I had organic, free-range pork sausages once. You could just smell the difference when they were cooking.
Organic free-range does not equal wild. It's the sam genetic stock that the feedlots use, it's just kept differently.
Additionally, free-range animals never want for food and are a lot less susceptible to predators...they get more exercise, but they certainly are not "wild" by any means. Walking around and eating grass during the summer and hay during the winter does not equal running from predators and starving through the winter.
What bugged me is that absolutely none of this seemed to be based on actual biology. a lot of the creatures they created are biologically impossible...period. Sea slugs can't become shark-sized because they inherently lack the circulatory systems to support a large size. They won't replace fish because fish are much more effective at swimming because they have that all-important thing called a notochord (or derivatives thereof) that allows for much faster swimming. Plus, teleost jaws are much more efficient than anything a slug is likely to evolve. The speed, gape, and ability to create suction simply by opening the mouth is unbsurpassed by any other feeding mechanism we've ever seen in any organism, extant or extinct. I would expect to see structural derivatives of a teleost jaw, but realize that teleosts have been the most common active aquatic organism since the Jurassic.
Similarly, the presence of a supporting endoskeleton has made vertebrates the primary large terrestrial animals since the Carboniferous. Arthropods cannot compete with that because the endoskeleton becomes impossible to support after you reach certain sizes. You simply can't stuff enough muscle into the body and still haveroom for assorted organs AND retain an exoskeleton that will support the animal's weight without cracking as soon as a muscle pulls on it. The limit to arthropod size is really the size of the giant Eurypterids from the Silurian, and those were aquatic. The largest a terrestrial vertebrate can be, it seems, is maybe a foot in length. Any more and it squishes itself under its own weight.
I don't know if mammals will be around in 250 million years, but with the amount that they've taken over within the last 65 million years, I wouldn't doubt that some derivatives may exist in the future. But fish will CERTAINLY still be around, as will terrestrial vertebrates. They have particular STRUCTURES that make them so successful and will continue to make them successful in the future.
Also, did anyone else notice that absolutely no attention was paid to plant evolution? Plant evolution is VERY important...inland forests allowed the evolution and diversification of giant land vertebrates such as dinosaurs, flowering plants led to insect evolution, herbivore evolution, and probably contributed to the downfall of dinosaurs. It also opened up whole new niches for animals to adapt into, such as eating fruits, nuts, nectar, etc. Evolution of, say, a plant which releases hydrogen gas into a bladder in the plant and therefore suspends the plant in the stratosphere rather than keeping it rooted in the ground would give rise to not only new niches, but a completely new ecology for organisms to adapt to. Instead, the show acts as if plants remain the same throughout earth's history.
Frankly, the problem with this and other similar extrapolatory works (which are science-fiction, not science) is that they are generally done by people with little or no knowledge of biology.
Oh, and After Man was done by Dougal Dixon, not Adams. Just a thought.
That's a broad statement that is characteristic of all successful species. I'd say that rats and other genetically diverse species with very short gestation periods, you have much more success. So comparatively, we're NOT "aggressive and competitive."
* Pretty much all historical instances of first contact between human cultures have been instances of tragedy or war (take a serious look at history). When there is an inequality of technology, tragedy, when the cultures are relatively equal - war.
That's human-vs-human. We frankly don't know what would happen with another species. Look, for instance, at he relationship between humans and cockroaches. They LIKE us. We may try to kill them, but our environment is so plentiful to them that5 we can't do jack against them. They have tyhe upper han. But they don't try to destroy us. They have different needs than we do, so they live alongside us.
* Encounters with new animal species almost always go badly for the non-humans, regardless of the intelligence of the species. Dogs and cats are pretty much the only animals in all of history to do well by associating with humans.
...with the exception of rats, mice, houseflies, cockroaches, racoons, squirrels, and dozens of other urban wildlife. Plus we have a preservationist aspect to our nature....we don't like to lose things. Pandas, for instance, have ben declining naturally for thousands of years. Now, people are afraid they're going extinct, so lots of work is being put towards preserving them. Due to the efforts of environmentalists, soe species will likely last longer than they would have otherwise.
Additionally, you're comparing nonsentient non-tool-using organisms to sentient organisms capable of holding their own.
* Finally, any potential alien civilization is a complete unknown. Maybe they'll be able to hold their own, maybe not... but if you're a betting man, bet on the species you already know is a viscious effective killer.
Just because we seem effective doesn't mean we are. What if we run into a sentient species that is a predator....not a scavenger like we are, but a full-blooded predator that hunts for every meal. Or perhaps a very territorial species. Or what about a species that exists as a hive mind rather than individuals....say a sentient bee of some sort which doesn't respect the lives of individuals. Humans are actually quite mild....we're not particularly territorial, we're not naturally vicous, and we value the lives of individuals. War is something we've learned, as is murder, theft, subjugation, etc but what if we meet a species that has any one or combination of these traits naturally? The simple fact is, the psychology of ANY E.T.I. is a big unknown, a nice huge X in the equation. I'm just saying that it could go EITHER way.....just because we make the rules on our own planet does NOT mean that the rules will be the same for them.
