Explain to them what a rem is, and how the sun gives you more radiation in a day than most people will experience, with the exception of medical imaging devices and flying on high-altitude airplanes, throughout their lives.
But that^ is still contrary to "above all, no lies. No propaganda. Just the truth, detailing what we do know, what we do not know, and where any potential problems may be." right after it (almost like you just can't help it, go in the direction of glorifying nuclear) - you can't have it both ways, it would provoke a justifiable backlash and ridicule (and probably reminding also, yeah, of a bit insane approach to nuclear in the past)
You mention how we receive radiation when stepping outside - actually, we receive radiation also when inside of course, many buildings have quite elevated levels of radon for example. But it's a baseline, it's insincere to essentially dismiss additional sources.
With the concern about small & distributed nuclear reactors that I voiced there, the point wasn't so much about the technology, but about the talent of people to frak things up - particularly at the level of small town utilities. Not about the technical side - but governance, delegation of responsibility, etc....municipalities can have problems with electricity, water, or sewerage infrastructure. I just don't trust them with anything nuclear, not in the landscapes dominated by "lowest bidder" and nepotism (typically rampant at the level of small communities).
And FFS, people have even a hard time of accepting that dumping millions of tons of CO2, that the planet kept in its lithosphere, can disrupt the balance; or, from a looser related field, with something having so much support, so much evidence, as biological evolution. We're not really close to the level of maturity which small reactors everywhere would demand, if we'll ever be.
Also, by which standards would we really judge such reactors to be safe safe, and their operators sufficiently (5yo level) smart? Those used with Fukushima / in Japan? (it also was essentially counted among "nothing can go wrong")
(also, you might be too optimistic about their potential impact - say, kinda like blanketing of an area with small explosives tends to be much more destructive than one gargantuan (that's also the case with MIRVs & their warheads); similar effects could manifest themselves, over long periods of time, for many small vs. few large power plants)
BTW, there's this fascinating, to me, phenomena with many of the devotees in the style of AC: this place is generally quite dismissive of Chinese or Indian technical prowess... ...except when glorifying the push for nuclear of those places. That is a WTH of truly massive proportions.
(well, at least I have an impression how the latter group is so large that it must include many from the former)
Heck, I've seen some people treating nuclear power plants as some kind of self-sustaining organism which should cover essentially as much of the planet as it can (supposedly everything needed for that goal coming from...the energy released by already existing reactors); or cherishing lightweight reactor designs meant for space...which don't have to worry about shielding, costs, waste disposal, or even refueling.
I see nuclear as likely (not certain...we'll see what the German experiment gives in few decades - and it is good in the sense that one technologically and scientifically competent place tries other routes; just like the French quest to optimise nuclear) part of whole solution - probably one of more sensible ways to generate large part of base load.
But it won't do much as long people will just want more, more, more without restraint; without recognizing what's good enough, nuclear won't change much. There is no sane reason
But you miss the larger context, overlook that other approaches would also benefit from this, probably not making that much of an impact on relative competitiveness. What I'm also saying is they don't exist in isolation from the rest of the world (soooo... for example, yes, weapons; many more impactors - and you can't prove much with hypervelocity impacts - "oh well, another small asteroid hitting big target"; or: in-situ manufacturing tech would be viable at lower level of sophistication (more massive), while still probably ending up smaller and spawning colonies much faster than a ship which aims for providing comforts to largish crew)
Most importantly: even I think about "really powerful" lifting, I'm not thinking "magic" - but something which is still plausible...so, it would need to be non-rocket based launch to LEO (which wouldn't bring quite the kind of changes), not strictly "engines" as imagined.
(and yes, when talking about the "magical nanotech" variant above, I treat it only as a possibility which doesn't appear to be contrary to what this universe really is - it's quite lonely in that among most scifi fantasies)
Mass driver of some kind looks like most plausible (other proposals tend to be too silly even as far as mega-structures go), launching pellets (likely still not entirely non-rocket based) carrying small parts (just to assemble one 10k in LEO?); maybe something like Startram (and probably only its smaller versions - meaning, passengers would still have to go up on, at most, a version of "pellet" which is very akin to present launch vehicles...except embryos!).
Anyway, I think you're severely overstating what 10k would give. Nearest analogue is probably such submarine at best, ~= at the largest (but probably closer to Kilo class, type XXI u-boot, Kobben, or even VII) - considering, cargo, landers, propulsion and fuel (...oh yeah, it would need to have its own to take it out of LEO, and lots of it[1]: direct Hohmann transfer orbit from Earth to Jupiter takes roughly as much delta-v as launch to LEO itself - I assume you don't like the idea of long trajectories via gravity assists).
So "low cost" is an understatement, probably an order of magnitude more expensive than most expensive subs (and they're... too expensive, there's plenty of efforts around to lower their costs while at best keeping the capabilities), imposed by the much harsher conditions and without the convenience of being able to surface to safety at moments notice; things are harder in space... lack of efficient cooling method for one. Propulsion is also much easier, no need to carry reaction mass (which would be likely a majority of the whole, together with the engine)
Typical subs also have way too large crews & little automation, we don't have the required tech here (it's again much harder when you can't just surface); "largish" crew variants would still be fairly small by necessity... travel time would still be long (so... somebody might take a stash of embryos after all, tens of thousands could be less massive than one crew member; then somebody might realize this crew member wasn't really needed after all, and maybe another, and so on)
And that's ignoring cost of operations...which, really, boils down to "OK, but what would you be doing 'there'?" Well, all we do boils down to resource gathering and manufacturing. And I assume fancy 10k would be meant to return...but what for?
And the thing with radiation was how fiction badly influences our imagination - as depicted they offered virtually no protection (and BTW where were the radiators? At least Avatar does their size decently, as a starting point)
Bases on the Antarctic essentially have this model: 10k+ vessels, no problem with propulsion, everything carried there.
The failure mode on that cold day was hardly due to non-expandability: Ares V stack WOULD ALSO DISINTEGRATE in the event of SRB burning through one of its attachment points, and wrecking havoc...
The end result really had nothing to do with side-placement of the orbiter, TPS, or overall fragility.
Plus, part of the point was a side note how the Soviets apparently didn't think much about inaugural launch of their shuttle (also side-attached) in conditions when NASA probably would prefer to have its hw in hangars - but then, they worked since the beginning with reality of the Kazakh steppe (or even Plesetsk Cosmodrome, not far from Arctic Circle...), and didn't bothered with segmented SRBs; also their heat shield implementation - which BTW was launched through heavy cloud cover - was possibly somewhat better, reportedly suffering only marginal damage in its inaugural flight (again, through heavy cloud cover)...of course, most likely, largely because it was done a decade later, with problems better understood.
And anyway, protecting TPS is not the only role of external tank thermal blanket, and the simplest demonstration of that is: the foam is sprayed also on parts of the ET which have no chance of shedding ice onto the orbiter. It also maintains the quality of cryogenic propellants; during launch, it keeps the structure within design temperature limits - and, by the same property, assures low altitude (predictable, within impact boundary limits) ET breakup.
Of course: yes, expendables are more sensible overall, you don't have to convince me of that - there was plenty more wrong than side-attachment with the concept of glorified Flash Gordon style glider contraption, riding on popular myths, (merely) appearing to the masses as something as sleek as, say, Concorde (but in space!!111); a spacecraft wasting most of its launched mass on airframe.
It was just a bit... pointless, and outright stupid with its treatment of safety. Pointless in how it was demonstrably a very suboptimal approach - all boiling down to how it didn't really deliver on any of its premises and promises, while eating the funds (both implementations). Stupid not only in the sense that over-complication impacted safety (~= costs!) for no real gain, also in how it was presented like just as safe as an airliner, using some very flawed metrics (which Feynman pointed out in his report).
And yeah, stupid ~politics... (also with both implementations)
(you can see in large part of my visible recent comments how I'm often frustrated at this, how the shuttles probably retarded progress for at least two decades; also at myself, sort of, for being so easily taken as a kid by "cool spaceplane")
PS. Sorry for late post, an old email client script reminded me the discussion expires; better late than never, I guess.
Show them how hard it is for something to undergo an uncontrolled nuclear fission reaction, show them how the danger of fallout and radioactivity is inversely related to time. Explain to them what a rem is, and how the sun gives you more radiation in a day than most people will experience, with the exception of medical imaging devices and flying on high-altitude airplanes, throughout their lives. And above all, no lies. No propaganda. Just the truth, detailing what we do know, what we do not know, and where any potential problems may be.
So just before "no lies. No propaganda" you essentially advocate... "supportive" disinformation, great. I mean, surely you must know there are different kinds of radiation - those reaching us from the Sun much easier to manage, not really comparable to what is at hand here, not even ionizing (even if UV might slightly resemble such, in its biologically damaging potential; still, much easier manageable).
Pretending like all kinds of radiation are the same can serve also nuclear devotees, it seems... really, perhaps the education should start with them.
Witness how their rhetoric unfolded during Fukushima: at the beginning, we had "so, we have a bit of a situation, X happened, but surely not X+1" - but wait few days or so, and suddenly it was "so, X+1 happened, but surely not X+2"...and repeat few times.
