There are wolves in Germany. Some reintroduced, and for example some packs that crossed from Poland (which has small group in western forests, even if most of their population is in the east - where, funnily enough, wolves from Slovakia, Belarus and Ukraine also cross; general direction seems to mimic the movement of people, or perhaps the other way around)
And I should have said "can scale", I guess. Yes, many modern implementations of leaving the body to nature are somewhat bizarre, to say the least. But it can work, does work for eons.
It's quite the other way around..."natural" burials scale exceedingly well. Number of people who have ever died is estimated at around 100 billion. Add to that countless other species in the time span of hundreds of millions of years, I don't think cremation of remains (not to mention industrial diamonds) is anywhere near scalable.
But members of many/most(?) cultures prefer to perceive themselves as not quite succumbing to the forces around them in such "trivial" way; as something above them. Which, in the end, is part of few certainly still useful adaptations.
Burning wastes resources... and for what? (well, in many places burying does, too - seriously, concrete tombs and metal caskets?)
A solace for living participants that there will be some reflection about them; preferably in an orderly manner. That they will be remembered - but ultimately we ourselves don't treat very old memorials, very old customs, very old faiths as anything more than archeological curiosities.
PS. Also, Ig Nobel 2008:
ARCHAEOLOGY PRIZE. Astolfo G. Mello Araujo and José Carlos Marcelino of Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil, for measuring how the course of history, or at least the contents of an archaeological dig site, can be scrambled by the actions of a live armadillo. REFERENCE: "The Role of Armadillos in the Movement of Archaeological Materials: An Experimental Approach," Astolfo G. Mello Araujo and José Carlos Marcelino, Geoarchaeology, vol. 18, no. 4, April 2003, pp. 433-60.
They might be withholding something as well... how can we be certain? It's just about finding optimum which is good for the long term prosperity - indeed w might be damn close to it, too. Thing is, to properly gauge it requires perspective far longer than human lifespan.
For $500 million, "governmental" Russian space program would be more than happy to do it. $100 million too, most likely. In fact, to a large part they are doing it...
When looking at mission totals, there's quite a bit of a difference, energy-wise - shuttle soft landing systems form notably greater part of its total weight.
Though if Obama would be called like that in a setting where there are no other presidents, never were, and never will be... (last one always interacting in a funny way with omnipotence and which of the two spheres (earthly vs. sublime) is really in control, BTW) Yup, damn fuzzy in such case.
Anyway, certainly in practice it is presented as a name, at least at my place in the folk version. Unfortunately the dynamics of those are somewhat neglected typically (but then, at least my local flavor is not very Abrahamic and indeed not very monotheistic if looking at it with any kind of rigor; seems fairly typical, too)
Great, going into the direction of one ancient symbol, still popular in large parts of Asia but somewhat infamous for the last half a century in our cultural sphere...
(maybe not that strange though - one of the hypotheses is that galaxies, in the times when it was still possible to see them without light pollution, are what inspired it)
Considering what "pleasure" it is to deal with some London landlords, and the perpetrator here might well be one of them, it's not too improbable that many people actually didn't know they were stealing.
I almost remember how the central heating was used when there was just one metering device for each stairway (which would one for 30 apartments where I am). People... just don't possess the sense of moderation in such background utilities (which of course ended either with over-engineered heating plant, or every radiator being at most lukewarm)
And I don't know about Michigan / I won't read the link obviously - but where I live there are also places to keep oneself warm; and vast majority of freezing deaths are due to drunkenness.
Thing is how it's in the family, how it would be reasonably straightforward and what "essentially" meant here; especially when compared with all the other currently operational for a long time manned spacecraft.
(plus at least nominally it is Soyuz, 7K-L1 one, stripped and modified standard issue 1st gen one; virtually the same launchers were getting different names depending on the type of mission, too)
Take closer look at actions of leaders and judiciary or at population sentiments sometimes... (heck, it's so messed up that, while regimes of some of our allies are nominally on our side, populations seem to be actually somewhat further away than Iranians; and many not really recognizing Israel, to use this example) But do it better than remembering how WMDs were presented (really, revisit it; it was pretty conclusive, even in my "don't forget Poland" place where at the same time politicians were able to outright say "we're joining also for our future economic interests" in local media)
As for "proofs" - the deal is that somehow they didn't quite put a wedge between local powers... solid actions (I assume within limits of course) or policy statements would give somewhat better message. It wasn't about a need for espionage, just jumping at pushed labels
You complained about my usage of "West"...
