That should be an example of all four combinations of good and bad, instinct and not instinct. Is promiscuous sex good or bad? That's a morality question. That it is a natural instinct doesn't really say anything one way or the other.
It's kind of neat watching people argue over sex and what it means. I think there's a good reason for this: since we've gotten reliable birth control - the pill - sex doesn't mean what it used it. It's no longer primarily about reproduction. It may be for some people, but you don't see too many families with ten or more kids these days. So unless people are having less sex, they're having it for reasons other than making babies.
So, if sex no longer means what it used to, does the traditional thinking that goes on about it still apply? I don't know, but it'll be interesting to see what happens. I suspect that we're in a transition stage, though - sexual politics will be very different in a few generations.
Re:Wait a sec, this story isn't about "dark matter
on
Dark Matter Discovered
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· Score: 1
This book is an excellent starting place if you're interested in getting into astrophysics. Lots of fun problems, and it's a really good intro if you can remember first year physics and math.
Mind you, it's an astrophyisics textbook so it ain't cheap.
Coke's employee base is very nearly fanatical in their loyalty to their product, and use of "the blue" is not accepted
Seems like Pepsi's is, too. I know the daughter of one of the vice presidents of PepsiCo, and it was really something to hear her talk about how good Pepsi is, how the war with Coke isn't over, and how Coke's constantly used nasty practices to keep Pepsi down. I thought it sounded so sad, caring that much about something as unimportant as a consumer product. I then looked at all my Apple gear and felt really, really sad for myself.
...was the one where they investigated something strange, and Mulder had a theory it might be the aliens, and he thought he was going to get to the bottom of the mystery but by the end of it the audience learned that the conspiracy was deeper and more sinister than we ever suspected. Oh, and Scully was out of commission and/or separated from Mulder when the really cool stuff happened.
I hope the movie's like that episode. That would be awesome.
Man, I'm a hard-working, well-paid highly educated guy just like lots of people here on Slashdot, but I gotta say... I really, really wish I didn't have to work. I hate working. I like doing what I do, but I wish I didn't have to do it. I dream of being the idle rich.
In all honesty, I'd be more than happy if the government could help me live a decent life with me working less. I don't know why we have to work as much as we do; 40 hours a week doing a job is way too much time. There are so many other things I'd rather be doing with that time. I'm sure a lot of other people feel like this, too.
I don't understand why work is seen as a virtue. Just doin' a job for the sake of doin' a job sucks. I don't see how that makes you a good person.
Art for art's sake is virtually a thing of the past
I don't know if there really has been much art for art's sake; certainly, if there has, it's a recent phenomenon. Most artists historically have done what they were doing for money as much as art - painters created portraits to pay the bills, composers would create the kind of music that their patrons desired, and so forth. Patronage and the arts have long gone hand in hand.
HSS is taking it way too far, though. Not having RTFA, it seems to me that something like this would produce mush after a while, since HSS will begat hits which will begat HSS.
Alternatively, if you really want to keep that last past present-tense you could quote it and write something like, "Watching the Macworld keynote, I thought 'Tiger looks very good'".
You know, you really should have a comma after the word 'thought.' And I won't even get into where your period should be placed at the end of the sentence.
I could be wrong, but I imagine that there are ways to get around this. A number of software companies in Canada, are technically American, with their headquarters based in someone's basement office or something, while all of the work is done in Canada. I imagine something similiar could be done for this thing.
It just strikes me as something that's much more financially viable than tourism....
Tourisim as an industry is huge. Considering how many people would like to go to space, even for a quick visit (show of hands?), that's a potentially very good market.
High-speed transport will follow, but this gets feet in the doors.
Oh man, watching this live. For a while I thought this was going to be a disaster. Thankfully we all got it wrong.
No kidding. It really started looking a lot like the Genesis sample return spinning madly as its parachute failed to open. I was pretty worried for Mike there for a minute. That guy's an amazing pilot.
This page argues (most of the way down) that a series of prizes, for a grand total of $5.6 billion in prize money, could bring the cost of access to space to $10,000 a person. $5.6 billion sounds like a lot, but over a few decades it's something that could be affordable by an agency like NASA. Hopefully, Bigelow's prize is the first such step.
There's the annual X Prize Cup which will hopefully give a number of teams motivation to keep working on what they're doing. Anyways, I doubt that many of the teams would quit just because the prize was won... I mean, I think they all just want to get into space, and they're closer now than they've ever been (even if they're still a ways off).