Such things don't breed trust, not one bit. More - that is an evidence of issues (of whatever kind), justifying concerns (which can be also framed in a less dignified term "fear") about "environmentally sound operation" or "careful" - a very visible example of somewhat "uncontrolled nuclear fission reaction" despite major efforts of a place seen as among most technically adept...AND, most importantly, despite Fukushima plant certainly being counted, before the incident, among the shining beacons of nuclear energy! (not specifically of course, just among many others)
The thing with "careful disposal of the waste" - it turned out to be much bigger problem than anticipated; not so much the technical side of it, but political and cost considerations, making the nuclear much less attractive than it seemed, justifiably blunting the early enthusiasm (seriously, look back at those early times, people had a bit insane approach...and what ever happened to "electricity will be so cheap it won't make sense to meter it!!"?)
And the inverse relation of time vs. the danger of fallout and radioactivity isn't much of a consolation for those in the "wrong" place and time (which could be made somewhat more likely by massive adoption of many miniature reactors - I mean, we are talking here about the approach, costs & responsibility distribution more akin to water or sewerage, in how they are municipality services...how much trust do you really have, in (many!) people at such levels, to not cut corners or be careless?)
Now, I'm generally the first to lament the colossal waste of one local abortive attempt, and I can seriously consider moving to the backyard of a nuclear power plant my place probably needs to build in a decade or two (well, not literal "backyard" if only because that would still be a noisy industrial plant; but many likely benefits all around of such neighborhood, among them possible voluntary expulsion of large part of stupid people)
But don't pretend the devotees (essentially a sort of "nuclear cargo cult") aren't a problem, too - an image one, at least, in the name of willingness to overlook issues.
Look at the first AC reply to your post - pretending like pebble bed reactors are proven tech; but for example ignoring how they share one major problem with RBMK (Czernobyl) reactors - they are essentially giant stakes of coal; how actual test reactors so far weren't entirely encouraging, anyway.
Well the point is: it's generally even more precautionary (and such) to be able to make the things or people you might need - while not depending on support & stream of resources from Earth (really, depending on local resources and locally-grown people is not just a good idea: it's an inevitability, and exactly how any long-term successful colonization came to pass even on this minuscule grain of sand we call Earth). Furthermore, that is the best way to assure "the resources don't get spoiled (bored or damaged) on the way to wherever"[1]...
"Today" is really not that relevant here; it's not only about launch capabilities, also overall costs - even of straightforward construction. Just the difference of powerful engine wouldn't really make the burden to construct "a 10,000 ton ship" or "a space station around Jupiter, 2001 style"[2] non-astronomical - you can't really expect the people of Earth to finance such.
OTOH, in-situ approaches would make the burden minuscule, and they are quite likely to "organically" emerge within a very short few centuries or millennia (don't think about it in the scales of normal human lifetime - that's this influence of "scifi cargo cults" and popular culture uneasiness about what our universe & physics really are) - mass production, simplification, modularisation is what generally seems to do the trick in revving up large endeavors, setting up ~sustainable (if there even is such a thing with humans) industries; while few large, unique and overcomplicated artifacts generally accomplishes quite the contrary.
(1.) It's also about the odds of succeeding with few megaprojects (an approach which often gives white elephants) vs., say, ten to hundred times more (per the same cost) smaller & largely independent from the start efforts. I suspect the latter would simply utterly out-compete the former - by the time (which includes the time of construction!) the "big and glorious" gets anywhere, the place will tend to be already long taken (and again, "big and glorious" is primarily a nice, singular, big target - which, despite its scale, won't stand a chance against hypervelocity impacts), and already for some time sending its own waves of colonisation further out.
2. BTW fictional depictions: 2001 station would probably disintegrate, as depicted - any engineer will tell you that spinning an unfinished ~wheel is generally a very bad idea. Also, the radiation environment in Jupiter system is insane - its described severity during 2010 spacewalk didn't even come close, they would be all dead just from sitting inside the Discovery and Leonov for a small fraction of the time depicted in the movie. At most, better aim for a base on Callisto, it's bearable this far out.
Overall, hostile conditions are also why probes tend to be a good idea. Quite likely a better idea for now - for example together with occasional teleoperation (from Martian orbit for example - also because we don't have even a good idea how to approach landing a largish object on Mars, the planet has probably nearly the worst combination of gravity and atmosphere to do that) of one of the whole fleet of robotic explorers, some even including such torso. AI is also constantly improving (we depend on it more and more every day; but again, not the kinds of "AI" spewed out by works of fiction), it's not about being smarter than brightest humans (humans are on average pretty stupid, too - go through a list of cognitive biases), but about efficiently mass-producing & distributing suitable expertise where it's needed (and IMHO the sets of science instruments are already remarkably diverse, given the constraints)
Or, sure, we can escape into "what if" world of fantasy physics, geopolitics, or macro-economy... what those musings about 10k tons to LEO are largely about (but, BTW, you might find i
When it comes to "leave the planet in a hurry" - truth is, virtually all conceivable catastrophes would still leave the Earth much, much, much more hospitable than any other place in the system. And large part of extremely unlikely scenarios leveling the playing field across the system, would be also a major headache for the whole system...
BTW, the issues with launch capabilities might just become obsolete not too long time from now...together with, most importantly (and disappointingly to many, I'm sure), obsoleting the grandiose styles of space travel - which I see as very much influenced by silly "scifi cargo cult" depictions in works of popular fiction; purpose of which is NOT to sensibly conceptualise space travel, their purpose is mass entertainment. If anything, they strive to be not too unfamiliar, not too different from earthly experiences and expectations (which are themselves quite distorted anyway - most people die close to where they were born), avoiding the discomfort from depicting the ABSOLUTELY WILD realities of actually existing universe and its physics - bonus: it's much, much easier to write that way, within the framework of stories known since ancient times, much easier to depict. Such fiction quite possibly already massively & negatively influenced some of our "space" goals)
While... how many people actually realize that we can already send at least vast majority of "colonists" when they are miniaturised and in deep hibernation, and that at least dozens of thousands on Earth are past the procedure? (it's fairly routine by now) Give me one medium launcher plus 100-200 million, and I can transport at least a thousand viable humans practically to anywhere in our system.
Add in-situ manufacturing, and it doesn't really matter anymore how much can we put into LEO (while we're possibly already not far from Kessler syndrome, and near Earth orbit is the ultimate asymmetric warfare battleground, really - perhaps it's best to not place there large targets for any space-capable entity which can have a whim of starting the cascade). And if, lets say within a millennium or ten millenniums (a blink of an eye, in geological & galactic terms), in-situ manufacturing would advance to the level of ~"magical nanotech", it would also probably mean mind uploading and such at about the same moment (give or take few centuries) - making the "big & glorious" spaceships as silly as advancing the technology to the levels presently used in, say, nuclear submarines...but utilizing that tech only to build "advanced" Viking longships (that's how inconsistent, that's what most scifi visions tend to be BTW).
With such "ultimate" advancements, launching billions of starwisp-like "seeds" towards stellar neighborhood, and simply ~transmitting ourselves, would rapidly (in geological terms) colonise the galaxy.
And here's the best part: even if such "ultimate" advancements turn out to be not feasible, even if we would be limited just to "plain" in-situ manufacturing, "traveling light" (embryos), and comet (and such) hopping (estimated billions of 20+ km, trillions of 1+ km comets just in our Oort Cloud, plenty to spread over thousands of years - and, inevitably, some groups would eventually hitch a ride with Oort Clouds of passing stars)...it would still rapidly colonise the galaxy.
It's quite frightening how straightforward (here: old, CFC-based foam piece killed Columbia*) the facts can be, and still not work with those people... but then, myths and their collections seem to also have a much stronger grasp on them, on average.
Here, I guess also the myths of glorious-looking (kinda feels like this damn French Concorde, but better / in space!) Flash Gordon style contraptions of a spacecraft which wastes most of its LEO mass on airframe...possibly even with its designers and decision-makers being raised on & influenced by such works of fiction (FG and so on; which mostly just naively extrapolated rapid advances in airplane tech of the ~1940s; kinda like those airplanes (Wiki Unicode URL, tends to work weird on/.) from "our" times, as imagined ~130 years ago, were undoubtedly shaped by rapid advances in marine tech - and we can even build them, basically just take a Harrier & remove wings and canopy...it's still a horrible idea vs. "boring" reality).
The STS was simply deeply flawed, foam-shedding (another fact: most severe - but lucky to spare critical impact points - in early flights, which used only CFC-based foams) being just one aspect of it...not even the worst (other being also with the basic concept, its premises and promises - obsolete even before the Shuttle seriously got onto drawing boards, for example with automatic rendezvous & docking done since the 60s)
Oh yeah, but it looked and felt awesome, I'd be the first to give it that (hm, yeah, "emotional" as you say)
And with the news at hand... "green" fuels are also simply much easier & safer to work with; those are things which - contrary to the suggestion of (great?)grandparent poster - tend to save time and money in the longish & up time spans (so, for once aiming at thoughtful long-term choices)
Food for thought[1]: your body, your cells constantly "recycle" large part of the matter used as their constituent parts - there are quite few of the atoms forming your body at birth remaining in you (also proportionally, accounting for later mass gains). So... what is your age, are you the same human as at birth?[2]
BTW, ponder in which ways what you thought as the precious part of your body gets disposed of...;p
Or, more seriously, how it is quite universal for humans to believe in "really me" surviving death of all things, with their body essentially discarded - evidently we are quite open to accepting the idea of single entity, single being continuing its existence despite none of its verifiable original parts doing so (maybe/hopefully it means there won't be too much fuss about mind uploading)
Also: the ship of Theseus.