Oh, and as a side note the odds of meeting a technologically equal civilization are close to zero. Either we come to them, or they come to us. The chances that we meet half way...
And if you consider that God likely has a "fast foward" button for the boring billions of years, the "seven day" line might really be acurate, after all.
I dunno. I'd think that the explosion of animal diversity in the Cambrian, the relatively rapid evolution of animals in the Paleozoic, the majesty of the dinosaurs in the Mesozoic, massive vulcanism during assorted ages, breathtaking meteor impacts, etc would be a lot more exciting than a homogenous population of naked apes contemplating their navels, complaining about Microsoft, and writing crappy emo songs about how sad they are now that their girlfriend left them.
But then, a supreme being may have different standards of what makes something interesting...
I've read Mindplayers and some of her short work. I find her bland...there's something missing from her work that I find in Gibson, Sterling, Shirley, and Stephenson. She'sot a bad author and I enjoyed her books, but they just don't seem as rich as some other cyberpunk works. That's my personal opinion, agree or disagree as you see fit.
Not to be a smartass or anything, but we shouldn't BE looking for a planet with an atmosphere more or less like ours. Earth didn't start out with lots of water, OR with an oxygen atmosphere. We were a rock with lots of iron, manganese, and silicon oxides with a hydrogen cyanide atmosphere. It wasn't until after a bunch of comets struck the earth and deposited a bunch of water that we actually had oceans. And it wasn't until our atmosphere was converted by photosynthesizing bacteria that we got an oxygen atmosphere. Even if we DO find live, it's more likely we'll find chemosythetic microorganisms or something similar. It's very unlikely we'll find a planet all ready for us to drop colony ships and stick people on.
Regardless of how common earth-like planets are, we're going to need to terraform them so they'll be habitable for us. We'll need to engineer bacteria similar to the ones which converted our atmosphere and we'll likely also have to redirect some large comets from their outer fringes to make a water ocean.
Part of me just keeps wanting to yell at the astrophysicists, astronomers, and sci-fi authors who talk about the difficulty of finding a habitable planet. Please, these people need some paleontology and historical geology courses under their belt before they can go off spouting about "habitable" planets. Regardless, we're going to have to MAKE those planets habitable or else we're going to have to change ourselves so that we can inhabit those planets. It's common sense.
I think the whole interstellar imperialism depends on the technology of the species we encounter. If they are technologically superior, they may very well turn our species and our sphere of influence into a colony. If they're less advanced, they will likely end up as dependant on us, or perhaps may get wiped out. If we have equal technological levels we may see each other as competitors and try to eliminate the other's threat using either economic forces or via plain old war. Of course, there's the possibility that they have absolutely no interest in us, either due to vastly different biologies or simply their psychological profile. It's even quite possible that they will simply absorb us as America has done to many other cultures.
But to assume that humanity will undoubtably subjugate any other interstellar species is anthropocentric and ignorant.
Mmph....I think it really depends on taste. Stephenson is more technical than other cyberpunk authors. But frankly, I like Gibson a LOT more...I even like Rucker more than him. Also, thogh not many people have read his work, Tom Maddox's stuff is quite good. He's a LOT like Gibson, but his future is more constructive than Gibson's.
Also, my favorite cyberpunk author besides Gibson is John Shirley. He has the same thick noir imagery which makes Gibson's work so beautiful. His more recent stuff has sort of slipped into horror (or what some pundits call splatterpunk, whatever that is).
I also like Sterling a lot, and though his work tends not to be technical, he IS highly politically-conscious and has also done some journalism as well. His stuff tends to focus on politics surrounding technology rather than the tech itself (consider Schismatrix....it's ALL about technology politics). His short stories are, indeed, his forte and I got a real kick out of his recent Deep Eddy stories.
There's also Rucker (whose cyberpunk is more transcendentalist than anything else). Software and Wetware are good, though the series sort of fizzles out. Cadigan is good, but I find her a little bland. Shiner is weird...really weird. And that's basically the movement right there.
There's also other people who've written assorted cyberpunk novels, such as Greg Bear's Blood Music or Greg Egan's Permutation City. You could even *potentially* call some Phil K. Dick books cyberpunk....A Scanner Darkly, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, Ubik, and Valis are all more or less cyberpunk.
As for today, the only real "new" cyberpunk author is Charles Stross, who I personally find to be a fascinating author. Everyone else has been writing in the subgenre for 10-20 years.
Frankly, that opens up a huge can of worms. Once you get to consumer products, you also allows all sorts of unpleasant ways to violate the rights of individuals.
For instance, those of you who have read Neil Stephenson's Snow Crash remember a particular virus that restructured an individual's brain to allow an individual to control those individuals through particular language programs (nam-shub). Can you imagine what this could do if ANYONE created such a virus? Especially considering that they effectively found a way to crash the brains of potential opponents.
Or how about the cut-out chips used in the House of Blue Lights in William Gibson's Sprawl stories? Kidnap a woman and put her under the chip. It's like rape drugs, but worse, because she isn't even aware of ANYTHING. Or hell, just let the government use it for shutting up dissidents or prisoners.
