You've neatly managed to avoid the point, so I'll condense it for you:
Otherwise intelligent-seeeming folks these days will expend considerable time jumping on an irrational belief if it contains a reference to, or places its basis in, Christianity.
Meanwhile, beliefs just as irrational, when stated by the eco-sensitive contingent, are mostly left uncriticized.
This is, basically (imho, of course), because it's just so gosh-darn cool these days to rip on Christians. You can just *feel* the smug attitude of intellectual superiority that goes into most posts attacking Christians. I just felt like pointing out that most folks making these posts wouldn't be so brave, were it not so socially acceptible to attack religious beliefs these days.
If you want to think that this post is aimed at you specifically, then feel free to do so. Your stated opposition to irrational beliefs rings a tad hollow in the light of how vehemently you leap to the defense of silly ecological views, however.
Frankly, I think that holding back progress in areas that could feed and power the poorer nations of the world is a hell of a lot more dangerous than holding the wacky belief that the world was created ab vacuo last Tuesday. YMMV, and apparently it does. Everyone picks their own particular windmills to tilt at; you like picking on 'rabid fundamentalism' and I like jeering at dewy-eyed eco-nuts.
Of course, I try to restrict my criticism more for the ideas themselves than their proponents, but I'm a closeted hate-filled dick, so what do I know?
Really? Tell me how a religionist's faith-driven belief that god watches each of us and will punish us for doing wrong is different from an eco-nut's belief that using nuclear power or genetic tech will unleash horrors to kill us all.
NEITHER is based on anything remotely resembling scientific evidence, every single bit of which shows that there's not a goddam (god added for emphasis, natch) thing to fear from the aforementioned technologies.
Now try to be honest and tell me there _isn't_ a huge line of propoganda being fed to the general population that gene-tinkering is bad, and nuclear power is horrible. You want to talk infection? How about a world that shies away from genetically modified crops which could feed millions of starving people, held back by some addle-pated idiots that fear genetech as though it were, say, witchcraft in the puritan era.
I call bullshit on eco-views. I call bullshit twice. You neo-pagan, christian-hating, gaia-loving people are just another herd of sheep. You don't have the knowledge to even hold an opinion, and you don't have the gumption to bother to inform yourselves about the issues you feel free to spout your ridiculous opinions on.
If this were the middle ages and you twinkies were anti-religion, I'd be impressed. Realistically, though, you'd be baa'ing in front of the papal rostrum. 99% of the folks here that think themselves so incredibly brilliant for being anti-religion and anti-science are just another herd following the current cool thing. Dont' bother educating yourselves, it'll only hurt your wooly little minds.
Meanwhile, you can content yourselves with the thought that, though millions may eventually die for your beliefs, well, they're poor and dark-skinned, and at least you're politically correct.
You know what simultaneously amuses the living hell out of me, and pisses me off incredibly?
The way slashdot folks will just *pile on* to criticize anyone stating a Christian belief, yet let pass *equally retarded* statements from the luddite/anti-nuke/anti-genetic-science crowd.
Just for the record, because I'm sure someone will pipe up and squeal that I must be some 'fundie' trying to defend religion, I don't believe in creationism, and I don't think that there's any guiding higher power out there...not God, not Gaia, nothing.
But watching you oh-so-cool children of the 80s posture and preen as you rip into a religionist, while ignoring the *completely fucking retarded* beliefs of the scientifically ignorant folks that fear genetic manipulation or nuclear power just gets my (non-endangered) goat.
There's such a mind-boggling load of misinformation there that it's hard to know where to begin.
No, EMP does not consist of alpha particles. Alpha particles are simply helium atoms stripped of their electrons. They have a range of a couple inches in air before they strike another atom or molecule and lose their energy, becoming plain old helium.
EMP is just high intensity broadband electromagnetic radiation, like the static you hear on the radio when lightning strikes-- only much stronger.
They're produced by a _high altitude_ nuclear burst, wherein the gammas produced by the device as it detonates cause the creation of a large amount of electrons in the upper atmosphere as they collide with air molecules. Lower level bursts result in a far more localized, but similar, effect.
God forbid you should want to try to inform yourself, but you could just go to google (www.google.com, duh) and search for 'electromagnetic pulse'.
By the way, yes, you can produce EMP without a nuclear weapon. Check www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/kopp/apj emp.html. And, by gosh, it's not even classified.
Why, exactly, would this be a joke? Is the idea of a US organization tasked with maintaining US military assets in space completely incomprehensible to you?
