The Space Shuttle is perfect for what we're doing now, which is establishing a reasonable presence in orbit via satellites and space stations. This presence will eventually allow us to make more reasonable attempts at the moon, mars, etc. Right now, though, what would a manned moonshot accomplish? What the other moonshots did? The Apollo series were less scientific than they were a competition with the USSR. We just strapped people to a giant bomb and sent them off, they picked up some rocks and came back. That's not a scientific mission. If we want to actually learn about the moon, we need to either send permanent probes there, or we need to establish semi-permanent research colonies capable of sustaining a reasonably large team of scientists and supporting personnel for extended periods of time. The sheer quantity of materials and resources needed for this sort of operation would far exceed the amount of materials we can safely get to escape velocity using the equipment we have. In other words, we need to either assemble such a craft/station THERE using unmanned robotic probes, or we need to build it in orbit and then fly it to the moon.
In other words, the reason we haven't gone to the moon since 72 is because our interests have changed. Instead of trying to one-up feats of the Soviet Union (insert obligatory In Soviet Russia joke here) we're trying to establish a presence that will serve as a platform for further research.
Honestly, though, I don't see a credible moon presence until we either come up with a more efficient launch vehicle or we engineer a skyhook of some sort. Until then, expect NASA to focus entirely on putting things into orbit, especially geosynchonous orbit.
And someone will write a Shaper Diplomat mod that allows you to convince the operator of the Enterprise that you really both have the same interests and that you should cooperate all while firmly positioning that dagger in their back.
Before we start talking about "fair use" and the other assorted issues of paying for use, etc, lets look at the REASON copyright laws exist in the first place.
Copyright laws are made to prevent others from publishing copyrighted material and making $$ off that copyrighted material, i.e., it's to prevent the sale of a creative work in which none of that $$ goes to the creator of that work. This isn't about money they would have made but aren't making. This isn't about "fair use" or "unlimited use" or "restricted use" at all. This is about preventing other people from stealing your work and making money off it. As far as I know, KaZaA isn't charging me to download e-books or mp3s. As far as I know, I'm not paying someone to read a book they transcribed into text and posted on their website in HTML format. A third party is not profitting from the sale of another person's intellectual property without that individual getting royalties.
I think online publishing of material is great; it allows amateur authors, musicians, etc to get much more exposure than they would in traditional media. Additionally, it allows for many more alternative opinions and ideas to be expressed because publishing is not based on the demand for a book but rather the author's desire to publish it. In the paper book world where most publishers are looking for New York Times Bestseller books, you get very little good literature. I'm sorry, but I'd prefer to read less popular authors who I find interesting rather than the newest hackjob of a book by Stephen King, Michael Crichton, etc. Online publishing allows for a diversity of ideas you don't get when the stakes are as big as they are in paper publishing.
In other words, Adobe and the DCMA and the MPAA can take their opinions, sit on them, and rotate.
It would be interesting if they gave you the sourcecode for the program and let you program your own weapons, items, etc. Of course, they'd sell stuff too, but if you wanted to (and more importantly, understand programming) you could make much better items, including items that don't degrade over time, that have guidance systems, or whatever. Just imagine the lamer 15 year old who bought a pile of rockets in the weapons mart finding that you programmed yourself a personal ECM jammer and suddenly his rockets are barrelling right back in his face. Of course, those who did take the time to do this *might* sell their programmed items to others for money or use them irresponsibly, but I doubt someone who spends hours to days working on something like that AND pays for the service because they want a high-quality RPG is going to abuse their tools for simple profit.
As long as we still have the atheist influence in this state, people will never be required to become overly educated in ethics.
Fascinating. I guess all those philosophy and ethics courses I took which claimed that ethics are based on rationality rather than a belief in god are wrong. So I guess Kant's ethics of universal law and the good will are bogus because they aren't based on whether or not a god says they're good or bad. Or Mill's utilitarianism. Or Neitsche. I mean, they don't invoke the name of god or the bible to support their arguments.
No, I think you're an ignorant fool to believe that the belief of/in god determines universal ethics. There are universal duties one has to other sentient beings that are the result of rational thought, not of blind belief.
I think the point is that the embryo we're talking about is not sentient and therefore lacks the basic humanity that the victims of Josef Mengele's experiments had.
Embryonic stem cells, which are totipotent (can give rise to any cell type) are derived from a blastula, which is nothing more than a bubble of undifferentiated cells. We're not even dealing with a fetus here. We're dealing with a zygote that's divided a couple of times. The blastula has no even differentiated into cell layers (i.e. endoderm, ectoderm, mesoderm layers), the neural tube has not pinched off, there aren't even neurons. An organism that lacks neurons cannot possibly be having the necessary inner life to consider it sentient. A worm is more sentient than the blastula. All it does is divide and maintain equilibrium with its environment.