1. Even seems like not a bad pun here, in context.
2. TBH I would argue not quite (likewise me of course) - the "monolithic me" is largely a myth allowed also by our, really, quite poor memory and such; hiding from us the full realization of immense changes over life (we generally seem more similar to our peers than to ourselves at very different life stages), or how we generally function (go through the list of cognitive biases, this is our primary mode of operation; or, consider how split brain patients seem almost unchanged post-operation, basically just with few curious "glitches")
Depends on what you mean by "a vehicle like that" - Russian launches for example routinely happen in (low) sub freezing temps (compounded by often strong wind of the steppe) - and in fact the only launch of Buran likely happened in such temperatures, too (middle of November, early morning; 60+ km/h wind 3+ hours & 2 orbits later at the nearby landing strip; too bad no snow yet, would be apt, with a name of the vehicle meaning "blizzard").
While local rates should be still* somewhat higher with mobile - the latter typically offer the same rate throughout whole country, no matter where the called number is. With people becoming more mobile in general, that could very well have the affect of lower overall charges (well, quite likely really often higher in absolute terms, as far as I can tell - but that's largely because we keep in touch much more actively)
There was a problem with international rates for some time - but that is rapidly improving for a year or two (in the one place of many smallish countries I'm familiar with...), charges now becoming not much higher than country calling - and actually, it's not terribly hard to find offers which, in many cases (for some group of neighbouring countries, typically), already offer the same rates as mobile country calling (which BTW, yes, typically means they are less expensive than long-distance country land line rates).
Is this argument, that you mention, how telecom PR tries to convince you it's a good idea, tries to justify it? (plus, the one who initiates, who desires a conversation, should pay for it... )
* Honestly, I didn't care enough to compare for a long time. The monthly contract payment for - barely used - land line trumped any expected differences over half a decade ago already.
Most of the imagined usage scenarios seem like something which needs minuscule amounts of data - not much beyond "pinging" the network from time to time, to maintain connection. Probably in the daily range of how much one web page loading weights (yes, mostly in the other direction, but...)
If they really tried, it could perhaps even mostly piggyback on some routine control channels (kinda like SMS does, "free" to the carriers; and like WAP did). Bandwidth doesn't seem like the biggest obstacle here, seamless & sensible integration of affordable (no over-engineered) solutions might be the prime one.
Generally, Germany tries to be (with mixed results) quite cautious, vigilant about things which can negatively brand a group of people by some vague association. You see, they had a bad experience with such practices, in the first half of XX century.
For example, AFAIK, German authorities don't really follow the statistics about ethnicity, skin colour, "race" of their population, they don't really know how it's distributed (does Berlin has, say, 100k or 300k black people? Who knows; at most one can tell, I think, how many immigrated from African countries)
Also... what, are we really not satisfied from how the unnamed criminal will get, considered fair by the courts, officially sanctioned punishment? Wishing for "traditional" treatment, with simplistic views of overall effects on the world? (come to think of it, what happened during WW2 wasn't that unusual, in human history - it was mostly how new methods & technology allowed for terrifying scales and efficiencies) Would we like some groups of people to take matters in their own hands?... (vigilantism seems to be revving up on the web as is, anyway, up to libel with impunity; lets be careful not to return to extralegal punishments, mob justice, witch-hunts...)
An atheist might say that it is impossible to "defame" a religion, since they're all made up anyway.
Actually, he might just say that religions defame each other constantly, anyway:P (and "a hard-line Christian or Muslim" might not really care about other than his)
German courts have ruled that the names of criminals cannot be published alongside their crimes, regardless of the fact that they actually committed such crimes (not "may have committed", but "actually did commit").
The real goal doesn't need to be, typically implied by critics, "protecting the criminal" and such. This can be also easily about protecting random others who will get caught in the debris. Kinda like what Xest points out, "in the article you linked there's a fair argument that condemning religious hate speak has the goal of preventing unnecessary violence in the world"
Opposition to such anonymity perhaps partly stems, also, from "traditional" outlooks at punishment... but remember, those were formed when words couldn't travel very far anyway, and communities were rather small.
However - in case you haven't noticed - the apes running around figured out mass-media & long-distance communication (we're probably on different continents...). And they don't waste time, they breed quite a lot - but at the same time they are very sentimental about already obsolete (given the numbers of apes involved and their reach; after only around 2 to 3 centuries, in most places - earlier, even just one name was enough) but popular means of identification and tracing "lineage" (even if it's largely just one of their myths, considering the typical levels of infidelity & just very recent appearance of genetic paternity tests)
It can even jump across generations (for example: nobody even remembers, nobody really knows why the Cagots were shunted, hated, and prosecuted; "because they come from Cagot family" seemed to be the only consistant reason; rhyming songs kept the names of Cagot families known, after the first efforts of govs which tried to abolish this injustice - yeah, those evil entities, of which UN is the ~top reflection)
I've had enough of this throughout all of my youth (if not exactly the same kind - strong ostracism starting, largely, from a random name; which was just a bit too meaningful linguistically, in a somewhat unfortunate way; all in a small, provincial, "decent" city, of the kind respecting "traditional values"). It's not pretty (and you probably can't understand it if your whole early life hasn't been shaped by such)...it was hell, actually (drop the "many have worse" - one can say that to pretty much anybody...what matters in the end, I suspect, is the amount of shared experiences with a group / exclusion from positive ones; also, after quickly glancing over,
Govs ultimately reflect wishes and desires of societies, especially in moderately functional democracies. They're very much in the "market" - greatly influenced by those who have the means (which always largely boiled down to wealth) to do it; who are happy by people like you wounding up on myths.
~"Half a century ago it was so great" ("In your lifetime (unless you were born prior to 1965), the conditions have been deteriorating") is one of those myths. Most hilariously and paradoxically, considering you cherish it so much:
America in the 1950s was a middle-class society in a way that America in the 1990s is not. That is, it had a much flatter income distribution, so that people had much more sense of sharing a common national lifestyle. And people in that relatively equal America felt good about their lives, even though by modern standards, they were poor--poorer, if Boskin is correct, than we previously thought. Doesn't this mean, then, that having a more or less equal distribution of income makes for a happier society, even if it does not raise anyone's material standard of living? That is, you can use the fact that people did not feel poor in the 1950s as an argument for a more radical egalitarianism than even most leftists would be willing to espouse.
...no lack of stories of people risking life and limb for other people, not to mention for peoples' pets (where, I think, you'll find that human capacity to make even non-humans members of the tribe) that the statement "We're all just greedy, even altruism is greed based upon delayed reward" does not explain human behavior.
Oh but it does - it's just that evolution (ALL about the "delayed reward") cares more about groups, over longish periods, than about the level of individuals. Also evolution of societies, the one which determines which will become stronger and dominate, one way or another, over others (and note how much easier - also for present us, "civilised" people - it is to wage destruction on humans when they are different enough, mostly far away; and to see it as "just war" or some such)
As for pets, we possibly see animals in a bit atypical & strange way, perhaps because the primates are usually mostly hunted upon or fighting (also killing) among their species - and, once we started serious hunts, we used, we externalised this aggression to our prey, to some other animals...but since it was tapping into mechanisms directed for many millions of years mostly towards our "kins", it brought over other effects. And to what degree - heck, we basically worshipped our prey, in animist beliefs; which also still greatly influences present religions (holy blood & flesh, sacrifice, "lamb of god" origin, those are post-animism rituals of ex-hunter-gatherers) ...or so the hypothesis goes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_Necans http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunting_hypothesis
Still, note how we generally value more the "smallish, cute and fluffy" kind of animals (curiously, somewhat reminiscent of typical primate, especially juvenile...). Plus it's strongly cultural conditioning - most people in our culture don't really care about cows for example, but go to one subcontinent... (where, in the general region, qualms against eating dogs or cats are often almost nil; the differences possibly stemming from much longer importance of agriculture)
Anyway, we most likely greatly contribute to what will be most rapid extinction events in geological record, I don't quite see it as indicative of how "caring" we are towards other lifeforms...
Makes sense, doesn't it? If only because the deities involved in such, would probably have more "resources" of sorts (what, we should just believe there's nothing gods get out of us?[1]) / dominate over others /...evolution:>
Overall - yes, probably one of my less stupid ideas;) (a moment of divine inspiration?;) )
Also, just logically follow the "in image" premise...it would obviously be about the mind, behaviour, the biggest things which distinguish us; in "body" we are virtually identical to many higher mammals.
"Morality" then also, at least rough draft of it. And now, lets see... how do we treat bacteria?[2] (heck, we hardly even realized they existed until a mere ~2 centuries ago - except for the effects of their very collective "work" on which our existence depends, and also to make some things more... tasty:> )
1. And furthermore, consider how for example the main Abrahamic deity is clearly established, in its own sacred texts, as capable of lying and deceiving people (also the "righteous forefathers")...why the admitted instances of it should be the only ones?
2. Looking at the mythological claims about "power" and such, that's the rough approximation of distance between us an gods...makes their very human behaviours, known from their very own mythologies, even more "sad" (but then, that's not something readily apparent to, say, primitive desert people; it's just a reflection of them)
Bacteria, that's BTW something the deity would have told us, right, if caring? Would save us tons of suffering (but maybe going against the "tasty") when it comes to diseases, imagine how many people pasteurization would save. Plus, bacteria are the dominating life form on this planet; there are more bacterial cells in & on our bodies than "human" ones, we are a walking colonies of bacteria (which could also nicely fit to this analogy with gods, in a twist taking it further[3] than "we are sensory organs";p )
3. This gets into factual...people do sustain gods, gods do die when we stop worship them (how many people take Greek Pantheon seriously now? Or Norse one, per image I linked)
Then, ultimately, we might as well create them; maybe that's our "purpose" (per one Arthur C. Clarke quote)
From the dynamics of rape-infested areas, it seems such mostly just adds lots more brutality to ~all rapes (that's the real world for you, can't run away from it)
The 30% countries tend to have greater emphasis on "traditional values" or hold of religious movements on the population; movements which incidentally do push for "monogamy and selective partnering" or "abstinence before marriage" - while even actively discouraging methods which do take into account human nature. Ultimately, it's a dazzled approach which just doesn't work.
