I'd like to think that the solution to this sort of thing (voting fraud) could be effectively combatted by making the penalties really severe, like a multi-decade stay in prison. I feel that the consequences are serious enough, after all the BASIC premise of our DEMOCRACY is at stake; one person one vote. I mean how many nations do we despise, condemn or even sanction for not allowing this basic right regardless of how much it has been perverted or corrupted by practices like buying votes or dirty politics. Even when "the people" make stupid mistakes REPEATEDLY (Bush 2000, 2004), we allow them that right.
So denying that right should be treated very very seriously. If, in fact, the criminal act was carried out by a single or few individuals then fine, a long prison term should discourage others. Otherwise, in the best of worlds, a plea bargain will be made in which they'll finger the real perpetrators; the big fish who are doing this systematically and on a large scale. THEY should be prosecuted and sent to prison for a long long time.
Unfortunately the reason why I said "in the best of worlds" is because some of these individuals may be motivated by a higher calling (and not just by the reward of public office or money). If they truly believe that what they are doing serves some sort of meta-physical goal, their beliefs may cause them to act without fear of earthly punishments. Suicide bombers, to take an extreme example, are unlikely to be dissuaded by even the death penalty. This is just another way in which extremism destroys what most people would call civilization and would return us to the pious but desperately impoverished middle ages.
I'm surprised to see this kinda thing happening to our neighbors to the north. Compared to the cesspool that is American politics, I thought Canadian politics were squeaky clean. That's why I've always thought it would be a good place to run to (as James Cameron has evidently decided) in case the far right kooks took over.
Speaking of which, what ever happened to the investigations into Diebold and the voting machines in Ohio (and maybe more states)? Wasn't there enough evidence to start a criminal investigation? Or did it just fizzle because nobody cared?
Ok, if someone were to attack London with a heavily armed bomber or attack aircraft these would be invaluable.
If someone were to fly a small, unarmed plane on a suicide mission, these might cause more damage than the attack (as many other posters have pointed out).
If someone were to fly a very small, slow, remotely guided (or pre-programmed) drone and a large, surposonic anti-aircraft missile tipped with a massive high explosive warhead was used to shoot it down, it would almost certainly cause much more damage than the drone could. Especially since the drone will likely be flying at "treetop" level (or below!) which means the missile will not be exploding high in the atmosphere but literally in the streets. (Actually, again as other posters have pointed out, missiles will likely be useless against such threats; it is unclear if they could even lock on or track such small targets against the ground clutter).
Maybe shoulder mounted SAMs are in order. In that case, do you want them up on a water tower or apartment building where they'd be firing DOWN? (Probably best to put them at the venue itself).
What did Chernobyl, Three Mile Island and the Space Shuttle Challenger have in common?
All three disasters were due to erroneous decisions made by (otherwise) smart, trained people at the wee hours of the morning. This has been shown to be have a bad effect on human decision making,
So the first thing I noticed was the fact that this disaster happened at 2am (not sure what time zone it was in or what time zone the pilots were in but you get the point).
Obviously someone has to be awake at all times to fly a plane (or operate a nuclear plant) but perhaps they could've timed the captain's rest better and made it clearer who was in charge when he was asleep.
Hi there- I know that the scientists are loath to use any form of lossy compression on what could be priceless scientific data but I just wanted to ask if you are using any compression. I mean, images of this sort should be ideally suited to some forms of compression (a simplistic example would be RLE); after all, there is a lot of "space" (yuk yuk:).
I used to work in digital cinema during the early trials and very prominent movie directors would often walk up to the projection screen, inches fom their face, looking for compression artifacts that could be caused by our servers (we used wavelets). They passed and now digital cinemas are everywhere in the world.
In one of his short stories, (I believe) after a near miss by an earth grazing asteroid (sliced through the upper atmosphere over a major city), a very large (gigaton) bomb is detonated in earth's orbit in a position diametrically opposed to the earth. The resulting "flash" resulted in a radar pulse (remember that was Clarke's early training in WWII) that was used to illuminate all the objects in the solar system. This was recorded and catalogued.
Decades later, an extra-terrestrial signal is recorded from another star system. After a quick calculation, it is apparent that the aliens, upon detecting the flash of this giga-bomb, quickly responded with a reply aimed at our solar system.
Look I'm as concerned (and convinced) about environmental damage and global warming as anyone. But finding immense reserves of natural gas in the U.S. and now the UK can only be a good thing. It should buy us a few decades of relatively cheap, relatively low carbon producing (well at least compared to coal and oil shale) energy. If it's cheap enough (or if we aren't too cheap ourselves) we can use the energy to PULL CO2 from the atmosphere (I've heard a measly 10% increase in the cost of electricity would pay for it!).