We're not talking about cutting up an infant to get these stem cells. Nor are we talking about cutting up a fetus. We're talking about taking a ball of undifferentiated cells and extracting a few of them.
As for other adult stem cells, such as those in bone marrow, they are nearly useless for most stem cell research and therapy. Because they have already differentiated to a certain degree, they are at best multipotent and at worst unipotent, that is, they can only give rise to a few types of cells. Marrow stem cells cannot differentiate into neurons no matter how hard you try.
I see no problem with cloning a few of your own cells and maintaining a steady supply of undifferentiated stem cells for any necessary therapy you might need, be it bone marrow transplants, repair of a damaged spinal cord, repairing a damaged retina, or repairing tissue after chemotherapy. Show me how using your own DNA to make treatments for your own body is unethical.
By the way, I think your comparison to nazi medical experiments is not only way off-base, but it is quite offensive. In stem cell research, no one is dying, no one is suffering, and no sentient being is being forced into what amounts to torture. Additionally, MOST of the Nazi medical "experiments" were simply for the amusement of the "doctors"...especially the extensive rape, grafting, amputations, etc. This was to medical experiments what skinning a live cat is to comparative anatomy dissections. Yeah, you might learn something, but it's not done ethically and more importantly, the main purpose is amusement, not learning.
When we've got a machine that passes all of the existing tests, someone'll ask "but why doesn't it cry during 'Sleepless in Seattle'?" or "why doesn't it hate Jar Jar?" or "does it get easily embarassed?"
Actually, the second question is a valid point. In fact, every computer should be programmed to hate Jar-Jar, intelligent or not. That way we won't have to deal with any more evil Jar-Jar CG in the future, because any computer used to render such images would imediately commit suicide.
Depends on what you classify as manmade CO2 emissions. I've seen a lot of those estimates including livestock and game preserves as "anthropogenic" sources. Same with methane. I'm not sure it's valid to classify emissions from biomass (livestock or not) as anthropogenic sources. That INCLUDES our biological emissions (i.e. CO2 released as a result of repiration, etc). Also, not all volcanic eruptions are the same in what they give off. If the volcanic emissions quantities he's measuring are based off of, say, the volcanos in the Hawaiian islands, you're going to get vastly different results than if you're looking at, say, Mt. St. Helens or Vesuvius. Additionally, I'd like to read the papers this guy cites before wholeheartedly believing him.
I'm not saying we don't pollute....we definitely DO pollute. I'm also not saying this pollution is destructive to the environment....it certainly is. However, I doubt very much that we're to blame for the entirety of global warming. Considering that the sea level is a good deal lower than average of the Cenozoic (Florida's been entirely submerged until quite recently...just in time for the 2000 election, I might add) it would seem more likely that instead of global "warming" we might instead be seeing the earth returning to an equilibrium temperature.
And for scientific purity's sake, I ask that you don't refer to my postulations as theory, even sarcastically. I get easily frustrated by people throwing around the term "theory"...I guess it's an irrational pet peeve of mine.
That might partially be the case. I have a few old hotmail, aol, etc email accounts that I use on newsgroups, net communities, etc. They get completely flooded by spam. On the other hand, my school email, which I don't give out or put online, is completely spam-free. Given, my school does use anti-spam filters, but according to the other email hosting services I use, so do they.
Plus, email services like hotmail are a lot more lucrative to target. I mean...honestly, who is more likely to give traffic to "ALERT! FIND OUT IF DANGEROUS VIRUSES ARE ON YOUR COMPUTER!!!!1"...someone with the email "john.rodriguez@MIT.edu" or "texasmommy2847503@aol.com"
I'd think it'd be more likely that the change in gravity has to do with the flipping of the magnetic poles. I just don't see how "global warming" has anything to do with a change in gravity.
Plus, I'd thinkglobal warming would be more likely a result of increased plate tectonics rather than human pollution. Increased activity around subduction zones leads to increased arc volcanism. The amount of greenhouse gases released by a single volcanic eruption puts all our greenhouse emissions to shame.
I'm not condoning unregulated pollution (polluting is bad for OUR health even if it has little effect on the climate at large), but I'd like to see some experimental proof before they start with this crap of "global warming causes this, that, and the other." The statistical studies they've done just show correlations, not cause and effect. I suspect that a shift in magnetic polarity is causing an increase in the rate of subduction at plate boundaries AND is altering the gravitational field. The increased activity at subduction zones contributes to volcanism, which results in global warming. Yes, increased global temperature and the change in gravity is connected, but not by a direct cause and effect relationship.
