In his concession, Kerry showed us how he would likely respond to a crisis in his (hypothetical) presidency. Instead of waiting until the last vote was cast (in counting absentee and early ballots), he quit. Instead of standing firm on his personal convictions and the sacrifice of those who helped his campaign, he gave in. Did he do it as a gesture of peace and unity among Americans? Or did he just see the "writing on the wall" and throw in the towel instead of waiting through the emotionally and physically demanding process of counting, re-counting, contesting, etc.
If the possibility existed that the true will of the voters wasn't shown in the preliminary election results due to mis-counts and poor tallies (remember that they don't get certified until later) - then Kerry did bad by conceding. Very bad.
I'm glad we found that out now instead of a few months into his (hypothetical) presidency.
This reminds me of a story told by Ben Rich, the head of Lockheed's Skunk Works during the late 70s through the early 90s. One of the first projects they had under his tenure was to re-open the U2 spy plane assembly line and produce some new, updated versions of the airplane. However, the Air Force didn't want the bad vibe associated with funding new spy plane work (especially from our allies and not-so allies), so they required that the new airplane be called the "TR-1," hopefully shielding themselves from the cloak-and-dagger stigma associated with the old U2. As Ben Rich tells the story, when the press got hold of the news, they immediately took to calling the new airplane the "TR-1 Spy Plane." Nowadays, they don't even bother with the TR-1 part, and just refer to it as the U2 again.
Poor Hormel. Spam will ALWAYS be Spam, I'm afraid.
When the Apostle Paul traveled to Corinth to spread the Gospel, he had just come from Athens where he attempted to "convince" the people that Jesus Christ is God's Son using reasoning, scripture, apologetics - you name it. The Bible goes on to tell us that maybe one or two people in all of Athens believed. You see, the place was the world center for reason, philosophy, science, etc., and we all know how difficult it is to argue with someone for whom the argument itself is more than half the fun. Paul changed his tactics in Corinth, however, which resulted in the founding of one of the great churches. This is documented below:
1 Corinthians Chapter 2
When I came to you, brothers, I did not come with eloquence or superior
wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. For I resolved to know
nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. I came to
you in weakness and fear, and with much trembling. My message and my preaching
were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the
Spirit's power, so that your faith might not rest on men's wisdom, but on God's
power.
We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the
wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. No,
we speak of God's secret wisdom, a wisdom that has been hidden and that God
destined for our glory before time began. None of the rulers of this age
understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.
However, as it is written:
"No eye has seen,
no ear has heard,
no mind has conceived
what God has prepared for those who
love him" -- but God has revealed it to us by his Spirit.
The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. For who among
men knows the thoughts of a man except the man's spirit within him? In the same
way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. We have not
received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, that we may
understand what God has freely given us. This is what we speak, not in words
taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing
spiritual truths in spiritual words. The man without the Spirit does not accept
the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him,
and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned. The
spiritual man makes judgments about all things, but he himself is not subject to
any man's judgment:
"For who has known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct him?" But we
have the mind of Christ.
Each must make up his own mind who Christ is, and what He's done for them. After that, we'll all sit around the throne in Heaven and talk with God like neighbors around the '67 Mustang --"So, THAT'S how you supercharged the intake." -- "So, THAT'S how you micro-mechanically sequenced the RNA to replicate the DNA so that the photo-sensitive proteins in the eye would transfer from one generation to the next."
I went to Menehune College Pre-School when I lived in Hawaii as a kid. The Menehune are depicted as short but lanky-looking dark-skinned cheerful figures with pot-bellies. Kinda like skinny bald hobbits, actually.
Common misconception - the nuclear engine blasts nasty gamma radiation all over creation. The isotopes stay within the ceramic fuel rod matrix. The exhaust gas (air) might become slightly radioative from neutron bombardment, but the half-life of most of those isotopes is on the same order of magnititude as the time it takes the supersonic air to exit the jet nozzle. If one of these crashed, however. ..
It's old news for you new posters. . .
on
Saving Huygens
·
· Score: 1
At the risk of being modded redundant, buried down on page 2 or 3 of the comments list is a reason why this is a VERY old story. It's not like it just happened. ..