Ok, if we insist on being idiots, we're still gonna get somewhat screwed by global warming, but hopefully we won't lose more than a few million species and displace no more than a few hundred million people (*SIGH*). The environmental damage from shale gas, while significant, is on a local level and the earthquakes are nothing to be afraid of (I'm from CA so I know earthquakes). Sorry for the low expectations but I'll take this as GOOD news.
The BEST thing about this is that we won't be supporting (as much) people who hate us and want to blow us up. (What is about this that Republicans don't understand? That SUVs = terrorists.) Also the jobs that are created will be on-shore (or just off-shore).
Didnt someone say James Cameron wanted to shoot "Avatar 3" in zero-g? Now we know where he'll be getting the material to build his own film studio in orbit!
If the next two Avatar films make as much money as the first one did, he'll actually be able to pay for it! (Don't know what scale for actors would be in outer space, could be astronomical).
Ok, I know this is a temporary fix that only takes care of the symptoms (not the cause) of global warming but...
Use the asteroid to build some sort of sunscreen!
Depending on the material of the asteroid, you could use it to build a solid (like very thin sheets of aluminum foil) screen or transparent refracting glassy "disks" (there was some MIT proposal that utilized this). Or, if the asteroid was mainly worthless "powder", grind ít up even further and SPRAY it into a cloud between the sun and earth, 500 tons of very finely ground material might be able to reduce solar radiation by a few percent over the entire earth. Of course it would dissipate but it still might buy us some time like a decade or so and at least you wouldn't have to worry about getting rid of it once we solved the underlying (CO2) problem. For this, you might want to put the asteroid not into LEO (too dangerous and difficult due to the delta-V) or Geosync but at L1.
If you're really lucky, and the composition of the asteroid is just right and you've got the proper manufacturing technologies to support doing this IN SPACE (i.e. with little water), you can make huge quantities of solar cells to block out the sun! Cut down on global warming AND power the earth (also cutting down on global warming!).
Honestly, although I am very happy to see these guys doing such a forward thinking thing, I'm afraid they're a bit premature; we still don't have cheap(er) access to LEO. Maybe if that Dragon spaceship works out (fingers crossed). It is such a shame that it requires private visionaries to do what should be a function of our government. Short-sighted politicians indeed.
By the way, any guesses WHICH asteroid they're going after? Must be a NEO and not too big. Sounds like Apophis?
You know, I've always wondered why (in the original series at least) there seemed to be few, if any Indians or Chinese for that matter.
Then I remembered a line that Spock once said that went something like "the 15 million dead from WWI, the 60 million in WWII or the 600 million in WWIII". (He was talking about the stupidity of mankind after Kirk's boasting).
Then the movie "Star Trek: First Contact" came out which was supposedly set in North America after a big war(?) had impoverished the populace but hadn't reduced the country to radioactive cinders.
I never read any of the "official" (or unofficial) histories but I was wondering; was a nuclear war supposed to have taken place, not between the U.S. and USSR but in Asia? Between India and China perhaps?
(I'm glad to have gone to see the Taj Mahal last year; I've always thought that if Pakistan and India went to all out war, it would be the first to go.)
Ok, ok I realize that probably the real reason for the dearth of these nationalities was probably due to the script choices of Gene Roddenberry or some casting decisions but I was wondering if there was any justification after the fact. Anyway, if so I hope life DOESN'T follow art!
I actually wrote a screenplay with the following conceit:
Who's the MOST INFLUENTIAL person in human history? Think MORE than Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Lenin, Einstein, Gandhi, etc.
Who is the ONE individual who's essence (or what makes Him special) is inextricably tied up in their DNA? I mean just cloning Einstein from his DNA will not guarantee you another, well, Einstein (though he's likely to be pretty smart). Likewise, "Boys from Brazil" notwithstanding cloning Hitler would not necessarily get you an evil dictator; you're just as likely to get a (bad) artist.
This is one and the same person: Jesus Christ. Of course this idea has been bandied about for a long time.
However,, with the technology rapidly approaching to make this a reality (from stereotypically the shroud of Turin or His less well known preserved foreskin) the question becomes WHO would REALISTICALLY do such a thing? No right minded government would do so because it would fear the wrath of its citizens (and the condemnation of most other countries). Likewise no large institution or very wealthy individual would do so fearing public opprobrium. And it will be a few more decades before the technology becomes cheap enough for the average crazy person to do.
The key is "right minded". My idea is that there is ONE person in the world who, as economists like to say, is both "willing and able" to do such a thing. The country he leads has shown itself capable, over the decades, of pursuing highly technical large scale projects against the condemnation of the ENTIRE WORLD. Sanctions, threats of war, starvation of their population, NOTHING has dissuaded them from achieving their goal.
I'm talking about N. Korea of course and Kim Jong-Un.