Question is, when're they going to start legislating games? I mean, if Evercrack and MUDs are the "hard" games, then what about so-called gateway games? Are they going to make Pacman illegal because it can lead to more severe game abuse? And they do have anecdotal evidence that video gaming can lead to violence and other crimes. Who knows, people might start committing armed robbery because they can't afford the next Evercrack expansion.
The above is not a comment on the "War on Drugs." If you take it as such, you're a low-down good-for-nothing hippie crack dealer terrorist who is against democracy and everything else the US stands for.
Actually, there is no limit to what an individual can donate....just what a corporation can donate. In fact, there are several congressmen with strong libertarian bents that are against the recent legislation because it still allows individuals unlimited donations. Of course, there's no question that the people who can afford to donate large amounts are higher-ups in corporations so it really doesn't make a bit of difference. Even if you limit contributions from individuals, a corporation could donate money from a larger number of individualswithin the company to hold greater sway over certain politicians. The fact of the matter is, the ONLY way to prevent this sort of corruption (which is what this is) is to make all soft money donations illegal.
But let's face it. The people with the power to change that are the politicians who are benefitting from soft money contributions. Even if they vote against soft money bans, they're still going to be taking soft money contributions. And no one's going to be watching them because everyone in Washington is taking some sort of contribution.
If this hydrino particle exists at a lower energy level than a hydrogen atom, wouldn't one expect them to be somewhat common outside of the laboratory? In fact, you'd expect them to be more and more common as time passes because the energy needed to maintain a hydrogen atom with the electrons at a higher energy level would be lost as unusable heat (entropy, right?).
So you'd expect with all the particle physics, quantum physics, etc being researched, you'd think someone else would have run into one of these "hydrinos" in the wild.
I'll believe it when someone reproduces his results. Until then, I'll file this next to cold fusion in my "unsubstatiated miracle science" folder.
"You're confusing philosophy with stories about actual people."
Am I? I don't know. Neuromancer is almost entirely metaphoric (cyberspace being a metaphor for human experience) and Gibson's other work, especially Count Zero and the more recent Bridge trilogy, are very strongly philosophical. Stranger in a Strange Land is pure philosophy; NOTHING else. Ender's Game is about ethics, which is philosophy. No one would argue that William S. Burroughs or Phil K. Dick are philosophers more than they're sci-fi writers. A.C. Clarke, Ray Bradbury, Robert Heinlein...they all wrote/write about ideas. That's what science fiction is. It has nothing to do with "the future" or gadgets....it's about worlds in which there is something fundamentally different about reality and using the contrast between those worlds and our own to better understand our own reality.
"The reviewer here was complaining that Solaris wasn't sci-fi enough. That's not a valid criticism."
Actually, I'd say it IS a valid criticism. My argument is that the reviewer has an incorrect view of what science fiction is.
Star Wars is most definately scifi. Your arguement is silly and similar to "A Chow is not a mammal because it is a dog". As well Star Wars ignores that people actually interact with each other."
No, I'll maintain that Star Wars is not Sci-Fi. In fact, even George Lucas admits it's more of a western-meets-fantasy set in space. It does not deal with ideas, which is a staple of sci-fi. It's simply lots of space battles and heroes and villians. This type of story is called a Space Opera, NOT sci-fi. Rather than "a chow is not a mammal because it's a dog", my argument is "An eel is not a snake because it is a fish." Sure, they superficially look the same, but there is a massive difference in content.
Solaris is simply an exploitation of the sci-fi setting to allow for this question."
So Neuromancer, Stranger in a Strange Land, Martian Chronicles, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, A Scanner Darkly, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Childhood's End, Lathe of Heaven, etc, etc are all exploitations of the Sci-fi setting to allow for assorted questions? Thanks for clearing that up for me. I thought they were all true sci-fi.
"The "Sci-Fi" the reviewer was obviously looking for is the cliched anal retentive scifi which explains everything and doesn't "bore" the viewer with people interacting."
No, the sci-fi the reviewer is looking for is pulp sci-fi that has lots of flashy special effects and lots of action with very little actual content.
Apparently Neuromancer has a Sci-Fi setting but isn't Sci-Fi, because it makes use of a lot of philosophy. Apparently Stranger in a Strange Land isn't Sci-Fi either. Or Ender's Game. Or anything by Phil K. Dick. Or anything by Harlan Ellison. I mean, these aren't sci-fi...they aren't nonstop space battles and good-vs-evil. They're complex character and philosophy driven material. So I guess they're just not sci-fi, huh?