And what ABOUT replacing cash? Frankly, I like cash. Not all the time, mind you, but sometimes it's good to have some cash on hand. It's anonymous. It's easily spent. It's easily transferrable. It's very difficult to track. In a world where electronic interactions are easy to trace and are being watched by people like John Poindexter, the anonymity of cash is definitely a plus.
Black ICE from Gibson's Sprawl trilogy would be loved greatly by the RIAA....you try to decode a disk of theirs and the file you decode kills you. no lawsuit because you yourself were breaking the law by trying to break their encryption.
The neural restructuring found in Sterling's Schismatrix stories uis also disturbing, allowing organizations to "reshape" people who acted differently than they wanted, either by making them more adept at a certain skill, or by putting blocks on other skills. Do we really need gene-tampered and mentally-reshaped assassins walking around the streets? I think not.
Or if we go the way of hard scifi, do we want the "Drouds" of Larry Niven's Known Space books? Direct stimulation of one's pleasure center may be a boon for addicts of other drugs, but is much more likely to turn humanity into a pile of vegetables.
And I refuse to touch the whole Big Brother, Soylent Green, and other similar things with a ten foot pole.
The fact is, Sci-fi gives plenty of warnings about technology....in fact, at least as many as it gives potntial "good" technologies. But once you get governments trying to develop said technologies, they'll adapt other technologies that are really warned against rather than hoped for because it's there and it *could* be beneficial to them for one reason or another.
Just something to think about.
Re:Flavor- Who gives a F-ck. This is sick
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Lab-Grown Steak
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Actually, this is to satisfy people like YOU who don't want to kill animals and feel that eating bloody flesh is somehow wrong because you're killing an animal. Face it, you don't think eating bloody flesh is gross because it's meat. You think it's wrong because you kill an animal to make it.
All you're doing right now is proving my opinion that most vegetarians choose their diet because they feel vegetarianism makes them superior and more classy people.
Lab-grown steak is a good thing. Period. No more slaughterhouses, no more massive feedlots, no more nutrient runoff, no more E. coli in the meat, no more need to graze cattle on large tracts of land, no more hunting of predators that prey on herds, etc, etc, etc. Oh, and you don't need to kill anything.
This isn't becoming "detached" from our food, this is altering the source of our food so we don't need to become detached. If you want "back to nature" then go out and live in the savannahs of Africa and live as a hunter gatherer, because by your definition farming and animal domestication are all "becoming detached" from our food.
And I HAVE killed my own meat. Doesn't phase me. Not everyone has the same aversion to sitting on the top of the food chain that you have.
As other people have commented, sex is a lot less taboo in Japan. Stuff like Ranma or even Pokemon have frequent sexual references and Ranma has a great deal of nudity as well. Additionally, death is frequent in kid series like Dragonball and drinking is not looked down on (Japan sells alcoholic drinks in vending machines, for hell's sake). However, Outlaw Star has all these things being mainly lighthearted...compare your said sexual references to the few (much more serious) in Bebop and you see what I mean.
Maybe Cowboy Bebop could classify as adolescent, but the others don't seem any more 'adult' than Dragonball Z or Voltron.
Bebop, if an American movie, would get a solid R rating. Graphic violence, drug use, graphic language, the list goes on and on, especially if you watch the series uncut. Additionally, most kids and adolescents just don't/won't get the beatnik references that are spread throughout the series. If you had said the OTHER space bounty hunter series on CN (Outlaw Star) I'd agree with you. But not Bebop.
I've seen some stuff like Akira or Ghost in the Shell or Baoh - that comes off as adult.
GitS is certainly an adult film. Not only does it have adult content (nudity, graphic violence, obscene language, etc) but the ideas within the movie are meant for adults, not kids. I don't think it's possible for a kid or even an adolescent to comprehend the commentaries on identity and humanity. They just don't have the experience or context to understand it. Akira IS (in my opinion) an adolescent movie...it's a lot of action and violence, but it lacks the advanced concepts you tend to see in adult anime and instead goes for the big muscles and cool weapons.
There are plenty of adult anime. GitS, GitS: Stand Alone Complex, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Serial Experiments Lain, Perfect Blue, Jin Roh, and a lot of others are all strongly adult in nature. Frankly, I'd say you're suffering from a lack of exposure.
Re:Science is open to everyone
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Who Owns Science?
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Yes, if you want to subscribe. However, to read a paper of interest, you can just get off your lazy duff and go to a local library...if your public library doesn't have it, then check out the local university library. True, that's not plausible for everyone, but if it's important to you and you lack the money, it IS availible.
Too bad we couldn't have taken em up to Mir before it burned up on reentry.
I can't believe it though. The guy has a lot of balls using this as a publicity stunt, using other people's money, then backing out when it comes time for him to pay up.
For my money, I think that the future has got SnowCrash, Cryptonomicon, Neuromancer, Count Zero, Mona Lisa Overdrive, and Johnny Mnemonic written all over it (and maybe a bit of Jurassic Park.
Sure, the future has Neuromancer written all over it. But it also has Schismatrix written all over it as well. We're likely to see biological modification (including genetic alteration) in the future. Even if the majority finds gene-tampering taboo, there WILL be groups that will do it.