So he's got the bomb, now what? Not only are sanctions making life miserable but the increasing sophistication of anti-missile defenses is making his weapon of diminishing value. (You know, "Star Wars" might not have been practical against a global all-out nuclear attack using 1980s technology but it will probably work against a few primitive warheads using 2010 tech). So the only thing that keeps him in power, the ability to defy the west, is diminishing. Sounds like time for a new threat!
That's where HE comes in. A cloned Christ would provide Kim Jong-Un with several interesting opportunities. He could threaten the (religious) West with crucifying him AGAIN or merely making Him his slave. Or perhaps he could raise him as his son and demand that the world's Christians bow down to him. Or (IF!) the reborn Christ truly has godlike powers, he could rule the world!
Or he could do all these things using an army of Christ clones.
That's the basic idea behind my COPYRIGHTED screenplay "GodSon". So please don't copy this particular idea;) (There are also some interesting religious questions about whether or not he would be considered the son of God but that's outside the scope of this post). Anyway, do you like it? Do you think I should get it kickstarted?:)
Well this post probably going to be modded way down but the bigger problem is I'm probably going to hell.:(. (Unless God has a god-sized sense of humor).
Ok, I took a brief look at TFA but I'm not sure about the configuration.
It seems like they accelerate the "train" MOSTLY on the ground but then continue accelerating the craft up the final 12 miles. That requires the vacuum proof "tube" for the 12 mile vertical lift to be heavy and carrying a lot of power hungry superconducting magnets (and the final plasma curtain). No wonder they have to use such ginormous magnets to keep it aloft!
Why not do ALL of the acceleration on the ground and then, sort of gently redirect the train up the tube taking it to space. Then the last leg of the tube need not be anything than a (thin) wall keeping the air out with possibly some minor magnets just to keep the vehicle centered. Of course this will require the train to be set on a parabolic(?) path by the final set of propulsion magnets and will require some sort of tall, gently sloped "ramp" in order to do so in a manner that won't cause excessive g-forces but I imagine this ramp would be a lot shorter than 12 miles!
By the way, if you wanted to accelerate the train up to an appreciable fraction of orbital velocity in a CIRCULAR track, how big a ring would it have to be to keep the centripedal acceleration under 3g's. Didn't they ALREADY COMPLETE that 50 MILE in circumference tunnel for the SCC (super conducting collider) in Texas before congress axed the budget? I mean, the thing is already practically designed and built (instead of accelerating tiny particles to a very high fraction of c, use it to send much heavier things much slower)! If the g-forces are too high for humans, it could still be used for cargo.
(I think the term comes from the word "bootleggers").
Anyway, I wonder if young healthy people will start disappearing off the street. Maybe people will try to GET incurable chronic diseases (like HIV or Hepatitis) and have the fact that they are so infected indicated by a prominent tattoo (to ward off the organleggers. (The scarlet "H"?) Then of course, people will get the tattoos even if they don't have the disease I guess). Finally, maybe the death penalty will be enacted for even the most trivial of crimes (like parking tickets) with the executed having their organs freshly harvested.
More likely is if the government enacts a policy whereby if you sign up for a post-humous organ donation program (and presumably are enrolled in it for at least a year), you are put on the priority list for organ(s) shoud you need them. I understand this has already been proposed and maybe even put into place in some areas (at least for blood transfusions). It would make me more likely to participate, that's for sure.
So yeah, if this pans out, there are some interesting implications.
NASA should build it powerful space tug (or really learn a LOT about using nuclear explosions to nudge large objects) and place it into geo-sync orbit.
Then sell it to that Japanese construction company that wants to build a space elevator by 2050! It'll be right on schedule to be used as raw material or as a counterweight. (Well, hopefully it's a carbonaceous asteroid that can be made into carbon nanotubes/diamond fiber).
I thought that robot was kinda cool because it showed how superhumanly fast and agile our robot overlords will become.
Even if this robot (when eventually built with an on board power supply) can "only" go 18 mph, remember that unlike a real cheetah, it will presumably be able to keep it up for miles (I think cheetahs can only maintain this speed for a quarter mile). That's because the real cheetah is limited by heat buildup, presumably the motors and power source of this inorganic machine can operate at much higher temperatures so is limited not by heat buildup but fuel capacity.
Pretty scary if one of these things was chasing you down.
... that an automated search WOULDN'T find but that a sentient being would recognize? Perhaps by being able to pick up some sort of quantum phenomenon that wouldn't register with deterministic sensors? (I read that there the was a proposed experiment to see if the human eye could perceive quantum entangled images; if they could, the subject would see some sort of pattern, if not just random "static").
Perhaps if the galaxy was full of self-replicating machines bent on the destruction of organic life, this would be a way for the organic life to seek out each other without attracting the attention of the machines. This follows from such sci-fI books as "The Forge of God".
Anyway, if such a signal were discovered and it was determined to be encoded in such a manner, we would seriously have to think about our safety in our galactic neighborhood! Perhaps there would be an effort to enact radio silence on a planetary scale.