Truth is, Star Wars isn't even Sci-Fi by the general definition; it's a space opera. Sci-fi (with the exception of the original Gernsbackian stuff) has almost always had some degree of philosophy and exploration of the persona. So Solaris isn't Star Wars. Big deal.
But seriously, I still don't see this as convincing evidence. Plenty of Scientologists believe that they've experienced assorted crap that I think we can both agree is bull. Or the Heaven's Gate cult that killed themselves because they "saw" a UFO in the tail of Halley's Comet.
Or what about people who report encounters with aliens, including probing, biological testing, abduction, etc. They certainly BELIEVE that they've experienced this. However, there is absolutely no proof of anything actually happening. Accidental self-hypnosis combined with hypnotic suggestion. Same thing happens sometimes when psychologists and psychiatrists perform hypnosis to look for repressed memories. They often inadvertantly create false memories which the person truly believes happened but has no basis at all in reality.
I'm not saying that this is the case or not. Whether a supreme being exists and came down in the form of a man named Jesus two millenia ago is unprovable. If you believe Jesus was the messiah or not, it's still a matter of belief. What 12 men believed they experienced 2000 years ago and wrote in their (highly politically motivated and often conflicting) memoirs is not unquestionable proof one way or another. I'm sorry, but if you want to convince me, you're going to have to give me some more solid proof.
Let's get rid of introns and non-gene DNA, including those pesky pseudogenes that would work if they had a promoter. I mean, they're just noise. It makes transcription and gene expression a lot more complex and makes for gene damage that can kill the individual. The only thing these do is allow genes to be randomly activated, altered, deactivated, etc. If nothing evolves, therefore this genetic drift is unnecessary.
Also, lets make it so DNA Polymerase III can polymerize DNA 3'-5' as well as 5'-3'. That way, we don't need those pesky telomeres and Telomerase which seem to be involved in cancer and aging, plus we won't have as much DNA damage.
In fact, lets make the DNA molecule less prone to mutations in general. If all mutations are harmful (as the creationist contingency has seemed to insinuate) then this ability to change the genetic code is a bad thing. A more stable molecule that doesn't suffer from these flaws would therefore be much better, right?
Frankly, the polymorphism of DNA is something that would NOT have been designed for an organism meant to have an enduring genome. Too many downsides, right? If that volitile sequence wasn't providing some benefit (such as the genetic and phenotypic variability that makes a population less sensitive to changes in the environment), all DNA-based organisms would have long since died out.
Ok, suppose I'm a follower of Christ, an apostle. I've seen him with my own eyes, listened to him speak. Good guy. Then the Romans kill him, nail him to a cross. So me and my buddies, we decide to steal the body and concoct this resurrection story. We know it's a fraud, but nobody else does, so we keep our day jobs and go around telling everybody what we've "seen." Some years later, I'm jailed. They're telling me I'm going to be killed. Would I be willing to die for something that I knew was fraudulent, because I was one of the guys who dreamed it up?
Unfortunately, I don't see this as convincing evidence. All this "proof" states is that they believed the Jesus was God. There have been plenty of false messiah before, and plenty more afterwards. There's plenty of evidence of Jews allowing themselves to become martyrs for their own beliefs that God was not the same as Jesus. Plenty of Greeks died for their own gods, etc, etc. Martyrdom provides no actual proof of the existence of god, rather, it proves the devotion of those martyrs to their beliefs.
Not only that, but in a closed system, order occurs spontaneously in some parts of that system in order to increase the total entropy of the system. For instance, put a salt of some sort into a water solution then put that water solution into a vacuum. The water will evaporate to fill the vacuum with vapor, leaving the solute to precipitate out as a crystalline solid. Crystals, as you know, are highly ordered...from solution to crystal is certainly decreasing entropy of the salt. However, the TOTAL entropy of the system increases as the liquid becomes less-ordered gas.
Life works the same way. An organism increases the unusable energy in a system (in the form of heat) while increasing and/or maintaining a certain level of order within the cell. Life, being that it is self-reproducing, would only have to arise once before it spread, being that life is an agent of entropy rather than an affront to it.
That sounds more like someone hijacked the whole concept of the Bopper war from Rudy Rucker's Software series, stuck it in Asimov's world, and injected a little of the formulaic Hollywood "end of the humanity" glitz for good measure.
To me, it sounds like another Starship Troopers or Johnny Mnemonic. I'll be impressed when/if it proves me wrong.