The truth is, we're likely to see a combination of the two in the future. Yes, we're likely to see a computer-saturated world within the next few years (if you don't consider it computer-saturated right now), but that doesn't mean we won't see designed genetics as well. The two work together. It's not an either/or issue.
It seems as most everything in computer has "been done", and biology/chemisty/biochemical engineering seems to be where all the fun & excitement is these days.
The difference in modern computing and modern biochemistry/genetics/developmental biology is that bioenginnering is a good deal behind computing. 50 years ago, we were working on making computers work. We didn't really get to working on all the applications of computers until computers could be personalized and used in the home. Bioengineering is still at the point where it's being explored. It's all being done in labs because there aren't "do it yourself" genetics labs you can put in your home. Eventually there will be, but not right now. Therefore, if you want to fark around with DNA, you need a degree and a job. If you want to fark around with computers, all you need is to teach yourself some languages and get a PC.
It's not that computers aren't as exciting as genetics is right now...there's a lot more you can do with computers than DNA at the moment. However, genetics is more exclusive because it is not as availible to the public.
I'd be scared that with all the voting power the old and geezerly have, it'll be required for all us whippersnappers to wear this thing for a few days to better appreciate the pain they have to go through. I'm sure that would get them that increased Medicare funding that they so desperately want.
I'm royally sick of how the old folks have all the power. I guess it's the fault of my generation, who just doesn't vote. Stupid college kids.
Ghost in a shell was an awesome, but to bring it to the level of Akira-dom is kinda crazy... It's a great anime, but if you think about the time it was made vs. the time Akira was made, the similarity just isn't there.
I personally found Ghost in the Shell to be a much higher-quality piece of work than Akira and the depth of the movie far surpasses that of Akira. Better animation, better soundtrack, better plot...yes, it was made lter, but I still don't think you can say GitS is a lesser-quality piece of work.
Oh, and Spirited Away's already out in theaters in the US.
It has failed to live up to its promise of reliable, cheap and frequent access to orbit.
I'd say it's done fine for its main purpose of satellite deployment and repair. We're becoming quite reliant on those satellites and this "failure" seems to be working fine for that purpose. Just because the goals have changed does NOT mean we're failing.
Space exploration and exploitation should be driven by familiar human drives of wealth, power, greed, curiosity, freedom, etc., that have always sustained human expansion.
...which is why a majority of satellites are being placed in orbit for military or commercial purposes. The ISS is a relic really; the Russian pay-for-spaceflight incentives will most likely be the source of any new innovation and any real settling of Earth orbit.
The greatest contribution the scientific and engineering community could make to space exploration right now is the development of propulsion technology that provides at least an order of magnitude increase in lift and speed capability.
No, the greatest contribution the scientific community and engineering community can offer is a skyhook/space-elevator/whateverthefarkyouwannacall it. Doesn't mean it'll happen. Even carbon nanotubes seem to be too weak at this point to spin into a cable with enough tensile strength to not fall apart. As for other liftoff types, the only things I can think of are a somewhat controlled fission reaction or a really huge linear accelerator. You're NEVER going to get NASA to OK a nuclear-powered launch vehicle because it'll shed obscene amounts of radiation into the atmosphere and if there is a Challenger-esque accident, a crapload of enriched plutonium is suddenly spread all over Florida. A linear accelerator makes more sense, but the amount of electricity needed to make the lectromagnets strong enough would probably require building a full-sized fission reactor to power it and a LOT of metal in the contruction of it. Not to mention that in this new fear of terrorism, any large building contracts have liekly been cancelled as the government does not want to attract further attacks, especially considering the cost of the damage to such a piece of equipment.
For now, the most important thing is fortifying the global communications networks. Offworld colonization is important, but nowhere near as important as worldwide communications.
There's a difference between studying a few small rocks collected and studying the moon itself. Go outside and pick up a handful of rocks. How characteristic are they of the earth in general? How much do they tell us about the earth? Not much? Big surprise.
The bigger (and more random) your sample size, the more accurate your data. Basic statistical theory there. There may be other things we may learn from studying the moon, such as more detailed information on asteroids, etc. There may be other questions that we can't even ask yet because we simply don't know what questions to ask (the monolith in 2001 is an extreme example of this, but we may find new geological phenomena, etc. So far, we've only been to a very minimal part of the moon...we don't know enough about it to know the right questions to ask.
I'm not saying it needs to be under constant monitoring, but any credible research will require a diverse team of scientists (not Air Force pilots told to just pick up a few rocks) to collect and study samples. It only makes sense to have a base on site instead of sending back and forth gophers (which is basically what the Apollo astronauts were) to do stuff for them.
...And I've experienced the frustration of realizing that the class, stats, whatever that I chose, though perfectly acceptable, were entirely incompatable with my style of playing in the game. When I go into an MUD or an MMORPG, I generally build a very standard character and spend a day or two just exploring and figuring out how this, that, or the other just plain conflicts with my playing style. Yes, sometimes I can guess decently well, but in general, I need to fine-tune certain things to meet my needs. Since none of us have any idea how different skills, battling, etc. will be from the other games we've played, we don't KNOW how to tune our characters. I'd LIKE a test character to run around for a few days...it'll save me a lot of frustration and potential hardware accessory damage when I toss my keyboard or gamepad across the room after cursing myself for picking Rodian as my species when it's so damned clear that for my playtype I should have picked Trandoshan (or Wookie or Human or whatever).