Especially not poverty. This is for various reasons, one of them being the fact that there is no where to flee to for the moment.
I have to agree with that. I'm not saying it'll happen next week, exactly - we'd have to build the places we'd be going to, which is difficult and expensive. And that means the poor won't be able to afford it for a long time, unless governments foot a big part of the bill in an attempt to colonize space (which I think is a definite possibility, but not until space access costs come down a great deal.) But I actually wasn't talking about poor people in my original post: oppression and poverty aren't the same thing. You can be relatively well to do and still fell oppressed, and yet there may be nowhere to go on Earth where you can get away from that.
Space is pretty big, as you correctly point out, and pretty much none of what we've seen of it so far makes for a good destination for any settlers.
I posted a link to this elsewhere in this thread, so I apologize for repeating myself, but orbital colonies offer one such destination... we just have to build them. The technology to do so isn't anything that we don't already have. You might want to consider reading Gerrard O'Neill's The High Frontier. It's a solution that has some issues - mainly, the startup cost of his particular vision is enormous - but a more staged approach starting a lot smaller seems quite possible, once the cost of access to space gets down to something people can afford.
I think the main reason many people would like to move to space if they could is the same reason many left Europe for the New World: to escape opression, to start anew. Earth no longer feels like it's big enough to do this. Space, though - well, it's pretty big.
Many people believe orbital colonies are the way to go (and many don't - establishing an initial presence on Mars would likely be easier in the short term, but wouldn't gain you nearly as much in the long term). But just because there aren't any planets to move to, doesn't mean there's no place in the solar system we could go, at least after just a few years of construction with present-day technology.
Life in space would be hard for a few years, but it could be a lot better with time.
Well, I have no problem with sending the bad stuff into space. Sending the bad stuff into space with life support equipment, that's a different matter...
And then there's lightcraft. Watching that video reminds me of the old Orion test footage. Mind you, the site hasn't been updated in some time, although I did get email from the CEO saying there was lots coming. We shall see.
Which would mean it wouldn't be that big a deal, except for the fact that tourism is one of the world's biggest industries. (Granted, that link looks a couple of years old, but I don't think things have changed that much.) So if the only reason people want to go to space is for a vacation... well, that's a heck of a lot of people.
Man, I was worried for a second there glancing at that FAQ, until I got here:
"19. What is the "Springfield Effect"?
The Springfield Effect is the name given to the phenomenon by which every place named Springfield is hard-linked in hyperspace to every other place of this name. In other words, there is only one place named Springfield, but it is "linked" to various locations in the world."
Seth Shostak of SETI has an interesting article on the silicon-vs-carbon life thing here. Among other thing, carbon dioxide is a much nicer waste product than silicon dioxide.
The critical consensus isn't quite so strong, although some of the better known critics seem to like it quite a bit. The people I know who've seen it all described it as boring, but with some nice eye candy. Sky Captain, on the other hand - this, I'm excited about.
Slashdot Mirror
It's kind of neat watching people argue over sex and what it means. I think there's a good reason for this: since we've gotten reliable birth control - the pill - sex doesn't mean what it used it. It's no longer primarily about reproduction. It may be for some people, but you don't see too many families with ten or more kids these days. So unless people are having less sex, they're having it for reasons other than making babies.
So, if sex no longer means what it used to, does the traditional thinking that goes on about it still apply? I don't know, but it'll be interesting to see what happens. I suspect that we're in a transition stage, though - sexual politics will be very different in a few generations.
Mind you, it's an astrophyisics textbook so it ain't cheap.
Seems like Pepsi's is, too. I know the daughter of one of the vice presidents of PepsiCo, and it was really something to hear her talk about how good Pepsi is, how the war with Coke isn't over, and how Coke's constantly used nasty practices to keep Pepsi down. I thought it sounded so sad, caring that much about something as unimportant as a consumer product. I then looked at all my Apple gear and felt really, really sad for myself.
'Global warming' hype reaches fever pitch But critics doubting data compare ideology behind movement to Communism, Nazism
Man, they don't get past the sub-header before invoking Godwin's law. Now that's good journalism!
I hope the movie's like that episode. That would be awesome.
In all honesty, I'd be more than happy if the government could help me live a decent life with me working less. I don't know why we have to work as much as we do; 40 hours a week doing a job is way too much time. There are so many other things I'd rather be doing with that time. I'm sure a lot of other people feel like this, too.