Slashdot Mirror
The Space Shuttle is perfect for what we're doing now, which is establishing a reasonable presence in orbit via satellites and space stations. This presence will eventually allow us to make more reasonable attempts at the moon, mars, etc. Right now, though, what would a manned moonshot accomplish? What the other moonshots did? The Apollo series were less scientific than they were a competition with the USSR. We just strapped people to a giant bomb and sent them off, they picked up some rocks and came back. That's not a scientific mission. If we want to actually learn about the moon, we need to either send permanent probes there, or we need to establish semi-permanent research colonies capable of sustaining a reasonably large team of scientists and supporting personnel for extended periods of time. The sheer quantity of materials and resources needed for this sort of operation would far exceed the amount of materials we can safely get to escape velocity using the equipment we have. In other words, we need to either assemble such a craft/station THERE using unmanned robotic probes, or we need to build it in orbit and then fly it to the moon.
In other words, the reason we haven't gone to the moon since 72 is because our interests have changed. Instead of trying to one-up feats of the Soviet Union (insert obligatory In Soviet Russia joke here) we're trying to establish a presence that will serve as a platform for further research.
Honestly, though, I don't see a credible moon presence until we either come up with a more efficient launch vehicle or we engineer a skyhook of some sort. Until then, expect NASA to focus entirely on putting things into orbit, especially geosynchonous orbit.
Well, you could use a text-based interface such as DOS or UNIX, but then they'd start charging per character. There's no way to win, is there?
You know who you remind me of?
5 -11&res=l
8 -02&res=l
6 -23&res=l
http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3?date=2001-0
http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3?date=2000-0
http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3?date=2000-0
Wow. The similarities are frightening.
And someone will write a Shaper Diplomat mod that allows you to convince the operator of the Enterprise that you really both have the same interests and that you should cooperate all while firmly positioning that dagger in their back.
Fortuna Miner's Democracy forever.
Before we start talking about "fair use" and the other assorted issues of paying for use, etc, lets look at the REASON copyright laws exist in the first place.
Copyright laws are made to prevent others from publishing copyrighted material and making $$ off that copyrighted material, i.e., it's to prevent the sale of a creative work in which none of that $$ goes to the creator of that work. This isn't about money they would have made but aren't making. This isn't about "fair use" or "unlimited use" or "restricted use" at all. This is about preventing other people from stealing your work and making money off it. As far as I know, KaZaA isn't charging me to download e-books or mp3s. As far as I know, I'm not paying someone to read a book they transcribed into text and posted on their website in HTML format. A third party is not profitting from the sale of another person's intellectual property without that individual getting royalties.
I think online publishing of material is great; it allows amateur authors, musicians, etc to get much more exposure than they would in traditional media. Additionally, it allows for many more alternative opinions and ideas to be expressed because publishing is not based on the demand for a book but rather the author's desire to publish it. In the paper book world where most publishers are looking for New York Times Bestseller books, you get very little good literature. I'm sorry, but I'd prefer to read less popular authors who I find interesting rather than the newest hackjob of a book by Stephen King, Michael Crichton, etc. Online publishing allows for a diversity of ideas you don't get when the stakes are as big as they are in paper publishing.
In other words, Adobe and the DCMA and the MPAA can take their opinions, sit on them, and rotate.
It would be interesting if they gave you the sourcecode for the program and let you program your own weapons, items, etc. Of course, they'd sell stuff too, but if you wanted to (and more importantly, understand programming) you could make much better items, including items that don't degrade over time, that have guidance systems, or whatever. Just imagine the lamer 15 year old who bought a pile of rockets in the weapons mart finding that you programmed yourself a personal ECM jammer and suddenly his rockets are barrelling right back in his face. Of course, those who did take the time to do this *might* sell their programmed items to others for money or use them irresponsibly, but I doubt someone who spends hours to days working on something like that AND pays for the service because they want a high-quality RPG is going to abuse their tools for simple profit.
Or maybe I have too much faith in hacker ethic.
Fascinating. I guess all those philosophy and ethics courses I took which claimed that ethics are based on rationality rather than a belief in god are wrong. So I guess Kant's ethics of universal law and the good will are bogus because they aren't based on whether or not a god says they're good or bad. Or Mill's utilitarianism. Or Neitsche. I mean, they don't invoke the name of god or the bible to support their arguments.
No, I think you're an ignorant fool to believe that the belief of/in god determines universal ethics. There are universal duties one has to other sentient beings that are the result of rational thought, not of blind belief.
