Just an exchange between the comparatively small arsenals of India and Pakistan are estimated to be enough to trigger a Nuclear Winter event, collapsing the world economy. If it lasted more than two or three years much of the world would be lucky to maintain a medieval-era level of technology. You don't think that a full-on exchange between the US and Russia would be catastrophically larger? If a few dozen nukes would destroy our civilization what would a few thousand do?
Really? This garbage again? India launches a probe to Mars and the Luddites scream "IT'S AN ICBM!!" Now Israel. Utter stupidity. Do you think that generals in Israel and India do not talk to their counterparts in Pakistan and Iran? Is this actually a surprise to anyone who has been paying any attention AT ALL to the advancement of aerospace science over the last half a century? Targeting systems aren't even considered high-tech any more, you could program an Arduino board and a GPS receiver to do it.
Here's a headline for you: SpaceX and Virgin Galactic Can Produce ICBMs! Run And Hide!
Reagan probably **was** crazy enough to launch if there weren't people like Bush (only good thing I've ever said about him) holding him back. He wanted to invade Cuba, until the Joint Chiefs talked sense into him.
At one point the (IIRC) Norwegian meteorology department launched a sounding rocket. The notification paperwork had all been filed with the Soviets but apparently got lost before it arrived in Moscow. The track looked like a SLBM from the North Sea, and the Kremlin generals asked Gorbachev for permission to retaliate. Fortunately he was sane enough to hold them off until it was confirmed that the rocket wasn't targeting Moscow. I hope someone lost their head for that particular mistake.
This is why the non-loonies were so desperate to get Wolfowitz and Pearle out of the Reagan White House, the bastards were whispering in Ronnie's ear that a nuclear war in Europe was "winnable" if the US attacked first. Somehow they believed that it wouldn't escalate into a general launch of ICBMs. Considering the quality of intellect resident the last time they were back in the White House it's very lucky that the Soviet Union no longer exists, just a kleptocracy that the neo-cons are happy to work with.
Wait until you buy a house. When we bought ours we were flooded with credit card offers, one week the total value of all the card offers was $250,000. That was 50% more than we had just paid for the house.
My understanding is that English Sparrows in North America are almost unable to mate with English Sparrows from Europe because their songs and mating activity have diverged in the couple of centuries since they were introduced here. Still physically the same critter, but there is no interest between them. Not sure if they could be considered the same species any longer or not.
"White" is inappropriate, because the only peoples that I can think of that are actually white are the Scandinavians and the Brits. My heritage is mostly French and German, but I tan darker than my co-irker who is supposedly "black". And then you get into the whole foolishness of "White Hispanic" when the people in question might not have any Spanish (or other European) genetic heritage at all and still be lighter skinned than the average resident of Salamanca.
Their tool kit was far more primitive than later humans, and only advanced when new peoples brought skills acquired from elsewhere. They don't seem to have been capable of much, if any, innovation on their own. The most advanced Neanderthal cultures always occur where they had the most opportunities to interact with Cro Magnons. Isolated Neanderthal bands kept the identical cultural level for thousands of years.
Aside from Neanderthals and Denisovians, which we know about, at least one more group of genes in Central Asian peoples comes from an "unknown" hominid for which we have no genetic samples. I'll skip the obvious joke about Homo Erectus.
True enough. I was responding mostly to your last paragraph, which seemed more about 'soft power' in general. I think the Peace Corps was the single greatest foreign policy initiative to ever arise out of the bowels of the US gov't, at least until Ronnie Raygun put the former head of Naval Intelligence in charge of it. Ever read 'The Ugly American'? Really a good book (unbeknownst to most people the 'ugly' American was the good guy).
Although I have to admit I never thought I'd see an uglier vehicle mass produced than the Gremlin, the Fiat 500 is probably the most hideous thing I've seen on the highway. Perfect car for Jennifer Lopez to hype.
The problem with improving people's lives is that they tend to give the credit to the local government, not some faceless bureaucracy on the other side of the world.
This. Cisco is essentially annoyed because other people's wireless hardware doesn't fail fast enough so they can't sell them new junk. I have network hardware at home from the 1990s that still works, and since it's adequate for the traffic on my network there is no reason to replace it. If Cisco doesn't want to support the old protocols like 802.11b in their newer hardware they don't have to. If that protocol is all that works on my ancient backup laptop/dev box (it is) then I won't buy their new stuff. (Not that I would buy Cisco, anyway.)
