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User: Chris+Burke

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  1. Re:It's easy on NASA Attempts To Assuage 2012 Fears · · Score: 1

    Naw, they'll be safe on their moon base. ;)

  2. Re:Wow. on NASA Attempts To Assuage 2012 Fears · · Score: 1

    Used to be they would kill/hurt animals. No special effects.
    Probably still do in some movies, maybe not in the west but ...

    Yeah. For example you can watch an old movie with horses in it like a Western. If a horse that's shot falls over sideways, it was a trained stunt. If the horse falls over forward, they used a trip wire to make it fall on its face.

  3. Re:You're doing it wrong on NASA Willing To Team With China; Rumors of a Budget Cut · · Score: 1

    I don't understand "natural" and "artificial" in this context. I mean, it makes sense to talk about an ecosystem's "natural" balance -- i.e. the balance it had/would attain without the influence of post-industrial humans. But the economy is nothing but the actions of modern humans... So I don't understand the distinction. If China buying up debt increases the agreed upon value of the dollar, then isn't that just the value of the dollar? I mean I understand your point that the coming devaluation of the dollar will be worse because of these actions, but that still just seems like the "natural" market at work. Is it because they're specifically trying to inflate the dollar, rather than taking actions which just happen to increase the value of our currency?

  4. Re:FIREFLY on NASA Willing To Team With China; Rumors of a Budget Cut · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    hmmm maybe Josh had it right! Ching-wah tsao duh liou mahng.

    So you're suggesting that our space-faring culture will be heavily influenced by our cooperation with the Chinese, but that we'll screw them over somehow before the great migration, so there won't actually be any Chinese people in the new solar system?

    Could happen, could happen.

  5. Re:I'm surprised that this technology is available on Engineered Bacteria Glows To Reveal Land Mines · · Score: 1

    There's nowhere on earth usefully defended by minefields alone. Not even the DMZ. And if you could sit and spray the mine fields with this bacteria and disarm/maneuver between them unmolested, then you could have done that yesterday. But they don't (outside of small incursions), because there's a hell of a lot more firepower than just mines that is being pointed across the DMZ.

  6. Alchemy on CERN Physicist Warns About Uranium Shortage · · Score: 1

    This is of course dependant on us not discovering alchemy in the next 10 years.

    We've already discovered alchemy, at least the transmutation aspect of it, over a hundred years ago. We can convert one element into another. We can turn lead into gold. It's just ridiculously inefficient and uneconomical. Even the more economical way of producing gold from mercury is mostly used as a source of neutrons rather than gold.

    The alchemists of hundreds of years ago thought they could do this in table-top experiments. Well, they were wrong. They were also wrong about the economics of turning lead into gold. But they were right that it is possible. We already know how. It's just... useless for this purpose. Except creating the Plutonium. That's downright useful alchemy. :)

  7. Re:I'm surprised that this technology is available on Engineered Bacteria Glows To Reveal Land Mines · · Score: 1

    It's not like it was impossible to detect and disarm mines before this. It was just more time consuming and expensive. Mines are just one aspect of the Demilitarized Zone, and would be basically useless by themselves. There are troops from both countries patrolling their side of it in case anyone tries to cross over, and massive amounts of guns and artillery. Nevertheless, the North has gone on incursions in to the South's side of the DMZ. And the biggest threat from NK has been the tunnels they dug all the way underneath the DMZ. Who cares about mines on the surface when you're going under it?

    So, basically, this will have zero impact on the situation in the Koreas.

  8. Re:It's easy on NASA Attempts To Assuage 2012 Fears · · Score: 1

    Giving NASA a trillion dollars is the same as burning it or dumping it in a bottomless pit.

    The money pit is a national treasure!

  9. Re:Wow. on NASA Attempts To Assuage 2012 Fears · · Score: 4, Funny

    don't feel good just because you're more sane than the bottom 0.001% who are off their meds.

    Look, I gotta take it where I can get it, alright?

