS. Networking, even at the LAN level, hadn't even occurred to them yet. People with modems (a small minority) could dial a BBS...
The CPU time limit is less important in this instance than the two months you have to teach them. In that amount of time, starting them from scratch, you won't likely get to the point of teaching them algorithm analysis and optimization anyway, much less benchmarks and profiling.
Consequently, Python will probably be a good deal *faster* than C, because its low-level stuff has already been optimized by people who know how.
If you use C, can you imagine getting new programming students, within two months, to the point where they are implementing hash-based associative arrays and a fast stable sort routine? I can't. In two months, working in C, you'll be lucky if they can remember how to copy a string.
> The mere _finding_ of an ET would be _dramatic_ for our civilization
On the contrary, it would have no practical impact at all. Zilch.
Bear in mind, even if we knew for certain that there were intelligent and technologically advanced aliens in a certain star system, there is ZERO chance we'd be able to communicate with them to any significant extent. With a multi-year communication lag, we wouldn't be able to communicate meaningfully with them even if they spoke English and used the same kinds of communications technology we do -- all of which is ridiculously unlikely in the uttermost extreme, even by comic-book standards.
There would be arguments, but there are arguments about extra-terrestrial life now. No change there.
> I honestly believe it could sway the attitudes and priorities of many governments.
Don't be so naive. Human nature does not change just because some additional information is thrown into the mix. Look at everything we've already learned over the last couple of millennia, and yet human nature is just the same as it always was. When Columbus publicized the existence of what we now call America, did the attitudes of European governments change dramatically? The only real change was *which* land they wanted to fight over, and even that very small change only happened because the newly discovered land was reachable, which an alien planet wouldn't be.
But this is really neither here nor there anyway, because we're not talking about a research program that has the potential to actually find anything out. We're talking about SETI, a program that listens to the radio waves coming from stars. If there were any intelligible or demonstrably-non-natural radio signals coming from the stars, they would have been noticed anyway, without SETI. There aren't any. But SETI keeps listening anyway, because SETI is not interested in *finding* anything.
I'll say that again, because it bears repeating: SETI is not intended to *find* anything. The program is not scientifically but politically motivated. They don't intend to find anything. They just want to keep stringing people along, promising that maybe *next* year the program will do something of value. But it won't. Ever.
See, humanity was the first race to develop time travel, in the late thirty-seventh century by your calendar, during the Third Great Intergalactic War. We knew that if we didn't act it was only a matter of time before one of the other races would develop or get ahold of the technology and use it against us. So we went ahead and sterilized the other races' homeworlds in the distant past, before they developed any significant technology. War over. We win.
Once the word of what we'd done started getting out to the civilians, there was hell to pay, of course. But as far as I'm concerned there's no question. I don't have to worry that my grandkids will be wiped out because a Xenthasi Accelerator generates a supernova and wipes out their home star system, or that some Rtulmrachan Overlord will drop a galaxy-sized black hole in their immediate neighborhood, or that the Uiola will tear down our whole local group and re-use the matter to build the Largest Entertainment Mall in the Universe. We won.
I've got a better idea. Why don't we take the money we've been spending on SETI, and put it toward a research program that produces some information occasionally.
I'm not asking for information with proven immediate practical value. Pure research can prove to be valuable later, in unanticipated ways. I understand that. But that's assuming that there's actual *research* going on.
Scientific research is constructed so that you find out *something*, even if it isn't what you'd hoped the answer would be. That's the scientific method. Even if your experiment fails, you *learn* something from it. SETI, however, is not set up that way. SETI is designed up to keep on promising, year after year, decade after decade, that maybe *next* year we'll find [the desired answer -- and there is only one result SETI is interested in finding]. No premise is tested and proven, disproven, or revised. Ever.
Calling SETI science is intellectually dishonest. SETI is politics, and a boondoggle.
(Granted, it's not a very BIG boondoggle, because it's not all that MUCH money. But every penny of the money spent on it is wasted.)
> surely faking moon landings should be getting cheaper?