The alternative is not teaching either one. I asked nephews in northern Michigan when they were in 10th grade what they had learned about evolution and got nothing but a blank stare back. The topic had never been covered in all their science classes up to that point, I don't know if it even got touched on the last two years. In those same schools I learned about evolution in 3rd or 4th grade (about 1972)
We know exactly what they ate and how it was prepared. We have their copralites, their fossilized crap. We have their homes. We have their garbage dumps. We have their skeletons. It's not deep dark mystery, basic scientific analysis of human remains can let us know how far they traveled from their birthplace (isotopic analysis of bone growth), how often they experienced food shortages (bone density), what type of diet they had (trash midden excavation), what intestinal parasites they had (copralite analysis), what the climate was like (pollen analysis), how food was prepared (fire pit excavation, trash midden excavation, copralite analysis), and so on. If you were at all aware of the advances in archeological techniques of the last half century you would realize how incorrect your statement was.
In Peru the finding and testing have all been done several thousand years ago, pretty much everyone knows where to get the correct dirt for making adobes. My brother-in-law is a civil engineer there, and says that Peru is one of the only countries in the world where a study of adobe is required for the degree. An adobe house is nothing like what comes to mind when Habitat For Humanity refers to them as "mud huts".
Making the adobes correctly is quite a process. First water is poured into a well in the top of the mound of dirt, and is mixed in. The process is repeated until the mud is about the consistency of wet, lumpy concrete, and then it is left to "sleep" overnight. In the morning more water is added and thoroughly mixed in, until it is the consistency and of bread dough. Now 'paja' grass, an extremely strong high-altitude grass, is sprinkled over the mud and stomped in. The mud is turned, more paja is added, more turning, until the whole thing is very much like play dough.
Now the 'adobera', the form, is pulled out of the water where it's been soaking all morning and set on a flat piece of ground. A chunk of adobe is hacked off the side of the mound (yes, it's that thick), a wet rag is run around the inside of the adobera, the mud is squeezed in and the top flattened with a we piece of scrap lumber. Then the adobera is pulled off, set on the next piece of clear ground, and wet again, ready to be filled. About one and a half sandle-widths is left between adobes so that you can get around.
The next day the adobe bricks are turned on their side so that air can get to both large sides. After a week or two the adobes are stacked vertically, loosely enough that air can still circulate between them, where they can continue drying. The process for making the mortar for putting the wall together is made in much the same manner, although less paja is used. If the wall is going to be mud-plastered (rather than using regular plaster or cement) the mud is made in the same way, but with much less paja or none at all (depends on the quality of dirt available.)
Sigh. Of course you're right, but life is too short to do all the really cool things we want to do. Worst of all, there are now too fucking many people to do a lot of it the way we want to. Did you know that the only way to hike the Inca Trail now is to go with one of two groups (one of 40 and the other of 70 people) allowed per day? When I did it there were 4 of us that got off the train, and we didn't see anyone else for the next three days until we got to the ruin. Well, hopefully I'll be hiking the Apurimac Valley from Cusibamba to Pacaritambo next year, while there are still only farmers who walk that trail. Five years from now there will probably be tour groups.
Not really, a zombie is an undead human (well, a real zombie never actually died, just sustained extreme brain damage from being poisoned, paralyzed and from oxygen deprivation while buried alive), Frankenstein's monster was created from a collection of dead body parts. I think there's some more nits over here to pick . . .
Every time our designs go up against the competition the result is a bunch of smoking holes filled with Soviet era relics.
When did this happen? The Iraqis covered their planes with sand so that occupying forces couldn't use them rather than fly them, there hadn't been spare parts available for so long that almost none were airworthy. Afghanistan had no air force, nor did Granada or Somalia, and Panama's air force was made up of US-built planes (and defected immediately anyway). Attacking US aircraft weren't even detected in time for Sudan's air force to get off the ground. Ah, you mean Yugoslavia, where most of the trained pilots disappeared into the population during the chaos.
My family has an advantage over most, in that my wife is from Peru and we go down there frequently. Paruro is a gorgeous town not too far from Cusco, where we have a house. While there we clean wheat, mill it into flour, and go to the bakery to make whole wheat bread with it. We kill, clean, and eat chickens, rabbits and guinea pigs that Rosa's family raises, cooking them on a wood stove. We watch adobes being made and then being used to build houses, ride horses, walk between villages, and pick avocados and oranges off the tree. The past is still very much alive in places like Paruro, while just a couple hours away Cusco has luxury hotels and an international airport.
Slashdot Mirror
Just an exchange between the comparatively small arsenals of India and Pakistan are estimated to be enough to trigger a Nuclear Winter event, collapsing the world economy. If it lasted more than two or three years much of the world would be lucky to maintain a medieval-era level of technology. You don't think that a full-on exchange between the US and Russia would be catastrophically larger? If a few dozen nukes would destroy our civilization what would a few thousand do?