I don't understand why work is seen as a virtue. Just doin' a job for the sake of doin' a job sucks. I don't see how that makes you a good person.
I don't know if there really has been much art for art's sake; certainly, if there has, it's a recent phenomenon. Most artists historically have done what they were doing for money as much as art - painters created portraits to pay the bills, composers would create the kind of music that their patrons desired, and so forth. Patronage and the arts have long gone hand in hand.
HSS is taking it way too far, though. Not having RTFA, it seems to me that something like this would produce mush after a while, since HSS will begat hits which will begat HSS.
You know, you really should have a comma after the word 'thought.' And I won't even get into where your period should be placed at the end of the sentence.
Next stop: Grammar Rodeo!
I could be wrong, but I imagine that there are ways to get around this. A number of software companies in Canada, are technically American, with their headquarters based in someone's basement office or something, while all of the work is done in Canada. I imagine something similiar could be done for this thing.
Tourisim as an industry is huge. Considering how many people would like to go to space, even for a quick visit (show of hands?), that's a potentially very good market.
High-speed transport will follow, but this gets feet in the doors.
No kidding. It really started looking a lot like the Genesis sample return spinning madly as its parachute failed to open. I was pretty worried for Mike there for a minute. That guy's an amazing pilot.
This page argues (most of the way down) that a series of prizes, for a grand total of $5.6 billion in prize money, could bring the cost of access to space to $10,000 a person. $5.6 billion sounds like a lot, but over a few decades it's something that could be affordable by an agency like NASA. Hopefully, Bigelow's prize is the first such step.
Because that way I'd know I'd win said bet?
There's the annual X Prize Cup which will hopefully give a number of teams motivation to keep working on what they're doing. Anyways, I doubt that many of the teams would quit just because the prize was won... I mean, I think they all just want to get into space, and they're closer now than they've ever been (even if they're still a ways off).
I have to agree with that. I'm not saying it'll happen next week, exactly - we'd have to build the places we'd be going to, which is difficult and expensive. And that means the poor won't be able to afford it for a long time, unless governments foot a big part of the bill in an attempt to colonize space (which I think is a definite possibility, but not until space access costs come down a great deal.) But I actually wasn't talking about poor people in my original post: oppression and poverty aren't the same thing. You can be relatively well to do and still fell oppressed, and yet there may be nowhere to go on Earth where you can get away from that.
Space is pretty big, as you correctly point out, and pretty much none of what we've seen of it so far makes for a good destination for any settlers. I posted a link to this elsewhere in this thread, so I apologize for repeating myself, but orbital colonies offer one such destination... we just have to build them. The technology to do so isn't anything that we don't already have. You might want to consider reading Gerrard O'Neill's The High Frontier. It's a solution that has some issues - mainly, the startup cost of his particular vision is enormous - but a more staged approach starting a lot smaller seems quite possible, once the cost of access to space gets down to something people can afford.
I think the main reason many people would like to move to space if they could is the same reason many left Europe for the New World: to escape opression, to start anew. Earth no longer feels like it's big enough to do this. Space, though - well, it's pretty big.
Life in space would be hard for a few years, but it could be a lot better with time.
Well, I have no problem with sending the bad stuff into space. Sending the bad stuff into space with life support equipment, that's a different matter...
And then there's lightcraft. Watching that video reminds me of the old Orion test footage. Mind you, the site hasn't been updated in some time, although I did get email from the CEO saying there was lots coming. We shall see.
Which would mean it wouldn't be that big a deal, except for the fact that tourism is one of the world's biggest industries. (Granted, that link looks a couple of years old, but I don't think things have changed that much.) So if the only reason people want to go to space is for a vacation... well, that's a heck of a lot of people.
Dude... Michael Moore isn't running the country. That's a pretty big difference.
"19. What is the "Springfield Effect"?
The Springfield Effect is the name given to the phenomenon by which every place named Springfield is hard-linked in hyperspace to every other place of this name. In other words, there is only one place named Springfield, but it is "linked" to various locations in the world."
Sadly, creationist FAQs aren't quite so amusing. (Well, okay, there's this one.)
Seth Shostak of SETI has an interesting article on the silicon-vs-carbon life thing here. Among other thing, carbon dioxide is a much nicer waste product than silicon dioxide.
The critical consensus isn't quite so strong, although some of the better known critics seem to like it quite a bit. The people I know who've seen it all described it as boring, but with some nice eye candy. Sky Captain, on the other hand - this, I'm excited about.