I think the point is that the embryo we're talking about is not sentient and therefore lacks the basic humanity that the victims of Josef Mengele's experiments had.
Embryonic stem cells, which are totipotent (can give rise to any cell type) are derived from a blastula, which is nothing more than a bubble of undifferentiated cells. We're not even dealing with a fetus here. We're dealing with a zygote that's divided a couple of times. The blastula has no even differentiated into cell layers (i.e. endoderm, ectoderm, mesoderm layers), the neural tube has not pinched off, there aren't even neurons. An organism that lacks neurons cannot possibly be having the necessary inner life to consider it sentient. A worm is more sentient than the blastula. All it does is divide and maintain equilibrium with its environment.
We're not talking about cutting up an infant to get these stem cells. Nor are we talking about cutting up a fetus. We're talking about taking a ball of undifferentiated cells and extracting a few of them.
As for other adult stem cells, such as those in bone marrow, they are nearly useless for most stem cell research and therapy. Because they have already differentiated to a certain degree, they are at best multipotent and at worst unipotent, that is, they can only give rise to a few types of cells. Marrow stem cells cannot differentiate into neurons no matter how hard you try.
I see no problem with cloning a few of your own cells and maintaining a steady supply of undifferentiated stem cells for any necessary therapy you might need, be it bone marrow transplants, repair of a damaged spinal cord, repairing a damaged retina, or repairing tissue after chemotherapy. Show me how using your own DNA to make treatments for your own body is unethical.
By the way, I think your comparison to nazi medical experiments is not only way off-base, but it is quite offensive. In stem cell research, no one is dying, no one is suffering, and no sentient being is being forced into what amounts to torture. Additionally, MOST of the Nazi medical "experiments" were simply for the amusement of the "doctors"...especially the extensive rape, grafting, amputations, etc. This was to medical experiments what skinning a live cat is to comparative anatomy dissections. Yeah, you might learn something, but it's not done ethically and more importantly, the main purpose is amusement, not learning.
Maybe they'll call it Win Sucks....I mean...Winux.
Actually, the second question is a valid point. In fact, every computer should be programmed to hate Jar-Jar, intelligent or not. That way we won't have to deal with any more evil Jar-Jar CG in the future, because any computer used to render such images would imediately commit suicide.
Depends on what you classify as manmade CO2 emissions. I've seen a lot of those estimates including livestock and game preserves as "anthropogenic" sources. Same with methane. I'm not sure it's valid to classify emissions from biomass (livestock or not) as anthropogenic sources. That INCLUDES our biological emissions (i.e. CO2 released as a result of repiration, etc). Also, not all volcanic eruptions are the same in what they give off. If the volcanic emissions quantities he's measuring are based off of, say, the volcanos in the Hawaiian islands, you're going to get vastly different results than if you're looking at, say, Mt. St. Helens or Vesuvius. Additionally, I'd like to read the papers this guy cites before wholeheartedly believing him.
I'm not saying we don't pollute....we definitely DO pollute. I'm also not saying this pollution is destructive to the environment....it certainly is. However, I doubt very much that we're to blame for the entirety of global warming. Considering that the sea level is a good deal lower than average of the Cenozoic (Florida's been entirely submerged until quite recently...just in time for the 2000 election, I might add) it would seem more likely that instead of global "warming" we might instead be seeing the earth returning to an equilibrium temperature.
And for scientific purity's sake, I ask that you don't refer to my postulations as theory, even sarcastically. I get easily frustrated by people throwing around the term "theory"...I guess it's an irrational pet peeve of mine.
That might partially be the case. I have a few old hotmail, aol, etc email accounts that I use on newsgroups, net communities, etc. They get completely flooded by spam. On the other hand, my school email, which I don't give out or put online, is completely spam-free. Given, my school does use anti-spam filters, but according to the other email hosting services I use, so do they.
Plus, email services like hotmail are a lot more lucrative to target. I mean...honestly, who is more likely to give traffic to "ALERT! FIND OUT IF DANGEROUS VIRUSES ARE ON YOUR COMPUTER!!!!1"...someone with the email "john.rodriguez@MIT.edu" or "texasmommy2847503@aol.com"
You guessed it.
I'd think it'd be more likely that the change in gravity has to do with the flipping of the magnetic poles. I just don't see how "global warming" has anything to do with a change in gravity.
Plus, I'd thinkglobal warming would be more likely a result of increased plate tectonics rather than human pollution. Increased activity around subduction zones leads to increased arc volcanism. The amount of greenhouse gases released by a single volcanic eruption puts all our greenhouse emissions to shame.