This got scored as a Troll, but the author does have a point. The Earth is probably going to kill us before we kill the Earth - if that is even possible. I am in full agreement that we need to be good stewards of the Earth - but we sometimes go WAY too far down the environmentalist path.
It like saying, "Hey - I've figured out how to take books from the library WITHOUT getting a library card! All you have to do is . .." This, of course, is addressing a feeling of entitlement that many net users feel. Who cares that library cards are free (in most municipalities)? _I_ don't want anybody to know what I'm checking out and tell me how long I can keep it!
How long before we start seeing agents more frequently on the net to police stuff like this? If it happens, it may be our own fault for not being trustworthy with what we've got. ..
It's hard to say. The history of the US shows, however, that military buildups are generally GOOD for scientific R&D. Some of those billions are going toward the things to which you speak - but the "power equation" always comes back around to where the ultimate source is. Hydrogen cars consume way more electricity than a pure battery-powered car does - both get their power from "the plug," afterall. But even then, our supply of clean electrical power is way inadequate to power every car, house, business, factory, etc. - we'd need solar panels and wind turbines on every street, hill, field, rooftop - you name it. SO, the agency and policy to which you speak is the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. More nuclear power will mean more electric cars. Of course, the general public will need to be able to embrace nuclear power without some of the current (needless) regulatory oversight.
People have been talking about integrating sensor networks like this for a long time. One issue that comes up often is what to do about privacy - especially with regard to image data. You can put a camera on every building in town - and you can be guaranteed that at least one person per day will object to having their picture taken and used for some open-source data fusion project.
As implausible is it seems that a low-budget laser on the ground could have caused this incident, the only conclusion we can reach is that the Flight Control Computer onboard the aircraft became "self-aware" and took action it deemed necessary to protect its own self-determination. ..
Every science and engineering operation with live internet access in the US today has a three-hour hole in their accounting this morning, I would imagine.
Probably not. They knew exactly where to look to see the rover, and they also were able to take many pictures of the same area at different sun angles (shadow lengths) to get one with enough contrast to show the tracks. Because the width of the rover's tracks is just at the pixel resolution of the orbiting camera, a little luck/persistence was required to get those shots, I imagine.
I, too would like to know where the Beagle2 lies. It is about as small as one pixel from an orbiting camera, so they'll need to find some other evidence (ejecta from an impact crater, etc.) to find it. It's very likely Beagle is the crack of a rock, for example.
It is, of course, no accident. If you look closely, you'll see that there are some subtle differences - Buran doesn't have main engines at the back, for example. All the launch/orbital injection thrust comes from the Energia booster. This actually improves the Buran's flight performance, as the US Shuttle has a weight/balance/stability issue with those heavy main engines at the back - precisely where you DON'T want weight if you're flying.
What I imagine happened is the Soviet engineering team was shown a picture of the US Shuttle during development, and that mental snapshot railroaded their thinking to produce what we have today. When it comes right down to it, engineers are the masters of copying other people's work - whether consciously or not. Once you see what a Space Shuttle looks like, it's hard to get your mind off that configuration. ..
How much money could be saved if the trip to Mars was just one-way? How many people would volunteer to "sacrifice" themselves for the sake of exploration? Consider this: the most technically challenging part of a long-duration space mission is how to provide for food, water and air - followed closely by the re-entry systems. If you could cut the food, water and air need in half and eliminate the Earth re-entry system, we might now be talking about an affordable Mars mission.
The moral issues are clear, however. Suicide is a nasty requirement to write up in the mission specs. Nevertheless, an astronaut's chances of dying on one of the current U.S. "man-rated" space vehicles is better than one in fifty due to accidents as measured by actual performance. Make death part of the final equation, and we're talking the ultimate no-frills space ride.
Normal parachutes need a good amount of airflow to properly inflate. In the highest reaches of the atmosphere, there isn't enough air density to cause a parachute to open - it will just flail behind the craft, gaining velocity until it burns up. An inflatable parachute uses internal gas pressure to keep its shape - initially deflecting the hypersonic airflow around and away from the craft, eventually producing the drag necessary to slow the craft down for safe recovery.