No, see, now we have the internet, so there'll be thousands of people pointing out all the (real and imagined) flaws in the photo-editing job.
Then there's the other side of the internet coin: the blog postings featuring six-time-recompressed JPEGs of a fuzzy blob^H^H^H^Hrocket in the sky near the tower.
> It would have been far more intelligent to give them say a piece of Canada
But that isn't where they wanted to go.
Well, okay, sure, some of them probably would have taken you up on it, especially right after the holocaust. Goodness knows some of them have moved just about everywhere else in the world.
But that wouldn't have stopped Jews from moving to the middle east. They'd already been wanting to get back into "the land" for a while (roughly, since the first century), and increasing numbers of them had been moving there since the late nineteenth century. The war fallout sure did give the numbers a boost, but the Zionist movement was not new at the end of the war. It had already been underway for a full generation.
The real goof-up, arguably, was scattering them to the four winds in the first place. You can thank the good people of Rome (particularly Vespasian and Titus) for that move. Although, in fairness to them, it was not entirely unprovoked.
> (for now, otherwise in the future you can bet UPS will have subs -- business will adapt).
Just like they've adapted and started delivering to the various research bases in Antarctica?
The thing is, as impractical as an undersea colony would be, it would still be useful -- as a demonstration of some of the reasons why the moon colonies people keep proposing aren't practical.
It's still not practical, nor will be for the forseeable future.
*Possible*, perhaps, but not practical. To be practical, there would have to be some benefit to it besides novelty. You'd have to be able to build whole cities down there and, importantly, these cities would have to support themselves economically in some fashion. That's just not going to happen now or soon.
I suppose you could build an exotic resort down there, and charge rich people an arm and a leg to visit for a week at a time. Beyond that, there's no practical benefit at this time.
> There has been a good argument made in this thread that > a "thermal diode" wouldn't violate thermodynamics
A diode, in the sense of not passing anything in either direction when the potential goes the wrong way? Okay, sure, but that's not what the other post seemed to be talking about, or if it was I misunderstood it.
Thank you. You have made my point much more strongly than I was capable of doing myself.
China's insistence on Tibet having always been a part of China (a view that is not widely embraced outside the Chinese-speaking world, certainly not in the West) is deeply embeded in Chinese thinking about history, politics, and nationality. The same thing is true of the Taiwan issue ("One China Policy").
So like I said, it has absolutely nothing to do with minor practical concerns like some combustible ice that might be useful as a power source (as the grandparent post claimed). The ice is, compared with Tibet, relatively unimportant to the Chinese.
> I get why you'd want an iPad. I'd like one too,'
Yeah, umm, care to explain it to the rest of us, then?
Why would we want a device that costs more than a midrange desktop computer but has a much smaller storage capacity, a smaller screen, a slower CPU, no keyboard, and no high-resolution pointing device (just touchscreen, which is very low-res), and no ability to be repaired or upgraded?
Why would I want that? Why would anyone want that? Just because Steve Jobs is a gifted and dynamic communicator who presented it really well in his keynote speech? (Granted, he is a really good public speaker. Maybe he should run for President. It worked for Obama.)
For two-thirds of the cost of the iPad I could get a laptop computer with a larger screen, normal storage capacity, an essentially normal CPU, a mediocre almost-full-size keyboard, and an inconvenient but normal-res pointing device built in, that's just as portable as the iPad when I fold it closed. If the portability were an extremely important factor for me, I'd go with that.
And when the portability doesn't matter, obviously, I'll be going with a mid-tower system.
Slashdot Mirror
I've got a perfect studio recording here of the first movement of Four Minutes, Thirty-Three Seconds, which I consider to the the perfect ringtone.
We already have one. We call it the "gas pump".
HTH.HAND.
There's "rare and valuable" and then there's "rare and valuable". We're talking about stuff like neodymium and gadolinium, not iridium and tellurium.
> The plant should still make a huge profit, unless I am misunderstanding basic economics.
You're thinking about the mining company's perspective.