I really wish the consumer level 3D printers could match the quality of the ones they're using. (Disclaimer: I've never handled the output from either so I'm just looking at pictures. But the ones shown in the link look much better without any obvious pixelization or should I say "voxelization"?).
Oh well, another 5 years I guess. (Still I'm glad to be living now and not, say, during the middle ages!).
Eventually, it will (probably?) be easier to terraform Mars than the Moon. Then Mars will truly be a place we can LIVE ON (you know, without space helmets and everything).
I would rather have (minor) damage to the environment than to continue to pay Hundreds of Billions of dollars a year to people who hate our guts and will kill after we (inadvertently) burn some of their holy books (despite our president's gracious apology).
From what I've read, the environmental damage is "minor; some low level seismic activity and perhaps some pollution of water supplies. So charge a little more for the natural gas coming out of these rural (low population density) communities and pay for piped in water or buy them out.
When you compare the TREMENDOUS costs our reliance on oil from the middle-east costs us (two wars, huge standing forces in bases all throughout that region, alliance with ethically dubious regimes) IN ADDITION TO the outrageous price we are paying for the oil, these minor concerns are nothing. (Remember all those jobs, money, infrastructure and technology developed will go right here in the old US of A). Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Also, natural gas is (much?) more carbon "lite" than Crude Oil.
You have very good points, like I said this is just a thought experiment to consider what could be done with Apple's huge cash hoard. Just wanted to point out what other countries have done with their trade policies.
Ok, here's something that I'm sure will piss off a lot of people, (maybe even myself if I think about it!) but why doesn't the US enact a law that mandates a majority of Apple products SOLD in the US be MADE in the US? (not just designed)
I know this would suck for consumers (and the corporate planners at Apple which would have to deal with the havoc this would cause their supply chains) but it would bring back manufacturing jobs to the US (now we'd just have to keep those pesky migrants from taking them!). I mean, this wouldn't be illegal by international trade rules would it? (Brazil has a similar policy and it's still a member of the WTO). Also the auto industry has something like this in place, lots of foreign car companies manufacture cars in the US.
Like I said, this is not going to be popular with lots of people, even me a (very) happy Apple shareholder. However, as a committed well-off Democrat, I'm used to advocating positions that might not be good for my own self-interest IN THE SHORT RUN in support of the common good. Maybe I should be committed!;)
"On the dogmas of religion, as distinguished from moral principles, all mankind, from the beginning of the world to this day, have been quarreling, fighting, burning and torturing one another, for abstractions unintelligible to themselves and to all others, and absolutely beyond the comprehension of the human mind." --- Thomas Jefferson to Carey, 1816
Doesn't sound like he's a big fan of Religion being a part of government, does he?
You're right about me not being well read in the Scriptures. However, I didn't say the BIBLE was urging these evangelicals to believe this stuff; i don't know where it comes from. Just flipping through cable TV shows and hearing all these "preachers" yell (I guess this is something, that if you truly believe in, can't be talked about quietly) about being prepared for the Rapture makes me wonder; what happens when the Rapture doesn't come?
Remember that guy last year who predicted the Rapture was coming in May? Then when it didn't he said it was in October? Well he and his followers sure did a lot of preparing for it. They probably knew Christan Scripture a lot better than you do, hell their lives depended on it! (I'm sure if you doubt me you could track them down and ask them, they're no longer so famous so they'll have time to talk to a true Christian believer).
I don't know where you fall on the spectrum of belief (well maybe it'll happen tomorrow but I'll still do my homework) if you believe in the old testament, the new testament or something else (Mormonism? Scientology?) but the very fact that you think this way in the 21st century (that's 2000 years and counting that you've been waiting) makes me worried that you might be getting a little impatient and want to hurry things up.
I have no idea whether or not it constitutes fraud to hide behind a "shell" company (although common sense tells me it isn't fraud, I mean a small company could've bought the trademark and then Apple bought it from them what's the difference?).
But I do know that Disney, when he was buying up (seemingly) most of Florida for Walt Disney WORLD used exactly this tactic to acquire the (tens of thousands?) of square miles of land he needed. He didn't want to repeat the fundamental mistake of building a theme park but not the land around it thus allowing (other) developers to get rich. (I understand that finally that Japanese American family that owned a strawberry farm right next to Disneyland finally sold, probably for a HUGE amount).
I never heard of Disney getting sued let alone losing.
So this, to me, doesnt seem to be fraud, not unless they lied about something. (I understand that Proview claimed the purchasers said they wouldn't have a competing product; well not only is the iPad completely different from what Proview made, but Proview hasn't made it for years).