I understand the issues they're trying to counter. I understand the REAL issue which is the fact LucasArts knows they can milk the Star Wars franchise/MMORPG combination for quite a lot of Money with a capital M.
They know that's the case, we know that's the case. There are no secrets here. So why the hell are they still lying to us? If they were outwardly honest and said "We're choosing to do this because it will allow us to charge for each individual who uses the service." I honestly don't think that their audience is going to be less receptive to it. Everyone will consider it and decide whether it's worth it to them or not. But there ISN'T AN ALTERNATIVE if you want a Star Wars-themed MMORPG. Period. The mass market that is interested in a STAR WARS game is a captive audience...they'll jump through the hoops to have the service no matter what. The people looking for a good online RPG will either sign on immediately or they'll sit back and see if it's all its cracked up to be. If it IS as good as they make it out to be, than the skeptics (like me) will join because it will provide something they can't get elsewhere and we'll put up with the limitations. I honestly don't see why they have to feed us a line of crap about how this is all to prevent multiplaying and then insult our intelligence with that sarcastic "Ah, Virginia, I wish it wasn't so" comment. We're not stupid...we understand trade-offs. But we also understand that they have more to gain here than we do.
Can't you just spin a cylindrical living quarters which provides simulated gravity as a result of centripetal force? It's not gravity, but it still provides the forces necessary to develop strong bones, or so I'd think.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't forget the "In Orcish Mordor..." running jokes. In Orcish Mordor, ring wears YOU. In Orcish Moria, sword swings YOU.
No matter how much we criticize Jackson's use of Gimli as a comic device, it always COULD get worse...
Organic free-range does not equal wild. It's the sam genetic stock that the feedlots use, it's just kept differently.
Additionally, free-range animals never want for food and are a lot less susceptible to predators...they get more exercise, but they certainly are not "wild" by any means. Walking around and eating grass during the summer and hay during the winter does not equal running from predators and starving through the winter.
What bugged me is that absolutely none of this seemed to be based on actual biology. a lot of the creatures they created are biologically impossible...period. Sea slugs can't become shark-sized because they inherently lack the circulatory systems to support a large size. They won't replace fish because fish are much more effective at swimming because they have that all-important thing called a notochord (or derivatives thereof) that allows for much faster swimming. Plus, teleost jaws are much more efficient than anything a slug is likely to evolve. The speed, gape, and ability to create suction simply by opening the mouth is unbsurpassed by any other feeding mechanism we've ever seen in any organism, extant or extinct. I would expect to see structural derivatives of a teleost jaw, but realize that teleosts have been the most common active aquatic organism since the Jurassic.
Similarly, the presence of a supporting endoskeleton has made vertebrates the primary large terrestrial animals since the Carboniferous. Arthropods cannot compete with that because the endoskeleton becomes impossible to support after you reach certain sizes. You simply can't stuff enough muscle into the body and still haveroom for assorted organs AND retain an exoskeleton that will support the animal's weight without cracking as soon as a muscle pulls on it. The limit to arthropod size is really the size of the giant Eurypterids from the Silurian, and those were aquatic. The largest a terrestrial vertebrate can be, it seems, is maybe a foot in length. Any more and it squishes itself under its own weight.
I don't know if mammals will be around in 250 million years, but with the amount that they've taken over within the last 65 million years, I wouldn't doubt that some derivatives may exist in the future. But fish will CERTAINLY still be around, as will terrestrial vertebrates. They have particular STRUCTURES that make them so successful and will continue to make them successful in the future.
Also, did anyone else notice that absolutely no attention was paid to plant evolution? Plant evolution is VERY important...inland forests allowed the evolution and diversification of giant land vertebrates such as dinosaurs, flowering plants led to insect evolution, herbivore evolution, and probably contributed to the downfall of dinosaurs. It also opened up whole new niches for animals to adapt into, such as eating fruits, nuts, nectar, etc. Evolution of, say, a plant which releases hydrogen gas into a bladder in the plant and therefore suspends the plant in the stratosphere rather than keeping it rooted in the ground would give rise to not only new niches, but a completely new ecology for organisms to adapt to. Instead, the show acts as if plants remain the same throughout earth's history.
Frankly, the problem with this and other similar extrapolatory works (which are science-fiction, not science) is that they are generally done by people with little or no knowledge of biology.
Oh, and After Man was done by Dougal Dixon, not Adams. Just a thought.
That's a broad statement that is characteristic of all successful species. I'd say that rats and other genetically diverse species with very short gestation periods, you have much more success. So comparatively, we're NOT "aggressive and competitive."
That's human-vs-human. We frankly don't know what would happen with another species. Look, for instance, at he relationship between humans and cockroaches. They LIKE us. We may try to kill them, but our environment is so plentiful to them that5 we can't do jack against them. They have tyhe upper han. But they don't try to destroy us. They have different needs than we do, so they live alongside us.
Additionally, you're comparing nonsentient non-tool-using organisms to sentient organisms capable of holding their own.