But there's another perspective to consider. As far as the people who own the relevant mineral rights are concerned, they can sell now while China's still producing a lot of the stuff and the prices are relatively tame, or they can hold out and hope China restricts the supply or runs low on ore, in which case they'd be sitting on a rather larger fortune.
It's not like the stuff's going to become less valuable sitting in the ground.
> But have you tried to do a "Wire Transfer?"
Yeah, I had to do that once. The fee for the service was insane, like $10 plus 5% of the amount or something outrageous like that. Not such a big deal for a one-time thing, but it's definitely not something I'd want to do on a regular basis for paying my monthly bills.
> Wow. I guess that just puts a spot light on the diversity of the U.S. Here in California
Culturally speaking, from the perspective of a midwesterner, California is basically a foreign land. Canada, for instance, is much more culturally similar to us than you folks are. Heck, even the deep south is not as culturally distant from us as California.
As for geography, California is basically the ends of the earth. It's so far, it's pretty much like going overseas, because you pretty much have to fly to get there. I mean, *theoretically* you can drive to California, but you need at least two weeks, three if you want to stay for a few days before you head back. That's crazy. We can drive to Florida (or, in a different direction, New York City) in two days, Chicago or Niagara Falls in one day. These places are far apart, but we've got good roads in the US, so it's doable. But California is far, even farther than Mexico. It takes about as long to fly there as it takes to fly to Europe.
Also, it's rumored that California is nearly as *expensive* to visit as Europe. I don't know if this is true, because I haven't been there myself, but they say everything costs 5-10 times as much as it does here.
But hey, your paper money is the right color, so we have that in common.
(In fairness, we probably imagine California as being even more different from us than you really are, because a lot of what we know about it comes from Hollywood.)
> What is irresponsible is to use a credit card for long term
> debt., and to spend more money than you have.
Yeah, but people who use credit cards on a daily basis invariably end up spending more than they have, because they never know how much they already spent until the statement comes weeks later. Also, a very large percentage of the people who use credit cards on a day-to-day basis are doing so precisely *because* they already spent all their money and won't have any more until their next paycheck comes in. Financially responsible people don't *need* credit cards, because there's money in their checking accounts.
> I've never bothered to use the ledger in my chequebook
Yeah, I don't mess with that either. I use carbon-copy checks, which makes it unnecessary.
> it might make sense if the chequebook is the *only* way money leaves your account
How *else* would money leave a checking account? I suppose I could go to the bank and fill out a withdrawal form and get cash, but why bother, when I can just write a check?
> I'm not going to easily keep track of all the direct debits,
> standing orders, ATM withdrawals, debit card transactions, etc.
Exactly. That's the point.
> And that's before you even consider money going *in* to your account
Money goes into my checking account when I deposit checks. And just in case I don't remember to write down the amounts beforehand, the bank teller hands me a deposit receipt with the amount printed on it. But generally I put my paychecks into the computer first and take them to the bank later.
> I do use Gnucash to manage my finances
I just use a spreadsheet. It's easier.
> but that is a very "after the event" affair
Yeah, me too.
> > buying everyday stuff like groceries on credit is not fiscally
> > responsible and will quickly land you hip-deep in debt
>
> It will? I can't say I've noticed
Evidence: about twenty percent of the population of North America.
> My credit card bill arrives at the end of the month and gets
> paid off by an automatic direct debit from my current account
> when the bill becomes due a month later.
Ah. That would help a little. Here, if your credit card bill becomes overdue, they just start charging usurious interest rates, not to mention late fees. However, even with that difference...
> If you lack the discipline to only spend within your limits
It's not just a matter of discipline (though that is relevant too), but also of keeping track. With a checkbook, you generally have a record of what you've spent. (With carbon-copy checks, you always have a record of what you've spent.) With a credit card, you don't know until the end of the month when you get your bill. Unless you keep a ledger, but if you do that the credit card is no longer more convenient than writing a check.
> If you lack the discipline to only spend within your
> limits, you can always use a debit card instead,
Oh, yeah, I definitely want to be charged use fees in excess of a dollar for each and every transaction. How could I pass up a deal like that?