  10. Re:It's easy on NASA Attempts To Assuage 2012 Fears · · Score: 5, Funny

    No NASA should respond with "Yes it's real and we need $1 trillion in funding to determine how to stop it" and then spend that on real research.

    That's awesome. And then in 2013 when the public goes "Hey, you took that $1 trillion and built a space station and a moon base and a bunch of rockets and solar power stations and telescopes and rovers and stuff, when you were supposed to be preventing the end of the world!"

    And NASA can say "What do you think all that stuff was for? It worked, didn't it?"

    LOL. Make it so.

  11. Re:Wow. on NASA Attempts To Assuage 2012 Fears · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Stupid people raise stupid people.

    Whatever the genetic component of intelligence may be, it is clear that environment and education make a huge difference. These kids would end up a lot smarter simply by being brought up by someone other than their stupid bitch of a mother.

  12. Re:I don't get "It" on NASA Attempts To Assuage 2012 Fears · · Score: 1

    Every year I see hundreds of calenders that stop after anywhere from 12 to 18 months and no one gets upset. Why does anyone get upset just because the Mayan calender ends at a certain date?

    I don't know where the "Mayas thought the end of the world would come on the date their calendar ended" idea came from, but once created, it's at least semi-plausible and thus unsurprising that it would spread. I mean many cultures have legends predicting the end of the world (Armageddon, Ragnarok, etc), it's hardly inconceivable that the Mayans had a specific date for theirs.

    Now why anyone would believe that the Mayans had accurately predicted to the day when the world was going to (spontaneously, apparently) come to an end, that boggles my mind.

  13. Re:Flattering, I guess... on NASA Attempts To Assuage 2012 Fears · · Score: 1

    Does Blade Runner count? I don't think he used that exact term, but he did have a 3D photograph that could basically let him see around corners.

  14. Re:"when should I kill my children" on NASA Attempts To Assuage 2012 Fears · · Score: 1

    I dunno, the people in On the Beach had a pretty compelling reason to at least consider euthanizing their children. Or pretty much any time death is guaranteed and your choices are slow and painful or quick and merciful.

    But... I mean... Obviously you should wait until something like the nuclear holocaust actually happens before seriously considering it.

    Thinking about it because you saw a movie means you're just an idiot with an unfortunately functional reproductive system.

  15. Re:Wait? on NASA's LCROSS Mission Proves Lunar Ice Suspicions · · Score: 5, Funny

    It refuses to account for its location on both November 22, 1963, and on September 11, 2001.

  16. Gravity is not weak! on Micro-Black Holes Make Poor Planet Killers · · Score: 2, Informative

    Gravity is much, much weaker than the subatomic electrostatic forces that hold subatomic particles apart.

    It really isn't, not in the way that you mean. Yes the Gravitational Constant is much smaller than Coulomb's Constant, and yes the gravitational attraction between two protons is much weaker than the electrostatic repulsion between two protons.

    However as soon as you do anything more complicated than compare two charged particles, things change. The reason is because the two forces bind to different properties of matter, and while the charge property can be both positive and negative, mass is only positive. So while the gravitational force between two hydrogen atoms is very small, it is bigger than the electrostatic force between them because they are carrying no net charge.

    Thus gravity can easily be the stronger force in any given situation, because the forces of opposite charges will cancel, while their masses will only add together. Put enough mass together, and the gravitational force can easily outstrip every other force.

    In essence, what you're claiming in a black hole is a neutron star - a single massive nucleus - packed together as tightly as is physically possible for matter to be packed. This is impossible on the most basic level: the larger an atomic nucleus gets, the more unstable it is. There are no stable atomic nuclei any larger than lead-208.

    Kind of an ironic statement, since the electrostatic force is much, much weaker than the strong nuclear force which holds the protons together, and yet it is exactly because of the electrostatic force overcoming the strong force that these atoms become unstable. Because the strong force is only stronger in the same naive way in which electromagnetism is stronger than gravity.