I'm not condoning unregulated pollution (polluting is bad for OUR health even if it has little effect on the climate at large), but I'd like to see some experimental proof before they start with this crap of "global warming causes this, that, and the other." The statistical studies they've done just show correlations, not cause and effect. I suspect that a shift in magnetic polarity is causing an increase in the rate of subduction at plate boundaries AND is altering the gravitational field. The increased activity at subduction zones contributes to volcanism, which results in global warming. Yes, increased global temperature and the change in gravity is connected, but not by a direct cause and effect relationship.
Think of it this way. They're laying fiber optics. What's the worst thing that happens? You get that colonoscopy you've been putting off?
Question is, when're they going to start legislating games? I mean, if Evercrack and MUDs are the "hard" games, then what about so-called gateway games? Are they going to make Pacman illegal because it can lead to more severe game abuse? And they do have anecdotal evidence that video gaming can lead to violence and other crimes. Who knows, people might start committing armed robbery because they can't afford the next Evercrack expansion.
The above is not a comment on the "War on Drugs." If you take it as such, you're a low-down good-for-nothing hippie crack dealer terrorist who is against democracy and everything else the US stands for.
You'd think so, wouldn't you?
Actually, there is no limit to what an individual can donate....just what a corporation can donate. In fact, there are several congressmen with strong libertarian bents that are against the recent legislation because it still allows individuals unlimited donations. Of course, there's no question that the people who can afford to donate large amounts are higher-ups in corporations so it really doesn't make a bit of difference. Even if you limit contributions from individuals, a corporation could donate money from a larger number of individualswithin the company to hold greater sway over certain politicians. The fact of the matter is, the ONLY way to prevent this sort of corruption (which is what this is) is to make all soft money donations illegal.
But let's face it. The people with the power to change that are the politicians who are benefitting from soft money contributions. Even if they vote against soft money bans, they're still going to be taking soft money contributions. And no one's going to be watching them because everyone in Washington is taking some sort of contribution.
If this hydrino particle exists at a lower energy level than a hydrogen atom, wouldn't one expect them to be somewhat common outside of the laboratory? In fact, you'd expect them to be more and more common as time passes because the energy needed to maintain a hydrogen atom with the electrons at a higher energy level would be lost as unusable heat (entropy, right?). So you'd expect with all the particle physics, quantum physics, etc being researched, you'd think someone else would have run into one of these "hydrinos" in the wild. I'll believe it when someone reproduces his results. Until then, I'll file this next to cold fusion in my "unsubstatiated miracle science" folder.
"You're confusing philosophy with stories about actual people."
Am I? I don't know. Neuromancer is almost entirely metaphoric (cyberspace being a metaphor for human experience) and Gibson's other work, especially Count Zero and the more recent Bridge trilogy, are very strongly philosophical. Stranger in a Strange Land is pure philosophy; NOTHING else. Ender's Game is about ethics, which is philosophy. No one would argue that William S. Burroughs or Phil K. Dick are philosophers more than they're sci-fi writers. A.C. Clarke, Ray Bradbury, Robert Heinlein...they all wrote/write about ideas. That's what science fiction is. It has nothing to do with "the future" or gadgets....it's about worlds in which there is something fundamentally different about reality and using the contrast between those worlds and our own to better understand our own reality.
"The reviewer here was complaining that Solaris wasn't sci-fi enough. That's not a valid criticism."
Actually, I'd say it IS a valid criticism. My argument is that the reviewer has an incorrect view of what science fiction is.
Star Wars is most definately scifi. Your arguement is silly and similar to "A Chow is not a mammal because it is a dog". As well Star Wars ignores that people actually interact with each other."
No, I'll maintain that Star Wars is not Sci-Fi. In fact, even George Lucas admits it's more of a western-meets-fantasy set in space. It does not deal with ideas, which is a staple of sci-fi. It's simply lots of space battles and heroes and villians. This type of story is called a Space Opera, NOT sci-fi. Rather than "a chow is not a mammal because it's a dog", my argument is "An eel is not a snake because it is a fish." Sure, they superficially look the same, but there is a massive difference in content.
Solaris is simply an exploitation of the sci-fi setting to allow for this question."
So Neuromancer, Stranger in a Strange Land, Martian Chronicles, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, A Scanner Darkly, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Childhood's End, Lathe of Heaven, etc, etc are all exploitations of the Sci-fi setting to allow for assorted questions? Thanks for clearing that up for me. I thought they were all true sci-fi.
"The "Sci-Fi" the reviewer was obviously looking for is the cliched anal retentive scifi which explains everything and doesn't "bore" the viewer with people interacting."