Just because we seem effective doesn't mean we are. What if we run into a sentient species that is a predator....not a scavenger like we are, but a full-blooded predator that hunts for every meal. Or perhaps a very territorial species. Or what about a species that exists as a hive mind rather than individuals....say a sentient bee of some sort which doesn't respect the lives of individuals. Humans are actually quite mild....we're not particularly territorial, we're not naturally vicous, and we value the lives of individuals. War is something we've learned, as is murder, theft, subjugation, etc but what if we meet a species that has any one or combination of these traits naturally? The simple fact is, the psychology of ANY E.T.I. is a big unknown, a nice huge X in the equation. I'm just saying that it could go EITHER way.....just because we make the rules on our own planet does NOT mean that the rules will be the same for them.
Correct. I think we agree there.
I dunno. I'd think that the explosion of animal diversity in the Cambrian, the relatively rapid evolution of animals in the Paleozoic, the majesty of the dinosaurs in the Mesozoic, massive vulcanism during assorted ages, breathtaking meteor impacts, etc would be a lot more exciting than a homogenous population of naked apes contemplating their navels, complaining about Microsoft, and writing crappy emo songs about how sad they are now that their girlfriend left them.
But then, a supreme being may have different standards of what makes something interesting...
I've read Mindplayers and some of her short work. I find her bland...there's something missing from her work that I find in Gibson, Sterling, Shirley, and Stephenson. She'sot a bad author and I enjoyed her books, but they just don't seem as rich as some other cyberpunk works. That's my personal opinion, agree or disagree as you see fit.
Ummm....
Not to be a smartass or anything, but we shouldn't BE looking for a planet with an atmosphere more or less like ours. Earth didn't start out with lots of water, OR with an oxygen atmosphere. We were a rock with lots of iron, manganese, and silicon oxides with a hydrogen cyanide atmosphere. It wasn't until after a bunch of comets struck the earth and deposited a bunch of water that we actually had oceans. And it wasn't until our atmosphere was converted by photosynthesizing bacteria that we got an oxygen atmosphere. Even if we DO find live, it's more likely we'll find chemosythetic microorganisms or something similar. It's very unlikely we'll find a planet all ready for us to drop colony ships and stick people on.
Regardless of how common earth-like planets are, we're going to need to terraform them so they'll be habitable for us. We'll need to engineer bacteria similar to the ones which converted our atmosphere and we'll likely also have to redirect some large comets from their outer fringes to make a water ocean.
Part of me just keeps wanting to yell at the astrophysicists, astronomers, and sci-fi authors who talk about the difficulty of finding a habitable planet. Please, these people need some paleontology and historical geology courses under their belt before they can go off spouting about "habitable" planets. Regardless, we're going to have to MAKE those planets habitable or else we're going to have to change ourselves so that we can inhabit those planets. It's common sense.
I think the whole interstellar imperialism depends on the technology of the species we encounter. If they are technologically superior, they may very well turn our species and our sphere of influence into a colony. If they're less advanced, they will likely end up as dependant on us, or perhaps may get wiped out. If we have equal technological levels we may see each other as competitors and try to eliminate the other's threat using either economic forces or via plain old war. Of course, there's the possibility that they have absolutely no interest in us, either due to vastly different biologies or simply their psychological profile. It's even quite possible that they will simply absorb us as America has done to many other cultures.
But to assume that humanity will undoubtably subjugate any other interstellar species is anthropocentric and ignorant.
Mmph....I think it really depends on taste. Stephenson is more technical than other cyberpunk authors. But frankly, I like Gibson a LOT more...I even like Rucker more than him. Also, thogh not many people have read his work, Tom Maddox's stuff is quite good. He's a LOT like Gibson, but his future is more constructive than Gibson's.
Also, my favorite cyberpunk author besides Gibson is John Shirley. He has the same thick noir imagery which makes Gibson's work so beautiful. His more recent stuff has sort of slipped into horror (or what some pundits call splatterpunk, whatever that is).
I also like Sterling a lot, and though his work tends not to be technical, he IS highly politically-conscious and has also done some journalism as well. His stuff tends to focus on politics surrounding technology rather than the tech itself (consider Schismatrix....it's ALL about technology politics). His short stories are, indeed, his forte and I got a real kick out of his recent Deep Eddy stories.
There's also Rucker (whose cyberpunk is more transcendentalist than anything else). Software and Wetware are good, though the series sort of fizzles out. Cadigan is good, but I find her a little bland. Shiner is weird...really weird. And that's basically the movement right there.
There's also other people who've written assorted cyberpunk novels, such as Greg Bear's Blood Music or Greg Egan's Permutation City. You could even *potentially* call some Phil K. Dick books cyberpunk....A Scanner Darkly, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, Ubik, and Valis are all more or less cyberpunk.
As for today, the only real "new" cyberpunk author is Charles Stross, who I personally find to be a fascinating author. Everyone else has been writing in the subgenre for 10-20 years.
Frankly, that opens up a huge can of worms. Once you get to consumer products, you also allows all sorts of unpleasant ways to violate the rights of individuals.
