If you pick up the (unfortunately out of print) philosophy texbook Thought Probes, you'll find several excellent short stories, together with good commentary on their philosophical implications. It includes "The Cold Equations," "Cloak of Anarchy," "The Star," and numerous other excellent, substantial, reasonably short texts and the commentaries are thought provoking for the teacher as well as students.
They say elephants never forget... and have you ever seen an elephant who looked happy?
In Spider Robinson's short story "Melancholy Elephants," he points out a huge problem with perpetual (or even lengthy) copyright, coupled with perpetual storage (memory). It stifles innovation, and worse, leads to stagnation in the arts.
There are a finite number of aesthetically pleasing ways to arrange a finite number of notes, a finite number of colored pigments, or a finite number of words. Remember the monkeys and Shakespeare? Without intending to -- without ever having been exposed to an earlier work -- it is quite possible that portions of a new creative work will substantially resemble portions of an earlier work. And that's enough to qualify as plagiarism.
Shakespeare's work was "substantially similar" to other, already-existing creative works... suppose he'd been subject to litigation for that?
The X-15 was fast, but it was also rocket-propelled. The X-43A uses an air-breathing scram-jet engine, which means it doesn't need to carry oxidizer on-board--it gets oxidizer from the atmosphere.
A reaction engine that doesn't need to carry its own oxidizer (oxygen) on-board has greater carrying capacity for fuel and payload.
I am not a physicist, but the waste fission plants generate are left-over fuel, more than the neutrons... and in most water-cooled reactors, the neutrons are 'thermal,' rather than 'fast.' The neutrons represent a radiation hazard, while isotopes of uranium (or plutonium) and other core materials at the end of a reactor's usable lifespan represent a 'waste' hazard.
A wee something I recall from USN nuclear power school (a long time ago): radioactive isotopes of oxygen decay to nonradioactive isotopes in a relatively short time, compared to radioactive isotopes of uranium (U-138, for example). O-18 has a half-life somewhere near thirty minutes, IIRC. If 'light' (gaseous) radioactive materials have half-lifes similar to oxygen's, they represent a much-less lasting waste hazard than do fissionables.
All my nuclear training is twenty years old and more, so I may be misremembering specifics, but the generalities should mostly be right.
Right. But Skinner wasn't all right; environment is not the only thing to influence behavior. The thing a lot of folk forget is that everything perceivable by an organism (or otherwise acting on it) is part of the organism's environment. In the case of most human organisms in the Western hemisphere, that most certainly includes video and movies, books and magazines, meals, and video games.
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If you pick up the (unfortunately out of print) philosophy texbook Thought Probes, you'll find several excellent short stories, together with good commentary on their philosophical implications. It includes "The Cold Equations," "Cloak of Anarchy," "The Star," and numerous other excellent, substantial, reasonably short texts and the commentaries are thought provoking for the teacher as well as students.
They say elephants never forget... and have you ever seen an elephant who looked happy?
In Spider Robinson's short story "Melancholy Elephants," he points out a huge problem with perpetual (or even lengthy) copyright, coupled with perpetual storage (memory). It stifles innovation, and worse, leads to stagnation in the arts.
There are a finite number of aesthetically pleasing ways to arrange a finite number of notes, a finite number of colored pigments, or a finite number of words. Remember the monkeys and Shakespeare? Without intending to -- without ever having been exposed to an earlier work -- it is quite possible that portions of a new creative work will substantially resemble portions of an earlier work. And that's enough to qualify as plagiarism.
Shakespeare's work was "substantially similar" to other, already-existing creative works... suppose he'd been subject to litigation for that?
We need to be able to forget.
On the other hand, raising "innocent animals" for slaughter and mass consumption is just fine, right? Or don't you eat meat or wear leather?
A reaction engine that doesn't need to carry its own oxidizer (oxygen) on-board has greater carrying capacity for fuel and payload.
I am not a physicist, but the waste fission plants generate are left-over fuel, more than the neutrons... and in most water-cooled reactors, the neutrons are 'thermal,' rather than 'fast.' The neutrons represent a radiation hazard, while isotopes of uranium (or plutonium) and other core materials at the end of a reactor's usable lifespan represent a 'waste' hazard. A wee something I recall from USN nuclear power school (a long time ago): radioactive isotopes of oxygen decay to nonradioactive isotopes in a relatively short time, compared to radioactive isotopes of uranium (U-138, for example). O-18 has a half-life somewhere near thirty minutes, IIRC. If 'light' (gaseous) radioactive materials have half-lifes similar to oxygen's, they represent a much-less lasting waste hazard than do fissionables. All my nuclear training is twenty years old and more, so I may be misremembering specifics, but the generalities should mostly be right.
Right. But Skinner wasn't all right; environment is not the only thing to influence behavior. The thing a lot of folk forget is that everything perceivable by an organism (or otherwise acting on it) is part of the organism's environment. In the case of most human organisms in the Western hemisphere, that most certainly includes video and movies, books and magazines, meals, and video games.