Science is the boss and should tell politics what to do, not the other way around.
The danger in that position is that there are people who are anxious to use science as an excuse to take away liberty. Is sociology science? If so, should sociologists be telling politicians what the laws should be? You used the example of the law of gravity, but what about when we get into areas where the science is less clear cut?
As you are alluding to, Science can't 'tell politics what to do'. Science is rational. People are not. Science has limits, human issues don't seem to have any bearing on how much we actually know about things. Once you get over trying to run the world using Mr. Spock's guidelines, things get a little easier.
If government is handing taxpayers' money to scientists, it will only get 'into the right hands' by chance, since funding decisions will always be driven by political agendas.
The solution is to get government out of the science business.
Where in the hell do you people come up with these insane ideas?
Government and 'private' interests / mechanisms / foibles / weaknesses and strength are much more alike than different. These are human issues - the actual organization of these bizarre creatures is of little significance. You need checks and balances no matter how you put together groups of more than six people.
That was the sole unique and important difference in the US Constitution. Not voting, not 'freedoms', not God. Checks and balances. Abuses ALWAYS happen. You want to minimize them. They won't go away.
Fisherman were bringing up amphorae in their nets off the coast of Brazil - remains of a mediterranean trading ship, from hundreds of years before discovery of the New World were found, but before an archaelogical expedition could get underway the Brazilian Navy encircled the site and covered it with dredgings. Allegedly to protect the site before an official study could be made of the site, but another reason appears to be behind the move - Brazil was discovered by Cabral, not somebody earlier and the government won't hear of any of it - so it's dead and buried.
Politics.:-\
Citations? All I can find is a Brazilian diatom. Not terribly surprised but I would be interested.
Those are outliers/anecdotes, not data. It's enormously well-known that being a female actress and somewhat older is highly correlated with having fewer parts available.
Actually, those women aren't outliers at all (except possibly Ms. Leachman). They all started young, got their initial breaks in part on the basis of their looks and managed to weave their way through Hollywood and continue getting roles as they matured.
Bonus points for Susan Sarandon's most 'visible' early role.
(Feel free to laugh at this if you want) I'm no fan of Apple but their products do work. They do exactly what they are designed to do. The disconnect comes when consumers expect them to do something different.
But I thought iPhones were supposed to make telephone calls.
Building permanently-floating metal objects is ridiculously expensive. Plastics are kind of a crap shoot since peak oil is upon us. People prefer to live on solid ground. Most economic growth is driven by government wealth redistribution, and governments have no interest in subsidizing ocean colonies. Pick a reason.
So building habitats in space is cheaper, easier and more desirable from the standpoint of private industry?
Ummm, notice my caveat about near unlimited cheap energy. If you haven that, you can put lots of stuff in orbit. If you have that, you can solve most of the problems here on earth. If you don't have that, you're in the exact mess we find ourselves in now..
Habitats fabricated in free space can provide thousands of times more habitable surface area than Earth.
Sure they can. At some impressive energy cost (remember the gravity well, it sucks pretty hard). It would be much easier to make floating / submerged habitats than ones in outer space.
Until you come up with essentially unlimited, cheap energy, space is not going to be the place for the huddled masses yearning to be free.
My engineer friend points out that if this saves fuel for large shippers, that should decrease global warming, resulting in a future closing of the passage to these largest ships, right?:)
Only if bulk shipping used an appreciable fraction of global fossil fuel use. From the Wikipedia article:
3.5 to 4 percent of all climate change emissions are caused by shipping.
Furthermore, bunker fuel is high in sulfur. While sulfur dioxide pollution is generally not considered a good thing, it does produce aerosols that reflect light back into space and create some bit of cooling (think volcanic eruptions).
Good thing we have real climatologists who actually think about things, do research, talk to others, make models and such. Armchair generals who don't even understand basic physics might make some big errors.
Impressive - if only it were true. The Northeast Passage has been opened for commerce since 1934 - and never 'closed'.