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I'd like to think that the solution to this sort of thing (voting fraud) could be effectively combatted by making the penalties really severe, like a multi-decade stay in prison. I feel that the consequences are serious enough, after all the BASIC premise of our DEMOCRACY is at stake; one person one vote. I mean how many nations do we despise, condemn or even sanction for not allowing this basic right regardless of how much it has been perverted or corrupted by practices like buying votes or dirty politics. Even when "the people" make stupid mistakes REPEATEDLY (Bush 2000, 2004), we allow them that right.
So denying that right should be treated very very seriously. If, in fact, the criminal act was carried out by a single or few individuals then fine, a long prison term should discourage others. Otherwise, in the best of worlds, a plea bargain will be made in which they'll finger the real perpetrators; the big fish who are doing this systematically and on a large scale. THEY should be prosecuted and sent to prison for a long long time.
Unfortunately the reason why I said "in the best of worlds" is because some of these individuals may be motivated by a higher calling (and not just by the reward of public office or money). If they truly believe that what they are doing serves some sort of meta-physical goal, their beliefs may cause them to act without fear of earthly punishments. Suicide bombers, to take an extreme example, are unlikely to be dissuaded by even the death penalty. This is just another way in which extremism destroys what most people would call civilization and would return us to the pious but desperately impoverished middle ages.
I'm surprised to see this kinda thing happening to our neighbors to the north. Compared to the cesspool that is American politics, I thought Canadian politics were squeaky clean. That's why I've always thought it would be a good place to run to (as James Cameron has evidently decided) in case the far right kooks took over.
Speaking of which, what ever happened to the investigations into Diebold and the voting machines in Ohio (and maybe more states)? Wasn't there enough evidence to start a criminal investigation? Or did it just fizzle because nobody cared?
Where's the outrage?
Ok, if someone were to attack London with a heavily armed bomber or attack aircraft these would be invaluable.
If someone were to fly a small, unarmed plane on a suicide mission, these might cause more damage than the attack (as many other posters have pointed out).
If someone were to fly a very small, slow, remotely guided (or pre-programmed) drone and a large, surposonic anti-aircraft missile tipped with a massive high explosive warhead was used to shoot it down, it would almost certainly cause much more damage than the drone could. Especially since the drone will likely be flying at "treetop" level (or below!) which means the missile will not be exploding high in the atmosphere but literally in the streets. (Actually, again as other posters have pointed out, missiles will likely be useless against such threats; it is unclear if they could even lock on or track such small targets against the ground clutter).
Maybe shoulder mounted SAMs are in order. In that case, do you want them up on a water tower or apartment building where they'd be firing DOWN? (Probably best to put them at the venue itself).
What did Chernobyl, Three Mile Island and the Space Shuttle Challenger have in common?
All three disasters were due to erroneous decisions made by (otherwise) smart, trained people at the wee hours of the morning. This has been shown to be have a bad effect on human decision making,
So the first thing I noticed was the fact that this disaster happened at 2am (not sure what time zone it was in or what time zone the pilots were in but you get the point).
Obviously someone has to be awake at all times to fly a plane (or operate a nuclear plant) but perhaps they could've timed the captain's rest better and made it clearer who was in charge when he was asleep.
Hi there- I know that the scientists are loath to use any form of lossy compression on what could be priceless scientific data but I just wanted to ask if you are using any compression. I mean, images of this sort should be ideally suited to some forms of compression (a simplistic example would be RLE); after all, there is a lot of "space" (yuk yuk :).
I used to work in digital cinema during the early trials and very prominent movie directors would often walk up to the projection screen, inches fom their face, looking for compression artifacts that could be caused by our servers (we used wavelets). They passed and now digital cinemas are everywhere in the world.
In one of his short stories, (I believe) after a near miss by an earth grazing asteroid (sliced through the upper atmosphere over a major city), a very large (gigaton) bomb is detonated in earth's orbit in a position diametrically opposed to the earth. The resulting "flash" resulted in a radar pulse (remember that was Clarke's early training in WWII) that was used to illuminate all the objects in the solar system. This was recorded and catalogued.
Decades later, an extra-terrestrial signal is recorded from another star system. After a quick calculation, it is apparent that the aliens, upon detecting the flash of this giga-bomb, quickly responded with a reply aimed at our solar system.
Look I'm as concerned (and convinced) about environmental damage and global warming as anyone. But finding immense reserves of natural gas in the U.S. and now the UK can only be a good thing. It should buy us a few decades of relatively cheap, relatively low carbon producing (well at least compared to coal and oil shale) energy. If it's cheap enough (or if we aren't too cheap ourselves) we can use the energy to PULL CO2 from the atmosphere (I've heard a measly 10% increase in the cost of electricity would pay for it!).
Ok, if we insist on being idiots, we're still gonna get somewhat screwed by global warming, but hopefully we won't lose more than a few million species and displace no more than a few hundred million people (*SIGH*). The environmental damage from shale gas, while significant, is on a local level and the earthquakes are nothing to be afraid of (I'm from CA so I know earthquakes). Sorry for the low expectations but I'll take this as GOOD news.
