I disagree that the US considers people gay on the basis of what they do. There are lots of counter examples of people who aren't the way they act: closet gays, bicurious, abstaining gay christians, lifestyle gays, metrosexuals, gay until graduation.
Some act gay but aren't, some explore 'alternative' sexualities but never feel that they aren't straight, some clearly self-identify as gay but don't actually have same-sex intercourse. Despite the world's efforts to put us all into convenient pigeon holes, sexuality is a complex spectrum that doesn't lend itself well to assumptions.
Does it also take into account if all your friends are women? If they're all members of a musical theatre troupe? If one of your friends is your mother...
Arguably, the STS program has contributed more to space science than Apollo did. Not to say that we didn't learn many useful and valuable things from Apollo, but Apollo was about a destination, STS was about doing useful stuff in space. We'll reap the benefits from both for a long time to come.
I personally believe that the loss of astronauts and cosmonauts in the last 50 years has not gone in vain. They gave their lives for their country, their countrymen, their planet and for science. Because of them we have global satellite communications, GPS, advanced materials, highly developed engineering, improved cosmology and a vision of the heavens we only dreamed of.
They knew the risks and they took them gladly - they are heros, every last one of them.
10 km is a drop in the bucket - you've still got another 100 km just to reach the edge of space, and even at that altitude you still need to be going 7000 m/s to orbit. That's like standing on a step-ladder to reach a cloud.
The problem is even at high-orbit you still need to slow down at intercept and circularise your orbit. You'd be much better off making fast fly-by on an (sun-centric) elliptical orbit that returns to Earth on the way back in. That way, you're in Mar's neighborhood for a month or so and can easily dispatch a lander for the final leg to Mars, but you don't waste a fuckton worth of fuel slowing down the bulk of your vessel to stop at the planet itself - save that for braking when you get home.
A court reporter records every word (and even utterance) said in the court. If the wiki is just a searchable set of indexed transcripts, sure - but why would it need to be a wiki, then?
Concepts like impartiality are nice, but the only people we trust to be impartial in practice are judges who are carefully appointed after much review - and we all know how technically literate they are.
If you had a third party do this, who would moderate the biases of this group? And who will moderate them? And how do you keep them from influence from outsiders with vested interests? And how do you prevent incremental factual distortions introduced by successive paraphrasing (eg. 'telephone' whispers)? And how will they even decide what is relevant to the case without introducing selection bias?
If jurors were smart enough to do it themselves, great! They can decide what evidence and facts are important to the case they are hearing. If you have non-judiciary third parties involved you're just opening a huge can of worms.
Well, it was a revolution in thought to discover that we weren't the centre of the universe. It would be a revolution in thought, politics and theology to know that we weren't alone in the universe. The discovery of an earth-compatible environment would also imply that interstellar colonisation was possible with sleeperships/seedships - that would greatly enhance the potential survivability of our species.
It was the "hmmmm" mostly. The implication seemed to be that we were simply looking at ourselves from far away and we were in truth only finding what we already knew to be. Afterall, if we really wanted to see a life-bearing rocky planet up close we could just go outside.:)
Joking aside, if we found an exoplanet, with earthlike environment that would be completely amazing and would have interesting philosophical implications. If we found such a planet with life on it, that has profound implications. If we found a planet with roads and a city - civilisation, that has truly astonishing implications for our entire culture. Now, if it turned out that we were imaging ourselves... that's still a neat result and we'd learn a hell of a lot about how space-time works for that to happen. None of this is a waste of time - in the long view, our civilisation will only grow by looking outwards.
Amen. It's only a decade after I left enforced PE that I've actually discovered that some physical activity can be fun and enjoyable and not demeaning, even if I'm not one of the fucking star atheletes.
They should re-badge PE as "Go run around outside time" and be done with it. At my old public school we used to just play games on a Friday afternoon and it was fun even if you weren't very good. Then I moved on to a private high school and suddenly everything was so competetive, so pressured that it made me hate it.
Slashdot Mirror
So you're saying god's cross-eyed?
And if Iran was the USA, you'd have a point.