And, like with a credit card, if you keep a ledger so that you know your balance, it's no longer more convenient than writing checks.
> which will be declined at the time of the transaction if your bank account is empty.
Many debit cards in the US don't even do that. They automatically transform into credit cards if your balance goes below zero. (No, I don't understand why this is legal. Some loophole, presumably, probably having something to do with some waiver hidden in the microscopic print of the contract you have to sign when you get the card, or something. You don't necessarily have to go in to the bank and sign paperwork to get a credit card, but to get a debit card, you do.)
And again, if you keep a ledger so that you know your balance, it's no longer more convenient than writing checks. I know I keep saying this, but it's really a fairly major point.
I'd like to know what Europeans think is so bad about a checkbook. It's actually quite handy.
> I even saw someone writing a check in a supermarket when I was in the US recently!
Yeah, most of us do that. Some people pay cash, but when you're buying a week's worth of groceries for a whole family you don't really want to carry that much cash around. A few groceries (mainly the larger ones, particularly chains such as Meijer) have started to take credit cards, but buying everyday stuff like groceries on credit is not fiscally responsible and will quickly land you hip-deep in debt -- unless you keep a ledger like you would for a checkbook, but if you're going to do that it's no longer more convenient than writing a check.
> Some banks only span a few towns (although these are disappearing)
Disappearing, really? As far as I'm aware, *all* the banks in my immediate geographical area (Crawford County, Ohio) are small like that. I've seen no evidence that they're disappearing. The bank I use (First Federal) has, I think, eight branches altogether, and a couple of those are just loan offices. Their headquarters is four blocks from here.
The big chain banks don't seem to bother with small towns (where most of the population of the US lives, unlike in Europe where everyone lives in the big cities). They just put in branches in the major cities and call it quits. Even in the big cities, the major-chain banks are in the minority. Perhaps this is because most Americans are more comfortable with a local bank. The big chain banks tend to evoke distrust, similar to the way you'd feel dealing with a bank that has changed ownership six times in the last five years. You don't know who they are or what they're going to do with your account, or what their policies and rates and hours are going to be next month. Who needs that?
Buying stuff from a retail chain is different, because the stuff is right there, you can hold it in your hands and walk out with it, and you know what you got for your money. No problem. Hence, Wal-Mart. But the psychology is very different with a bank. If Wal-Mart offered a banking service, most Americans would not trust it. We'd continue buying stuff from their stores, but we wouldn't put our money in their bank, because we'd worry about whether it would still be there next Tuesday.
Many banks advertise the fact that they've been locally owned and operated for generations. It's a selling point. (First Federal's letterhead/logo says "Locally Owned and Operated Since 1891", for instance.) Remember, too, that over here that's a long time. (Difference between Brits and Americans: The British think a hundred miles is a long ways, and Americans think a hundred years is a long time. A hundred miles? Half the population commutes that far round-trip to work. But a hundred years is, like, basically forever.) So for us, if a bank has been locally owned and operated since the late nineteenth century, it has achieved a reputation for reliability, for always being there through the generations. You can have confidence doing business with a bank like that.
> They still have "bank managers" too and you can go in an "speak to them"
Well, yes, that's sort of a requirement, or at least a very strong expectation.
> - Most UK branches haven't had this for years.
Such banks would be considered extremely disreputable over here. The reaction would be along the lines of "What do you mean, there's no manager you can speak to? Holy cow, what is this, some fly-by-night scam run out of the back of a truck? Did you forge this FDIC member placard?"
> Or what if US just stops using inferior checks and just wires money like rest of the world?
Unlikely. Checks are much cheaper. You can get a whole box of checks (anywhere from a hundred or so to more like twice that, depending on whether you get the carbon-copy ones or the ones where you have to use a ledger) for the price of wiring money *once*.
In the eighties, are you kidding? Microsoft was still selling DOS. Networking, even at the LAN level, hadn't even occurred to them yet. People with modems (a small minority) could dial a BBS...