For instance, those of you who have read Neil Stephenson's Snow Crash remember a particular virus that restructured an individual's brain to allow an individual to control those individuals through particular language programs (nam-shub). Can you imagine what this could do if ANYONE created such a virus? Especially considering that they effectively found a way to crash the brains of potential opponents.
Or how about the cut-out chips used in the House of Blue Lights in William Gibson's Sprawl stories? Kidnap a woman and put her under the chip. It's like rape drugs, but worse, because she isn't even aware of ANYTHING. Or hell, just let the government use it for shutting up dissidents or prisoners.
And what ABOUT replacing cash? Frankly, I like cash. Not all the time, mind you, but sometimes it's good to have some cash on hand. It's anonymous. It's easily spent. It's easily transferrable. It's very difficult to track. In a world where electronic interactions are easy to trace and are being watched by people like John Poindexter, the anonymity of cash is definitely a plus.
Black ICE from Gibson's Sprawl trilogy would be loved greatly by the RIAA....you try to decode a disk of theirs and the file you decode kills you. no lawsuit because you yourself were breaking the law by trying to break their encryption.
The neural restructuring found in Sterling's Schismatrix stories uis also disturbing, allowing organizations to "reshape" people who acted differently than they wanted, either by making them more adept at a certain skill, or by putting blocks on other skills. Do we really need gene-tampered and mentally-reshaped assassins walking around the streets? I think not.
Or if we go the way of hard scifi, do we want the "Drouds" of Larry Niven's Known Space books? Direct stimulation of one's pleasure center may be a boon for addicts of other drugs, but is much more likely to turn humanity into a pile of vegetables.
And I refuse to touch the whole Big Brother, Soylent Green, and other similar things with a ten foot pole.
The fact is, Sci-fi gives plenty of warnings about technology....in fact, at least as many as it gives potntial "good" technologies. But once you get governments trying to develop said technologies, they'll adapt other technologies that are really warned against rather than hoped for because it's there and it *could* be beneficial to them for one reason or another.
Just something to think about.
Actually, this is to satisfy people like YOU who don't want to kill animals and feel that eating bloody flesh is somehow wrong because you're killing an animal. Face it, you don't think eating bloody flesh is gross because it's meat. You think it's wrong because you kill an animal to make it.
All you're doing right now is proving my opinion that most vegetarians choose their diet because they feel vegetarianism makes them superior and more classy people.
Lab-grown steak is a good thing. Period. No more slaughterhouses, no more massive feedlots, no more nutrient runoff, no more E. coli in the meat, no more need to graze cattle on large tracts of land, no more hunting of predators that prey on herds, etc, etc, etc. Oh, and you don't need to kill anything.
This isn't becoming "detached" from our food, this is altering the source of our food so we don't need to become detached. If you want "back to nature" then go out and live in the savannahs of Africa and live as a hunter gatherer, because by your definition farming and animal domestication are all "becoming detached" from our food.
And I HAVE killed my own meat. Doesn't phase me. Not everyone has the same aversion to sitting on the top of the food chain that you have.
As other people have commented, sex is a lot less taboo in Japan. Stuff like Ranma or even Pokemon have frequent sexual references and Ranma has a great deal of nudity as well. Additionally, death is frequent in kid series like Dragonball and drinking is not looked down on (Japan sells alcoholic drinks in vending machines, for hell's sake). However, Outlaw Star has all these things being mainly lighthearted...compare your said sexual references to the few (much more serious) in Bebop and you see what I mean.
Bebop, if an American movie, would get a solid R rating. Graphic violence, drug use, graphic language, the list goes on and on, especially if you watch the series uncut. Additionally, most kids and adolescents just don't/won't get the beatnik references that are spread throughout the series. If you had said the OTHER space bounty hunter series on CN (Outlaw Star) I'd agree with you. But not Bebop.
GitS is certainly an adult film. Not only does it have adult content (nudity, graphic violence, obscene language, etc) but the ideas within the movie are meant for adults, not kids. I don't think it's possible for a kid or even an adolescent to comprehend the commentaries on identity and humanity. They just don't have the experience or context to understand it. Akira IS (in my opinion) an adolescent movie...it's a lot of action and violence, but it lacks the advanced concepts you tend to see in adult anime and instead goes for the big muscles and cool weapons.
There are plenty of adult anime. GitS, GitS: Stand Alone Complex, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Serial Experiments Lain, Perfect Blue, Jin Roh, and a lot of others are all strongly adult in nature. Frankly, I'd say you're suffering from a lack of exposure.
It's called sarcasm.
Yes, if you want to subscribe. However, to read a paper of interest, you can just get off your lazy duff and go to a local library...if your public library doesn't have it, then check out the local university library. True, that's not plausible for everyone, but if it's important to you and you lack the money, it IS availible.
Too bad we couldn't have taken em up to Mir before it burned up on reentry. I can't believe it though. The guy has a lot of balls using this as a publicity stunt, using other people's money, then backing out when it comes time for him to pay up.
Someone needs to put Blood Music down RIGHT NOW.
Sure, the future has Neuromancer written all over it. But it also has Schismatrix written all over it as well. We're likely to see biological modification (including genetic alteration) in the future. Even if the majority finds gene-tampering taboo, there WILL be groups that will do it.