The BEST thing about this is that we won't be supporting (as much) people who hate us and want to blow us up. (What is about this that Republicans don't understand? That SUVs = terrorists.) Also the jobs that are created will be on-shore (or just off-shore).
Didnt someone say James Cameron wanted to shoot "Avatar 3" in zero-g? Now we know where he'll be getting the material to build his own film studio in orbit!
If the next two Avatar films make as much money as the first one did, he'll actually be able to pay for it! (Don't know what scale for actors would be in outer space, could be astronomical).
Ok, I know this is a temporary fix that only takes care of the symptoms (not the cause) of global warming but...
Use the asteroid to build some sort of sunscreen!
Depending on the material of the asteroid, you could use it to build a solid (like very thin sheets of aluminum foil) screen or transparent refracting glassy "disks" (there was some MIT proposal that utilized this). Or, if the asteroid was mainly worthless "powder", grind ít up even further and SPRAY it into a cloud between the sun and earth, 500 tons of very finely ground material might be able to reduce solar radiation by a few percent over the entire earth. Of course it would dissipate but it still might buy us some time like a decade or so and at least you wouldn't have to worry about getting rid of it once we solved the underlying (CO2) problem. For this, you might want to put the asteroid not into LEO (too dangerous and difficult due to the delta-V) or Geosync but at L1.
If you're really lucky, and the composition of the asteroid is just right and you've got the proper manufacturing technologies to support doing this IN SPACE (i.e. with little water), you can make huge quantities of solar cells to block out the sun! Cut down on global warming AND power the earth (also cutting down on global warming!).
Honestly, although I am very happy to see these guys doing such a forward thinking thing, I'm afraid they're a bit premature; we still don't have cheap(er) access to LEO. Maybe if that Dragon spaceship works out (fingers crossed). It is such a shame that it requires private visionaries to do what should be a function of our government. Short-sighted politicians indeed.
By the way, any guesses WHICH asteroid they're going after? Must be a NEO and not too big. Sounds like Apophis?
You know, I've always wondered why (in the original series at least) there seemed to be few, if any Indians or Chinese for that matter.
Then I remembered a line that Spock once said that went something like "the 15 million dead from WWI, the 60 million in WWII or the 600 million in WWIII". (He was talking about the stupidity of mankind after Kirk's boasting).
Then the movie "Star Trek: First Contact" came out which was supposedly set in North America after a big war(?) had impoverished the populace but hadn't reduced the country to radioactive cinders.
I never read any of the "official" (or unofficial) histories but I was wondering; was a nuclear war supposed to have taken place, not between the U.S. and USSR but in Asia? Between India and China perhaps?
(I'm glad to have gone to see the Taj Mahal last year; I've always thought that if Pakistan and India went to all out war, it would be the first to go.)
Ok, ok I realize that probably the real reason for the dearth of these nationalities was probably due to the script choices of Gene Roddenberry or some casting decisions but I was wondering if there was any justification after the fact. Anyway, if so I hope life DOESN'T follow art!
So what's (who's) next?
I actually wrote a screenplay with the following conceit:
Who's the MOST INFLUENTIAL person in human history? Think MORE than Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Lenin, Einstein, Gandhi, etc.
Who is the ONE individual who's essence (or what makes Him special) is inextricably tied up in their DNA? I mean just cloning Einstein from his DNA will not guarantee you another, well, Einstein (though he's likely to be pretty smart). Likewise, "Boys from Brazil" notwithstanding cloning Hitler would not necessarily get you an evil dictator; you're just as likely to get a (bad) artist.
This is one and the same person: Jesus Christ. Of course this idea has been bandied about for a long time.
However,, with the technology rapidly approaching to make this a reality (from stereotypically the shroud of Turin or His less well known preserved foreskin) the question becomes WHO would REALISTICALLY do such a thing? No right minded government would do so because it would fear the wrath of its citizens (and the condemnation of most other countries). Likewise no large institution or very wealthy individual would do so fearing public opprobrium. And it will be a few more decades before the technology becomes cheap enough for the average crazy person to do.
The key is "right minded". My idea is that there is ONE person in the world who, as economists like to say, is both "willing and able" to do such a thing. The country he leads has shown itself capable, over the decades, of pursuing highly technical large scale projects against the condemnation of the ENTIRE WORLD. Sanctions, threats of war, starvation of their population, NOTHING has dissuaded them from achieving their goal.
I'm talking about N. Korea of course and Kim Jong-Un.
So he's got the bomb, now what? Not only are sanctions making life miserable but the increasing sophistication of anti-missile defenses is making his weapon of diminishing value. (You know, "Star Wars" might not have been practical against a global all-out nuclear attack using 1980s technology but it will probably work against a few primitive warheads using 2010 tech). So the only thing that keeps him in power, the ability to defy the west, is diminishing. Sounds like time for a new threat!