Slashdot Mirror
In his concession, Kerry showed us how he would likely respond to a crisis in his (hypothetical) presidency. Instead of waiting until the last vote was cast (in counting absentee and early ballots), he quit. Instead of standing firm on his personal convictions and the sacrifice of those who helped his campaign, he gave in. Did he do it as a gesture of peace and unity among Americans? Or did he just see the "writing on the wall" and throw in the towel instead of waiting through the emotionally and physically demanding process of counting, re-counting, contesting, etc.
If the possibility existed that the true will of the voters wasn't shown in the preliminary election results due to mis-counts and poor tallies (remember that they don't get certified until later) - then Kerry did bad by conceding. Very bad.
I'm glad we found that out now instead of a few months into his (hypothetical) presidency.
This reminds me of a story told by Ben Rich, the head of Lockheed's Skunk Works during the late 70s through the early 90s. One of the first projects they had under his tenure was to re-open the U2 spy plane assembly line and produce some new, updated versions of the airplane. However, the Air Force didn't want the bad vibe associated with funding new spy plane work (especially from our allies and not-so allies), so they required that the new airplane be called the "TR-1," hopefully shielding themselves from the cloak-and-dagger stigma associated with the old U2. As Ben Rich tells the story, when the press got hold of the news, they immediately took to calling the new airplane the "TR-1 Spy Plane." Nowadays, they don't even bother with the TR-1 part, and just refer to it as the U2 again.
Poor Hormel. Spam will ALWAYS be Spam, I'm afraid.
1 Corinthians Chapter 2
When I came to you, brothers, I did not come with eloquence or superior wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. I came to you in weakness and fear, and with much trembling. My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit's power, so that your faith might not rest on men's wisdom, but on God's power.
We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. No, we speak of God's secret wisdom, a wisdom that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began. None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. However, as it is written:
"No eye has seen,
no ear has heard,
no mind has conceived
what God has prepared for those who love him" -- but God has revealed it to us by his Spirit.
The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the man's spirit within him? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us. This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words. The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual man makes judgments about all things, but he himself is not subject to any man's judgment:
"For who has known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct him?" But we have the mind of Christ.
Each must make up his own mind who Christ is, and what He's done for them. After that, we'll all sit around the throne in Heaven and talk with God like neighbors around the '67 Mustang --"So, THAT'S how you supercharged the intake." -- "So, THAT'S how you micro-mechanically sequenced the RNA to replicate the DNA so that the photo-sensitive proteins in the eye would transfer from one generation to the next."I went to Menehune College Pre-School when I lived in Hawaii as a kid. The Menehune are depicted as short but lanky-looking dark-skinned cheerful figures with pot-bellies. Kinda like skinny bald hobbits, actually.
Yup, I forgot they made those thingies out of graphite to save weight. . .
Common misconception - the nuclear engine blasts nasty gamma radiation all over creation. The isotopes stay within the ceramic fuel rod matrix. The exhaust gas (air) might become slightly radioative from neutron bombardment, but the half-life of most of those isotopes is on the same order of magnititude as the time it takes the supersonic air to exit the jet nozzle. If one of these crashed, however. . .
The "off" switch.
At the risk of being modded redundant, buried down on page 2 or 3 of the comments list is a reason why this is a VERY old story. It's not like it just happened. . .
So you're saying that China is a first-world country?
Here is a short list of web definitions for the "Third World". You might be surprised - it wasn't originally meant to mean what we now think it means.
This got scored as a Troll, but the author does have a point. The Earth is probably going to kill us before we kill the Earth - if that is even possible. I am in full agreement that we need to be good stewards of the Earth - but we sometimes go WAY too far down the environmentalist path.
It like saying, "Hey - I've figured out how to take books from the library WITHOUT getting a library card! All you have to do is . . ." This, of course, is addressing a feeling of entitlement that many net users feel. Who cares that library cards are free (in most municipalities)? _I_ don't want anybody to know what I'm checking out and tell me how long I can keep it!