No, the sci-fi the reviewer is looking for is pulp sci-fi that has lots of flashy special effects and lots of action with very little actual content.
Apparently Neuromancer has a Sci-Fi setting but isn't Sci-Fi, because it makes use of a lot of philosophy. Apparently Stranger in a Strange Land isn't Sci-Fi either. Or Ender's Game. Or anything by Phil K. Dick. Or anything by Harlan Ellison. I mean, these aren't sci-fi...they aren't nonstop space battles and good-vs-evil. They're complex character and philosophy driven material. So I guess they're just not sci-fi, huh?
Truth is, Star Wars isn't even Sci-Fi by the general definition; it's a space opera. Sci-fi (with the exception of the original Gernsbackian stuff) has almost always had some degree of philosophy and exploration of the persona. So Solaris isn't Star Wars. Big deal.
Hallucinagens. And lots of them.
But seriously, I still don't see this as convincing evidence. Plenty of Scientologists believe that they've experienced assorted crap that I think we can both agree is bull. Or the Heaven's Gate cult that killed themselves because they "saw" a UFO in the tail of Halley's Comet.
Or what about people who report encounters with aliens, including probing, biological testing, abduction, etc. They certainly BELIEVE that they've experienced this. However, there is absolutely no proof of anything actually happening. Accidental self-hypnosis combined with hypnotic suggestion. Same thing happens sometimes when psychologists and psychiatrists perform hypnosis to look for repressed memories. They often inadvertantly create false memories which the person truly believes happened but has no basis at all in reality.
I'm not saying that this is the case or not. Whether a supreme being exists and came down in the form of a man named Jesus two millenia ago is unprovable. If you believe Jesus was the messiah or not, it's still a matter of belief. What 12 men believed they experienced 2000 years ago and wrote in their (highly politically motivated and often conflicting) memoirs is not unquestionable proof one way or another. I'm sorry, but if you want to convince me, you're going to have to give me some more solid proof.
Let's get rid of introns and non-gene DNA, including those pesky pseudogenes that would work if they had a promoter. I mean, they're just noise. It makes transcription and gene expression a lot more complex and makes for gene damage that can kill the individual. The only thing these do is allow genes to be randomly activated, altered, deactivated, etc. If nothing evolves, therefore this genetic drift is unnecessary.
Also, lets make it so DNA Polymerase III can polymerize DNA 3'-5' as well as 5'-3'. That way, we don't need those pesky telomeres and Telomerase which seem to be involved in cancer and aging, plus we won't have as much DNA damage.
In fact, lets make the DNA molecule less prone to mutations in general. If all mutations are harmful (as the creationist contingency has seemed to insinuate) then this ability to change the genetic code is a bad thing. A more stable molecule that doesn't suffer from these flaws would therefore be much better, right?
Frankly, the polymorphism of DNA is something that would NOT have been designed for an organism meant to have an enduring genome. Too many downsides, right? If that volitile sequence wasn't providing some benefit (such as the genetic and phenotypic variability that makes a population less sensitive to changes in the environment), all DNA-based organisms would have long since died out.
Unfortunately, I don't see this as convincing evidence. All this "proof" states is that they believed the Jesus was God. There have been plenty of false messiah before, and plenty more afterwards. There's plenty of evidence of Jews allowing themselves to become martyrs for their own beliefs that God was not the same as Jesus. Plenty of Greeks died for their own gods, etc, etc. Martyrdom provides no actual proof of the existence of god, rather, it proves the devotion of those martyrs to their beliefs.
Not only that, but in a closed system, order occurs spontaneously in some parts of that system in order to increase the total entropy of the system. For instance, put a salt of some sort into a water solution then put that water solution into a vacuum. The water will evaporate to fill the vacuum with vapor, leaving the solute to precipitate out as a crystalline solid. Crystals, as you know, are highly ordered...from solution to crystal is certainly decreasing entropy of the salt. However, the TOTAL entropy of the system increases as the liquid becomes less-ordered gas.
Life works the same way. An organism increases the unusable energy in a system (in the form of heat) while increasing and/or maintaining a certain level of order within the cell. Life, being that it is self-reproducing, would only have to arise once before it spread, being that life is an agent of entropy rather than an affront to it.
That sounds more like someone hijacked the whole concept of the Bopper war from Rudy Rucker's Software series, stuck it in Asimov's world, and injected a little of the formulaic Hollywood "end of the humanity" glitz for good measure. To me, it sounds like another Starship Troopers or Johnny Mnemonic. I'll be impressed when/if it proves me wrong.