Moreover, homosexuality in males seems to be linked to greater fertility of their sisters, as some demographic analyses suggest. And it might be actually a decent trade off.
Sure, it's not quite on the level of the bees or such, when it comes to the efforts put in assuring the survival and reproduction of your kins more than yourself (they have some curious genetics which strongly promotes that, IIRC "sisters" being more related to themselves than to a hypothetical offspring a worker could spawn from its genetic material), but...
BTW, I doubt it would work like that with priests, bishops, etc. - Catholicism, where it's officially[1] not allowed as it is now, by itself forms a slight majority of Christianity anyway...
1. Though there are claims of few prominent ex-priests (which does have its own problems of course, The reliability of apostates' testimony) from my place (only 2nd half relevant, from the quote) that the vast majority of priests engages in sex in full meaning of the word, most having some woman on the side (and how many has children?) [2]
Local historic circumstances of celibate introduction are slightly hilarious - the nuncio of the Vatican first brought the news to the clergy in the predecessor state of Czech Republic, they calmly accepted it and... continued doing what every man needs, just relatively secretly. The following visit of the nuncio in then-Poland didn't go so smooth - apparently, he barely escaped with his life:P (of course, after some grumbling the ~polish clergy also officially accepted the new rules; and also mostly continued having "wife" on the side)
2. The other things is, the difference between "vast majority" and "most" in such descriptions probably comes from... disproportionally high share of homosexuals. I seem to notice, here and there / through cracks, a view that religious life is good for such men - because it will ~"help them not to sin" (of course in reality, it seems like it might just as readily result in occasional - harmful to others - deviations, ultimately)
My buddy, who was in a monastery, claims that at least 1/3rd of the brethren at that particular monastery were gay, so much higher than in general population (coincidentally, he is also gay; but that wasn't the reason he remained only for probationary period - it seems that Catholic Church still has some reservations against epileptics in their ranks...). At least with monasteries it can be seen as a fairly good "solution" - them probably having not too bad of a life & maybe decent amount of fun, overall:P (vs. a comparatively "isolated" priest in typical parish, forced to try suppressing it all)
Which, again, might promote the fertility of their sisters... (specially with families being often on the larger side)
Of course, if you have a smartphone, you'll realise that most phone numbers aren't worth expending effort to remember, because your phone will do it for you. If a phone number is worth remembering, it's worth keeping in your phone's memory.
More like: if you have (just) a mobile phone - no need to go into smartphone territory, mobiles which won't do it for you are very rare for quite some time. Something like Nokia 1280 (or the new 100), among the least expensive phones at 20€ without contract, apparently has a phonebook for 500 entries (probably apart from the SIM card memory, the way this seems to usually work) - most likely way more than enough for vast majority of people. Even 50 entries (plus SIM card memory; here I'm sure, I borrowed this phone 5 years ago when my main one malfunctioned) of Nokia 1100 (just the most popular single consumer electronic device in the history of mankind) is probably enough for most.
At this point, I have a hard time understanding why anybody would want to remember phone numbers (apart from few essential ones of course - and even most of those would do fine as scribbles on a piece of paper, also carried around); unless it's a hobby or such.
And when utilising built-in notes, also such(^) phones can hold even more of the necessary numbers (at least of the "not secret" type, as most of them are)
Ultimately, the progress of our civilisation depends on, is largely about ever more efficient utilisation of prostheses for our minds - minds which have limited capacities, freeing them for new, upcoming pursuits and specialisations. The progress being largely about pushing old tools, habits, necessities, requirements, and skills of some bygone eras outside of the things we need to concern ourselves about. Many skills and activities which dominated the past become either obsolete or "hidden" from us.
Not far from it. For a time, before they seized power, too many thought it's best to "tame" the Nazis, co-opt them into mainstream politics, overlook some of their... flaws for the sake of the process. One high figure, when hearing about the first reasonably strong election result for the faction of Hitler, uttered ~"we have him!"
If there is really a God, and I am keeping an open mind, I believe he, she, or it would not be very happy with the things perpetrated in his name
I don't know, total lack of reaction (which would be supposedly of zero effort) leads to conclusion that he, she, or it is at the very least indifferent.
Or maybe... I have an impression that one of the few things which would make sense (you know, logic, supposedly one of the gifts which makes us ~"in image"...surely not to be discarded in such cases?), is if ~souls (flavoured in a way preferred by each deity; so far winning ones perhaps not so clear;p ) are essentially a food; or maybe sensory organs of sorts, etc.
Other things which would readily make sense being even more unsettling... (spoiled kid with an ant farm; or maybe destroyer and damager, the worst of sinners; or the twists in classic dystheism, maltheism, gnosticism - unfortunately for the Gnostics, following the true deity and uncovering the real nature of the mainstream Christian one as an usurper, the Demiurge, gets you branded by his influence as a heretic and is overall a relatively dangerous thing to do;p )
Commonly accepted "misunderstandings" are the true face of religions; it's what makes them, what forms their actual dynamics, what drives religions as popular social movements.
Their true living versions are the frakked up versions, those which had a competitive edge in displacing most of the others (quite often also "better" - but, evolution is indifferent); not the niche forms which stem from elevating the confirmation bias to art form by some statistically insignificant self-absorbed adepts of mental masturbation. The latter are a background noise without much of any significance (well, occasionally what one random one utters - in the sea of others - might stick, one way or another, in very evolved form, via societal dynamics beyond his real control or often even grasp)
Or, in more general terms, look at the list of cognitive biases. This is our primary mode of operation.
Among those particularly influencing the movements in question - how we merely like to convince ourselves about the reliability of our memory, how many myths about it and our minds we tend to believe.
The myths of "good old times" or ~"moral and intellectual demise of youth will destroy civilisation" are known virtually since the beginning of written word. And when people get older, they tend to start believing myths about the greatness of their youth (not the least because it makes us feel better when faced with "frustrating" reality of how much better in fact it is "now", for most cases of "now")...those are at the core of quite a few anti-progressive approaches.
More specifically, valuing more when getting older the lies from most of ancient mythologies, from the times when most of humanity was only shifting from ~hunter-gatherer to sedentary lifestyle, "we're so important[1], gods love us, I will survive[2] and get a reward, I'm so good and decent[3]" ( 1. BTW supposed "concerns" over the dead, people are happy to believe the myth of "more of us live now than have ever lived!" & ignore 100+ billion dead homo sapiens - at least we will be similarly ignored very quickly, so there's some "balance"... 2. generally the myth of "monolithic me" - while not only at any given time we're possibly closer to our peers than to ourselves at very different life stages, even split-brain patients are almost unchanged and there's one localized brain trauma resulting in people becoming completely blind without them realizing it 3. it's a bit sad how our deep need for Just World(tm) gets derailed so easily by us convincing ourselves of this one:/ )
Curious how "big miracles" disappear over time, eh? (and what's left stems mostly from misunderstanding of statistics in medical outcomes - but why it's a "miracle" only when organism sometimes manages to beat something serious, why not when it succumbs to common flu? Where are regrown limbs or survivors of decapitation?)
Furthermore, the premise in...
What makes religion religion as opposed to a mere collection of rituals and superstitions are the people that indoctrinate
...seems to ignore the crazy amounts of syncretism present around. Look at geographically distributed versions of supposedly the same religion; they are largely determined by what they absorbed locally / over time, organically and without clear guidance.
When applying some rigor, it's not very clear if, for example, local flavors of Christianity are closer to Christianity from X century [a] or to pagan practices from the same time (in either case, vast majority of present "Christians" would be branded - and treated - as very strong heretics by "Christians" living just few short centuries ago)
a. The time of "National Baptism" myth from my place - while the Pagan Reaction from XI century is of course forgotten; when the Christian ruler had to escape, priests & churches were annihilated as readily as it was done few decades ea
On the computer / hub side, "up" tends to be up of whole device, away from the centre of local gravitational well; especially ever since laptops dominate sales. Or at least, I don't think I ever encountered a USB hub or laptop which wouldn't have them in the proper orientation (though I probably wouldn't care to remember some isolated cases...but I would almost certainly notice if "logo = up" wasn't very dependable), or a motherboard for that matter (stationary machines aren't so obvious for "average Joe" of course, but everybody here should know which side of the motherboard is "up" - and backplate USB ports seem to always follow it; front / case ports seem to follow the gravity, unless perhaps they're vertically oriented on the side...but in such case, I think "up" tends to be "front" - so fairly natural when holding the plug & feeling the logo under thumb)
Or is that some quirk of the machines which lead you to invoking ancient deities in your signature?;) (well, their manufacturer certainly likes smooth USB plugs...)
Note that I'm not saying that there isn't a single holocaust denier, Mao/Kim Jong-Il/Stalin worshiper in the university system; that's like claiming that there's not a single Christian who doesn't support protesting dead soldiers funerals
Even further - that's like claiming there are no universities in North Korea... (or, to a lesser degree, China)
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Explain to them what a rem is, and how the sun gives you more radiation in a day than most people will experience, with the exception of medical imaging devices and flying on high-altitude airplanes, throughout their lives.