The CPU time limit is less important in this instance than the two months you have to teach them. In that amount of time, starting them from scratch, you won't likely get to the point of teaching them algorithm analysis and optimization anyway, much less benchmarks and profiling.
Consequently, Python will probably be a good deal *faster* than C, because its low-level stuff has already been optimized by people who know how.
If you use C, can you imagine getting new programming students, within two months, to the point where they are implementing hash-based associative arrays and a fast stable sort routine? I can't. In two months, working in C, you'll be lucky if they can remember how to copy a string.
Maybe it *used* to be secret, during earlier stages of development?
> The mere _finding_ of an ET would be _dramatic_ for our civilization
On the contrary, it would have no practical impact at all. Zilch.
Bear in mind, even if we knew for certain that there were intelligent and technologically advanced aliens in a certain star system, there is ZERO chance we'd be able to communicate with them to any significant extent. With a multi-year communication lag, we wouldn't be able to communicate meaningfully with them even if they spoke English and used the same kinds of communications technology we do -- all of which is ridiculously unlikely in the uttermost extreme, even by comic-book standards.
There would be arguments, but there are arguments about extra-terrestrial life now. No change there.
> I honestly believe it could sway the attitudes and priorities of many governments.
Don't be so naive. Human nature does not change just because some additional information is thrown into the mix. Look at everything we've already learned over the last couple of millennia, and yet human nature is just the same as it always was. When Columbus publicized the existence of what we now call America, did the attitudes of European governments change dramatically? The only real change was *which* land they wanted to fight over, and even that very small change only happened because the newly discovered land was reachable, which an alien planet wouldn't be.
But this is really neither here nor there anyway, because we're not talking about a research program that has the potential to actually find anything out. We're talking about SETI, a program that listens to the radio waves coming from stars. If there were any intelligible or demonstrably-non-natural radio signals coming from the stars, they would have been noticed anyway, without SETI. There aren't any. But SETI keeps listening anyway, because SETI is not interested in *finding* anything.
I'll say that again, because it bears repeating: SETI is not intended to *find* anything. The program is not scientifically but politically motivated. They don't intend to find anything. They just want to keep stringing people along, promising that maybe *next* year the program will do something of value. But it won't. Ever.
> We are the First Ones.
No, actually, we're the Last Ones Standing.
See, humanity was the first race to develop time travel, in the late thirty-seventh century by your calendar, during the Third Great Intergalactic War. We knew that if we didn't act it was only a matter of time before one of the other races would develop or get ahold of the technology and use it against us. So we went ahead and sterilized the other races' homeworlds in the distant past, before they developed any significant technology. War over. We win.
Once the word of what we'd done started getting out to the civilians, there was hell to pay, of course. But as far as I'm concerned there's no question. I don't have to worry that my grandkids will be wiped out because a Xenthasi Accelerator generates a supernova and wipes out their home star system, or that some Rtulmrachan Overlord will drop a galaxy-sized black hole in their immediate neighborhood, or that the Uiola will tear down our whole local group and re-use the matter to build the Largest Entertainment Mall in the Universe. We won.
I've got a better idea. Why don't we take the money we've been spending on SETI, and put it toward a research program that produces some information occasionally.
I'm not asking for information with proven immediate practical value. Pure research can prove to be valuable later, in unanticipated ways. I understand that. But that's assuming that there's actual *research* going on.
Scientific research is constructed so that you find out *something*, even if it isn't what you'd hoped the answer would be. That's the scientific method. Even if your experiment fails, you *learn* something from it. SETI, however, is not set up that way. SETI is designed up to keep on promising, year after year, decade after decade, that maybe *next* year we'll find [the desired answer -- and there is only one result SETI is interested in finding]. No premise is tested and proven, disproven, or revised. Ever.
Calling SETI science is intellectually dishonest. SETI is politics, and a boondoggle.
(Granted, it's not a very BIG boondoggle, because it's not all that MUCH money. But every penny of the money spent on it is wasted.)
> Why don't more private rich guys step up and fund moon missions?
All else being equal, it's generally a good deal easier to get voluntary contributions from poor people than from rich people.