That's where HE comes in. A cloned Christ would provide Kim Jong-Un with several interesting opportunities. He could threaten the (religious) West with crucifying him AGAIN or merely making Him his slave. Or perhaps he could raise him as his son and demand that the world's Christians bow down to him. Or (IF!) the reborn Christ truly has godlike powers, he could rule the world!
Or he could do all these things using an army of Christ clones.
That's the basic idea behind my COPYRIGHTED screenplay "GodSon". So please don't copy this particular idea ;) (There are also some interesting religious questions about whether or not he would be considered the son of God but that's outside the scope of this post). Anyway, do you like it? Do you think I should get it kickstarted? :)
Well this post probably going to be modded way down but the bigger problem is I'm probably going to hell. :(. (Unless God has a god-sized sense of humor).
Ok, I took a brief look at TFA but I'm not sure about the configuration.
It seems like they accelerate the "train" MOSTLY on the ground but then continue accelerating the craft up the final 12 miles. That requires the vacuum proof "tube" for the 12 mile vertical lift to be heavy and carrying a lot of power hungry superconducting magnets (and the final plasma curtain). No wonder they have to use such ginormous magnets to keep it aloft!
Why not do ALL of the acceleration on the ground and then, sort of gently redirect the train up the tube taking it to space. Then the last leg of the tube need not be anything than a (thin) wall keeping the air out with possibly some minor magnets just to keep the vehicle centered. Of course this will require the train to be set on a parabolic(?) path by the final set of propulsion magnets and will require some sort of tall, gently sloped "ramp" in order to do so in a manner that won't cause excessive g-forces but I imagine this ramp would be a lot shorter than 12 miles!
By the way, if you wanted to accelerate the train up to an appreciable fraction of orbital velocity in a CIRCULAR track, how big a ring would it have to be to keep the centripedal acceleration under 3g's. Didn't they ALREADY COMPLETE that 50 MILE in circumference tunnel for the SCC (super conducting collider) in Texas before congress axed the budget? I mean, the thing is already practically designed and built (instead of accelerating tiny particles to a very high fraction of c, use it to send much heavier things much slower)! If the g-forces are too high for humans, it could still be used for cargo.
(I think the term comes from the word "bootleggers").
Anyway, I wonder if young healthy people will start disappearing off the street. Maybe people will try to GET incurable chronic diseases (like HIV or Hepatitis) and have the fact that they are so infected indicated by a prominent tattoo (to ward off the organleggers. (The scarlet "H"?) Then of course, people will get the tattoos even if they don't have the disease I guess). Finally, maybe the death penalty will be enacted for even the most trivial of crimes (like parking tickets) with the executed having their organs freshly harvested.
More likely is if the government enacts a policy whereby if you sign up for a post-humous organ donation program (and presumably are enrolled in it for at least a year), you are put on the priority list for organ(s) shoud you need them. I understand this has already been proposed and maybe even put into place in some areas (at least for blood transfusions). It would make me more likely to participate, that's for sure.
So yeah, if this pans out, there are some interesting implications.
NASA should build it powerful space tug (or really learn a LOT about using nuclear explosions to nudge large objects) and place it into geo-sync orbit.
Then sell it to that Japanese construction company that wants to build a space elevator by 2050! It'll be right on schedule to be used as raw material or as a counterweight. (Well, hopefully it's a carbonaceous asteroid that can be made into carbon nanotubes/diamond fiber).
I thought that robot was kinda cool because it showed how superhumanly fast and agile our robot overlords will become.
Even if this robot (when eventually built with an on board power supply) can "only" go 18 mph, remember that unlike a real cheetah, it will presumably be able to keep it up for miles (I think cheetahs can only maintain this speed for a quarter mile). That's because the real cheetah is limited by heat buildup, presumably the motors and power source of this inorganic machine can operate at much higher temperatures so is limited not by heat buildup but fuel capacity.
Pretty scary if one of these things was chasing you down.
I always wondered if it would direct me to some secret govt. web site. Or maybe a fortune cookie factory.
I wasn't sure what the extra numbers were for. A port?
... that an automated search WOULDN'T find but that a sentient being would recognize? Perhaps by being able to pick up some sort of quantum phenomenon that wouldn't register with deterministic sensors? (I read that there the was a proposed experiment to see if the human eye could perceive quantum entangled images; if they could, the subject would see some sort of pattern, if not just random "static").
Perhaps if the galaxy was full of self-replicating machines bent on the destruction of organic life, this would be a way for the organic life to seek out each other without attracting the attention of the machines. This follows from such sci-fI books as "The Forge of God".
Anyway, if such a signal were discovered and it was determined to be encoded in such a manner, we would seriously have to think about our safety in our galactic neighborhood! Perhaps there would be an effort to enact radio silence on a planetary scale.
(Ok, enough with the wild speculation).