Really? This garbage again? India launches a probe to Mars and the Luddites scream "IT'S AN ICBM!!" Now Israel. Utter stupidity. Do you think that generals in Israel and India do not talk to their counterparts in Pakistan and Iran? Is this actually a surprise to anyone who has been paying any attention AT ALL to the advancement of aerospace science over the last half a century? Targeting systems aren't even considered high-tech any more, you could program an Arduino board and a GPS receiver to do it.
Here's a headline for you: SpaceX and Virgin Galactic Can Produce ICBMs! Run And Hide!
Frelling idiots.
Reagan probably **was** crazy enough to launch if there weren't people like Bush (only good thing I've ever said about him) holding him back. He wanted to invade Cuba, until the Joint Chiefs talked sense into him.
At one point the (IIRC) Norwegian meteorology department launched a sounding rocket. The notification paperwork had all been filed with the Soviets but apparently got lost before it arrived in Moscow. The track looked like a SLBM from the North Sea, and the Kremlin generals asked Gorbachev for permission to retaliate. Fortunately he was sane enough to hold them off until it was confirmed that the rocket wasn't targeting Moscow. I hope someone lost their head for that particular mistake.
As long as it increases the power and wealth of the PTB.
unless the other side believes that it can win.
This is why the non-loonies were so desperate to get Wolfowitz and Pearle out of the Reagan White House, the bastards were whispering in Ronnie's ear that a nuclear war in Europe was "winnable" if the US attacked first. Somehow they believed that it wouldn't escalate into a general launch of ICBMs. Considering the quality of intellect resident the last time they were back in the White House it's very lucky that the Soviet Union no longer exists, just a kleptocracy that the neo-cons are happy to work with.
Porsche owns cornering and handling.
That's because it's a Volkswagen.
Wait until you buy a house. When we bought ours we were flooded with credit card offers, one week the total value of all the card offers was $250,000. That was 50% more than we had just paid for the house.
My understanding is that English Sparrows in North America are almost unable to mate with English Sparrows from Europe because their songs and mating activity have diverged in the couple of centuries since they were introduced here. Still physically the same critter, but there is no interest between them. Not sure if they could be considered the same species any longer or not.
"White" is inappropriate, because the only peoples that I can think of that are actually white are the Scandinavians and the Brits. My heritage is mostly French and German, but I tan darker than my co-irker who is supposedly "black". And then you get into the whole foolishness of "White Hispanic" when the people in question might not have any Spanish (or other European) genetic heritage at all and still be lighter skinned than the average resident of Salamanca.
Their tool kit was far more primitive than later humans, and only advanced when new peoples brought skills acquired from elsewhere. They don't seem to have been capable of much, if any, innovation on their own. The most advanced Neanderthal cultures always occur where they had the most opportunities to interact with Cro Magnons. Isolated Neanderthal bands kept the identical cultural level for thousands of years.
Aside from Neanderthals and Denisovians, which we know about, at least one more group of genes in Central Asian peoples comes from an "unknown" hominid for which we have no genetic samples. I'll skip the obvious joke about Homo Erectus.
True enough. I was responding mostly to your last paragraph, which seemed more about 'soft power' in general. I think the Peace Corps was the single greatest foreign policy initiative to ever arise out of the bowels of the US gov't, at least until Ronnie Raygun put the former head of Naval Intelligence in charge of it. Ever read 'The Ugly American'? Really a good book (unbeknownst to most people the 'ugly' American was the good guy).
AMC Gremlin
AMC Pacer
Almost anything else ever made by AMC . . .
Although I have to admit I never thought I'd see an uglier vehicle mass produced than the Gremlin, the Fiat 500 is probably the most hideous thing I've seen on the highway. Perfect car for Jennifer Lopez to hype.
The problem with improving people's lives is that they tend to give the credit to the local government, not some faceless bureaucracy on the other side of the world.
This. Cisco is essentially annoyed because other people's wireless hardware doesn't fail fast enough so they can't sell them new junk. I have network hardware at home from the 1990s that still works, and since it's adequate for the traffic on my network there is no reason to replace it. If Cisco doesn't want to support the old protocols like 802.11b in their newer hardware they don't have to. If that protocol is all that works on my ancient backup laptop/dev box (it is) then I won't buy their new stuff. (Not that I would buy Cisco, anyway.)
Novell still exists? Even Firefox sees 'Novell' as a misspelling of 'noel'.
I think that A:\ Drive would be more appropriate. About the same speed, aren't they?