There are occasional wealthy philanthropists, but they tend to give mostly to specific pet causes.
> surely faking moon landings should be getting cheaper?
No, see, now we have the internet, so there'll be thousands of people pointing out all the (real and imagined) flaws in the photo-editing job.
Then there's the other side of the internet coin: the blog postings featuring six-time-recompressed JPEGs of a fuzzy blob^H^H^H^Hrocket in the sky near the tower.
> you could just as easily argue that getting involved in WW2 was unnecessary for the US.
Oh, is *that* why we didn't get involved until we were directly attacked? Huh. How about that.
(I basically agree with you on the other points, though.)
> It would have been far more intelligent to give them say a piece of Canada
But that isn't where they wanted to go.
Well, okay, sure, some of them probably would have taken you up on it, especially right after the holocaust. Goodness knows some of them have moved just about everywhere else in the world.
But that wouldn't have stopped Jews from moving to the middle east. They'd already been wanting to get back into "the land" for a while (roughly, since the first century), and increasing numbers of them had been moving there since the late nineteenth century. The war fallout sure did give the numbers a boost, but the Zionist movement was not new at the end of the war. It had already been underway for a full generation.
The real goof-up, arguably, was scattering them to the four winds in the first place. You can thank the good people of Rome (particularly Vespasian and Titus) for that move. Although, in fairness to them, it was not entirely unprovoked.
> Yeah I'm torn between "visionary" and "crackpot."
That's a false dichotomy. It's entirely possible to be both.
> Deliveries go to a PO box at a nearby port
Yes, and then?
> (for now, otherwise in the future you can bet UPS will have subs -- business will adapt).
Just like they've adapted and started delivering to the various research bases in Antarctica?
The thing is, as impractical as an undersea colony would be, it would still be useful -- as a demonstration of some of the reasons why the moon colonies people keep proposing aren't practical.
It's still not practical, nor will be for the forseeable future.
*Possible*, perhaps, but not practical. To be practical, there would have to be some benefit to it besides novelty. You'd have to be able to build whole cities down there and, importantly, these cities would have to support themselves economically in some fashion. That's just not going to happen now or soon.
I suppose you could build an exotic resort down there, and charge rich people an arm and a leg to visit for a week at a time. Beyond that, there's no practical benefit at this time.
> There has been a good argument made in this thread that
> a "thermal diode" wouldn't violate thermodynamics
A diode, in the sense of not passing anything in either direction when the potential goes the wrong way? Okay, sure, but that's not what the other post seemed to be talking about, or if it was I misunderstood it.
Thank you. You have made my point much more strongly than I was capable of doing myself.
China's insistence on Tibet having always been a part of China (a view that is not widely embraced outside the Chinese-speaking world, certainly not in the West) is deeply embeded in Chinese thinking about history, politics, and nationality. The same thing is true of the Taiwan issue ("One China Policy").
So like I said, it has absolutely nothing to do with minor practical concerns like some combustible ice that might be useful as a power source (as the grandparent post claimed). The ice is, compared with Tibet, relatively unimportant to the Chinese.
> I get why you'd want an iPad. I'd like one too,'
Yeah, umm, care to explain it to the rest of us, then?
Why would we want a device that costs more than a midrange desktop computer but has a much smaller storage capacity, a smaller screen, a slower CPU, no keyboard, and no high-resolution pointing device (just touchscreen, which is very low-res), and no ability to be repaired or upgraded?
Why would I want that? Why would anyone want that? Just because Steve Jobs is a gifted and dynamic communicator who presented it really well in his keynote speech? (Granted, he is a really good public speaker. Maybe he should run for President. It worked for Obama.)
For two-thirds of the cost of the iPad I could get a laptop computer with a larger screen, normal storage capacity, an essentially normal CPU, a mediocre almost-full-size keyboard, and an inconvenient but normal-res pointing device built in, that's just as portable as the iPad when I fold it closed. If the portability were an extremely important factor for me, I'd go with that.
And when the portability doesn't matter, obviously, I'll be going with a mid-tower system.