    Also ironic because gravity overcoming electrostatic forces is also responsible for the existence of all of those large, unstable atoms in the first place. Fusing even two hydrogen atoms requires overcoming the repulsion of their nuclei when very close, and it's the intense heat and pressure in the core of a star -- caused by its immense mass -- which allows this. As the star over time fuses heavier elements the energy released decreases until lead where it crosses over into negative. At this point all the fusion energy that was holding the mass of the star up fails, and all that mass in the outer portions of the star collapses in due to gravity, and that transfer of energy fuses atoms much, much heavier than lead and leads to all the unstable elements we find on earth plus many that don't last long enough to become part of a planet.

    Gravity, the "weakest" force, creates atoms which the strong interaction, the "strongest" force, cannot hold together!

    So, obviously the situation is more complex than just making a blanket statement that one force is stronger than the other.

  17. Re:Manned missions? on NASA, European Space Agency Want To Go To Mars · · Score: 1

    I'd rather see them dump the money into developing human-like androids to send to Mars than planning and paying to send humans.

    I agree they should spend their time developing sex-bots. At least I think that's what you're saying... "Send to Mars" sure sounds like a euphemism to me...

  18. Re:I read the article... on Great White Sharks Visiting San Francisco · · Score: 1

    If your intent with a laser can be described by the word frickin', all I can say is... you're doing it wrong!

  19. Re:uh on Great White Sharks Visiting San Francisco · · Score: 2, Funny

    Mike Tyson "generally" is not going to kick your ass, but you're still not going to sit next to him in the airport. Are you?

    I might be a little nervous, but sure I'd sit next to him since I know I'd be okay if I just didn't do anything that made me look like a wounded sea lion.

  20. Re:Interesting circumlocution on Microsoft Patents Sudo's Behavior · · Score: 1

    In other words, it's not the operation itself, or the software, but the actual _disc_ that they're claiming. The medium, not the message, as it were. At least it's a physical thing.

    That's always the case. Technically, a pure algorithm (software) is still unpatentable. So they always throw in the "A medium to store the code, and a general purpose computer to execute it" bit to make the software a component of a physical device that does something in the real world rather than abstract math and thus a patentable invention.

  21. Re:this is beautiful on Heart of the Milky Way Photos From NASA · · Score: 1

    and yet, somehow darkly disturbing.

    Well yeah, probably because just to the upper right of the center of the image, you can see what is clearly either the Death Star or Unicron heading right for us!

  22. Re:How big? on Heart of the Milky Way Photos From NASA · · Score: 1

    There's an annotated image here, which inexplicably has a scale in light years/parsecs. I mean, it must be talking about at a particular depth, maybe the dust cloud the Hubble imaged? The arc-minutes/seconds scale, at least, makes perfect sense.

  23. Meanwhile, on a mountain top in Hawaii... on Heart of the Milky Way Photos From NASA · · Score: 5, Funny

    The Keck I telescope quietly pouts. "We're pretty great," it says. "We're a great observatory."

    "I know, I know," says the Keck II consolingly. "It's just a name; don't let it get you down. We'd beat them in a second if we weren't too big to put in orbit."

    "Are you saying I'm fat?" Keck I cries.

    "Come on, that's a good thing for a telescope, am I right?" the Keck says encouragingly. "We're the fattest!"

    "Yeah!" Keck I says brightly, spirits seemingly lifted. But as Keck II returns to observations, Keck I still feels the sting of not being in the spotlight.

    Later, scientists analyzing data from Keck I find minor anomalies, caused by unexplained water droplets on the primary.

  24. Re:huh? on Researchers Neutralize Parkinson's Dopamine Killers · · Score: 1

    No problem. I'm really sorry this probably can't help your grandfather since if he had this kind of leukemia he'd already be receiving the treatment. They're always finding new ways to fight cancer, though, so you never know.

  25. Re:Silly scientists.... on NASA Reproduces a Building Block of Life In the Lab · · Score: 1

    I was talking about holding out that some building block of life wouldn't form naturally. If you had a deeper meaning here, I missed it.