So you don't remember (or don't want to look at what shaped large part of last half a century there) / there was nothing honorable about making 1953 coup d'etat happen and keeping Shah in power for the next 3 decades; with a blatant violation of democratic, etc. principles.
And once you go down the "but we make less torture" while being able to quantify with certainty how "we're million times better", there is no moral high ground left...
So we're already sure they're developing nuclear weapons? How likely they are to attack? If anything, we ourselves have shown recently that when a country cooperates with inspectors, and they give military intel that the invasion is saf^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hassurances that there is no foul play, it doesn't help much. But even few crude warheads and threats - and your country is safe. The politburo of Iran might say some things, but it doesn't change how the place is one of the most secular in the region; making them automatically "enemies" - that's somewhat further along - won't exactly allow us to exploit it. What our populations could think what one should do with an "enemy", hm? A war, obviously...
You said bad manners, not me - fact is, those in the embassy were perceived (and indeed were doing it for quite some time) as upholding previous regime. Such things tend to blow back (if only that one time...) / it's still "merely" a very serious breach of diplomatic protocol, not an invasion. Accident (plus war with, largely supported by US, Iraq) just played along... think how you would perceive such actions. "We supported our ally (1980s-era Iraq) in a war against our enemy." - and this nicely shows the issue. "Ally"? Seriously? If it's so arbitrary (face it, "enemy of our enemy" at best / just a recipe for blowbacks), then "enemy" has similarly little meaning; never mind what treatment made them an "enemy" (also, FYI Iraq was initially informed by US ambassador that it has basically free reign in dealing with Kuwait... is that what you meant by "rein them in peacefully"?)
Yes, spying, that's fine. Everybody does that on everybody. At least at the end you haven't used "enemy" / dropped the outright praises and condemnations while forgetting some important subtleties. It's not that hard to find practical reasons for some actions, within limits (mine "we must ultimately do certain things (some not)"), no need for all the promoted "us vs. them" bull-crap.
Why do you think I was talking about Israel?... look with how many other places you are allied there (hell, Egypt gets practically the same amount of aid as Israel) Or in other areas - destabilizing South America wasn't that many years ago.
WMDs in Iraq were also "facts" in all the news, across the spectrum (seriously, you don't see any similarities?). If it were something even remotely solid, you can be pretty damn sure it would surface in a much more serious way - if only because Iran wants to play a major role in its region, and ruling castes of some other places there (basically similar / still, our allies, w00t!) ultimately want to have a say in that. They would be very interested in Iran also destabilizing their regimes, in practice.
Accidentally, I'm on the East side of Prime Meridian... still, we're in the same boat (generally, I don't like West/East terms, too simplistic; even if there's nothing much better... and it's beside the point anyway)
And you do remember why they took power / from a puppet regime installed by whom, right?
"Enhanced Interrogation Techniques" - you really want to tell me you haven't heard how we justify torturing people now?! (NVM purposely keeping them in legal limbo)
Please explain how they treat us like enemies. Heck, did they at least invade somebody? (violating good diplomatic customs... borderline at best) BTW, who shot down their airliner? Who supported another nasty/nastier regime in a war with them? Sure, it's all a clusterf**k of a mess out there, we must ultimately do certain things (some not), but at least don't sing all the praises you should, all the condemnations you should... and that's it (at least the smallest bit of cynicism, for example)
It isn't quite so bad - "normal" conditions beyond the Earth magnetosphere are perfectly manageable during daily activities. The issue are solar flares - just improve their detection & modeling, and have a radiation bunker (basically inside water and fuel tanks; doubling as a sleeping place, might as well minimize daily dosage). A thing for which ISS wasn't planned...
Heck, it is launched by a rocket from R-7 lineage. A family which carried all Soviet and Russian manned missions to date, starting with Yuri Gagarin. Which launched Sputnik. And was the first operational ICBM (not very practical in its first role; but...sort of competing space agency says it is "The most reliable... the most frequently used launch vehicle in the world")
Don't exaggerate - while Soyuz is certainly tough (was meant for Moon return reentry after all), the two or so failures to detach service module were still close calls - and from more forgiving LEO, not from higher speeds of Lunar return.
Anyway, they will probably try to perform skip reentry to limit G forces - that's what Soyuz already did on at least some Zond missions.
Slashdot Mirror
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedlec_Ossuary
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skull_Chapel_in_Czermna
There are wolves in Germany. Some reintroduced, and for example some packs that crossed from Poland (which has small group in western forests, even if most of their population is in the east - where, funnily enough, wolves from Slovakia, Belarus and Ukraine also cross; general direction seems to mimic the movement of people, or perhaps the other way around)
There should be a loophole, in some (yeah...) circumstances, for sea burial.