While I agree with your points, the pedant in me makes me point out that the $100 hammers weren't your garden-variety claw hammers avalable from home despot, but were made of a special alloy to be non-sparking (so they could be used around fuel), yet tough enough to not deform (brass would be used otherwise). You can put this to rest with the '$1000 toilet seat' myth...it's another media simplification to grab headlines.
Mil-Spec'ing things can be a bitch, cost-wise, but that's another topic entirely. Rest assured that this, at least, isn't a case of gov't fraud.
You're pointing your finger in the wrong direction. It's the jackasses bitching about "wasting money in space while millions starve on Earth" that stop the space program, not government. As if there were some clearing house you could go to to trade a Titan-IV booster and feed Chad. But hey, at least they're being politically correct.
I knew what you meant, but _you_ didn't, and you fell back on the old 'Eek! Radioactive! We're all gonna die!' reaction. The concentration of U and Pu that would reach the ground after an out-of-atmosphere intercept would be so low as to be insignificant. Repeat after me -- The dose makes the poison.
No kidding Patriots were ineffective...I told you as much, myself, and I told you _why_ (frag warheads combined with proximity fuses). That doesn't change the fact that, yes, nearly every Patriot fired DID successfully intercept a Scud when fired. It just didn't make much difference in the trajectory of the Scud's warhead. I also told you what was changed to make it more effective (hit-to-kill fusing).
They were billed as anti-air missiles that could, in a pinch, also be used against Scuds, because it was _all we had to do the job_. The fact that the press and folks like you took that to mean "100% reliable, we can stop 'em every time", only to later excoriate the military for making promises that they never made doesn't change that.
If you disperse U or Pu over a city, people just put on dust masks and walk around with brooms, sweeping it up. The stuff's not water-soluble (well, _everything_ is slightly water-soluble, but it's less so than _sand_).
The radiation from Pu is in the form of Alpha particles, which have a range of a couple _inches_ in air. The stuff can't even get through your outer dead skin cells to hurt you.
Beta particles can be stopped by heavy clothing or a sheet of tin foil.
Gamma radiation's the hard one to stop, but nuclear materials in bombs aren't strong gamma emitters, anyways (until they explode, of course, but that's not the scenario here). Gamma radiation is also the _least_ damaging type.
Folks, everything around you is radioactive to a greater or lesser extent; you're getting dosed right now from the chair you're sitting in; we won't even mention the rads you're picking up from space. Eat to many bananas, and you'll flunk a whole-body radiation dose test given to nuke plant workers, because of the radioactive Potassium-40 they contain.
And no, it's not because of nuclear tests or reactors, either.
Radiation is not some horrid bugaboo that will make you simultaneously burn, mutate, and implode if you get a shot of it. It's also not your friend; it _can_ hurt you, so respect it.
Deuterium and Tritium are as toxic as, well, Hydrogen. Uranium and Plutonium are about as toxic as lead, and far less toxic than caffeine.
Maybe you meant radioactive, but that's an insignificant concern. You'd stand a better chance of getting hit in the head by a chunk of wreckage than getting anywhere near to a measurable dose.
Yeah, let's remember Patriot missiles. They were ANTI-AIRCRAFT MISSILES. They were _not_ designed to take out incoming Scuds, but they had the performance to intercept them, so they were used as such because it's better than nothing.
(The original Patriot PAC-3 missile used a proximity fuse and fragmentation warhead, since close is good enough to stop an aircraft. Newer versions are hit-to-kill.)
Side note: "Rouge" attacks are when people menace you with cosmetics. C'mon, folks, it's spelled _Rogue_.
Plants wouldn't be a problem. The current plants in any area in which prehistoric plants would be released have had a far longer time to better adapt themselves to their ecological niches through evolution. Prehistoric plants wouldn't stand a chance of taking over.
"Off-the-shelf" wasn't an option here, although you're correct about the costs of starting a production line for short product runs.
These 'toilet seats' were in fact one-piece molded toilet _stalls_ for use in B-52 bombers. Imagine a flying porta-john, if you will, now mil-spec it and only order a couple dozen. I'm amazed it only cost $1000.
The "$1000 toilet seat" myth sticks around mainly because it's fun to make fun of the DoD.
Slashdot Mirror
A few minutes (and a few beers) later, it occurred to me that I could make my point more clear to you. Here's a synopsis of our relative positions:
Me: People are criticizing harmless superstition, and letting harmful, unsupported, beliefs pass unscathed. That's fucking stupid.