The truth is, we're likely to see a combination of the two in the future. Yes, we're likely to see a computer-saturated world within the next few years (if you don't consider it computer-saturated right now), but that doesn't mean we won't see designed genetics as well. The two work together. It's not an either/or issue.
The difference in modern computing and modern biochemistry/genetics/developmental biology is that bioenginnering is a good deal behind computing. 50 years ago, we were working on making computers work. We didn't really get to working on all the applications of computers until computers could be personalized and used in the home. Bioengineering is still at the point where it's being explored. It's all being done in labs because there aren't "do it yourself" genetics labs you can put in your home. Eventually there will be, but not right now. Therefore, if you want to fark around with DNA, you need a degree and a job. If you want to fark around with computers, all you need is to teach yourself some languages and get a PC.
It's not that computers aren't as exciting as genetics is right now...there's a lot more you can do with computers than DNA at the moment. However, genetics is more exclusive because it is not as availible to the public.
I'd be scared that with all the voting power the old and geezerly have, it'll be required for all us whippersnappers to wear this thing for a few days to better appreciate the pain they have to go through. I'm sure that would get them that increased Medicare funding that they so desperately want.
I'm royally sick of how the old folks have all the power. I guess it's the fault of my generation, who just doesn't vote. Stupid college kids.
I personally found Ghost in the Shell to be a much higher-quality piece of work than Akira and the depth of the movie far surpasses that of Akira. Better animation, better soundtrack, better plot...yes, it was made lter, but I still don't think you can say GitS is a lesser-quality piece of work.
Oh, and Spirited Away's already out in theaters in the US.
I'd say it's done fine for its main purpose of satellite deployment and repair. We're becoming quite reliant on those satellites and this "failure" seems to be working fine for that purpose. Just because the goals have changed does NOT mean we're failing.
No, the greatest contribution the scientific community and engineering community can offer is a skyhook/space-elevator/whateverthefarkyouwannacal
For now, the most important thing is fortifying the global communications networks. Offworld colonization is important, but nowhere near as important as worldwide communications.
There's a difference between studying a few small rocks collected and studying the moon itself. Go outside and pick up a handful of rocks. How characteristic are they of the earth in general? How much do they tell us about the earth? Not much? Big surprise.
The bigger (and more random) your sample size, the more accurate your data. Basic statistical theory there. There may be other things we may learn from studying the moon, such as more detailed information on asteroids, etc. There may be other questions that we can't even ask yet because we simply don't know what questions to ask (the monolith in 2001 is an extreme example of this, but we may find new geological phenomena, etc. So far, we've only been to a very minimal part of the moon...we don't know enough about it to know the right questions to ask.
I'm not saying it needs to be under constant monitoring, but any credible research will require a diverse team of scientists (not Air Force pilots told to just pick up a few rocks) to collect and study samples. It only makes sense to have a base on site instead of sending back and forth gophers (which is basically what the Apollo astronauts were) to do stuff for them.
...And I've experienced the frustration of realizing that the class, stats, whatever that I chose, though perfectly acceptable, were entirely incompatable with my style of playing in the game. When I go into an MUD or an MMORPG, I generally build a very standard character and spend a day or two just exploring and figuring out how this, that, or the other just plain conflicts with my playing style. Yes, sometimes I can guess decently well, but in general, I need to fine-tune certain things to meet my needs. Since none of us have any idea how different skills, battling, etc. will be from the other games we've played, we don't KNOW how to tune our characters. I'd LIKE a test character to run around for a few days...it'll save me a lot of frustration and potential hardware accessory damage when I toss my keyboard or gamepad across the room after cursing myself for picking Rodian as my species when it's so damned clear that for my playtype I should have picked Trandoshan (or Wookie or Human or whatever).
I understand the issues they're trying to counter. I understand the REAL issue which is the fact LucasArts knows they can milk the Star Wars franchise/MMORPG combination for quite a lot of Money with a capital M.
They know that's the case, we know that's the case. There are no secrets here. So why the hell are they still lying to us? If they were outwardly honest and said "We're choosing to do this because it will allow us to charge for each individual who uses the service." I honestly don't think that their audience is going to be less receptive to it. Everyone will consider it and decide whether it's worth it to them or not. But there ISN'T AN ALTERNATIVE if you want a Star Wars-themed MMORPG. Period. The mass market that is interested in a STAR WARS game is a captive audience...they'll jump through the hoops to have the service no matter what. The people looking for a good online RPG will either sign on immediately or they'll sit back and see if it's all its cracked up to be. If it IS as good as they make it out to be, than the skeptics (like me) will join because it will provide something they can't get elsewhere and we'll put up with the limitations. I honestly don't see why they have to feed us a line of crap about how this is all to prevent multiplaying and then insult our intelligence with that sarcastic "Ah, Virginia, I wish it wasn't so" comment. We're not stupid...we understand trade-offs. But we also understand that they have more to gain here than we do.
Can't you just spin a cylindrical living quarters which provides simulated gravity as a result of centripetal force? It's not gravity, but it still provides the forces necessary to develop strong bones, or so I'd think.