I really wish the consumer level 3D printers could match the quality of the ones they're using. (Disclaimer: I've never handled the output from either so I'm just looking at pictures. But the ones shown in the link look much better without any obvious pixelization or should I say "voxelization"?).
Oh well, another 5 years I guess. (Still I'm glad to be living now and not, say, during the middle ages!).
The Moon doesn't have it, never did.
Mars might've had it, still might.
Eventually, it will (probably?) be easier to terraform Mars than the Moon. Then Mars will truly be a place we can LIVE ON (you know, without space helmets and everything).
I would rather have (minor) damage to the environment than to continue to pay Hundreds of Billions of dollars a year to people who hate our guts and will kill after we (inadvertently) burn some of their holy books (despite our president's gracious apology).
From what I've read, the environmental damage is "minor; some low level seismic activity and perhaps some pollution of water supplies. So charge a little more for the natural gas coming out of these rural (low population density) communities and pay for piped in water or buy them out.
When you compare the TREMENDOUS costs our reliance on oil from the middle-east costs us (two wars, huge standing forces in bases all throughout that region, alliance with ethically dubious regimes) IN ADDITION TO the outrageous price we are paying for the oil, these minor concerns are nothing. (Remember all those jobs, money, infrastructure and technology developed will go right here in the old US of A). Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Also, natural gas is (much?) more carbon "lite" than Crude Oil.
I know it's late (Armageddon was a few years ago) and the wrong country (Russia not China) but at least we're making progress.
As for the "brains" well I think it's probably going to be Watson speaking to us through his assistant Siri.
You have very good points, like I said this is just a thought experiment to consider what could be done with Apple's huge cash hoard. Just wanted to point out what other countries have done with their trade policies.
Ok, here's something that I'm sure will piss off a lot of people, (maybe even myself if I think about it!) but why doesn't the US enact a law that mandates a majority of Apple products SOLD in the US be MADE in the US? (not just designed)
I know this would suck for consumers (and the corporate planners at Apple which would have to deal with the havoc this would cause their supply chains) but it would bring back manufacturing jobs to the US (now we'd just have to keep those pesky migrants from taking them!). I mean, this wouldn't be illegal by international trade rules would it? (Brazil has a similar policy and it's still a member of the WTO). Also the auto industry has something like this in place, lots of foreign car companies manufacture cars in the US.
Like I said, this is not going to be popular with lots of people, even me a (very) happy Apple shareholder. However, as a committed well-off Democrat, I'm used to advocating positions that might not be good for my own self-interest IN THE SHORT RUN in support of the common good. Maybe I should be committed! ;)
"On the dogmas of religion, as distinguished from moral principles, all mankind, from the beginning of the world to this day, have been quarreling, fighting, burning and torturing one another, for abstractions unintelligible to themselves and to all others, and absolutely beyond the comprehension of the human mind." --- Thomas Jefferson to Carey, 1816
Doesn't sound like he's a big fan of Religion being a part of government, does he?
You're right about me not being well read in the Scriptures. However, I didn't say the BIBLE was urging these evangelicals to believe this stuff; i don't know where it comes from. Just flipping through cable TV shows and hearing all these "preachers" yell (I guess this is something, that if you truly believe in, can't be talked about quietly) about being prepared for the Rapture makes me wonder; what happens when the Rapture doesn't come?
Remember that guy last year who predicted the Rapture was coming in May? Then when it didn't he said it was in October? Well he and his followers sure did a lot of preparing for it. They probably knew Christan Scripture a lot better than you do, hell their lives depended on it! (I'm sure if you doubt me you could track them down and ask them, they're no longer so famous so they'll have time to talk to a true Christian believer).
I don't know where you fall on the spectrum of belief (well maybe it'll happen tomorrow but I'll still do my homework) if you believe in the old testament, the new testament or something else (Mormonism? Scientology?) but the very fact that you think this way in the 21st century (that's 2000 years and counting that you've been waiting) makes me worried that you might be getting a little impatient and want to hurry things up.
I have no idea whether or not it constitutes fraud to hide behind a "shell" company (although common sense tells me it isn't fraud, I mean a small company could've bought the trademark and then Apple bought it from them what's the difference?).
But I do know that Disney, when he was buying up (seemingly) most of Florida for Walt Disney WORLD used exactly this tactic to acquire the (tens of thousands?) of square miles of land he needed. He didn't want to repeat the fundamental mistake of building a theme park but not the land around it thus allowing (other) developers to get rich. (I understand that finally that Japanese American family that owned a strawberry farm right next to Disneyland finally sold, probably for a HUGE amount).
I never heard of Disney getting sued let alone losing.
So this, to me, doesnt seem to be fraud, not unless they lied about something. (I understand that Proview claimed the purchasers said they wouldn't have a competing product; well not only is the iPad completely different from what Proview made, but Proview hasn't made it for years).