You: You're a poopy-head!
See the difference?
--GP.
Whee, ad hominems r us!
You've neatly managed to avoid the point, so I'll condense it for you:
Otherwise intelligent-seeeming folks these days will expend considerable time jumping on an irrational belief if it contains a reference to, or places its basis in, Christianity.
Meanwhile, beliefs just as irrational, when stated by the eco-sensitive contingent, are mostly left uncriticized.
This is, basically (imho, of course), because it's just so gosh-darn cool these days to rip on Christians. You can just *feel* the smug attitude of intellectual superiority that goes into most posts attacking Christians. I just felt like pointing out that most folks making these posts wouldn't be so brave, were it not so socially acceptible to attack religious beliefs these days.
If you want to think that this post is aimed at you specifically, then feel free to do so. Your stated opposition to irrational beliefs rings a tad hollow in the light of how vehemently you leap to the defense of silly ecological views, however.
Frankly, I think that holding back progress in areas that could feed and power the poorer nations of the world is a hell of a lot more dangerous than holding the wacky belief that the world was created ab vacuo last Tuesday. YMMV, and apparently it does. Everyone picks their own particular windmills to tilt at; you like picking on 'rabid fundamentalism' and I like jeering at dewy-eyed eco-nuts.
Of course, I try to restrict my criticism more for the ideas themselves than their proponents, but I'm a closeted hate-filled dick, so what do I know?
Have a happy day.
--GP
Really? Tell me how a religionist's faith-driven belief that god watches each of us and will punish us for doing wrong is different from an eco-nut's belief that using nuclear power or genetic tech will unleash horrors to kill us all.
NEITHER is based on anything remotely resembling scientific evidence, every single bit of which shows that there's not a goddam (god added for emphasis, natch) thing to fear from the aforementioned technologies.
Now try to be honest and tell me there _isn't_ a huge line of propoganda being fed to the general population that gene-tinkering is bad, and nuclear power is horrible. You want to talk infection? How about a world that shies away from genetically modified crops which could feed millions of starving people, held back by some addle-pated idiots that fear genetech as though it were, say, witchcraft in the puritan era.
I call bullshit on eco-views. I call bullshit twice. You neo-pagan, christian-hating, gaia-loving people are just another herd of sheep. You don't have the knowledge to even hold an opinion, and you don't have the gumption to bother to inform yourselves about the issues you feel free to spout your ridiculous opinions on.
If this were the middle ages and you twinkies were anti-religion, I'd be impressed. Realistically, though, you'd be baa'ing in front of the papal rostrum. 99% of the folks here that think themselves so incredibly brilliant for being anti-religion and anti-science are just another herd following the current cool thing. Dont' bother educating yourselves, it'll only hurt your wooly little minds.
Meanwhile, you can content yourselves with the thought that, though millions may eventually die for your beliefs, well, they're poor and dark-skinned, and at least you're politically correct.
Baa.
Get along, lil' dogies!
--GP.
You know what simultaneously amuses the living hell out of me, and pisses me off incredibly?
The way slashdot folks will just *pile on* to criticize anyone stating a Christian belief, yet let pass *equally retarded* statements from the luddite/anti-nuke/anti-genetic-science crowd.
Just for the record, because I'm sure someone will pipe up and squeal that I must be some 'fundie' trying to defend religion, I don't believe in creationism, and I don't think that there's any guiding higher power out there...not God, not Gaia, nothing.
But watching you oh-so-cool children of the 80s posture and preen as you rip into a religionist, while ignoring the *completely fucking retarded* beliefs of the scientifically ignorant folks that fear genetic manipulation or nuclear power just gets my (non-endangered) goat.
There's such a mind-boggling load of misinformation there that it's hard to know where to begin.
j emp.html. And, by gosh, it's not even classified.
No, EMP does not consist of alpha particles. Alpha particles are simply helium atoms stripped of their electrons. They have a range of a couple inches in air before they strike another atom or molecule and lose their energy, becoming plain old helium.
EMP is just high intensity broadband electromagnetic radiation, like the static you hear on the radio when lightning strikes-- only much stronger.
They're produced by a _high altitude_ nuclear burst, wherein the gammas produced by the device as it detonates cause the creation of a large amount of electrons in the upper atmosphere as they collide with air molecules. Lower level bursts result in a far more localized, but similar, effect.
God forbid you should want to try to inform yourself, but you could just go to google (www.google.com, duh) and search for 'electromagnetic pulse'.