Over the years hundreds of thousands of freighters have passed through, and after Russia put Soviet-era politics aside it was extended to foreign commerce in the 1990s
So this is sort of non-story hype.
Not quite. Yes it's hyped (so is everything else). Note that the NE passage has 1) not been historically open all year round 2) often needed support from nuclear powered icebreakers 3) previously restricted to smaller vessels (no large tankers, no super max container ships).
The fact that all three limitations are likely to go away on a permanent (or at least long term) basis IS a significant change.
Further, if things continue apace (rapid warming of the Arctic as proposed by every single anthropogenic climate change theory) the NW passage will open for business in the next decade.
Hey, it's more than Apple users got for the constant outages to their $99/year MobileMe service.
I think they gave me one (or was it two) extra months of less crappy service. Apple did (finally) manage to message the kinks out of MobileMe. Just in time to drop it completely and create an entirely new set of problems in the iCloud.
One Company to rule them all, One Click to find them, One Company to contract with them all and in the darkness bind them In the Land of Profit where the Bezos lies.
In today's news, the nation which sent a man to the moon, but can no longer put a man into orbit, is buying tickets on stunt-planes to recreate the Mercury suborbital missions.
Or, in a less inflammatory tone:... the nation which sent a man to the moon has continued interested in near earth mechanics and has contracted with a commercial vendor to complete this research in a cost effective manner.
Or is it Slashdot policy to present as received for interviews?
I'm not sure (because for the life of me, I can't figure out what you are trying to say), but it's Slashdot policy to have completely grammar-neglected sentences throughout the website.
Slashdot Mirror
Science is the boss and should tell politics what to do, not the other way around.
The danger in that position is that there are people who are anxious to use science as an excuse to take away liberty. Is sociology science? If so, should sociologists be telling politicians what the laws should be? You used the example of the law of gravity, but what about when we get into areas where the science is less clear cut?
As you are alluding to, Science can't 'tell politics what to do'. Science is rational. People are not. Science has limits, human issues don't seem to have any bearing on how much we actually know about things. Once you get over trying to run the world using Mr. Spock's guidelines, things get a little easier.
If government is handing taxpayers' money to scientists, it will only get 'into the right hands' by chance, since funding decisions will always be driven by political agendas.
The solution is to get government out of the science business.
Where in the hell do you people come up with these insane ideas?
Government and 'private' interests / mechanisms / foibles / weaknesses and strength are much more alike than different. These are human issues - the actual organization of these bizarre creatures is of little significance. You need checks and balances no matter how you put together groups of more than six people.
That was the sole unique and important difference in the US Constitution. Not voting, not 'freedoms', not God. Checks and balances. Abuses ALWAYS happen. You want to minimize them. They won't go away.
Fisherman were bringing up amphorae in their nets off the coast of Brazil - remains of a mediterranean trading ship, from hundreds of years before discovery of the New World were found, but before an archaelogical expedition could get underway the Brazilian Navy encircled the site and covered it with dredgings. Allegedly to protect the site before an official study could be made of the site, but another reason appears to be behind the move - Brazil was discovered by Cabral, not somebody earlier and the government won't hear of any of it - so it's dead and buried.
Politics. :-\
Citations? All I can find is a Brazilian diatom. Not terribly surprised but I would be interested.
Although the logistical problems ran through my mind on how one can implement this real world, it is still freakin cool!
Yeah, real cool. Liquid Nitrogen cool.
Those are outliers/anecdotes, not data. It's enormously well-known that being a female actress and somewhat older is highly correlated with having fewer parts available.
Actually, those women aren't outliers at all (except possibly Ms. Leachman). They all started young, got their initial breaks in part on the basis of their looks and managed to weave their way through Hollywood and continue getting roles as they matured.
Bonus points for Susan Sarandon's most 'visible' early role.
(Feel free to laugh at this if you want) I'm no fan of Apple but their products do work. They do exactly what they are designed to do. The disconnect comes when consumers expect them to do something different.