The alternative is not teaching either one. I asked nephews in northern Michigan when they were in 10th grade what they had learned about evolution and got nothing but a blank stare back. The topic had never been covered in all their science classes up to that point, I don't know if it even got touched on the last two years. In those same schools I learned about evolution in 3rd or 4th grade (about 1972)
Nobody knows what was going on then.
We know exactly what they ate and how it was prepared. We have their copralites, their fossilized crap. We have their homes. We have their garbage dumps. We have their skeletons. It's not deep dark mystery, basic scientific analysis of human remains can let us know how far they traveled from their birthplace (isotopic analysis of bone growth), how often they experienced food shortages (bone density), what type of diet they had (trash midden excavation), what intestinal parasites they had (copralite analysis), what the climate was like (pollen analysis), how food was prepared (fire pit excavation, trash midden excavation, copralite analysis), and so on. If you were at all aware of the advances in archeological techniques of the last half century you would realize how incorrect your statement was.
In Peru the finding and testing have all been done several thousand years ago, pretty much everyone knows where to get the correct dirt for making adobes. My brother-in-law is a civil engineer there, and says that Peru is one of the only countries in the world where a study of adobe is required for the degree. An adobe house is nothing like what comes to mind when Habitat For Humanity refers to them as "mud huts".
Making the adobes correctly is quite a process. First water is poured into a well in the top of the mound of dirt, and is mixed in. The process is repeated until the mud is about the consistency of wet, lumpy concrete, and then it is left to "sleep" overnight. In the morning more water is added and thoroughly mixed in, until it is the consistency and of bread dough. Now 'paja' grass, an extremely strong high-altitude grass, is sprinkled over the mud and stomped in. The mud is turned, more paja is added, more turning, until the whole thing is very much like play dough.
Now the 'adobera', the form, is pulled out of the water where it's been soaking all morning and set on a flat piece of ground. A chunk of adobe is hacked off the side of the mound (yes, it's that thick), a wet rag is run around the inside of the adobera, the mud is squeezed in and the top flattened with a we piece of scrap lumber. Then the adobera is pulled off, set on the next piece of clear ground, and wet again, ready to be filled. About one and a half sandle-widths is left between adobes so that you can get around.
The next day the adobe bricks are turned on their side so that air can get to both large sides. After a week or two the adobes are stacked vertically, loosely enough that air can still circulate between them, where they can continue drying. The process for making the mortar for putting the wall together is made in much the same manner, although less paja is used. If the wall is going to be mud-plastered (rather than using regular plaster or cement) the mud is made in the same way, but with much less paja or none at all (depends on the quality of dirt available.)
I was mistaken, it was the Argentine oil company , not BP.
Sigh. Of course you're right, but life is too short to do all the really cool things we want to do. Worst of all, there are now too fucking many people to do a lot of it the way we want to. Did you know that the only way to hike the Inca Trail now is to go with one of two groups (one of 40 and the other of 70 people) allowed per day? When I did it there were 4 of us that got off the train, and we didn't see anyone else for the next three days until we got to the ruin. Well, hopefully I'll be hiking the Apurimac Valley from Cusibamba to Pacaritambo next year, while there are still only farmers who walk that trail. Five years from now there will probably be tour groups.
Not really, a zombie is an undead human (well, a real zombie never actually died, just sustained extreme brain damage from being poisoned, paralyzed and from oxygen deprivation while buried alive), Frankenstein's monster was created from a collection of dead body parts. I think there's some more nits over here to pick . . .
Every time our designs go up against the competition the result is a bunch of smoking holes filled with Soviet era relics.
When did this happen? The Iraqis covered their planes with sand so that occupying forces couldn't use them rather than fly them, there hadn't been spare parts available for so long that almost none were airworthy. Afghanistan had no air force, nor did Granada or Somalia, and Panama's air force was made up of US-built planes (and defected immediately anyway). Attacking US aircraft weren't even detected in time for Sudan's air force to get off the ground. Ah, you mean Yugoslavia, where most of the trained pilots disappeared into the population during the chaos.
My family has an advantage over most, in that my wife is from Peru and we go down there frequently. Paruro is a gorgeous town not too far from Cusco, where we have a house. While there we clean wheat, mill it into flour, and go to the bakery to make whole wheat bread with it. We kill, clean, and eat chickens, rabbits and guinea pigs that Rosa's family raises, cooking them on a wood stove. We watch adobes being made and then being used to build houses, ride horses, walk between villages, and pick avocados and oranges off the tree. The past is still very much alive in places like Paruro, while just a couple hours away Cusco has luxury hotels and an international airport.