And I should have said "can scale", I guess. Yes, many modern implementations of leaving the body to nature are somewhat bizarre, to say the least. But it can work, does work for eons.
Well that's the point; illusions for the living.
And secondly, certainly "more natural"...
It's quite the other way around..."natural" burials scale exceedingly well. Number of people who have ever died is estimated at around 100 billion. Add to that countless other species in the time span of hundreds of millions of years, I don't think cremation of remains (not to mention industrial diamonds) is anywhere near scalable.
Or sky burials (this one with photographs)
But members of many/most(?) cultures prefer to perceive themselves as not quite succumbing to the forces around them in such "trivial" way; as something above them.
Which, in the end, is part of few certainly still useful adaptations.
Burning wastes resources... and for what? (well, in many places burying does, too - seriously, concrete tombs and metal caskets?)
A solace for living participants that there will be some reflection about them; preferably in an orderly manner. That they will be remembered - but ultimately we ourselves don't treat very old memorials, very old customs, very old faiths as anything more than archeological curiosities.
PS. Also, Ig Nobel 2008:
ARCHAEOLOGY PRIZE. Astolfo G. Mello Araujo and José Carlos Marcelino of Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil, for measuring how the course of history, or at least the contents of an archaeological dig site, can be scrambled by the actions of a live armadillo.
REFERENCE: "The Role of Armadillos in the Movement of Archaeological Materials: An Experimental Approach," Astolfo G. Mello Araujo and José Carlos Marcelino, Geoarchaeology, vol. 18, no. 4, April 2003, pp. 433-60.
They might be withholding something as well... how can we be certain? It's just about finding optimum which is good for the long term prosperity - indeed w might be damn close to it, too. Thing is, to properly gauge it requires perspective far longer than human lifespan.
For $500 million, "governmental" Russian space program would be more than happy to do it. $100 million too, most likely. In fact, to a large part they are doing it...
When looking at mission totals, there's quite a bit of a difference, energy-wise - shuttle soft landing systems form notably greater part of its total weight.
Though if Obama would be called like that in a setting where there are no other presidents, never were, and never will be... (last one always interacting in a funny way with omnipotence and which of the two spheres (earthly vs. sublime) is really in control, BTW) Yup, damn fuzzy in such case.
Anyway, certainly in practice it is presented as a name, at least at my place in the folk version. Unfortunately the dynamics of those are somewhat neglected typically (but then, at least my local flavor is not very Abrahamic and indeed not very monotheistic if looking at it with any kind of rigor; seems fairly typical, too)
Great, going into the direction of one ancient symbol, still popular in large parts of Asia but somewhat infamous for the last half a century in our cultural sphere...
(maybe not that strange though - one of the hypotheses is that galaxies, in the times when it was still possible to see them without light pollution, are what inspired it)
...or, for the adventurous, rely heavily on skip reentry.
Though considering most of that comes from coal/etc., it might as well be that the price doesn't quite cover all the costs...
(surely the differences in vehicle fuel prices are quite close to what you ask about)
Considering what "pleasure" it is to deal with some London landlords, and the perpetrator here might well be one of them, it's not too improbable that many people actually didn't know they were stealing.
I almost remember how the central heating was used when there was just one metering device for each stairway (which would one for 30 apartments where I am). People... just don't possess the sense of moderation in such background utilities (which of course ended either with over-engineered heating plant, or every radiator being at most lukewarm)
And I don't know about Michigan / I won't read the link obviously - but where I live there are also places to keep oneself warm; and vast majority of freezing deaths are due to drunkenness.
Thing is how it's in the family, how it would be reasonably straightforward and what "essentially" meant here; especially when compared with all the other currently operational for a long time manned spacecraft.
(plus at least nominally it is Soyuz, 7K-L1 one, stripped and modified standard issue 1st gen one; virtually the same launchers were getting different names depending on the type of mission, too)
Take closer look at actions of leaders and judiciary or at population sentiments sometimes... (heck, it's so messed up that, while regimes of some of our allies are nominally on our side, populations seem to be actually somewhat further away than Iranians; and many not really recognizing Israel, to use this example) But do it better than remembering how WMDs were presented (really, revisit it; it was pretty conclusive, even in my "don't forget Poland" place where at the same time politicians were able to outright say "we're joining also for our future economic interests" in local media)
As for "proofs" - the deal is that somehow they didn't quite put a wedge between local powers... solid actions (I assume within limits of course) or policy statements would give somewhat better message. It wasn't about a need for espionage, just jumping at pushed labels
You complained about my usage of "West"...