But that^ is still contrary to "above all, no lies. No propaganda. Just the truth, detailing what we do know, what we do not know, and where any potential problems may be." right after it (almost like you just can't help it, go in the direction of glorifying nuclear) - you can't have it both ways, it would provoke a justifiable backlash and ridicule (and probably reminding also, yeah, of a bit insane approach to nuclear in the past)
...municipalities can have problems with electricity, water, or sewerage infrastructure. I just don't trust them with anything nuclear, not in the landscapes dominated by "lowest bidder" and nepotism (typically rampant at the level of small communities).
...except when glorifying the push for nuclear of those places. That is a WTH of truly massive proportions. ...the energy released by already existing reactors); or cherishing lightweight reactor designs meant for space ...which don't have to worry about shielding, costs, waste disposal, or even refueling.
...we'll see what the German experiment gives in few decades - and it is good in the sense that one technologically and scientifically competent place tries other routes; just like the French quest to optimise nuclear) part of whole solution - probably one of more sensible ways to generate large part of base load.
You mention how we receive radiation when stepping outside - actually, we receive radiation also when inside of course, many buildings have quite elevated levels of radon for example. But it's a baseline, it's insincere to essentially dismiss additional sources.
With the concern about small & distributed nuclear reactors that I voiced there, the point wasn't so much about the technology, but about the talent of people to frak things up - particularly at the level of small town utilities. Not about the technical side - but governance, delegation of responsibility, etc.
And FFS, people have even a hard time of accepting that dumping millions of tons of CO2, that the planet kept in its lithosphere, can disrupt the balance; or, from a looser related field, with something having so much support, so much evidence, as biological evolution. We're not really close to the level of maturity which small reactors everywhere would demand, if we'll ever be.
Also, by which standards would we really judge such reactors to be safe safe, and their operators sufficiently (5yo level) smart? Those used with Fukushima / in Japan? (it also was essentially counted among "nothing can go wrong")
(also, you might be too optimistic about their potential impact - say, kinda like blanketing of an area with small explosives tends to be much more destructive than one gargantuan (that's also the case with MIRVs & their warheads); similar effects could manifest themselves, over long periods of time, for many small vs. few large power plants)
BTW, there's this fascinating, to me, phenomena with many of the devotees in the style of AC: this place is generally quite dismissive of Chinese or Indian technical prowess...
(well, at least I have an impression how the latter group is so large that it must include many from the former)
Heck, I've seen some people treating nuclear power plants as some kind of self-sustaining organism which should cover essentially as much of the planet as it can (supposedly everything needed for that goal coming from
I see nuclear as likely (not certain
But it won't do much as long people will just want more, more, more without restraint; without recognizing what's good enough, nuclear won't change much. There is no sane reason
But you miss the larger context, overlook that other approaches would also benefit from this, probably not making that much of an impact on relative competitiveness. What I'm also saying is they don't exist in isolation from the rest of the world (soooo... for example, yes, weapons; many more impactors - and you can't prove much with hypervelocity impacts - "oh well, another small asteroid hitting big target"; or: in-situ manufacturing tech would be viable at lower level of sophistication (more massive), while still probably ending up smaller and spawning colonies much faster than a ship which aims for providing comforts to largish crew)
...so, it would need to be non-rocket based launch to LEO (which wouldn't bring quite the kind of changes), not strictly "engines" as imagined.
...except embryos!).
...which, really, boils down to "OK, but what would you be doing 'there'?" Well, all we do boils down to resource gathering and manufacturing. ...but what for?
Most importantly: even I think about "really powerful" lifting, I'm not thinking "magic" - but something which is still plausible
(and yes, when talking about the "magical nanotech" variant above, I treat it only as a possibility which doesn't appear to be contrary to what this universe really is - it's quite lonely in that among most scifi fantasies)
Mass driver of some kind looks like most plausible (other proposals tend to be too silly even as far as mega-structures go), launching pellets (likely still not entirely non-rocket based) carrying small parts (just to assemble one 10k in LEO?); maybe something like Startram (and probably only its smaller versions - meaning, passengers would still have to go up on, at most, a version of "pellet" which is very akin to present launch vehicles
Anyway, I think you're severely overstating what 10k would give. Nearest analogue is probably such submarine at best, ~= at the largest (but probably closer to Kilo class, type XXI u-boot, Kobben, or even VII) - considering, cargo, landers, propulsion and fuel (...oh yeah, it would need to have its own to take it out of LEO, and lots of it[1]: direct Hohmann transfer orbit from Earth to Jupiter takes roughly as much delta-v as launch to LEO itself - I assume you don't like the idea of long trajectories via gravity assists).
So "low cost" is an understatement, probably an order of magnitude more expensive than most expensive subs (and they're... too expensive, there's plenty of efforts around to lower their costs while at best keeping the capabilities), imposed by the much harsher conditions and without the convenience of being able to surface to safety at moments notice; things are harder in space... lack of efficient cooling method for one. Propulsion is also much easier, no need to carry reaction mass (which would be likely a majority of the whole, together with the engine)
Typical subs also have way too large crews & little automation, we don't have the required tech here (it's again much harder when you can't just surface); "largish" crew variants would still be fairly small by necessity... travel time would still be long (so... somebody might take a stash of embryos after all, tens of thousands could be less massive than one crew member; then somebody might realize this crew member wasn't really needed after all, and maybe another, and so on)
And that's ignoring cost of operations
And I assume fancy 10k would be meant to return
And the thing with radiation was how fiction badly influences our imagination - as depicted they offered virtually no protection (and BTW where were the radiators? At least Avatar does their size decently, as a starting point)
Bases on the Antarctic essentially have this model: 10k+ vessels, no problem with propulsion, everything carried there.
The failure mode on that cold day was hardly due to non-expandability: Ares V stack WOULD ALSO DISINTEGRATE in the event of SRB burning through one of its attachment points, and wrecking havoc...
...of course, most likely, largely because it was done a decade later, with problems better understood.
The end result really had nothing to do with side-placement of the orbiter, TPS, or overall fragility.
Plus, part of the point was a side note how the Soviets apparently didn't think much about inaugural launch of their shuttle (also side-attached) in conditions when NASA probably would prefer to have its hw in hangars - but then, they worked since the beginning with reality of the Kazakh steppe (or even Plesetsk Cosmodrome, not far from Arctic Circle...), and didn't bothered with segmented SRBs; also their heat shield implementation - which BTW was launched through heavy cloud cover - was possibly somewhat better, reportedly suffering only marginal damage in its inaugural flight (again, through heavy cloud cover)
And anyway, protecting TPS is not the only role of external tank thermal blanket, and the simplest demonstration of that is: the foam is sprayed also on parts of the ET which have no chance of shedding ice onto the orbiter. It also maintains the quality of cryogenic propellants; during launch, it keeps the structure within design temperature limits - and, by the same property, assures low altitude (predictable, within impact boundary limits) ET breakup.
Of course: yes, expendables are more sensible overall, you don't have to convince me of that - there was plenty more wrong than side-attachment with the concept of glorified Flash Gordon style glider contraption, riding on popular myths, (merely) appearing to the masses as something as sleek as, say, Concorde (but in space!!111); a spacecraft wasting most of its launched mass on airframe.
It was just a bit... pointless, and outright stupid with its treatment of safety. Pointless in how it was demonstrably a very suboptimal approach - all boiling down to how it didn't really deliver on any of its premises and promises, while eating the funds (both implementations). Stupid not only in the sense that over-complication impacted safety (~= costs!) for no real gain, also in how it was presented like just as safe as an airliner, using some very flawed metrics (which Feynman pointed out in his report).
And yeah, stupid ~politics... (also with both implementations)
(you can see in large part of my visible recent comments how I'm often frustrated at this, how the shuttles probably retarded progress for at least two decades; also at myself, sort of, for being so easily taken as a kid by "cool spaceplane")
PS. Sorry for late post, an old email client script reminded me the discussion expires; better late than never, I guess.
Show them how hard it is for something to undergo an uncontrolled nuclear fission reaction, show them how the danger of fallout and radioactivity is inversely related to time. Explain to them what a rem is, and how the sun gives you more radiation in a day than most people will experience, with the exception of medical imaging devices and flying on high-altitude airplanes, throughout their lives. And above all, no lies. No propaganda. Just the truth, detailing what we do know, what we do not know, and where any potential problems may be.
So just before "no lies. No propaganda" you essentially advocate... "supportive" disinformation, great. I mean, surely you must know there are different kinds of radiation - those reaching us from the Sun much easier to manage, not really comparable to what is at hand here, not even ionizing (even if UV might slightly resemble such, in its biologically damaging potential; still, much easier manageable).
...and repeat few times. ...AND, most importantly, despite Fukushima plant certainly being counted, before the incident, among the shining beacons of nuclear energy! (not specifically of course, just among many others)
...and what ever happened to "electricity will be so cheap it won't make sense to meter it!!"?)
...how much trust do you really have, in (many!) people at such levels, to not cut corners or be careless?)
Pretending like all kinds of radiation are the same can serve also nuclear devotees, it seems... really, perhaps the education should start with them.