.
How long before we start seeing agents more frequently on the net to police stuff like this? If it happens, it may be our own fault for not being trustworthy with what we've got. .
It's hard to say. The history of the US shows, however, that military buildups are generally GOOD for scientific R&D. Some of those billions are going toward the things to which you speak - but the "power equation" always comes back around to where the ultimate source is. Hydrogen cars consume way more electricity than a pure battery-powered car does - both get their power from "the plug," afterall. But even then, our supply of clean electrical power is way inadequate to power every car, house, business, factory, etc. - we'd need solar panels and wind turbines on every street, hill, field, rooftop - you name it. SO, the agency and policy to which you speak is the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. More nuclear power will mean more electric cars. Of course, the general public will need to be able to embrace nuclear power without some of the current (needless) regulatory oversight.
BTW, I am allergic to raw spinich.
People have been talking about integrating sensor networks like this for a long time. One issue that comes up often is what to do about privacy - especially with regard to image data. You can put a camera on every building in town - and you can be guaranteed that at least one person per day will object to having their picture taken and used for some open-source data fusion project.
Gordo did live to see two more Americans go into space alone on suborbital flights - somehow poetic, methinks.
That's called a wall.
As implausible is it seems that a low-budget laser on the ground could have caused this incident, the only conclusion we can reach is that the Flight Control Computer onboard the aircraft became "self-aware" and took action it deemed necessary to protect its own self-determination. . .
Every science and engineering operation with live internet access in the US today has a three-hour hole in their accounting this morning, I would imagine.
(Mike:) "Artoo -- that stabilizer has broken loose again. See if you can lock it down." (Artoo:) Tweet! Sqwak! Bweep!
Does it come with a shift-key?
Probably not. They knew exactly where to look to see the rover, and they also were able to take many pictures of the same area at different sun angles (shadow lengths) to get one with enough contrast to show the tracks. Because the width of the rover's tracks is just at the pixel resolution of the orbiting camera, a little luck/persistence was required to get those shots, I imagine.
I, too would like to know where the Beagle2 lies. It is about as small as one pixel from an orbiting camera, so they'll need to find some other evidence (ejecta from an impact crater, etc.) to find it. It's very likely Beagle is the crack of a rock, for example.
It is, of course, no accident. If you look closely, you'll see that there are some subtle differences - Buran doesn't have main engines at the back, for example. All the launch/orbital injection thrust comes from the Energia booster. This actually improves the Buran's flight performance, as the US Shuttle has a weight/balance/stability issue with those heavy main engines at the back - precisely where you DON'T want weight if you're flying.
.
What I imagine happened is the Soviet engineering team was shown a picture of the US Shuttle during development, and that mental snapshot railroaded their thinking to produce what we have today. When it comes right down to it, engineers are the masters of copying other people's work - whether consciously or not. Once you see what a Space Shuttle looks like, it's hard to get your mind off that configuration. .
How much money could be saved if the trip to Mars was just one-way? How many people would volunteer to "sacrifice" themselves for the sake of exploration? Consider this: the most technically challenging part of a long-duration space mission is how to provide for food, water and air - followed closely by the re-entry systems. If you could cut the food, water and air need in half and eliminate the Earth re-entry system, we might now be talking about an affordable Mars mission.
The moral issues are clear, however. Suicide is a nasty requirement to write up in the mission specs. Nevertheless, an astronaut's chances of dying on one of the current U.S. "man-rated" space vehicles is better than one in fifty due to accidents as measured by actual performance. Make death part of the final equation, and we're talking the ultimate no-frills space ride.
Glad to see the "other" Genesis reference. I might suggest "Watcher of the Skies" as an appropriate alternate song. . .
Normal parachutes need a good amount of airflow to properly inflate. In the highest reaches of the atmosphere, there isn't enough air density to cause a parachute to open - it will just flail behind the craft, gaining velocity until it burns up. An inflatable parachute uses internal gas pressure to keep its shape - initially deflecting the hypersonic airflow around and away from the craft, eventually producing the drag necessary to slow the craft down for safe recovery.