By the way, yes, you can produce EMP without a nuclear weapon. Check www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/kopp/ap
Why, exactly, would this be a joke? Is the idea of a US organization tasked with maintaining US military assets in space completely incomprehensible to you?
While I agree with your points, the pedant in me makes me point out that the $100 hammers weren't your garden-variety claw hammers avalable from home despot, but were made of a special alloy to be non-sparking (so they could be used around fuel), yet tough enough to not deform (brass would be used otherwise). You can put this to rest with the '$1000 toilet seat' myth...it's another media simplification to grab headlines.
Mil-Spec'ing things can be a bitch, cost-wise, but that's another topic entirely. Rest assured that this, at least, isn't a case of gov't fraud.
You're pointing your finger in the wrong direction.
It's the jackasses bitching about "wasting money in space while millions starve on Earth" that stop the space program, not government. As if there were some clearing house you could go to to trade a Titan-IV booster and feed Chad.
But hey, at least they're being politically correct.
I knew what you meant, but _you_ didn't, and you fell back on the old 'Eek! Radioactive! We're all gonna die!' reaction. The concentration of U and Pu that would reach the ground after an out-of-atmosphere intercept would be so low as to be insignificant. Repeat after me -- The dose makes the poison.
No kidding Patriots were ineffective...I told you as much, myself, and I told you _why_ (frag warheads combined with proximity fuses). That doesn't change the fact that, yes, nearly every Patriot fired DID successfully intercept a Scud when fired. It just didn't make much difference in the trajectory of the Scud's warhead. I also told you what was changed to make it more effective (hit-to-kill fusing).
They were billed as anti-air missiles that could, in a pinch, also be used against Scuds, because it was _all we had to do the job_. The fact that the press and folks like you took that to mean "100% reliable, we can stop 'em every time", only to later excoriate the military for making promises that they never made doesn't change that.
If you disperse U or Pu over a city, people just put on dust masks and walk around with brooms, sweeping it up. The stuff's not water-soluble (well, _everything_ is slightly water-soluble, but it's less so than _sand_).
The radiation from Pu is in the form of Alpha particles, which have a range of a couple _inches_ in air. The stuff can't even get through your outer dead skin cells to hurt you.
Beta particles can be stopped by heavy clothing or a sheet of tin foil.
Gamma radiation's the hard one to stop, but nuclear materials in bombs aren't strong gamma emitters, anyways (until they explode, of course, but that's not the scenario here). Gamma radiation is also the _least_ damaging type.
Folks, everything around you is radioactive to a greater or lesser extent; you're getting dosed right now from the chair you're sitting in; we won't even mention the rads you're picking up from space. Eat to many bananas, and you'll flunk a whole-body radiation dose test given to nuke plant workers, because of the radioactive Potassium-40 they contain.
And no, it's not because of nuclear tests or reactors, either.
Radiation is not some horrid bugaboo that will make you simultaneously burn, mutate, and implode if you get a shot of it. It's also not your friend; it _can_ hurt you, so respect it.
The same goes for fire, or electricity.
Deuterium and Tritium are as toxic as, well, Hydrogen. Uranium and Plutonium are about as toxic as lead, and far less toxic than caffeine.
Maybe you meant radioactive, but that's an insignificant concern. You'd stand a better chance of getting hit in the head by a chunk of wreckage than getting anywhere near to a measurable dose.
Yeah, let's remember Patriot missiles. They were ANTI-AIRCRAFT MISSILES. They were _not_ designed to take out incoming Scuds, but they had the performance to intercept them, so they were used as such because it's better than nothing.
(The original Patriot PAC-3 missile used a proximity fuse and fragmentation warhead, since close is good enough to stop an aircraft. Newer versions are hit-to-kill.)
Side note: "Rouge" attacks are when people menace you with cosmetics. C'mon, folks, it's spelled _Rogue_.
Plants wouldn't be a problem. The current plants in any area in which prehistoric plants would be released have had a far longer time to better adapt themselves to their ecological niches through evolution. Prehistoric plants wouldn't stand a chance of taking over.
"Off-the-shelf" wasn't an option here, although you're correct about the costs of starting a production line for short product runs.
These 'toilet seats' were in fact one-piece molded toilet _stalls_ for use in B-52 bombers. Imagine a flying porta-john, if you will, now mil-spec it and only order a couple dozen. I'm amazed it only cost $1000.
The "$1000 toilet seat" myth sticks around mainly because it's fun to make fun of the DoD.