But I thought iPhones were supposed to make telephone calls.
My bad.
Oh, I don't doubt there is an 'off' switch. I'm not sure that it's hooked up to anything...
"Sorry sir, it's not responding!"
Bureau of keeping track of weird things
I like that. We need one of those here.
To not be "evil" 100%, what do you suggest Google should do?
Make Richard Stahlman CEO?
Building permanently-floating metal objects is ridiculously expensive. Plastics are kind of a crap shoot since peak oil is upon us. People prefer to live on solid ground. Most economic growth is driven by government wealth redistribution, and governments have no interest in subsidizing ocean colonies. Pick a reason.
So building habitats in space is cheaper, easier and more desirable from the standpoint of private industry?
Who knew?
Ummm, notice my caveat about near unlimited cheap energy. If you haven that, you can put lots of stuff in orbit. If you have that, you can solve most of the problems here on earth. If you don't have that, you're in the exact mess we find ourselves in now..
Habitats fabricated in free space can provide thousands of times more habitable surface area than Earth.
Sure they can. At some impressive energy cost (remember the gravity well, it sucks pretty hard). It would be much easier to make floating / submerged habitats than ones in outer space.
Until you come up with essentially unlimited, cheap energy, space is not going to be the place for the huddled masses yearning to be free.
My engineer friend points out that if this saves fuel for large shippers, that should decrease global warming, resulting in a future closing of the passage to these largest ships, right? :)
Only if bulk shipping used an appreciable fraction of global fossil fuel use. From the Wikipedia article:
3.5 to 4 percent of all climate change emissions are caused by shipping.
Furthermore, bunker fuel is high in sulfur. While sulfur dioxide pollution is generally not considered a good thing, it does produce aerosols that reflect light back into space and create some bit of cooling (think volcanic eruptions).
Good thing we have real climatologists who actually think about things, do research, talk to others, make models and such. Armchair generals who don't even understand basic physics might make some big errors.
Actually quoting the register
So this is sort of non-story hype.
Not quite. Yes it's hyped (so is everything else). Note that the NE passage has 1) not been historically open all year round 2) often needed support from nuclear powered icebreakers 3) previously restricted to smaller vessels (no large tankers, no super max container ships).
The fact that all three limitations are likely to go away on a permanent (or at least long term) basis IS a significant change.
Further, if things continue apace (rapid warming of the Arctic as proposed by every single anthropogenic climate change theory) the NW passage will open for business in the next decade.
By your logic we should abandon the Gulf Coast, Tornado Alley, California, and Texas.
Well, Texas anyway. Who'd want to live there?
Like Vermont?
He said 'countries', not 'counties'.
oil prospectors.
You know where the oil is and how to get it? Uncle Jed? Is that you?
And a flashlight app.
Hey, it's more than Apple users got for the constant outages to their $99/year MobileMe service.
I think they gave me one (or was it two) extra months of less crappy service. Apple did (finally) manage to message the kinks out of MobileMe. Just in time to drop it completely and create an entirely new set of problems in the iCloud.
Was Murphy recursive?
One Company to rule them all, One Click to find them,
One Company to contract with them all and in the darkness bind them
In the Land of Profit where the Bezos lies.
In today's news, the nation which sent a man to the moon, but can no longer put a man into orbit, is buying tickets on stunt-planes to recreate the Mercury suborbital missions.
Or, in a less inflammatory tone: ... the nation which sent a man to the moon has continued interested in near earth mechanics and has contracted with a commercial vendor to complete this research in a cost effective manner.
Another definition of progress.
What's wrong with time since the Unix epoch? I'm using that and I'm doing fine!
2038 called (it uses neutrinos). There is a bit of an issue.
This. Please world. Make sense for just once? And kill "Daylight saving's time" while you're at it. Apple will be much happier.
Or is it Slashdot policy to present as received for interviews?
I'm not sure (because for the life of me, I can't figure out what you are trying to say), but it's Slashdot policy to have completely grammar-neglected sentences throughout the website.