Some act gay but aren't, some explore 'alternative' sexualities but never feel that they aren't straight, some clearly self-identify as gay but don't actually have same-sex intercourse. Despite the world's efforts to put us all into convenient pigeon holes, sexuality is a complex spectrum that doesn't lend itself well to assumptions.
Does it also take into account if all your friends are women? If they're all members of a musical theatre troupe? If one of your friends is your mother...
Arguably, the STS program has contributed more to space science than Apollo did. Not to say that we didn't learn many useful and valuable things from Apollo, but Apollo was about a destination, STS was about doing useful stuff in space. We'll reap the benefits from both for a long time to come.
I personally believe that the loss of astronauts and cosmonauts in the last 50 years has not gone in vain. They gave their lives for their country, their countrymen, their planet and for science. Because of them we have global satellite communications, GPS, advanced materials, highly developed engineering, improved cosmology and a vision of the heavens we only dreamed of.
They knew the risks and they took them gladly - they are heros, every last one of them.
And when they turn on us, we will be helpless.
A cloud going mach 20.
The problem is even at high-orbit you still need to slow down at intercept and circularise your orbit. You'd be much better off making fast fly-by on an (sun-centric) elliptical orbit that returns to Earth on the way back in. That way, you're in Mar's neighborhood for a month or so and can easily dispatch a lander for the final leg to Mars, but you don't waste a fuckton worth of fuel slowing down the bulk of your vessel to stop at the planet itself - save that for braking when you get home.
Can you pay in rubles?
The government would charge us all a gravity levy, if only they could find a way to deny it to those who can't pay.
We'd need a guide of some sort; something with a reassuring tag-line.
A court reporter records every word (and even utterance) said in the court. If the wiki is just a searchable set of indexed transcripts, sure - but why would it need to be a wiki, then?
Concepts like impartiality are nice, but the only people we trust to be impartial in practice are judges who are carefully appointed after much review - and we all know how technically literate they are.
If you had a third party do this, who would moderate the biases of this group? And who will moderate them? And how do you keep them from influence from outsiders with vested interests? And how do you prevent incremental factual distortions introduced by successive paraphrasing (eg. 'telephone' whispers)? And how will they even decide what is relevant to the case without introducing selection bias?
If jurors were smart enough to do it themselves, great! They can decide what evidence and facts are important to the case they are hearing. If you have non-judiciary third parties involved you're just opening a huge can of worms.
Only TVs in the US. I'm very pleased to say that the US is not yet the world.
Oh, you must be from Sydney.
Having lived there most of my life, I'm pretty sure Australia has civilisation. But I might be wrong.
Well, it was a revolution in thought to discover that we weren't the centre of the universe. It would be a revolution in thought, politics and theology to know that we weren't alone in the universe. The discovery of an earth-compatible environment would also imply that interstellar colonisation was possible with sleeperships/seedships - that would greatly enhance the potential survivability of our species.
It was the "hmmmm" mostly. The implication seemed to be that we were simply looking at ourselves from far away and we were in truth only finding what we already knew to be. Afterall, if we really wanted to see a life-bearing rocky planet up close we could just go outside. :)
Joking aside, if we found an exoplanet, with earthlike environment that would be completely amazing and would have interesting philosophical implications. If we found such a planet with life on it, that has profound implications. If we found a planet with roads and a city - civilisation, that has truly astonishing implications for our entire culture. Now, if it turned out that we were imaging ourselves... that's still a neat result and we'd learn a hell of a lot about how space-time works for that to happen. None of this is a waste of time - in the long view, our civilisation will only grow by looking outwards.
...the biggest friends list
He must be a lonely, lonely man.
Well, we may not have the S, but we've still got TD
So you're saying he's going to turn them lesbian? Makes sense to me, but I don't think it will encourage them to sleep with him.
They should re-badge PE as "Go run around outside time" and be done with it. At my old public school we used to just play games on a Friday afternoon and it was fun even if you weren't very good. Then I moved on to a private high school and suddenly everything was so competetive, so pressured that it made me hate it.
You'll find many of the truths we hold to be self-evident depend largely upon one's point of view.
My boss is an aussie, you insensitive clod!