Witness how their rhetoric unfolded during Fukushima: at the beginning, we had "so, we have a bit of a situation, X happened, but surely not X+1" - but wait few days or so, and suddenly it was "so, X+1 happened, but surely not X+2"
Such things don't breed trust, not one bit. More - that is an evidence of issues (of whatever kind), justifying concerns (which can be also framed in a less dignified term "fear") about "environmentally sound operation" or "careful" - a very visible example of somewhat "uncontrolled nuclear fission reaction" despite major efforts of a place seen as among most technically adept
The thing with "careful disposal of the waste" - it turned out to be much bigger problem than anticipated; not so much the technical side of it, but political and cost considerations, making the nuclear much less attractive than it seemed, justifiably blunting the early enthusiasm (seriously, look back at those early times, people had a bit insane approach
And the inverse relation of time vs. the danger of fallout and radioactivity isn't much of a consolation for those in the "wrong" place and time (which could be made somewhat more likely by massive adoption of many miniature reactors - I mean, we are talking here about the approach, costs & responsibility distribution more akin to water or sewerage, in how they are municipality services
Now, I'm generally the first to lament the colossal waste of one local abortive attempt, and I can seriously consider moving to the backyard of a nuclear power plant my place probably needs to build in a decade or two (well, not literal "backyard" if only because that would still be a noisy industrial plant; but many likely benefits all around of such neighborhood, among them possible voluntary expulsion of large part of stupid people)
But don't pretend the devotees (essentially a sort of "nuclear cargo cult") aren't a problem, too - an image one, at least, in the name of willingness to overlook issues.
Look at the first AC reply to your post - pretending like pebble bed reactors are proven tech; but for example ignoring how they share one major problem with RBMK (Czernobyl) reactors - they are essentially giant stakes of coal; how actual test reactors so far weren't entirely encouraging, anyway.
Well the point is: it's generally even more precautionary (and such) to be able to make the things or people you might need - while not depending on support & stream of resources from Earth (really, depending on local resources and locally-grown people is not just a good idea: it's an inevitability, and exactly how any long-term successful colonization came to pass even on this minuscule grain of sand we call Earth).
Furthermore, that is the best way to assure "the resources don't get spoiled (bored or damaged) on the way to wherever"[1]...
"Today" is really not that relevant here; it's not only about launch capabilities, also overall costs - even of straightforward construction. Just the difference of powerful engine wouldn't really make the burden to construct "a 10,000 ton ship" or "a space station around Jupiter, 2001 style"[2] non-astronomical - you can't really expect the people of Earth to finance such.
OTOH, in-situ approaches would make the burden minuscule, and they are quite likely to "organically" emerge within a very short few centuries or millennia (don't think about it in the scales of normal human lifetime - that's this influence of "scifi cargo cults" and popular culture uneasiness about what our universe & physics really are) - mass production, simplification, modularisation is what generally seems to do the trick in revving up large endeavors, setting up ~sustainable (if there even is such a thing with humans) industries; while few large, unique and overcomplicated artifacts generally accomplishes quite the contrary.
(1.) It's also about the odds of succeeding with few megaprojects (an approach which often gives white elephants) vs., say, ten to hundred times more (per the same cost) smaller & largely independent from the start efforts. I suspect the latter would simply utterly out-compete the former - by the time (which includes the time of construction!) the "big and glorious" gets anywhere, the place will tend to be already long taken (and again, "big and glorious" is primarily a nice, singular, big target - which, despite its scale, won't stand a chance against hypervelocity impacts), and already for some time sending its own waves of colonisation further out.
2. BTW fictional depictions: 2001 station would probably disintegrate, as depicted - any engineer will tell you that spinning an unfinished ~wheel is generally a very bad idea. Also, the radiation environment in Jupiter system is insane - its described severity during 2010 spacewalk didn't even come close, they would be all dead just from sitting inside the Discovery and Leonov for a small fraction of the time depicted in the movie. At most, better aim for a base on Callisto, it's bearable this far out.
Overall, hostile conditions are also why probes tend to be a good idea. Quite likely a better idea for now - for example together with occasional teleoperation (from Martian orbit for example - also because we don't have even a good idea how to approach landing a largish object on Mars, the planet has probably nearly the worst combination of gravity and atmosphere to do that) of one of the whole fleet of robotic explorers, some even including such torso. AI is also constantly improving (we depend on it more and more every day; but again, not the kinds of "AI" spewed out by works of fiction), it's not about being smarter than brightest humans (humans are on average pretty stupid, too - go through a list of cognitive biases), but about efficiently mass-producing & distributing suitable expertise where it's needed (and IMHO the sets of science instruments are already remarkably diverse, given the constraints)
Or, sure, we can escape into "what if" world of fantasy physics, geopolitics, or macro-economy... what those musings about 10k tons to LEO are largely about (but, BTW, you might find i
When it comes to "leave the planet in a hurry" - truth is, virtually all conceivable catastrophes would still leave the Earth much, much, much more hospitable than any other place in the system. And large part of extremely unlikely scenarios leveling the playing field across the system, would be also a major headache for the whole system...
...together with, most importantly (and disappointingly to many, I'm sure), obsoleting the grandiose styles of space travel - which I see as very much influenced by silly "scifi cargo cult" depictions in works of popular fiction; purpose of which is NOT to sensibly conceptualise space travel, their purpose is mass entertainment. If anything, they strive to be not too unfamiliar, not too different from earthly experiences and expectations (which are themselves quite distorted anyway - most people die close to where they were born), avoiding the discomfort from depicting the ABSOLUTELY WILD realities of actually existing universe and its physics - bonus: it's much, much easier to write that way, within the framework of stories known since ancient times, much easier to depict. Such fiction quite possibly already massively & negatively influenced some of our "space" goals)
...but utilizing that tech only to build "advanced" Viking longships (that's how inconsistent, that's what most scifi visions tend to be BTW).
...it would still rapidly colonise the galaxy.
BTW, the issues with launch capabilities might just become obsolete not too long time from now
While... how many people actually realize that we can already send at least vast majority of "colonists" when they are miniaturised and in deep hibernation, and that at least dozens of thousands on Earth are past the procedure? (it's fairly routine by now) Give me one medium launcher plus 100-200 million, and I can transport at least a thousand viable humans practically to anywhere in our system.
Add in-situ manufacturing, and it doesn't really matter anymore how much can we put into LEO (while we're possibly already not far from Kessler syndrome, and near Earth orbit is the ultimate asymmetric warfare battleground, really - perhaps it's best to not place there large targets for any space-capable entity which can have a whim of starting the cascade).
And if, lets say within a millennium or ten millenniums (a blink of an eye, in geological & galactic terms), in-situ manufacturing would advance to the level of ~"magical nanotech", it would also probably mean mind uploading and such at about the same moment (give or take few centuries) - making the "big & glorious" spaceships as silly as advancing the technology to the levels presently used in, say, nuclear submarines
With such "ultimate" advancements, launching billions of starwisp-like "seeds" towards stellar neighborhood, and simply ~transmitting ourselves, would rapidly (in geological terms) colonise the galaxy.
And here's the best part: even if such "ultimate" advancements turn out to be not feasible, even if we would be limited just to "plain" in-situ manufacturing, "traveling light" (embryos), and comet (and such) hopping (estimated billions of 20+ km, trillions of 1+ km comets just in our Oort Cloud, plenty to spread over thousands of years - and, inevitably, some groups would eventually hitch a ride with Oort Clouds of passing stars)
It's quite frightening how straightforward (here: old, CFC-based foam piece killed Columbia*) the facts can be, and still not work with those people... but then, myths and their collections seem to also have a much stronger grasp on them, on average.
...possibly even with its designers and decision-makers being raised on & influenced by such works of fiction (FG and so on; which mostly just naively extrapolated rapid advances in airplane tech of the ~1940s; kinda like those airplanes (Wiki Unicode URL, tends to work weird on /.) from "our" times, as imagined ~130 years ago, were undoubtedly shaped by rapid advances in marine tech - and we can even build them, basically just take a Harrier & remove wings and canopy ...it's still a horrible idea vs. "boring" reality).
...not even the worst (other being also with the basic concept, its premises and promises - obsolete even before the Shuttle seriously got onto drawing boards, for example with automatic rendezvous & docking done since the 60s)
Here, I guess also the myths of glorious-looking (kinda feels like this damn French Concorde, but better / in space!) Flash Gordon style contraptions of a spacecraft which wastes most of its LEO mass on airframe
The STS was simply deeply flawed, foam-shedding (another fact: most severe - but lucky to spare critical impact points - in early flights, which used only CFC-based foams) being just one aspect of it
Oh yeah, but it looked and felt awesome, I'd be the first to give it that (hm, yeah, "emotional" as you say)
And with the news at hand... "green" fuels are also simply much easier & safer to work with; those are things which - contrary to the suggestion of (great?)grandparent poster - tend to save time and money in the longish & up time spans (so, for once aiming at thoughtful long-term choices)
*Columbia Accident Investigation Board Report, Volume 2, Appendix D, Section 11.3 and figure 11-1, p222
Food for thought[1]: your body, your cells constantly "recycle" large part of the matter used as their constituent parts - there are quite few of the atoms forming your body at birth remaining in you (also proportionally, accounting for later mass gains).
;p
So... what is your age, are you the same human as at birth?[2]
BTW, ponder in which ways what you thought as the precious part of your body gets disposed of...
Or, more seriously, how it is quite universal for humans to believe in "really me" surviving death of all things, with their body essentially discarded - evidently we are quite open to accepting the idea of single entity, single being continuing its existence despite none of its verifiable original parts doing so (maybe/hopefully it means there won't be too much fuss about mind uploading)
Also: the ship of Theseus.