So you don't remember (or don't want to look at what shaped large part of last half a century there) / there was nothing honorable about making 1953 coup d'etat happen and keeping Shah in power for the next 3 decades; with a blatant violation of democratic, etc. principles.
And once you go down the "but we make less torture" while being able to quantify with certainty how "we're million times better", there is no moral high ground left...
So we're already sure they're developing nuclear weapons? How likely they are to attack? If anything, we ourselves have shown recently that when a country cooperates with inspectors, and they give military intel that the invasion is saf^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hassurances that there is no foul play, it doesn't help much. But even few crude warheads and threats - and your country is safe.
The politburo of Iran might say some things, but it doesn't change how the place is one of the most secular in the region; making them automatically "enemies" - that's somewhat further along - won't exactly allow us to exploit it. What our populations could think what one should do with an "enemy", hm? A war, obviously...
You said bad manners, not me - fact is, those in the embassy were perceived (and indeed were doing it for quite some time) as upholding previous regime. Such things tend to blow back (if only that one time...) / it's still "merely" a very serious breach of diplomatic protocol, not an invasion. Accident (plus war with, largely supported by US, Iraq) just played along... think how you would perceive such actions.
"We supported our ally (1980s-era Iraq) in a war against our enemy." - and this nicely shows the issue. "Ally"? Seriously? If it's so arbitrary (face it, "enemy of our enemy" at best / just a recipe for blowbacks), then "enemy" has similarly little meaning; never mind what treatment made them an "enemy" (also, FYI Iraq was initially informed by US ambassador that it has basically free reign in dealing with Kuwait... is that what you meant by "rein them in peacefully"?)
Yes, spying, that's fine. Everybody does that on everybody. At least at the end you haven't used "enemy" / dropped the outright praises and condemnations while forgetting some important subtleties. It's not that hard to find practical reasons for some actions, within limits (mine "we must ultimately do certain things (some not)"), no need for all the promoted "us vs. them" bull-crap.
Why do you think I was talking about Israel?... look with how many other places you are allied there (hell, Egypt gets practically the same amount of aid as Israel) Or in other areas - destabilizing South America wasn't that many years ago.
WMDs in Iraq were also "facts" in all the news, across the spectrum (seriously, you don't see any similarities?). If it were something even remotely solid, you can be pretty damn sure it would surface in a much more serious way - if only because Iran wants to play a major role in its region, and ruling castes of some other places there (basically similar / still, our allies, w00t!) ultimately want to have a say in that. They would be very interested in Iran also destabilizing their regimes, in practice.
Accidentally, I'm on the East side of Prime Meridian... still, we're in the same boat (generally, I don't like West/East terms, too simplistic; even if there's nothing much better... and it's beside the point anyway)
And you do remember why they took power / from a puppet regime installed by whom, right?
"Enhanced Interrogation Techniques" - you really want to tell me you haven't heard how we justify torturing people now?! (NVM purposely keeping them in legal limbo)
Please explain how they treat us like enemies. Heck, did they at least invade somebody? (violating good diplomatic customs... borderline at best) BTW, who shot down their airliner? Who supported another nasty/nastier regime in a war with them? Sure, it's all a clusterf**k of a mess out there, we must ultimately do certain things (some not), but at least don't sing all the praises you should, all the condemnations you should... and that's it (at least the smallest bit of cynicism, for example)
It isn't quite so bad - "normal" conditions beyond the Earth magnetosphere are perfectly manageable during daily activities. The issue are solar flares - just improve their detection & modeling, and have a radiation bunker (basically inside water and fuel tanks; doubling as a sleeping place, might as well minimize daily dosage). A thing for which ISS wasn't planned...
Heck, it is launched by a rocket from R-7 lineage. A family which carried all Soviet and Russian manned missions to date, starting with Yuri Gagarin. Which launched Sputnik. And was the first operational ICBM (not very practical in its first role; but...sort of competing space agency says it is "The most reliable ... the most frequently used launch vehicle in the world")
Don't exaggerate - while Soyuz is certainly tough (was meant for Moon return reentry after all), the two or so failures to detach service module were still close calls - and from more forgiving LEO, not from higher speeds of Lunar return.
Anyway, they will probably try to perform skip reentry to limit G forces - that's what Soyuz already did on at least some Zond missions.
Orbit of ISS makes much less of a difference if you launch from Baikonur... launching from there would be less costly in any case.
It's designed for quite safe LEO radiation environment, deep inside the magnetosphere of Earth.