1. Even seems like not a bad pun here, in context.
2. TBH I would argue not quite (likewise me of course) - the "monolithic me" is largely a myth allowed also by our, really, quite poor memory and such; hiding from us the full realization of immense changes over life (we generally seem more similar to our peers than to ourselves at very different life stages), or how we generally function (go through the list of cognitive biases, this is our primary mode of operation; or, consider how split brain patients seem almost unchanged post-operation, basically just with few curious "glitches")
Depends on what you mean by "a vehicle like that" - Russian launches for example routinely happen in (low) sub freezing temps (compounded by often strong wind of the steppe) - and in fact the only launch of Buran likely happened in such temperatures, too (middle of November, early morning; 60+ km/h wind 3+ hours & 2 orbits later at the nearby landing strip; too bad no snow yet, would be apt, with a name of the vehicle meaning "blizzard").
While local rates should be still* somewhat higher with mobile - the latter typically offer the same rate throughout whole country, no matter where the called number is. With people becoming more mobile in general, that could very well have the affect of lower overall charges (well, quite likely really often higher in absolute terms, as far as I can tell - but that's largely because we keep in touch much more actively)
There was a problem with international rates for some time - but that is rapidly improving for a year or two (in the one place of many smallish countries I'm familiar with...), charges now becoming not much higher than country calling - and actually, it's not terribly hard to find offers which, in many cases (for some group of neighbouring countries, typically), already offer the same rates as mobile country calling (which BTW, yes, typically means they are less expensive than long-distance country land line rates).
Is this argument, that you mention, how telecom PR tries to convince you it's a good idea, tries to justify it? (plus, the one who initiates, who desires a conversation, should pay for it... )
* Honestly, I didn't care enough to compare for a long time. The monthly contract payment for - barely used - land line trumped any expected differences over half a decade ago already.
Most of the imagined usage scenarios seem like something which needs minuscule amounts of data - not much beyond "pinging" the network from time to time, to maintain connection. Probably in the daily range of how much one web page loading weights (yes, mostly in the other direction, but...)
If they really tried, it could perhaps even mostly piggyback on some routine control channels (kinda like SMS does, "free" to the carriers; and like WAP did). Bandwidth doesn't seem like the biggest obstacle here, seamless & sensible integration of affordable (no over-engineered) solutions might be the prime one.
For example, AFAIK, German authorities don't really follow the statistics about ethnicity, skin colour, "race" of their population, they don't really know how it's distributed (does Berlin has, say, 100k or 300k black people? Who knows; at most one can tell, I think, how many immigrated from African countries)
Also... what, are we really not satisfied from how the unnamed criminal will get, considered fair by the courts, officially sanctioned punishment? Wishing for "traditional" treatment, with simplistic views of overall effects on the world? (come to think of it, what happened during WW2 wasn't that unusual, in human history - it was mostly how new methods & technology allowed for terrifying scales and efficiencies) Would we like some groups of people to take matters in their own hands?... (vigilantism seems to be revving up on the web as is, anyway, up to libel with impunity; lets be careful not to return to extralegal punishments, mob justice, witch-hunts...)
An atheist might say that it is impossible to "defame" a religion, since they're all made up anyway.
Actually, he might just say that religions defame each other constantly, anyway :P (and "a hard-line Christian or Muslim" might not really care about other than his)
German courts have ruled that the names of criminals cannot be published alongside their crimes, regardless of the fact that they actually committed such crimes (not "may have committed", but "actually did commit").
The real goal doesn't need to be, typically implied by critics, "protecting the criminal" and such. This can be also easily about protecting random others who will get caught in the debris. Kinda like what Xest points out, "in the article you linked there's a fair argument that condemning religious hate speak has the goal of preventing unnecessary violence in the world"
...it was hell, actually (drop the "many have worse" - one can say that to pretty much anybody ...what matters in the end, I suspect, is the amount of shared experiences with a group / exclusion from positive ones; also, after quickly glancing over,
Opposition to such anonymity perhaps partly stems, also, from "traditional" outlooks at punishment... but remember, those were formed when words couldn't travel very far anyway, and communities were rather small.
However - in case you haven't noticed - the apes running around figured out mass-media & long-distance communication (we're probably on different continents...). And they don't waste time, they breed quite a lot - but at the same time they are very sentimental about already obsolete (given the numbers of apes involved and their reach; after only around 2 to 3 centuries, in most places - earlier, even just one name was enough) but popular means of identification and tracing "lineage" (even if it's largely just one of their myths, considering the typical levels of infidelity & just very recent appearance of genetic paternity tests)
Large part of what you're doing by publishing names, is exposing to ostracism plenty of people who share them by pure chance.
It most likely would be like that even with photos, half of humanity is similar to somebody. I've had 2 instances of clearly non-demented people being mistakenly absolutely sure I'm one of their buddies (me even looking rather uncommonly with longish hair and some beard, 600k city, random encounters in the public transport and in a swimming pool changing room). It's much worse when people kinda-think-they-remember some random face they've seen few times in the news / we are very bad at remembering such random ones, really: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mistaken_identity , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eyewitness_identification , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eyewitness_testimony , "it has been shown that in experimental tasks, participant performance was closer to chance than actually being able to recognize faces previously presented"
Publish whole address, neighbourhood - and you expose the locals to blame and ostracism by association.
It can even jump across generations (for example: nobody even remembers, nobody really knows why the Cagots were shunted, hated, and prosecuted; "because they come from Cagot family" seemed to be the only consistant reason; rhyming songs kept the names of Cagot families known, after the first efforts of govs which tried to abolish this injustice - yeah, those evil entities, of which UN is the ~top reflection)
I've had enough of this throughout all of my youth (if not exactly the same kind - strong ostracism starting, largely, from a random name; which was just a bit too meaningful linguistically, in a somewhat unfortunate way; all in a small, provincial, "decent" city, of the kind respecting "traditional values"). It's not pretty (and you probably can't understand it if your whole early life hasn't been shaped by such)
~"Half a century ago it was so great" ("In your lifetime (unless you were born prior to 1965), the conditions have been deteriorating") is one of those myths. Most hilariously and paradoxically, considering you cherish it so much:
America in the 1950s was a middle-class society in a way that America in the 1990s is not. That is, it had a much flatter income distribution, so that people had much more sense of sharing a common national lifestyle. And people in that relatively equal America felt good about their lives, even though by modern standards, they were poor--poorer, if Boskin is correct, than we previously thought. Doesn't this mean, then, that having a more or less equal distribution of income makes for a happier society, even if it does not raise anyone's material standard of living? That is, you can use the fact that people did not feel poor in the 1950s as an argument for a more radical egalitarianism than even most leftists would be willing to espouse.
...no lack of stories of people risking life and limb for other people, not to mention for peoples' pets (where, I think, you'll find that human capacity to make even non-humans members of the tribe) that the statement "We're all just greedy, even altruism is greed based upon delayed reward" does not explain human behavior.
Oh but it does - it's just that evolution (ALL about the "delayed reward") cares more about groups, over longish periods, than about the level of individuals. Also evolution of societies, the one which determines which will become stronger and dominate, one way or another, over others (and note how much easier - also for present us, "civilised" people - it is to wage destruction on humans when they are different enough, mostly far away; and to see it as "just war" or some such)
...but since it was tapping into mechanisms directed for many millions of years mostly towards our "kins", it brought over other effects. And to what degree - heck, we basically worshipped our prey, in animist beliefs; which also still greatly influences present religions (holy blood & flesh, sacrifice, "lamb of god" origin, those are post-animism rituals of ex-hunter-gatherers)
...or so the hypothesis goes:
As for pets, we possibly see animals in a bit atypical & strange way, perhaps because the primates are usually mostly hunted upon or fighting (also killing) among their species - and, once we started serious hunts, we used, we externalised this aggression to our prey, to some other animals
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_Necans
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunting_hypothesis
Still, note how we generally value more the "smallish, cute and fluffy" kind of animals (curiously, somewhat reminiscent of typical primate, especially juvenile...). Plus it's strongly cultural conditioning - most people in our culture don't really care about cows for example, but go to one subcontinent... (where, in the general region, qualms against eating dogs or cats are often almost nil; the differences possibly stemming from much longer importance of agriculture)
Anyway, we most likely greatly contribute to what will be most rapid extinction events in geological record, I don't quite see it as indicative of how "caring" we are towards other lifeforms...
Makes sense, doesn't it? If only because the deities involved in such, would probably have more "resources" of sorts (what, we should just believe there's nothing gods get out of us?[1]) / dominate over others / ...evolution :>
;) (a moment of divine inspiration? ;) ) ...it would obviously be about the mind, behaviour, the biggest things which distinguish us; in "body" we are virtually identical to many higher mammals. :> )
...why the admitted instances of it should be the only ones?
...makes their very human behaviours, known from their very own mythologies, even more "sad" (but then, that's not something readily apparent to, say, primitive desert people; it's just a reflection of them)
;p )
...people do sustain gods, gods do die when we stop worship them (how many people take Greek Pantheon seriously now? Or Norse one, per image I linked)
Overall - yes, probably one of my less stupid ideas
Also, just logically follow the "in image" premise
"Morality" then also, at least rough draft of it. And now, lets see... how do we treat bacteria?[2] (heck, we hardly even realized they existed until a mere ~2 centuries ago - except for the effects of their very collective "work" on which our existence depends, and also to make some things more... tasty
1. And furthermore, consider how for example the main Abrahamic deity is clearly established, in its own sacred texts, as capable of lying and deceiving people (also the "righteous forefathers")
2. Looking at the mythological claims about "power" and such, that's the rough approximation of distance between us an gods
Bacteria, that's BTW something the deity would have told us, right, if caring? Would save us tons of suffering (but maybe going against the "tasty") when it comes to diseases, imagine how many people pasteurization would save. Plus, bacteria are the dominating life form on this planet; there are more bacterial cells in & on our bodies than "human" ones, we are a walking colonies of bacteria (which could also nicely fit to this analogy with gods, in a twist taking it further[3] than "we are sensory organs"
3. This gets into factual
Then, ultimately, we might as well create them; maybe that's our "purpose" (per one Arthur C. Clarke quote)
From the dynamics of rape-infested areas, it seems such mostly just adds lots more brutality to ~all rapes (that's the real world for you, can't run away from it)
The 30% countries tend to have greater emphasis on "traditional values" or hold of religious movements on the population; movements which incidentally do push for "monogamy and selective partnering" or "abstinence before marriage" - while even actively discouraging methods which do take into account human nature. Ultimately, it's a dazzled approach which just doesn't work.
Moreover, homosexuality in males seems to be linked to greater fertility of their sisters, as some demographic analyses suggest. And it might be actually a decent trade off.
:P (of course, after some grumbling the ~polish clergy also officially accepted the new rules; and also mostly continued having "wife" on the side)
:P (vs. a comparatively "isolated" priest in typical parish, forced to try suppressing it all)
Sure, it's not quite on the level of the bees or such, when it comes to the efforts put in assuring the survival and reproduction of your kins more than yourself (they have some curious genetics which strongly promotes that, IIRC "sisters" being more related to themselves than to a hypothetical offspring a worker could spawn from its genetic material), but...
BTW, I doubt it would work like that with priests, bishops, etc. - Catholicism, where it's officially[1] not allowed as it is now, by itself forms a slight majority of Christianity anyway...
1. Though there are claims of few prominent ex-priests (which does have its own problems of course, The reliability of apostates' testimony) from my place (only 2nd half relevant, from the quote) that the vast majority of priests engages in sex in full meaning of the word, most having some woman on the side (and how many has children?) [2]
Local historic circumstances of celibate introduction are slightly hilarious - the nuncio of the Vatican first brought the news to the clergy in the predecessor state of Czech Republic, they calmly accepted it and... continued doing what every man needs, just relatively secretly. The following visit of the nuncio in then-Poland didn't go so smooth - apparently, he barely escaped with his life
2. The other things is, the difference between "vast majority" and "most" in such descriptions probably comes from... disproportionally high share of homosexuals. I seem to notice, here and there / through cracks, a view that religious life is good for such men - because it will ~"help them not to sin" (of course in reality, it seems like it might just as readily result in occasional - harmful to others - deviations, ultimately)
My buddy, who was in a monastery, claims that at least 1/3rd of the brethren at that particular monastery were gay, so much higher than in general population (coincidentally, he is also gay; but that wasn't the reason he remained only for probationary period - it seems that Catholic Church still has some reservations against epileptics in their ranks...). At least with monasteries it can be seen as a fairly good "solution" - them probably having not too bad of a life & maybe decent amount of fun, overall
Which, again, might promote the fertility of their sisters... (specially with families being often on the larger side)
Of course, if you have a smartphone, you'll realise that most phone numbers aren't worth expending effort to remember, because your phone will do it for you. If a phone number is worth remembering, it's worth keeping in your phone's memory.
More like: if you have (just) a mobile phone - no need to go into smartphone territory, mobiles which won't do it for you are very rare for quite some time. Something like Nokia 1280 (or the new 100), among the least expensive phones at 20€ without contract, apparently has a phonebook for 500 entries (probably apart from the SIM card memory, the way this seems to usually work) - most likely way more than enough for vast majority of people. Even 50 entries (plus SIM card memory; here I'm sure, I borrowed this phone 5 years ago when my main one malfunctioned) of Nokia 1100 (just the most popular single consumer electronic device in the history of mankind) is probably enough for most.
At this point, I have a hard time understanding why anybody would want to remember phone numbers (apart from few essential ones of course - and even most of those would do fine as scribbles on a piece of paper, also carried around); unless it's a hobby or such.
And when utilising built-in notes, also such(^) phones can hold even more of the necessary numbers (at least of the "not secret" type, as most of them are)
Ultimately, the progress of our civilisation depends on, is largely about ever more efficient utilisation of prostheses for our minds - minds which have limited capacities, freeing them for new, upcoming pursuits and specialisations. The progress being largely about pushing old tools, habits, necessities, requirements, and skills of some bygone eras outside of the things we need to concern ourselves about. Many skills and activities which dominated the past become either obsolete or "hidden" from us.
Not far from it. For a time, before they seized power, too many thought it's best to "tame" the Nazis, co-opt them into mainstream politics, overlook some of their... flaws for the sake of the process. One high figure, when hearing about the first reasonably strong election result for the faction of Hitler, uttered ~"we have him!"
If there is really a God, and I am keeping an open mind, I believe he, she, or it would not be very happy with the things perpetrated in his name
I don't know, total lack of reaction (which would be supposedly of zero effort) leads to conclusion that he, she, or it is at the very least indifferent.
...surely not to be discarded in such cases?), is if ~souls (flavoured in a way preferred by each deity; so far winning ones perhaps not so clear ;p ) are essentially a food; or maybe sensory organs of sorts, etc. ;p )
Or maybe... I have an impression that one of the few things which would make sense (you know, logic, supposedly one of the gifts which makes us ~"in image"
Other things which would readily make sense being even more unsettling... (spoiled kid with an ant farm; or maybe destroyer and damager, the worst of sinners; or the twists in classic dystheism, maltheism, gnosticism - unfortunately for the Gnostics, following the true deity and uncovering the real nature of the mainstream Christian one as an usurper, the Demiurge, gets you branded by his influence as a heretic and is overall a relatively dangerous thing to do
Their true living versions are the frakked up versions, those which had a competitive edge in displacing most of the others (quite often also "better" - but, evolution is indifferent); not the niche forms which stem from elevating the confirmation bias to art form by some statistically insignificant self-absorbed adepts of mental masturbation. The latter are a background noise without much of any significance (well, occasionally what one random one utters - in the sea of others - might stick, one way or another, in very evolved form, via societal dynamics beyond his real control or often even grasp)
Or, in more general terms, look at the list of cognitive biases. This is our primary mode of operation.
Among those particularly influencing the movements in question - how we merely like to convince ourselves about the reliability of our memory, how many myths about it and our minds we tend to believe.
The myths of "good old times" or ~"moral and intellectual demise of youth will destroy civilisation" are known virtually since the beginning of written word. And when people get older, they tend to start believing myths about the greatness of their youth (not the least because it makes us feel better when faced with "frustrating" reality of how much better in fact it is "now", for most cases of "now")
More specifically, valuing more when getting older the lies from most of ancient mythologies, from the times when most of humanity was only shifting from ~hunter-gatherer to sedentary lifestyle, "we're so important[1], gods love us, I will survive[2] and get a reward, I'm so good and decent[3]" ( 1. BTW supposed "concerns" over the dead, people are happy to believe the myth of "more of us live now than have ever lived!" & ignore 100+ billion dead homo sapiens - at least we will be similarly ignored very quickly, so there's some "balance"... 2. generally the myth of "monolithic me" - while not only at any given time we're possibly closer to our peers than to ourselves at very different life stages, even split-brain patients are almost unchanged and there's one localized brain trauma resulting in people becoming completely blind without them realizing it 3. it's a bit sad how our deep need for Just World(tm) gets derailed so easily by us convincing ourselves of this one
Curious how "big miracles" disappear over time, eh? (and what's left stems mostly from misunderstanding of statistics in medical outcomes - but why it's a "miracle" only when organism sometimes manages to beat something serious, why not when it succumbs to common flu? Where are regrown limbs or survivors of decapitation?)
Furthermore, the premise in...
What makes religion religion as opposed to a mere collection of rituals and superstitions are the people that indoctrinate
...seems to ignore the crazy amounts of syncretism present around. Look at geographically distributed versions of supposedly the same religion; they are largely determined by what they absorbed locally / over time, organically and without clear guidance.
When applying some rigor, it's not very clear if, for example, local flavors of Christianity are closer to Christianity from X century [a] or to pagan practices from the same time (in either case, vast majority of present "Christians" would be branded - and treated - as very strong heretics by "Christians" living just few short centuries ago)
a. The time of "National Baptism" myth from my place - while the Pagan Reaction from XI century is of course forgotten; when the Christian ruler had to escape, priests & churches were annihilated as readily as it was done few decades ea
On the computer / hub side, "up" tends to be up of whole device, away from the centre of local gravitational well; especially ever since laptops dominate sales. Or at least, I don't think I ever encountered a USB hub or laptop which wouldn't have them in the proper orientation (though I probably wouldn't care to remember some isolated cases...but I would almost certainly notice if "logo = up" wasn't very dependable), or a motherboard for that matter (stationary machines aren't so obvious for "average Joe" of course, but everybody here should know which side of the motherboard is "up" - and backplate USB ports seem to always follow it; front / case ports seem to follow the gravity, unless perhaps they're vertically oriented on the side ...but in such case, I think "up" tends to be "front" - so fairly natural when holding the plug & feeling the logo under thumb)
;) (well, their manufacturer certainly likes smooth USB plugs...)
Or is that some quirk of the machines which lead you to invoking ancient deities in your signature?
Note that I'm not saying that there isn't a single holocaust denier, Mao/Kim Jong-Il/Stalin worshiper in the university system; that's like claiming that there's not a single Christian who doesn't support protesting dead soldiers funerals
Even further - that's like claiming there are no universities in North Korea... (or, to a lesser degree, China)